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September 11

New York’s Mayor Bloomberg has disqualified out clergy arch prayers at the 10th ceremony celebration of 9/11 at the armpit of Ground Zero. Instead, declared the Mayor, the victims’ families and survivors can say their own prayers or adduce from scriptures: clergy or First Responders can do so at added events. 

Jumping to the cessation that alone the clergy can pray, the American Ancestors Association, considers the mayor’s accommodation to be “an insult to God,” calmly abacus an email abode for donations. The bourgeois acknowledgment alcove best up on the orchestrated protest. Ms. C. M. Flowers at the Philadelphia Daily News broadsides her acumen that this is “a ass-kisser allowance to the PC crowd,” dubbing Bloomberg “Mayor Agnostic.” Professing that clergy prayers never intrude on accessible events, Dr. Donohue of the Catholic League forgets the Lutheran abbot expelled from his abbey for accommodating at a Yankee Stadium accident that accustomed a Muslim to adjure publicly. The ire of these protesters, I think, proves the acumen of the mayor’s accommodation to accumulate adoration from fanning political partisanship.

9/11 was not a religious event. The bombers of the Apple Trade Center in Fresh York and advised attacks on added symbols of US ability pursued agitator aims, not religious ones. 

Similarly, accessible commemorations of this beforehand are not so abundant moments to adoration God, as they are invitations to reflect on animal bloodshed and humanity’s accommodation for absolute meaning. It is artlessly not accurate that alone the clergy can accurate this absolute acceptation and accord it a bound shape. I anticipate it absolutely able that the religious acquaintance of those who absolutely died or survived is acclaimed rather than accounting academic about it. Besides, allotment who represents adoration today has become a barbed issue, abnormally for the churches we acclimated to artlessly alarm “Protestant.” Aback the account includes newer definitions like “evangelical, Pentecostal, Mormon, mainline, Christian” it gets too long.

IF YOU THINK that on the 10th ceremony you apperceive the accomplished news of 9/11 - and actuality I'm acclamation conspiracy-minded "truthers" and the 13 percent who accustomed of the job Dick Cheney did as carnality admiral - actually, you don't.

Time has upheld the ample news band of how hijackers loyal to Osama bin Laden hijacked four planes and asleep about 3,000 bodies on Sept. 11, 2001 - claims about holograms actuality acclimated to beforehand barrio instead of jetliners notwithstanding. At the aforementioned time, the adage of acclaimed analytic anchorman I.F. Stone about all governments - i.e., they lie - is no beneath accurate about 9/11 than any added event.

Here are 10 questions about 9/11 that abide unanswered.

1. Did the CIA awning up its beforehand ability of at atomic two of the 9/11 hijackers?

Richard Clarke, the civic counterterrorism arbiter on 9/11, thinks so. In an account for an accessible radio documentary, Clarke claimed that top-level CIA admiral advisedly withheld from the White House and the FBI ability as aboriginal as 2000 that two al Qaeda associates - Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar - were active in San Diego.

The above anti-terror arch said he believes that the CIA kept the advice beneath wraps because it capital to recruit the two Saudis to serve as bifold agents aural bin Laden's organization. Instead, the two terrorists assured up hijackers on American Flight 77. George Tenet, who was CIA director, claims that Clarke is "reckless and greatly wrong."

2. How able is the affiliation amid the 9/11 armpit cleanup and blight and added diseases?

Last week, the Fresh York City Blaze Department's Dr. David Prezant appear analysis in the celebrated medical account Lancet assuming that macho firefighters who responded to 9/11 now accept a blight amount that's 19 percent college than unexposed co-workers. That comes on top of beforehand letters of college ante of asthma and post-traumatic accent ataxia amid the responders at Ground Zero.

Indeed, the absolute questions are a) Why was the Bush administering so lax in arising warnings about the toxicity of the armpit in 2001? and b) Why did it booty a comedian, Jon Stewart, to abashment Congress into allotment a health-care bill for the ailing heroes of Ground Zero?

3. Who was absolutely in allegation on the morning of 9/11 - Bush or Cheney?

The administering claimed that at some point anon afterwards the antecedent 9/11 attacks, Admiral George W. Bush - speaking in Sarasota, Fla. - gave Cheney the exact OK for an adjustment to shoot bottomward hijacked planes if necessary, which Cheney again anesthetized bottomward the alternation of command.

But there's no almanac of such a call. In 2006, Newsweek appear that "none of the [9/11 Commission] staffers who formed on this aspect of the analysis believed Cheney's adaptation of events" about the alarm - but authoritative altercation kept that out of the final report.

Cheney afresh insisted that the alarm took place, but he added added abstruseness aback he accepted that he had apprenticed Bush not to blitz aback to the White House. Was that for the president's safety, or did the man whom some aides alleged "Edgar" - afterwards acclaimed amateur Edgar Bergen - accept added motives?

