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Robert Fisk's Skepticism vs.
Manuel Garcia Jr.s Shameless Propaganda
Crimes
Of The State
Wednesday Aug 29, 2007
Longtime
international journalist Robert Fisk has entered
the debate over September 11th 2001. Immediately, he
was pounced on by CounterPunch for voicing his concerns.
One might ask why CounterPunch sees it as a high priority to
attack those who voice skepticism of the government's account
of 9/11?
Manuel Garcia Jr., whose actual career has included work on more
advanced weapons of mass destruction (WMD's) for the US government,
has written
some questionable papers about the New York building "collapses"
of 9/11. Garcia no longer includes his Lawrence Livermore Laboratory
resume at the end of his articles, for some reason, but this is
what he told us originally:
(Article continues below)
"[Garcia's] working experience includes measurements
on nuclear bomb tests, devising mathematical models of
energetic physical effects, and trying to enlarge a union
of weapons scientists."
While establishing some level of expertise, the elephant
in the room would be the morality of someone, at this late stage
of our MAD evolution, helping build more effective nuclear bombs.
And, if one has no reservations about vaporizing thousands to
millions of humans, in a single blast, what's a little disinformation
on the morality spectrum?
Garcia's first papers were
rebutted by Kevin Ryan, formerly of UL Laboratories, the man
who was outright fired from his position solely for raising
issues about the World Trade Center "facts" with the head of the
NIST.
If you're a big fan of physical and mechanical arguments, you
can wade into that debate. But that's not what makes Garcia a
propagandist.
It is Garcia's relentless insistence that there could not possibly
have been any "conspiracy" whatsoever on 9/11, despite mountains
of evidence that this is the most likely scenario.
Garcia can jumble his numbers around all he wants, but he has
not a word to say about the actions of FBI and CIA, Mossad, ISI,
Saudi intelligence, and the alleged hijackers who supposedly carried
out these deeds. The cover-up by Bush operative Phillip Zelikow
is irrlevant to Garcia as well, as is the whistleblowing of numerous
witnesses. It appears Garcia has never read the
relevant material, yet he pontificates and ridicules (like
his editor
A. Cockburn), without the slightest grasp of why something
smells wrong with the entire September 11th affair. This is either
Garcia/Cockburn's willful ignorance, or it's a deliberate disinformation
campaign. It's not up to me to sort out the motives of irrational
propagandists like Garcia and Cockburn.
Enter poor old Robert Fisk.
Already fearful of angry individuals whom Fisk has dubbed "the
ravers" of 9/11 ("no
planers"?), Fisk attempted to chart a measured and evidence-based
course through the September 11th puzzle.
Here is what likely attracted Garcia's attention. Fisk:
"I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for
example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions,
how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting
point is supposed to be about 1,480C – would snap through at
the same time?"
--Robert Fisk
Garcia's first response to this was to plug a new "debunker"
website,
a site that includes nasty propaganda, something Garcia is comfortable
with. Garcia does not address the numerous inconsistencies brought
out by critics, such as Dr.
Steven Jones and others, and merely falls back on the US government
studies that have been dissected and shredded by many knowledgeable
scientists and engineers over the past several years. Garcia acknowledges
none of this, and this amounts to a naked "appeal to authority,"
a logical fallacy.
Garcia also fails to answer Fisk's most on-point observation:
"would snap through at the same time?" The simultaneous
and symmetrical "failure" is the heart of the controlled demolition
hypothesis. Such perfect symmetry doesn't just happen, not once,
not twice, God damn certainly not three times in a row! It must
be made to happen, quite carefully, quite expertly.
In the words of Dutch
demolition expert Danny Jowenko, describing building WTC7:
"A team of experts did this."
An entire industry exists just to make these steel framed buildings
fall down exactly into their footprints, or else ... they
WOULDN'T! To acknowledge this is a responsible and credible
observation, nothing like what Garcia puts out. In Garcia's physics,
the controlled demolition industry is unnecessary. One just needs
a kerosene tank and some office furniture to bring down a skyscraper
neatly.
Garcia's next fallacies are a series of ad hominem attacks against
Robert Fisk, possibly rising to the level of libel.
"Fisk's questions are "intelligent" for a person who does
not know physics and has yet to look at the most elementary
facts -- and finding-- about the WTC events. A succinct way
of putting Fisk's "questions" in this matter is simply: "I am
ignorant on the subject, I don't know how the mechanics unfolded."
if he were to apply his formidable investigative skills to this
subject, then he might answer his own questions.
"It is better to remain silent and let people think you
are a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." --
Oscar Wilde (from memory, could be off a bit)" -Manuel Garcia
Jr.
Having called one of the world's top investigative journalists
a fool, in no uncertain terms, Garcia tries his hand at philosophy.
