My grandmother remembered life in rural Alabama when there were no cars or planes. She remembered NYC before WWI. She was a so called yellow dog Democrat and loved Jimmy Carter. Reagan was an actor and not a serious person. She took me on a trip in 1956 and we flew on a DC-3, just like the movie Casablanca. You got on the plane and walked uphill to your seat. She had 3 children: the oldest son was her best and brightest-the lawyer-a major at Iowa Jima, her daughter the concert pianist, the most talented. My father was the youngest, little fat Stanley. He of course developed deep reserves of drive, ambition, and personality.
My father was just like Arnold Palmer. Dad died at 80 and Arnold only recently passed away but when I see a picture of Arnold Palmer and read the obituary, it feels as if my father died again. My father loved golf and people. He did periodontal surgery on thousands of people and I can report that I have practiced for 30 years on his patients and not one says anything but that they miss him. For him to enter a room was to brighten it, to leave it, left it emptier. They are all dead now: Dad, Grandma, even my Mother who should have her own monument in front of the courthouse instead of a Civil War soldier. She was a tireless volunteer on every Board in our little town. But a soldier's early death is more poignant than a lifetime of service. I am a many generations Southerner.
I have come to talk about 9-11. Let me tell you what I remember because I did not experience it watching TV. I had NPR radio on in my office. I started seeing patients at 8:00A (9:00AM ET) and heard a small plane had hit the twin towers. Shortly thereafter a passenger plane was said to have plowed into the other tower. They were both burning. I was very busy and the radio was just background, planes-terrorism-everybody in shock--yada,yada--I had teeth to save. At 10:30 a tower fell. Shortly thereafter the other one. I reflected on 50,000 New York deaths. I felt a malevolent Evil had shockingly arisen. I had the general feeling that approx 25,000 worked in each tower and I pictured them both falling erratically on surrounding skycrapers. After lunch I got a call from a parent whose daughter was on my soccer team, was the game this afternoon cancelled? I was the coach of the U10 Purple Dragons. I said of course not. I loved coaching soccer and whatever problems were going on were in New York City and Washington, DC. Why would we change a kid soccer game in Alabama? An hour later I was contacted by the League Administrator to say all games were cancelled. I considered that decision a mistake. But the idea that there were people who hated America so much that they would plan to kill innocent people was unbelievable to me. I had worked in foreign affairs 20 years before and hosted people in my home from all over the world for 15 years and could not understand where the hate was coming from. We had just had 4 Palestinians from the Gaza strip stay at our house and we listened to their stories. They disliked Israel and our support for their settlement policy but they were sympathetic to our loss. I knew we had a CIA dirty tricks department screwing around in other people's country but I thought the serious people controlled them. I thought the overall effort of America was to help all these countries. Perhaps we were no longer loved and admired? Maybe we were culpable because we had not politically reined in our MIC?
Driving home I knew everything I thought I knew about America had changed. I picked up my oldest son from daycare, he was 11. I drove him around aimlessly muttering to myself that there must be something we could do. There was something that needed doing, something that had to be understood, what was it? Everything was completely the same--and completely different. It was a giant pause. Whither America?
I don't know how many Americans are conspiracy theorists about 9-11. I want to say 25% know they don't have the full story and have reached for an explanation that is more substantial. I just don't have a good feel for how many hard core false flag enthusiasts there are. If you ask people what they really think about 9/11, they look at you quizzically, they really haven't thought about it. The official story just is. Not exactly believable but not exactly worth shouting about publicly and ruining your reputation. Well, I have seen the WTC-7 videos and reflected on the Truth about this event. And I remain suspicious but unwilling to accuse the government of crimes against its own people. If I had to accept there was an our own government neo-con plot to take down 5 Middle East countries that were opposed to Israel and they created an event to rally Americans for action in the Mid-East, I would be forced to become a revolutionary. I know my government lied about Vietnam. I know it has lied about many international interventions from Iran to Guatemala to Panama to Chile. It has lied about spying on me. It lies to do what it wants but how could the government itself be malignantly treasonous without numerous people speaking up? It does not seem as if our dysfunctional government could pull off that level of secrecy.
I saw the video of the fall of the towers and WTC-7 when I got home that night. I heard a recorded report by the BBC about WTC-7 before it actually fell which the news mentioned but did not go into again and likewise I saw Silverstein on tape in the afternoon say the building was so badly damaged that it would have to be "pulled". Since it had already happened I thought it puzzling that you could consider bringing a building down at 3:00pm and then have it fall at 5:00pm. That is quick work. How is it possible that in the midst of all that destruction, somebody sticks some dynamite sticks on support columns and a couple of hours later, BOOM, there goes a 47 story building in its own footprint? I thought demolition was more complicated than that. But that is not what was said to have happened. It fell due to office fires that on film never looked that bad. It had an obvious damaged corner and would have logically fallen over in that direction. But it didn't. It was only later that night that I saw the film of the falling Towers. I had imagined wrong--they came straight down and did not tip like I thought. I imagined the middle buckling and the top tipping over and the weight dragging the whole thing over. Wrong. It appeared to be 'blowing up'. I watched the pancaking with wonder. I did not even realize that most people had evacuated and only the fireman were going UP the stairs when it collapsed. When I heard that "only" 3,000 people had died I was surprised. I expected 10x as many.
