Sunny Day

I live in Pawling, NY, a small town about an hour and a half north of New York City. I work in Brewster, NY, the town I grew up in, and that's only about an hour away from The City. I have been to The City many times in my life, but one of the saddest had to be at the second game the Mets played after Sept 11, 2001. I still remember standing at the railing, looking south toward Manhattan and seeing the smoke still rising from what would come to be known as Ground Zero. I will never forget what happened there. I only wish I knew the truth.

I was at work on September 11, 2001, when people started saying they heard on the radio that a plane hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center. Not a small, private plane or a military aircraft, but a big, huge jetliner. I was stunned. I didn’t think it possible. I mean, those things have sophisticated guidance systems in them, and they could practically fly themselves. (I have since learned there is no “practically” about it, they can fly themselves.) So how could they miss what was literally one of the tallest buildings in the country? It didn’t make any sense but, I figured, tragic as they are, accidents do happen.

But when a second plane hit the other tower, it was instantly obvious that it was no accident. Now we were desperate for information. We tried to turn on the TV at the office to see what (if anything) was on the news, but that summer, a roofing crew had re-tarred the roof of our office, and in the process they knocked the satellite dish out of alignment. We had to wait for the owner (the only one with the technical know-how to fix it) to come in, and he had just happened to have decided to come in late that day. He did eventually arrive and, having not heard about the plane crashes, agreed that we ought to get the TV going, so he set about fixing it.

In the meantime, the news reports kept coming both from the radio playing in the warehouse, and from the brother of one of our co-workers. The Pentagon had been hit. The Pentagon? You mean, one of the most heavily fortified and defended buildings in the entire country was also hit by a plane? Don’t they have a whole bunch of anti-aircraft guns on their roof for just such an emergency? Isn’t it a standing order that if a plane is about to crash into it, that it must be shot down? (That may sound horrible, but if the plane is going to be flown into a building, the people in it are going to die anyway; shooting the plane down may save the lives of the people in the intended target.) This was becoming more and more surreal as the day wore on. I mean, planes manage to crash into both World Trade Center towers, and now the Pentagon was hit, too? I just kept asking myself, “How the fuck was this possible?”

Before our boss was done fixing the satellite dish, our co-worker (whose brother was watching it on TV), came in and said that one of the towers had fallen down. We were stunned. My first thought was that it had toppled over and came crashing down on the other buildings of Lower Manhattan. I asked him if this is what happened, and he said, “No, it just came straight down into one big pile.” I said, “You mean right down on its own footprint?” And he said, “Yeah.” Well that didn’t sound right, either. I didn’t know it then, but that little detail would keep gnawing at me. “Was anybody still in it at the time?” “Yeah, I’m sure.”

My father has been a volunteer firefighter in Brewster, NY, for more than fifty years. I'm very proud of him, and so there’s a special place in my heart for those who risk their lives to save others. I wept inside at the thought that who knows how many people were killed in that collapse not because they worked there and couldn’t get out in time, but because they went into the building to save lives. I was reminded of those sick people who plant two bombs at a location, with the second one timed to go off after first responders and rescuers had a chance to arrive to help the survivors of the first bomb. Then word came that the second tower collapsed. I died inside. All I could think about at that moment were the firefighters who were inside that building for the sole purpose of trying to save lives. I couldn’t believe what was happening. This kind of shit just isn’t supposed to happen! Who did this? What did they want from us? Why were they doing it? How many more would die that day? And would it continue tomorrow? It started out as a beautiful sunny day, and it turned into one of the blackest days of our nation’s history. Little did I realize then how black it truly was.

I did not know anyone personally who was killed or injured. I have a friend who worked in Manhattan, and he sent an e-mail a couple of weeks later to all of his friends to let them know he was okay. He had incredible stories about the generosity of New Yorkers that I’m sure some of you will still not believe. He said that people started walking north, away from the towers to get away. Everywhere, cars, even taxis, were stopping and picking up as many people as they could carry to get them away. Strangers helped other strangers, and nobody was thinking about anything other than getting out of there alive. Other than the two horrendous acts of mass murder committed that morning, that day would be one of the most crime-free in New York’s history. One of my co-workers lost a cousin in one of the towers when it collapsed. She also lost a friend who worked in the Pentagon. And when her mother learned a day or two later about the cousin, she suffered a heart attack and died. To my knowledge, those were the only ones that died to which I had any kind of connection, and I never met any of them before.

