Calling all 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts

Cyclo,

That feeling in your gut is a symptom of predjudice. I get them too, and it means that I don't have any rational reasons behind my predjudice. You should always treat them with suspicion.

I have looked at these conspiracy theories and I am convinced that the story as told-- i.e. America was attacked by Al Qaida who hijacked planes to drive them into buildings-- is the only one that makes any sense.

There simply is no other explaination that anyone has given that makes the slightest bit of sense. The evidence includes hundreds of people who saw planes flying into buildings (and millions who saw it on TV). Airplane passengers whose families testify that died. (If you have one, I would love to see it).

Add to this the fact that these conspiracy theories continue a trend of Jewish conspiracies. The US unfortunately has inherited a long European tradition of anti-Semitism that has has existed long before 9/11 or even the state of Israel.

Add to this fact that many of these theories are clearly based on grave logical errors (like that posted by Freedom4Free above) and claims that are simply ridiculous... like the idea that 4,000 Americans could have been told of the plot beforehand and not one of them would have gone public (I certainly would have).

In science it is said that fantastic claims require fantastic evidence. No one who denies the attacks of 9/11 can even come up with a story that makes sense.

I would enjoy seeing logical alternative story.

I think the void many people like Cycloptichorn feel stems from the fact that although comprehensive in it's explanation, there are many questionable facets to the official story.
Cy stated that building 7 and the call to "pull it" were one of those instances. That it fell in perfect symmetry, and fell almost on cue.....seems odd. Couple that with its complete omission from the investigative reports.
No one has to wholeheartedly side with the conspiracy theorists to say that there is an official story about building 7, but sumpthin' seems odd about it.
I'd be open to alternatives in the same way I'm open to the official story.
The alternative may be just as fishy. Who knows.
Secondly, he mentioned that the complete lack of aircraft debris in the field. There is no precedent set for this kind of wholesale destruction of an airliner, at least not to my knowledge.
Again, the official story exists, but it doesn't seem right, independent of a "gut" feeling. The facts don't cohere with what we have known from past instances.

I want to distance myself from the conspiracy theorists, but I also don't take the official story in the way some Americans do.
IMO, it's OK to question without being labelled a nutcase.

Oh, I believe that planes hit buildings and all that. I just am not sure that people who had a lot to gain didn't have more to do with it than is let on.

Ebrown,
Predjudice? What the hell are you talking about. The feeling in my gut is knowing a liar when I hear one, knowing the history of just how often people have been lied to, and applying rational logic and justified caution/suspicion of motivations.

I don't believe any Jewish conspiracy theories, I don't care any more or less about Jews than I do Christian or Muslim or Hindu or whatever. All a bunch of people who have odd, contradictory and hard to define motivations behind their actions, in my opinion.

Cycloptichorn

I mean predjudice in the sense that gut feelings come from preconceptions and your general worldview rather than from logic or rational thought. It is rare that a gut feeling will contradict your preconceived notions of the way things are.

Rational logic can be spelled out. And still neither you or anyone else has come up with any rational explanation for what happened other than that we were attacked by terrorists.

It is easy to come up with these objections to any "official explanation". The same kinds of objections are used to question evolution, or the moon landing. You can raise these kinds of objections to anything.

So give me a plausible explanation for the facts of 9/11that can exist outside of being an objection to the story I believe it is real -- Do this and I will consider it with an open mind.

The fact that there is apparantly no other explanation is the reason I am confident that the official explanation is true.

Does that seem "odd" because it conflicts with everything you know about physics and structural engineering, or does it just seem "odd?"


And your knowledge of airline crashes is based upon ... what?

Cyc,

Are you saying something along the lines of the government knew about 9/11 and purposely did nothing to stop it or even had something to do with it, or is your problem just with the governments political use of 9/11 after the fact?

He could probably be included in that poll that says one third in this country think 9/11 was somehow an inside job.

Of course, the poll also pointed out that:



I'm sure he's in one of those categories.

Cyc is normally a well reasoned and learned poster here on A2K, which is why I am questioning him further before jumping to any conclusions.

The editor of Popular Mechanics has a new book out. The magazine has been debunking the 'myths' for several years now, but the loons persist. Here's part of the article...
--------------------------------------------------------------

September 12, 2006 --

ON Feb. 7, 2005, I became a member of the Bush/Halliburton/Zionist/CIA/New World Order/Illuminati conspiracy for world domination. That day, Popular Mechanics, the magazine I edit, hit newsstands with a story debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories. Within hours, the online community of 9/11 conspiracy buffs - which calls itself the "9/11 Truth Movement" - was aflame with wild fantasies about me, my staff and the article we had published. Conspiracy Web sites labeled Popular Mechanics a "CIA front organization" and compared us to Nazis and war criminals. For a 104-year-old magazine about science, technology, home improvement and car maintenance, this was pretty extreme stuff. What had we done to provoke such outrage?

