Former Bush team member is voicing serious doubts about the collapse of the WTC

By John Daly
UPI International Correspondent

Washington, DC, Jun. 13 (UPI) -- Insider notes from United Press International for June 8

A former Bush team member during his first administration is now voicing serious doubts about the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9-11. Former chief economist for the Department of Labor during President George W. Bush's first term Morgan Reynolds comments that the official story about the collapse of the WTC is "bogus" and that it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7. Reynolds, who also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas and is now professor emeritus at Texas A&M University said, "If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and a government attack on America would be compelling." Reynolds commented from his Texas A&M office, "It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7. If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely to be correct either. The government's collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms. Only professional demolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapse of the three buildings."

Two years after President George W. Bush proclaimed "mission accomplished" in Iraq, some thoughtful officers are beginning to question who the insurgents actually are. In a recent interview the head of the US 42nd Infantry Division which covers key trouble spots, including Baquba and Samarra Major General Joseph Taluto said he could understand why some ordinary Iraqis would take up arms against U.S. forces because "they're offended by our presence." Taluto added, "If a good, honest person feels having all these Humvees driving on the road, having us moving people out of the way, having us patrol the streets, having car bombs going off, you can understand how they could (want to fight us). There is a sense of a good resistance, or an accepted resistance. They say 'okay, if you shoot a coalition soldier, that's okay, it's not a bad thing but you shouldn't kill other Iraqis.'" Taluto insisted however that the other foreign forces would not be driven out of Iraq by violence, observing, "If the goal is to have the coalition leave, attacking them isn't the way," he said. "The way to make it happen is to enter the political process cooperate and the coalition will be less aggressive and less visible and eventually it'll go away." Taluto's comments are sure to raise hackles at the Pentagon, which insist that all insurgents are either Baathists or al-Qaida. Taluto observed that "99.9 per cent" of those captured fighting the U.S. were Iraqis.

Ah well, there's always Argentina. The German government is reportedly blocking the deportation of Nazi war crimes suspects from the U.S. back to Germany to be tried and punished. The German interior ministry has refused to accept the suspects even though the United States already has stripped them of their citizenship because of their World War II history and has asked Germany to accept them; German officials worry the suspects might join neo-Nazi groups. Deputy director of the Office of Special Investigations at the Department of Justice Jonathan Drimmer said, "By and large we're talking about concentration camp guards, we're talking about collaborators, people who were involved in indigenous police forces, that kind of thing." German interior ministry officials said that Washington had not given Berlin enough proof that the suspects were war criminals, despite repeated requests from Germany. Deportation in U.S. court cases requires not criminal, but just civil, proceedings, with a burden of proof of "clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence." German Interior ministry officials noted that if Germany accepted the deportees, they would be supported by the German social system and possibly would involve themselves in the extreme right or anti-Semitic political activities.

The first conflict that the newly independent United States engaged in began in 1801 with the Barbary States; now descendents of those corsairs have participated in naval exercises with their former enemies. On June 7 Algerian and U.S. Coast Guard warships conducted a joint naval exercise, improving interoperability and developing cooperation in securing the western Mediterranean. The vessels conducted maritime patrol missions, testing their joint capabilities to monitor and board suspicious vehicles and interdict illegal migration. U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Robert Wyner said Washington regards Algeria as a strategic partner in the war against terrorism and that Algeria would play a major role in U.S. efforts to bolster the stability of North Africa and counter the threat of al-Qaida. Interestingly enough, former counterterrorism adviser Richard A. Clarke closed Boston harbor on 9-11 because of concerns that al-Qaida terrorists were stowaways aboard liquefied natural gas tankers from Algeria bound for Boston's Everett LNG facility.