Exclusive: CAIR and the 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists
Peter Gadiel


Author: Peter Gadiel

Date Published: 2007-08-24


9/11 conspiracy theorists do our country a disservice in that they divert Americans from seeing the real cause behind this tragic event. FSM Contributing Editor Peter Gadiel explains why 9/11 “Truthers” set a dangerous precedent.

 

CAIR and the 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists

 


By Peter Gadiel

 

As the father of a 9/11 victim, I want to add my perspective on Luke Sheahan’s recent column on the Ohio State professors and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) promoting the theory of the “9/11 Truthers.”

 

It does not surprise me in the least that CAIR would participate in supporting the theory that the attacks of 9/11 and the 3,000 resulting murders were planned and carried out by the U.S. government. CAIR is an outfit which has been named by the government as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case, and so distracting Americans from the facts is likely in their best interests. Those facts are: Nineteen radical Islamist men who were not U.S. citizens, with the help of Islamist terrorist organizations headquartered overseas, entered the United States, were supplied funds by those Islamist terrorist organizations, and hijacked four commercial airliners.

 

These radical Islamist terrorists succeeded in flying three planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. On the fourth plane the passengers, having been alerted to the mass murder committed with the other planes, thwarted the terrorists and caused the plane to crash in a field in Pennsylvania. Afterward, Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility, and hundreds of thousands of people worldwide publicly celebrated the “successful” attacks committed by those who shared their radical Islamist views.

 

Thus, is it any surprise that CAIR would promote myths about the attacks in order to divert Americans’ attention from the fact that Islamist terrorists were responsible? It’s easy to understand that the people at CAIR don’t like these facts. Mass murder committed by some Muslims in the name of Islamic Jihad makes it difficult for CAIR to sell the idea that there’s no terrorist war against America, the West and all Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Baha’i, atheists, etc.

 

The granddaddy of these “the U.S. government did it” fairy tales is a film called “Loose Change,” manufactured by a fellow by the name of Dylan Avery, a film he admits was inspired by the film “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery,” and conceived while he was “high.” The fastest way anyone can debunk this film is to read the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s interview with Avery.

 

In that interview, Avery admits lack of foundation or proof for his assertions, and admits the existence of reliable opposing scientific opinion, admits that much of what he says is speculation, and backtracks when confronted with facts (e.g. after saying NORAD intentionally sent planes in the wrong direction in the search for the hijacked planes he then says: ”I don't want to implicate anybody without hard evidence, but it seems that NORAD and the FAA and a lot of key institutions of our government simply dropped the ball.”   (Most of us understand that “dropping the ball” is quite different from intentionally allowing 3,000 people to die.)  You can see for yourself the logical gaps (actually they’re logical canyons) in this man’s reasoning.

 

Avery claims that it was a missile, and not a plane, that hit the Pentagon. Now, I myself have spoken with people who were there and saw the plane hit, and so has Dylan Avery, as he admits.  What is his “proof’” for his claim that it was a missile? Some people who were on the scene did not see the plane. In support of this claim, he cites a Pentagon survivor who supports his theory but who, as he says, “crawled out of” the Pentagon after the attack and didn’t see the plane.

 

Again, those who want to see Dylan Avery destroy his own theories should read the interview as well as the Popular Mechanics point by point rebuttal of the “U.S. government did it” theorists.

 

The great tragedy of films like “Loose Change” is that they prevent Americans from understanding the federal government’s true role in 9/11, which was the widespread incompetence, corruption and criminal negligence of elected officials and bureaucrats that created the conditions that permitted Islamist terrorists to develop their strength and invade our borders. In five and a half years of involvement on this issue, I have learned one lesson all too well: that our government appears incapable of carrying out the responsibilities assigned to it by our Constitution.

 

That failure is not because, as Dylan Avery would have you believe, elected officials made a decision that they would allow bin Laden to kill Americans by the thousands. Rather that failure is the result of elected officials and their underlings in the bureaucracy responding to special interests that profit from policies that increase our exposure to hostile forces. (A prime example of this is the recent expansion of the Visa Waiver Program, from its current 27 countries to an unlimited number. This program permits citizens of other nations to visit the U.S. without first obtaining a visa. Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, and Richard Reid, the “Shoe Bomber,” were eligible under the VWP. Expansion of VWP was successfully lobbied for by the travel industry.)

 

I want to make quite clear that I agree with Mr. Avery about one point: there are people in our government to whom the lives of innocent Americans seem to have very little value. To wit: the fact that little is being done to stem the flow of illegal aliens over our borders, some of whom are violent criminals. However, the point that Mr. Avery and his cohorts miss is that if 9/11 were an ‘inside job,” the number of people working for the government to perpetrate this crime would have to have been enormous. Yet the government of the United States is simply too incompetent and corrupt to: 1) carry out such a mission;  2) carry it out without being exposed beforehand;  or 3) keep such an enormous number of co-conspirators from leaking to the press after the event. (This is, after all, a government which, even when it was run by competent and relatively honest people in the 1940s, couldn’t even keep the atom bomb secrets from being stolen by Soviet agents.)

 

In short, with his ludicrous claims of “the government did it,” Mr. Avery is diverting the attention of the American people from the true causes of 9/11 which are Islamist hatred and U.S. government incompetence and corruption. That is the real danger of the “9/11 Truthers.”

 

Under the circumstances, CAIR would be foolish if it didn’t join this bandwagon; any scheme that will shift blame from Islamists to someone else is okay by them. “Hey dumb Americans,” says CAIR, “don’t believe your own eyes.  Islamists didn’t do it, you did.”  And Mr. Avery and those Ohio State professors are carrying their message.

 

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FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Peter Gadiel is the president of 9/11 Families for a Secure America. He is a lifelong Republican who voted for George Bush in 2000.

 

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