MONOLOGUE WRITTEN BY CLYDE LEWIS

I was away most of last week with my family, visiting my ailing father. I knew that I would not be able to comment on the 15th anniversary of the attacks of September 11th, 2001 before the anniversary. I knew that if I did, I wouldn’t have been a very popular person. The reason I say this is because after 15 years, I feel as if I have become more pragmatic about the attacks and I have also become more cynical as I have always pointed out that the 911 attacks and the subsequent memorials and tributes have been rendered caustic because of the way the victims have been turned into political footballs.

They have become just another tool where the politicians have found a way to kick a corpse for loose change.

Now I want to make myself clear on something very important.

I have no problem with people who want to take the time to remember those they lost, or wax patriotic and think that nearly three thousand who died that day were heroes, but just bowing our heads in silence, and making this a patriotic outing, even creating a pseudo religious moment out of the ordeal is hollow when you consider what happened was a ritualistic crime that really has no answers.

I suppose it is a little harsh to realize that some 30 percent of Americans are unable to tell what year the attacks against America took place.

According to a Washington Post poll, 95 percent of Americans questioned in the poll were able to remember the month and the day of the attacks, “911” or September 11th, but when asked what year, 30 percent could not give a correct answer. Of that group, six percent gave an earlier year, eight percent gave a later year, and 16 percent admitted they had no idea whatsoever.

Even with all of the mournful memorials, and the declarations of which we will “never forget,” people have been so conditioned with 911 – as a magic word, that they can’t remember the year it happened.

We are always being told to “look back” and not “look forward” we are told to bow our heads in silence, instead of speaking up and we are told to remember and relive the pain, rather than realizing that we need a healing process.

When you ask people to revisit the events of 911 and reconsider what really happened, you enter the twilight zone of public mythology where people don’t want to rethink unhappy events and where you challenge their personal egos. If you eliminate the emotional baggage and the constant bombardment of the false narrative, you may be able to see the truth. Images begin to re-emerge and forgotten information comes back.

The legacy of 911 has been distorted, repackaged, and sold as an atoning moment in what can be called the civil religion. Even within the ranks of those who call themselves 911 truthers, the speculating and conspiracy theories can be just noise getting in the way of the reality that 911 is not just an inside job—but a full time job.

While we get into deep philosophical discussions over thermite explosions, building collapses ‘no plane’ theories and the blame game, the criminal planners of the 911 attacks are happily getting away without facing trial.

Government officials get away with criminal activity because we have established a system that intrinsically knits corruption into the government construct. The law itself grants immunity in a way that makes successful prosecution the exception.

Successful prosecution and investigations into criminal activities in government also costs money. If you were to take a look at history’s most nefarious cases, you would see that while some cases have deep pockets for investigation. Other cases, where criminal wrongdoing can be traced to public leaders, seem to be limited in budget.

For example, the overall cost for investigating the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster totaled $100 million dollars and the Columbia disaster investigation came in at a whopping $175 million dollars. When it comes to alleged criminal activity or wrong doing with a political figure or alphabet agency, investigation budgets are much lower.

The investigation into the Watergate scandal totaled $12 million dollars. The Clinton/Lewinsky scandal investigation cost the taxpayers $30 million dollars. Iran/Contra ran up a total of $35 million dollars.

The investigation into the September 11th, 2001 attacks only totaled $3 million dollars. Now, that was all that was allocated. Public Law 107-306 provided for the allowance of $3 million for the 9/11 Commission. Congress subsequently appropriated, and the President signed into law, an additional $11 million appropriation for the Commission. Recent legislation authorized an additional $1 million, bringing the Commission’s total budget to $15 million. Still the offering originally set at 3 million was an embarrassment. After haggling and begging $15 million is still less than investigating a stain on a blue dress. How is it that the biggest crime of the century was left with a small amount of money for investigating an alleged terrorist attack that plunged us into two wars?

$15 million wasn’t enough to even start getting to the bottom of what happened. $15 million didn’t pay for much other than some press releases and the costs of printing reports. It certainly wasn’t enough to pay for real investigation or legal struggles to discover information which the government was stonewalling. The lack of funding and the lack of cooperation from the government compromised the investigation.

9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: “It should be a national scandal“; “This investigation is now compromised . . . This is `The Gong Show’“; and “One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up.”

In August 2002, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched what would become a six-year investigation of the three building failures that occurred on September 11, 2001 the well-known collapses of the World Trade Center Twin Towers that morning and the lesser-known collapse late that afternoon of the 47-story World Trade Center Building 7, which was not struck by an airplane.

NIST conducted its investigation based on the stated premise that the “WTC Towers and WTC 7 [were] the only known cases of total structural collapse in high-rise buildings where fires played a significant role.”

Neither before nor since 9/11 have fires caused the total collapse of a steel-framed high-rise—nor has any other natural event, with the exception of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, which toppled a 21-story office building. Otherwise, the only phenomenon capable of collapsing such buildings completely has been by way of a procedure known as controlled demolition, whereby explosives or other devices are used to bring down a structure intentionally.

Although NIST finally concluded after several years of investigation that all three collapses on 9/11 were due primarily to fires, fifteen years after the event a growing number of architects, engineers, and scientists are unconvinced by that explanation.

Is it any wonder why there are so many conspiracy theories about the event?

Even when the so-called 28 pages about 911 were released there was really no smoking gun. Entire paragraphs are redacted – especially in crucial points.

What we have access to shows that the Saudi government including top officials, including then Saudi ambassador to the U.S., Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and other members of the royal family – financed and actively aided the hijackers prior to September 11, 2001.

