I hope you know that, on the 11th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, you live in a country so exceptional it's blessed by God; that, in fact, it's -- no point in pulling punches -- "the greatest nation on earth." If you don't believe me, just listen to President Obama, who used the last words of his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention to say exactly that. And depending on your political druthers, you don't have to believe him either. After all, the stages of the Republican and Democratic conventions were filled with politicos insisting on the same thing.

At the Republican convention, Mitt Romney, speaking in his acceptance speech of Neil Armstrong's first footfall on the moon, said: "Like all Americans we went to bed that night knowing we lived in the greatest country in the history of the world." Chris Christie in his keynote speech drove home this point: "Standing strong for freedom will make the next century as great an American century as the last one." Michelle Obama praising her husband as a great dad wasn't going to miss an opportunity to say: "Every day [the people I meet] remind me how blessed we are to live in the greatest nation on earth"; and Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and secretary of state (she of double-hulled oil tanker fame) gave the Republicans a primer on foreign policy for the Romney era, and this was her version of it: "Because it just has to be -- that the most compassionate and freest country on the face of the earth -- will continue to be the most powerful!"

And that's just to name a few among a bevy of American exceptionalists from whom you certainly wouldn't want to exclude Vice President Joe Biden. After all, leaving Mongol horsemen, Apache warriors, Roman legionnaires, Napoleon's Army, and every other war-fighter twitching in the dust, he claimed President Obama was well aware that our special forces are "the finest warriors the world has ever known."

Think of all this as a kind of exceptional post-9/11 fever. The more ordinary Americans worry about their country being on the "wrong track" or "in decline," the more loudly, emphatically, aggressively (and yet defensively) politicians seem to insist, against all evidence, that we are and always will be (unless my opponent gets into office) the greatest, finest, freest etc. around.

By the way, tell that to Peter Van Buren or John Kiriakou. Both were government officials who told the truth about bad things happening inside the government of the greatest country the universe has ever seen. One wrote the book "We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People" about just what a laughable mess the State Department's "reconstruction of Iraq" turned out to be and, for doing that with remarkable honesty and wit, he is being forced into early retirement by the bureaucrats of the greatest State Department in the history of the world. The other, a CIA agent, told reporters the truth about some of the practices of the greatest spy agency in the history of the galaxy, including acts of torture by operatives in his own agency. As Van Buren notes in his latest post, "The Persecution of John Kiriakou," as a result he's going to celebrate the 9/11 anniversary with a court date the following day.

These are indications of the real state of affairs in this country 11 years after they attacked us because they "hated our freedoms." Now, on September 11, 2012, the national security complex is, as Van Buren indicates, beyond accountability for any crimes it may commit. It exists in a post-legal America not available to 99% of us.

As for our freedoms, a lack of the slightest urge to prosecute anyone who committed a crime on Washington time means that our governmental officials now have extraordinary new freedoms -- more license than 007 ever did -- to kidnap, torture, abuse, murder, surveil, and assassinate (including American citizens). That's a record to ponder as another September 11th rolls around and, living in the greatest nation on earth, you ask yourself: Who really won, them or us?
(c) 2012 Tom Engelhardt is co-founder of the American Empire Project. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture: a History of the Cold War and Beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. His most recent book is The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's (Haymarket Books).

NOTHING COULD be more scary than the thought that this duo - Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak - is in a position to start a war, the dimensions and outcome of which are incalculable.

It's scary not only because of their ideological fixations and mental outlook, but also because of the level of their intelligence.

The last month gave us a small sample. By itself it was but a passing episode. But as an illustration of their decision-making abilities, it was frightening enough.

THE ROUTINE conference of the Movement of Non-Aligned Nations was to take place in Tehran. 120 states promised to attend, many of them represented by their presidents or prime ministers.

This was bad news for the Israeli government, which has devoted much of its energies during the last three years to the strenuous effort to isolate Iran - while Iran was devoted to a no less strenuous effort to isolate Israel.

