Is it Luck?
The Questions Raised by the Events of September 11, 2001
It is almost 20 months since the tragedy of September 11, 2001. The questions raised by these events have yet to be adequately examined in the U.S. by a public inquiry. The opposition of the Bush administration to the needed public inquiry has posed the significant obstacle. This is all the more of an indictment of the Bush administration when it has used the mantra of September 11 to make war on dissent and civil liberties at home, and on civilian populations and governments abroad.
A recent article in Newsweek, The Secrets of September 11, questions why the 800 page report by the U.S. Senate-House joint congressional inquiry has not been made public yet. The report was available on November 27, 2002. It was then turned over to a working group in the Bush administration to examine. According to the Newsweek article, the Chairmen of the Committees sponsoring the inquiry, Senator Bob Graham and Representative Porter Goss, are preparing a letter of complaint to Vice President Dick Cheney. Goss, a Republican and Graham, a Democrat, were the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees which sponsored the investigation.
There is also concern about whether the 800 page report will even be made available to the new commission finally appointed to investigate the events of September 11. The "National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States" was created only after family members of those killed, demanded that the U.S. government conduct a public investigation. The families have been stymied by the lack of government support or funding for the investigation. While $40 million was approved for an investigation of the recent Columbia Shuttle disaster, only $3 million dollars was initially approved for the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks. The House-Senate investigation had a budget of only $3 million dollars.
The first public hearing, held on March 31 and April 1, 2003, by the National Commission, was eclipsed by the war against Iraq. Testifying at that hearing, Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband was killed in the attack on the World Trade Center, raised a series of questions that she asked the commission to explore. In her testimony she asked:
"Is it luck that aberrant stock trades were not monitored? Is it luck when 15 visas are awarded based on incomplete forms? Is it luck when Airline Security screenings allow hijackers to board planes with box cutters and pepper spray? Is it luck when Emergency FAA and NORAD protocols are not followed? Is it luck when a national emergency is not reported to top government officials on a timely basis? To me luck is something that happens once. When you have this repeated pattern of broken protocols, broken laws, broken communication, one cannot still call it luck. If at some point we don't look to hold the individuals accountable for not doing their jobs properly then how can we ever expect for terrorists not to get lucky again? We must find the answers as to what happened that day so as to ensure another September 11th can never happen again."
Demands from the families of the victims of 9-11 and of the public for a public inquiry, and for the publication of the secret 800 page report, continue. The authors of the Newsweek article, however, document the continuing efforts of the Bush administration to thwart any public investigation into the events and to examine whether U.S. government activities before and on September 11, 2001, contributed to the tragedy.
An online petition with over 19.000 signatures raises these questions and others. This petition to the U.S. Senate asks for an investigation into George W. Bush's possible foreknowledge of the attacks prior to 9-11, into the activities of the Carlyle Corporation and Unocal in trying to build a pipeline through Afghanistan prior to 9-11, and other related matters. Along with the names of those signing the petition there are many comments. Richard Girard asks:
"There is too much that doesn't make sense in the White House's explanation, including why the jets were not scrambled from Andrews."
Another person signing the petition, Manjusree Sen writes:
"I demand a thorough investigation of very likely complicity in the highest ranks of our own government. Not only do victims of 9/11 and their friends, associates, and families deserve to know the whole truth, so do all Americans and world citizens."
Online discussion, websites, and petitions, raising the questions and examining the evidence, help the public to understand the many contradictions of the Bush administration's account of government actions up to and on September 11. The lack of official government support to examine its own wrongdoing makes a mockery of the Bush administration's use of September 11 to justify its supposed "war on terrorism". By its continued opposition to the needed inquiry, the Bush administration is convincing more and more people in the U.S. and around the world of U.S. government complicity in the events of September 11, 2001.