'There is no room for doubters. Questioning the official story has been equated with holocaust denial or – in a throwback to the Stalinist era – even with insanity.' -- Ian Henshall and Rowland Morgan

'Official investigations have been stymied by secrecy, cronyism, and a refusal - even built into their terms of reference – to think the unthinkable.' -- Ian Henshall and Rowland Morgan

'The process of [ military] transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.' -- Project for New American Century

In the immediate aftermath of 911, Afghanistan was attacked. Why Afghanistan? It had no oil, the links with Al-Qaeda and 911 were tenuous at best. Possible involvement of Osama bin Laden. The Taliban had offered to extradite bin Laden, if evidence was produced. Less talked about, the funding of the operation, or at least Al-Qaeda by Pakistani ISI. This is what journalist Daniel Pearl was investigating on behalf of the Wall Street Journal when he was kidnapped and brutally killed.

The US was quick to go to war with Afghanistan. Several months and many millions of man-hours later, the US was forced to admit it had not a shred of evidence linking Osama bin Laden to 911.

According to FBI Director Robert Mueller:

'In our [seven month] of investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper – either here in the United States or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere – that mentioned any aspect of the Sept 11 plot.'

Afghanistan may lack oil, but it is criss-crossed by important oil pipeline routes.

If there is little if any evidence of the involvement of either Osama bin Laden or Al-Qaeda, then who were the hijackers? If the hijackers were mainly Saudi, then why not attack Saudi Arabia, why attack Afghanistan?

Several of the alleged hijackers have since 911 reappeared elsewhere alive and well. Assuming we can dismiss reincarnation and being in two places at once, it again begs the question: who were the hijackers?

Identity theft is one possibility.

The alleged ringleader, Mohammed Atta, does not fit the profile of a rabid Muslim fanatic. He was womanising and drinking in the period preceding 911. Or did he think as he was going to his death he would have a bit of fun before he went to meet Allah, or whatever Muslim fanatics do when they arrive in paradise? Maybe he thought he needed a bit of practice before he met the seven virgins at the service of all martyrs.

Quite convenient his passport was found in the ruins of the Twin Towers. No black boxes were found, no aircraft engines, but the passport of Mohammed Atta miraculously survived!

According to John Martin, retired chief of the Justice Department's internal security section:

'This operation had tremendous security, and using false names would have been part of it. The hijackers themselves may not have known the others' true identity.'

Would not the hijackers have made use of the Al-Qaeda passport factory in Afghanistan to acquire fake identities?

Al-Qaeda was established by the CIA, MI6 and the Pakistani ISI with funding from Saudi Arabia in the 1970s. As late as the 1990s, the CIA was running Al-Qaeda into Bosnia to fight the Serbs. As late as the 1990s, MI6 financed Al-Qaeda to mount a coup in Libya and assassinate Colonel Gaddafi.

911 changed the world

It is a truism to say 911 changed the world. It certainly did so for George W Bush. Enron was pushed into the background, as was ballot rigging in Florida.

It was, as Bush himself saw it, an opportunity.

An opportunity to push through the Patriot Act, an opportunity to invade Iraq.

A map drawn up by Dick Cheney showed Iraq neatly carved up. A map that was drawn in 2000, when Bush took office, ie before 911.

We know the invasion of Iraq was illegal, that there were no weapons of mass destruction, that there were no links between Iraq and Al-Qaeda.

Iraq is now a magnet for every Muslim fanatic and terrorist. Far from stabilising the Middle East or tackling the threat of terrorism, Iraq is now one big terrorist training camp.

The US and and UK are now pilfering Iraq.

But was 911 more than a heaven sent opportunity?

The neocons had been wanting a war without end, a war that would last a century. The Project for a New American Century, had speculated on the need for a 'new Pearl Harbor', if its ambitious plans were ever to bear fruit.

Pearl Harbor is now known to have been allowed to happen to propel the US into WWII. Was 911 allowed to happen, was it deliberately instigated and its aftermath stage managed?

Further release of information on Pearl Harbor was stopped by the Clinton administration. It would never do to expose to public gaze how these scams were conceived and executed.

The US has no qualms about the slaughter of innocent civilians: the Phoenix programme in Vietnam, Death Squads in Central America. Or to create incidents to justify war: the Gulf of Tonkin incident used as a pretext to mount war on North Vietnam.

These and other incidents are well documented by William Blum, Noam Chomsky and John Pilger. Or watch the film In Whose Interest?, a post-911 fifty year appraisal of US foreign policy.

Then there are the innocent civilians killed in Iraq. The million children killed as a result of sanctions, those dying as a result of the use of depleted uranium munitions and cluster bombs, the ongoing deaths following the illegal invasion.

Asked what he would tell Iraqis about televised images 'of Americans soldiers killing innocent civilians', Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt replied: 'Change the channel.'

