But what do you do when the rant can't be deleted -- because the author is a columnist for a major newspaper?
We refer here to Toronto Star writer Michele Landsberg. On Sunday, Ms. Landsberg dedicated her column to Barrie Zwicker, a television journalist who peddles an obscure video called The Great Deception. Mr. Zwicker's basic thesis is that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were likely a conspiracy involving "elements within the top U.S. military, intelligence and political leadership," that the war on terrorism is a "Big Lie" and that George W. Bush's "implausible official version" of 9/11 was really just a pretext to "promot[e] perpetual global war in the service of resource looting."
The "evidence" Mr. Zwicker presents in support of his thesis is a mish-mash of odd details and darkly phrased questions -- none of them unfamiliar to anyone who followed the rise and fall of such conspiracy theories in late 2001. Whatever currency these theories once enjoyed was blown away last year by a stream of confessions and operational disclosures from captured al-Qaeda commanders. Yet Ms. Landsberg apparently came away from The Great Deception a believer. Upon watching the video, she says, "a frightening chill came over me." She concludes: "If you call [Mr. Zwicker] a conspiracy theorist, call me one, too, because I agree with Zwicker when he says, 'I don't know exactly what happened, but something smells very fishy.' "
What is unintentionally comical about Ms. Landsberg's piece is the way she presents herself and Mr. Zwicker as a pair of heroic free thinkers who "challenge conventional wisdom" and stand up to the "rank-smelling" censors and lackeys who guard the path to truth. The duo ask "embarrassingly uncool" questions, she says, which "99% of Canadian journalists have not dared or deigned to ask."
The truth, of course, is rather less dramatic. While 99 out of every 100 Canadian journalists do indeed find Ms. Landsberg's nonsense "embarrassing," it is not for any lack of courage. Rather, they recognize that Mr. Zwicker's "Big Lie" theory is an eccentric crock. The reason they haven't reported on it is because they're good reporters.
We will not try to argue down Ms. Landsberg: Clearly, her logic circuits have been blown by a blinding hatred of the United States. And just as it is impossible to prove to a true conspiracy theorist that the Holocaust happened or that the moon landing wasn't faked, no one will ever be able to definitively "prove" 9/11 to those who see the hand of the CIA behind every evil. But surely, Ms. Landsberg's editors at the Star were in a position to exercise better judgment. Poisonous delusions such as these do not belong in a mainstream newspaper.
© Copyright 2003 National Post
I can condense that to three words: Barrie is queer.
:) I hope this post is still here when I get back.
The F-16s at Andrews are National Guard, not active duty AF. The primary mission of the active duty forces at the base is Airlift and transporting the President and his entourage, not air defense.
Just because a base has some fighters assigned doesn't mean that the mission of the base is defending nearby cities and national monuments from air attack.
Prior to 9/11 the air defense focused on Communist bombers that routinely fly down the coast of the US to Cuba and the detecting and countering cruise missiles, not shooting down passenger jets.
Well, after Clinton got into office, we no longer had a standing 24 hour a day intercept system.
But why let that stand in the way?
Rumsfeld did not call for an attack on Iraq after the WTC attack, he had made a public statement two days before the WTC attack on the necessity for US pressure on Iraq.
Bush was not fully briefed on the attack before he entered the school building. At about the time he arrived at the school the first plane had hit the first tower - at the time it was thought to have been an accident like the 1945 plane collision in the Empire State Bldg - and he was told of that first collision just before he entered the building, when it was still thought of as an accident. At 9:03 when the second plane struck, he was already reading to the children in a classroom - something very well documented - and within two minutes of that second crash he was told of it and immediately left the building with his entourage.
The FBI did not have "the exact identities" of the hijackers within 24 hours; in fact that FBI had worked up a list of 25 probably hijackers, which included most of the 15 actually involved plus at least ten who turned out not to be participants. It wasn't terribly difficult to come up with some names right away by perusing the passenger manifests and ticket purchases for those planes.
The list of this guy's misrepresentations could go on and on.
We didn't. They got a few names wrong, if I remember correctly. They were going by the seat numbers the hijackers had sat in.