Don Jeffries

Thanks for this, David. You provide more food for thought.

Daniel, I've never noticed that before. You are exactly right- Jean Hill is not looking at the limousine, in the midst of the shooting. That's an astute observation, and one that deserves an explanation.

Bill,

I do know that we have no national interest in Libya. I do know that we bombed Libya under Reagan, killing his small daughter, and then the guy kind of disappeared for a few decades. If another country bombed our White House, and killed Obama's daughter, how would we feel about that? Who would best be descibed as a "bully" in that case? I guess he stopped killing and torturing or something. All of a sudden, now he is the #1 boogeyman again. Well, with Bin Laden gone, someone has to be.

Our foreign interventionism has done nothing but make us even more enemies around the world. We've done nothing but intervene in small countries for decades now. Again, the last president to buck that trend was JFK, who was not going to go along with the plan for Viet Nam. If we're so worried about standing up against tyranny, and helping revolutions around the world, why haven't we ever stood up to a really powerful, totalitarian nation like China? Why didn't we ever try and invade the Soviet Union? Surely they did more bad things than Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Yemen have combined. Maybe because the Chinese and Soviets were capable of fighting back?

We are not the world's policeman- we are the world's bully. Always ready to bomb and occupy small countries who cannot possibly fight back. Hey, maybe Grenada is piling up "stockpiles" of weapons or something. Maybe Kosovo needs our "assistance" again. I don't know how you can justify our reprehensible actions around the world.

Bill,

No one called you, or anyone else, stupid. I referred to the American people collectively that way. I'm sorry- in a time of desperate economic crisis, movies like Hangover 2 make 200 million dollars. That's just one of many examples. We have become an idiocracy.

Yes, I am a moderator. Again, no secret. I don't get involved a lot, because I don't believe in restricting debate unless it gets really, really bad.

I wasn't critiquing you specifically about this boogeyman's name. Everyone in the msm now calls him Ghaddafi with a hard "G," whereas before they always called him Quaddafi with a "K" sound. I just made an observation which I think has some relevance.

Btw, did you know that Al-Queda is now on the side of truth and justice? According to the msm, they are fighting against Quaddafi. How does that work? Isn't this "war on terror" supposed to be against them? I can't believe anyone can defend what we're doing in Libya, or anywhere else. Our own country is falling apart completely, and all we can do is kill people on the other side of the world, who have done absolutely nothing to us. You don't advise your neighbors on how to take care of their house, when the roof is falling in on your own home.

Bill,

I didn't think it was a secret- I'm an American, and I can trace my roots back here to the mid 1700s.

I wasb't calling Hanks stupid- but I think the majority of the people, at this time, unfortunately are. Maybe dumbed down or brainwashed is a better term. They've proven to be incredibly easy to fool. I'm not qualified to judge the collective brain power in any other country, but I know Americans, and that's my assessment.

As a populist, what makes it more difficult for me is the fact that I still feel a great affinity for "the people." Kind of like the way Winston Smith described the proles in 1984; he was desperately rooting for them, and realized they could overpower the Party in sheer numbers with little effort, but recognized how unable they were to do that.

That's where I am, I guess- waiting for the people to wake up and take control.

Getting things back to the topic of this thread....

No one-including Bugliosi, Posner, DVP or Tom Hanks-can make an effective case for Oswald being the lone assassin, because the official record proves that was impossible. However, what we should be worried about are two things; the star power of Tom Hanks, and the increasingly stupid American public.

What made JFK such a successful film, and so important to our cause, was Oliver Stone's fame and the fact so many high profile stars agreed to appear in it. An indepedent film, made by even a well known director, wouldn't have had nearly the impact without all those stars. Tom Hanks is a mega star, and his name alone will attract viewers, no matter what his thesis is. Fortunately, it appears as if Hanks is confronting the reality of just how difficult it will be to film a convincing argument from all the historical inaccuracies in Bugliosi's huge book.

If Hanks is able to film anything based on Bugliosi's book, it won't matter how good a production it is. People will watch, and a certain number will believe it, because they simply don't know the subject matter and, as noted above, are just incredibly unwilling to think for themselves. P.T. Barnum would drool over the prospect of dealing with today's public.

Btw, why can't we spell the new (and formerly old) boogeyman's name correctly? In the old days, when he was public enemy number one, there were two basic variations; Quaddafi and Khaddafy. Now, for some reason, we put a "G" in front. Why is there such confusion about how such a famous man's name is spelled?

