"9-11: A Detective Story" - nonfiction in-progress

Within hours of the September 11 terrorist attack, every major TV station in the country broadcast a piece about how Osama bin Laden was blamed for every terrorist attack against anything vaguely American anywhere in the world. The piece I refer to culminated in the U. S. bombing of Somalia. We were so sure that bin Laden was running a chemical weapons lab in Somalia that we bombed the lab, killing tens of thousands of Somali civilians. Our on-site investigation after the bombing revealed the truth: there had been NO chemical weapons in the place we had bombed. The TV piece that everyone in America watched on September 11 emphatically made the point that our government blamed bin Laden for every catastrophe, real or imagined, in the world. And in the instance in which our leaders were most certain of bin Laden’s guilt – the chemical plant in Somalia – when they checked out the accuracy of our "intelligence," there were no chemical weapons. So bin Laden was innocent of the one thing we were most certain that he was guilty of!!

That didn't mean that bin Laden was innocent of all wrong doing.

But it did mean that bin Laden was our number one all-purpose scapegoat.

You may remember that our government spent a grand total of one day investigating the September 11 terrorist attack before they identified the guilty party. It was, surprise, surprise, Osama bin Laden.

Forgive my skepticism, but I am NOT convinced that we fingered the right guy.

My skepticism was doubled by the fact that our government didn't have a good enough case to present it to the American people. Instead of showing us the "evidence," Bush dispatched his lap dog Tony Blair to tell our prospective "allies" (i.e., guys that we pay to be our friends) about the "evidence."

That so strongly and clearly reeks of bullshit that the only reason Americans fell for it was that we were too frightened to squeak. America has become a country filled with citizens so convinced of our own helplessness that we accept whatever our government dumps on us without making a peep. But the amputated "investigation" that concluded that bin Laden and al Queda were the Absolute Without Question Guilty Parties was so lame that a few of us might have screamed

"Don't insult us with your bullshit"

... if we hadn't been so terrified. But we were terrified. So we let ourselves be comforted and conned by President Butthead's speech writer and Donald Rumsfeld's graveside manner and we pretended we didn't notice that their evidence stunk. It's time to reexamine the evidence.

The questions of exactly who masterminded the attack, exactly who was behind the attack, who if anybody looked the other way and allowed the attack to happen, who if anybody acted as an agent provocateur, how and why the entire intelligence apparatus of the U. S. fell asleep on guard duty -- and a whole list of other unanswered questions -- are not merely academic questions. They are matters of life and death to everyone in America. If we have not fingered the real criminals, that means that the real criminals are still out there free to attack us again whenever they choose.

If we have not identified the real reasons for the attack, then we have no chance of nipping further attacks in the bud. That sounds vague, so I'll give you an example: Say for the purpose of argument that bin Laden is the mastermind behind the attack. Why did he do it? Our president says that it was because bin Laden "hates freedom" or he "hates democracy" or "he wants to destroy freedom and democracy." Bin Laden must be nuts if those are his reasons. How does one HATE freedom or DESTROY democracy? President Bush and his Goon Squad have done a far better job of destroying democracy than bin Laden could ever dream of. But there is something even more troubling behind our government’s goofball assessment of bin Laden’s (or whomever’s) motives: it goes without saying that, while we intend to apprehend and punish the criminals, it is in our best interest to redress any legitimate grievances that people similar to bin Laden (or whomever) might have. But how do you redress the complaint that someone "hates freedom" or "hates democracy"? You don't. You can't. There is no action you can take to redress those grievances because they don't make one bit of sense. But before we blame bin Laden for that incoherent nonsense, remember this: those are not bin Laden’s words – they are President Bush’s words.

And they are perfectly consistent with the rest of the dumb shit that comes out of Bush’s mouth.

Instead of allowing Dubya to speak for bin Laden, why don't we pretend for the moment that bin Laden is allowed to speak for himself. What does bin Laden say are his grievances?

He says he's pissed off at the fact that American military bases are still in Saudi Arabia against the will of the Saudi people, and in bin Laden's view, against the will of God.

Is there any truth to those charges?

YES, American military bases are still in Saudi Arabia.

YES, the Saudi people object to those military bases?

YES, the Saudis allowed the U. S. to put military bases in their country during the Gulf War on the condition that we would remove those bases as soon as the Gulf War was over.

YES, America has reneged on its promise and left military bases in Saudi Arabia.

YES, that pisses off everyone in Saudi Arabia.

Is there anything we can do to redress that grievance?

Of course there is: remove the military bases NOW. Immediately.

When it comes to bin Laden's other stated grievance, that our military bases so near Islam's most sacred places are "against the will of God"? -- it pains me to admit this, but I am not one of the people God confides in, so I don't know what His will is.

