With the coming anniversary of 9-11 I felt it was appropriate to watch the Netflix docuseries Turning Point. Looking back, I’m not sure what the point of the documentary was. The events of 9-11 were glossed over. The decisions that followed by the Bush administration had been loosely covered. There was some criticism on Obama for expanding the war in Afghanistan. Then the series ended with the with drawl from Afghanistan however they may have finished their series too soon. Had they continued filming while the military pulled out of the war, they may have bookended the series with the peak of US dominance and the fall of the US as a superpower.

The odd picking a choosing of facts in the series lacked direction as to what exactly they were trying to explain or where the series was going. I guess one could argue that it showed how screwed up US policy has been since 9-11 but what is more interesting are the things left out. The following are just a handful of facts that were left out.

George W. Bush was handed a military briefing titled “Bin Laden determined to strike in US.” Later, he would state multiple times that no one had any idea that something like this could have happened.

Just like the plans for invading Iraq, the Patriot Act was written before 9-11, dusted off, voted on and signed into law without being read by a single member of congress.

Muslim cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki, who was killed by drone strike by the Obama administration had been a Pro-American citizen for years after the events of 9-11. After the attack on 9-11 he talked heavily about how terrorism was against the beliefs of Islam and condemned the attacks. After being harassed for years by the FBI, DHS, and being held seral times at airports for hours, sometimes days without being allowed to board his flight by TSA, Al-Awlaki became an extremist learning that even as an American citizen he did not have the same protections as everyone else. In the end it turned out he was right. Due process was ignored and Al-Awlaki was killed by drone strike without ever being charged for a crime. His son was later killed in the same fashion, a young man who was seeking out family after the loss of his father. Another fact that was left out was the death of AL-Awlaki’s daughter, Nawar Al-Awlaki, in a raid in Yemen during the Trump administration.

Flight 93 was shot down by a US fighter jet over Pennsylvania. Donald Rumsfeld said so himself. There were multiple debris sites over a 6-mile radius. In Turning Point, they claim that one of the flight attendants had been part of the group that stormed the cabin. The final 12 minutes of the flight recorder had never been released. How they know who was involved in the storming of the cabin when no recordings are available?

To this day no footage of the plane hitting the pentagon has been released even though over 80 cameras caught the events and only the one from the guard shack outside of the pentagon has been released. All evidence of the “crash” were collected and discarded the day of the attack before the FBI could have documented the crime scene.

On Sept 10, 2001 Donald Rumsfeld announced that 2.3 trillion dollars of the pentagon budget were unaccounted for. The next day the section of the pentagon where budgets and accounting were taken care of was destroyed by a plane flying into the building. Weird.

Building seven was never mentioned in regard to the Trade Center. The third building to fall on its own that day. Several floors had caught on fire when the towers fell. The building was also reported to have fallen 15 minutes before it actually collapsed.

Osama Bin Laden was reported to have died after the invasion of Afghanistan by French intelligence who were at the funeral. Bin Laden had renal failure and was on dialysis treatments to stay alive. The odds of him living long after traveling through the mountains into Pakistan are slim.

There are three official versions of the Bin Laden raid. Bin Laden used his wife as a human shield. Bin Laden poked his head out of his bedroom when a SEAL called his name and shot him in the head. Bin Laden shot at SEALs when they were in his house. All of these are official versions of the story. The man who was pulled out of the house could not be identified because he was shot in the face multiple times. DNA could not be used as ID because they did not have a source sample. The body was dumped at sea against Islamic law, contrary to what the Obama administration says. Any footage of Bin Laden after the invasion of Afghanistan was previously recorded footage or recordings edited to sound like new material and there has never been a video of Bin Laden admitting to the 9-11 attacks.

Pages of documents regarding the funding of the 9-11 attacks from the Saudi Government have never been declassified. 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals.

Even with the dual embassy bombings and the attack on the USS Cole the federal government did not seize the money they had given Bin Laden to fight the Russians until after 9-11.

The passport of one of the hijackers was found outside of the Trade Center after the planes collided with the towers, intact, without being burned.

3 days after 9-11 the decision was made to invade Iraq.

ISIS was completely skipped, created by former Ba’ath party members who were not allowed to help run Iraq after it was invaded.

The project for a new American Century stated that an event like Pearl Harbor needed to happen for America to remain a world power in the coming century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century