The Path To 9/11

Tomorow ‘The Path To 9/11′ will be shown on BBC2 and ABC. This is an ABC and Disney co-creation. We are told that it is based on the 9/11 Comission report, I won’t go into the possibility of the report being biased and/or false, but the show itself appears to have rewritten history to bring the evil terrorists into the equation more than they actually were. Not only this but Scholastic Inc. sent out over 100,000 letters, in the US, to high schools containing various lesson plans surrounding ‘facts’ of 9/11 drawing on ‘The Path to 9/11′ as a resource. This letter is available here and does include: ‘As a docudrama, it contains imagined scenes that some of the political figures who lived through the period say are misleading and inaccurate.’. 

The lesson plans appear to be slightly misleading, referring to the 9/11-Iraq connection. Surely as president Bush took us to Iraq as part of the war on terror this is a fair comment to make. However since then two things have been released. Firstly, 15 of the 19 terrorists did not orriginate in Iraq. They did not orriginate it Afghanistan. They did not come from Pakistan. Nor did they come from Iran. They came from Saudi Arabia. Yet this is not stated in the lesson plan. Nor is the quote from George Bush recently when he said that there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11. Should we allow the company to decieve school children in this way?

I want an educated discussion of the event in schools. Maybe the minds of children can work on this problem and find things that we can’t. Maybe if we show them raw footage, slow motion shots, all the things the media never showed in the aftermath, but the things they could have shown. Maybe if they are shown that, and allowed to debate that, then maybe Scholastic can make a pack, preferably with REAL facts.

Various omissions appear on the sheet. No mention of Bin Laden’s CIA training and funding. and no mention of the illegal wire tapping or total disregard for the american Bill of Rights, by the Bush administration.

In my eyes the worst form of lying is the witholding of information. If Scholastic want the children of the schools that recieved the packs to make informed decisions why not provide them with all the information at their disposal?

Is failure to admit evidence proof of guilt? or am I just being cynical? If any teachers do read this, I doubt it, but it may happen, by al means hold a class discussion about that attack nearly 5 years ago, but don’t use ‘The Path to 9/11′ as your resource material. By all means use the Commission report, by all means use In Plane Sight, By all means use various videos from the day, but please use the facts, please treat you students as the adults they are, trust them to make their own decision about what happened on that day. Why be afraid that by showing them certain videos, or telling them certain facts that they may believe that there is more to the story of 9/11 than what was released in the media or than Disney say?

C4 will be showing ‘The 9/11 Liars’ about people who faked their deaths in the WTC attack, could that show not equally be about ABC, Disney, Scholastic and even high ranking Bush administration officials.

And in other news, the space shuttle Atlantis has taken off, 2 days until Star Wars is out on DVD , Stever Irwin is to be ‘buried soon’ and Kimi Raikkonen takes Pole in Monza, ahead of Schumacher (2nd) and Heidfeld (3rd), Alonso has 5th.
MTFBWY