9/11 Conspiracies Prompt More Questions than Answers

September 11, 2001—a date surpassing the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 as the “date that will live in infamy”. Everyone alive and old enough to have a memory will live with the events of that day for the rest of their lives. I have already given my thoughts on the attacks, as well as my experiences here, and the general response to it has been tremendously successful. However, in this article, I offer no sympathy or recollection of that traumatic morning. Instead I will project my energies on a question that has been burning in the American public for the last nine years, and much more passionately in the last year or so, as groups have gotten together in a quest for “9/11 Truth”. That is exactly what I am after: the truth. I never was a gung-ho believer in a 9/11 conspiracy, but have only recently began to open up a bit more.

I must admit, I was mesmerized by the documentary Loose Change when it first came out, but because every few years they make edits and remove information from their film that has been proven false, I wonder how much of it is actually credible to begin with. For that reason, I will not cite them further or encourage others to view their hunk of rubbish as a source for anything other than comedic revelry.

My concerns of a 9/11 conspiracy are less technical, meaning I am not going to sit here and pretend to be an architectural expert. People stand on top of their soapbox and claim that the flames did this, but they didn’t do that. Fire could have caused this, but not that. There had to be bombs planted, but if there were, who planted them? These are just a few of the questions included in the dizzying array of melodramatic and paranoid lunacy that gives a bad name to those of us theorists who are more interested in how the United States benefited from such an attack, and not the tin-foil helmet inducing refuse that causes others to sit in a fetal position in their newspaper lined closets chanting how the government is out to get them.

The only concern I have that the buildings were brought down by something other than a single plane each is this following picture. It is not new, nor is it exclusive. It is one of the many taken on that day, and shows a fireball exploding out from the building at the place of impact:

Here you can see a clear fireball, because that is all that is there. There are no missiles, no hidden weapons assisting the plane—all we have is the jetliner that slammed into the tower. Immediately it was announced that jet fuel caused the towers to collapse. Since fuel burns at such a high temperature, if it seeped down the elevator shafts and burned intensely while sticking to the beams, that is what obviously caused them to melt, thus making the building fall on top of itself and implode. But this is where that theory does not make any sense. You see the fireball, do you not? That massive explosion that sent shards of glass and steel flying into the air? THAT is the jet fuel. What could that flame be besides the fuel burning? Steel does not ignite, the wooden desks and Sheetrock do not combust to form a flame like that. The only explanation for that flame is the jet fuel, which all ignited within seconds of the plane striking the tower. So what jet fuel is left to flow down into the center of the building?

I will now end here in regards to the actual World Trade Center on that fateful day, because there are hundreds upon hundreds of websites and documentaries (some good, some not so good) that can explain the building structure and theories of a controlled demolition down to the dots on the I’s. But one more question regarding this: when in the history of human architecture has a building ever been destroyed because of a fire? Not gutted, destroyed. When has a solid, steel frame building (arguably the strongest in the world) ever fell because of a fire?

Where my interest lies, as mentioned earlier, when dealing with conspiracies, is how the US government benefits from such an attack. It’s quite comical that every time this country needs something, or a boost in economy, we conveniently go to war because of an assassination or attack on our soil. We needed a little boost in 1941, which is why the US naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was allowed to be attacked on December 7, yes, allowed. The government had full warning that the Japanese were going to attack because of intelligence, and rather than scramble their soldiers to prepare or evacuate, they had the planes and ships moved into nice little lines, side-by-side with each other so that Japanese bombers could not miss.

The result of this? A swift, and patriotic response to join the US Army by volunteers all over the nation. There were no questions asked; just an overwhelming sense of patriotism. The US had been looking to go to war for some time, but how could they persuade people to enlist to fight a war that they seemingly had no reason entering? Simple: you let the nation be attacked to inspire people.

This quote here comes from Hermann Goering, the president of the Nazi Reichstag, uttered during the Nuremberg Trials:

Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country…

What is the first thing you remember about the days following the attacks on 9/11? A sense of patriotism, of course. We wanted revenge on our attackers and the government quickly saw to it that we would have a war in the Middle East. How many of us know someone who enlisted in the months following, when they never had any intention of doing so previously? How many people were attacked for denouncing the oncoming war, called cowards and un-American? How is it, that for a country whose two main political parties that could not agree on the color of the sky, almost unanimously voted to go to war? Why? Because they were inspired. To serve your country is to do so without questioning its integrity.

The invasion of the Middle East was an illegal one, made so by a rushed sham of a declaration of war. And why, if it was pounded into our skulls day and night, that it was Osama Bin Laden who organized the attack, did we invade Iraq? Was Saddam Hussein ever mentioned with being in cahoots with Bin Laden? No, of course not, but he had those infamous (and now comic) weapons of mass destruction.