Research.

Every 9/11 conspiracy theory we investigated was based on similarly shoddy evidence. Most of these falsehoods are easy to refute simply by checking the original source material or talking to experts in the relevant fields. And yet even the flimsiest claims are repeated constantly in conspiracy circles, passed from Web site to book to Web site in an endless daisy chain. And any witness, expert - or publication - that tries to set the record straight is immediately vilified as being part of the conspiracy.

The American public has every right to ask hard questions about 9/11. And informed skepticism about government and media can be healthy. But skepticism needs to be based on facts, not fallacies. Unfortunately, for all too many, conspiratorial fantasies offer a seductive alternative to grappling with the hard realities of a post-9/11 world.


Source

I don't believe your contention that gut feelings come from preconceptions / worldview. We are born with instincts like any other animal. Sometimes we have "gut feelings" that tell us not to do something, like get on a plane, and listening to that little "gut feeling" may save our life. We don't always know why we have these feelings because most of it is voided during early childhood when parents, teachers and other adults tell us to "stop being silly. Think logically."

Sometimes there are little clues, like an eye twitch barely noticed, that we interpret subconsciencely. We know the person is not telling the truth, but may not be able to associate it with the eye twitch, or nose rub or shift from one foot to the other because it was subtle.

Of course planes flew into buildings on that horrible day.

Of course our government was responsible in part for it having happened. Afterall, when presented with a report a month earlier that was titled "Osama Determined to Attack" the president stayed on vacation and did nothing. No warning was sent out to the public to be aware of their surroundings, watch for unattended bags, or all the other stuff that made vigilantes of all of us until AFTER the attack.

Yet, Ashcroft stopped flying public planes in July 2001.

Coincidence?

Gut feeling?

Hmm, I'm saying that it's hard to know what to believe. But I know that I don't trust a bunch of confirmed liars to tell me the truth.

Let say there hypothetically exists a group within the government who actively wanted the US to be attacked in some fashion. This group doesn't contain Bush - why would it, it certainly wouldn't be neccessary and would only be a liability later. Perhaps this group in the past would have talked about how we need a 'new pearl harbor' event in order to mobilize us militarily.

Let's say this same group hears that OBL wants to attack us with airplanes; and they decide to take the simplest course of action, which is to do nothing, let it happen, and pick up the pieces in a position of superior strength. Coincidentally, this is exactly what happened; Bushco. were explicitly warned, and took no steps.

This doesn't take any active involvement by anyone, no huge conspiracies, nothing. Just inaction from a couple of people, leading an easily lead, hand-picked president around by the ear. And all their goals were accomplished.

It is important to remember that the US, as a nation, was not seriously damaged by 9/11. We lost a couple of buildings and a couple thousand lives. A tragedy, a terrible event, but the equivalent of a black eye or broken finger, on a national scale. So a cold and calculating politician might see the gain in allowing something like this to happen. I wouldn't put it past them, they spy, torture, and lie continually.

I remember that the PATRIOT act was written before 9/11. I recall that the Domestic Spying began months before 9/11. These 'protections' were already in place, ready to be used, waiting for a justification; so when an opportunity came along, why not take it?

---

One of the reasons I don't trust the Popular Mechanics article in the slightest is the fact that it doesn't jive with reality at all parts:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html?page=5&c=y

Here they give their explanation for why WTC7 fell; but Silverstein, the owner of the building, detailed in an interview that they decided to 'pull' the building. So who is lying? You can find a plausible explanation for anything if you try hard enough, but that doesn't mean that it is the correct explanation for it.

As I said originally, you don't see me starting threads about how 9/11 was an inside job. I don't have enough evidence either way to say what happend. But I don't trust the Bush admin to tell me the truth that day, and I know enough about history to know that plots and cabals are pretty common.

There is no doubt that the gov't has exploited 9/11 down to the last drop for every bit of nefarious gain that they could get out of it, so I am in full agreement with the second part of your statement, JP; I don't know for sure about the first part one way or the other. As far as I'm concerned, the 'official story' really doesn't mean much to me.

Cycloptichorn

Very very interesting... and not entirely sure how to respond. Personally, I think that there would have to be too many people involved in order for something like that hypothetical to happen and keep quiet about it at the same time... but sadly, I guess part of me really wouldn't be that surprised about it either.