If the location of the conference was not bad enough, the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, announced that he would attend, too. And as if this was still not bad enough, the new president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, also promised to come.

Netanyahu was faced with a problem: how to react?

IF A wise expert had been consulted, he might have asked: why react at all?

The Non-Aligned Movement is an empty shell. It was created [or "founded"] 51 years ago, at the height of the Cold War, by Nehru of India, Tito of Yugoslavia, Sukarno of Indonesia and Abd-al-Nasser of Egypt. 120 nations joined. They wanted to steer a course between the American and the Soviet blocs.

Since then, circumstances have changed completely. The Soviets have disappeared, and the US is also not what it was. Tito, Nehru, Nasser and Sukarno are all dead. The Non-Aligned have no real function anymore. But it is much easier to set up an international organization than to disband it. Its secretariat provides jobs, its conferences provide photo opportunities, world leaders like to travel and schmooze.

If Netanyahu had kept quiet, chances are that the world media would have ignored the non-event altogether. CNN and Aljazeera might have devoted a full three minutes to it, out of courtesy, and that would have been that.

But for Netanyahu, keeping quiet is not an option. So he did something exceedingly foolish: he told Ban Ki-moon not to go to Tehran. More precisely: he ordered him not to go.

The aforementioned wise expert - if he existed - would have told Netanyahu: Don't! The Non-aligned make up more than 60% of the UN membership. Ban wants to be re-elected in due course, and he is not going to insult 120 voters, much as you wouldn't want to insult 80 members of the Knesset. His predecessors have attended all former conferences. He cannot refuse now - especially not after you publicly ordered him around.

Then there was Morsi. What to do about him?

If another wise expert, this time on Egypt, had been asked, he would have given much the same advice: let it be.

Egypt wants to resume its role as the leader of the Arab world and as an actor on the international stage. The new president, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, certainly would not want to be seen giving in to Israeli pressure.

So, as the Hebrew saying goes, better to swallow a frog - even two frogs - then do something foolish.

BUT NETANYAHU couldn't possibly follow such advice. It's would be contrary to his nature. So he and his assistants proclaimed loudly - very loudly - that the 120 attending countries are supporting Iran's effort to annihilate Israel, and that Ban and Morsi are promoting a Second Holocaust.

Instead of isolating Iran, Netanyahu helped Iran to isolate Israel.

The more so as both Ban and Morsi used the Tehran stage to castigate the Iranian leadership and its Syrian allies. Ban condemned Ahmadinejad's denial of the holocaust as well as his proclaimed hopes for the disappearance of the "Zionist entity." Morsi went even further and castigated the murderous Syrian regime, Iran's main ally.

(This speech was broadcast live on Iranian television. The translator evoked general admiration for his presence of mind. Whenever Morsi said in Arabic "Syria," the translator said in Farsi "Bahrain".)

THIS WHOLE episode is important only insofar as it illustrates the incredible folly of Netanyahu and his close advisers (all of them handpicked by his wife, Sarah, easily the most unpopular person in the country). They seem to be cut off from the real world and to live in an imagined world of their own.

In this imaginary world, Israel is the center of the universe, and Netanyahu can give orders to the leaders of the nations, from Barack Obama and Angela Merkel to Mohamed Morsi and Ban Ki-moon.

Well, we are not the center of the world. We have a lot of influence, owing in part to our history. We are a regional power, much beyond our actual size. But to be really effective, we need allies, moral standing and the support of international public opinion, just like everybody else. Without this, Netanyahu's pet project, to secure for himself a place in the history books by attacking Iran, cannot be carried out.

I know that many eyebrows were raised when I categorically stated that neither Israel nor the US would attack Iran. It seemed that I was risking my reputation - such as it is - while Netanyahu and Barak were preparing for the inevitable bombing run. When talk about the impending attack reached a crescendo, my few well-wishers were sincerely worried.

However, during the last few days, there has been an almost imperceptible change of tone here. Netanyahu declared that the "family of nations" must lay down a "red line" and timetable for stopping Iran's nuclear arms effort.

