Why Does Alexander Cockburn Hate Me? And why is he saying all those nasty things about me?

Alexander Cockburn thinks anybody who has the slightest doubt whether we know the whole truth about the 9/11 attack is nuts. Absolutely wacko. Too stupid to be allowed on this earth. Undoubtedly for some this is accurate. But there are also some real strangers on Alex’s side as well.

On the 9/11 anniversary Alex used his CounterPunch column to go after the 9/11 Doubters with a vengeance. Yesterday he was at it again. The interesting thing is that he never tells us why he accepts 9/11 as writ. Just that those who don’t accept it belong in the loony bin. He also spends an inordinate amount of time gnashing his teeth over attacks by those who don’t agree with him. In other words, he can attack but others had best not attack him.

Alex writes as if he doesn’t really see any shades of gray in 9/11 Doubters. All are of the same ilk. One person who just recently has begun to speak out as a 9/11 Doubter is Paul Craig Roberts. Alex has not bashed him for that yet, as far as I know. But he won’t publish any of his articles about 9/11. He has however published at least two dozen other pieces by Roberts this year. I wonder if Alex classifies Mr. Roberts as loony.

I found it interesting that in his anniversary piece he told us his brother Andrew, who’s writing a book on the DoD, had seen pictures of the plane crashing into the Pentagon. Alex didn’t say whether he had seen the pictures as well. Yesterday he told us Chuck Spinney told him there ARE pictures, both still and moving, of a plane hitting the Pentagon. Is Chuck all of a sudden a more reliable source than brother? Why no mention of brother Andrew in the second article? But my real question relates to the government keeping these pictures from us. Alex criticizes anybody who wonders how hijackers with minimal training were able to fly planes precisely where they wanted them to go. But he has no problem with government incompetence, at all levels, allowing this to happen. So how has such an incompetent government been able to keep us from seeing these pictures of a plane hitting the Pentagon?

We can only believe that Alex accepts the 9/11 Commission Report pretty much as gospel. But many of us feel it left a lot to be desired. Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst and frequent contributor to CounterPunch, called the Commission a Chimera- admittedly for different reasons than many 9/11 Doubters have trouble with the report.

And then we have Thomas Kean, head of the 9/11 Commission, defending the recent ABC miniseries as an accurate portrayal. This after two FBI agents hired as consultants quit, saying the series was highly inaccurate. And after most people with any common sense realized the series was nothing but a hatchet job on the Clinton Administration. (Now, Alex, don’t fly off the handle and say I’m defending Clinton. I’m not. Read only what I have written.) The whole thing does leave some room for doubt about the Commissioners and their Report.

As does Senator Mark Dayton’s hearings over the discrepancies between the timeline in the Commission Report and the timeline presented by NORAD. I know NORAD is one of the things Alex likes to rave on about. I’m not a supporter of Mark Dayton, one of my Senators, nor of the other fool we have as a US Senator here in Minnesota. But doing a comparison does have to make one wonder.

All in all, I can say only this. Alex, give it a rest. You definitely have a right to your opinion. But others, including some who may be almost as intelligent as you, have a right to their opinion as well.