Would the US therefore permit, if not instigate such an incident on its own soil, on its own people?

All we can do from afar is look at the evidence that presents itself to us and ask questions.

The collapse of the World Trade Centre Towers and the 47-story WTC 7, had all the appearances of classic controlled demolitions. So well executed that only a handful of companies in the world could have carried out such an audacious operation.

The towers were substantially over-engineered, the Twin Towers were designed to withstand a crash by a Boeing 707, all three towers to withstand substantial fires. The Twin Towers barely moved on impact, readjusting to carry the load, and yet all three towers, WTC 7 had not even been hit, collapsed.

If nothing else, lessons to be learnt, are other steel-framed towers around the world in danger of collapse? The first time in the history of steel-framed buildings that one has collapsed, then in single day, three collapse.

questions remain unanswered

Four planes hijacked in a single day. And yet no aircraft scrambled to intercept them.

At the Pentagon, a Boeing 747 penetrates what is supposed to be a building reinforced to withstand a missile attack. Where is the aircraft wreckage? How does a Boeing 757 fly into the building only a few feet off the ground? Why did the Pentagon missile defence systems fail to shoot it down?

If these were blood-thirsty Muslim fanatics determined to kill as many people as possible, then by their own criteria they failed.

civil unrest and war without end

As the wars for the world's resources hot up, we will see more and more civil unrest, and vicious counterattack by the state. When a Bolivian friend showed film footage of the riots at the Seattle WTO meeting, the Bolivians to whom she showed it were amazed. They were used to such brutal clampdowns to suppress dissent, but to see it on the streets of a major western city!

It is not only civil dissent, we will see sponsored coups, as we saw with the crude attempt by the US to topple the legitimate government of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. The crimes of Chavez was to oppose the neo-liberal agenda of globalisation and to be president of a country that was the world's fourth largest supplier of oil, a country on which the US is totally dependent for its oil.

Looking to the near future, we risk war with China, as the two remaining superpowers fight for control of the world's dwindling resources.

There is a solution. We have to drastically cut our use of energy. We need a mixed energy supply, primarily renewables, but renewables will not be enough, we have to cut our total energy demand.

Every driver of a gas guzzling SUV or people carrier should be seen as dangerous as a Muslim suicide bomber.

George Tenet, former director of the CIA, drives a hybrid gasoline/electric car. He does so as an act of patriotism.

In the immediate aftermath of 911, apart from a handful of Muslim fanatics, the US had the sympathy of the world. In a very short period, Bush and Blair squandered that sympathy. Both nations are now hated the world over and at far more risk of terrorism than they ever were before 911.

9/11 Commission

People doubt what they see with their own eyes, because of the horror they then have to admit to. But this is the wrong approach.

We should look at the facts before us, establish likely explanations and scenarios, then ask the awkward political questions, probe the nightmares where our minds won't to go.

An official 9/11 Commission was established. But it was tainted even before it started work. It was to accept as read the 'official' explanation, and only question 'intelligence' failings. War criminal Henry Kissinger was originally appointed as Commission Chairman, but public outcry forced him to stand down before he took up his post. But Bush need not have worried, the Commission had enough Washington insiders to ensure the right result. Principle of who was executive director Philip D Zelikow, a close associate of Condoleezza Rice. He probably had better access to evidence as a Bush insider than he did in his official capacity as executive director. It also meant he could tip off the White House if the Commission happened to be straying too close to the truth.

One Commission member, Senator Max Cleland, did speak out. He objected to White House control of evidence:

'This is a scam, it's disgusting. America is being cheated ...We shouldn't be making deals.'

He was quickly replaced by Bob Kerrey, a member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. It does not do to rock the bi-partisan boat. It was then back to business as usual.

Virtually all the evidence the 9/11 Commission drew upon came from within the defence and intelligence establishment. That is agencies who were completely impartial to the matters under investigation!

lack of an investigation

A plane crash, a train crash, a building crash. There is usually a major investigation, a board of inquiry. There were none.

Three steel framed buildings collapse on the same day. The only known collapses in the history of steel-framed buildings. There were no investigations.

Four air crashes in one day. Assumed to have been hijacked. There were no air crash investigations. The black boxes were not recovered. At the Pentagon there was no crash debris.

Donald Rumsfeld, known for his connections with Saddam Hussein, was also closely connected with Bechtel. Bechtel has done very nicely out of the corporate plundering of Iraq. Bechtel was responsible for supervising the World Trade site after 911.

Another company that has done well out of Iraq contracts was AMEC, one of the few non-US companies to get contracts. AMEC helped clean up the WTC site, AMEC was the construction company reinforcing the part of the Pentagon where whatever it was crashed.

No attempt was made at reconstruction of what happened, safeguarding of forensic evidence. The site was cleared, dumped, and what could be, shipped off to the Far East for recycling.

Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc, were paid $500,000 to reassemble TWA Flight 800, that crashed in the sea. No such contract was handed out at the World Trade Center. At the Pentagon, men in suits and shirts and ties, were seen collecting up what little debris was to be found at the crash site. An absolute no-no, for both an air crash and a crime scene.

Aircraft parts have serial numbers. Can we be sure that the planes that took off, were the same planes that crashed into the Twin Towers? Can we even be sure the planes took off?

Self-evident as these basic facts may seem, they were not checked.

What little we know what took place on board the hijacked planes were from mobile phone calls from crew and passengers. Slight problem: mobile phones do not work at this altitude. Why did no crew on any of the four planes send out an alarm? Why were phone records not checked to establish who actually made the calls, and from where?

No black boxes, not even the engines, were recovered from the Twin Towers, but quite conveniently, the passport of one of the hijackers was recovered from the wreckage!

What was though recovered were a number of hard disk drives. Data recovery showed a large number of anomalous financial transactions from just before the planes hit and up until the towers collapsed. The company that recovered the data, Convar, was acquired by Kroll. The flow of information has since ceased. Kroll has close ties with the military and intelligence establishment.

The 9/11 Commission saw no reason to follow up what on the face of it appeared to be insider dealing. A matter for SEC, but not for them.

Flight 77 took off from Dulles Airport (Washington). It could have flown straight to the Pentagon in a matter of minutes. Instead it flew off course, then disappeared off the radar screens. Flight controllers at the time thought it had crashed. Some time later, a plane reappears in Washington airspace, heads towards the Pentagon, flies around the Pentagon, then crashes.

It was only days later, the mysterious aircraft that appeared in Washington airspace, was said to be the missing Flight 77. Had it crashed straight into the Pentagon, it would have taken out Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon top brass. But instead, it flies around the Pentagon in an almost impossible maneuver, heads for the only unoccupied part of the Pentagon (at the time undergoing renovation), then flying only a few feet above the ground (an impossible maneuver for a Boeing 757), ploughs into the Pentagon, leaving virtually no wreckage on the lawn outside, and apart from the entry hole and until the roof collapses, leaving the facade of the Pentagon undamaged.

The alleged pilot of Flight 77, was by all accounts a hopeless pilot, and yet he executed a maneuver beyond the capability of most military pilots flying a fighter aircraft!

There are plenty of CCTV cameras around the Pentagon, including a gas station and hotel across the road. Their video footage was seized by the FBI within minutes of the crash. It was only when French investigators said there was no evidence of a Boeing 757 being involved, that half a dozen frames from a video clip were released. But these are of such poor quality they could be of almost anything, and certainly do not show a Boeing 757. They are also for the wrong date and time!

Brian Quig (main name to fame exposing CIA drug running) was of the view:

'... [when Flight 77] bypassed a straight in shot at the joint chiefs of staff only to hit an insignificant spot in the back of the Pentagon, I said to myself then, it is not a terrorist attack!'

After expressing these thoughts, Brian Quig was killed in a fatal car crash.

silence is golden

It is not only CCTV footage that has been silenced or disappeared.

Air traffic controllers, fireman, even within the FBI, have been told to keep their mouths shut.

The girlfriend of Mohammed Atta was told to keep her mouth shut. Bar manager Tony Amos and bar tender Patricia Idrissi were the original source of Mohammed Atta's fondest for alcohol. Later, they were to change their stories, then they disappeared.

mainstream media cannot be trusted

The mainstream media has been remarkably silent in questioning, let alone challenging, the official story, although occasionally little snippets slip out.

Like, for example, almost a throw away comment at the end of a Time magazine article that noted that senior Pentagon generals canceled their flights the day before 911. Or the fact the the Wall Street Journal was investigating links between Al-Qaeda funding and the Pakistani ISI. At least they were until their journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and brutally killed.

On the day the Twin Towers were hit, TV images of the towers being hit and then crashing to the ground, were interspersed with pictures of Palestinians celebrating. The Palestinian celebrations were nothing to do with 911, but of this we were not told. The subtext we were meant to draw was one of rabid towel-heads celebrating the killing of innocent Americans.

On the day the war in Iraq 'officially' ended, we were shown crowds celebrating the toppling of statue of Saddam Hussein, or so it appeared. A long shot of the square showed a handful of people around the statue, the rest of the square empty, with US tanks on the entrances to the square.

When Hugo Chavez was toppled in a CIA masterminded coup, private TV channels in Venezuela showed Chavez supporters on a bridge firing into the crowds. Only they weren't, they were firing at snipers who were shooting at unarmed demonstrators.

One of the worst example of the mainstream media at work was the recent vicious attack on Noam Chomsky by The Grauniad.