Translated into simple Hebrew: there will be no Israeli attack, unless approved by the US. Such approval is impossible before the coming US elections. It is highly unlikely afterwards, too, for the reasons I tried to set out. Geographical, military, political and economic circumstances make it impossible. Diplomacy is called for. A compromise based on mutual interests and respect may be the best outcome.

An Israeli commentator has made the interesting suggestion that the President of the United States - after the elections - personally travel to Teheran and reach out to the Iranian people. That is no more improbable than Richard Nixon's historic visit to China. I would add the suggestion that while he is at it, the President come to Jerusalem, too, to seal the compromise.

A YEAR and a half ago, I also dared to suggest that the Arab Spring would be good for Israel.

At the time, it was a common assumption in Israel, and throughout the West, that Arab democracy would lead to a surge of political Islam, and that this would present a mortal danger to Israel. The first part of the assumption was right, the second was wrong.

The obscurantist demonization of Islam can be dangerously misleading. The painting of Islam as a murderous, inherently anti-Semitic religion, can lead to destructive consequences. Fortunately, the dire forecasts are being disproved daily.

In the homeland of the Arab Awakening, Tunisia, a moderate Islamic regime has taken root. In Libya, where commentators foresaw chaos and permanent civil war between the tribes, chances for stability are growing. So are the chances that Islamists will play a positive role in post-Assad Syria.

And most importantly - the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is behaving with exemplary caution. Six thousand years of Egyptian wisdom is having a moderating effect on the Brothers, including Brother Morsi. In the few weeks of his rule, he has already demonstrated a remarkable ability for compromising with divergent interests - with the secular liberals and the army command in his own country, with the US, even with Israel. He is now engaged in an effort to settle things with the Sinai Bedouins, addressing their (justified) grievances and calling a halt to military action.

It is, of course, much too early to tell, but I believe that a rejuvenated Arab world, in which moderate Islamic forces play an important role (as they do in Turkey), may form the environment for Israeli-Arab peace. If we desire peace.

For this to happen, we must break out of Netanyahu's imaginary world and return to the real world, the exciting, changing, challenging world of the 21st century.

It was great fun to confront Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, the Baptist preacher and Georgetown sociology professor who stood in for the so-called "progressive" wing of Obama boosters, last Friday on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! We got the chance to make BAR's case, that the First Black President has shown himself to be, not the lesser of two evils on the corporate electoral menu in November, but the more effective evil.

Over the last four years, Obama has crafted a "veritable model" for austerity through his "deficit reduction commission, which came up with the figure of $4 trillion in cuts, which he now includes among his solemn promises to the American people." Obama put Social Security and other entitlements "on the table" for chopping two weeks before taking the oath of office, and has pursued an austerity partnership with the GOP ever since.

The Affordable Care Act, Obama's most heralded achievement (aside from killing bin-Laden), "was actually born in the Heritage Foundation-that's a right-wing Republican think tank-in the late '80s. Essentially the same bill was a Republican bill in 1993. Bob Dole ran on that bill in 1996. Mitt Romney picked up that bill for Massachusetts later on. And it then emerged as the Obama bill." Obama has locked the drug and insurance corporations so deeply into the federal health care money flow, it will be damn near impossible to dislodge them in the foreseeable future.

He has accomplished "a kind of merging of the banks and the state, with $16 trillion being infused into these banks...and the line between Wall Street and the federal government virtually disappearing." In other words, Obama is constructing the classic edifice of fascism, which is aptly described as the unbridled rule of the most reactionary, rapacious elements of finance capital.

Like no other president in history, and far out-Bushing George Bush, Obama has mortally wounded the Bill of Rights with his preventive detention legislation, signed into law while the nation celebrated last New Year's Eve. Under Bush, a president's authority to indefinitely detain American citizens without charge or trial was merely a theory of the resident chief executive. Obama made the theory into a law that all future presidents will have at their disposal - an alloyed evil worthy of all the superlatives of Hell.