Or is this just related to the American tendency to just be stupid about these things. You know, like mispronoucing Iraq (E-Rock) as Eye-Rack?

"Bipartisan foreign policy" makes a mockery of our absurd two-party system, which in reality is one party- the war party, the globalist party. We have absolutely no business in Libya, much as we have no business in Iraq, Afghanistan or Yemen. We have become the Great Satan, bombing and occupying foreign countries, and killing untold number of civilians in the process.

Obama the great "peace" candidate is now at war with four harmless, tiny nations. The last president to reject war was JFK, who did it multiple times during his administration. In fact, JFK may be the ONLY sitting president who rejected the call to war. That's one of the main reasons I still admire him so much.

With the worst economy in our nation's history, a disastrous inequity between the haves and have nots, abysmal lack of jobs, and a crumbling infrastructure, the last thing we should be doing is enforcing our idea of "freedom" on other countries at the point of a gun. We have huge problems to address at home.

It's amazing to me that, more than 40 years after the first critical works analyzing the official story were published, anyone continues to entertain the notion that Oswald may indeed have been the assassin of JFK. The lone nut thesis was demolished all those decades ago, by private citizens who took the time to sift through the morass of mostly meaningless exhibits and testimony. We know for a fact that:

- FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover orchestrated a huge coverup, perhaps best exemplified by Harold Weisberg's discovery that so many FBI documents had been purposefully mimeographed repeatedly, in order to diminish their clarity. Consider all that Weisberg and other researchers had to go through (and still have to go through) in order to unearth even a single document from our government. Innocent, honest government officials don't make access to information that difficult to obtain.

- The lone assassin thesis DOES rest on the SBT, and it is impossible. The condition of CE399 alone proves this. The Warren Commission published photos of identical test ammunition, fired into substances like cotton and a goat carcas. One can look at the bullets fired into anything other than cottom, and see how damaged they were, compared to the nearly pristine condition of CE399. When coupled with the bullet holes in JFK's shirt and coat, which match precisely the location "mistakenly" marked by Boswell on the original autopsy face sheet, and the location where Burkley placed it on the death certificate, not to mention Sibert & O'Neill's report, we can be certain that there is absolutely no question the back wound was far too low to have exited from the throat. Case closed.

- The majority of eyewitnesses, even those in the TSBD itself, described the shots as coming from the front (knoll/ railroad tracks). Photos immediately after the assassination reveal all attention was directed there, with spectators and police racing up the grassy knoll, while the TSBD was entirely ignored. Coupled with the testimony of all the doctors and nurses at Parkland, describing a massive hole in the back of JFK's head, the violent backward motion of JFK's head in the Zapruder film (assuming, for the sake of argument, that it's unaltered), and the initial reports that the throat wound was one of entrance, and we have pretty strong indications that shots were fired from the front, where Oswald never was.

- While attention has been drawn in recent years, from Gary Mack and numerous LNers and even some CTers, to the supposed mistakes and irresponsibility of various critics, the most irresponsible critic imaginable cannot touch the mistakes and distortions in the Warren Report. Consider:

- They printed up only a small number of the 26 volumes of Hearings & Exhibits, forced the public to buy all 26 together and priced them so exhorbitantly that very, very few Americans were able to afford them. They further limited the ability of researchers to study the record by arranging the data in such a haphazard way that it was, in the words of Sylvia Meagher, "tantamount to a search for information in the Encylopedia Britannica if the contents were untitled, unalphabetized, and in random sequence." As Mark Lane and others pointed out early on, many if not most of the "concusions" in the Warren Report are directly contradicted by, or entirely unrelated to, the evidence cited as evidence for them in the Hearings & Exhibits. An honest government wouldn't do that. A real investigation wouldn't do that.

- The WC failed to even identify crucial witnesses who were some of the closest eyewitnesses to the assassination. Two of them were of tremendous interest to critics- the Umbrella Man and the Babushka Lady. There is no indication that the astute investigators on the WC staff even attempted to locate and interview these witnesses, or obtain the obviously important Babushka Lady's film. They also failed to call extremely critical witnesses to testify, such as Admiral Burkley, who was in the motorcade, at Parkland, on Air Force One, at Bethesda, and was JFK's personal physician. Meanwhile, they did somehow locate and interview Viola Peterman, who had been the infant Lee Harvey Oswald's babysitter and hadn't seen the Oswalds for many years. Needless to say, innocent investigators don't do that. Honest government officials searching for the truth would want the most important witnesses, and wouldn't waste time on irrelevant people who were witnesses to nothing. They also wouldn't overtly pad the record, as can be seen by reading most any sample testimony in the Hearings & Exhibits, by asking pointless, rambling questions about the history and background of witnesses, yet also fail to ask pertinent ones.

