In “Bayoneting
a Scarecrow The 9/11 conspiracy theories are a coward’s cult.”
(Guardian, Feb. 20), George Monbiot accuses members of the
9/11 truth movement of being “morons” and “idiots” who believe
in “magic.”
By David Ray Griffin -- Information Clearing House
March 7, 2007 -- In “Bayoneting
a Scarecrow The 9/11 conspiracy theories are a coward’s cult.”
(Guardian, Feb. 20), George Monbiot accuses members of the
9/11 truth movement of being “morons” and “idiots” who believe
in “magic.” Having in his previous attack -- “A
9/11 conspiracy virus is sweeping the world,”
Guardian, Feb. 6 -- called me this movement’s “high priest,”
he now describes my 9/11 writing as a “concatenation of
ill-attested nonsense.”
If my books are moronic nonsense, then people who have endorsed
them must be morons. Would Monbiot really wish to apply this
label to Michel Chossudovsky, Richard Falk, Ray McGovern,
Michael Meacher, John McMurtry, Marcus Raskin, Rosemary Ruether,
Howard Zinn, and the late Rev. William Sloane Coffin, who, after
a stint in the CIA, became one of America’s leading civil
rights, anti-war, and anti-nuclear activists?
If anyone who believes that 9/11 was an inside job is by
definition an idiot, then Moncbiot would have to sling that
label at Colonel Robert Bowman, former head of the U.S. “Star
Wars” program; Andreas von Bülow, former State Secretary in the
German Federal Ministry of Defense; former CIA analysts Bill
Christison and Robert David Steele; former Scientific American
columnist A. K. Dewdney; General Leonid Ivashov, former chief of
staff of the Russian armed forces; Colonel Ronald D. Ray, former
U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense; all the members of
Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice,
Veterans for 9/11 Truth, and Pilots for 9/11 Truth; and most of
the individuals listed under “Professors Question 9/11” on the
“Patriots Question 9/11” website.
One of the reasons these people reject the government’s
conspiracy theory is that, if they were to accept the official
account of the destruction of the World Trade Centre, they would
need to affirm magical beliefs. A few examples:
The Twin Towers came straight down, which means that each
building’s 287 steel columns all had to fail simultaneously; to
believe this could happen without explosives is to believe in
magic.
At the onset of each tower’s collapse, steel beams were ejected
out as far as 600 feet; to believe that these horizontal
ejections could be explained by gravitational energy, which is
vertical, is to believe in magic.
Virtually all of the concrete in the towers was pulverized into
extremely fine dust particles; to believe that fire plus gravity
could have done this is to believe in magic.
WTC 7 and the towers came down at virtually free-fall speed,
meaning that the lower floors, with all their steel and
concrete, provided no resistance to the upper floors; to believe
this could happen without explosives is to believe in magic.
Pools of molten metal were found under each building. Because
steel does not begin to melt until it reaches about 1,540°C and
yet the fires could not have gotten over 1000°C, to accept the
fire theory is to believe in magic.
Monbiot, regarding the 9/11 truth movement’s conspiracy theory
as a wrong-headed distraction, fails to see that the obviously
false and truly distracting conspiracy theory is the official
9/11 myth, which has been used to justify imperial wars and
increased militarism, thereby distracting attention from global
apartheid and the ecological crisis. We focus on the 9/11 myth
because, until it is exposed, getting our governments to focus
wholeheartedly on the truly urgent issues of our time will be
impossible.
David Ray Griffin has published over 30 books, including four
about 9/11. His next book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer
to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official
Conspiracy Theory, will be out in April.
LINK: Information Clearing House