By James Donahue

As with all spectacular events that changed our lives, the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon has generated a whole school of conspiracy theorists. And after seven years of reeling under the way the Bush Administration used this event to reshape not only our Constitutional freedoms and the way our government operates, we must wonder if they may be right.

We recently watched the film Recount, a drama based on the events surrounding the political chaos that went on in Florida in December, 2000 after the presidential election was locked in a dramatic state-wide election recount. The film awoke old anger in this writer as we relived the daily drama, with vote totals between George W. Bush and Vice-President Al Gore so close that nobody knew who would claim that state’s Electoral College votes. The national election was so close that the results in Florida would determine the presidency.

As the film clearly depicted, an accurate recount was stymied by the political powers that operated Florida . . . namely the Republicans under the leadership of then Governor Jeb Bush, a brother to George W. Bush, and Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Harris refused to cooperate with efforts to get ballots recounted. After the Gore camp succeeded in getting a state court order to allow a recount, the U.S. Supreme Court intervened. In the end the Supreme Court, in an unprecedented act, appointed Bush the winner.

A coalition of newspapers later financed an unofficial recount of all of the Florida votes and found that Bush appeared to have won the Florida election by a few hundred votes. But it also was discovered that thousands of blacks and minority residents in predominately Democratic precincts were strangely listed as felons and denied access to the polls.

Because Gore won the popular vote in the United States, but Bush gained the Electoral College votes, and because the polls were suspiciously manipulated in the Republican controlled state of Florida, on which the final outcome hung, Bush entered office under a cloud. A lot of people believed it was a stolen election.

That cloud was still hanging heavily over Mr. Bush’s head when 9-11 happened. That attack changed everything in a matter of minutes. Suddenly America was under attack, people were shocked and frightened, and Bush emerged in a leadership role. He and New York’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani were not what we needed but they were all we had at the moment, so we gave them the reins.

Everyone was so shocked by the attack that most Americans, including nearly all members of our House and Senate, accepted the Patriot Act when it was submitted to Congress on September 24, just 13 days after the attack, by the Bush Administration. It passed in both houses with almost no opposition and was quickly signed into law by President Bush. It was a detailed document containing 1,016 sections, and would have been impossible for even a bank of lawyers to have written within less than two weeks. It was designed to strip Americans of many of their Constitutional rights, giving government and police the right to violate rights of free speech and privacy, and to conduct secret searches and surveillance in the interest of fighting terrorism. In retrospect, it was obvious that the Patriot Act was carefully prepared long in advance of 9-11.

 During the days of mass paranoia, stirred by the cooperative media, that followed the assault, there was a strange series of letters containing anthrax received by some high profile people. Two of the recipients were Senators Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. Both men objected to the speedy passage of the Patriot Act and urged the Senators to take some time to read the document and understand what it was they were acting on. They got the message loud and clear. In the end, Senator Russ Feingold was the only man in the room to vote against it.

Since that date, the United States has evolved from the role of victim to that of the world’s worst terrorist. We not only sent troops to invade Afghanistan, where intelligence sources said Osama bin Laden and his small band of Islamic extremists known as Al Qaeda were thought to be operating, but later attacked Iraq which had no connection to Al Qaeda and was not a known threat to United States security. Both wars continue to this day with no end in sight. In the meantime, billions of U.S. dollars have been spent on armaments, “reconstruction” and a variety of other contracted services that have proven very profitable to companies favored by the Bushites. To date, we have lost well over 4,000 American troops, and killed an untold hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in both Afghanistan and Iraq, leveled the Iraq infrastructure, desecrated the landscape with bombs and bullets made with depleted uranium, and all but rekindled the ancient wars pitting Christians against the Moslems known as the Crusades.

Looking back at the video footage available on the Internet, shot by a variety of news security and private video cameras in and around the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon on 9-11, there is evidence that the attacks may, indeed, have been a conspiracy designed to make a few people in key places very wealthy while their patsy, George W. Bush, remained in office.

You can find, for instance, footage with sound, of people expressing alarm that unexplained explosions were being heard on the lower floors and even in the parking garages under the already burning towers before they imploded. You can find reports from police officers who are warning of the discovery of a suspicious item that may be a bomb on the lower floors and they were ordering an immediate evacuation of the buildings.

Another unexplained mystery about the 9-11 attack was the strange collapse of a third skyscraper known as Building 7, which imploded like the Twin towers, even though it was not hit by an aircraft. This structure, like all the others in the immediate area, was extensively damaged by the disaster, but it should not have collapsed. It was a steel building.

Yet other videos caught images of the second aircraft that hit the South Tower from a variety of angles. The news reports told us it was a hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 although witnesses could clearly be heard saying the plane they saw looked like a military aircraft. They said it was grey in color, had no windows, and a large object could be seen attached to the bottom that may have been a bomb.

Other video footage from a security camera aimed at the side of the Pentagon at the moment it was supposedly hit by hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 does not support an aircraft of that size. What appears in one frame looks more like a much smaller vehicle, possibly a drone or a missile. While the security around the area was extremely tight, and independent research was all but impossible, reports have leaked out that no parts from an aircraft were ever found at the scene.

There is only one known video that captured an image of the strike on the North Tower. It was shot from some distance by a news reporter and just what flew into the tower is difficult to make out. Some suggest it was a small aircraft, or possibly a missile, because of the way it exploded on impact. The second tower was clearly hit by an aircraft which flew into the building and caused an explosion and fire that erupted on the opposite side.

If these weren’t the hijacked airliners that struck the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 9-11, what happened to these three hijacked aircraft and the passengers they were carrying? And why was it that Osama bin Laden issued a taped message some years later in which he confessed that his organization carried out the attack.

Why was our president wasting his important time reading children’s books to an elementary class in Florida on the morning of the attacks? Why do we have reports of government aircraft being used during the hours immediately after the assault to safely get relatives of bin Laden out of the United States? Why has our military failed to capture and try Bin Laden for such a heinous crime? Why did we devote all of our time and energy to capturing, trying and killing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks? Is Osama bin Laden a secret CIA agent? Was he acting under orders from the same people who pull the strings in Washington?

If ever a conspiracy theory had all the elements of a real conspiracy, this is the grand-daddy of them all.