Grouch: Let's be fair to the "9.11 truth movement" (and consider ourselves pioneers for doing so)...

There is a stark difference between investigative reporting, and science, which requires "peer-reviewed" theses. To ask an investigative journalist for the latter is to expect him or her to rise to a level that is unreasonable on its face, as you're dealing with apples and oranges.

Now, what that journalist uncovers may contain elements of science... but since when does a reporter need to provide a "peer-reviewed" paper on, let us say, what temperature it takes to melt steel? Why would you demand of him to "prove" an easily researchable fact like that? (My first guess would be to throw tacks in the road, and bind-up his argument with mocking contentiousness, but that's just my opinion..).

The fact-finders of 9.11 have their closest soul mates in the bevy of investigators of the Kennedy assassination. The exact same dynamic was at play there, to de-fuse and extinguish all talk of a "conspiracy". Again, this was a case of pitting evidence against ridicule, and average citizens who didn't have the time or the inclination to see beyond the bumper sticker were likely to be more at home with the pack mentality that comes with public ridicule.

But the m.o. of that ridicule there, too, was dishonest at best. Think of how many times you've heard the retort "there is absolutely NO EVIDENCE..!!", followed by some glib explanation that the Warren Commission either contained no mention of this "alleged" fact or had "debunked" it, even. Here's how that scam works:

Warren Commission convenes, given the dubious mandate by LBJ to set the nation's mind at ease. Over here is a big pile of facts. Over there is a small pile, called "evidence".

If you simply don't put all the pieces of paper and photographs and autopsy findings and inconvenient truths from Pile 1 into Pile 2... you then have plausible deniability that "no evidence exists", once you pass the holy water over Pile 2, and officially christen that pile "The Evidence".

This is how they did it, and this is why civilian investigators for decades gave up their time, money, and reputations as sane and patriotic Americans: to recover the lost facts and disseminate them in the hope that some justice might conceivably be had. For all the public disdain heaped-upon truth-seekers over the decades, no mainstream critic has ever been able to come up with a nefarious rationale for their motivations (to write a book? LOTS of people write books! Give me a break!).

And it's why I get angry, whenever I observe the public disdain for "amateur" 9.11 investigators. Since when did we become a country that wouldn't want to know if there was anything beyond "they attacked us because they hate our freedom"? Wouldn't you, as a decent American, want to know if something more sinister had taken place, either with the murder of your President, or the attack on our soil?

Sadly, the answer is probably no, most people don't want to know. They understand that if they subscribe in either case to any theories that don't jive with the Official Story, they will be mocked and ostracized. And who, in our high-achievement society, wants that?

Which is why the independent actors of the "9.11 truth movement" should, at the very least, get a thumbs-up for courage, as long as their work is doomed never to be taken seriously in terms of historical importance.