Thursday, April 04, 2002

And the tinfoil hat goes to...
Thierry Meyssan, author of 11 Septembre: L'effroyable imposture (commonly given English translation: The Frightening Fraud), which contends that the Pentagon was not, in fact, hit by a hijacked aircraft on September 11, and any reports you may have seen to the contrary are the result of an American conspiracy to conceal the operations of a truck-bomber -- and what his real target was.

I really want to believe this is someone's idea of an April Fool prank. But if Amazon.fr is to be believed, not only does the book exist, but it is the number 1 best seller for French Amazon, and among French brick-and-mortar bookstores as well. (There is utterly no mention of it, or its author, on the American site.)

Snopes.com documents Meyssan's claims, and refutes them effectively. I'm particularly puzzled, though, by "Where are the wings?" Snopes doesn't point it out, but it's my understanding that the wings contain the fuel tanks -- and aviation fuel, as we have all seen at length, burns real good.

Plus, there were witnesses.

File it with the books on crop circles and moon landing fakery. And remember how hard the French are falling for this, just in case we need to judge their credibility on other issues.

Assuming the book really exists.

LATER: It's worse. Damian Penny reports that the book has a lot to say about "the hidden agenda behind the war in Afghanistan and the secret aims of the "War on Terrorism"".

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