The Right Blogosphere is in a feeding frenzy after someone discovered that White House “green jobs” consultant Van Jones signed a “truther†statement in 2004. As I pointed out in the last post, the “truther” statement in question is not as insane as most truther statements are, so I’m not too concerned about it.
But now rightie blogger Gateway Pundit believes he found damning evidence that Van Jones was part of the Truther movement in its infancy. This is in the form of a document at Rense.com dated September 2, 2002, that announces a march in San Fransisco calling for a congressional inquiry into September 11. You know, like the 9/11 Commission that victims’ widows like Kristen Breitweiser had to fight the White House tooth and nail to get started.
People forget that in those days there were moderate elements of what came to be called the “truther” movement. These were not the hard core who insist 9/11 was an “inside job” and the WTC towers came down by controlled detonation. Rather, these were people who felt that what media had written about 9/11 didn’t add up, and believed the Bush White House was at least guilty of gross negligence for ignoring warnings about a terrorist attack.
In 2001 and 2002 the moderate truthers and the 9/11 families calling for a congressional commission were working together loosely and dragging around the same or a similar set of questions they wanted answered. Some of these questions eventually were passed on to and addressed by the 9/11 Commission.
If pushing for a 9/11 Commission makes someone a Truther, then I argue 9/11 Commission Chairs Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton must be Super Truthers.
If it turns out that Jones really does believe 9/11 was an “inside job,” then I’d be among the first to question his judgment. But so far I’m not seeing that.
Update: Although there was talk of an “inside job” on 9/11 almost immediately after the attacks, if I can believe my own archives, the Truther “inside jobers” didn’t completely swamp the “truth commission” movement until 2006. I had thought it was earlier than that, but maybe not.
Update: Chris Good reports, “This morning, ABC’s Jake Tapper reported that Jones was on the “organizing committee” of a 2002 march in San Francisco demanding a congressional inquiry into 9/11.” Wow, a congressional inquiry into 9/11. How shocking. Not. Am I the only one who remembers how people had to fight to get the White House to agree to the 9/11 Commission?
OK, we all need to admit the truth.
We all remember what Ann Coulter said about Kristen Breitweiser and the other 9/11 wives. She was partially right.
THEY were the ones who set the exlosives! It was a Liberal plot to discredit Bush, and payback for the widows was the insurance money.
There, now that that’s out there, I feel better, don’t you?
On a serious note, the fact that we had real war criminals running around DC for the better part of 8 years is nothing to concern oursleves with. We need to turn away and look forward.
But, Good God, man, how could the “Green Jobs” consultant to the White House sign ANYTHING questioning our government’s actions on 9/11. The traitor!!! We need an investigation.
This is no longer the United States of America, it’s now “Through the Looking Glass” of America. I want the FDA to look into our drinking water. I think some DFH’s spiked it with brown acid, which is not too good, you know…
I doubt you are aware of it, but rense is a nazi, not neo-nazi, but nazi sight. It is brutally anti-semitic and no rational person should have anything to do with it.
Joe5348
Joe — the document I linked to may be stored on the rense site, but it’s not a rense document. In the present discussion it doesn’t matter what sort of site rense is.
“rense is a nazi”
Who isn’t a Nazi these days, it’s the new hip thing right? You know if you throw around incendiary language it starts to cool off after awhile.
A major B.S filter is required when traveling in Rense country………
Anyone who thinks the original 9-11 Commission really did a thorough job needs to read “The Commission” by Phillip Shenon. While I am certainly not a “truther”, most Americans don’t realize that the executive director of the 9-11 Commission was a Bush Administration plant named Phillip Zelikow who suppressed a lot of information, such as the number of times that Bush and Condi Rice were warned about an impending attack and did absolutely nothing and the complicity of the Saudi government in funding and providing visas and cover for the hijackers. Read the book and you will understand why Van Jones wants a deeper investigation.
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First of all, maybe my memory is shot, but I remember Newt Gingrich blaming 9/11 on Clinton – he said this on TV *before noon* on September 11, 2001.
Second, those who believe the official 9/11 story can answer me one question: why did Bush and Cheney personally ask Congress *not* to investigate 9/11? (This came out around the time of Bush’s SOTU speech in January 2002.)
Finally, somewhat off-topic. The engineering magazine, IEEE SPECTRUM, did a piece a few years ago on NORAD’s 9/11 response. The poor guys at NORAD had no idea what was going on – they could only sit and stare at radar screens – and had to depend on watching the news channels on TV to see what was unfolding. Kind of funny in a way!