But I do know this: If the Saudis or the Russians or the John Birch Society put a military base next door to the Vatican or the New York Stock Exchange -- Christianity's two holiest places -- we would throw their asses out of there quicker than you can cross your fingers behind your back and say "We have no grievance with the Ayrab or Muslim people."

As an American, and as an Arab, I want to get to the truth about 9/11 so much it hurts.

As a human being, I want to get to the truth even more. To that end, II will write this book as if I were a private detective hired by some person who felt that he couldn’t go on living without knowing exactly who had killed his family, and why. If that approach seems a bit quirky, it may have something to do with the fact that I take the September 11 attack personally. My wife was on her way to work, switching subways in the huge underground network beneath the World Trade Center when the first airplane hit the tower. If she had gone to work an hour later, she would be dead. My wife and I love each other in a way that would make it impossible to go on without finding and apprehending anyone who hurt her. It took her all day to make her way home from New York to Bayonne. When she got home we ordered the biggest pizza we could find. Over pizza, she told me that when she finally made it out from under the World Trade Center, she looked up and saw a gaping hole in the building. She said that the instant she saw that huge gaping hole she was overwhelmed by a feeling of great sadness for all the people who had died and for all the people who would die when America took its revenge out on innocent people.

Let's lay the groundwork for the investigation

1. I can't be the only person in America who has noticed the enormous CONFLICT OF INTEREST in allowing the very people whose ineptitude allowed the September 11 terrorists to slip through our defenses to investigate their own screw-ups! If we allow the Bush administration, the CIA, or the FBI to investigate their own failings we are just begging to be bombed again.

2. TAKE NOBODY'S WORD FOR ANYTHING: Demand that our politicians, including the president and his cabinet, the CIA, the FBI and the Israeli Mossad take lie detector tests. If anyone refuses to take the tests, put them in prison. No ifs, ands, or buts. No exceptions.

3. Something That Doesn't Smell Right: If the airplane hijackers were Arabs who wanted to blend inconspicuously into the landscape, why didn't they stay in Arab neighborhoods?

4. Something Else That Doesn't Smell Right: Why would people slick enough to pull off that complex plan be stupid enough to leave behind photos, passports, deranged last - will - & - testaments, terrorist handbooks, their real names ... and a whole nutbag full of stuff.

5. All the "evidence" the alleged hijackers left behind, did it tell us who the real terrorists were -- or who they wanted us to think the terrorists were?

6. Is there anything in our government's entire collection of evidence (the stuff in the cars, the ATM films, etc.) that our government could not make, fake, doctor or invent?

7. (If I reach the point where I have to inject some humor to save my sanity, I may have a question or two about Mohammad Atta's eye makeup. The guy was inconspicuous looking like Michael Jackson is inconspicuous looking.)

8. If you judge our government's credibility the same way you judge an individual's credibility in a courtroom (i.e., if they lie once everything they say loses credibility), how seriously should we take their word for anything? This is my approach and the reasoning behind it:

What is the relationship between what our government says happened and what really did happen? Take Vietnam. I start out believing that America defends freedom & democracy, then Lyndon Johnson admits that 80% of Vietnam would vote Communist if given a choice, so America & LBJ lose points for repressing democracy. A few years later smart people argue convincingly (or more convincingly than LBJ) that the North Vietnamese didn’t attack us in the Gulf of Tonkin, we attacked them. Several years after that you learn that LBJ made up the Gulf of Tonkin incident that started the Vietnam War! He admitted it! The president of the United States made up an incident that caused the deaths of 56,555 Americans and over 1,250,000 Vietnamese.

The American hostages in Iran? First you believe what the government says, then you learn that the C.I.A. overthrew the people’s government in Iran. THEN you learn that Reagan made a deal with Iran to keep the hostages until after the election so he’d be sure to beat Jimmy Carter.

You learn the truth in layers, and the more you learn the worse it gets.

By the time the U.S. starts the Gulf War, you think you’ve wised-up enough not to be conned any more. Bush started the war with Iraq out of the blue. Saddam tries everything he can to get out of it, but won't give Saddam any "wiggle room." By then I'd done a ton of research on the Middle East. I thought I had the whole thing figured out. Then one year after the Gulf Massacre ended, TV GUIDE runs an article, “Fake News,” that reveals the incredible truth: the bashing babies’ heads against walls in a Kuwaiti hospital by Iraqi soldiers and the other atrocities that President Bush had used to whip America into a war frenzy had never happened. Those atrocities were fictional events created by a public relations firm headed by Old George Bush's former chief of staff. The "atrocities" were movies with actors, scripts and rehearsals. The President of the United States used movies, which he pretended were real, to con the American people into letting him decimate Iraq.

Never, in my most cynical imaginings... The way I now judge our government is simple:

Imagine the worst thing you can think of and it will be worse.

Ron D