In crime, we often hear of the three pillars of conviction: means, motive, and opportunity. The bookends of this have been the basis for a generation’s worth of “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams” memes, and led to a rise in conspiracy culture that has led us as a nation into two wars, two of the worst Presidencies in US history, and now, into literal “gestapo and concentration camps” fascism.
While the reaction of populations to veer into collective avoidance behavior to cope with a world that is no longer “safe” by creating a delusional world where they hold both special knowledge and imaginary righteous power is beyond the scope of this piece, what makes it stand out is how 9/11 was handled, and the conspiracies that arose from this traumatic event.
If you’re waiting for us to nay-say the engineering claims of thermite use, or post footage of how WTC 7 caught fire from falling debris and not shaped charge demo, well, all of that has been debunked before, and in 25 years of having the same conversations, despite a thorough and public investigation by myriad governmental and private institutions, well, no, we won’t be doing that today.
Because we don’t have to. There was a conspiracy going on that day. It’s just not the one you’re thinking of. And they got away with it, scot free and stinking rich.
We must say that this is all conjecture, of course, so let’s tack on an “allegedly” for our lawyers, but we’re going to spin you a yarn that makes a hell of a lot more sense than 25 years going by without a single “9/11 inside job” participant feeling remorse and telling the “truth”.
George W. Bush was the likable frat boy child of the former CIA director-turned-President Geoage Herbert Walker Bush, who, by all accounts, was a barely passable student, a good time enjoyer, and did the bare minimum to squeak by, despite opportunities and Yale, Harvard, and the Texas National Guard, as a pilot (a position he eventually lost after failure to take a scheduled physical). Well known as a nepo baby, he seemed to have little real drive or ambition, and even less care for the actual job of leadership.
After a failing-upwards career as an oil man, that included allegations of insider trading, and entertaining of a run at being the MLB Commissioner as an owner of the Rangers, Bush decided – as did his brother Jeb – to run for Governor, of Texas and Florida, respectively. Obviously he won, but this is significant to THIS story for two reasons. One, his time as Governor was marked by being largely a rubber stamp for monied interests and performative cruelty under the guise of being “tough on crime”. Two, his campaign, which included spreading rumors about his opponent, Ann Richards, being a lesbian, was run by one Karl Rove.
Here’s all we’ll say about Karl Rove: “In the fall of 1970, Rove used a false identity to enter the campaign office of Democrat Alan J. Dixon, who was running for Treasurer of Illinois. He stole 1000 sheets of paper with campaign letterhead, printed fake campaign rally fliers promising “free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing”, and distributed them at rock concerts and homeless shelters, with the effect of disrupting Dixon’s rally.” – Wikipedia
Let’s fast forward to his Presidential run. Why on earth would the lazy, layabout multi-millionaire owner of a baseball team Governor son of a President, who had STILL shown no interest or talent for leadership, with no burning desire to accomplish signature policy through public service, decide to run for President? Perhaps some idea lies with his choice of VP, former Secretary of Defense under George HW Bush, Dick Cheney, who had overseen the operations in Kuwait in his father’s war with Iraq.
So the good time frat boy teams up with an ethics-free political operative he would later call “the Architect”, and the avatar of his father’s failure to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Insert GIF of Jack from LOST screaming, “we have to go back”.
When we talk about “means” and “opportunity” in relation to the 9/11 conspiracy, we never address the real kicker – “motive”. Because there is no motive for GW to blow up the WTC in a false flag event. Indeed, 9/11 threw a big ole monkey wrench into the existing conspiracy.
The conspiracy to invade Iraq.
This was always the plan, and why W ran for President. Certain corners of the GOP were obsessed with unseating Saddam, seeing him as not only a continued threat to regional stability (after using him to promote regional instability, of course), but as unfinished business, an untied loose end. That, in their eyes, America would be forever besmirched with this smirking autocrat claiming victory over them, in some imagined, delusional fantasy where Saddam wasn’t just happy to go back to preening in his palaces and killing his own people for fun.
The minute W moved into the White House, the national security apparatus pivoted from whatever they were doing to setting up a case to go into Iraq. WMDs, human rights violations, fear of acquiring a nuclear weapon, anything they can do to justify “finishing the job” in Iraq. There are no clear goals, there is no endgame other than vengeance and dominance. And, of course, money. Lots and lots of money.
We’ll inject here that it’s really worth reading the 9/11 Commission Report. How terrorism operated in that time is far different than after these attacks. Many if not most of the attackers were on watch lists, but because planes were usually blown up or held hostage, the protocol for these triggers was to not load the baggage from these passengers until they had gotten on the plane. That was it. The idea was that no hijacker would blow up a plane with themselves on it. Like we said, things were different.
