September 11, 2001 - An exploration into some important issues related to the events of that day.
"Conspiracy" and Other 'C' Words - Part 2
Complicity: One doesn"t have to resort to the word "conspiracy" in order to understand the nature of the failure of educational institutions, the media and elected officials to critically, thoroughly, competently, and rigorously investigate the issues surrounding 9/11 [and neither The 9/11 Commission Report, NIST"s Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Towers, The FEMA Report, The Pentagon Performance Report , nor the Popular Mechanics" article/book are critically competent, thorough, or rigorous efforts]. For the most part, these various sectors of the power elite did not gather together to conspire about anything. Rather, they are all, each in its own idiosyncratic manner, complicit in, among other things, the on-going censorship with respect to almost all of the important facets of 9/11.All of the individuals and groups making up the collective power elite have their own individual vested interests, agendas, values, goals, needs, and resources. At some point, the issues of 9/11 impinge upon their activities, and they make individualized judgments about how to handle such issues.
They look at what different branches of the government are doing. They examine the current political landscape. They consider the activities of the military. They assess the activities of various competitors or players in the business and corporate world. They take the pulse of the media and educational institutions. They poll the public or do marketing research. They reflect on their resources, liabilities, and needs. They do risk assessments concerning an array of political and economic situations in various regions of the world. They think about the future. They make assessments about the meaning, nature, and significance of 9/11.
They take all these factors and run them through their models, formulas, and methodologies. The result is a judgment about how to proceed.
For a variety of reasons virtually all of the players who participate in the collective power elite have -- somewhat independently of one another -- arrived at very similar and, in certain respects, overlapping decisions. They believe that the easiest, least problematic way for them -- as individuals, groups, institutions, parties, or organizations -- to move forward is to avoid looking at the events of 9/11 too closely.
Arriving at such a decision is not because they have definitive evidence that the "official" government narrative concerning 9/11 is true or viable. Most of these people have never read The 9/11 Commission Report, nor have they gone through and reflected on NIST"s Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Towers, nor have they perused The Pentagon Performance Report, nor have they read the book Debunking 9/11 Myths issued through Popular Mechanics, nor have they read the 20 or 30 other major works which critique all the foregoing, nor have they viewed the many videos which critically examine the available data entailed by 9/11.
Furthermore, arriving at such a decision is not because they have sat around in some boardroom or participated in a teleconference or met clandestinely with fellow conspirators and worked out a narrative for 9/11. In fact, in many ways, these individuals and groups probably don"t care, one way or the other, about the realities of 9/11, but, instead, they just want to know how they effectively can use or adapt to whichever way the political, economic, and judicial winds seem to be swirling with respect to that issue in order to be able to successfully advance their individual agendas, goals, aspirations, programs, and bottom lines.
Are such individuals, organizations, corporations, institutions, and so on complicit in, among other things, maintaining an environment of censorship concerning the realities of 9/11? Of course, they are.
However, they didn"t have to conspire with one another in order to reach such an arrangement. All they had to do is arrive at a decision in which it was considered prudent to leave 9/11 alone and run with the "official" government version of the matter.
Various members of the media, as well as an array of educators and political officials (both elected and unelected), may be complicit in wrongdoing linked with 9/11. Various members of the media, as well as an array of educators and political officials (both elected and unelected), may be complicit in many different kinds of injustice linked with 9/11. Various members of the media, as well as an array of educators and political officials (both elected and unelected), may be complicit in the censorship that has gone on in relation to 9/11. Various members of the media, as well as an array of educators and political officials (both elected and unelected), may be complicit in the oppression that has arisen in relation to 9/11. Various members of the media, as well as an array of educators and political officials (both elected and unelected), may be complicit in the shredding of the American Constitution and its Bill of Rights that have taken place in conjunction with the events of 9/11.
None of the foregoing, however, necessarily means that those who are complicit in the ways indicated are conspirators. On the other hand, there might be some individuals -- not yet definitely identified -- who are hidden among those who are complicit in matters concerning 9/11 and who actually are conspiring against Americans -- including some of the individuals and groups that are merely complicit -- and, perhaps, quite unknowingly involved -- in helping such conspirators to achieve their aims and ambitions.
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Confabulation: In psychological terms, to confabulate is to create a memory of a supposed past event that, in point of fact, did not necessarily take place. Alternatively, if the event on which the confabulated memory is based did take place, then, the act of confabulation may mean that the event did not actually occur in the way in which one remembered it as happening.
