The New Pearl Harbor

(Conspiracy Nation, 9/11/04) -- A new book by David Ray Griffin, a professor of theology and ethics, asks readers to re-think what they "know" about the tragic events of September 11, 2001. The book, The New Pearl Harbor (image, left), gets its title from a document put out by The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), published in 2000, suggesting "a new Pearl Harbor" could be in some ways fortuitous. Eerily, in light of the subsequent 9/11/01 events, the PNAC document was written by "soon-to-be top officials in the Bush administration." World War II Nostalgia Craze Besides the eerily prophetic PNAC document, another odd prelude to "9/11" was the release, in May 2001, of a World War II nostalgia film. "'Pearl Harbor' exploded onto the big screen with an impressive publicity campaign that had fans, websites, and other media outlets, counting down the days until its Memorial Day Weekend release. 'Pearl Harbor's' approved budget of $145 million made it the biggest movie budget ever to get greenlit." [1]

The ground for a World War II nostalgia craze had already been fertilized, prior to the film's release, by the touting of the generation who fought in that war as "the Greatest Generation."

Sympathy For Bush

Put yourself in George W. Bush's shoes. His father, George Herbert Walker Bush, 80 years old, confronts inevitable decay and death. Regretting his hellion youth and wishing somehow to make up for it to his dad, whom he loves, Bush II succumbs to a notion that he can bring back the past. Many baby boomers feel similarly. Feel some sympathy for George W. Bush too in that we depend on oil, the oil is in the Middle East, other nations want to control the oil, and if we don't grab it someone else will. Top that off with having to pretend its "not about oil" so that the

over-consuming American conscience can sleep at night, and you can appreciate what a thankless job being U.S. president can be.

Here, based on what is publicly known, is the...

Realpolitik Of 9/11

The U.S. needs secure pipelines through Afghanistan and Pakistan to move oil and gas from Turkmenistan to the Indian Ocean. CentGas (Central Asia Gas Pipeline), a consortium of several oil companies, is reluctant to build the pipeline unless the tulmultuous region is politically stable. Controlling the crucial area is the Taliban, created by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) back when the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan. The Taliban works with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and receives money from Saudi Arabia -- protection money: Saudi Arabia pays Taliban so Taliban will not unleash terror in Saudi Arabia. Also reportedly giving money to Taliban is Unocal, part of the CentGas consortium.

In 1998, Unocal grew dubious about the reliability of Taliban. Unocal withdrew from the CentGas consortium. Taliban would not yield to U.S. diplomacy, which tried to persuade it to play ball, get with the team. In July 2001, the U.S. gave Osama bin Laden and the Taliban a final ultimatum: "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs." [3]

Taliban did not yield. Coincidence theorists will note that, by coincidence, a "new Pearl Harbor" occurred soon after Taliban refused the July 2001 ultimatum. A further coincidence is, right after the 9/11 day of infamy, the U.S. military was propelled into Afghanistan. An Israeli newspaper noticed yet one more coincidence: "If one looks at the map of the big American bases created [in Afghanistan], one is struck by the fact that they are completely identical to the route of the projected oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean..." [4]

9/11 Anomalies

Griffin's book, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11, is chock full of anomalies, troubling facts about 9/11 that don't fit well into the government's version of  what happened on September 11, 2001.  It's not possible to cover all the inconsistencies here, in this review.

One puzzling circumstance noticed by Griffin is the enormous amount of very fine dust generated by the destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers. Officially, burning jet fuel compromised steel girders in the WTC towers and floor after floor pancaked downward to the ground in an instantaneous collapse. Since we are talking here about reinforced concrete, where did so much energy come from to turn reinforced concrete into dust? Photos of the debris show only a few small pieces of concrete, reports Griffin. About 100,000 tons of concrete were pulverised into powder -- from a building collapse?

What is the War on Terror costing us? On September 11, 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld proposed "to dip into Social Security, if necessary, to pay for defense spending." It may have been Dwight D. Eisenhower who warned that every dollar spent on weapons was a dollar that could have been spent elsewhere. But one never hears, "We can't afford it," when it comes time for a war. And it's the economically less-well-off, by-and-large, who also pay for it with their blood.

One of the early, fringe presidential candidates this year was running on a single issue: the need to get to the bottom of what really happened on 9/11/01. John Buchanan, a Republican, stated as follows in one of his speeches:

"I stand here as a 9/11 Truth Candidate and some may thus dismiss me as a single-issue candidate and in a narrow sense that is true. But if you consider that 9/11 has led us into fiscal ruin, endless war and constitutional twilight, my issue is the mother issue of our age." [5]

------- Notes -------
[1] "Pearl Harbor" movie review
[2] qtd. in "Please, Please, Go Shopping," by Conspiracy Nation.
    http://www.shout.net/~bigred/Shopping.htm
[3] Griffin, David Ray. The New Pearl Harbor. 
    Northhampton: Olive Branch Press, 2004. ISBN: 1-56656-552-9
[4] qtd. in Griffin, op. cit.
[5] qtd. in Griffin, op. cit.

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