Obama is the war president who simultaneously drone-bombed five countries - Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Pakistan - and who has boldly redefined war. After bombing Libya for seven months, Obama told Congress that there was no need to trigger the War Powers Act because nothing resembling a war had actually occurred. "It is not a war, as far as Obama's doctrine is concerned, unless Americans are killed. So you can slaughter as many people in the world as you want to, as long as Americans' casualties are kept at low or no."

The impulse toward so-called "humanitarian military intervention" now trumps centuries of international law, thanks to Obama. Terms like "national sovereignty" are no longer useful to the Chief Executive of Empire, who commits crimes against peace - the highest crime on the planet - as a matter of daily routine. Under the Nobel laureate president, "wherever the United States deems evil to occur, it will and should intervene militarily. That is anarchy. That is chaos. But actually, it's called imperialism."

These are just a few of the damnable highlights of Obama's presidential record, which should be the basis for evaluating his worthiness of support. Obamite "progressives" like Bill Fletcher and Carl Davidson insanely insist in the title to their August 9 Alternet article that "The 2012 Elections Have Little To Do With Obama's Record...Which is Why We Are Voting For Him." The fact is, on progressive terms, Obama's record is indefensible - which is why Dr. Dyson was compelled to repeatedly agree with my set of facts on Democracy Now!

I'm quite please with how the exchange with Dyson went. His style is to throw up a "Wall of Words," like an anti-aircraft gunner filling the sky with flak. It's impossible to engage all of the bits and pieces of subjects swirling around his ascending speech-column - and silly to try, since your job is to make your own case, not to dignify the other guy's every utterance. However, some of Dyson's remarks are worth a playback - if only to note how far to the right the political conversation in Dyson's circles has gone in the Age of Obama.

The current resident of the White House "is the most progressive president...since FDR," said Dyson. Funny, isn't it, that a president who is purported to be second only to Franklin Roosevelt in leftiness leads the assault on entitlements - the legacies of FDR, LBJ and other presidents and their Congresses - from within the Democratic Party? If Obama is a contender for Roosevelt's place in the pantheon, then so is his political twin, Bill Clinton. Had we only known that such giants walked among us! If only Barack and Bill had left a record in office that would testify to their greatness. (Sorry, Bill Fletcher, I forgot that the record doesn't matter.)

Obama has solved the pesky problem of predatory lending, said Dyson with a straight face. "The predatory lending that was going on with consumer practices have been addressed." The solution must have been sent to the wrong address, probably to a boarded up house. Candidate Obama, who opposed any moratorium on foreclosures as unraveling subprime schemes ravaged Black and brown neighborhoods in early 2008 (Hillary Clinton and John Edwards backed voluntary and mandatory moratoriums, respectively), became the president who, as the New York Times recently reported, refused to spend hundreds of billions in available federal funds on the housing crisis, while five million Americans lost their homes; whose Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, declared he would not spend money on housing even if another $100 billion was available, and who also refused to spend most of $6.7 billion set aside by Congress for groups and regions hardest hit by the crisis; and whose administration bullied state attorneys general to settle the robo-signing "crime of the century" on favorable terms to the banks. Nothing about the U.S. housing crisis has been addressed in ways that are meaningful to the American people, especially Black and brown folks. Except in Dyson's world (in Fletcher's world, it doesn't matter).

There's this term called "liberal internationalism" that's floating around, which Dyson thinks describes Obama's foreign policy. Dyson is pleased with "the way in which the liberal international policy-yes, liberal, not progressive, not radical, but liberal internationalism-has reintroduced an openness to a Muslim world, despite the complicated and contradictory practices that exist there." I suspect that Dyson is still hearing Obama's smooth talk to Muslims in the summer of 2009. We get an update on Obama vs. Bush policy from Michael Hayden, Bush's former director of the CIA and the National Security Agency. Hayden told C-Span that Obama and Bush's policies are now quite alike - except Obama kills more people.

