The First Draft of History

This is why I'm a conspiracy theorist:

On September 11, 2003 I was working inside of a factory in Alabama. I had no access to news either on TV or radio until my shift was over late in the afternoon. I became aware of the terrorist attack on our nation via a phone call from my wife around 9:30 am or so from my panicked wife who said something on the order of:

"We're under attack. Planes have crashed into the World Trade Center and both towers have collapsed. The Air Force has shot down a plane in Pennsylvania and I think they've bombed the Pentagon too."

That's what I call the first draft of history. Everything after that is edited. Sanitized for your protection. Very quickly after a tragedy like 9-11, especially one involving terrorism, you stop seeing the raw footage. You stop seeing footage on TV of the bodies jumping out of the doomed buildings, because someone has decided that you don't need to see that anymore. In other words, you stop seeing the truth.

Being an Air Force veteran, I clued in on the part about shooting down a plane. It was all a monstrous tragedy, but the shootdown of an American airliner by the military would be unique and historic. That would be a truly important part of the story. Was the Air Force really given an order to shoot down a commercial airliner? My wife didn't make up that bit of information in the middle of that recounting of the morning's events. She was relaying to me actual news stories which indicated that the plane was shot down based on eyewitness accounts. Was it true?

Over time, the shootdown story was dismissed in favor of the now well-known story of the "Let's Roll" passengers forcing down the jet. That's the version that the 9-11 Commission tells in minute-by-minute detail in their Report. The shootdown story was just incorrect. The witnesses were wrong. Anyone who wants to keep exploring the shootdown theory is just a kook, (or Keeper Of Odd Knowledge, as Rush calls them!). Case closed.

Until this week, when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld opened it again. Speaking to American troops in Iraq, Rummy made a statement about the terrorists "attacking the United States in New York and shooting down the plane in Pennslyvania". Oops! Slip of the tongue. Nothing to see here. Move along please.

Don't you remember? The witnesses were wrong. Just like they were in Oklahoma City where they saw Middle Eastern companions with McVeigh. Just like they were on Long Island when they saw a missle take down TWA Flight 800. Just like they were when they saw an explosion take down a jet leaving New York in the week after 9/11. They were all wrong.

The govenment told us so. It must be true.