I could go on and on, but I would expect any regular poster on this forum to know this stuff. It isn't incumbent upon us to identify individual assassins in order to point out the impossibility of the official story. Oswald shot no one on November 22, 1963. We ought to be asking ourselves why nearly everyone in a position of authority, from all elected politicians to all mainstream journalists to all establishment historians, continue to chant the lone assassin mantra so passionately, nearly fifty years after the crime. Why is there such a complete consensus on this issue among those in authority, when the overwhelming number of average people reject it just as completely?

We ought to concentrate on the impossibility of the lone nut story, not be forced into constructing theories that we can't possibly prove. At least we can force history to acknowledge that there was a conspiracy.

This wildly inaccurate hit piece typifies the way the left has treated the Kennedy legacy for decades now. That's why the whole left-right charade is fooling fewer and fewer people every day.

JFK was killed by very powerful forces, and the high paying shills in the mainstream media, who serve as their official mouthpieces, made it clear long ago that they still despise him and his family. They don't even try to hide it; whether it's Sy Hersh's "exposes" or Gerald Blaine and Clint Hill blaming JFK for his own assassination, the animosity is still obvious.

No other modern Democratic president arouses this kind of ire in journalists, historians or bloggers. There are strong indications that FDR, for instance, knew about Pearl Harbor in advance, and his presidency began nearly thirty years before Kennedy's, yet there is no way a critical work about him could be published even now, some sixty five years after his death. Harry Truman oversaw the establishment of both the Pentagon and the CIA, and dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When was the last hit piece on him written? We saw what happened when pressure from Jack Valenti and other LBJ loyalists forced the History Channel to stop airing the part of "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" that implicated him in the plot.

The world in which the likes of Macarey, Hersh, Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, Christopher Hitchens, etc. operate is decidedly of the "left" wing variety. Now, if the "left" is what it is claimed to be, shouldn't these guys consider JFK some kind of hero? On the contrary, they have no interest in the circumstances surrounding his death, and believe it was meaningless, anyway, since he was an unprincipled, mafia-connected serial adulterer. As for RFK, his leftist credibility was established first hand, when he made eradicating poverty his primary issue prior to and during his ill-fated presidential campaign. Did anyone even know the shamefully impoverished souls of Appalachia existed before Bobby visited them, and forced the media to recognize them? Has any other politician been back there since, outside of his own daughter Rory, who made a film about the subject some years back?

In my view, there has always been an establishment "left" and then the renegade "left." FDR represented the establishment left of his day, while Huey Long would have represented the ultimate renegade. Truman and LBJ were not really leftists, but were accepted by the establishment "left." JFK, on the other hand, was never accepted by the established left. Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Truman hated JFK. Stevenson belatedly tolerated him. If anything, the established left hated Bobby even more. They gave him the "ruthless" tag, and never forgave him for working for McCarthy or being the hard nosed counsel for the McClellan committee, which they interpreted as being "anti-union" instead of simply being interested in rooting out corruption wherever it was.

When Ted Kennedy decided to run for president in 1980, the same press that had been justifiably criticized by the "right" for ignoring the unanswered questions about Chappaquidick suddenly decided it was a very important issue. Who can forget Roger Mudd's notorious hit piece on Teddy, which when edited left him stuttering and stammering and almost singlehandedly derailed his campaign. As recently as a few years ago, we saw the "left" leaning press publish an interview with Caroline Kennedy, who was considered a shoo-in to be appointed to the U.S. Senate, in which a large number of "uhs" were included for readers to enjoy. They even clean up the grammatical mistakes of athletes- do you mean to tell me that this highly unusual inclusion was accidental? Again, to no one's surprise, another Kennedy's chances at public office went down the drain.

To borrow a phrase from the oft-disliked Alex Jones, the left-right paradigm is bogus. The establishment loves "leftists" like Clinton or Obama. On the other hand, they will never allow "leftists" like Cynthia McKinney or Dennis Kucinich to be elected president. There may be broad areas of agreement bewteen "leftists," but generally speaking, those that are truly interested in protecting civil liberties and in promoting peace are never allowed near the White House. As documented so well in Virtual JFK, Kennedy was the last president to defy the call to war, and he did it multiple times. Bobby Kennedy was the ultimate "dove" candidate, and clearly would have been just as reluctant to follow his marching orders as his brother was. On the other hand, Gene McCarthy, imho, was a typical establishment "left" candidate.

