The Toronto Star continues to let the execrable Antonia Zerbisias drag their newspaper into the gutter, with a truly insane column quoting internet wacko Barry Zwicker as if he were a credible source: Poking holes in the official story of 9/11. (Hat tip: Truth Dr.)

Whatever the explanation, Zwicker, a media critic for more than 30 years, says the U.S. press abdicated its responsibility to probe what happened and has been “complicit” in advancing the official explanation.

“If the corporate media had looked at this from the beginning, we would be living in a different world now,” he insists. “(U.S. President) George W. Bush would have been impeached by now.”

Inquiry’s unasked questions include: Why were fighter jets not scrambled in time to stop the planes from smashing into the buildings? Why did the U.S. chain of command — including the commander-in-chief Bush — not act when the hijackings were in progress? Why were so many warnings missed? And why did it take the Kean Commission — Washington’s official 9/11 inquiry — so long to get going, and only after the bereaved families noisily lobbied for more than a year?

Among the questioners coming to Toronto are University of Ottawa economics professor Michel Chossudovsky (War and Globalization, The Truth Behind September 11), French political activist and best-selling author Thierry Meyssan (9/11: The Big Lie), former fighter pilot turned security expert Dr. Robert Bowman of Florida, the Center for Cooperative Research’s Paul Thompson, who compiled a comprehensive 9/11 timeline (http://www.cooperativeresearch.org), and Ellen Mariani, a 9/11 widow who is suing the government instead of taking a multi-million-dollar payout.

True, some of the participants have some unusual theories. For example, Meyssan, despite eyewitness accounts, has suggested that it was in fact a missile that hit the Pentagon. But at yesterday’s opening session at least, not a tin-foil hat was in site among the mostly middle-aged crowd of 100. In fact, they looked like the kind of people you might see slinging hash for the homeless at a soup kitchen.

Zerbisias has now officially joined the ranks of gibbering lunatics. How far will the Toronto Star let her go?