A very compelling article from Seattle’s The Stranger (via Utne) on the 9 / 11 Truth Movement six years after WTC:

It’s inaccurate to refer to Truthers as conspiracy theorists because, as they’re quick to point out, many of them don’t have a theory. They only have questions. Some of them believe that the government is guilty of knowing about the attacks and simply allowing them to happen, others believe that the planes were remote-­controlled and no passengers died in the attacks, and still others believe that the Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile and no plane was involved at all. Many Truthers believe that Flight 93 couldn’t have crashed in Pennsylvania since the crash site is only 6 feet wide by 20 feet long. A radical few even claim that no planes struck the Twin Towers. The debate within the movement is intense and not always polite; some Truthers believe that denying that hundreds of air passengers died on September 11 is disrespectful and stupid.

And although a 2006 Scripps poll found that 36% of Americans believe the government was somehow responsible for 9 /11, getting that 36% to agree on exactly what this means has gotten perhaps more difficult than ever. What do you believe?

Flipping through the channels yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised that MSNBC was replaying their live coverage of 9/11 in it’s entirety, from the moment the news first broke that the first plane had hit the World Trade Center. Talk about riveting television! Heroes ain’t got nothing on watching planes fly into buildings and hearing Matt Lauer and Katie Couric try to assume a newsy tone, at least until they could wake up Tom Brokaw and get him down there to handle business. I don’t really know to what the occasion this replay was owed, since the 6th Anniversary of the event had passed some days before, and according to the TV Guide there was supposed to be some show about fat people, but nevertheless I was pretty into it, which I guess might sound kind of fucked up, but whatever. It was interesting to see the events unfold in hindsight, with six years worth of conspiracy theorizing and Loose Change/Zeitgeist watching behind me. Not saying that I believe in any of that stuff, but I’m DEFINITELY not saying that I don’t, yaddidimean?

To that end, today brings another tiny chip away from that much-derided “official” explanation for the happenings of that fateful day, in the form of pilot Russ Wittenberg, who flew over 100 combat missions in Vietnam, sat in the cockpit for Pan Am and United for over 30 years, and previously flew two of the actual airplanes that were allegedly hijacked on 9/11 , United Airlines Flight 175 & 93. According to Wittenberg:

I don’t believe it’s possible for… a so-called terrorist to train on a 172, then jump in a cockpit of a 757-767 class cockpit, and vertical navigate the aircraft, lateral navigate the aircraft, and fly the airplane at speeds exceeding it’s design limit speed by well over 100 knots, make high-speed high-banked turns,.. pulling probably 5, 6, 7 G’s… I couldn’t do it and I’m absolutely positive they couldn’t do it.”