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Summary: Still making a compelling argument for an independent investigation
Comment: Professor David Ray Griffin's first book on the atrocity of 11th September, 2001, was named The New Pearl Harbor. This was a clear synthesis of other people's research, conveniently assembled in one book, articulately written and refreshingly free of hyperbole and foaming-at-the-mouth 'anti-government' hysteria. Written before the Independent 9/11 Commission published its findings, The New Pearl Harbor was in some way a plea not to ignore difficult and controversial evidence.
Griffin's sequel, was a book that responded to the official report on 9/11. The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, analysed how the Independent Commission handled this important but neglected evidence and also looked at just how independent this investigation actually was. From the title, we can tell that Griffin was distinctly unimpressed, articulating the anger and disappointment expressed by some of the victims families themselves.
A few books later, Griffin has produced his most comprehensive work yet: Debunking 9/11 Debunking (a terrible title indeed). This book systematically dismantles the work that has been produced by the apologists for the 9/11 Commission and its Official Conspiracy Theory. The main offenders here are Vanity Fair (which was instrumental in promoting the NORAD tapes, which became the basis for the film United 93), the book Without Precedent, written by the Chair and Vice Chair of the 9/11 Commission (Thomas H. Keen and Lee H. Hamilton respectively), the NIST report on the destruction of the World Trade Center and finally Popular Mechanics book, Debunking 9/11 Myths. Griffin also looks at the mostly unconvincing arguments put forth by those from the political left of the spectrum, who argue that the whole '9/11 Truth Movement' is a dangerous diversion from more important areas of popular struggle.
It would be redundant, here, to explain Griffin's arguments as to why each one of the pieces put forth by defenders of the Bush administration's position on 9/11 fails to encompass all of the available facts. Griffin calmly takes apart and deconstructs each argument. This is not the work an academic theologian arguing that he understands engineering, construction, or military and defense issues better than those who have spent their entire professional careers within the respective areas of the 9/11 story - Griffin solidly supports his contentions with readily source-able information from Admirals and Generals, pilots, intelligence officials and physicists, engineers and firefighters, mainstream news reports and independent studies.
Debunking 9/11 Debunking is an indispensable guide to the latest research on 9/11. It methodically demonstrates that, despite the best pretences of the liberal-conservative consensus, the alternative theory is at present, the only one that encompasses the majority of the available facts. When ideology is put to one side and a cold, hard look is taken at the evidence, the official version of events simply lacks credibility, as uncomfortable as that may seem. If nothing else, Griffin's book is a reminder that the more evidence uncovered around the awful events of 11th September, 2001, the more questions that are raised and as a result, we need most what we haven't yet got: a truly independent, international investigation.
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Summary: An alternative to "Groupthink"
Comment: Like everyone else I was taken in by the events of the day: the shock and awe. Looking back though it is very strange: why did those towers EXPLODE? where were the fighter jets? How come they were experts in TV studios ready to give explanations on who was behind the attacks while the attacks were happening? Even people on the street ready to be interviewed with a complete story of how and why the towers collapsed? How come people knew in advance of the attacks and conducted insider trading? Immediately after 9/11 there was the Anthrax attacks? (Remember those?)
Loads of questions...
And then there was matters that was hushed up: the biggest being the collapse of World Trade Center 7 - this was a huge building. Small compared to the twin towers but would be huge in any other city except New York: 47 stories. Untouched by aircraft it collapsed in 6.5 seconds in what looks like a perfect controlled demolition. No live TV cameras showed it coming down and as far as I can tell, the few videos of it coming down have never shown on BBC1 or major TV channels! Why not? Shouldn't we at least be worried by skyscraper safety?
So let's re-cap:
Advance warning of the event: widespread.
Fires exploding skyscrapers? Impossible.
Towers collapsing at free fall speeds: Impossible.
Dust clouds and Molten steel at ground zero: Not possible from a fire.
4 airliners over 4 hours not being intercepted by jet fighters: Highly improbable.
Rumsfold announces $2.2 TRILLION overspend on September 10th and the only department destroyed at the Pentagon on the 11th September are the AUDITORS looking at the overspend: highly suspicious!!!
From there explore all the evidence: all the craziness of that day and decide: how could this not be an inside job? Like a magic trick, the art is in the preparation... Building rigged for demolition? They must have needed someone on the inside for that? I wonder who they could get? (Google it: the answer will surprise!) The Bush Administration wanted a "New Pearl Harbor" (See Program for a New American Century) and they got it on 9/11.
Why? Throughout history, when a country goes to war, the aggressor first blames its victim for some indiscretion. The Bush Administration needed a b-i-g justification for its war in Afghanistan and Iraq and 9/11 provided that justification!
I am happy to be proven wrong on these assertions. The only way to do it is to have a new investigation into 9/11 just as the relatives of the victims of 9/11 are saying in "9/11 Press for Truth".
