There is a group of people out there who believe that the government is not telling us the truth about what really happened on 9-11. This group has become known as the "9-11 Truth Squad", and some prominent people have become its spokesmen. One of those prominent people is Rosie O’Donnell, who is on the extreme end, and claims that not only is the government lying about what happened, but the government, our government, is responsible. Of course, when you hear people say that our government is responsible, that is troubling on several fronts. First is the fact that our government has become so overrun by zealots that it would actually be possible for such a thing to occur. Second, is that we have been lied to so much, that we could actually believe that it would.

As longtime readers will recall, in my column of 18 March 2003 ("American Liberty On It’s Way To Extinction), I pointed out some parallels between the state of our national consciousness post 9/11 and the state of the German national consciousness prior to World War II. To conspiracy minded folks like Rosie O’Donnell, those parallel are proof positive that our government destroyed the World Trade Center. Let me just say that I don’t believe that, as such a plot would require a great deal more competence than either the Bush II or the Clinton Administrations have had. Step back and think about it for a minute. If Bush is as incompetent as the liberals claim he is, then how could he ever be able to pull 9/11 off? You can’t have it both ways – if he is incompetent in the execution of the Iraq mess then it is safe to assume that he is incompetent in every thing else as well, and if he is competent to pulling off bombing his own cities and deceiving the people about it, then he is a genius and is very competent in everything else, too.

Like the overwhelming majority of citizens, I bought into the party line regarding 9/11, namely that an Islamic terrorist who I shall not name was the mastermind, and his followers snuck into the country, took flying lessons, and flew the planes into the buildings with the intent of causing as much damage as possible. Until a month ago, when I saw a videotape that made me question everything.

I have a whole stack of unlabeled videotapes of shows that I recorded for future viewing. It was very late one Friday night, around 2 AM, actually, when I saw on one videotape a scene of a plane flying into one of the towers. My tired eyes suddenly opened wide. What was on that tape? It turns out it was part of the pilot episode of a short-lived Fox network show called "The Lone Gunman". The basic storyline was about a plot to fly, via remote computer control, a commercial passenger airplane in the World Trade Center. This plot, called scenario 12D, was contrived to make it look like foreigners were the culprits to whip up war fever so that the defense industry could sell more weapons. As it turns out, a rogue mid-level government bureaucrat is the one who remotely, via laptop, hijacks the control of the airplane and steers it into the World Trade Center. If you are a conspiracy theorist, this storyline would support your argument that our government was really responsible for what happened that fateful day. Of course, the difference between fiction and reality is that in the fictional world, the hero saves the day and is able to override the remote computer, regain manual control of the aircraft, and avert disaster. Here is the most creepy part—the episode aired on March 4, 2001, a full six months before the real thing occurred.

"What is his point?" you are asking yourself right now. (Okay, you might not be, but perhaps you should.) "Schrader is one of those left-wing conspiracy wackos." Actually, I am not. I do not believe that our country knowingly participated in the destruction that occurred that day; now, I’m not so sure that we didn’t inadvertantly participate. Perhaps we have been giving Osama bin-Laden too much credit; maybe he isn’t as smart as we think he is. After all, what ingenious and clever thing has he done since 9/11? Nothing that I can think of; just routine bombings. Perhaps he got the idea to crash planes into tall skyscrapers from that television episode. All we really know about his plot prior to March 2001 is that he wanted to hijack some American commercial jetliners; we don’t know what he was going to do with them. Perhaps the original idea was to hijack some American airliners and crash them into the ground. We don’t know, but it is a possibility.

"If it wasn't Bin-Laden's idea to crash planes into the towers, if he stole the idea from someone else, why would he take credit for it?" If you were only a second rate talent, wouldn't you take credit for something spectacular? "But why? What would he gain by doing that?" Fame. Fans. Attention. Recruits. If you are a superstar, you can convince people to do stupid things they would not otherwise do. Think -- groupies.

Perhaps we do need to take a second look at 9/11, not so much to assuage the conspiracy crowd, who can never be convinced (think-- " the grassy knoll"), but for our own peace of mind, so that we can finally put this to rest, once and for all. We need to know the truth – every scab, every wart, every pimple – so that, once we know the truth, we can adjust and never make the same mistakes, mistakes like broadcasting to terrorists how they can kill us, again.