> Chuck, there are many aspects to the official 9-11 story, this is only
> one of them, in his book the New Pearl Harbor, Griffin reviews the work
> of those who have interrogated the official story (among whom those who
> doubt a plane hit the Pentagon are a minority) and his overall purpose
> is to present a *cumulative case* arguing that the official story simply
> does not hold up. He also looks at the conventional (even among
> 'conspiranoids') view that it was a plane that hit the Pentagon; he
> looks at the question of how/why the Pentagon's air defense system
> (missile batteries) failed to respond, wonders why the FBI seized all
> surveillance cameras from the immediate area and looks at the remarks
> made by air traffic controllers that they thought it was a military
> plane given the way it manouevered, and who also said that it had to
> have been flown by a highly trained fighter pilot - as opposed to a pair
> of neophyte pilots who by all accounts could hardly operate the flight
> simulators they were supposedly trained on. These accounts call into
> question the official story about who the hijackers were, etc. Even
> Micheal Moore, a favortie son of people around here, raises querstions
> about the governments story about where the pilots were trained.
I'm not familiar with the details of Griffin's book and have no intention of reading it. As far as I'm concerned, there are more important things to be worried about than to waste time on some of the more wild-eyed 9-11 conspiracy theories.
Are people really serious about challenging the official 9-11 story. Then they should start by demanding that the government make all evidence available to the public domain. My main beef with the official story is that we are beign asked to rely on what the government and experts are telling us. I happen to believe the official story, but I'm not going to tally accept it given that the government hoards information and has destroyed evidence. Open access to the evidence should have been one of the foremost demands of the 9-11 accountability movement, rather than half-baked theories.
http://www.xymphora.blogspot.com wrote:
>
> The Official Story about 9-11 is that some fundamentalist Islamic
> terrorists came to America, learned how to fly at American flying
> schools well enough to perform the simple maneuvers required to plow
> planes into buildings, and performed well enough to hit the two towers
> and the Pentagon. The Pentagon story has always been unbelievable, with
> incompetent Cessna pilot Hani Hanjour required to suddenly acquire the
> skills of a stunt pilot to manage to crash Flight 77 into the Pentagon
> at exactly ground level. The second plane to hit the towers was Flight
> 175, supposedly piloted by Marwan Al-Shehhi. If he demonstrated
> fighter-pilot skills on his reapproach to the WTC, it destroys the
> credibility of the Official Story. It would mean that the pilots were
> highly trained pilots before they arrived in the United States, and
> weren't just a few religious nuts who learned to fly as students - and
> not very good students - at American flying schools. The American flight
> training has always been said to be just enough to allow them to take
> over the flights from the original pilots and guide the planes directly
> into their targets. It is quite possible that the entire story about the
> Florida flight training is itself a deception to give credibility to the
> Official Story about the identity of the hijackers. Everything we think
> we know about the hijackers, including the little we know about the
> Florida flight training schools, may be part of this deception.
I believe the official story because it is the most plausible and because the visual evidence supports the official story. Occam's Razor is also a good guide. My chief problem with these accusations that 20 men from the Middle East couldn't have pulled 9-11 off is that they are racist. It's like the UFO nuts who once argued that the ancient Egyptians weren't smart enought to build the pyramids, that they were actually built by aliens.
Of course, much of the evidence about theskyjacking conspiracy is controlled by the government. But I think that the fact that 19 men skyjacked 4 airplanes is one of the most plausible explanations for what happened. There were motivated to carry through this plot. They had rehearsed the skyjackings and they had planned for years. They were part of a political network that had previously tried to blow up the World Trade Center and airplanes over the Pacific. A conspiracy is hard to keep secret, but if only a core know bout the audacious plan and the other side simply isn't prepared, 9-11 is very possible.
As for the government not scrambling jets or otherwise stopping this conspiracy--let's remember what happened in Seattle in 1999 when the cops panicked and made history. Big surprises happen. Seattle was the result of a general attitude among police forces that activists were not to be taken seriously. Sure, the U.S. government had talked about the possibility of flying planes into buildings (remember the photos from Genoa of the ground-to-air missile batteries), but nothing like 9-11 had ever happened before on American soil. Combine a smug, overconfident attitude by the U.S. government with a smart plan by the 9-11 skyjackers and voila, 9-11.
There are questions that should be asked about 9-11, but the American left is more obsessed with paranoia and fantasies than they are about digging out truths that could be just as damaging. ;-)
Chuck0