9/11: Q&A:Why? Who? How? etc.

I envision the book with a cover filled with questions that will give the reader a clear idea of where the book is going. The words "9/11" and "why" should show up as large transparent images behind the text, but that may not work on some browsers...so please use your imagination

1. Why did they (whoever they are) attack us? 2. Why do they hate us? 3. Who are they? 4. How many theys are there? Is there only one or are there several? (Obviously, the more people that hate us, the greater the likelihood of terrorist attacks.) 5. Are there other countries that hate us waiting for their chance to attack us? 6. If so, who are they? 7. Why do they hate us? 8. Do they have good reasons? 9. Are all of their reasons the same? 10. Our government took one day to decide who was behind the attacks. What if they were wrong? 11. What if Osama bin Laden was not the orchestrator of the September 11 attacks? 12. What if Al Qaeda was not behind the September 11 attacks? 13. Why would terrorists slick, subtle, and creative enough to plan and execute the horrible but fairly brilliant idea of hijacking three American airliners and using them as bombs be dumb enough to leave a ridiculously obvious trail of paper, rented cars, Al Qaeda “guidebooks,” semi-deranged last-will-and-testaments, passports, photos, real names, gym memberships, and a whole idiotbox full of other circumstantial evidence showing us exactly who they are? 13. If the alleged hijackers were Arabs, why didn’t they hang out in Arab neighborhoods where they would be less conspicuous? 14. Would perpetrators as savvy as the September 11 killers be more likely to tell us who they really are or who they want us to think they are? 15. Have we correctly identified the 19 hijackers or have we fallen into the trap they laid and blamed exactly who they wanted us to blame? 16. If we have fingered the wrong bad guys, doesn’t that mean that the real bad guys are still out there free to strike again whenever they choose? 17. It’s difficult to imagine a group of outsiders pulling off those attacks successfully on their own. Did the perpetrators have any inside help? (CIA, FBI, Mossad, Ollie North?) 18. Would we learn more about the events of September 11 if we gave polygraph tests to everyone of Middle Eastern descent or if we gave them to the CIA, the FBI, the Mossad, and every single one of our illustrious politicians? 19. Who benefited most from the September 11 attack on our country? 20. If the September 11 attack demonstrated beyond a doubt that our defense needs are protecting our own asses here at home (secure airlines, secure public-meeting places, secure cities, streets, schools

After the September 11 terrorist attacks, everyone in America seemed to have difficulty answering --and living with-- one question:

"Why do they hate us?"

The question referred not only to terrorists, but to the people all over the world who cheered when they heard that thousands of Americans had been killed.

WHY?

A few years ago there was a case in New York that was so appalling that it captured the attention of the entire country. It involved a New York lawyer named Joel Steinberg, his battered live-in girlfriend, and a child, a little girl named Lisa. Tiny, skinny, God she was skinny, with a tiny trusting face. Even though Joel Steinberg had kept her locked in a dungeon-like room and starved and abused her to death, she had that trusting look on her face even as she lay like a dead elf in a coffin.

I am almost a pacifist, but I and everyone I knew felt that Joel Steinberg deserved to be put to the most unpleasant imaginable death. If there is any truly unforgivable act, it is the torture and killing of children. If someone did to your child what Joel Steinberg did to little Lisa …?

In September 1990, our government reported that Iraqi soldiers were ripping babies out of incubators and smashing their heads against walls. That really got us riled. If there is any truly unforgivable act, it is the torture and killing of children. In early 1991, President Bush dropped more bombs on Iraq than had been dropped on three continents during all of World War II. Iraq is about the size of California. But how much sympathy can you have for people who bash babies’ heads against walls? I may be an Arab but that doesn’t mean that I approve of everything Arabs do.

To be truthful, sometimes I hate what Arabs do.

368 days after the Gulf War ended, TV Guide featured a cover story titled "Fake News.” The heart of the article was a long sidebar that described in detail how the baby bashing and other atrocities that President Bush had used to whip America into a war frenzy had never happened. Those atrocities had been orchestrated by the public relations firm of Hill and Knowlton, headed by Craig Fuller, former chief of staff to George Bush. They were movies with actors, scripts and rehearsals that helped the President of the United States make a mockery of our democracy and attack the people of Iraq—a people who had never hurt us in any way. They loved us and admired us until our bombs killed 200,000 of them, destroyed 20,000 Iraqi homes, leveled schools and hospitals, poisoned their water and destroyed one of the most advanced countries in the Middle East.

Even after all that, President Bush wasn’t able to get rid of his old best friend, Saddam Hussein, so America continued to impose sanctions on Iraq, withholding luxuries like food and medicine. By the most conservative estimates, the sanctions America has imposed on Iraq kill some 5,000 Iraqi children every month. After ten years of our polite murder, some 750,000 Iraqi children under the age of five have died from malnutrition and disease because of our sanctions.

Face this truth: our politicians, in our name, are intentionally starving thousands of Iraqi children, intentionally depriving them of medicine...intentionally KILLING them in the hope that the dead children’s parents will become so crazy with grief that they will overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Anyone in America who wonders why “they” hate us—Reason 1: WE are Joel Steinberg.