911 Liars Disgrace the Fallen, the Truth

911, Loving the Volk Heimatland
Image: Bob Jagendorf / Flickr

By Michael Leon

In the Autumn of 2002, the Bush-Cheney regime was forced by the American people to accept the formation of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

Observers of these types of truth-finding commissions in American history were skeptical. The 9/11 Commission in sum was charged with examining the facts and causes relating to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, including a full and complete accounting of the circumstances before, during and after the attacks.

The skepticism was well-placed as foreshadowed by the ludicrous appointment by President Bush of Henry Kissinger to the 9/11 commission in November 2002.

This time Bush went around the bend. An absurd appointment for a commission searching for the truth behind the 9/11 attacks, even the New York Times blasted Kissinger’s appointment.

There can be no place for the kind of political calculation and court flattery that Mr. Kissinger practiced so assiduously during his tenure as Richard Nixon’s national security adviser and secretary of state. Nor is there any tolerance for the kind of cynicism that Mr. Kissinger applied to the prosecution of the Vietnam War. (November 29, 2002)

Kissinger, before he withdrew his appointment to widespread laughter, went on the Lou Dobbs Show [enough said about the puke] on December 16, 2002 and said:

I hope that everybody has his partisanship out of his system now. And that people remember that this was an event that was totally unexpected to the American public; that it came from a direction that nobody had ever thought of. And that it was the first attack on the continental United States … .

Needless to say, neither Dobbs nor any other corporate American journalist bothered to ask Kissinger how he reached his preordained conclusion on the very matters he was supposed to investigate.

From Counterpunch:

From a direction that nobody had ever thought of? There is a mountain of evidence that flying jets into buildings was thought of, presented to Bush before 9/11, and not acted upon; as well as the Clinton administration handing over to Bush other strategic plans to fight Al-Qaida, similarly not acted upon. These are among the questions that Kissinger and the Commission were supposed to investigate and answer objectively and thoroughly wherever the truth would lead them, with no biases.

But the most political, most dishonest administration in American history, and a supine Congress did mange to find their lackeys for the Commission.

Vice-Chair Lee Hamilton

Consider Commission Vice-Chair Lee Hamilton, the epitome of putting politics over truth and the kind of guy you put on a commission [he's been on quite of few] that doesn't ask embarrassing questions or make waves. Hamilton did Kissinger proud.

As Robert Parry notes, "Hamilton was demonstrating what would become his M.O., putting bipartisanship and collegiality ahead of truth and accountability. ... If one really wants to understand why the American political 'center' has failed, a good place to start is by examining how Lee Hamilton’s 'bipartisanship' has encouraged Republicans to play fast and loose with democracy."

There is a multitude of questions that are raised by the 9/11 report, but asking them, demanding truth and accountability is considered in bad Washington D.C taste.

Take U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice who excoriated Richard Falk, a man our world needs desperately and serving as U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Palestinians, for asking questions and pointing out the deficiencies in the official account of the 9/11 attack.

But for the the Rices, Hamiltons, Kissingers, Bushs and Cheneys of the world, truth is a sphere to avoid. Wrote Falk anwsering Rice and others in January 2011:

What seems apparent from this incident, which is itself disturbing, is that any acknowledgement of doubt about the validity of the official version of the 9/11 events, while enjoying the legal protection of free speech, is denied the political and moral protection that are essential if an atmosphere of free speech worthy of a democracy is to be maintained.

The rest is tragic history: $trillions of wasted treasury, 100,000s of lives destroyed, more lies than even the Nixon administration could have conceived; and in the words of the late Norman Rufus Colin Cohn commenting on the obscenities of the last century: A "mood of passive compliance."