The fact that so many "leftists" remain committed to distorting JFK's (and RFK's) record is curious, if they were indeed the kind of vacuous playboys they are portrayed as. Why should they care about these obsolete political figures from another era, who supposedly epitomized the cold-war mentality, and were actually planning no real reforms of any kind? I think we know the answer to that, and we'll continue to see these kinds of smear campaigns, if and when the next Kennedy runs for high office (right now, I suspect they've already got a few juicy pieces on Robert Kennedy, Jr. in the can). They killed JFK, RFK and JFK, Jr., and they do not want another Kennedy in the White House.

How could I leave out Rocky & Bullwinkle? The first cartoon written for adults, but still enjoyed by kids.

Evan,

I think your analogies are flawed. Two airliners colliding on the ground, for instance, would only be an appropriate analogy if this had happened numerous times, but on only THAT occasion did loss of life occur. As for the hijacker's passport being found, we would have to have an actuary calculate the odds that one of the few items-perhaps the only item- found intact was something that was so significant to a particular conspiracy theory (the official one). I don't think that many people would question a hat, a glove, a wallet somehow escaping the inferno, but one of the alleged hijacker's passports? Hmmm.

Your example about reading Bugliosi only would have some validity, but you have to consider that all 911 truthers have been exposed to the other side- the official one- through numerous viewings of local and national news reports on the subject, newspaper and magazine articles in the msm, discussions between conventional talking heads on network t.v., etc. You'd have a point if Fetzer or any other 911 truther had somehow never been exposed to the other side via the msm, which is a virtual impossibility for most people.

I realize some issues are complicated. However, I don't believe most are. I also think that the establishment benefits from the oft expressed (via msm and politicians) admonition that "things are not that simple." That kind of thinking is a guarantee that problems won't be resolved, and serves to absolve those entrusted with solving them from responsibility. As we can see by the state of the world, and my country in general, few if any of our leaders have any interest in solving them, and prefer to attribute complexity to various issues that just aren't that complex.

As I've noted before, I willingly acknowledge my inherent bias against the official view of most political events. I don't trust those in power, nor those who are highly paid to report on these events via the msm. I'd like to see some debunker admit their bias against "conspiracy theories," and their inherent trust in the same sources that people like me distrust. While some of us are predisposed to see conspiracies, others are predisposed not to see conspiracies.

Henry David Thoreau had a beautiful motto, which has seldom been followed by anyone, unfortunately; "Simplify." Most issues are made too complex and confusing, when the truth can usually be at least generally established by using a bit of common sense. Regarding 911, in simple terms:

- The WTC buildings should not have been able to be literally disintegrated by a jet aircraft crashing into one of the upper floors. If rocket fuel-leaving out all the information about it never being hot enough to melt the steel-had truly been the culprit, then why did the South tower- which was hit 17 minutes later than the North tower- collapse so much quicker, in less than an hour? The same fuel brought down one building in less than an hour, while it took about 1 hour and 45 minutes to bring down the other.

- Building 7, despite what debunkers claim, had no logical reason to collapse into itself, in an indentical manner as the North and South towers.

- Before 911, there was no previous example of a high rise building (not to mention something the size of the WTC) collapsing from fire damage. On 911 there were 3 examples of this. Since 911, there have been no more.

- The hole left in the Pentagon, by whatever hit it, is decidedly too small for a Boeing 757. Where did the wings go?

- Most of the remains from the WTC towers were finely ground into smithereens, yet we are to believe one of the hijacker's passports was found, in perfect condition, a few blocks away? Magic bullet, anyone?

- Planes were literally flying around like loaded weapons for a few hours that morning, yet we are to believe that the Pentagon- the heart of the #1 defense system in the world- was unable to shoot down or divert an airliner they had plenty of time to track, heading straight for it?

- We are also expected to believe that the Pentagon- which has security cameras everywhere- somehow managed to miss capturing a clear image of the craft that slammed into it that day?

