Compared to some people, I was lucky: I wasn’t injured. I kept my job. I got home easily. But compared to the vast majority of Americans, I am a victim. I had glass in my hair. I lost a year’s work, and some irreplaceable items. My family went crazy for a while. My kid had nightmares. You explain to a five-year-old why (in his words) “They crashed into the building on purpose?” or reply to “I thought pilots were good people”.

But I am a victim another way.

I share part of this other victimhood with all Americans. I am a victim, not of terror, but of the so-called ‘war on terror’. I am a victim of a government that is out-of-control. I am a victim of crushing national debt. I am a victim because I live in a country that went from having the sympathy of the world to one that is a pariah, an outcast among nations, a rogue state. I am a victim because I now have to ‘watch what I say’. I am a victim because my rights are violated, not by some nebulous and inimical group of terrorists, but by my own government.

They do not speak for me.

But in another way, I do not share this other victimhood. My victimhood is being abused.

I have watched for years as my government – our government – has whittled away my rights, stolen my freedoms, and wrecked the constitution in the name of a false security. I have watched and watched and watched, as they have used my name – my victimhood – to make me a victim once again.

They do not speak for me

So, I will post this diary, and I will take action. I will volunteer. I will give money. I will make a difference. This is MY country, this is MY victimhood, and I will not have it abused. I am no martyr; I have no death wish; I hope that no terrorist ever strikes anywhere again. But the founders of this country knew what they were doing. They wanted freedom. They DEMANDED freedom. They put their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor on the line to win freedom. And now it is reduced to this.

But it is worse even than this; it would be one thing to pay too heavy a price to increase our safety. But we have paid the price for nothing. We have arrested thousands of people, and let them go. We have spied on our own citizens, and found out nothing. We have allied ourselves with torturers, and yet, we are not safe. Indeed, by making our enemies unite, we have made ourselves weaker, and our enemies stronger.

This victim demands an end to the ‘war on terror’ that is really a war on America. Impeach the president.

About Peter Flom

Peter Flom received his Ph.D. in Psychometrics in 1999 from Fordham University, where he was a Presidential fellow. He was a teaching assistant and later an adjunct professor while in graduate school, and also consulted with students who were writing their dissertations. Since graduating he has continued to consult with Ph.D. candidates in the social sciences, and has assisted in writing grant applications in the fields of drug abuse and HIV prevention. He is first author on four papers, and co-author on numerous others. He was in the World Trade Center in 2001 when the planes impacted.

Originally printed in DailyKos.

In December, 2001, I reluctantly went to Ground Zero, to the pile of debris, the hole in the ground, the shattered remnants of buildings that had been the World Trade Center complex in downtown Manhattan. As so many others had already done, I inhaled the dusty air, some of which may have been human once.

I stood on the gallery of a church, leaning against one of its columns, staring aghast at the immensity of the devastation. Rubble. Piles of rubble. Behind makeshift fences and barriers. Designed to keep out a steady stream of the curious and the mournful.

I looked skyward, from ground level up to the top of a faceless building, exterior walls gone, the world privy to the angle of every desk and chair and file cabinet in the now wall-less, fully ventilated window offices. Huge loosely hung sheets of black tarp fell a hundred stories from roofline to sidewalk, and running high across the that roofline, touching the clear blue sky above, was a multi-story American flag.

I remembered so many times before,walking across the plaza, riding the elevator to Windows on the World, dining with my mother as the panorama of the Big Apple glittered around us. Seemed like yesterday.

I was oblivious to the actual event as it happened; I was thousands of miles away, in another hemisphere, on a slick, mossy corduroy path, photographing bromeliads, bamboo, palms and flowers in 110 degree Amazon heat. No phone. TV. Radio. Just a guide, a few fellow travelers, a National Geographic photographer filming birds, native cooks preparing tropical delicacies like tiger catfish, and the chatter of colorful noisy macaws. I was soaked to the skin with sweat, reveling in the majesty of the towering rainforest.