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Summary: An Extraordinary Book on Extraordinary Events.
Comment: The critical, formative event of this decade was 9-11, a term which actually refers to a series of events that took place on September 11th, 2001 in the United States of America. Few other events have had such an impact on public consciousness; none have been so thoroughly exploited by governments. To this day, it serves as the justification for a rash of policies from the declaration of a 'war on terror' to the expansion of executive powers and the disregard of human rights. Its shadow still stands over political discourse in more than one nation, and its echoes can still be heard whenever an official speaks about terrorism. Yet for an event of such massive importance, its actual details have received little attention and even less scrutiny in the mainstream media.
Fortunately, those outside the mainstream have not neglected it, and step-by-step, detail-by-detail, they have uncovered a wealth of evidence that the official U.S. government explanation for what transpired on that day is untenable. They have gone further and constructed alternative accounts of what happened - accounts which seriously implicate the authorities in Washington. And for attempting to discover and expose the truth about these terrible events, they have been rewarded with abuse, ridicule, slander, scorn and apathy. Such is the gratitude of the American public.
Nonetheless, the 9-11 truth movement soldiers on and has gained an increasing number of adherents worldwide. In response to this trend, numerous publications emerged to bolster Washington's fairy-tales about evil Arab terrorists massacring innocent American citizens one day in September. The prestige of the organizations behind these publications, (the National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST] and Popular Mechanics magazine among others,) tended to obscure their shoddy theories regarding 9-11 and their even more dubious attempts to debunk the alternative explanations. Fortunately, one of the heroes of the 9-11 truth movement - Professor David Ray Griffin of Claremont Graduate University, has risen to the challenge of these '9-11 debunkers' and demolished their accounts with skill and style. This book is that refutation - a brilliant treatise combining strong arguments, clear analyses and witty commentaries on a subject that is both difficult and disturbing.
After a solid introduction which establishes the intellectual groundwork for what follows, Professor Griffin sets about shattering four defences of the official theory in the four parts of his book. The first is the 9-11 Commission Report (which the professor has already refuted in an earlier work) where Dr. Griffin deals with one of the crucial mysteries of 9-11: the failure to intercept the hijacked planes. Suffice to say, he demonstrates that the most plausible explanation is that someone in a position of authority gave a stand-down order.
The emeritus professor then proceeds to show that a book brought about by the official heads of the 9-11 Commission - Without Precedent - is guilty of all the flaws that it ascribes to conspiracy theorists. The third section of Debunking 9-11 Debunking challenges the NIST report that attributed the collapse of the towers to jet fuel and aircraft impacts. Professor Griffin demonstrates that this view is scientifically indefensible.
It is the fourth part of this work which is the most crucial for those opposed to the official theory, for it involves countering the most widely publicized '9-11 debunking' account: that of Popular Mechanics magazine, (which later became a book titled Debunking 9-11 Myths.) True to form, our author does not disappoint. After a masterly critique of Senator McCain's foreword, the professor slices apart Popular Mechanics' claims regarding the planes, regarding the demolition of the Twin Towers, regarding WTC Building 7, regarding the Pentagon attack and regarding United Airlines Flight 93. The confutation of the official story is complete.
Professor Griffin's conclusion manifests the qualities that make his tome a pleasure to read: a superb writing style, a highly perceptive view of the entire situation and a polite tone of indomitable confidence that befits a scholar who knows his subject. Upon finishing his treatise, one is wont to exclaim, "A man! And I had expected only an American!" Indeed, Debunking 9-11 Debunking is an extraordinary book on an extraordinary subject by an extraordinary individual.
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Summary: Popular Mechanics debunked
Comment: David Ray Griffin is no conspiracy theorist. Rather, he sets out clearly how the official myth of 9/11 has been built up and supported by Yellow Journalism. This book is primarily an answer to Popular Mechanics "Debunking 9/11 Myths," but also touches on some other topics.
Griffin shows that all the debunkers have done is set up "straw man" arguments then debunk these.
Griffin shows that the official narrative of 9/11 is false and contains so many contradictions and falshoods that it can not be anything other than a myth. He makes no claims outside of this other than to call for a proper independent investigation in to the attacks of 9/11.
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Summary: Debunking Debunking 9/11 Debunking
Comment: When I originally sat down to write this review of Griffin's latest book I made the mistake of taking the damn thing seriously and trying to attack it on its own terms. But such are the labyrinthine methods and convoluted reasoning employed I found that I was being lured into a potentially Sisyphean endeavour. An evening spent on the internet googling the subject revealed that there are enough brilliant websites out there that patiently and calmly rebut every point that Griffin and co make (of course there's significantly more that peddle the whole conspiracy thing, but in these mumbo-jumbo ridden times that, sadly, is only to be expected). But I was keen to put up a dissenting review to balance the mainly credulous ones that have previously been posted, so here goes.