Oh yes! Those four words echo through my brain like a razor blade bouncing in a spinning dryer. Those four words single-handedly convinced the American public that war is alright. Where did these weapons go, though? Did we ever find them? And how about Saddam Hussein? We were able to capture him yet we do not have the slightest idea where Bin Laden is. Sure, he releases his tapes every few years, shaking his finger at America and the world and promising jihad. How do we know he isn’t dead already? How is it that this man, who has been on the run for nine years while living in cave after cave, who supposedly has kidney disease, has not turned up dead? Maybe it’s because he isn’t supposed to. Maybe Bin Laden never really existed, or perhaps he was just an insignificant little peon whose worth was exaggerated by our government to scare the hell out of us. Is it so unbelievable? Shall we make reference to McCarthyism and the Red Scare?

Is it so unbelievable, coming from the nation who will murder and invade at the drop of a hat, a nation that concocted the Tonkin Gulf Incident out of thin air to give us reason to invade Vietnam? Yes, out of thin air. This incident, which supposedly had one of our ships attacked by a Vietnamese gun boat, never happened. It was made up—a “false flag” operation if you will, and the scary part is, the government admitted it earlier this year. But that’s alright: the 50,000 Americans who died during the struggle were just pawns in a chess game, a mere sacrifice for the boost of our economy, which thrives on war.

War is a business, and it does not take a brain surgeon to figure that out. War means weapons need to be made, which means factories need to be opened or filled with additional workers. Then there are tanks and other vehicles, and uniforms, and food, and computers, and so on and so forth—the list is endless. And of course, there’s the oil, the one liquid on earth that will drive men to the edge of insanity to claim it for themselves. We needed oil in the 90′s and today, just like we needed the rubber trees in Vietnam, and in case you have not realized it, what the United States of America needs is what the United States of America gets. That should be painfully obvious by now. It only cost John F. Kennedy his life, because he would not commit to an all-out war in Vietnam, and let the CIA have a chance to redeem themselves after the Bay of Pigs disaster in the early 1960′s.

But now the United States does not even have the common decency to let our own soldiers being the sole purveyors in this fruitless war, but they need to contract jobs out to companies like Blackwater, who carry out covert political assassinations, and who have ties to none other than Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

So I will end with this question: DO YOU TRUST YOUR GOVERNMENT?

I would like to sit here and think that 9/11 was not an inside job or anything but a terrorist attack on our nation. I remember much simpler times when I was younger, when the world seemed like such a better place and whatever I was told was the truth, and even if it wasn’t, I was not burdened by some underlying sense of guilt, that it is my job, and the job of us as Americans to ask questions. Historian Howard Zinn once said, “Dissension is the highest form of patriotism”, meaning it is ok to ask questions, and that we have a right to, as citizens.

Look at the middle east today, look at our soldiers dying. What is the purpose of war? How have we not learned in our human existence? For a country that saw 600,000 men die during the Civil War, how did we not learn? World War I was the war to end all wars, and less than 30 years later, there is a second world war. Then came Korea, then Vietnam, then Desert Storm, and now this mess. And what is this for? Our men and women are giving up their lives fighting on a dusty piece of land that holds no more significance to them than a piece of spit-out gum in a storm drain. Is it worth it? Is it worth it for this country and others to engage in fruitless wars?

I am 19 years old, and I have only known nine years without war or terrorism. I look at the children born today, and some of the boys and girls I have taught in the last few years at CCD, and I just think that these kids will never known anything but terror and violence. Since they first developed a memory, there has been war. At least I can look back at a time in my childhood where there was no worldwide fear—no danger in going on vacation to a foreign country and having to worry if you will come back alive, no danger in getting on an airplane wondering if the person behind you is going to hijack it or blow it up, no danger in looking at every person of Middle Eastern descent and thinking to myself, could they be a terrorist? Do they want to do me harm? It is a generalization and a prejudice that I, and everyone else, should rid themselves of, but I fear that will be impossible so long as the world works this way, and continues to head in a path of destruction.

That is what angers me, that there are people in positions of power who stand to make a buck on the death of others. I hate to sound like a hippie, yelling for peace and not war, but as someone who has immersed himself in history, and past wars, very rarely do I find a war with a real purpose. Again, what is the point to send people to die in a foreign land when we have threats right here in our own country. I do hope that one day there will be peace, that children can grow up in a world without fear, and maybe it needs this generation’s bones in the ground before that can be accomplished, I don’t know. And that, my friends, is the real conspiracy.

5th Grade Memories: Looking Back on September 11

Today, the ninth anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks of September 11, 2001, is just like that very day: ordinary. We all got up and went to school or work, not giving any thought to what would soon unfold right before our eyes on national television. I was only ten years old at the time and in fifth grade, and looking back on it now, it is hard to believe just how long ago it was. That day has remained with me all this time, and my memories of the events of that day, and the days that followed will most likely stay with me forever.

We were only a week into school and sitting in home-room when the first plane struck. Naturally, no one was made aware of it until later in the morning, and as students, we were never made aware. The first time we sensed something was wrong was during our Art class with a teacher nobody liked, Mr. Maskaly. We had only been going to that class for a few days and we grew to hate it. The teacher was old and mean and never had any emotion. But something was not right with him that day. We walked into class and he was just sitting silently at his desk and then he stood up and announced to us that, “Today is going to be a sad day.” That was the only thing we heard about it while we remained in school until 3:20 P.M.

