Gaping Holes in the 9/11 Narrative
By Robert Scheer, AlterNet
Posted on September 11, 2006, Printed on September 12, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/41474/

What we still don't know about 9/11 could kill us. By "we" I mean the
public that has been kept in the dark for five years by a president who
may know the truth but has chosen to ignore it. Instead of grappling
with the thorny origins of that disaster, George Bush willfully turned
the nation's attention and resources to a totally unrelated and
disastrous imperial adventure in Iraq.

Just how unrelated was definitively established last Friday with the
belated release of the Senate Intelligence Committee's second report,
which concluded that there not only was zero connection between Saddam
Hussein and Al Qaeda, but that Iraq was the one country in the region
where Osama bin Laden could not operate.

Unfortunately, that was not true of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the two
countries that had recognized and otherwise supported the Taliban
government that hosted bin Laden during the run-up to 9/11. Fifteen of
the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, and yet there has been no
serious investigation of the extended Royal family's roll in the
recruitment of bin Laden's "soldiers" and the ease with which they
secured legal visas to enter the United States.

While funds for Al Qaeda emanated from the Saudi kingdom, the essential
logistical support for Al Qaeda came from Pakistan. Now, five years
later, bin Laden and the remnants of his organization are assumed by
the United States to have found refuge in Pakistan's unruly tribal
region, where the Pakistan government recently has reduced its forces,
conceding that it could not defeat local tribesmen sympathetic to the
Taliban.

Nor has there been any credible accounting of the role of Pakistan's
intelligence community, then and now, in support of Islamic terrorists
on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghan border. Or in the passage of
Pakistan's nuclear secrets to what Bush refers to as "rogue nations."

Recall that the predominant excuse for invading Iraq was the claim that
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and would be willing to
pass them on to rogue regimes and terrorists. Not only were such
weapons not found, but the evidence from the accounts of former
Administration insiders and the Senate Intelligence Committee makes
clear that the Administration was consciously cherry picking the
evidence to shore up its fraudulent case.

There were weapons of mass destruction being shipped to "rogue
nations," but they were coming from Pakistan in an extensive program
headed by Abdul Qadeer (A.Q.) Khan, the father of the "Islamic bomb."
The Pakistan government has admitted that Khan passed on to North
Korea, Libya and Iran technical know-how and vital materials for the
creation of nuclear weapons. But Khan was pardoned of any crimes by
Pakistan's dictator general, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Khan is
restricted only by a loose form of house arrest and has never been made
available to U.S. investigators. Yet the Bush Administration dropped
the sanctions originally imposed on Pakistan in reprisal for its
development of nuclear weapons in return for Pakistan's support in the
"war on terror."

As for Afghanistan, the Taliban is on the rise. NATO commanders last
week urgently requested more troops, and the country is now torn by the
anarchy of a narco-state that is supplying 92% of the world's heroin
market and generating massive profits for gangsters and terrorists
alike. The country is now as dangerous for American soldiers as is
Iraq.

Despite this sorry record of neglect in Southwest Asia and the creation
of a quagmire and recruiting poster for terrorism in Iraq, Bush once
again arrogantly asserts that his policies have made us safer, even as
he has undermined our domestic freedoms and mocked the U.S. commitment
to international law, particularly concerning the treatment of
prisoners.

Last week, Bush conceded that there were indeed secret CIA prisons,
when finally announcing that the group of "key witnesses" to the 9/11
disaster would be moved to Guantanamo and for once afforded visits form
the Red Cross and minimal legal representation. Some of them have been
interrogated in secret for up to five years, with the Bush
Administration left as the sole interpreter of what they revealed.

After five years of official deceit, it is not too difficult to believe
that the isolation of those prisoners was done less for reasons of
learning the truth about 9/11 and more in an effort to politically
manage the narrative released to the public.

There is glaring evidence that the latter was the case. The 9/11
Commission report contains a disclaimer box on page 146, in which it is
stated that the report's account of what happened on 9/11 was in
considerable measure based on what those key witnesses allegedly told
interrogators, and that the commissioners were not allowed to meet the
witnesses or their interrogators.

"We submitted questions for use in the interrogations, but had no
control over whether, when or how questions of particular interest
would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so
that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify
ambiguities in the reporting."

In short, the most cited source that we have on what happened on 9/11,
the much celebrated 9/11 Commission Report, was stage-managed by the
Bush administration, just as it has controlled and distorted so much
other information.

In light of that sorry record of the propagandistic exploitation of the
9/11 tragedy for partisan political purpose, is it any wonder that
large numbers of Americans have doubts about all of it and that a
considerable industry of documentaries and investigative reports has
sprung up with alternative theories ranging from the plausible to the
absurd.