Occasionally there comes into the fray of political debate a view so outrageous, so fringe, so forbidden and so dangerous that it demands consideration if not for its eccentricity, than for the vehemence of its position. That view and that particular court case became known to me two weeks ago.

Stanley Hilton — a political scientist, lawyer and Bob Dole’s former chief of staff — said on the Alex Jones Radio Show that not only did George W. Bush allow the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 to take place, but that our president ordered the attacks to take place in order to rally the country into a frenzy of nationalism in order to consolidate political power.

You read that correctly.

Hilton is doing more than just throwing around serious claims; he filed a $7 billion lawsuit on June 3, 2002 against George Bush, Dick Cheney, George Tenet, John Ashcroft, Robert Mueller and Condoleezza Rice for ordering the attacks. He supposedly has the support of 400 victims of Sept. 11 who have signed the suit.

The suit is hefty. It declares Patriot Acts I and II unconstitutional; accuses the defendants of coordination with the Saudi government to plan and orchestrate an artificial second Pearl Harbor event in order to sway public opinion; calls for nothing less than all defendants’ removal of office immediately; and seeks to have a judge rule the reasons for the Iraq war not only illegitimate and false, but also in violation of the Constitution.

Hilton supposedly supports these claims with eyewitness testimony from military personnel, uncovered government memos and certain gaps in evidence contradicting the “official” story of Sept. 11.

I would be laughing at this collection of conspiracy theory talk if I didn’t remember with crystalline clarity how I felt at 8:45 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001.

When I remember the first uncensored report of a deli man in New York talking about the rain of human limbs and blood near his store, suddenly everything gets very serious, and a part of me screams loudly and demands truth, no matter how hurtful.

Hilton seems to pass the “Is he usually this insane?” personal history test when weighing his outrageous claims, considering his former prestigious offices. However, the suit he is pushing with the help of bereaved Sept. 11 families, conspiracy theorists and Bush-haters certainly didn’t materialize out of nowhere.

He personally admitted in his radio interview that the possibility of the American government slowly becoming a military state through a phantom or intentional terrorist strike was the subject of his senior thesis at the University of Chicago, where he was a classmate of Paul Wolfowitz.

And he didn’t seem to do this for fun. Since filing the suit, he’s been personally threatened, received death threats, had a spy infiltrate his law office and was nearly disbarred in the state of California. He hasn’t gained much from this publicity.

As for the involvement of those Sept. 11 families, one possibility is that, due to their grief, they are willing to believe someone with professional legal expertise who promises answers. The sheer number of them willing to support the suit is noteworthy. But hey, even cult leaders have their charismatic moments.

We are left with several possibilities. One is that Hilton hates Bush so much that he is willing to do or say anything to stop him and that he might be nuttier than a Snickers bar.

Another possibility is that, somehow, Hilton has struck upon the truth and we should all be very, very scared.

The third possibility is much more likely, and that is that we have let ourselves become so worked up over what happened on Sept. 11 (an understandable response) that, despite our nature as Americans to debate and discuss issues, we have suppressed open debate of what actually happened on that day, even though legitimate doubts of the official explanation of the tragedy might exist.

As of right now I stand by the official explanation by our government for Sept. 11, but I must concede that if even one of Hilton’s harsh charges is true, we should not let our emotions block us from holding anyone and everyone involved with the atrocities fully responsible for their actions.