"We've seen all of these continuities between two very different human beings, President Bush and President Obama. We are at war, targeted killings have continued, in fact, if you look at the statistics, targeted killings have increased under Obama."

"We have made it so politically dangerous and so legally difficult that we don't capture anyone anymore. We take another option, we kill them. Now. I don't morally oppose that."

And neither does Dyson, we assume - as long as it's a "liberal" internationalism. Dyson, who was speaking from Charlotte and sounding like a delegate to the convention, said folks that don't "get in the game" of Democratic politics are "engaging in a form of rhetorical narcissism and ideological self-preoccupation that has no consequence on the material conditions of actually existing poor people."

Not trusting myself to respond to such insulting language, I leave the task to two BAR readers, both of them named John:

"Has Dyson forgotten the lessons of the abolitionist and civil rights movement (among others) which taught that through civil disobedience that policies can be influenced from without, regardless of elections? Otherwise, I can't explain his single-minded focus on presidential elections as a vehicle for change. Finally, to say that by not supporting Obama for the principled reasons that you have elucidated isn't doing anything constructive for the poor is the most disingenuous form of cheap shot I have ever witnessed. I was infuriated by this in particular because it is the poor who most desperately need change and for someone to stand up and fight for them. Obama has been missing in action on so many issues that have affected struggling people. So for him to say that by critiquing Obama in the way that you have is actually destructive to the poor is just disgusting."

The second John likes to deal in deep sarcasm. His letter was sent directly to Dyson:

"Like you, I believe it is time to move beyond the reflexive opposition of the black left to imperialist violence, lawlessness and racism, opposition that was formerly embodied by such figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and the millions of sisters and brothers in the movements they led and represented. Some call your position grasping opportunism, or perhaps a modern form of Bookerism, but I prefer to name it pragmatism and realism.

"Once again, I would like to thank you for lending such a powerful and intelligent black voice to that cause."

The article below was written for the Journal of 9/11 Studies for the eleventh anniversary of September 11, 2001, the day that terminated accountable government and American liberty. It is posted here with the agreement of the editors.

In order to understand the improbability of the government's explanation of 9/11, it is not necessary to know anything about what force or forces brought down the three World Trade Center buildings, what hit the Pentagon or caused the explosion, the flying skills or lack thereof of the alleged hijackers, whether the airliner crashed in Pennsylvania or was shot down, whether cell phone calls made at the altitudes could be received, or any other debated aspect of the controversy.

You only have to know two things.

One is that according to the official story, a handful of Arabs, mainly Saudi Arabians, operating independently of any government and competent intelligence service, men without James Bond and V for Vendetta capabilities, outwitted not only the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency, but all 16 US intelligence agencies, along with all security agencies of America's NATO allies and Israel's Mossad. Not only did the entire intelligence forces of the Western world fail, but on the morning of the attack the entire apparatus of the National Security State simultaneously failed. Airport security failed four times in one hour. NORAD failed. Air Traffic Control failed. The US Air Force failed. The National Security Council failed. Dick Cheney failed. Absolutely nothing worked. The world's only superpower was helpless at the humiliating mercy of a few undistinguished Arabs.

It is hard to image a more far-fetched story--except for the second thing you need to know: The humiliating failure of US National Security did not result in immediate demands from the President of the United States, from Congress, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and from the media for an investigation of how such improbable total failure could have occurred. No one was held accountable for the greatest failure of national security in world history. Instead, the White House dragged its feet for a year resisting any investigation until the persistent demands from 9/11 families for accountability forced President George W. Bush to appoint a political commission, devoid of any experts, to hold a pretend investigation.

On 9/11 Doubts Were Immediate

On September 11, 2001, a neighbor telephoned and said, "turn on the TV." I assumed that a hurricane, possibly a bad one from the sound of the neighbor's voice, was headed our way, and turned on the TV to determine whether we needed to shutter the house and leave.

What I saw was black smoke from upper floors of one of the World Trade Center towers. It didn't seem to be much of a fire, and the reports were that the fire was under control. While I was trying to figure out why every TV network had its main news anchor covering an office fire, TV cameras showed an airplane hitting the other tower. It was then that I learned that both towers had been hit by airliners.