I do not know what to do with the standard story. I know that Bush I and II are connected to the Saudi's and have been for a long time. Saudi "investors" bailed out Bush the younger in the mid 80's from some poor oil investments. So the administration went to a lot of trouble to deflect blame from that country and its representatives in the US. The hijackers were Saudi but we protected the diplomats from that country and gave them safe passage home without asking them much about what they knew and when they knew it. We certainly didn't incarcerate them all and waterboard them. The Saudi ambassador was not jailed but flown home. We were told the hijackers had nothing to do with the government of Saudi Arabia and I accepted the truth of that. Now I find that less than credible.
And then we intervened in Afghanistan and attacked Iraq. Why did we do this? I imagined that we would send some helicopter gun ships to Kabul, chase down Osama bin Laden, kill him or bring him home and be done with the whole Afghanistan operation in a week. Whoa! That was obviously not the plan, we are still there 15 years later. We attacked Iraq too! I listened to some flimsy rationales about weapons of mass destruction from Colin Powell and the Administration but the knowledgeable UN observer, Scott Ritter, who was a US marine, said the evidence was simply not credible. But war is the health of the State. I find it difficult to believe that most Congressional representatives support Israel by taking money from its supporters and are paid to stay silent about facts they may be aware of that do not support the received wisdom about 9-11. Surely someone would spill the beans.
But the facts are these: Both towers sag or drop slightly at the floor where the airliners hit. Then they start collapsing from the top by "blowing up". Why would they blow up at the very top? I can understand pancaking after 5-7 stories have collapsed but each floors support would have to be taken out as the above weight collapsed on it. It would be somewhat jerky until the weight of the above floors was massively greater than the supports and then it might appear to be blowing up and the speed of descent close to free fall. Do the towers fall at free fall or slightly slower? I understand WTC-7 actually falls at free fall speed. That is obviously a problem for the official explanation of what occurred. The official report says they did not check for explosives because they did not expect them to be there. Does this make sense?
I am still skeptical of the demolition narrative because someone would have had to pre-plan the destruction while counting on a bunch of Arabs to do what the FBI had uncovered they were planning as cover for the real story. Two FBI field offices reported to DC headquarters in July that Muslim terrorist suspects were taking airliner flying lessons in two different locations around the USA. They were obviously on the radar as suspects but the warnings were apparently ignored. And don't you need miles of synchronized wiring and explosives to take down a building? and wouldn't flying a plane into that choreographed demolition make it more difficult to plan on the demolition actually working? I would be interested in a demolition story. How technically it could be done. To simulate it collapsing on its own would not be the same as blowing out all the supports on the lower floors--that would be obvious. Blowing the supports from the top down might be interrupted by the destruction of the airliners on the lower floors. And if it was wired for demolition how many floors would need explosives? Wouldn't interviewing the people who worked on all the floors notice some unusual activity during the previous months? I haven't heard any reports or claims about that. But what if it was done at night? A night clean up crew might have some stories about that or not. Has there ever been a nano-thermite building demolition? How would it work?
The controlled demolition story seems like overkill to me if in fact the al-Quaeda plotters are going to be "allowed" to accomplish their plan. Just a few deaths from the airliners and in the building itself would be enough to suggest the horrific possibilities that could have occurred. ( Recall the basement bombing some 9 years earlier). You would not need to destroy the buildings unless there was some other reason to destroy WTC-7 besides going to war in the Mid-East. Were planners going for a twofer? Destroy the evidence for implicating (or convicting) some big criminals like Enron, Global Crossing and their government supporters? I believe the prosecution records for numerous security fraud cases were housed in WTC-7. The New York Fed was located there, maybe picking up some gold in the basement of the Fed Reserve vault would be useful?
America is unsettled like I am unsettled because there is a vague suspicion that much of what we are told is untrue. Media is used to shape a narrative and support policies that support American empire.
You will not find me dwelling on Truther sites but I have a very uneasy feeling about our own government's complicity in the actual events of September 11, 2001.
So I ask myself, What would make the official story completely believable so I could rest easy that the government is working not just for American advantage but also for a better world that recognizes the POV of all contending countries? That it acts on principles that can be stated to its citizens? After all, they are acting in our name.
I have become sympathetic to the plight of 1930s Germans as their country and its enlightened history was bent to evil ends......