There are lots more points, obviously, and I am not as qualified at Jim Fetzer or others to argue them. This is a clear case of "simplify." The Cold War is over- we needed another bogeyman, and after 911, we have those elusive "terrorists," which are nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Was is a Racket, as Gen. Smedley Butler termed it so long ago. Thus we are now bombing and/or occupying four small countries that have done nothing to us whatsoever, for the express purpose of rooting out this nebulous "enemy."

The debunkers will continue to answer with official sources and "experts." I know nothing about the pilots arguing that the official story is true, but if they making that argument, then their alleged expertise fails to impress me. I don't change my opinion merely because someone who has some related experience disagrees with me. I use common sense, deductive reasoning, and also judge political events in a larger context. Based on all this, my analysis of the official story of 911 is that it is demonstrably impossible.

As Thoreau said, we must learn to "Simplify."

John,

The first book that really touched on this subject was The Jefferson Conspiracies by David Leon Chandler, published in 1995. Ever the paranoid, I found it interesting that the author died prematurely prior to publication.

Made Joe Backes post in the "Liars Club" thread invisible. Joe directly called Morrow a xxxx and also spewed perhaps the worst profanity there is at him in caps.

Andy Griffith Show

Green Acres

Beverly Hillbillies

Twilight Zone

Dick Van Dyke Show

Lost In Space

The Flintsones

The Munsters

Alfred Hitchcock Presents

The Addams Family

Favorites that didn't last long enough were The Time Tunnel and The Invaders. I didn't appreciate The Wild, Wild West, Route 66 or The Outer Limits until catching them later in reruns.

And this relates to the assassination of JFK?

Jim P.,

Okay, I'm learning more and more about your unusual beliefs. You state that the bullet wound in JFK's throat was an exit wound. How could any bullet, fired from even street level (let alone stories above) enter his back and have an exit point some 5-6 inches higher?

This argument becomes a battle in semantics. Did the limo actually stop, or merely slow down? What does slow down mean, exactly? Are we going to get to the point where we adopt the Clintonian logic of "what is is?"

There was something so noticable about the speed of the motorcade, or limo specifically, that numerous witnesses volunteered their observations on it during their testimony. Whether the limo slowed down or actually stopped, the driver was not following normal procedures. At the sound of gunfire, William Greer didn't step on the gas, per his training. Instead, he hit the brakes and actually turned around to look at the President. Apparently, hands thrust up to his neck and a distressed look on his face weren't enough to motivate this professional to respond properly. Why?

This may all be just another part of the parlor game- did the limo stop or just slow down? However, those who argue that the witnesses who noticed this were mistaken become, in effect, defenders of the Secret Service detail that failed JFK so miserably. If there was something strange or improper about the limo's speed at the time of the shooting, then the Secret Service must be held accountable for that. This has all been debated numerous times, but I just don't see how anyone can defend what Greer did that day. It can't be standard procedure to slow down and look over your shoulder at the sound of gunfire.

Some want to excuse the negligence of the Secret Service in Dallas. I think that's absurd, given the indications we have all of them failed to do their job that day. Thus, I think this issue is a part of that whole debate regarding the performance of the Secret Service. How do those who think all those witnesses who reported the limo stopped/ significantly slowed down feel about the performance of JFK's Secret Service detail?

Harold Weisberg was a personal hero of mine. He was an indefatigible researcher, and we owe him a great debt, particularly for his numerous FOIA battles and for producing Post Mortem, which in my view will wind up being his most enduring work. The evening I spent at his home back in the early 1980s was one of the highlights of my life. However, he was an extremely bitter, envious and cantakerous man.

Weisberg hated virtually all the other critics, except Harold Roffman, who he looked at as something of a surrogate son, and Jim Lesar, who helped him with his FOIA lawsuits. He lashed out at all of them during the evening I spent with him, and had a particular disdain for Mark Lane. I'd learned about this feud back in the mid-1970s, when I heard Mark Lane's side of it as a teenage volunteer with his Citizens Committee of Inquiry. I think Weisberg was jealous of Lane's media appearances and the fact his book had sold so many copies. Meanwhile, Weisberg's own sales were minimal in comparison, as were his media appearances. After an initial run by Dell with the first Whitewash, Weisberg was forced to self-publish the rest of his classic books on the JFK assassination.