Cameras showed people standing at the hole in the side of the tower looking out. This didn't surprise me. The airliner was minute compared to the massive building. But what was going on? Two accidents, one on top of the other?

The towers-the three-fourths or four-fifths of the buildings beneath the plane strikes--were standing, apparently largely undamaged. There were no signs of fire except in the vicinity of where the airliners had hit. Suddenly, one of the towers blew up, disintegrated, and disappeared in fine dust. Before one could make any sense of this, the same thing happened to the second tower, and it too disappeared into fine dust.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6alf9_xswA

The TV news anchors compared the disintegration of the towers to controlled demolition. There were numerous reports of explosions throughout the towers from the base or sub-basements to the top. (Once the government put out the story of terrorist attack, references to controlled demolition and explosions disappeared from the print and TV media.) This made sense to me. Someone had blown up the buildings. It was completely obvious that the towers had not fallen down from asymmetrical structural damage. They had blown up.

The images of the airliners hitting the towers and the towers blowing up were replayed time and again. Airliners hit the top portions of the towers, and not long afterward the towers blew up. I turned off the TV wondering how it was that cameras had been ready to catch such an unusual phenomenon as an airplane flying into a skyscraper.

I don't remember the time line, but it wasn't long before the story was in place that Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda gang had attacked the US. A passport had been found in the rubble. Another airliner had flown into the Pentagon, and a fourth airliner had crashed or been shot down. Four airliners had been hijacked, meaning airport security had failed four times on the same morning. Terrorists had successfully assaulted America.

When I heard these reports, I wondered. How could a tiny undamaged passport be found in the rubble of two skyscrapers, each more than 100 stories tall, when bodies, office furniture and computers could not be found? How could airport security fail so totally that four airliners could be hijacked within the same hour? How could authorities know so conclusively and almost immediately the names of the perpetrators who pulled off such a successful attack on the world's only superpower, when the authorities had no idea that such an attack was planned or even possible?

These questions disturbed me, because as a former member of the congressional staff and as a presidential appointee to high office, I had high level security clearances. In addition to my duties as Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, I had FEMA responsibilities in the event of nuclear attack. There was a mountain hideaway to which I was supposed to report in the event of a nuclear attack and from which I was supposed to take over the US government in the event no higher official survived the attack.

The more the story of 9/11 was presented in the media, the more wondrous it became. It is not credible that not only the CIA and FBI failed to detect the plot, but also all 16 US intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency, which spies on everyone on the planet, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, Israel's Mossad, and the intelligence agencies of Washington's NATO allies. There are simply too many watchmen and too much infiltration of terrorist groups for such a complex attack to be prepared undetected and carried out undeterred.

Washington's explanation of the attack implied a security failure too massive to be credible. Such a catastrophic failure of national security would mean that the US and Western Europe were never safe for one second during the Cold War, that the Soviet Union could have destroyed the entire West in one undetected fell swoop.

As a person whose colleagues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington were former secretaries of state, former national security advisors, former CIA directors, former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I was troubled by the story that a collection of individuals unsupported by a competent intelligence service had pulled off the events of 9/11.

As a person with high level government service, I knew that any such successful operation as 9/11 would have resulted in immediate demands from the White House, Congress, and the media for accountability. There would have been an investigation of how every aspect of US security could totally fail simultaneously in one morning. Such a catastrophic and embarrassing failure of the national security state would not be left unexamined.

NORAD failed. The US Air Force could not get jet fighters in the air. Air Traffic Control lost sight of the hijacked airliners. Yet, instead of launching an investigation, the White House resisted for one year the demands of the 9/11 families for an investigation. Neither the public, the media, nor Congress seemed to think an investigation was necessary. The focus was on revenge, which the Bush neocon regime said meant invading Afghanistan which was alleged to be sheltering the perpetrator, Osama bin Laden.

