L.A. to Prez: Yeah, right; Whatever

So the L.A. TV newsbots are buzzing like a fridge over the president’s revelation that our own Library Tower was the intended bullseye of a foiled terrorist plan in ’02. They are only too glad to echo the Prez’s words unchecked. Fox News took it even further, as only they can, providing a violent visual to drive home the point with a clip of a destroyed Library Tower from Independence Day. After all, a fearful audience is a consuming audience.

But I call bullshit on the whole revelation of an intercepted terrorist plot. As it is now known from the extensive (exhaustive) dissection of The Events of Nine-Eleven, these modern skyscrapers cannot be brought down by hi-jacked-plane-as-missile strikes, but require detonation of pre-planted explosives. This is not marginalized conspiracy theory claptrap; this is physics and eyewitness accounts from 9/11. So perhaps something went wrong with the inside job of planting-of-explosives. Then-mayor James Hahn has emerged to say he was told nothing about it at the time. Why not?

But even if this line of inside-job self-inflicted terrorism thinking is just a bit too dark for the masses, a heartening wide-spread skepticism is solidifying out there. A cross-section of the new popular mindset was captured by the Times:

Other downtown employees saw the new details as a political move by Bush to “keep us living in fear” and garner support for the war on terrorism.

“It’s a travesty…. I mean, we’ve caught him lying so many times,” said Mark Lea, who works at a major law firm in the Wells Fargo building next door. “He’s only doing this to draw up support for his domestic spying.”

Patrick Grover, who works on the tower’s 2nd floor, agreed.

“I’m not alarmed [by the threats],” Grover said. “I’m alarmed that they’re exploiting it years later.”

A few years ago, random man-on-street interviews would not yield lines like this. This is a good thing.

And seriously–shoe bombs? Shoe bombs were going to be used? To blow open locked cockpit doors? Who comes up with this shit? Renny Harlin?