Chris Floyd on 9/11

A commenter [yours truly] asked recently about my take on 9/11. In light of the anniversary (which I noted here; see also Jon Schwarz's piece here), I thought this might be a good time to set out, very briefly, what I think on the subject.

It's really quite simple and, to my mind, self-evident: the "official" story of what happened on September 11, 2001, is not a complete or accurate account. (We should of course speak of official stories, because there have been several shifting, contradictory scenarios offered by the great and the good in the six years since the attack. However, for clarity's sake, we'll stick with the singular for now, and will assume -- as the entire media and political establishment does -- that the report by the Hamilton-Kean 9/11 Commission is the final "official" version.)

To put it plainly, this official account is riddled with holes: unexplained inconsistencies, unprecedented occurrences, astounding coincidences, mysterious lacunae, and deliberate obfuscations. It is, in fact, a more improbable "conspiracy theory" than many of those suggested by the much-derided "9/11 truth movement."[my emphasis]

Any writer who doesn't show the respect for activists and writers who push for greater awareness of the 9/11 coverup, any writer who doesn't live up to the standard of decency that Mr. Floyd has set here, has revealed serious flaws in political analysis, if not in character. I'm thinking in particular of Alexander Cockburn, George Monbiot, and Matt Taibbi.

More from Chris:

The profound failures of the Commission report have been amply detailed elsewhere by many hands. For our purposes here it is enough to say that it was not a thorough, independent investigation in any way, and that such a probe is still needed: a genuinely independent, wide-ranging, in-depth investigation, with full subpoena powers and full access to all material, whatever its security classification -- and testimony under oath, and under pain of perjury, from every relevant official, including the president and the vice president.

Let us have such a probe, and let the chips fall where they may....

But you and I know that there will never be an investigation like that into 9/11. Regardless of what it might or might not reveal about the origin of the attacks, such a free-wheeling, fully-powered probe would inevitably uncover other vast swamps of bloody murk in the shadowlands where state power, criminal gangs, covert ops and financial interests mingle, merge, squabble and seethe. It would, in other words, open a window into the real way that the world works, into the bestial realm of raw power and savage greed that churns on behind the facade of public events and the trappings of state.

more

I agree there will not be any satisfactory answers from officialdom. No open windows and fresh air from that squalid sector. But we can open that window ourselves. Isn't that what dissident writers do? Just as William Blum has documented the war crimes of U.S. imperialism to open windows and eyes, so too does the 9/11 truth movement seek to show that these crimes are not limited to misadventures in other countries. If we have truly seen enough, we need to say so.