You’ve noticed a little bit of back and forth in the pages of the News-Herald in the past few editions over the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Managing Editor Douglas Grant started it with a column on Friday critical of actor Charlie Sheen who said on the Jimmy Kimmel show that the U.S. government was responsible for terrorist attacks n apparently not via incompetence but actually planning and perpetrating it.

A letter appeared in Tuesday’s paper from John Sharpe taking Grant to task for his attack on Sheen.

It’s prompted some discussion in the office lately.

It’s my contention that a reasonable person could question the explanation, or lack thereof, the public has been given about 911 without necessarily believing that Vice President Cheney actually piloted the first plane that hit the tower, ejecting to safety just before impact.

Conspiracy theorists contend that the Neocons needed an excuse to start their war so they could remake the Middle East and had in fact written in the late 90s that some type of catastrophic event that rallied the nation around the president and the flag would be necessary to make it work.

I must admit, I’m vulnerable to most conspiracy theories that come down the pike. I don’t think there’s any way Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone shooter (if he shot at all) of President Kennedy. I believe aliens landed at Roswell in 1947 and the government has been concealing it from us; and I will go to my deathbed believing that Super Bowl III between my mighty Baltimore Colts and the New York Jets was fixed to give the AFL legitimacy in preparation for the merger. There’s no way that drunken Namath could have piloted a victory over Unitas, Bubba Smith, John Mackey and company. No way.

By the same token, there’s no way anyone could convince me that our government killed 3,000 of its own people. Still, there are curious things about 911, particularly the way the buildings fell. It looks like a classic demolition. And what was up with that third 45-story building collapsing seven hours after the twin towers fell that wasn’t even hit by a plane? Bizarre.

There are many unanswered questions about the events of that day that the victims’ families in particular, and Americans in general, deserve to know. Asking those questions does not make one a nut case.