A recent conversation on our family mailing list brought 911 Mysteries to my attention. (Watch part 1, part 2, and part 3 of the first installment, Demolitions.) The producers make a pretty compelling argument, although I could just be too willing to believe people in positions of power are capable of shocking feats of corruption.

The movie doesn’t make accusations, perhaps one of its strongest aspects. It just presents lots of evidence, about buildings and steel and fire and explosions and demolitions and insurance and investments and permits and planes and volcanoes and thermite and basements and the weekend before 9/11, then leaves it up to the viewer to ask the gut-wrenching impossible questions: What if…?

I had just finished reading Barbara Kingsolver‘s The Poisonwood Bible the week before 9/11. In the novel, some of the characters get caught up in a removal of a legitimate African government apparently orchestrated by the US since the African government wanted something out of line with American expectations. I remember thinking after 9/11 that I wouldn’t be surprised if it came out someday that somehow the US government was behind or aware of the tragedy. If some portion of our government is orchestrating coups in other countries and no one calls them on it loudly enough, it’s really only a matter of time before that portion tries the same scenario at home.

They must have felt so confident. Decades of pulling off the downfall of governments, of protecting the interests of the few at the cost of the many, of using popular mainstream media to tell a gullible public what to believe. After so much practice abroad, to so little consequence, it must have been easy.

May the truth, the unbiased, uncompromised, unadulterated truth, whatever it may be, be revealed.