"What I have come to realize from my entire 9/11 experience,
and also from the tepid reception of my [BOGUS] "physics explanation"
articles (like New Orleans dikes) is that the public is basically
irrational. It is ultimately pointless to worry about
Bush and global warming and fascism and the rest, because they
will always win. It has to be this way, because people are
fully in the grip of fantasies they would rather die to preserve
than become aware of factual reality. " -Garcia
I'm not sure if Garcia tipped his hand here. Bush, fascism and
global warming will "always win," and so we shouldn't worry about
them? Who -- in the political realm -- would you expect to be
pushing ideas like that? If Garcia is being sarcastic or ironic,
I'm not feeling it.
"We are no better than the caricatures of natives in 1930s
jungle movies, hopping about in crazed deadly frenzy because
of our "ju-ju"."-Garcia
Garcia goes off the deep end about "ju-ju" for a while , attempting
to ridicule everyone who disagrees with his 9/11 view as some
kind of anachronistic, racist stereotype that I am at a loss to
explain. And, what the hell does that have to do with Fisk's valid
observations of the September 11th anomalies?
This approach of Garcia's is what makes him clearly a propagandist,
clearly an untrustworthy source, and clearly not worth the pixels
he bangs out.
"That is what 9/11 conspiracies are, our ju-ju. As crazy
a ju-ju as any of our fundamentalist religions (the non-fundamentalist
ones are just clubs)." -Garcia
Says the man who has no idea what in the hell he is talkng about.
When the Russian
Permanent Mission at the United Nations laid out Osama bin
Laden's entire operation in Afghanistan and his personal location,
in March of 2001, the Bush regime did nothing. Nothing whatsoever.
They reportedly entertained bin Laden at the American
miltiary hospital in Dubai, United Arab Emirates in July and
treated his kidneys. They then deliberately --conspicuously --
ignored numerous warnings, including the same scenario of suicide
skyjackings that moved
Bush out of his hotel at the G-8 summit (July 2001) to a safer,
undisclosed location. The story, however, right from Air Force
One around 10am on 9/11 was, "No warnings," and that this "attack"
was a complete surprise.
But, the Russians, who gave some of the gravest and most detailed
warnings before September 11th 2001, know better than Mr. Garcia
about what a "conspiracy" looks like.
The "conspiracy" does not start or end with the Manhattan buildings.
Conspiracy is a legal concept, not a physics concept. To make
Garcia's determination -- that because of his, let's say, exploration
into the collapses ot the Twin Towers and/or WTC7 -- that he can
completely rule out "conspiracy" by any and all parties in the
US government: THIS IS THE HEIGHT OF IRRATIONALITY. Arrogance,
hubris, or is it just a script that Garcia has accepted to read
to the "ju ju" mystified rubes who accept Counterpunch as an authority
on these matters? Garcia discredits himself. He fails to address
critics, and he resorts to the basest name calling and smear tactics.
Robert Fisk makes an interesting observation about "lead hijacker"
Mohammad Atta (unanswered by Garcia, of course), regarding Atta's
letter:
"...released by the CIA – mystified every Muslim
friend I know in the Middle East? Atta mentioned his family
– which no Muslim, however ill-taught, would be likely to include
in such a prayer. He reminds his comrades-in-murder to say the
first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from
it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder – let alone expect
the text of the 'Fajr' prayer to be included in Atta's letter."
Lest we forget, this was the Mohammad Atta who ate
pork, drank alcohol, snorted cocaine, paid strippers for lap dances,
gambled, and broke just about every rule there is for strict,
practicing Muslims. Yet, this Atta -- we are to believe --
was so deeply religious that he killed himself on 9/11 in the
service of radical Islam?
Two plus two equals five. Right, Garcia? (Just say "quantum"
and you're covered.)
In closing, I strongly disagree with both Garcia and Fisk's overall
conclusions about who was responsible for 9/11. Fisk doesn't believe
the US government could have been responsible in any way because
of their (non-sequitur) alleged incompetence in the Middle East.
I find that reasoning specious, and ignorant of numerous facts
that do point a finger at high level US operatives (Cheney, Rumsfeld,
Rice, Ashcroft, Tenet, FBI and CIA supervisors), among others.
Maybe there's hope for Fisk to open his eyes, now that he has
acknowledged the cover-up. The first step is acknowledging that
there is a problem.
###
Recent articles from Crimes
of the State Blog:
9/11 - CIA IG REPORT: A Little More Light Through the Cracks
The
9/11 B.S. Movement
Blatant Insanity = Intentional DIS-Information
Skeptics"
or Dupes? Skeptic Magazine Not So Skeptical of 9/11 Lies
ISI
and The Wire Transfers of 9/11
The
Limits of Christopher Ketcham's / Counterpunch's Israeli Hangout
9/11
Truth Has Already Won the Debate
No
George Monbiot, These Are the Facts of September 11th 2001
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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