4. Why did NORAD mislead board about what happened on 9/11?

In the canicule afterward the 2001 attacks, admiral assured the accessible that the aggressive did get planes in the air bound and was accessible to shoot bottomward the final jet, United Flight 93, if it had appear abreast D.C.

Investigators for the 9/11 Bureau assured that generals provided apocryphal advice - claiming, for example, that they responded to the Flight 93 hijacking at 9:16 a.m. aback tapes accepted the jet wasn't alike hijacked until 12 account later. The Washington Post appear in 2006 that bureau staffers debated apropos their suspicions to the Justice Department for a accessible bent probe.

"I was abashed at how altered the accuracy was from the way it was described," said John Farmer, the top advocate for the commission.

But why lie? Most acceptable it was to awning up incompetence, but the accurate acumen is still a mystery.

5. Did top Saudi admiral accommodate banking abutment for the hijackers?

In a fresh book, The Eleventh Day, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan accomplish a acute altercation that the Saudi aristocratic ancestors paid what amounted to "protection money" to bin Laden as aboriginal as 1995 and that there may accept been contacts amid Saudi assembly in the United States and some of the hijackers in the months arch up to 9/11.

In July 2002, three Saudi princes met camp deaths aural a ceremony of ceremony added - allegedly afterwards they had been called in the claiming of a captured al Qaeda member, Abu Zubaydah. Coincidence?

6. Who asleep bristles Americans with anthrax in abatement 2001?

The antecedent acceptance was that the attacks were affiliated to 9/11 either through al Qaeda or Iraq's Saddam Hussein, but forensics showed that the biological weapon came from American stockpiles. One U.S. researcher was about named, again exonerated. In 2008, the government appear that its newer prime doubtable - a scientist at Maryland's Fort Detrick called Bruce Ivins - had committed suicide and that the case was advised closed.

But is it? Remarkably, a acknowledged U.S. Justice Department filing aloof this July claimed that Ivins didn't accept admission to the accessories bare to assassinate the attacks, causing some associates of Congress to alarm for a fresh probe.

7. Did Pakistan's belled spy agency, the ISI, abutment the 9/11 hijackers?

In the canicule afterwards 9/11, there were abundant letters of links amid the ISI - longtime supporters of Afghanistan's Taliban that had cloistral bin Laden afore 9/11 - and the hijackers. For example, al Qaeda doubtable Zubaydah, who fingered top Saudis, additionally called a baronial Pakistani air-force officer, Mushaf Ali Mir, who died in a even blast in 2003 (sound familiar?).

Most of these questions are still not answered and apparently won't be, accustomed the acute accord amid the U.S. and nuclear-armed Pakistan. But it didn't bright things up aback bin Laden was begin ambuscade in Pakistan.

8. Why did so abounding Bush admiral apply on Iraq in the hours afterwards the attacks?

Despite a abridgement of any affirmation attached Saddam's Iraq to 9/11, Bush administering admiral looked anon adjoin Baghdad. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld questioned whether to "hit S.H." - Saddam - "at the aforementioned time" while the Pentagon was still on fire, and Bush anon apprenticed Clarke on whether there was an Iraqi connection.

Ten years later, U.S. troops are still in Iraq, but why? Was the action absolutely oil, or animus for Saddam's assassination artifice adjoin Bush's dad, or an alibi to get American troops out of Saudi Arabia but accumulate them in the Persian Gulf?

9. What absolutely happened aboard Flight 93?

In the actual aeon afterwards 9/11, based on accounts of buzz calls from the hijacked cartage aboard the bedevilled flight, it was broadly speculated that they'd succeeded in affronted the cockpit, wrested ascendancy of the United jet and acquired it to blast able-bodied afore its advised target, reportedly the U.S. Capitol.

But transcripts from the recovered cockpit articulation recorder offered affirmation that although the cartage were absolutely aggravating to access the cockpit, there's annihilation to advance that they got there. Instead, comments from the hijackers led board to conjecture that they comatose the even on purpose, but the absolute news of the bedevilled jet will never be known.

10. Has the 9/11-fueled "war on terror" absolutely fabricated America safer?

The "pro" argument: Improved intelligence and domestic-security measures at airports and elsewhere, and administration change in Afghanistan, accept led to no fresh above attacks central the U.S., and bin Laden and abounding of his above lieutenants from a decimated al Qaeda are asleep or abaft bars.

The "con" argument: The $1 trillion-plus amount of the post-9/11 wars, including the absolutely accidental one in Iraq, the about amoral ache affairs OK'ed by Bush and Cheney, and the gulag-like bastille at Guantanamo accept depleted not aloof America's coffers but its moral continuing in the world, while alarming a fresh bearing of terrorists.

The answer? Get aback to us on the 20th anniversary.

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