Please read all of this. Not just part of it. That would be to take something out of context. I know this is long but hopefully you will find edifying or at least informative.
This entry must be prefaced....I am a historian and I am approaching this from a strictly research driven perspective. As mentioned above everyone has an opinion, agenda or what is commonly called a "bias." Perhaps a more appropriate term is "worldview" however this is more sublime than most would like or be willing to accept. I am no different. It should be noted however that I do my best to research any topic in order to get at the truth of any subject rather than "thesis driven" research. I think Xaos would vouch for my objectivity in such projects despite my conservative political leanings. Again pay attention to language, I said conservative, NOT Republican, there is a huge difference. All that being said....
This documentary and more importantly the website asks questions that are fundamental to understanding the world that we live in today. "In a post 9/11 world" we all know that the terrorists are coming to get us. But what if that was a lie from the beginning? What if the government itself had created an incident that put American lives at risk or worse took American lives in order to acheive some larger private or public policy or aim?
This is the preface of the entire project that we see here. Such actions by a/our government would be far from unprecedented. In fact such actions have been documented in our own government for over 230 years. This includes private organizations and people who took action to force governments into action. The documentary looks at evidence that says that the New American Country released a report discussing how to move America into the 21st century more securely. "If" we assume that such a program was initiated to "benefit" the nation then there would still be some powerful precedents for sucha activity in American life. Likely those incidents would be condemned as well however we "all generally" would agree that the consequences of such actions were justified in the long haul. On 16 December 1773, citizen's of Boston Massachussetts threw tea into the harbor. In 1846 President James Polk sent troops in to territorries between Texas and Mexico for the purposes of starting a war with the express aim of acquiring California and New Mexico when the Mexicans sued for peace. At the same time he had sent Thomas Larkin to foment an uprising in California.
Perhaps the most prominent case of one man's ambition to change the face of our nations policy through contrived action was John Brown. In his recent biography of Brown entitled, John Brown: Abolitionist (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005) David S. Reynolds describes a man who was so convicted that God had called he and his family to action that they first moved to Kansas and helped to stage the event known as Bloody Kansas where Brown and other killed proslavery aggitators with broadswords and in 1860 Brown led the raid on Harpers Ferry that sparked the Souths resolve to secede from the United States. Thus the Union army sang John Browns Body throught the war after he was hung in S. Carolina. Although we do not agree with his methods can we say that what he accomplished was not worth it.
Sometimes however it was not what governments did however so much as what they let happen. I do not think that this is the case here however. If this documentary were true then it would imply action by various branches of the government that are much bigger than the presidential administration. We have also heard the stories of the CIA's involvement in government overthrow and "reshaping" throughout central America. My father claims to have been a part of the CIA funded guerrila movement of the 1960s in Guatemala.
I write none of this to justify the actions that these film makers attribute to Bush or his administration, rather to point out that there is historical precedant for such actions and if these allegations were to be true it should not surprise us so much. Certainly I would be more than upset if they could be proven true without a doubt. The problem is that i do not believe they can be and even the website obstructs the verification of their own resources.
Although some might cal my objections "academic" where are the notes to all of this eveidence? Cite your sources! Dont just tell me about them, tell me how I can find them. They encourage us to investigate for ourselves but do not tell us how to do so. This is especially easy on the world wide web. For an example of how their website should have been formatteed if they want to convince even the most casual skeptic visit http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/ . This is how one should be posting their "evidence" to those of you who might object that such a collection does not exist for 9/11 you should probably rethink your acceptance of their argument to begin with. The History Channel and the Discovery Channel have both aired programs that detail the physics of 9/11. The sad thing is that such documentaries would likely be purported as tools of government dissemination by the creators of this one. I would very much like to learn more about the science involved at Physics911.net but pleas ego visit that site and tell me wher ethe science is....I couldnt find it. What I did find was more conpiracy theories and anti-semitic or at least anti-Zionist (the two are different in important ways) literature and organizations.
So again I ask, where is there real evidence. Evidence is what an argument is built on. The rest is colorful prose which documentaries are specially good for. I would really like to see the hard evidence. Again if these claims are true then it makes a significant difference to the way our nation thinks of itselfa nd its leadership. As a historain I tend to look at these kinds of controversies as a more or less casual observer since it is usually between 30 and 50 years before we know the "truth" about anything or can even begin to put it into its historical context. Recently another batch of Docs were released concerning WWII. The next major batch concerning the Vietnam conflict is scheduled for 2012. The freedom of Information Act enacted by Clinton freed up a loth of information, but, did not apply to his administration(passed to go into effect in June 2000), and still put most everything on a 20 year moratorium insted of 30 or 50.
What is of greater concern to me now is the validity of theses allegations in light of the current Port security "scandal" (by the way, point me to a president who did not have a scandal in office and I will show you a president who wasted his time and likely accomplished nothing in office). If Bush was aware of selling these ports to a management firm in Dubai could this be a repeat of the incident? Had the sale succeeded would we have seen another "attack" months before the 2006 elections? Who knows. What is for sure is that thanks to people like Michael Savage and Senators Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton this will now get a 45 day(though likely cursory) review in Congress.
I'll conclude by apologizing for the length of this post and adding the great historian's excuse..."well, I guess we'll just wait and see".
For those of you who are interested in a more liberal perspective of what is going on in the middle east you may be interested in checking out http://www.juancole.com/ . Although I do not always agree withis analysis, he does give good coverage of the Arab press, and not just Al Jazeera, lol.
Also there is http://www.homestead.com/prosites-prs/index.html for a more conservative take on things, especially stories you will likely not find elsewhere.
For all those of you who would like to try to find out more inforamtion for yourselves look into:
http://www.loc.gov/index.html
http://www.archives.gov/
Both of these can be difficult to navigate but a lot of information you would not expect to be there is there, you just have to find it.
Thanks for taking the time to get this far.