I think JP has hit upon the classic refutation of any "vast conspiracy" claims--the equation constructed from the number of people who would have had to have been involved and the venality which conspiracy implies. If you have a criminal conspiracy of even a half dozen or fewer people, it is often the case that a crime can be solved by police investigators because one or more of that half dozen or less spill the beans. How less likely is it that conspiracies which require the participation of hundreds or even thousands of individuals could be successfully covered up. Because people who conspire politically or criminally are venal, they can't be trusted--they can't trust outsiders and they cannot trust one another--after all, their participation in a conspiracy guarantees that they are dishonest.

I read the Popular Mechanics web site yesterday--they're hyping their book debunking the Septemeber 11th conspiracy theories, so they naturally want to generate as much publicity as possible. But they make many salient points in which no special knowledge of classified information is necessary. For example, the contention that the Air Force was ordered to "stand down"--the Air Force is never in a "stand up" posture in domestic air space to begin with (or at the least weren't before September 11th), so that's a huge strawman, which nevertheless gets a lot of attention in the phony conspiracy theories. One officer quoted by PM points out that prior to September 11th, the NORAD operational stance was looking outward for threats, not at American air space. You don't need access to sensitive information to see the sense in that statement.

Cyclo has mentioned the two planes--Pennsylvania and the Pentagon--which hit the ground, and has suggested that their crash sites are not consistent with what one would expect in such crash sites. I've read just the opposite, and not simply at the PM web site. The plane that hit the Pentagon was in a steep, but not drastic, approach, rather like one would see in a commercial plane which lost power and was obliged to come in for a landing at a high angle. The scattering of debris at the Pentagon site is a non-starter of an issue--the aircraft hit near ground level on a large, solidly constructed building, the debris wasn't going to scatter as it would have in other types of crashes which only resulted in a pan-cake type of crash on the ground.

The Pennsylvania crash site is consistent with a non-military aircraft in a steep power dive. A great deal of the outer fusilage was scattered over a wide area leading to the point at which the aircraft hit the ground. Military aircraft, especially fighters and fighter-bombers, are built with heavy structural reinforcement so as to hold together in a power dive, and in fast, drastic maneouvering--commercial aircraft are not. That aircraft began shedding external fixtures and sheet metal long before it hit the ground, and right after it is thought to have gone into a steep dive--a dive which it was not constructed to withstand.

Much of the rest of the "meat" of conspiracy theories relies upon the anecdotal evidence of people on the ground, many of whom have since stated that they had not ever stated what they were alleged to have stated. Marc Birnbach of Fox "News" is one such source, who the conspiracy nuts claim as a witness of the second plane hitting the WTC. They consistent refer to him as "Mark Burnback," and willfully ignore his statement, which he has repeated, that he was in Brooklyn and did not see the second plane hit the tower. I believe the PM article discusses this.

Here is a link to an SFGate article on the conspiracy theorists. SFGate is a site maintained by The San Francisco Chronicle, the political allegiance of which is commonly known to be liberal and supportive of the Democratic Party. SFGate could not by any stretch of the imagination be described as a conservative mouthpiece.

Michelle Malkin of The New York Post reviews the Popular Mechanics book and takes some gleeful shots at the conspiracy theorists. Although The Post long had a liberal tradition, having been founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton and some mercantile backers, under Ruper Murdoch's News Corporation, it became conservative and a tabloid. That does not make it unreliable, and Miss Malkin's review is entertaining to read.

This article is from Macleans, the classic Canadian news magazine (roughly the Canadian equivalent of Time magazine). Macleans, founded in 1905, was long seen as a supporter of the Liberal Party in Canada--to quote my Sweetiepie Girl, just because they're called liberals doesn't mean they are liberal. Tories in Canada long criticized Macleans as a liberal organ, especially the arch-conservative Conrad Black--who is currently under indictment for securities fraud and peculation in Canada and the United States. Black's big conservative news venture (he's the Canadian version of Rupert Murdoch) is The National Post. The current editor of Macleans is a former editor with The National Post, and is seen as having moved the magazine's editorial policy to the right. Nevertheless, even by Canadian standards, Macleans can be seen as centrist, and especially in comparison to the "political spectrum" in the United States.

By the way, JP, thanks for this thread, i've been getting awfully tired of the September 11th conspiracy threads.

"Hmm, I'm saying that it's hard to know what to believe. But I know that I don't trust a bunch of confirmed liars to tell me the truth. "

Sort of like a convicted liar saying "We tried really really hard to get bin Laden." Hard to believe any politican these days.

Yet, these conspiracy nuts have not and can not prove their case, so they should be ignored.