Sometimes confabulation occurs in the context of what is known as a "flashbulb memory". A flashbulb memory is an extremely vivid and clear recollection of a purported past event.
Sometimes, however, one may not have had the necessary experience or could not have been in a position to be able to have a reliable and true memory of whatever event one clearly and vividly is remembering. In such a case the flashbulb memory episode is an instance of confabulation in which the content of the "clear and vivid" memory, has been invented, either partially or wholly.
For example, Jean Piaget, the famous Swiss developmental psychologist, had a vivid memory of having been kidnapped as a child. He carried this memory with him for many years until the nanny who looked after him finally confessed that the kidnapping event never occurred.
Elizabeth Loftus, who has done a lot of groundbreaking research involving eyewitness accounts and false memory syndrome, also had a vivid recollection of seeing a dead relative floating face down in a backyard pool. The problem was, as she found out years later, the event that she remembers so clearly and vividly never took place.
President Bush had a confabulated flashbulb memory with respect to the North Tower of the World Trade Center in relation to September 11, 2001. He reports -- and I have seen the video news coverage of his speech -- that he had been waiting outside the elementary classroom in Florida where he was scheduled to meet with children and hear them read from a now famous book about a pet goat. He recalled that he had been watching a television set that was located outside the classroom, when he saw the first plane fly into the North Tower and, recalls himself at the time making a remark to the effect of: "boy, that was one bad pilot."
The problem with the foregoing recollection is that he could not possibly have been in a position to witness what he claimed to have remembered. The only video/film coverage of the North Tower event was by the Naudet brothers of France who were in Manhattan on September 11, 2001 doing a documentary on New York fire fighters.
The Naudet brothers" video/film footage of the North Tower September 11th event was not released until September 12, 2001. Consequently, President Bush could not possibly have witnessed what he claimed to remember while waiting to go into the elementary classroom on the morning of September 11, 2001.
Was there a television set outside the elementary classroom? I don"t know.
Was President Bush watching television before he entered the classroom? I don"t know.
However, irrespective of whether there was or was not a television outside the classroom and irrespective of whether he was or was not watching the television, the one indisputable fact is that he could not possibly seen what he claimed to have seen on the morning of September 11, 2001 because the film/video concerning the crash of Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center was not released until September 12, 2001.
Similarly, there are many people who claimed to have seen, on the morning of September 11, 2001, a large commercial jet plane flying between 10 and 50 feet off the ground knocking over lampposts along the highway as the airplane approached the Pentagon, skimmed over the grassy area in front of the west faade of the Pentagon, hitting a construction transformer truck, before slamming into the Pentagon. The Pentagon Performance Report seems to corroborate such accounts because the report indicates that the airplane struck the first floor of the Pentagon going at more than 500 miles per hour.
The problem with all of the foregoing is that due to aerodynamic factors such as "the ground effect", wing-tip vortex effects, and so on, it is not physically possible for a 2000-ton plane flying at 500 miles per hour to follow a relatively level flight path that permits such a plane to get closer than about 65 feet above the surface of the ground -- in contradistinction to eyewitness accounts which positioned the plane as being between 10 and 50 feet off the ground over the last two to four hundred yards before allegedly striking the Pentagon. What people claimed to have seen in this respect is in violation of known laws of physics, and, therefore, one suspects that, to varying degrees, what one is dealing with in relation to these kinds of report involves some form of confabulated memory.
Just as President Bush, Jean Piaget and Elizabeth Loftus all claimed to have clear memories of something which did not or could not have happened, so too, many of the eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen a large commercial plane flying at some 500 miles an hour (according to The Pentagon Performance Report) and running between ten and fifty feet above the ground as it approached the Pentagon on 9/11 were providing an account that could not have happened in the way in which they remember. Furthermore, physical laws of aerodynamics are such that what The Pentagon Performance Report"s claims to have been the case -- namely that the commercial plane that hit the Pentagon did so on the first floor of the building -- also could not have been true because a 2000- ton plane traveling at 500 miles per hour would not have been able to strike the first floor in the manner in which the Report claimed due to the aforementioned aerodynamic factors.
Were the people who gave such accounts lying? Not necessarily. The fact of the matter is -- and this is a well-established phenomenon in courtrooms across America -- eyewitness testimony is often inaccurate, and part of the reason for this is a direct result of the human tendency to confabulate, to varying degrees, with respect to our memories of past events.
