Loony Lies about 9-11 : NM IMC

Truth And The Search For It
By: Stuart W. Mirsky

In September 2003, roughly two years after the attacks visited on us on September 11, 2001, the New York Sun ran a story about Riverside Church in Morningside Heights. The church, a renowned uptown liberal bastion, was hosting an "alternative symposium," a gathering described as being for those "who doubt al Qaeda’s role in the attacks of two years ago."

Scheduled speakers included Cynthia McKinney, a former (and, as it turned out, future) Georgia congresswoman who had said on California radio that President Bush really knew about the attacks before they happened. A "documentary filmmaker," who planned to participate in the church-sponsored event, was also quoted by the paper expressing his doubts concerning who was really behind the attacks and regarding the authenticity of the November 2001 video tape which showed Osama bin Laden at a dinner party in Taliban-run Afghanistan gloating over their results.

According to the Sun, the filmmaker claimed that the person on the video "doesn’t look like bin Laden." Church spokesman Tinoa Rodgers offered similar sentiments, saying, "I don’t know if anyone knows who is behind the attacks on September 11. There are a lot of theories going around and everybody draws their own conclusions," and adding, "I don’t know what al Qaeda is, it’s a name they throw around . . ."

This kind of thinking has persisted in various quarters to this day as people on the Left deride the Bush administration’s efforts to deal with the aftermath of 9/11. But suddenly we have Zacarias Moussaoui testifying in open court that he was both a member of al Qaeda and a participant in the 9/11 plot, intending to pilot a fifth plane, along with convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid and unnamed others, into the White House. He was only prevented from following through on his plans because he was picked up by authorities while trying to enter this country.

So what happens now to all the conspiracists and Bush haters on the Left, those who have made a career of denying the culpability of bin Laden and his henchmen? What do such people – who have gone into a myriad of verbal contortions "explaining" how the attacks of 9/11 were really engineered by Republicans in the White House or by Israeli operatives – have to say for themselves? How will they square their "theories" and the arguments they underpin with the facts as presented by Moussaoui in his recent court testimony?

Are we about to read their public retractions in The New York Times? Are the media going to remind us of the past claims made by these folks and go back to interview them again to document their recantations? Don’t hold your breath.

Of course, anything can be "explained" away and I can already imagine the claims we’ll soon be hearing – that Moussaoui was secretly tortured by American security forces to get him to make his statements or that he was brainwashed or just off his rocker. There’s always a wide range of possibilities one can invoke to explain away the obvious and the deniers of the events of 9/11 can certainly be expected to come up with plenty of good stories (just as Holocaust deniers routinely do), stories that will do the necessary job of squaring the circles of their pet conspiracy theories. But at some point rational people – and I’ll grant not everyone is – have to stop and ask themselves what’s really going on.

As long as there’s absence of direct evidence, as there is in this case (because none of us actually saw bin Laden give the direct order or witnessed the hijackers as they salaamed in obeisance and moved into operational mode), there will always be room for doubt. But is it serious doubt? All sorts of yarns can be spun to fill in the holes that the absence of direct evidence leaves. But in the end most of us will agree that we live in a world where facts will win out. And the facts in this case look mighty clear at this point thanks to Moussaoui’s desire to ascend to an Islamic martyr’s heaven.

So, shall we wait for the inevitable recantation and acknowledgement by the deniers that yes, the terrorists from al Qaeda really did what they have always said they did? Not bloody likely. Instead, expect the Left’s apologists to continue spinning their gossamer-like web of conspiracy theories as they bang relentlessly away at the American response to the unprovoked attacks visited on us by Osama bin Laden and his cronies in 2001.

And the American media will continue not holding them accountable, following a misguided ideal of equal time for all ideas, no matter how asinine and, perhaps indulging in their own demonstrated preference for anyone but the Republican George W. Bush in the White House. This seems to be all we can expect in the world of political discourse these days.

But it does great harm to the notion of truth. And to the search for it.

Stuart W. Mirsky is a novelist, essayist and author of two books, "The King of Vinland’s Saga," a historical novel about the Norse in North America in the eleventh century, and "Irregularities," a compilation of political and social commentary.