We also have learned that according to antiwar.com, two of the hijackers had extensive contacts with Saudi naval officers in the United States, according to telephone records. And when Abu Zubaydah, one of the accused 9/11 conspirators, was captured in Pakistan, they found the phone number of a Colorado company that managed “the affairs of the Colorado residence of the Saudi Ambassador.” Prince Bandar is practically the star of the suppressed 28 pages – no wonder the Bush administration, which had close ties to him, fought so hard to keep this secret.

The 28 pages also reveal that an individual – name redacted – associated with al-Qaeda and the hijackers sneaked into the US, avoiding Customs agents and the INS due to the fact that he was traveling with a member of the Saudi royal family. We are also told that “Another Saudi national with close ties to the Saudi Royal Family, [redacted], is the subject of FBI counterterrorism investigations and reportedly was checking security at the United States’ southwest border in 1999 and discussing the possibility of infiltrating individuals into the United States.”

Prince Bandar went on to become head of Saudi intelligence: his personal relationship with the Bush family is well-known, and his access to US government officials – and his powerful influence in Washington once again creates more circumstantial evidence that 911 was an inside job.

It would not be stretching the evidence to bluntly state that the suppressed 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry report on the 9/11 terrorist attacks places agents of the Saudi government at the epicenter of the plot. In short, there’s no two ways about it: the Saudis did 9/11. They worked jointly with a criminal element in our government and since our government had no desire to retaliate against them covered up the truth and lied in order to put us in perpetual war.

Do you think that any of this will make it into the narrative? Will the 911 narrative include malfeasance, corruption, lies, cover-up and impunity?

Of course not, because the narrative want to sugar coat everything by focusing on tributes and feel good ceremonies that distract from just how evil 911 really was, and how it was used as a tool for tyranny.

Now all we can do is just have tributes and mourn. No one demands justice or accountability. Nobody in the media has the guts to change the narrative and nurture the truth.

I am growing quite tired of the narrative, and I am sick to my stomach knowing that the American people probably don’t know that when the event took place the government didn’t care enough to investigate it as a crime, they wanted to prop it up as a reason for war, empire building, constitutional negation and to open the dialogue to stealthily commit us to state socialism and to eliminate sovereignty.

It is a patriot’s duty to demand more and not play along when we know that justice has been negated. The government couldn’t be bothered with giving the people justice and closure in order to heal.

The question is why we are spending so much time looking back and remembering when we should be moving forward and wondering where we are going to end up.

The course we have chosen to take after the attacks was arguably not the wisest.

This country went from being a model for a healthy democracy into a despotic police state, divided and now once again fighting over whom is the most victimized, who is the most oppressed, and who is the one most worthy of not being shot or killed in the battlefield that is just down the block.

We were told that the U.S. Patriot Act would protect our freedoms and provide us safety. Fifteen years later, we now are aware that this was a blatant lie. This so called act of patriotism has snowballed into a disaster. Every vital constitutional right, every protection from government overreach corruption and abuse has been taken away from us.

We used to stand up to organized government, now we acquiesce to anything the government wants. When people do stand up to government, when their property is taken or their livelihoods are compromised, there are the do goody good believers that will be the first to say that they had it coming. When their bloodied bodies lay in the streets or when someone is shot and killed defending their rights, there is a contingency with Stockholm Syndrome ready to defend the wolves that have killed the other defiant sheep.

This is what the government has done with the 911 attacks – they have twisted it into a tool for oppression and impunity.

This is not freedom, this isn’t patriotic, and this is not constitutional.

In the wake of 911, not only did 3000 people die in the horrible tragedy, many of our liberties and freedoms died too. Free speech is non-life support, the right to protest seems to also be dwindling and the ability to challenge corruption and wrong doing is ridiculed by officials and those who use their political affiliation as their identity.

Due process has also died since 911, something that I rail about from time to time. I have been told that supporting due process means that you condone criminal activity.

Is it because due process has always been a presumption of innocence even if the court of public opinion or even the government treats your otherwise? The right to self defense, even with a gun, is slowly seeing its nadir.

Who ever thought that we would see the day when there would be a vocal majority saying it is time to infringe on a constitutional right to bear arms?

We have seen the death of accountability in government affairs. There is no transparency anymore. Everything is either classified or covered up by a media that has been hijacked by the pentagon. Those who speak out of line or see things differently and report about such matters are called conspiracy theorists.

The government declared war on everything after 911 and representative government has become a casualty of war along with truth which always is a liability to a government that wants ultimate power over their people.

The U.S. government now poses a greater threat to our freedoms than any terrorist, extremist or foreign entity ever could.

However, who wants to hear this as we are caught up in the throes of remembering a terrifying event like 911.

Once again, I do not want to question the integrity of anyone who decides they want to grieve and mourn their losses from 15 years ago. However, I do want to make it clear that living in the past, and not learning from it, is counter intuitive.

Staying forever transfixed in a tragedy and not moving forward, is similar to someone who loses a loved one, and decides to just stay in bed and obsess over the past. If this was happening to someone you loved, you would seek out an intervention or intervene on your own.

The sad thing is that most Americans now, just shrug at the destruction of our liberties.

In 15 years, we have self-medicated in the haze of entertainment, bread and circus politics, and the distraction of interchangeable and divisive headlines that we hear about and then flush down the memory hole as the government continues to make their power grabs, turning nature into pipelines and parking lots while paving the New World Order over the bodies of the old world.

In its place, we put a building called “The One World Center” as a reminder of where they want us to go, and what they want us to accept.

https://soundcloud.com/groundzeromedia/a2016-9-12

Written by Ron Patton