"Treachery and all Ruinous Disorders"

A sermon by Dave Weissbard

delivered at

The Unitarian Universalist Church

Rockford, Illinois

05/28/06

Tomorrow is Memorial Day, a day that is allegedly set aside for remembrance of those who have died in our nation’s wars, defending America. While its past is shrouded in some confusion, we know that it was first officially proclaimed in May of 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. By his order, flowers were to be placed on the graves of soldiers in Arlington National Cemetery – interestingly, those of both Union and Confederate soldiers. The Southern states refused to acknowledge the holiday for years, seeing it as a Union celebration, but after World War I, when it explicitly was defined as honoring veterans of all wars, they joined in.

It is our belief that those who died in the military were, as I said, fighting to defend our nation – or at least believed they were. The problem is that with most wars, a retrospective look is different from a contemporaneous one. Our nation has engaged in scores of armed conflicts in its short history and the word “defense” has been stretched past the breaking point on many occasions. In fact, looking back, there has often been an element of deception involved in selling those wars to the American people. “Remember the Maine!,” the sinking of the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, the invasion of Korea, and the Gulf of Tonkin incident were all rather different from how they were originally portrayed to the American people through the media, although some believe it is unpatriotic to look too closely at the facts.

It is still true at this Memorial Day that a significant majority of the American people continues to believe that the present conflict in Iraq is related to the events of 9/11. While the administration, when directly confronted, acknowledges the lack of any link, it spent a great deal of time and energy creating the impression that there was one. The “Big Lie” technique does work. Say it often enough and people will believe it, no matter how counterintuitive it is.

I have, over the past years, suggested in newsletter columns and in passing in several sermons, that I am very suspicious of the official account of 9/11. You know that I have never been frightened away by controversy. I tend to call a spade a spade without fear for the consequences. There is one exception to that: I do not like to appear a fool. I prefer to be reasonably certain of my facts before I stick my neck out. That doesn’t mean I can’t be wrong, but at least I have a solid basis for my view. One of the things we are taught in school and by our media is to be suspicious at best, and in truth, dismissive of “conspiracy theories.” Only kooks believe in them. That can be a great defense against the truth.

I am now down to my last two sermons and I am not comfortable about concluding my ministerial career without having addressed the questions surrounding 9/11 more directly. It is not that I am confident of the facts. I am confident that there are strangely unanswered questions.

We know from world history that the great empires of humanity have consistently disintegrated because of failures from within, more than from external threats. The Greek word “hubris,” excessive pride, the conviction that they are destined to rule the planet, has humbled most of the empires, from that of Athens, and Rome, and Charlemagne, and Spain, and Britain, to, many would suggest, the modern American Empire.

There is no more explicit statement of American hubris than “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” the document published in September 2000 by the Project for a New American Century, which includes among its members, most of the people in positions of power in our present administration: Cheny, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bolton, and Scooter Libby. While its title refers to “Defenses,” the published plan is explicit that America, to maintain its standard of living, must create a military that is capable of dominating the whole planet, and in fact the space surrounding it. Only by total control can we, in their eyes, be safe. We must be prepared for preemptive action anywhere, anytime, in order to keep the rest of the world subservient to our interests.

The creators of that report, which is available for your reading on the internet,[ http://www.newamericancentury.org/defensenationalsecurity.htm] recognized that getting the American people to spend the kind of money necessary for the military would not be easy. They said:

The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.

Is it not strange that twelve months after that blueprint was issued, with its proponents in positions of great power, America experienced “a new Pearl Harbor.” At the ready, immediately after that tragic event, were military plans and a comprehensive bill that radically changed the way the government related to the citizens of our nation. And the people’s representatives rolled over, and acceded to the extremist demands. Since then, 9/11 has been used to justify: torture, spying on the American people, imprisonment of citizens without due process, and bloody wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – and people have swallowed it. A president who was in serious political trouble on 9/10 managed to remain in office for a second term (I am reluctant to say reelected because I do not believe that he was legitimately elected either time.)

