Think about Columbine. Those kids had two guns apiece, and a whole bunch of homemade bombs, but the bombs didn't kill anybody.

Well, I was using fire as a metaphor. I'm not just talking about civil violence that uses actual fire, or about cities that are literally made of wood. For "fire," read, "riots, bombings, assassination attempts, troops firing into crowds," and the whole ugly list. This is not a problem that can be solved by building a brick house.

The violence against the civil rights movement also consumed some of the segregationists. Ask George Wallace. The violence might not have been commensurate with the pro-segregationist violence, but it existed, and was unpredictable in its targets.

And the "hecklers" don't come off as thuggish, simply as cranky and unlikeable. That they presume the press came in at random, without permission, is pretty naive.

The charges that the petition wants investigated are that Bush & Cheney may have specifically allowed the attacks, meaning a) they had foreknowledge of such an attack on such a day and b) they deliberately did not move to stop said attack once it was underway. Is that seriously your position?

No accusation of abetting there. No sirree.

Is that a question about negligence? Or is that a question about willing participation?

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041026093059633

If you want to read it, you'll see that we're not talking about claims of mere negligence. The petition doesn't claim that Bush neglected the warning about al-Qaeda. It implies that he knew that 9/11 would happen on Septmeber 11, that the government knew which hijackers would do it, that they covered for the planes, that they wired money to Mohammed Atta.

Here are some of the questions the petition demands be investigated:

# Why were the extensive missile batteries and air defenses reportedly deployed around the Pentagon not activated during the attack?

# Why haven't authorities in the U.S. and abroad published the results of multiple investigations into trading that strongly suggested foreknowledge of specific details of the 9/11 attacks, resulting in tens of millions of dollars of traceable gains?

# How could Flight 77, which reportedly hit the Pentagon, have flown back towards Washington D.C. for 40 minutes without being detected by the FAA's radar or the even superior radar possessed by the US military?

# What happened to the over 20 documented warnings given our government by 14 foreign intelligence agencies or heads of state?

# Why did the Bush administration cover up the fact that the head of the Pakistani intelligence agency was in Washington the week of 9/11 and reportedly had $100,000 wired to Mohamed Atta, considered the ringleader of the hijackers?

So, again, you're creating a different petition and a different Van Jones.

-faked moon landing
-CIA invented crack
-federal government created AIDS in lab
-JFK murdered by LBJ, Vince Foster murdered by HRC
-Paul McCartney dead since 1967, album covers reveal

Some theories that deserve investigation:

-Cheney's rush to war, with propaganda and lies
-illegal government surveillance of citizens
-politicization of the Justice Department
-failure and malfeasance, rather than deliberate planning, before and after 9/11
-GOP voter suppression tactics

What's the difference between the first list and the second? The second list is full of issues that can actually be investigated, questions raised by real positive evidence. We know enough to know there are real questions.

The first list is strictly non-evidentiary. Every claim is based on secret evidence that exists somewhere, or on urban legend, or on nothing at all.

And indeed, the "inside job" fantasy actually covers up the Bush's real malfeasance. Making the question about whether or not the Pentagon planned 9/11 sets them up for exoneration, and obscures questions about why they responded so poorly and irrationally.

Yes, we have a number of elected officials who dabble in birtherism. They have no business holding elected office, and the sooner we drive them out the better. Sinking to their level will neither help defeat them or help the country.