In my photographic journal, I made a haunting notation: 9-11-01. Pink flower. 9 a.m. In the presence of such exquisite beauty, I was oblivious to the horror unfolding to the rest of the world.

It was only a day later, when a supply boat made an unscheduled stop at our camp, that I learned what happened. The sketchiest of details. Almost no information at all. By lantern light, beneath a thatched roof with the night sounds of the jungle around us, a small group of us, from the USA, England, Germany and Australia, scanned the pictorial front page of a damp Peruvian paper. Everything in the Amazon was damp.

La Guerra. The headline spread from edge to edge. Big block letters. Superimposed over a picture of President Bush flanked by the burning, smoke-spewing towers. Long on image; short on detail, and none of us fluent in Spanish. Our guide and a teacher helped translate the meager news. As far as we knew, a war had started. We were ahead of ourselves. As we slowly comprehended the enormity of it all, firefighters (above right) were deep in debris, trying to save lives, sometimes at the expense of their own. I sat in the rainforest and wrote.

“We still have no information on the terrorism. It is as if we are in a microcosm, a sanctuary cut off from the world. Our sanctuary is also our oasis from the horror… there is great peace here, and and expectation to live simply and simply live. We could learn much from these old but far from simple people. This Amazon has much to teach us, and is a great leveler.”

– Journal entry, 9-16-01

It was only at the end of the week, at the Chavez Airport in Lima, that we learned about the true enormity of death and destruction. Horror-stricken, my companion and I joined thousands of tourists now calling the airport concourse home. For days. Cancelled flights, poor communications, worried relatives. Army tanks outside the plate glass windows, flags at half mast, soldiers in heavy boots marching back and forth through the airport with assault weapons at the ready. American Airlines in frazzled disarray. We huddled in shadowy corners, sleeping on marble floors, piled up against each other and our luggage (above left). Not knowing — anything.

There were no newspapers or magazines; TVs had been removed. A single computer in a small phone booth area could be rented for 30 American cents an hour; we collected messages and addresses, booked the computer for an hour at a time, and held the places in line for those who made the necessary internet connections and bulk-emailed messages for everyone else. Mass e-mailings. Short messages. “What’s happening” and “We are okay, just stranded.”

To this day, despite having made the pilgrimage to the Mecca of ground zero, I still feel a disconnect from the events of that week. I always will, I guess. I didn’t live through it, was not saturated with the immediacy of news coverage, didn’t have a clue of its enormity.

I was moving in a different world, an isolated world of peace, beauty, spirituality and the most basic living, in tandem with natives who still travel hundreds of miles over rivers in dugouts just to see a single doctor in a ramshackle shed or a shaman with a healing garden. A different world. One without such weapons of mass destruction.

I don’t diminish what happened in New York City; not by any means. There are no words that will ever completely describe it. The absolute horror of it.

But today, even as many Americans mourn, even as many question some of the events of that day, even as we fight the wrong enemy in the wrong country while the true instigators remain untouched and taunting us, even as our soldiers continue to die in this “retaliatory” fight based on untruths, we must take a moment to mourn. A moment of silence. Not just for the dead in the towers. But the dead in Iraq — women, children, elderly, innocents and our soldiers. A moment of silence to think about what the right response is, or should be.

The numbers didn’t stop with the 3000 who died at Ground Zero.

The numbers continue to surge past 3,774 (as of 7 p.m. 9/10/07) U.S. soldiers killed and the hundreds of coalition troops who have died.

The number of innocents slaughtered in Iraq can be measured in the tens of thousands and grows day by day.

The number of people whose hearts, minds and spirits and bodies are warped and twisted by war escalates; physical and mental trauma doesn’t recognize borders and number too many.

So we must take a moment to mourn.

And then we must move on.

