by Scott Creighton
“But, you know, this guy (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab), looking at it in some respects, looking at it in retrospect, probably did us a favor.” Thomas Kean, Co-Chair of the 9/11 Commission Report
It’s fitting, isn’t it? It’s fitting that one of the leading architects of the most elaborate cover-up in American history comes out the other day and offers up this quote right in time for my second part of the The Prestige. You can’t ask for better timing than that.
While I appreciate the rare candor from Commissioner Kean, I figured I would list a few of those people who would probably agree with Mr. Kean’s statement (there are so many others from stock market CEOs to Blackwater mercenaries); those who think Umar DID do us “a favor” on Christmas day (let’s call it “The Christmas Day Miracle”)…
- … an American president looking for justification for bombing villagers in a country that we are not at war with (a week prior to the “underpants bombing”) and without congressional approval.
- … an international banker, the “underwear bombers” daddy, about to lose part of a $5 billion dollar investment package in Yemen because of the ongoing revolution.
- … an American oil tycoon, Ray L. Hunt, who has billions tied up in Yemen oil and LNG production as is a life-long friend of the Bush family.
- … the IMF, World Bank, the Islamic Development Bank or any bank member of the Federal Reserve System who is bound to make a fortune off the debt of the “long war”.
- … someone related to the “president” of Yemen in some way or another.
- … a defense contractor.
Great illusions, those that survive the test of time, will always return. They will always be brought back in some revised form by a new magician looking to cash in on a predecessors success. Invariably the trick is modified ever so slightly to conform with the newer technology or to correct a flaw in the previous version. But without any doubt, if an illusion stands up to the skeptics leaving its “magic” intact, and if it continues to have a marketable value, you will see it again and again and again. This is the nature of the business.
2. “The Turn“. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary – Terrorism
A truly great illusion is transformative. At the turn of the Decade of Magic, the first of the New American Century, it was written that all that was needed to transform the American will was a “new Pearl Harbor type of event”. A catalyzing event that would rally the citizens who formerly abhorred “nation building” of any kind, behind a powerful new doctrine of preeminent warfare, unilateral in its nature and global in its scope. What was once the Wolfowitz Doctrine became the Bush Doctrine became the Obama Doctrine. See? Transformative.
Justified by the corpses piled at Ground Zero and emboldened by a magician standing atop them with a bull-horn, “the change” of the American psyche from international disengagement to self-righteous rage was complete and from then on “nothing would be the same”.
Terrorism had worked its magic. 19 simple, invisible men, without even so much as a bullet between them, rose to become the greatest menace in the history of America. No longer did we need to foment enemy states as the oppressive tyranny that threatened “our way of life”. That’s to time consuming and too limited geographically. Now the threat was unseen, unknown, lurking everywhere and nowhere and the vast masses of audience members in America would wait with gleaming vengeance in their hearts for our beloved leader to tell us who we needed to kill to make the world “safe for democracy” again.
Thus is the power of “The Turn”.
When you witness a great illusion part of it will always remain with you; the subconscious need for the mystical is universal. Like literary archetypes that traverse both time and culture, magic touches something primal in all of us and connects us, one to the other.
The theater of Sept. 11th 2001 was remarkable in many ways. The initial crash of Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center was stunning in and of itself. A major catastrophe of unprecedented scale served simply as the opening act, the flourish to get our attention focused on stage as the rest of the show prepared to make an entrance. And what an entrance it was.
Just as the cameras were pulled hastily out of the news vans and every single tv station broke into coverage of the horrific burning of the North Tower, Flight 175 curved ever so effortlessly into focus, gliding, it enter stage left and the audience froze.
It was at that moment that the world as we knew it changed forever. We were no longer secure. We were no longer safe. An accident became terrorism and as the other planes were identified and crashed in turn terrorism became “war”.
But that was not enough for the Grand Illusion, the “Shock Opera” of the 9/11 magicians. We watched the ultimate magic act, steel framed massive symbols of American might crumbled and exploded right before our eyes. People leaped from buildings, people ran through streets, and for a brief moment, chaos ruled America. Nothing was safe.
To rehash all the evidence of the fraud of 9/11 would be redundant to say the least. The lies covering lies covering lies all too well illustrates a deliberate intention to deceive. The events that took place for the “first time ever” layered upon the mistakes made by men who were promoted rather than punished boggles the mind and screams for real investigation. Official stories change, witnesses are ignored, subpoenas are forgotten, and officials condemned “conspiracy theories” before any ever even existed.
You can’t investigate the great illusions. You can’t investigate “The Turn”. Because no magic act can withstand the light of day, ladies and gentlemen, because magic doesn’t exist. It’s not real. And the magician knows that better than anyone.
It took 400 plus days of pressure from the families of the victims of 9/11 to finally convince the president to agree to a congressional “investigation” of the greatest failure of our national defense in history. And the first chairman had to step down for fear his personal investments might influence his objectivity. The replacement chairmen admitted later that the investigation was compromised, deeply flawed by lies, obfuscation, and graft. Now one of those very same chairmen of the flawed 9/11 Commission Report says that the “Underwear bomber” has done us “a favor”.
Indeed.
Our new magician has put a different spin on the old illusion. We still have the same Pledge; the invisible, hidden secret nemesis roaming from corrupt country to corrupt country, demanding we invade their nation as well before we run out of national treasure. But the new twist on the old trick, thank God, is that they don’t seem to need dead Americans anymore to stand on with bullhorns. Our national memory is enough.
A fizzing set of jockey shorts and the word of a FBI agent that the same Pledge is at fault is enough to conjure images of falling towers. It’s enough to remind us that the world is not the same as it was just a few years ago. It’s enough to set ablaze the embers of hate that have been smoldering within us for nearly a decade.
This new version is perhaps is the greatest version of the grand illusion; one that needed no Turn, just the promise of one. The threat.
Just as the dust clouds once settled over Manhattan and now as the smoke clears while the panties are extinguished, the stage is set for an audience who has been reduced to a childlike state of acceptance. The stage is cleared and the lights are dimmed for the 3rd and final act of the grand illusion.
Chapter 3 – The Prestige (tomorrow)
3. “The Prestige“. The secret impresses no one. The trick you use it for is everything. – Shock and Awe
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