Eventually the boss got the satellite dish fixed, and we watched in horror the endless replays of the planes colliding into the buildings and of the towers collapsing. It was nothing like I imagined. They shouldn’t have come straight down like that, not out of blind chance, and not both of them. By all right and reason, those buildings should have toppled to the side at least a little bit and come crashing down on the buildings next to them, at least. How could they possibly have just weakened at some point and come straight down, right onto their own footprints? Both of them? It was too coincidental, too strange to be true. Then I started hearing reporters on the scene use the exact words I was looking for: “It was like a controlled demolition.” And not just one of them, several of them said the same thing, almost verbatim. A “controlled demolition.” But that couldn’t possibly be true, could it? For that to be true, someone had to plan this well in advance. Could this have been deliberate?

Six years have passed since that terrible sunny day. And in that time, I have come to believe that our government, specifically the Bush administration, does not want the truth of what happened to come out. I wish I could believe that this is because they acted so incompetently and failed so miserably to protect us, that they just didn’t want to be reminded all the time. Remember, too, that this was early on in their first term. They were still busy trying to prove that they were vastly superior to the Clinton administration, that they could do everything better. So it wouldn’t have surprised me that they simply didn’t want people to have some kind of evidence that, despite what conservatives say about government, they still can’t effectively run one. Like I said, I wish I could believe that. But I don’t.

My suspicions began to ignite again when I started hearing that Bush didn’t want an independent investigation into what happened. Now what the fuck was going on? The worst attack on our nation’s soil since Pearl Harbor, and Bush didn’t want to investigate to find out what happened? If not for the families of the victims, there would never have been a 9/11 Commission Report. Not that this report explained what happened that day. About the only thing you could say for certain of the 9/11 Commission Report, is that it is not a report and review on what really happened that day. Not an accurate one, anyway. It couldn’t be. It had too many internal contradictions to be an accurate report. And it left too many questions unanswered, or poorly and inadequately answered, if at all.

Those of us who question the “official account” have been called all kinds of names by our government, including “Conspiracy Theorists”. That one I find particularly ironic because the official 9/11 Report is itself a “Conspiracy Theory.” It’s a theory that says 19 highjackers conspired to fly four planes into various targets. It’s just that this is the only “Conspiracy Theory” the government will allow to be said. They don’t want to hear anything else, for to ask questions and to doubt the official version of events is to “embolden the enemy”. That might be true if the official version of events was the truth. But it clearly is not.

Now why would I say that with such certitude? Before listing just some of the reasons why I doubt the official account, let me say that sharper-eyed observers than I have found hundreds of contradictions. Here are just a few. For one thing, several of the 19 highjackers turned up alive and well and complaining about why they were accused of being among the highjackers. That is a documented fact. It’s not just that a name matched, which would be understandable, but the pictures matched their faces. I bet you didn’t hear a lot about that in the Corporate-Controlled Media, or CCM (former known as the MSM (Mainstream Media) or the SCLM (So-Called Liberal Media), neither of which conveys the truth that a majority of the media is controlled by a small number of corporations). And there are other facts the CCM doesn’t seem to want you to know. (Contrast what you’ve heard about all of this with how much you’ve heard in the media about Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan. I’m certain you’ve heard and know more about these three women than you have about the truth behind the 9/11 attacks.)