For there are decisions to be made, political and social battles to be fought, and a country or two and thousands of people to be mended. We have been fiscally and emotionally and politically bankrupted by the fallout from those first few hours of what should have been an ordinary workday on September 11.

My mother, in one of our many discussions about everything and anything some ten years before she died, once said of her own death, “Mourn as you must, but honor me most by continuing to live and be the best that you can be.”

Yes, we need to think about that. And what that “best” might be. And move on to achieve it.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s program, The fifth estate took a look at the lies and manipulations which lead to the invasion of Iraq and the failure of the media to question the lies which they were being fed by this administration. They point out the many simularities between what we heard then about Iraq and what we are hearing from the administration about Iran. This program first aired on March 7th 2007.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Since the US-led invasion four years ago, the fifth estate has covered Iraq and the war on terror from virtually every angle–the military, media, intelligence, politics–revealing aspects of the story that you didn’t find anywhere else. Now, as the White House warns about the latest threat in the region, this time from Iran, it’s worthwhile looking back to examine the deception, suspect intelligence, even lies, that convinced the world of the rightness of targeting Saddam Hussein.

The political decisions behind the invasion

The Lies That Led To War is drawn from these stories: In 2003’s The Forgotten People, the fifth estate examined the human rights arguments used to make a case for war. We looked at the sale of technology by the US to Iraq during the 1980’s despite the fact that this equipment could be, and was used eventually, in military operations by Saddam Hussein against Kurdish civilians. After the gassing of the Kurds in 1988, American business with Iraq actually increased.

In Act of Faith which aired that same year, the fifth estate examined how George Bush and Tony Blair struck a deal that would lead to the invasion of Iraq. It was a deal struck while UN diplomats worked to avert conflict in the weeks and months leading up to March 19, 2003.

In the widely acclaimed Conspiracy Theories and the Unauthorized Biography of Dick Cheney, which aired in 2003 and 2004 respectively, we looked at intelligence failures leading up to 9/11, Dick Cheney’s power within the White House and his Halliburton connections, as well as the links between the Bush family, the Saudi Royal family and the Bin Ladens.

Selling the war in Iraq

In 2005’s Sticks and Stones, we turned our attention to the American media and how they covered the ongoing war in Iraq, public dissent, as well as the increasingly hostile tone between left and right in American discourse.

Now, The Lies That Led To War provides context to the events of the previous six years, showing how political, diplomatic, media spin – which sometimes crossed the line into outright lies – have been used by the those in power to further their own agendas.

Since September 11th there have been those who say that what we actually saw, may not have been what we thought. Videos on this subject have been in the top 100 videos on Google video for a long time. Well after a new one recently appeared in to the top 100 videos, I felt that perhaps we should all take a look. I make no judgments on the content of these videos. I don’t advocate for them or against them, consider this simply an exercise in constructive reasoning.

9/11 Loose Change Second Edition

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Loose Change 2nd Edition” is the follow-up to the most provocative 9-11 documentary on the market today.

This film shows direct connection between the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the United States government.

Evidence is derived from news footage, scientific fact, and most important, Americans who suffered through that tragic day.

9/11 Mysteries (Full Length, High Quality)

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is a brand new public domain 9/11 Truth documentary about the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center complex.

Countdown’s Keith Olbermann gave a stirring ‘Special Commentary’ on 9/11, and the effect that it has had on Americans, and most especially the effect it’s leaders actions have had on the very fabric of our society.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jon Stewart on the ABC docudrama, The Path to 9/11

Click here to view the embedded video.

Protecting your family

Click here to view the embedded video.

Path to 9/11, a largely fictional account which is being portrayed as a dramatized documentary(docudrama), is nothing more than an lame attempt by one of the largest corporations in the United States to sway public opinion and voters, in favor of a one political party, to the detriment of another, all to influence the outcome of an election. It’s a more ambitious attempt, to do what the so called “Swift boat Veterans for Truth”, and Sinclair Broadcasting, did to John Kerry in 2004.