Weisberg continued to become more alienated from the critical community in his last years, even as he was able to get a publisher for his final two books on the assassination. His leaking of the original script for JFK to longtime LN propagandist George Lardner, of the Washington Post, was inexcusable, imho. If Weisberg was envious over Lane's success with Rush to Judgment, I can only imagine how upset he was over Oliver Stone's film. But that was Weisberg; like so many high profile Warren Commission critics, he wanted to be "the star." He thought everyone should defer to him, and that he'd already done all the truly important research. I'm quite certain he would have loved Stone if the director had picked Harold Weisberg, instead of Jim Garrison, as the film's protagonist.

I have no doubt that, if he'd been a younger man, and thus joined forums like this one to discuss the case, that he would be bickering constantly with everyone, probably calling them names and questioning their motives and their capabilities. In other words, he'd fit right in.

I tend to agree with Bernice here. I don't think Moorman is all that impressive of a witness, no matter what your views are. If she'd been questioned adequately early on, as she would have been in an honest investigation, then her input almost certainly would have been very valuable.

I also find it a bit unseemly that she appears to have a desire to discredit Jean Hill. With Hill no longer around to defend herself, that just strikes me the wrong way, especially since (I think) they were at one time close friends.

Thanks for this, Douglas. Very intriguing stuff.

Ray Carroll is once again playing with words, and persists in espousing a theory only he understands.

Mark Lane was the very first public advocate Oswald had in America (other than Marguerite). To maintain that he was "against" Oswald in any way, shape or form is even more ridiculous than claiming Garrison was.

Since both Lane and Garrison thought Oswald fired no shots at JFK (and didn't kill Tippit, either), and most every other CTer I can think of reflects those views, I'd be interested in knowing just who Ray thinks DID believe Oswald was innocent?

What CTers do you think are FOR Oswald?

Thanks, Monk, for sharing the great news. Jack is a real warrior for truth and an invaluable asset to this forum.

Our leaders have become very amateurish in the way they attempt to cover up their misdeeds. What a ridiculous story this is; a crack team of Navy Seals assassinates the unarmed, #1 boogie man in the world, then disposes of his body at sea. Look at the opportunity that was lost; here we had the guy behind 911, and would have easily been able to bring him to trial, so that we could grill him mercilessly about the details of the attacks, thereby ending all this nasty controversy.

Kind of ironic, isn't it, that a man who was awarded the Nobel Peace prize is now being lauded for ordering an assassination. The same lover of "peace" who, if they decide to attack Pakistan too, can bring the record number of countries we are at "war" with to an incredible four at one time. When Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly are singing Obama's praises, it ought to be obvious to even the most brain dead American that our "two" party system is a joke.

What kind of credibility do our leaders have, that anyone would believe them about this? Remember, just the day before Obama was allegedly killed, the mainstream news was breathlessly reporting about Quaddafi's new squad of super rapists, armed with viagra. It was so absurd that they quickly denied the reports, but that kind of unbelievable allegation is now par for the course for them. Look at the photshopped picture of a supposedly dead Bin Laden that was initially released. It was discredited almost instantly. They can't even do a half adequate job of covering their tracks. That's why the ever trusty John McCainiac was quoted today as advising the authorities not to release any photos of the dead Bin Laden.

At this point, our leaders have to realize that trust has to be earned.

This "conspiracy theory," like all of them, has gained momentum over the years for a number of reasons. First, anyone with common sense questions the absence of film footage from the Pentagon. At a time (even in 2001), where security cameras were regular features at most workplaces, it stetches credulity to the breaking point to imagine that the complex housing the heart of our national defense wouldn't have captured whatever hit the building from a myriad of different angles. The official impulse on the part of goverment officials to conceal and classify information, seemingly all the time, is a huge part of the problem here. Who knows- if they were forthcoming immediately, then maybe fewer of us would be so suspicious of them.

A lot of questions could have been answered early on, by simply releasing all that videotape. There is no national security issue involved whatsoever. But, just at the government withheld countless documents pertaining to the JFK assassination, even though they claimed it was the work of a lone nut, they have withheld this footage, even though the claim is that 19 nutty terrorists were responsible. But even the gas station across the street, whose security camera would have caught the incident on tape, had their equipment confiscated. Why?

There is the simple, basic question of how this could have happened. How did the world's supposedly most advanced "defense" system permit planes to fly around like that, for all that time, and then not defend itself when one of them crashed directly into the center of our military command center? That just isn't believable. If our defense doesn't work any better than that, then every taxpayer has a right to demand their trillions of dollars back. Obviously, it wasn't money well spent.

America has become increasingly divided into two camps; those who generally trust the government and the mainstream media, and those who don't. I think it's obvious where I stand.