Normally, terrorists are proud of their success and announce their responsibility. It is a way to build a movement. Often a number of terrorist groups will compete in claiming credit for a successful operation. But Osama bin Laden in the last video that is certified by independent experts said that he had no responsibility for 9/11, that he had nothing against the American people, that his opposition was limited to the US government's colonial policies and control over Muslim governments.

It makes no sense that the "mastermind" of the most humiliating blow in world history ever to have been delivered against a superpower would not claim credit for his accomplishment. By September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden knew that he was deathly ill. According to news reports he underwent kidney dialysis the following month. The most reliable reports that we have are that he died in December 2001. It is simply not credible that bin Laden denied responsibility because he feared Washington.

But Osama bin Laden was too useful a bogeyman, and Washington and the presstitute media kept him alive for another decade until Obama needed to kill the dead man in order to boost his sinking standings in the polls so that Democrats would not back a challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Numerous bin Laden videos, every one pronounced a fake by experts, were released whenever it was convenient for Washington. No one in the Western media or in the US Congress or European or UK parliaments was sufficiently intelligent to recognize that a bin Laden video always showed up on cue when Washington needed it. "Why would the ‘mastermind' be so accommodating for Washington?" was the question that went through my mind every time one of the fake videos was released.

The 9/11 "investigation" that finally took place was a political one run from the White House. One member of the commission resigned, declaring the investigation to be a farce, and both co-chairman and the legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission distanced themselves from their report with statements that the 9/11 Commission was "set up to fail," that resources were withheld from the commission, that representatives of the US military lied to the commission and that the commission considered referring the false testimony for criminal prosecution.

One would think that these revelations would cause a sensation, but the news media, Congress, the White House, and the public were silent.

All of this bothered me a great deal. The US had invaded two Muslim countries based on unsubstantiated allegations linking the two countries to 9/11, which itself remained uninvestigated. The neoconservatives who staffed the George W. Bush regime were advocating more invasions of more Muslim countries. Paul O'Neill, President Bush's first Treasury Secretary, stated publicly that the Bush regime was planning to invade Iraq prior to 9/11. O'Neill said that no one at a National Security Council meeting even asked the question, why invade Iraq? "It was all about finding a way to do it."

http://articles.cnn.com/2004-01-10/politics/oneill.bush_1_roomful-of-deaf-people-education-of-paul-o-neill-national-security-council-meeting?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS

The leaked top secret Downing Street Memo written by the head of British intelligence (MI6) confirms Paul O'Neill's testimony. The memo, known as the "smoking gun memo" whose authenticity has been confirmed, states that "President George W. Bush wants to remove Saddam Hussein, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." In other words, the US invasion of Iraq was based on nothing but a made up lie.

As an engineering student I had witnessed a controlled demolition. When films of the collapse of WTC building 7 emerged, it was obvious that building 7 had been brought down by controlled demolition. When physics instructor David Chandler measured the descent of the building and established that it took place at free fall acceleration, the case was closed. Buildings cannot enter free fall unless controlled demolition has removed all resistance to the collapsing floors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lESol88wOi0

If airliners brought down two skyscrapers, why was controlled demolition used to bring down a third building?

I assumed that structural architects, structural engineers, and physicists would blow the whistle on the obviously false story. If I could see that something was amiss, certainly more highly trained people would.

The first physicist to make an effective and compelling argument was Steven Jones at BYU. Jones said that explosives brought down the twin towers. He made a good case. For his efforts, he was pressured to resign his tenured position. I wondered whether the federal government had threatened BYU's research grants or whether patriotic trustees and alumni were the driving force behind Jones' expulsion. Regardless, the message was clear to other university based experts: "Shut up or we'll get you."

Steven Jones was vindicated when chemist Niels Harrit of the University of Copenhagen In Denmark reported unequivocally that the scientific team in which he participated found nano-thermite in the residue of the twin towers. This sensational finding was not mentioned in the US print and TV media to my knowledge.