In addition, there is a further problem with many of these eyewitness accounts in relation to the precise direction from which the alleged plane was coming as well as in relation to the nature of the angle of the plane when it allegedly hit the Pentagon. More specifically, there is detailed, videotaped testimony from three individuals -- namely, two Pentagon police officers (Chadwick Brooks and William Lagasse) as well as Robert Turcios who was working at the Citgo gas station about a quarter of a mile away from the west faade of the Pentagon -- which directly contradicts the testimony of a number of eyewitnesses concerning the flight path of a large commercial airliner that appeared to strike the Pentagon.
The issue has to do with the location of the commercial jet in relation to the Citgo station when it flew over that area as the craft headed for the Pentagon. Did the plane fly to the north of the Citgo station or did the plane fly to the south of the Citgo station?
If the commercial jet in question flew to the south of the Citgo station as it headed for the Pentagon, then, this would be consistent with a flight path in which lamp posts were allegedly knocked down along the highway running past the Pentagon, --one of which supposedly fell on a taxi and punched a hole in the car"s windshield as the plane made its way toward the Pentagon. Such a flight path also would be consistent with The Pentagon Performance Report that purportedly reconstructed what would have been necessary with respect to the plane"s flight path in order to be able to account for the pathway of damage inside the Pentagon.
However, if the plane"s flight path took the craft across an area to the north of the Citgo gas station, then, at least two things are not true. First, the individuals who claim they saw the plane follow a flight path to the south of the Citgo gas station are mistaken (possibly another case of memory confabulation), and, as a result, this leaves one in need of an explanation for what knocked down the lampposts because those lampposts are in a location which is entirely away from any flight path which went along a line to the north of the Citgo gas station. Secondly, if the plane that allegedly hit the Pentagon followed a flight path to the north of the Citgo gas station, then, The Pentagon Performance Report is incorrect with respect to its account of what caused the pathway of internal damage in the Pentagon because its report requires a plane which came at the Pentagon from a direction that was to the south of the Citgo station ... not the north side of the Citgo gas station.
Finally, irrespective of who is correct in her or his memory of what transpired on the morning of September 11, 2001 in relation to events at the Pentagon, the foregoing discussion indicates that there are those among the witnesses who are enveloped in confabulated or invented memory, in part or in total, with respect to the flight path of the plane in question. The large commercial jet that people claimed to see hit the Pentagon on 9/11 could not simultaneously have approached the Pentagon on both the north side and the south side of the Pentagon.
Although the two Pentagon police officers who, independently of one another, claim to have seen a commercial plane traveling toward the Pentagon on the north side of the Citgo gas station both believe that the plane in question did strike the Pentagon, there is some other information that may be inconsistent with the striking part of their account. First, although The 9/11 Commission Report claims that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon at 9:37-38 a.m., there is evidence that the Pentagon was struck by an earlier event that had a sufficiently violent shockwave to stop all battery operated clocks in and around the so-called "crash" area at 9:32-33 a.m., some five minutes before the alleged plane crash took place.
Furthermore, April Gallop, an employee at the Pentagon with top security clearance, was seated at her desk within 60 feet of the alleged crash site. As she hit the start-up button for her computer, there was a tremendous explosion that buried both her and her infant child who she was going to be taking to daycare shortly after starting up her computer.
After pulling herself and her daughter out of the rubble, as well as helping a few other people who had been buried during the blast, she exited the Pentagon via the hole that had been created by whatever the nature of the event was that had caused the explosion. She was in her bare feet because she had lost her shoes during the explosion.
She reports that there were no fires. Nothing was hot to the touch. There was no plane wreckage -- not fuselage, not people, not luggage, not engines.
Were there fires later on? Yes, there were. Nonetheless, despite whatever may have caused those subsequent fires, initially, the explosion that April Gallop lived through involved no fires and no plane wreckage.
Secondly, a number of military personnel who were caught up in the initial Pentagon blast indicated that they smelled cordite, not jet fuel, and these individuals had sufficient training and experience to know the difference. Cordite is associated with the explosion of munitions not jet plane crashes. Consequently, irrespective of whatever else may have happened at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, there was at least one, and possibly two, explosions at the Pentagon that were munitions-related and not jet crash-related.
Finally, exploding jet fuel does not cause blast injuries. Yet, the medical first-responders at the Pentagon reported that they had been treating a lot of blast injuries as well as burn injuries on the morning of September 11, 2001. For example, Captain Stephen S. Frost of the Medical Corps stated: "We saw many blast injuries" -- such as pulmonary blast injuries, gastrointestinal blast injuries, concussions, as well as secondary (being hit by debris propelled by a shock wave) and tertiary blast injuries (being injured as a result of being thrown by the force of the blast"s shock wave.).
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