In Shakespeare’s tragedy, King Lear, the Earl of Gloucester says to his illegitimate son, Edmund:

These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects: love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked ‘twixt son and father.,. . . We have seen the best of our time: machinations, hollowness, treachery and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves. Find out this villain, Edmund. It shall lose thee nothing; do it carefully.

I believe America, today is in much the state that England was under Lear. I believe that we are being plagued by “machinations, hollowness, treachery and all ruinous disorders” that could result in the destruction of our nation from within, and that, as citizens, we are charged with the responsibility of finding out the villains.

I want to return to the events of 9/11, not because they are the root cause of the problems, but because they are a symptom that has been used with such deftness as a tool to justify great evil.

We all know well the official story. On 9/11/01, a group of terrorists, under the direction of Osama bin Laden, commandeered four passenger planes and successfully used three of them as bombs: two to destroy the towers of the World Trade Center in New York, and one to fly into the Pentagon where it inflicted minor damage. The fourth was crashed before it could reach its target – the Capitol or the White House.

Most of us saw film of the planes hitting the world trade center - time and again. We know where we were at that moment which, I am sure, will long be seen as a key event in American history. I was in Albany, preparing for the burial of a close friend, Frank Cole, who once was a guest in this pulpit. The first tower was struck as we were leaving for the national cemetery in Saratoga, the second while we were en route. Frank was a pilot for the New York state Police and there was to be a “fly over” during the committal service, but all air traffic was grounded by that time, and that element did not happen. We had to modify the actual memorial service that night to take the events of the day into account. And I had to return to Rockford via Greyhound because planes were still not flying two days later.

There were immediate demands for an investigation into what had happened, but the administration didn’t want anyone looking too closely. Finally, the people appeared to have prevailed and a commission was appointed to investigate. It concluded that there had been great failures on the part of the CIA and the FBI. The director of the CIA resigned, and was then strangely awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor. How do you give such an award to someone who has admitted partial responsibility for such a tragedy? More importantly, the commission failed to acknowledge, much less respond to, many significant questions that had been raised. It has been viewed by people around the world as an administrative whitewash.

Some of the theories which people suspicious of the event have raised are extreme indeed. Popular Mechanics Magazine in March 2005, devoted a large article to “Debunking the Myths.” Many of the sixteen they debunked were hard for anyone to take seriously. The magazine ridiculed all those who have doubts on the basis of how crazy some challengers may be. It’s an ancient way of putting off serious challenges.

One of the questions that has been raised really puzzles me. On 9/11 itself, I questioned how the planes could have been flying around for so long without receiving serious attention – certainly the one that hit the Pentagon. It was my belief, as it is of many conspiracy theorists, that there is a standing order that the North American Air Defense command is routinely notified and scrambles jets to investigate when an airliner is off course for more than 10 minutes. I remember that as going back to the “hijacking to Cuba” days. Popular Mechanics alleges that because the transponders were turned off, no one knew where the planes were – they allege a “hole in the donut” in our radar. I remember how quickly the exact movements of the planes were reported on TV. It does not seem as if their locations were unknown. On the other hand, my former brother-in-law, who is an air traffic controller in Washington, tells me there is no notification policy for domestic flights. On the other hand, there appears to be an acknowledgment by NORAD of the scrambling of jets in many such cases in the months leading up to 9/11. I am puzzled.

It appears to be a reality that there are no other known cases of destruction of steel constructed buildings by fire anywhere in the world, and the World Trade Center was acknowledged to be one of the safest. We were told that jet fuel burns at a high enough temperature to melt steel, but in fact it does not. Popular Mechanics alleges that the jet fuel it was hot enough to compromise the integrity of the steel, and that it was added to by the burning of other materials in the building, and that resulted in the floors falling upon floor.

I have watched, as I trust many of you have, films of the controlled demolition of many buildings. The commentators have told us how difficult it is to get a building to fall straight down – that it is only possible through very skilled planting of explosives. Both towers collapsed straight down. It seems to defy the odds. And the speed with which the buildings collapsed does not seem compatible with the pressure theory.