Several years after 9/11 architect Richard Gage formed Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth, an organization that has grown to include 1,700 experts. The plans of the towers have been studied. They were formidable structures. They were constructed to withstand airliner hits and fires. There is no credible explanation of their failure except intentional demolition.

I also found disturbing the gullibility of the public, media, and Congress in the unquestioning acceptance of the official stories of the shoe-bomber, shampoo and bottled water bomber, and underwear bomber plots to blow up airliners in transit. These schemes are farcical. How can we believe that al Qaeda, capable of pulling off the most fantastic terrorist attack in history and capable of devising improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that kill and maim US troops and destroy US military vehicles would rely on something that had to be lighted with a match? The shoe and underwear bombers would simply have pushed a button on their cell phones or laptops, and the liquid bomb would not have required extended time in a lavatory to be mixed (all to no effect).

None of this makes any sense. Moreover, experts disputed many of the government's claims, which were never backed by anything but the government's story line. There is no independent evidence that anything was involved other than firecracker powders.

The case of the underwear bomber is especially difficult to accept. According to witnesses, the underwear bomber was not allowed on the airliner, because he had no passport. So an official appears who walks him onto the airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas day. What kind of official has the authority to override established rules, and what did the official think would happen to the passenger when he presented himself to US Customs without a passport? Any official with the power to override standard operating practices would know that it was pointless to send a passenger to a country where his entry would be rejected.

The circumstantial evidence is that these were orchestrated events designed to keep fear alive, to create new intrusive powers for a new over-arching federal policy agency, to accustom US citizens to intrusive searches and a police force to conducting them, and to sell expensive porno-scanners and now more advanced devices to the Transportation Safety Administration. Apparently, this expensive collection of high-tech gadgetry is insufficient to protect us from terrorists, and in August 2012 the Department of Homeland Security put in an order for 750 million rounds of ammunition, enough to shoot every person in the US 2.5 times.

Naive and gullible Americans claim that if some part of the US government had been involved in 9/11, "someone would have talked by now." A comforting thought, perhaps, but nothing more. Consider, for example, the cover-up by the US government of the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty that killed or wounded most of the crew but failed to sink the ship. As the survivors have testified, they were ordered in a threatening way not to speak about the event. It was twelve years later before one of the USS Liberty's officers, James Ennes, told the story of the attack in his book, Assault on the Liberty. I continue to wonder how the professionals at the National Institute of Standards and Technology feel about being maneuvered by the federal government into the unscientific position NIST took concerning the destruction of the WTC towers.

What will be the outcome of the doubts about the official story raised by experts? I worry that most Americans are too mentally and emotionally weak to be able to come to grips with the truth. They are far more comfortable with the story that enemies attacked America successfully despite the massive national security state in place. The American public has proved itself to be so cowardly that it willingly, without a peep, sacrificed its civil liberty and the protections of law guaranteed by the Constitution in order to be "safe."

Congress is not about to expose itself for having squandered trillions of dollars on pointless wars based on an orchestrated "new Pearl Harbor." When the neoconservatives said that a "new Pearl Harbor" was a requirement for their wars for American/Israeli hegemony, they set the stage for the 21st century wars that Washington has launched. If Syria falls, there is only Iran, and then Washington stands in direct confrontation with Russia and China.

Unless Russia and China can be overthrown with "color revolutions," these two nuclear powers are unlikely to submit to Washington's hegemony. The world as we know it might be drawing to a close.

If enough Americans or even other peoples in the world had the intelligence to realize that massive steel structures do not disintegrate into fine dust because a flimsy airliner hits them and limited short-lived fires burn on a few floors, Washington would be faced with the suspicion it deserves.

If 9/11 was actually the result of the failure of the national security state to deter an attack, the government's refusal to conduct a real investigation is an even greater failure. It has fallen to concerned and qualified individuals to perform the investigative role abandoned by government. The presentations at the Toronto Hearings, along with the evaluations of the Panel, are now available, as is the documentary film, "Explosive Evidence--Experts Speak Out," provided by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.