What we later found out, was that the teachers were told of the events but were instructed to not tell any of the students. Many parents also came in, wanting to take their kids out of school, and it was allowed, no questions asked. During the day, kids were randomly being pulled out, but as fifth graders we could not imagine why. We sat there, still going about our day.

When school ended, I walked to the parking lot with everyone else, expecting to get on the bus. It was then when we were confronted by a large mass of worried parents, who converged on the group of kids. I saw my mom and dad, the latter which I was expecting to be at work. My Aunt Marie was also supposed to be visiting that day, and I was looking forward to seeing her, but she was not there. My parents both looked saddened, so automatically I thought that something happened to my Aunt. I asked if she was alright, and they told me she was. They did not elaborate on anything else on the car ride home. When I got home, it was then when they explained to me what happened. I could not grasp what I had just been told.

The World Trade Center was hit by planes and it was not an accident, but intentional. What does that mean? I heard the words “terrorist attack” being thrown around on the television, but I did not know what that was. To be honest, I did not even know what a Muslim was until that day. All I saw were shots of the streets of New York, covered with debris and dust. The video of the plane striking was replayed over and over again. So this is what happened? I sat there, for the rest of the day, mesmerized by what was unfolding on television. I did not understand half of what was being said, but I watched it anyway.

Later in the evening, before sunset, we headed down to Union Beach which overlooks New York City. It was there where we saw a thick cloud of smoke, emanating from the sky line. I can even remember seeing it from my house, which is miles away from that location. There must have been hundreds of people there, looking out on the horizon, some crying, and some praying; everyone was distressed. A small memorial along the guard rails of the beach had already begun to form. There were candles all over the place.

It was this same place where my mom and Aunt came earlier in the day. The attacks happened before my Aunt left to see us, and she called my mom asking if she should still come, and of course, they decided the best place to be was with each other. So they went down to the beach, and even in the morning, a crowd was already forming.

My dad, who worked at WTC from 1979 to 2001, was let go when his company went out of business just months before the attack. He left work early to come be with my mom. She also worked there, from 1986 until 1990, before leaving after she was pregnant with me. My dad was there in 1993 for the first bombing, and he worked up on the 86th floor. Not knowing whether he survived that first attack, my mom was in a panic. These were the days before cell phones and the pay phones were jammed with people trying to call their loved ones. With me in her arms, at only two years old, she then got a phone call from a friend, saying she saw him pass in front of a television camera and was alive and well. He came home early in the morning, wearing a jacket stained with smoke and soot. The handkerchief he covered his nose with is located in a family photo album. He had to walk down 86 flights of stairs, in total darkness except for a small window at the end of every stair well. Had his company not went out of business, and he would have been at work, he would have most likely been killed in the attacks.

And so it was this same person who informed my mom of good news in 1993 to call in 2001 with the news of these attacks. “Julie, it’s the World Trade Center again!” she yelled into the phone at my mom, not able to express her feelings of what was happening any other way. My mom turned on the TV and saw one of the buildings up in smoke. She then ran downstairs to tell my grandma, who lived with us in a basement apartment at the time, when the second plane struck. My mom waited in the living room, and my grandma came out of the bedroom just in time to see the second plane hit. My mom just threw her arms up in the air.

At the same time, Jeff Huber was informed at his job in Woodbridge what had happened. He admits that he laughed when he heard the news of the first plane hitting, because he thought it was someone in a private plane trying to fly between the two towers, something that was stupidly allowed for many years. But when he heard a second plane hit, his reaction went from laughs to shock. For the first time, everyone realized it was no accident. The nation was under attack.

In the next few days after the attacks, I attended many vigils and services in my town of Hazlet and the neighboring Union Beach. It was simply amazing at how united we all were. Complete strangers were consoling one another, and those who worked or had dealings in the towers were telling stories of what used to be. The fifth graders of Beers Street Elementary School were allowed to talk about it as much as we wanted, to prevent it from building up in side of us. I remember being given paper in English class so we could draw pictures of what was going through our heads. We talked about it in class, we talked about it at lunch, and we talked about it after school.

Everyone was completely obsessed with what happened, and worried if any more attacks were coming. Stories then were revealed of people we knew, losing parents or close friends in the attacks, and that was when it really hit home, days later. And so the days passed, and then the months, and the years. The attacks of September 11 were eventually put out of our minds. I will not say they were forgotten, because it would have been impossible, but we needed to move on in a sense, and get back to our lives which at the time, the biggest worry we had was what game we were going to play during recess.

It is now nine years later, and I try not to think about that day except for when it gets close to the anniversary. There will be countless specials on television today, and in the days ahead and behind. But none of them will come close to affecting me in the way my own memories have.

For our grandparents, they had the attacks on Pearl Harbor, our parents had the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and our generation has the September 11 attacks. I can only hope that we will never forget the events of that day, but not only the attack, but how we, as Americans, responded.

Let us never forget the brave firefighters, policemen, and EMT’s who rushed towards the burning buildings when everyone else was running away.They are heroes and deserve to be treated with absolute respect. Let us also never forget the thousands of innocent men and women who were killed that day, and everyone who lost a mother, father, brother, sister, or friend.

God bless you all, and God bless America.