National Columnist Leonard Pitts Joins the long list of government apologists and shameless shills with his latest column casting those who would have the temerity to question the "official record" as nothing more than "rote rejectionist" incapable (or perhaps unworthy) of "honest debate".

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Posted on Fri, Sep. 15, 2006
IN MY OPINION

Just the facts . . . at least as we know them

BY LEONARD PITTS JR.
lpitts@MiamiHerald.com

I beg your pardon.

Apparently I made a major error of fact in a recent column. It turns out, contrary to what I wrote, there never was a Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States. It wasn't hijacked airliners that brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Nor did any airplane plow into the Pentagon. Nor did United Flight 93 come to Earth in a field in Shanksville, Pa. Rather, this tragedy was staged by the U.S. government in order to dupe the nation into an oil war in the Middle East.

Or at least so I am told by a surprising plurality of readers. Add to that Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela and renowned loose cannon, who said in a speech Tuesday it's possible the U.S. government had a hand in attacking itself on Sept. 11.

Diana Johnstone:

I found your posting to be highly persuasive in general for most people, whom I'm sure you're happy to serve. Yet your easy-ish dismissal of the inside possibilities (nay, probabilities) seems based on a rather innocent if not wholly ignorant understanding of how things can and often DO work. And in this case, 9/11, a far better explanation is reached beyond the box-cutter story by FIRST knowing possibility, and calculating the most likely probability. Come-on, you've heard this before.

I do not know who pulled-off "9/11", however the popular narrative happily stoked by Official-sounding reports and endless suggestions that it was 'solely the act of an outside aggressor, hell bent on the destruction of our freedoms', strains credulity and ultimately, believability. That's why every article like yours that continues to belie facts in-search of truth, makes me want to puke.

I certainly feel that my freedoms are currently suffering direct and very personal attacks, however old Binny and his boys could NEVER do what this domestic gang has been extraordinarily successful at by playing upon the whipped up fears of my more innocent and less cynical brethren citizenry.

This post is cross-posted at indoctriNATION.

I received an email earlier today from a reader suggesting that I balance TheFilter.ca’s coverage of 9/11 with an Alex Cockburn article posted to Znet called “The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts: How They Let the Guilty Parties of 9/11 Slip Off the Hook”

I thought I would post my response, simply because it expresses some of the frustration I’ve had over the last week with much of the alternative media’s coverage of the fifth anniversary of 9/11.

Thanks for your interest in the site, and your story suggestion.

I had actually read Cockburn’s article when it was put up on Counterpunch, and some similar pieces from other Big Alternative sites, and decided to pass on posting them. Reading Cockburn’s again, I felt the same way I did about it the first time around: disappointed, but not surprised.

The article is one of the most hollow, dishonest outbursts that I’ve seen in a long time on an alternative news site and frankly, it really knocks Counterpunch, Znet, and the Nation (who also published it), down a few pegs on the integrity board.