The question, can the mainstream media be trusted, answers itself.

intelligence failings

We were told by George W Bush in the immediate aftermath of 911, that the US had no warnings of such attacks. We now know this not to be true. And it was not the normal intelligence 'noise' filtering through the system. Warnings were coming from foreign intelligence agencies, from foreign leaders.

For some reason the Bush administration did not want to know, even less were prepared to act. All the more peculiar when post-911, Bush justified the illegal attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the 'war on terror', taking the war to the terrorists, not letting them bring the war to us.

It is difficult to put what was happening down to intelligence failing to filter through the system, intelligence failings, or as FBI officials said to an official inquiry that they had 'failed to join the dots'. It is difficult when field agents who wished to follow through investigations of Al-Qaeda and other terrorists suspects were stopped dead in their tracks.

One of the worst failings was the failure to investigate the contents of the laptop of Zacarias Moussaoui.

conspiracy theories and nothing else

Many will say these are conspiracy theories and nothing else. In that they are in good company, to quote George W Bush:

'Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists themselves, away from the guilty.'

The only conspiracy theory is the official story being peddled by George W Bush.

further reading

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed and John Leonard, The War on Freedom, Tree of Life Publications, 2002

William Blum, The CIA: A forgotten history, Zed Books, 1986

William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Common Courage Press

William Blum, Rogue State, Common Courage Press, 2000

Bush 'plotted Iraq war from start', BBC news on-line, 12 January 2004

Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism, Pluto Press, 1999

Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, Pluto Press, 1999

Noam Chomsky, Rogue States, Pluto Press, 2000

Noam Chomsky, A New Generation Draws the Line, Verso, 2001

Noam Chomsky, 9-11, Seven Stories Press, 2001

Noam Chomsky, Pirates and Emperors, Old and New, Pluto Press, 2002

Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival, Hamish Hamilton, 2003

John K Cooley, Unholy Wars, Pluto Press, 2000

David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor, Arris, 2004

David Ray Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, Interlink, 2004

Ian Henshall and Rowland Morgan, 9-11 Revealed: Challenging the facts behind the War on Terror, Robinson, 2005
 http://www.heureka.clara.net/books/911-revealed.htm

Seymour M Hersch, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, HarperCollins, 2004

Molly Ivins & Lou Dobose, Bushwacked: Life in Geroge W Bush's America, Allison & Busby Ltd, 2004

Steven E Jones, Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?, unpublished draft
 http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html

Larry Klayman, Fatal Neglect, Judicial Watch, 2002

Annie Machon, Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers: MI5, MI6 and the Shayler Affair, Book Guild, 2005
 http://www.heureka.clara.net/books/shayler-affair.htm

Michael Meacher, This War on Terrorism is Bogus, The Guardian, 6 September 2003

Michael Moore, The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader, Simon & Schuster, 2004

Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, School of Assassins, Orbis, 1997

O'Neill lashes 'blind man' Bush, BBC news on-line, 10 January 2004

Keith Parkins, Intelligence Services Unaccountable and Out of Control?, January 1999
 http://www.heureka.clara.net/gaia/spooks2.htm

Keith Parkins, Natural Capitalism, October 2000
 http://www.heureka.clara.net/gaia/nat-cap.htm

Keith Parkins, Soft Energy Paths, May 2001
 http://www.heureka.clara.net/gaia/energy.htm

Keith Parkins, Pipeline Politics, Indymedia UK, 21 August 2003
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/08/275930.htm

Keith Parkins, A sense of the masses - a manifesto for the new revolution, October 2003
 http://www.heureka.clara.net/gaia/democracy.htm

Keith Parkins, The rape and pillage of Iraq, Indymedia Chicago, 5 December 2003
 http://chicago.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=34095&group=webcast

Keith Parkins, Middle East Panorama, Indymedia Colombia, 8 December 2003
 http://colombia.indymedia.org/news/2003/12/8120.php

Keith Parkins, Grauniad smears Chomsky, Indymedia UK, 19 November 2005
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/11/328122.html

Keith Parkins, The Evil Empire, to be published

Keith Parkins, Preventive War or the US Imperial Grand Strategy, to be published

John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World, Verso, 2003 {updated edition}

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Weapons of Mass Deception, Robinson, 2003

Ahmed Rashid, Taliban, I B Tauris, 2000

Michael C Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon, New Society Publishers, 2004

Robert B Stinnett, Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR Pearl Harbor, Touchstone, 2001

worth watching

Loose Change
Confronting the Evidence
Painful Deceptions
In Whose Interest?
End of Suburbia
A Letter to the Prime Minister
Fahrenheit 9/11
We Intercept this Empire ...
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised {La Revolucion No Sera Transmitada}
Fourth World War

websites

 http://www.911truth.org
 http://www.911review.com
 http://www.reopen911.org
 http://www.911research.wtc7.net
 http://www.letsroll911.org
 http://www.911inquiry.org