What’s this all about?

ABC/Disney plans to memorialize the fifth anniversary of 9/11 with a fictional docudrama called “The Path to 9/11″. Written by an avowed right-wing activist, this work of fiction directly contradicts the accepted record of the 9/11 Commission Report. President Clinton and former administration officials were denied an advance copy; Rush Limbaugh and obscure right-wing bloggers saw it last week. ABC plans to distribute this docudrama to 100,000 educators across the country. We’ve set up this site to encourage ABC to change its strategy.

One key scene shows Bill Clinton’s National Security advisor Sandy Berger supposedly refusing to order the CIA to take out bin Laden, a purely fictional event that has been repeatedly discredited, most recently by terrorism expert Richard Clarke.

Some of the interesting things which were unsurprisingly left out or glossed over, President Bush and the pet goat (often mistakenly called my pet goat) situation for one:

The official story is that Bush was meeting with a group of pre-schoolers when he was informed of the attack on the World Trade Center and quickly left the room. Not quite right, says Moore. [The official story has changed since the footage of Bush reading to the children has been published.] Bush learned of the first attack before entering the school, ‘decided to go ahead with his photo op,’ and began to read My Pet Goat to the students. Informed of the second attack, he incredibly remained with the students for another seven minutes, reading from the book, until a staff member suggested that he leave. The look on his face as he reads the book, knowing what he knows, is disquieting.” Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Click here to view the embedded video.

Lets not forget the August 6th 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing…

BEN-VENISTE: Isn’t it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?

RICE: I believe the title was, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.”

Watch it for yourself….

Click here to view the embedded video.

ABC is promoting this exclusively to the “Mainstream” media and right wing bloggers. This should be a red flagged warning sign to everyone. If this was an accurate and truthful version of events, they would not be trying to prevent a review by both sides, before it’s broadcast.

On September 1 2006, it became evident that ABC had offered previews of “The Path to 9/11″ to right-wing bloggers and media personalities, like Rush Limbaugh, and to mainstream media outlets. When it was confirmed that no advance information had been sent to progressive and liberal bloggers and media, an effort was launched to discover how and why this had happened.

John from America Blog did a video blog on this subject you can watch it:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s a letter from Tom McMahon, The Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee:

Does a major national broadcast network want to stain itself by presenting an irresponsible, slanderous, fraudulent, “docu-drama” to the American public?

Not if you and I have the last word — but either way, we’re about to find out.

The ABC television network — a cog in the Walt Disney empire — unleashed a promotional blitz in the last week for a new “docudrama” called “The Path to 9/11″. ABC has thrown its corporate might behind the two-night production, and bills it as a public service: a TV event, to quote the ABC tagline, “based on the 9/11 Commission Report”.

That’s false. “The Path to 9/11″ is actually a bald-faced attempt to slander Democrats and revise history right before Americans vote in a major election.

The miniseries, which was put together by right-wing conservative writers, relies on the old GOP playbook of using terrorism to scare Americans. “The Path to 9/11″ mocks the truth and dishonors the memory of 9/11 victims to serve a cheap, callous political agenda. It irresponsibly misrepresents the facts and completely distorts the truth.

ABC/Disney executives need to hear from the public and understand that their abuse of the public trust comes with a cost. Tell Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger to keep this right-wing propaganda off the air — we’ll deliver your message:

http://www.democrats.org/pathto911

This story is breaking quickly. The bias of the “docudrama” only became known when ABC began circulating previews recently. Less than two weeks ago, 9/11 Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste confronted a lead writer of “The Path to 9/11″ after watching the first half of the miniseries at a screening, but most of what we know amounts to bits and pieces because ABC chose to screen the miniseries to conservative bloggers and right-wing media outlets exclusively. Almost none of the Democrats portrayed in the film have even been asked for their thoughts.

