Ed Begley, Jr. disowns his past troofer connections, while discussing Van Jones' political seppuku
Eight years following the 9/11 attacks, with a new president under our belts, all lefties still clinging to the conspiranoid fantasy that "9/11 was an inside job," need to either do full mea culpas and disassociate themselves from the insanity of that movement, or forever be held accountable for their irresponsible actions and statements.
President Obama's former green jobs czar Van Jones offers the perfect model for this: admit your stupidity, fall on your sword, and move on. Jones had affixed his signature to a 2004 911Truth.org petition, which suggested George W. Bush's administration may have "deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war." In the parlance of the "troofer" movement, the petition was LIHOP (Let It Happen on Purpose) rather than MIHOP (Made It Happen on Purpose) -- the "it" being 9/11. LIHOP's sort of conspiranut-light, but it still reeks of the lies and distortions of trooferdom.
The Obama administration cannot countenance a troofer in their midst any more than they could a Holocaust-denier, or member of the John Birch Society or the Ku Klux Klan. Sure, everyone's got their Freedom of Speech, but having a crackpot onboard calls into question what your administration stands for, or at least your lack of a vetting process.
Think not? Then check this out: Whenever a "birther," for instance, pokes his or her head above water in the GOP camp, lefties fire at will. Yet, the bogus conspiracy theory that Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen pales in comparison to the outright psychosis peddled by the troofers.
At least one of the signatories to that same letter Van Jones lent his name to is a birther, one of the first and foremost birthers, actually: Phil Berg, the Philadelphia lawyer who has unsuccessfully tried getting the U.S. Supreme Court to find President Obama ineligible to be POTUS. On the same list as Berg are numerous big-name libs, such as Ed Asner, Ralph Nader, historian Howard Zinn, Janeane Garofalo, wackjob former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, radio show host Thom Hartmann, Daniel Ellsberg, and others.
Liberals were by no means the only ones who were fellow travelers to or outright endorsers of 9/11 moonbat falderol. You need only look so far as Ernie Hancock's libertarian Web site Freedom's Phoenix to grok that. (Ditto for moon-barker Alex Jones' Infowars.com.) Still, Dems seemed particularly susceptible to this mental virus. Those who fell victim, should simply own up to it and admit that they were wrong.
Earlier today, I was checking out ScrewLooseChange.blogspot.com, home of Phoenix blogger Pat Curley, whom I profiled in the 2007 cover story The Yoda of 9/11. Curley was debunking 9/11 'tards long before it was cool to do so. And he continues to carve the 9/11 kooks see-through navels with his lightsaber of truth ( not "troof"), as was evidenced recently by his debate with Loose Change director Dylan Avery on Canadian radio host Rob Breakenridge's show The World Tonight.
The MP3 is worth listening to, and you won't have any trouble figuring out who the adults are on the show (Avery's 25 going on a petulant 12). But what really caught my fancy was this YouTube video Curley'd culled from another site, of Ed Begley, Jr. on Fox News' Fox & Friends, as Begley and some Republicans discussed Van Jones' recent resignation.
Speaking of Jones' dalliance with the 9/11 troof crowd, Begley owned up to his own dance with the 9/11 dunderheads, claiming he was "sort of lured in by the tinfoil hat crowd," and ended up participating in some wacky troofer panel.
"I'm guilty as charged of moderating this panel," he stated. "When I started to hear this stuff about remote control planes flying into buildings and people planting bombs -- yeah, that makes sense, that Cheney ordered people to plant bombs and charges at the World Trade Center and didn't bother to, like, put some weapons of mass destruction off the C-17 plane [in Iraq]. It doesn't track, you know? It's just crazy talk."
Crazy talk, indeed. Troofers posited that what happened on 9/11 was not the result of 19 Islamic fanatics who hijacked commercial airliners and flew them into the Pentagon and the Twin Towers. Rather, they said it was the work of our own government, that there was no plane at the Pentagon, and that the destruction of buildings one and two of the World Trade Center was accomplished through massive controlled demolitions.
The troofers went so far as to claim that Flight 93 never crash landed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. They denied there were bodies recovered from the crash site, and they denounced a coroner who indicated otherwise.
Remember the phone calls to relatives from the different flights? Either they never happened, according to the troofers, or they were faked. Those who picked up plane and body parts at the Pentagon? All liars, according the troofers. Even the New York City Fire Department was in on the cover-up, suggested some.
But with major, mainstream outlets such as Popular Mechanics, the BBC, and the History Channel having thoroughly debunked all of the troofer crowd's conspiracy theories, reducing them to dust, it becomes more and more difficult for liberals to fix their wagons to the troofer cause with a straight face.
Van Jones has done his bit to correct his past by asking 911Truth.org to remove his name from the list of signers to that petition. Similarly, Begley displayed a great deal of intellectual honesty by saying he was duped on the Fox show. Other lefties should do likewise. Those who do not should be called on their past foolishness, and asked if they still buy into this madness the troofers insist is reality.
I mean, how can certain lefties decry the birthers, yet keep the door cracked for the troofers? Let's be through with this stuff, people. The Bush administration cynically used the tragedy of 9/11 to involve us in Iraq, to pass the Patriot Act, and boost support for the administration. Isn't that bad enough? As is said in Matthew: Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
