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Edited on Fri Dec-01-06 07:26 PM by mhatrw
Nice side-step, BTW.
There's almost nothing factual in Cockburn's article, leaving little to "factually dispute." However, I certainly have many problems with it:
1) Regardless of facts, skepticism about the events of 9/11 is inherently politically healthy given the litany of heinous acts that have since been committed in 9/11's name.
2) We could use a lot more good old fashioned American populism right now.
3) While Marx is an essential political theorist, the cult of Marxism is far more destructive to the left than the healthy distrust of elites who have consistently proven themselves to be untrustworthy to say the least.
4) There is nothing remotely racist about the suggestion that the failure of our trillion dollar a year national defense system to intercept a single hijacking over a 90 minute period on 9/11 bears extremely close scrutiny. According to the official story, everybody from the FBI, Cleveland Center ATC, United Airlines officials, the FAA, several other local ATC towers, Cleveland’s and Pittsburgh’s mayors to an entire roomful of concerned US Congressmen knew all about the threat Flight 93 posed at least 25 minutes before anybody in the US military was made aware of it -- more than 90 minutes into our biggest national security emergency since at least Pearl Harbor. So exactly who screwed up? How and why? Why aren't we entitled to ask these simple and obvious questions without having bizarre charges of racism thrown in our faces? Conflating this sort of inexcusable ineptitude with the failure to complete a risky hostage rescue mission in a foreign country is like comparing a baseball manager's decision to send just 3 fielders out on the field with his failure to pull a starting pitcher before he falters.
5) What is so destructive about 9/11 official story skeptics other than the fact that they threaten 9/11 official story apologists like Cockburn and the rest of the left gatekeepers who have spent the last five years studiously avoiding the subject of 9/11 accountability?
6) Cockburn writes, "Chuck Spinney, now retired after years of brilliant government service exposing the Pentagon's budgetary outrages, tells me that 'there ARE pictures taken of the 757 plane hitting Pentagon -- they were taken by the surveillance cameras at Pentagon's heliport, which was right next to impact point. I have seen them, both stills and moving pictures. I just missed seeing it personally, but the driver of the van I just got out of in South Parking saw it so closely that he could see the terrified faces of passengers in windows. I knew two people who were on the plane. One was ID'd by dental remains found in the Pentagon.'"
Is this second generation "insider" hearsay supposed to impress us? Are we supposed to be content with Cockburn's assurances that Spinney told him that Spinney's van driver saw something on a video the very existence of which has since been withheld from the US public for no discernible reason? Does Cockburn's strange brand of leftism support transparency in government?
7) When did Osama "take credit for the attacks"? Why did he originally deny he had anything to do with them? And aren't various terrorist groups always clamoring to "take credit" whenever something they don't like blows up?
8) Cockburn writes, "Ultimately, the 9/11 conspiracists want us to believe that the Bush/Cheney gang is a new breed of evil. This might be the most dangerous deception of all, for it fosters the fantasy that a new administration, a Hillary or Gore administration, would pursue more humane policies."
This is nothing but a huge, stinking strawman. Further, if some people believe that the Bush/Cheney gang are far more evil than the Democrats, so what? How is that contrary to the greater goals of the left?
9) Why would "helping" down the WTC towers with explosives require a conspiracy of thousands? Couldn't the small team needed to complete this work have easily been killed -- simply by having them report to the WTC towers again on 9/11 and locking the doors on them?
10) Cockburn writes, "There is a one particularly vigorous coven which has established to its own satisfaction that the original NASA moon landing was faked, and never took place. This "conspiracy" would have required the complicity of thousands of people , all of whom have kept their mouths shut. The proponents of the "fake moon landing" plot tend to overlap with the JFK and 9/11 crowds."
How would Cockburn respond if we were to apply his facile guilt-by-association technique to all of the various contributors to Counterpunch?
11) Cockburn writes, "The "conspiracy" is always open-ended as to the number of conspirators, widening steadily to include all the people involved in the execution and cover-up of the demolition of the Towers and the onslaught on the Pentagon, from the teams acquiring the explosives and the missile, inserting the explosives in the relevant floors of three vast buildings, (moving day after day among the unsuspecting office workers), then on 9/11 activating the detonators. Subsequently the conspiracy includes the disposers of the steel and rubble, the waste recyclers in Staten Island and perhaps even the Chinese who took the salvaged incriminating metal for use in the Three Gorges dam, where it will submerged in water and concrete for ever. Tens of thousands of people, all silent as the tomb to this day."
Another stinky strawman. But just for the sake of argument, how many office skyscraper workers so much as notice the existence of the building operation workers who move among them? How many people does it typically take to detonate a building once it is rigged for controlled demolition? And what are the people who disposed of the WTC metal before it could be analyzed supposed to say about this? To whom? Who would then report what?
12) Occam's Razor quite obviously does not apply to historical human events generally, and certainly not in the manner claimed by Cockburn vis a vis 9/11.
13) As for Sperry's "analysis," the buildings didn't stand for hours after impact. Nor was the demolition indistinguishable from the effects of plane crashes, unless you presuppose what you are trying to prove.
14) Why does Cockburn have more faith in FEMA's "explanation" of WTC-7's collapse than either the NIST or even FEMA itself?
15) Cockburn writes, "What is the goal of the 9/11 conspiracists? They ask questions, yes, but they never answer them. They never put forward an overall scenario of the alleged conspiracy. They say that's not up to them. So who is it up to? Who do they expect to answer their questions? When answers are put forward, they are dismissed as fabrications or they simply rebound with another question."
Yet another stinky strawman. What is wrong with asking questions about 9/11? Why is Cockburn the only one allowed to ask questions? Why do people seeking the truth about 9/11 need to answer his attacks? Why can't concerned citizens question their own government?
16) Cockburn writes, "As discussed in Wayne Barrett and Dan Collin's excellent book Grand Illusion, about Rudy Giuliani and 9/11, helicopter pilots radioed warnings nine minutes before the final collapse that the South Tower might well go down and, repeatedly, as much as 25 minutes before the North Tower's fall."
Why did they suspect as much -- considering that this event was historically unique? Why didn't word of these suspicions get out to anybody else until years after the fact?
17) When has Cockburn ever campaigned to hold anybody accountable for anything that happened on 9/11? How does attacking those who want to hold people accountable for their actions on 9/11 help further this supposed goal of his?
The rest of the article is simply more meta-analysis mumbo-jumbo that assumes that a healthy skepticism of one's government and corporate media outlets is a problem that requires a sociological diagnosis and cure.
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