But we still know enough, thanks to news accounts and crack research, to fact check “The Path to 9/11″ as a biased, irresponsible mess. Here’s what you need to know:

Richard Clarke — the counterterrorism czar for the Clinton administration, now himself a consultant to ABC News — describes a key scene in “The Path to 9/11″ as “180 degrees from what happened.” In the scene, a CIA field agent places a phone call to get the go ahead to kill Osama Bin Laden, then in his sights, only to have a senior Clinton administration official refuse and hang up the phone. Sandy Berger, President Clinton’s National Security Advisor, called the same scene “a total fabrication. It did not happen.” And Roger Cressey, a top Bush and Clinton counterterrorism official, said it was “something straight out of Disney and fantasyland. It’s factually wrong. And that’s shameful.”

Another scene revives the old right-wing myth that press reporting made it impossible to track Osama bin Laden, accusing the Washington Post of blowing the secret that American intelligence tracked his satellite phone calls. In reality, responsibility for that blunder — contrary to “The Path to 9/11″ — rests with none other than the arch-conservative Washington Times.

The former National Security Council head of counterterrorism says that President Clinton “approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda,” and the 9/11 report says the CIA had full authority from President Clinton to strike Bin Laden. Yet chief “Path to 9/11″ scriptwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh, a friend of Rush Limbaugh, says the miniseries shows how President Clinton had “frequent opportunities in the ’90s to stop Bin Laden in his tracks — but lacked the will to do so.”
ABC asked only the Republican co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, Tom Kean, Sr., to advise the makers of “The Path to 9/11″. The producers optioned two books, one written by a Bush administration political appointee, as the basis of the screenplay — yet bill the miniseries as “based on the 9/11 Commission Report.”

This is a picture of bias — a conservative attempt to rewrite the history of September 11 to blame Democrats, just in time for the election.

Tell Walt Disney president Robert Iger that you hold his company responsible — and that this community demands that ABC tell the truth:

http://www.democrats.org/pathto911

ABC is trying to use of the airwaves — airwaves owned by you and me, and loaned to broadcasters as a public trust — to slander Democrats and sell a slanderous, irresponsible fraud to the American people, and they’re shamefully doing it just weeks away from Election Day.

The Walt Disney Corporation could have given Americans an honest look at September 11. Instead, the company abandoned its duty to the truth — and embraced the fiction known as “The Path to 9/11.”

But ABC isn’t the only company pushing this gross revision of history. ABC has enlisted the reputable education and children’s entertainment company Scholastic, Inc. to send 100,000 letters to high school teachers, urging them to show students “The Path to 9/11″. Scholastic has also created a discussion guide for teachers to use to encourage students and their families to watch this irresponsible fraud and then discuss it in school. The discussion guide does not in any way point out the concerns and criticisms that have been raised about the validity and accuracy of the film.

We’ve got to stop this now.

ABC/Disney must face an accountability moment. You can ratchet up the pressure on ABC by sending your own letter to Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger — tell him to keep this propaganda off their air.

http://www.democrats.org/pathto911

We’ll keep you up to date as this story evolves.

Thank you,
Tom

Tom McMahon
Executive Director
Democratic National Committee

This is a perfect example of why media consolidation is bad for America.

1. We need to reverse these failed FCC policies and retroactively reinstate the former media ownership requirements.
2. We need to re-establish the fairness doctrine which required that broadcast licensees had to present controversial issues of public importance, and to present such issues in an honest, equal and balanced manner, and we need to enforce this with penalties under criminal and civil laws.
3. Create a statutory right of equal time so that politicians from all sides can present their arguments.
4. Bar all corporate money from politics in the United States. Money does not, and should not equal speech, no matter how many court rulings have suggested otherwise in the past. I can say whatever I like to anyone I like, the same as ABC. When money as political speech enters the picture, the individual citizen’s voices are drowned out.

Tell ABC exactly what you think about it, heck tell Disney too while you are at it!