On the August 17 broadcast of KBDI Channel 12's Colorado Inside Out , guest panelist Ed Thomas -- editor-in-chief of the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle and a former Denver city councilman -- distorted an August 14 Rocky Mountain News column by Paul Campos when he named Campos his choice for the show's regular “Disgrace of the Week” segment. Thomas said that Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado, called the September 11, 2001, terror attacks “the most overblown event in American history” and that Campos called for a stop to “wallowing in our obsession [with the attack].” But Thomas omitted that Campos had written that the “terrible day” was being “overblown and shamelessly exploited” and that it didn't “justify the Iraq war, indiscriminate spying on Americans, extrajudicial renditions, torture, or any of the other immoral actions that continue to be done in its name.”

From the August 17 broadcast of KBDI Channel 12's Colorado Inside Out:

PATRICIA CALHOUN (host): We're returning to the “Disgrace of the Week.”

[...]

THOMAS: There were 3,000 people that were incinerated on 9-11. There was an editorial in the Rocky Mountain News the other day where the editorialist at the bottom, he said, “It's high time to stop wallowing in our obsession, which is, what is becoming the most overblown event in American history.” 3,000 people were killed, and he calls it “the most overblown event in American history.” And what's interesting about it this, I'm sure -- probably Hank Brown is just poundin' his head on, you know, on his desk, because he just got rid of Ward Churchill, and now he's got to put up with Paul Campos. This -- you want to talk about a disgrace. Overblown, I don't think so.

[...]

ERIC LOVE (University of Colorado history professor): Stu Bykofsky, a conservative columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, who noted in a article last week that what the United States needs in order to bring itself back together in the midst of the Iraq war, which is a very divisive war, is not decisive and competent leadership, it's another 9-11. His statement specifically was, “We need another 9-11 attack.”

CALHOUN: All right -- now, short and sweet for nice please, we only have a minute.

LYNN BARTELS (Rocky Mountain News reporter): Say something nice? Paul Campos. I read his column; I love it.

Thomas failed to point out that Campos' column discussed the August 9 Philadelphia Daily News column by Stu Bykofsky, headlined, “To save America we need another 9/11.” Bykofsky wrote that "[a]nother 9/11 attack" would “restore America's ... singular purpose”:

ONE MONTH from The Anniversary, I'm thinking another 9/11 would help America.

[...]

Remember the community of outrage and national resolve? America had not been so united since the first Day of Infamy -- 12/7/41.

We knew who the enemy was then.

We knew who the enemy was shortly after 9/11.

Because we have mislaid 9/11, we have endless sideshow squabbles about whether the surge is working, if we are “safer” now, whether the FBI should listen in on foreign phone calls, whether cops should detain odd-acting “flying imams,” whether those plotting alleged attacks on Fort Dix or Kennedy airport are serious threats or amateur bumblers. We bicker over the trees while the forest is ablaze.

America's fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.

What would sew us back together?

Another 9/11 attack.

The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda.

Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?

If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.

From Paul Campos' column, “The Cult of 9/11,” in the August 14 edition of the Rocky Mountain News:

When Stu Bykofsky, a columnist for The Philadelphia Daily News, wrote a column last week in which he openly hoped that America suffers “another 9/11,” he merely had the poor judgment to say what many a right-wing politician and pundit is thinking.

[...]

Bykofsky's column is a nostalgic look back at the days immediately following 9/11, when the nation was unified by fear and anger, and a desire to find and destroy “the enemy.” (Typically, Bykofsky doesn't bother to define who “the enemy” is. This spares him the effort of having to consider whether invading a country that had nothing to do 9/11 made any sense.)

Six years later, it's worth looking back on that terrible day with something other than a wistful longing for a repeat performance, in order to recognize a couple of obvious if unpleasant truths.

[...]

[I]n the years since [September 11, 2001], we have been encouraged to develop a kind of narcissistic obsession with the events of Sept. 11, 2001 (indeed, the very term “9/11” reflects this.) “9/11” is invoked over and over again, as the day that “changed everything,” and that therefore justifies everything from banning toothpaste on airplanes to wholesale spying on Americans without a warrant to torturing people who have been imprisoned for years without trial.

Campos did use the term “overblown” to describe 9-11, but Thomas did not provide the full context of Campos' usage:

The fact is that if you, like me, are one of the 99.9 percent of Americans who doesn't know anyone who was killed or injured in the 9/11 terror attacks, or in the subsequent rescue efforts, then 9/11 was at bottom a very disturbing thing that you saw (over and over again) on TV.

It didn't “change everything,” and it didn't (and doesn't) justify the Iraq war, indiscriminate spying on Americans, extrajudicial renditions, torture, or any of the other immoral actions that continue to be done in its name.

It's high time to stop wallowing in our obsession with what is becoming the most overblown and shamelessly exploited event in American history. [emphasis added]