There’s a lot more in there about how little we knew about Al Qaeda, or Osama bin Laden, painting a much more confusing map of groups and goals to sift through, especially when your focus is on Iraq, not the potential for a domestic terror attack. It’s telling that most “9/11 Truthers”, including that stupid fucking movie, never go into the actual findings of the 9/11 Commission, because none of them ever read it. They don’t even reference the hours and hours of public testimony on the subject. Because that’s how avoidance works. But we digress.
Back to the plan, the timeline was most likely to be ready to present “evidence” to Congress by late 2001, mobilize by early 2002, and ride the win into midterms. By now, this is beginning to ramp up, involving more cabinet members, like Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell. The push to develop a case to go into Iraq is in full swing by September 11, 2001.
“A plane has just hit the WTC.” W sits stunned, children’s book in hand, in front of cameras and kids, as he realizes his plan just got fucked in the ass harder than Stephen Miller being railed by his Grindr date after CPAC.
Because here’s the thing. 9/11 didn’t help us get into Iraq. It forced us to go into Afghanistan.
We didn’t give a shit about Afghanistan. The CIA had had a presence there for decades, controlling the heroin trade and training the fighters opposing the USSR. There are major movies about it. They’re both comedies. The Tom Cruise one is better than the Mel Gibson one.
However, we couldn’t punish Saudi Arabia, where many of the participants were from, nor could be punish Pakistan, a nuclear power where most of the participants were trained (and, of course, where Bin Laden was eventually found and killed). So the Taliban, who did indeed have a mutual aid pact with Al Qaeda, and certainly did allow training and planning for 9/11 on their soil, were targeted. We won’t say unfairly, but the proportional response was one of performative righteous retribution, not law enforcement, and certainly did nothing to further the Bush administrations’ goal of getting their hands on Saddam and Iraqi oil.
W’s crew snapped into action, trying to fold their already flimsy case for Iraq into this new terrorism narrative. Fabricated meetings between Saddam and Osama were slathered all over Fox News, who were just truly coming into their own as a fascist propaganda outlet, leveling up from being just crotch-frothing Clinton haters. A forged leak from Italian intelligence departments claimed Saddam was purchasing yellowcake uranium from Niger, with Colin Powell shaking a vial at the UN being the most egregious stunt, one that arguably cost Powell any hope of the Presidency in the post-Bush years.
Gallons of ink were spilled by the Conservative media on how vital it was, how moral it was, to remove this brutal dictator before he could do more harm. As true as that may be, honestly, the fact is that we knew he didn’t have shit. And by war’s end, we had proved it.
So if the US knew Saddam was not a threat, had no WMDs, and had UN inspectors reports regularly, why the fuss all of a sudden, to open a second, unrelated front at a time when capturing the murderers of 2977 Americans on our own soil seemed to be an ethical, moral, and practical necessity??
The only explanation that makes any sense is that the plan to go into Iraq pre-dated 9/11, was already in motion, and far enough along that it could not be abandoned.
Into Iraq we went. Contractors, including Cheney’s Halliburton, made billions. Republicans did indeed do well in the midterms – it remains the only election since 1982 where the President’s Party gained control of the House.
Afghanistan, by contrast, was a dumpster fire of a quagmire that would see us leave ingonimiously and far too late, with the Taliban returning to power almost immediately.
W had every reason to prevent 9/11, and zero reason to commit such an act, as his existing plan to illegally and falsely claim imminent threat and invade Iraq was in motion, and had to be awkwardly folded into this larger “war on terror” that cost us trillions of dollars, thousands of US lives, millions upon millions of dead, refugees, and radicalized people in the region, and an ongoing humanitarian crisis in a perpetually destabilized region so deeply traumatized by a generation at war that violent groups like ISIS would continue their own brutally violent conquest of their own people.
The W Administration pulled off one of the most heinous litanies of war crimes in modern history, an illegal occupation of two countries that sparked 25 years of endless war, destruction, immiseration, and death, a path that led to a global refugee crisis that to this day emboldenes Far Right and outright fascist politics who use immigrants from these war-torn hell holes as fodder for racist fear mongering.
The horror is that W’s Iraq lies and Trump’s Iran lies are exactly the same playbook. Same with Venezuela. Wars for oil, for money, for political gain, firmly seated on a bedrock of American racism so clockwork reliable to see foreign non-whites as expendable that there is zero outcry from the Right. Nothing but cheers of “winning” as hundreds of thousands are dead in Gaza, in Iraq, in African countries suffering the psychotic DOGE cuts to USAID, in international waters after being blown up with no evidence by our psychotic Secretary of Defense, and ever spiraling aggression on the world stage as our national security suffers, just as it did after 9/11, and increasingly traumatized and radicalized populations seek their own righteous vengeance against the US.
We have to face the reality of how our disastrously violent foreign policy has made us all less safe, and let the biggest criminal administrations in history shove taxpayer money into their pockets with both hands while laughing at us for being so gullible as to drift into these easily debunkable fantasies.
It’s all an inside job. And it is beyond time we dropped the fucking fairy tales and held these monsters accountable.
