The tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks has given rise to a profusion of articles, documentaries and television programs that certify the Bush administration’s version of the events, while world opinion has become largely skeptical. For Thierry Meyssan, who sparked the global debate on the interpretation of the attacks, the overwhelming media campaign is the imperial system’s last attempt to preserve its apparent legitimacy and justify its future wars.
- Nicolas Sarkozy: "Ten years have passed but the memory of those shattered destinies is still intact and all the French people remember what they were doing on September 11, distraught as they were by what you had experienced. And on the evening of September 11, deep inside we felt more American than ever before. (...) The strongest response to those mass murders and to their perpetrators, is the liberation of the Arab peoples, around the values that America and France have always embodied, democracy. "
- ©Elysée
It is strange to observe how the Western press is celebrating the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks: while the topic could be approached from a variety of different angles, a uniform narrative set in or was imposed. Media were vying to obtain live interviews on the subject: "What were you doing on that day at that time?." This approach reflects the collective refusal to put things in perspective, to analyze the event and its consequences, focusing exclusively on the immediate emotional reactions; in short, to put on a big show instead of doing journalism.
The commemoration was punctuated with Orwellian injunctions: "How dare you question the official version considering the suffering of the victims’ families?", or "Those who question the official version are negationists and the enemies of democracy!." And yet, respect for victims - not just those who died on that day in the United States, but also those who were killed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere - requires precisely that we seek the truth instead of settling for outrageous lies. And how can democracy thrive if we fail to question official "truths" or, worse, if we substitute rational debate with verbal abuse?
In the days following the attacks, through a series of articles, and in subsequent months through books and lectures, I challenged Bush’s version of the events and accused the Straussian faction of the US military-industrial complex of having sponsored them. Although initially alone in my approach and heckled by the Atlanticist press, I gradually mobilized international public opinion, including in the United States, until last year when my questions rang out at the podium of the UN General Assembly. The more the US authorities tried to contradict me, the more they were contradicting themselves. Doubt spread and today those who doubt are the majority.
As usual when the wind turns, the opportunists safeguard their future by distancing themselves from the version they had long defended and that is sinking fast. This was the case yesterday with MM. Kean and Hamilton, the co-chairs of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, who have disassociated themselves from their own report; it is now the turn of Mr. Richard Clark, counter-terrorism adviser to Mr. Clinton and Bush, who accused his colleagues of cover-up. In 10 years, the U.S. and British authorities failed to produce the evidence to justify their "self defense" military action in Afghanistan, according to their pledge before the UN General Assembly. Instead, they showed they had a dark secret to hide and have continued to fabricate more lies in order to hide it. Who would still dare to claim, as Colin Powell did at the UN Security Council, that Saddam Hussein was complicit in September 11 or, like Tony Blair, that Osama bin Laden masterminded the London bombings?
During these ten years, a growing number of experts have brought to light the inconsistencies in the Bush version, which in turn other experts have defended. Had the latter’s arguments been persuasive, the controversy would have flickered out. At the end of the day, the differences between the two groups of scientifs intersect a dividing line which is exclusively political. If they approve of the Afghanistan invasion and the Patriot Act, they ratify the theory that the steel structures of the Twin Towers did not withstand the heat of the fire, that Tower 7 was too fragile and that a plane disintegrated inside the Pentagon. If, on the contrary, they condemn the imperial military expansion and the legitimation of torture, they refute the absurdity that the Twin Towers were the only steel structures in the world to have collapsed into their own footprint, that Tower 7 collapsed by imitation, and that a big Boeing penetrated the Pentagon through a doorway without damaging the frame.
Bush’s version of September 11 has become the central tenet of imperialism. We are ordered to believe in it as in a revealed truth. Failing that, we challenging the New World Order and are rejected as heretics and intellectual accomplices of terrorism.
The dividing line can be summarized as follows: on one side, the globalized Western elites cling to the official version; on the other side, the majority of Western populations and the Third World denounce the lie.
What is important is not to determine how some individuals, who were not on the flight manifests yet made it on board the aircraft, can hijack the flight, or how a Boeing can fold back its wings, enter through a small door and disappear inside the Pentagon, but rather if from that day the West has been the target of a world Islamic conspiracy, or if instead the attacks were orchestrated by a US faction to embark with impunity on the conquest of the world.
- In Paris, a replica of the Twin Towers was built on the Trocadero esplanade in honor of the 3000 victims of September 11. It will be inaugurated by the Ambassador of the United States, the mayor of the French capital and the Interior Minister. No memorial has been planned for the one million victims of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
The philosophers who study the history of science affirm that scientific errors do not always disappear after having been refuted. It may take the passing of the generation that professed them. What makes it possible for a truth to substitute an error is that, over time, the truth conserves explanatory power, while the error loses.
In 2001, I concluded my analysis by warning against the generalized erosion of individual rights. I rebuffed the portrayal of Al-Qaeda as an anti-Western terrorist organization and claimed instead that it was a hotbed of Arab mercenaries used by the CIA in various conflicts, in Afghanistan against the Soviets, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo against the Serbs, and in Chechnya against the Russians, in accordance with the Brzezinski strategy. Finally, I announced the imminent invasion of Iraq and the remodeling of the Middle East promoted by the neoconservatives, for once allied with Kissinger.
At the time, the press had made a mockery of my analysis on four main points.
Le Monde explained that the U.S. would never attack Iraq because they had already settled the problem with "Desert Storm" and that only my kneejerk anti-Americanism could lead me to consider otherwise.
Le Monde Diplomatique reproved learnedly that I must have known nothing about U.S. politics to imagine a neocon-Kissinger alliance.
The Washington Post bombarded us with details on the sprawling world Islamic conspiracy that I refused to take seriously, blinded as I was by the Arab presence in France.
And the New York Times applauded the Patriot Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, to which only a European pacifist imbued with the spirit of Munich could be against.
Yet 10 years later, anyone can see that I was right on all four points and that my detractors were wrong. They are now seeking to redeem themselves by conceding loud and clear that the Bush administration "used" 9/11 to impose its own agenda. Over time, they will inevitably recognize that I did not read into a crystal ball to predict a future they did not suspect, but that through a rigorous political analysis it was possible to decipher in advance the intentions of the 9/11 sponsors to execute this agenda.
While NATO has placed the companions of bin Laden in power in Tripoli, it is more essential than ever to understand September 11 in order to identify the real threats to world peace and be able to deal with. How can we not see that the people who are commemorating this anniversary today will be promoting new wars in the Middle East and North Africa tomorrow?
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