From the title you can work out that this book, Griffin's 4th on the subject, is a response to some of the debunking texts that have appeared since the 9/11 conspiracy theories started gaining more attention. His declared intention is to demonstrate that despite the efforts of the debunkers (or `believers', as opposed to `truth seekers' like himself) the evidence in support of the official version of the events of 9/11 is fatally compromised and that the facts indicate that there must be, at least, some degree of governmental complicity in the attacks. To quote: "What could be more fanciful than the official theory, according to which 19 young men, following a plan authorized in Afghanistan, prepared for their operation without being detected by any of our intelligence organizations, defeated the most sophisticated defense system in history, caused the total collapse of three steel-frame high-rise buildings by crashing planes into them, and then crashed another plane into what is surely the most well-defended building on the planet? If such a story hade been taken to Hollywood, would it not likely have been rejected as too fanciful".
Reading between the lines I sense a certain, how can I put it, lack of respect for the abilities of people with brown skin. In effect Griffin's point is that the sheer scale of the attack with its concomitant requirement of long term and sophisticated planning was too great an undertaking for a bunch of cave-dwelling fanatics to have carried out and because the US government did have the resources and means to do so, they must have done it. Indeed al-Qaeda may well have sponsored and undertaken other actions against US institutions and personnel before 9/11, as well as the subsequent bombings in Bali, Madrid and London, but the big one on 9/11 is an all-American terrorist attack and don't you forget it.
I am intrigued by the (almost fanatical) reluctance of the conspiracists to acknowledge the role of militant Islam. It's as if they can't grasp or deal with this aspect and feel more comfortable, bizarrely perhaps more safe, assuming that the traditional enemy, our own untrustworthy governments, are the perpetrators. No paradigm shift needed there. In his earlier book Omissions and Distortions he bluntly states that those who dismiss the official version "may or may not find the history of Osama Bin Laden particularly relevant...but they will...be most focused on events suggestive of complicity within the Bush administration." Because the official version suggests that 9/11 was an al-Qaeda operation, they give it no credence whatsoever, like JFK assassination conspiracists who take it as read that Oswald was innocent and proceed from there.
Employing the same rhetorical devices, specious logic and circular arguments that Griffin accuses the `believers' of, his book is also littered with footnotes, which are intended to give off an aura of academic rigour. But many of the sources are simply other conspiracists who are obviously chosen precisely because they are peddling the same line as Griffin. In many cases the source cited is actually another book by Griffin himself. Other citations are just plain egregious. For example the claims that some of the "alleged" hi-jackers were not dead, hadn't been on any of the planes and were alive and well and living in Morocco (p.127) supposedly backed up by legitimate sources like The Daily Telegraph and the BBC News website are undermined by the fact that subsequent admissions of error by these sources about this matter are not mentioned.
One of his central objections to the official version is the cause of the collapse of WTC 1, 2 and 7. What exactly his qualifications are for judging the quality of evidence given by technical experts relating to pretty abstruse issues of structural engineering, steel stress, melting temperatures and so on, I don't know. He is after all a professor of Theology, and therefore no more qualified to weigh up such evidence than I am. Yes, he can cite individual experts who dispute the official scenario but unfortunately the weight of professional mainstream opinion is firmly behind the jet fuel, flammable material, weakened steel supports theory and not the planned demolition by explosion scenario. Griffin makes great play that one of the big guns of the truth movement who supports the collapse by demolition theory is an actual proper academic, physicist Steven Jones. I am more inclined to side with the official version experts, particularly as they don't have sidelines of publishing papers, like Jones has, entitled "Behold My Hands: Evidence for Christ's Visit in Ancient America". But then perhaps I'm just biased against theologians.
I have read three of Griffin's books. This will be the last. Griffin is now so mired in the 9/11 truth quagmire that he seems to have lost all perspective and appears to have gone slightly mad. His obsessive, repetitive barrage of facts, speculation and paranoid ramblings, with all the impedimenta of apparent academic practice, creates a self contained and self referential closed system. Like a stalker, his belief system is constructed so that criticism, rather than undermining his arguments, in his mind only serves to strengthen them.
May I recommend as a purge for all this nonsense a read of How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World, The Looming Tower and Fiasco. The first as a healthy purgative of satirical common sense, the second to get you to smell the coffee and acknowledge the threat of fanatical religious believers of a different stripe and the last to demonstrate the incompetence of a government which is supposed to have cooked up and carried out this elaborate self inflicted terrorist attack and successfully covered it up. A minor point, but if the government has no qualms about wasting thousands of its own citizens then it would hardly think twice about silencing Griffin who is supposedly exposing their criminal activities.
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