How many people have to be involved, to decide to not take a course of action in response to the Bin Laden threat to attack? Just a couple. Not even half a dozen, really.

It really isn't any of the physical evidence that concerns me, other than the lies someone is telling about WTC7, whether it is Silverberg or Popsci, someone isn't telling the truth on that one...

Cycloptichorn

I don't disagree with you, and that's why I don't try to make a 'case,' only explain why I don't believe we are being told the truth.

There's a difference between maintaining a level of skepticism and advancing theories contrary to the body of evidence. Just ask our friends in the Global Warming thread.

Cycloptichorn

Well, Cyclo, if your only contention is that some few people knew that an attack of some kind was probable, and willfully failed to take measures to prevent it--you have a point, sort of. Most of the September 11th conspiracies, however, refer to explosions within the buildings, to military aircraft such as transports hitting the towers, to a failure of the Air Force to intercept (something which they were not operationally prepared to do), and all of those types of conspiracy theories imply hundreds, at the least, of co-conspirators. It takes hundreds of people to get a military transport off the ground and flying across the country, and the military have a vested interest in and a policy of tracking military aircraft in flight. To put massive amounts of explosives into the WTC towers implies quite an extensive conspiracy, as well. I've worked in industrial security, with a company which sells, installs and maintains security equipment and systems. You can't even go to your customer's site and do routine maintenance and repair of the camera systems without at least dozens of people knowing it, and everytime you pass a secure door, you either need Security to open the door for you, or you will have used a card reader which records the data of your visit.

The farthest you will get with the type of conspiracy to which you refer would be to claim that a handful of people had special knowledge and did nothing. Even that means they'd have to have taken steps to keep their information under wraps, and that would only have drawn more people into the conspiracy, and people who were not necessarily a part of the conspiracy to begin with. If any one person or a few persons in such a conspiracy had a falling out, the possibility of the revelation of the conspiracy is dramatically heightened, unless you intend to invoke cloak and dagger operations to "silence" people, which once again means taking more and more people into the conspiracy.

This reminds me in many ways of the Pearl Harbor conspiracy theorists. In both cases, the principle of entia non sunt multiplicanda is ignored--i.e., that the simplest explanation is the most probable. And, in both cases, we were caught flat-footed in a disasterous way. Conspiracy theories about Pearl Harbor bloomed before the war was even over, despite more than a dozen War Department and Congressional hearings and committee investigations. At the heart of the Pearl Harbor conspiracy theories is the unwillingness to admit the simple truth--the Japanese Imperial Navy pulled off one of the greatest pre-emptive attack operations in military history, and succeeded against some formidable odds stacked against them. How much easier to look for deep-dyed conspiracies than to admit that we were asleep at the wheel, and people for whom we consistently expressed racist contempt made monkeys out of us.

The same principle applies to September 11th. Yes, there was a conspiracy, and it was carried to fruition by the religious extremists who were responsible for the conspiracy. Any further attempts to hint at or allege dark conspiracies represents a simple failure to recognize an ugly truth.

Cycloptichorn



Very interesting obvservations Cyclo, i would also like to point out the sharp
rise in national defence spending BEFORE 9/11.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/5305868.stm

Without looking at raw data, this line graph means nothing. Typical line graphs are done in the following manner. A point is marked on the graph to represent spending at a certain time (end of fiscal year perhaps). Another point is marked on graph for spending at another point in time (next fiscal year end perhaps). A line is then drawn between the two points.

In your graph, the lines are too straight, indicating that the points used to create your lines are not based on monthly figures, but more likely yearly figures. Thus, it could well be that nearly all the increase in spending came after 9/11 with no actual increase happening beforehand or it could all have occurred prior to 9/11, thus proving whatever point you think you are trying to prove. For the graph to show what you wish it to show, points would have to be plotted showing monthly expenditures, and you would get a more uneven line (even crooked perhaps)

In short, your data is useless in proving your point. Par for the course.

Except, it is a fact that they did have 'special knowledge.' We know that the Prez et al were warned about the possibility of an AQ attack using airplanes. There was no more need for special knowldege than this, because they can say 'we're working on it' while not actually doing anything about it, because the two-three people on top (Cheney, Rummy, Bush, maybe a few others) had no intention of doing anything about it, because they knew an opportunity when they saw one.

Not much of a 'conspiracy'; just a decision amongst those who sat at the top of the decision pyramid to quietly ignore a problem, which, if it struck, would turn out to be a great opportunity for them; and if it didn't, then they wouldn't have wasted any time on it. It was a win-win for the Bush WH, no matter what happened.

Cycloptichorn