The New, More Respectable Trutherism

A KIND of Post Surge Derangement Syndrome (PSDS) at the Sydney Morning Herald this weekend with the hard left broadsheet publishing a zealously generous extract from 'The Commission - The Uncensored History Of The 9/11 Investigation', a new book by New York Times journalist, Philip Shenon. Beneath the supermarket tabloid headline - "They knew, but did nothing" - is an illustration showing George W. Bush sitting behind a stack of ignored or perhaps impossibly copious documents and also the then National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, staring out from an Oval Office window with indifference. It is to be hoped that some good comes from Shenon's work but the message here is designed to be obvious for those disinclined to read a feature running to no fewer than eight pages online: blame them.

Shenon, it's worth noting, was the man given the task of fact-checking Michael Moore's notoriously dishonest film, Fahrenheit 911. He gave it the big thumbs up, much to the delight of conspiracy theorists. A telling measure of Shenon's impartiality was his prediction that the segment in the film that would probably be far more "damaging to the White House" than any statistic was the replayed seven minutes Bush spent reading 'My Pet Goat' to those schoolchildren in Florida - after hearing of the second World Trade Center attack. As John Howard stated last week, coverage of Iraq has declined because "left-liberal elements" cannot sanction a more positive reality. One could add that PSDS demands any viable ameliorator of those still powerful cravings for world-historical denunciations of BushCo. Re-enter 9/11.

Elizabeth Benedict, writing at the ultra-liberal Huffington Post, not only praises Shenon's book but says it converted her away from the belief that "the US government and the private sector were aware of the hijackers' plans and, recognizing that 9/11 suited their policy goals, did nothing to stop it." This view she calls "LIHOP" (Let It Happen on Purpose), for short. Like the SMH, she now seems to be relieved that a more outwardly respectable theory is available and - most importantly - Bush and Rice bare the brunt of the blame.

Richard Clarke again emerges as The Man Who Knew Too Much, with nobody - especially not Condoleezza Rice - prepared to listen. That's a problem Clarke seems to have generally. Nobody on the left likes to pay heed to his reminiscences about Al Gore approving of the illegal kidnapping of terrorists; or his assertion at the 9/11 Commission that the chemicals mixer in the first WTC bombing (Abdul Rahman Yasin) fled to, and was harboured within, Saddam Hussein's Iraq - which, Clarke pointed out, "didn't cooperate in turning him over and gave him sanctuary, as it did give sanctuary to other terrorists"; forgotten now, conveniently, is the same Clarke being "sure" that "intelligence existed linking bin Laden to Al Shifa's current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan."

In seven years (not minutes), the Clinton Administration responded to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996, the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 by doing essentially nothing. Intelligence on planes possibly being used as missiles against targets like the Pentagon were extant from 1996 and two years prior to 9/11 a report warned the executive branch that terrorists might dive-bomb a hijacked plane into the Pentagon or some other state building. Clinton defence secretary William Cohen admitted to the 9/11 Commission that at least three missions to kill Osama bin Laden were cancelled in 1998-99. To be fair, nonetheless, it is possible Bill Clinton's bombing of Sudan may have killed someone's pet goat.