HAPPY NEW YEAR from all of us at CivicMedia, TruthToTell and First Person Radio!

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Like the Kennedy assassination, questions surrounding the events of 9-11 continue to haunt our consciousness. The word, conspiracy, has been batted around like a lead tennis ball. It pushes people to the edges of the conversation - one side firmly believing that, essentially conspiracies don't exist, let alone apply to these tragic events in which we all have sought simplistic answers based on what we've seen - in some cases, time and again –  ad nauseam for many.

Then come the distrusting believers, those who see conspiracy around every corner and under every bush. Thus are we inundated by theory after theory about how one event or another came to be. Real conspiracy theorists might complain that so may theories have been forwarded on purpose - as a way to discredit what may be the truth. Such was the case of Kennedy's killing.

Now comes a series of examinations – and questions and accusations - by a fair number of scientists, architects, engineers, lawyers and pilots probing the 9-11 World Trade Center tower collapses as something beyond the power of two aircraft collisions with the two tall buildings, but especially the felling of a third, much shorter structure, Building Number 7.

Other questions ask why what would have been expected damage and impressions of an aircraft collision with the wall of the Pentagon failed to materialize following the reported 4th aircraft's dive.

Many assert that we've been lied to from beginning to end, including several Twin Cities professionals and 9-11 family members. If that's the case, the next question would have to be: why in the world would the United States government, even that particular President (George W. Bush) - and/or Vice President (Dick Cheney) in power, dare to set up an event that would claim well over 3,000 lives in the collisions alone, and another 1,000 from the subsequent fallout - the toxic air left for responders - some 10,000 of them - to inhale?

In fact, no one EXCEPT the government, has questioned the nearly 1,000 deaths resulting from the poisonous mix of metals and chemicals that billowed up and hung around for police, firefighters, medical workers and other clean-up specialists to breathe in and absorb into their lungs and other tissues.

At least one of those 10,000, probably many more, live here in the Twin Cities area, and her condition is critical, as is the condition of the thousands of survivors - thus far - who found their leaders deaf and blind to all complains and claims that this was the place and the event that sickened them. Republicans in the Senate (and, perhaps earlier on in the House) refused to budge on a bill – the Zadroga 9-11 Victims Compensation Act – until the very last minute of this last Congress a few days ago which would have put their callous behavior permanently on the record.

But the skeptics have been countered by various so-called “de-bunkers,” willing to spend a good deal of time questioning the questioners with their own claims of what “really happened” on that fateful Tuesday.

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL talks with – and challenges – the week's guests as we explore the “truth” around 9-11 – and its fallout – a new enemy for Americans to attack: Islam – and our lurch into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.