No one has offered a credible explanation of why it was that the third building, at 7 World Trade Center, collapsed in a similar fashion later in the day.

Another strange reality is the speed with which the steel remnants of the towers were shipped out of this country before they could be analyzed to see what it was that had happened to them. This would never be permitted in a normal building collapse.

Firemen on the scene kept reporting that everything was under control, moments before the collapse. Were they really that dumb?

There are a lot of questions raised about the plane that allegedly crashed into the Pentagon, including how could such an incompetent pilot make such a manoeuver, how could such a large plane make such a small hole, and what happened to the debris. Again, my former brother-in-law claims to have seen pictures of the debris and that eye-witnesses saw a plane go into the Pentagon, but I have not found significant support for his claims. Indeed, the government did report finding DNA from all but one passenger, but how are we to know that it came from the Pentagon site, or that it really was found?

Many have been inspired by the story of the brave passengers who managed to take charge of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. There are a lot of questions about that one too, with many believing that this is one instance in which the air force actually did shoot down a plane to protect Washington.

Then there is the question of how a President of the United States, informed as George Bush was, of what had happened in New York, could go on reading stories to a grade school class in Florida. It is mind boggling. Actually, this is, to me, believable, but it is no tribute to the President.

There are a lot of questions raised about the happenings on 9/11, including the psychological impact of it being 911 - a distress call.

I don’t want to carry paranoia too far, but one of the best sites for exploring the questions has been 911truth.org. I have used it over the months, and even yesterday. Today, when one goes there, there is the message, “Account for domain 911truth.org has been suspended.” All the information is available elsewhere. [The site was back up Sunday evening. I highly recommend it.]

Many American citizens are not satisfied with the report of the commission. A Zogby Poll released this week shows the people split almost in half between those who believe there has been a coverup and those who are satisfied, with a small number undecided. Around the world, people are more skeptical than we are.

The number of contradictions in the official version of... 9/11 is so overwhelming that... it simply cannot be believed. Yet... the official version cannot be abandoned because the implication of rejecting it is far too disturbing: that we are subject to a government conspiracy of "X-Files" proportions and insidiousness.'

The implications are indeed disturbing. Many people who know or at least suspect the truth about 9/11 probably believe that revealing it would be so disturbing to the American psyche, the American form of government, and global stability that it is better to pretend to believe the official version. I would suggest, however, that any merit this argument may have had earlier has been overcome by more recent events and realizations. Far more devastating to the American psyche, the American form of government, and the world as a whole will be the continued rule of those who brought us 9/11, because the values reflected in that horrendous event have been reflected in the Bush administration’s lies to justify the attack on Iraq, its disregard for environmental science and the Bill of Rights, its criminal negligence both before and after Katrina, and now its apparent plan not only to weaponize space but also to authorize the use of nuclear weapons in a preemptive strike.

What are the conspiracy theorists suggesting the role of the government was in 9/11. The answer is that there is a range of explanations. Some believe that there are government people who literally organized the conspiracy, while others suggest that they knew about it and intentionally allowed it to happen so they could use it as “a new Pearl Harbor.”

To me, the biggest problem with the conspiracy theories is that I can’t imagine such a conspiracy being pulled off without a leak somewhere along the way – it is so enormous. At the same time, I know that a part of me does not want to believe it could be possible, for all the reasons that Griffin outlined. But I have to face the questions, and to ask you to face the questions for the reasons he cited.

I am not confident that I know what went on on 9/11. I am confident that I do not know, and that I need to know more than I do. To the fundamental question, “Do I really believe that people in the administration could even permit such an event to happen if they knew about it, much less encourage it, my honest answer is that believing it requires no strain. I believe we are being led by people who consider American citizens expendable for a “greater cause,” which is American domination of the world economy.

They say: We have given our lives but until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.

They say, Our deaths are not ours; they are yours; they will mean what you make them.

They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for anything we cannot say; it is you who must say this.

Those who died for our country did so with a vision of what America is supposed to be. We honor them best by doing what we can to see to it that America becomes what it is supposed to be.