Coming Clean

I've always been conscious, writing this blog, how strange I am, compared to other people. It's not the first time this has happened to me. Much of my life, I've not fit in. Not when I was a seven year old in third grade. Not when life seemed deadly serious to me, even in elementary school, as other kids played dodgeball and watched the Flintstones. Not when I wanted to work instead of going to high school football games. Not when I started college at 16. And not now.

Some of you have read this blog since the beginning, and you've watched as I've learned and changed over the last year or so--the culmination of years of change that have led me to where I am today. The difference now, compared to ten years ago is that I know me. I know who I am, where I fit, what I'm good at, and who really loves me, and so now I don't need to be anyone but the person that I am.

So, at the risk of turning this blog from one that gets read sparingly to one that gets read not at all, today, I'm "going there."

Yesterday was the 11th anniversary of 9/11. I will confess that at the time of the attacks, I was an emotional basket case. I felt instantly the changing of the world. I'd already witnessed, through TV news, the Oklahoma City Bombing, Waco, Columbine. But somehow that morning, 9/11, something was very different. I knew that morning that nothing would ever be the same.

Shortly after that day, I had an intuition, I guess, because while the narrative was all over--the Arab hijackers, the hatred they had for America, the reaction of the world--I wrote an essay. It was about justice and mercy, and while it's long since gone, the victim of old computers and poor labeling of diskettes, it was basically a call for people to remember that what seems like justice depends upon the perspective where you stand, and that when we do something wrong, we'd like to receive mercy a lot more than justice, so maybe we should give that in this case too. I read the essay as the message at my church at the time, at the invitation of our pastor. I guess I had a feeling that there was more to it than the common 'wisdom" at the time. Maybe he did too.

Now more than a decade later, we're still killing people based on the excuse of 20 Arab hijackers driving planes into buildings. Hundreds of thousands of people--men, women and children. Millions displaced by war. Our country's finances in tatters from years of war spending and government contracts to Blackwater and others of their ilk. Thousands of people indefinitely detained. Some tortured. Some killed. And in certain quarters, the bloodlust is no less vicious today than it was 11 years ago. It is as if America is performing an experiment to see how long normal people will continue killing in vengeance for past events.

And then yesterday, on the anniversary of 9/11, there was the killing of our ambassador in Libya, Chris Stevens, and several other people. At first report, it was said to be the work of Muslim "protesters" of an anti-Muslim film put out by an Israeli real estate developer to discredit the Muslim faith. People began to comment on news sites in the same old, hate-filled ways. Politicians wasted no time to point fingers and criticize.

Then, as the day has worn on today, the story has gotten curiouser and curiouser. The guy who made the anti-Muslim movie isn't who it was said he was. His name is a pseudonym; he isn't an Israeli as first reported. Maybe he's a "right-wing extremist." He might not even exist.

The attack on the Libyan embassy probably wasn't even a protest of the movie. It probably used the protest of the movie in Egypt as a diversion to carry out an intentional attack on the ambassador and his staff. The FBI is investigating. Today, again, I feel as if things changed and will never be the same. I have the feeling that there is very much more to this story than meets the eye, or the news report, and I'm betting that in the days and weeks to come, we're going to learn a lot that we don't really want to hear.

So here's why I'm writing this, and why I started out with a disclosure of my lifelong weirdness. I'm as certain as I can be, without having been there in person, that we've been led down this blood-soaked path by lies, manipulations, and deceptions. And I'm not afraid to say so anymore.

In my opinion after review of much information:

The American government knowingly permitted the attacks of 9/11/2001 to occur

It has then systematically disposed of evidence, failed to investigate important information, and tried to intimidate or discredit anyone who's gotten any traction toward exposing their crimes.

Who, specifically? I don't know--we have no way of telling what's true and what's not in so-called news reporting. I only know it wasn't twenty Muslim extremists inspired by AlQaeda. Why did they do it? Well, judging from the results for the last decade--to pave the way for wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the middle east, and to provide cover for the erosion of civil rights and Constitutional protections here in our country. What has it gained? Well, puppet governments in a couple of those places, one complete with its own connection to illegal drug trafficking, and a population who is so desensitized to abuse that it no longer seems to care if toddlers and elderly incontinent people get their diapers searched just to get on an airplane. File in, get probed, file out. Stupid, docile, sheep.

Now, I don't buy everything that "truthers" say, but here's the thing--there's stuff about 9/11 and the official story about it that makes no sense. And in all my experience in law, one thing I learned was: if it doesn't make sense, it isn't true.

Why did the government haul away all the debris at ground zero without investigators combing through it for evidence?

Why didn't NIST test for explosives, when many witnesses and a couple of videos agree that there were multiple explosions in the lower areas of the towers--in the case of the second tower, before the plane even hit the building?

Why did a third building, WTC7, collapse, in very much the same manner as the twin towers (straight down, very quickly), later the same day, when it was never hit by a plane? And why didn't we hear much about it?

Why did the government give three different time lines and stories about when fighters were "scrambled" to defend against the attack?

Why, when not a single one of the hijackers was Iraqi, or Afghani, we wound up attacking those countries, but never Saudi Arabia, where the hijackers were supposedly from?

And you know, the only people who are asking ANY questions about what happened that day, and why, are the truthers. So I'm going with them, even if I have to upgrade my tinfoil hat.

If you're interested, or maybe just curious, a documentary by Richard Gage, of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth has recently been broadcast by a public tv station in my old hometown, Denver. It's streaming online now and indefinitely, for free. It's a reasonable, and pretty short, summary of why people have questions about 9/11--why people like me are pretty sure that what they've told us about that day isn't true. And why so many people want so badly to avoid reaching that conclusion.

As for the rest, I'm going to wait and see what next emerges about the curious story of how an American diplomat died yesterday, and nearly, but not quite, fired up all the anti-Muslim hatred all over again. I'm pretty sure that whatever happened is important.

In the meantime, I'm going to face the fact that maybe I'm still odd, after all these years. Or maybe I'm just tired of getting played like a fiddle.