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The Bigger Picture
4.20.02
McKinney Broke the Code of Silence--THANK GOD
-- 'Which is easier to believe: That the world's mightiest military
power, along with an unparalleled national security and intelligence
apparatus, failed to predict, interdict or even put up a decent fight
against the most deadly attack in this country's modern history? Or that
people in high places put out the word to stand down and let it happen?'
-- democraticunderground.com
>From Camelot To Crawford -
And The McKinney Problem
By Warren Pease
4-20-2
>From Camelot To Crawford
Which is easier to believe: That the laws of physics which have governed
objects in motion since the big bang were suspended for a few seconds on
a single afternoon in Dallas 39 years ago to allow a single, mediocre
marksman to kill a president? Or that there was another rifleman?
Last week Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D - Courage) broke the code. In
a radio interview, she asked the forbidden question concerning Sept. 11:
Why is the Bush administration stonewalling, and why has it asked Senate
investigators to back off? In short, is Bush Inc. trying to hide
something? If so, what did they know and when did they know it?
In a statement intended to clarify her statements and call off the dogs,
McKinney said, "We hold thorough public inquiries into rail disasters,
plane crashes and even natural disasters. Why then does the
administration remain steadfast in its opposition to an investigation
into the biggest terrorism attack in history?"
She added that international news organizations have been reporting for
months of indications that the Bush administration had received warnings
about the attacks and failed to act on them. Naturally, she's being
savaged by the right, the center and the left. Paul Begala, the latest
Democratic white knight to turn yellow from the toxic after-effects of
radical spine-ectomy, even did a ritual dive under the table on
Crossfire to symbolically distance himself from McKinney's comments. It
was a gesture so perfect as a metaphor for media harlotry that it was
impossible to see it without assuming that Paul gave co-host and
right-wing fop Tucker Carlson's thigh a couple of quick squeezes and
whispered salacious promises involving champagne and chains and mirrors
in a posh hotel later that evening.
The grassy knoll
Ari Fleischer, presidential spokesdork and owner of the second best
smirk in the western world, dismissed McKinney and those who share her
point of view as members of "the grassy knoll society." This refers to
an area flanking Elm Street in Dallas from which an alleged second
shooter opened fire on John F. Kennedy in 1963. Although many witnesses
to the assassination say they heard shots coming from the grassy knoll
-- even some Dallas cops charged in that direction looking for the
shooter -- the official story pins the blame on a single rifleman firing
from a sixth floor window of the old Texas Schoolbook Depository.
Ironically, the building now serves as a museum dedicated to advancing
the official story.
But here's the thing. Playing the "conspiracy nut" card is a
time-honored way to discredit the unofficial points of view.
Unfortunately, there are any number of nuts who do, in fact, give
serious conspiracy investigators a bad name. There are also a lot of
very sane profiteers, such as Art Bell, who are making a ton of money
peddling conspiracy theories. But just because these nuts and shysters
exist doesn't mean there are no conspiracies.
While most conspiracy theories -- notably those involving Area 51,
Roswell, or alien abduction -- are viewed by officialdom as merely bread
and circuses for today's gullible junk science consumers, those that
challenge important official truths are dealt with harshly.
One of those official truths is that conspiracies only happen in
far-away places and that, in America, politics is characterized by
reasonable actions taken by reasonable men elected to office by
reasonable voters. There are no conspiracies to remove elected officials
in America, and therefore any political assassinations must be planned
and carried out by single, mentally unbalanced individual with a grudge
and a fixation -- usually called the "one lone nut" theory.
Famous lone nuts include a bunch of guys with three names and another
with one name squared: Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, John Wilkes
Booth, Sirhan Sirhan.
The single-bullet theory
It 1963, it was deemed necessary to preserve the fiction that, in
America, conspiracies don't kill politicians, lone nuts do. And when the
facts in the Kennedy case failed to support this essential construct, a
new theory was invented to fit the facts.
So Arlen Specter, then a young lawyer working for the Warren Commission
and now a US Senator from Pennsylvania, devised a scenario so ridiculous
that it required complete suspension of the laws of physics, along with
even the barest modicum of logic and skepticism.
To fit the official story, Oswald had to have acted alone. But a man
named Abraham Zapruder had filmed the assassination with his home movie
camera and, in the process, established a precise time frame for the
sequence of events. Investigators proved it was physically impossible to
get off more than three shots with the alleged assassination weapon -- a
cheap, mail-order bolt-action rifle. The first shot missed and the third
blew Kennedy's head apart.
Therefore, to account for multiple wounds to the president and Texas
Governor John Connolly, seated just in front of Kennedy, the second shot
must have passed through Kennedy, hung motionless in the air for a bit,
zigged and zagged, entered Connolly's shoulder, bounced around his rib
cage, exited, zigged again, and lodged in his wrist, shattering bone and
cartilage. And after this miraculous journey, it finally showed up on a
stretcher at Parkland Hospital in nearly pristine condition. The "single
bullet" in Specter's single bullet theory. Needless to say, scores of
proficient marksmen have never been able to replicate this feat. Not
even close.
But that's not considered crazy; it's the official story signed by all
members of the Warren Commission and passed into the US historical
record, irreproducible results notwithstanding.
Not coincidentally, this same country relies on the trappings of
legality to explain the events of December 2000, which in any country
not called America would have been described by an American
administration and press as an obvious and shameful overthrow of the
democratic process, and would be officially "deplored."
And so when Cynthia McKinney attempts to force this very same fraudulent
administration to apply the same level of official scrutiny that would
attend any high-profile kidnapping, a missing child or yet another in
the endless series of multiple murder-suicides that plague a country
wracked by economic depression and infested with advanced weaponry --
when McKinney attempts to force an official inquiry into the events of
Sept. 11 that may ask uncomfortable questions of high-ranking officials
in various intelligence agencies and administration positions, Ari
Fleischer has the epic effrontery to, in essence, accuse her of being a
couple of cans short of a case.
This administration is nearly a million votes short of legitimacy and
its chief apologist has the unmitigated gall to suggest that anyone who
questions its official pronouncements a conspiracy nut.
Never mind that the only entity that seems to have benefited from 9-11
is the Bush administration itself, which was in its customary disarray
and tanking quickly in the polls by late August 2001. Now, capitalizing
on an unprecedented wave of hyper-patriotism fueled by the ceaseless
cheerleading of irrepressible bliss ninnies in mainstream media, Bush
has shamelessly used the corpses of about 3,000 American civilians as
springboards to advance his political agenda.
So is he the luckiest bastard ever to tread the American political
stage, or did he make his own luck? Who knows? And without the kind of
thorough investigation McKinney is calling for, those questions can
never be answered and the events surrounding Sept. 11 will simply pass
into American folk lore along with the grassy knoll.
Which is easier to believe: That the world's mightiest military power,
along with an unparalleled national security and intelligence apparatus,
failed to predict, interdict or even put up a decent fight against the
most deadly attack in this country's modern history? Or that people in
high places put out the word to stand down and let it happen?
The author would much rather there were no need for a Grassy Knoll
Society, and that we lived in a country in which government had earned
our trust. Sadly, this is George W. Bush's America. ___
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/04/18_camelot.html
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