What's A Blogger To Do?
Introducing Jeff Wells and Rigorous Intuition
By Winter Patriot on 9/11/2005, 1:25am PT  

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Don't look now, but it's September 11th. Four years on, and still we have nothing. No answers. No accountability. No truth. No justice. Just two horrible and totally unnecessary wars, many thousands of people dead, many more thousands of people maimed, our country --- indeed the whole world --- transformed in many ways, none of which seem to be for the better, and nothing of value. Nothing of any value at all.

What's a blogger to do?

I don't know. I honestly do not know. But it's not for lack of trying. I have sat here for hours, trying to write something that would make sense of it all. But I can't --- I just can't. Because it doesn't make any sense, unless you look at it from the proper angle. And I can't seem to get the right angle on it at the moment.

Fortunately, I know somebody who looks at things from an angle I can't quite reach. Permit me to introduce Jeff Wells, author of the excellent blog Rigorous Intuition.

In Jeff's words,

We're outside the gate, thank God. And if we want to do good work, that's where we'll stay. Because the walls need to be breached, and the gate that beckons us to normalcy is part of the problem.

If you don't read anything else today, please spend a few minutes with Jeff's post of August 2004, "The Coincidence Theorist's Guide to 9/11". It starts like this:

That governments have permitted terrorist acts against their own people, and have even themselves been perpetrators in order to find strategic advantage is quite likely true, but this is the United States we're talking about.

That intelligence agencies, financiers, terrorists and narco-criminals have a long history together is well established, but the Nugan Hand Bank, BCCI, Banco Ambrosiano, the P2 Lodge, the CIA/Mafia anti-Castro/Kennedy alliance, Iran/Contra and the rest were a long time ago, so there's no need to rehash all that. That was then, this is now!

That Jonathan Bush's Riggs Bank has been found guilty of laundering terrorist funds and fined a US-record $25 million must embarrass his nephew George, but it's still no justification for leaping to paranoid conclusions.

That George Bush's brother Marvin sat on the board of the Kuwaiti-owned company which provided electronic security to the World Trade Centre, Dulles Airport and United Airlines means nothing more than you must admit those Bush boys have done alright for themselves.

That George Bush found success as a businessman only after the investment of Osama's brother Salem and reputed al Qaeda financier Khalid bin Mahfouz is just one of those things - one of those crazy things.

That Osama bin Laden is known to have been an asset of US foreign policy in no way implies he still is.

That al Qaeda was active in the Balkan conflict, fighting on the same side as the US as recently as 1999, while the US protected its cells, is merely one of history's little aberrations.

The claims of Michael Springman, State Department veteran of the Jeddah visa bureau, that the CIA ran the office and issued visas to al Qaeda members so they could receive training in the United States, sound like the sour grapes of someone who was fired for making such wild accusations.

That one of George Bush's first acts as President, in January 2001, was to end the two-year deployment of attack submarines which were positioned within striking distance of al Qaeda's Afghanistan camps, even as the group's guilt for the Cole bombing was established, proves that a transition from one administration to the next is never an easy task.

Of course everyone is welcome to his or her own opinion.

My opinion is that you should read the entire piece.

And then you should read as much about 9/11 from Jeff Wells as you can.

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