y name is Eric, and I am a truther. I have been a truther for eight years. The moment tye second plane made impact. I asked myself (what happened)? A harmless question. I think everyone asked it to themselves at some point that day. My initial guess was that it was domestic terrorists-- ex-soldiers like McVeigh. I turned out to be wrong. You see, I am a truther that believes the attacks were the work of Al Qaeda. Oddly, there is interesting backstory to Al Qaeda. In the travel diary of Marco Polo, the narrator recounts the legend of the Old Man of the Mountain. The mountain was called Alamut, and the Old Man was a descendent of Saladin. Now, the Old Man trained assassins, who were orphan boys brought to Alamut and brainwashed. They were given hashish (assassin being derived from hashishim). In their drugged state they were seduced by several women and given a night of pleasure barely imaginable. The next day, when the srugs wore off, the boys were convinced that they had gone to heaven... And Allag had revealed to them that if they fight and die for Him they would be rewarded with 72 cirgins. So Al Qaeda has a mythic heritage rooted in the Crusades. I have no problem believing the official story. We trained and armed a bunch of folklore-infested exfremists who planned, funded, and executed the attack. Cool. Clinton leaves office specifically warning about the threat of Al Qaeda. Dick Clark cites Al Qaeda and cyberterrorism as the two gravest threats to national security. A PEB specifically states that Bin Laden is determined to attack. The possibility of planes being used as missiles is actively theorized upon in war games. Yet it happened in a manner where our national defense's pants were completely down. Don't believe me. Look it up in the commission report. Now, I am only making points. I am not creating an alternative theory. That is the difference among truthers. I want the truth. I have no interest in creating truth wholecloth. I write fiction, but I live real. The fact that I am tied together with hologram kooks is insulting. It is red-baiting, pure and simple. The fact is that warnings were ignored and profits were made. The PATRIOT act passed with one dissenting Senate voice... And we went to war. Twice. With daisy cutters, shock and awe, and not a single fucking thing to show for it. Did the government let it happen? No. I think that's absurd. But what is more troublng is the threat was ignored but the attack was exploited. It is that through laziness and ideology a cabal of neoconservative theoreticians were allowed to lay down a welcome mat for world war three by actively courting risk. And that clear avenues of investigation have been cleared in favor of narrowing the guilt to Al Qaeda. Ignore the Saudi connection. Ignore the Egyptian connection. Overall to ignore the collusion between our oil interests abroad funding the terror threat and insurgency that plagues us today. That is what makes me a truther. Our oil and gas appetite has blinded us to the bedfellows we have made. But it is far better to believe a few fanatics hate us for our freedoms than to recognized the compromising situation we are placed in. So yes, the truth of 9/11 has been sanitized, in my humble opinion. I may be heading to Aghanistan in a year or so. The military theory is that my job can help bribe farmers into growing wheat instead of poppies. So after the agriculture lobbyists come the bankers. Once the drug money is stifled, the insurgency will weaken and make way for the Caspian pipeline. Oil wealth grows while governments around the worls grow ijcreasingly oppressive. Then the next attack will occur and (surprise!) no one will be looking. Because our eyes are stuck on the prize.