45% doubt 9/11 story

While political leaders in Washington desperately try to convince Americans that the major threats to the country are gay people having weddings, Mexicans picking lettuce and the off chance that somebody might one day burn a U.S. flag, the American people seem to have more serious concerns in mind.

A solid 45% of people polled by Zogby International now agree that "Congress or an international tribunal should re-investigate the 9/11 attacks, including whether any U.S. government officials consciously allowed or helped facilitate their success."

In other words, nearly half the country suspects there are U.S. government officials who permitted or even helped plan the horrific mass murder of September 11, 2001.

The credibility of Washington leaders is now so critically eroded that one of every two Americans would now support an international tribunal investigating the actions of the U.S. government.

The survey results, released May 23 by Zogby, also show 42% of Americans believe the official 9/11 Commission "concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence."

It's a far cry from the near-unanimous support the White House, Congress and the Pentagon earned from the shocking horror of the 9/11 attacks nearly five years ago.

A growing "9/11 truth movement" is gathering converts at a furious clip, even filling convention centers with people from all walks of American life who can no longer accept the dubious "official narrative" told by the U.S. corporate media in the immediate aftermath of the made-for-TV slaughter of innocents.

In Chicago this weekend, some 500 skeptics of the "Islamic radical terrorist" story met at the first International Education and Strategy Conference for 9/11 Truth, according to the New York Times.

Official media such as the New York Times still presents the skeptics as oddballs obsessed with minutiae such as the melting point of steel in the World Trade Center towers or dubious claims that Flight 77 didn't actually strike the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, uncontested evidence pointing to staggering levels of government complicity -- such as shamed CIA chief Porter Goss' breakfast with Mohammad Atta's financier on the very morning of the attacks or the Pentagon intelligence program that actually identified several of the hijackers a year before the hijackings -- continues to be ignored by the mainstream press and the more melodramatic 9/11 skeptics.

A Zogby poll in 2004 found that 49% of New Yorkers believed that some national leaders "knew in advance" that the outrageous crimes would take place and did absolutely nothing to stop the murder of some 3,000 innocent Americans.

The psychologically devastating attacks of 9/11 was the "new Pearl Harbor" that Bush Administration officials said was necessary for their plans in the Middle East, according to the now infamous "Project for a New American Century" report published a year earlier.

Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, "Scooter" Libby and Paul Wolfowitz are the most notorious of the 16 members of PNAC who were installed in top positions of power once the Supreme Court appointed George W. Bush as president only nine months before the attacks took place.