Waiting for Doug Thompson to Change his Mind

original with links


Doug Thompson of Capitol Hill Blue has changed the link to his article taking nine eleven truth seekers to task, characterizing them as fools and scam artists. Now the original link points to an article criticizing a Bush “panoply” of “police cars, multiple limos, staff vans, Secret Service SUVs, a helicopter overhead” accompanying the unelected one to a community college for a talk on prescription drugs. In an April 15 explanation of sorts, Thompson admits removing columns, including “three on 9-11 and two on President Bush. The links remain active but the columns have been replaced with a noticed (sic) that the content has been deleted from our archives.”

If there was a notice about removing material, Thompson did not bother to add it to the page where the nine eleven researcher as “fruitcake” article once appeared. “In recent days, I have penned some angry columns—over the top even for me. I also asked some friends who are writers, editors and journalism professors to review the archives of Capitol Hill Blue to see if any columns or articles didn’t meet what they consider to be acceptable standards of journalism,” Thompson explains in an article entitled An apology to our readers.

“Their first report came in today and they found a number of recent Rants that they felt crossed the line or, in their opinion, were written when Amy and I were preoccupied with the declining health and approaching death of our brain-damaged kitten, Loki… Amy and I have spent the last six months trying to save Loki and I was unaware of the toll the battle was taking on my psyche, particularly in recent weeks,” Thompson writes.

It is certainly understandable that Doug Thompson would be angry and even lash out irrationally at the prospect of the “painful decision” (as he wrote elsewhere) to euthanize his pet. “Truth is not served by off-the-cuff rants and I have been striking out in anger at many people in recent days because of grief and that is not right. I misdirected the anger and frustration I felt over our inability to save a pet. That is not right.” Fair enough. However, this does not address the issue at hand—does Thompson sincerely believe those of us who are dedicated to discovering the truth—the whole truth and nothing but the truth, to use an old cliché—are mental patients and snake oil salespersons?

Thompson holds out a bit of hope: “I’m taking a break until we have put Loki’s death behind us. When that is done I will revisit the topics I wrote about before and, hopefully, write about them in a more coherent and reasoned way.”

I don’t know. I find it difficult to believe the death of a pet would change the basic conviction of a person about a certain event—it may change the delivery and tone, but not the underlying belief. It would be nice to read a column next week from Thompson where he expresses doubt about the official version of nine eleven events—after all, only an irrational person ignorant of the facts would buy the whitewash commission version, basically a fairy tale at odds with science and physical law as we understand it on this planet.

I’m not holding my breath.

“The conspiracy claims by those who say Osama bin Laden and his rabid band of followers could not possibly have planned and executed the attacks that killed more than 3,000 Americans on that fateful day are, in my opinion, just plain wrong,” Thompson wrote in his original column, now excised. Again, I’m not sure if this bullheaded claim was penned as the result of the impending death of Doug’s pet or if he actually believes the Muslims with laptops in an Afghan cave storyline, basically and obviously an absurdity.

“I can state,” former German Minister of Technology, Andreas von Bülow, told Tagesspiegel in early 2002, “the planning of the attacks was technically and organizationally a master achievement. To hijack four huge airplanes within a few minutes and within one hour, to drive them into their targets, with complicated flight maneuvers! This is unthinkable, without years-long support from secret apparatuses of the state and industry…. Even investigative journalists are fed propaganda and disinformation. Anyone who doubts that, doesn’t have all his marbles!”

We can only hope, with his grief behind him, Doug Thompson will find his marbles.