Around the same time that I heard about some of the highjackers being alive and well, I also heard an interesting fact. In the entire history of steel-framed constructed buildings, only three have been brought down by fire, and all three fell on the same day – Sept 11, 2001. There have been other steel-framed buildings that burned for far longer and yet showed no signs whatsoever of even coming close to collapsing. This made me start thinking again about the way those three buildings (WTC-1, WTC-2, and WTC-7) came down – as if they were brought down by a controlled demolition. Maybe you heard some of the news anchors reporting live describe it that way. You probably never heard about the many eye-, ear-, and nose-witness accounts who said they saw suspicious activity in the buildings in the days and weeks leading up to 9/11, or heard a rapid series of explosions (pow-pow-pow-pow) right before the buildings came down, or smelled cordite (a material used in explosives, primarily, and not something you would smell in any old fire.)

I wish I could say I was making this up. I wish I could say that this is only something I’ve heard about, and not actually seen, but I've seen the videos of people being interviewed that very day! I’ve heard them describe, in their own words, and in words that almost matched exactly what other witnesses have said. One site that might tell you more is that of an eyewitness to that day’s events. His name is William Rodriguez, and his website is william911. He worked in the towers and he was responsible for saving hundreds of lives that day for a simple reason. He had the key. The Master Key. The key that opened the doors in the stairwells of the North Tower, which were locked (for reasons not clear to me.) Read his story. He, too, heard explosions below him in the basements before the planes hit. He has also been determined to be the last person to get out of the North Tower alive, running out as it collapsed and being saved by ducking under a fire truck. His story of hope and courage is remarkable.

I could go on and on about the discrepancies between the official report and the actual, verifiable facts, but that wouldn’t do any good. I encourage each and every one of you to begin your own investigations. Since you’re reading this, you have access to the internet. Start with 911Truth, and begin looking at what they have to say. These are not crazy people who dream up wild possibilities of what might have happened. These are people, many of them relatives of the victims, many scientists, who question the official report. They want to know what really happened that day. They want to know why the president and vice president have refused to testify separately and under oath, about what they knew of that day and when did they know it. They want the truth because we obviously have not been told the truth, and we have a right to it.

As you investigate, you will learn other things you probably haven’t heard before. Did you know that the coroner who was at the scene in Shanksville, PA, where flight 93 is said to have gone down, said that after about twenty minutes, he "ceased being the coroner"? There were no bodies in the wreckage. He said that it looked more like someone dug a hole in the ground and just threw a bunch of metal and airplane parts in it.

Then there’s the Pentagon. This one is really strange. If you look carefully at pictures of where the Pentagon was hit, you will see a big hole (as you would expect). What you don’t see, and what you would also expect, is any evidence of a plane! The hole itself is barely big enough for the fuselage to fit through, yet there is no evidence that the areas to the side of the hole were struck by the wings of the aircraft, nor can you see any sign of the huge, multi-ton engines attached to them. If they didn’t go inside the building, they should be on the lawn, but you cannot see any of them in any of the photographs. The official explanation is that the plane “vaporized” in the explosion. This, my friends, is simply an insult to your intelligence. Because not only do they say that the plane vaporized, they say that they were able to recover the bodies of the passengers and identify them. How could that be? How could something vaporize a metal aircraft like that and leave human bodies intact? Why were the tapes from every security camera in the vicinity (including the VA Highway Dept’s and those of local hotels looking in that direction) confiscated by the FBI within minutes of the impact? Why have they never been released to the public? If a plane really did hit the Pentagon, then why don’t they let us see the evidence? You can see the basis for these questions at Pentagon Strike.

Friends, your government has lied to you about the events of Sept 11, 2001. That much is obvious. I urge each and every one of out there to start asking your own questions about the discrepancies. If you’re an American, contact your Senators and Representatives and demand that they re-open the investigation. And this time, NOBODY should be permitted to testify without being under oath, and NOBODY should be allowed to not testify if asked. This is especially true of the president and vice president. They know more than they are saying, and not simply because “it’s classified.” (It is illegal to classify something just to keep it out of the public domain. All classified material and documents must pertain to national security. The president’s reputation is NOT a matter of national security.) Many people who could have given testimony that contradicted the official report were not called to do so. And this time, let a reputable person lead the investigation and not a hand-picked crony of the president.

Remember the Fallen. Demand the Truth. Peace on Earth.