Time for 9/11 To Grow Up

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It's Time To Stop Reading Us Children Stories On 9/11

9/11 turns 21 on Sunday. It’s finally an adult, and should be treated like one. As should the American people. Tell us the truth!

I never believed it was an “inside job,” whatever that means.

But, Americans have never been told the entire story. Only just enough information to scare us into a 20 year global war on terror that cost even more American lives, hundreds of thousands of civilian lives around the world and trillions of dollars.

Given that conspiracy theories only mushroom in the dark, there is a direct line between the unanswered questions surrounding 9/11 and the rise of Q-anon. When government invents the truth, its citizens start getting inventive with it as well.

Democracies demand the truth, no matter how shameful.

Osama bin Laden, his number two, Ayman al-Zawahri, and the American people were cheated of a public trial after President Obama killed bin Laden in 2011 and President Biden killed Ayman al-Zawahri last month. I refuse to believe those two couldn’t have easily been brought in alive just like Eichmann. But trials are messy opportunities for government secrets to be revealed.

Putting bin Laden and al-Zawahri on trial would have answered:

• Just how close the Bin Ladens were to the Bush family.

• How is it that every single jet was grounded on 9/11 except for the ones flying Osama bin Laden’s relatives back to Saudi Arabia?

• What’s the overlap between Saudi financing of American businesses and Saudi financing of al-Queda?

Obviously, our government never wanted those answers, which is why it continues to delay anything resembling a trial for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, reportedly al-Qaida’s number three leader. He was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on March 1, 2003 and has been sitting in GITMO for nineteen years.

There are a lot of truths we could learn from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. The biggest truth being America did not need to invade Iraq or Afghanistan to find the culprits behind 9/11.

The Pentagon claims Mohammed is finally going on trial this month. I doubt that’s the truth.

If we are to believe what we’ve been told, Mohammed “masterminded” all of 9/11 from soup to hiring the nuts.

We’re also told he masterminded the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center killing six and the 2002 nightclub explosion in Bali killing 202.

I have no reason to doubt that he’s guilty. I also have no reason to doubt that he’s innocent. That’s how it works here in America. There’s been no trial.

Obviously this guy could tell us a lot. Things like the Taliban wanted to turn bin Laden over to America right after 9/11, but America wanted a global war on terror.

That is why after nearly two decades in custody, there’s still no trial for Mohammed, and I doubt there ever will be one.

Given all we sacrificed after 9/11, Americans deserve to know why? For whom? But that would require actual trials of so called enemy combatants who would reveal there was absolutely no need for a global war on terror. All those lives, all that treasure could have been used to fix our roads, our schools, provide free health care and meals to every single American instead.

Those are the truths Americans deserve to know.

Upon taking office in 2009, President Obama promised to put Mohammed on trial in a Manhattan federal courtroom. But the Bush administration made that impossible. Mohammed’s case would immediately get thrown out.

You see, after Mohammed was captured in 2003, Liz Cheney’s dad made the CIA transfer him to several “extraordinary rendition sites” where governments like Syria have no problem ignoring the Geneva Conventions and torturing people. Needless to say, he was also denied habeas corpus.

Mohammed was then brought to GITMO where our CIA waterboarded him 183 times. Since he was tortured, he could no longer be tried in a federal courtroom. The case would get thrown out immediately.

(By the way, a senate investigation later concluded that all that torture failed to reveal one single shred of valuable intelligence. But we did get to torture him, so there’s that.)

What do you do with Mohammed?

Even the Bush administration knew that because of international as well as American law regarding due process it was impossible to try him.

So what does a country that proudly brands itself as a nation of laws do when it can no longer obey them? Write new ones!

George W. Bush passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which conveniently allowed our military to hold its own trials, called “military commissions,” which wouldn’t get all hung up on those pesky U.N. resolutions forbidding torture and insisting on habeas corpus.

I mean, who still obeys the Geneva Conventions? That’s so lessons from Nazi Germany!

George W. Bush left office and Obama, the former professor of constitutional law, quickly realized Mohammed couldn’t stand trial in a real court of law. He had to break his promise.

So, Obama’s Justice Department fed us some nonsense about it not being safe to hold the trial in Manhattan, and Mohammed would stay in GITMO to stand trial before our military. You know, the same people who tortured him. Kind of like a fair and open trial except for the “fair” and “open” part.

Two presidents later, Mohammed’s military commission trial, after many delays, is scheduled for later this month.

Mohammed’s attorneys will insist that because his confessions were coerced through torture they are not admissible in a court of law.

The Prosecution will insist that while yes, he had been tortured, the only confessions they will enter into evidence are the ones obtained through what they call their “clean team interrogations.”

Nice. There were two types of interrogations. One was “dirty,” the other was “clean.” Your tax dollars paid for both as well as all that propaganda we spread convincing the world, and ourselves, that Americans are a civilized people.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is 58. In a normal court of law a judge would free him citing the government’s denial of due process and, of course, the waterboarding.

I doubt there will ever be a “military commissions” trial.

I also doubt he will ever go free.

If he wasn’t a terrorist when we caught him two decades ago, he’s certainly going to be one if we free him.

Here’s a novel idea. Instead of a global war on terror, our government can keep us safe by telling the truth.