If I were asked to provide a single defining trait to describe conspiracy theorists I would choose:
Conspiracy theorists: those whose near absolute scepticism of official narratives is matched only by their complete credulousness when it comes to alternative explanations - particularly those involving secret groups of people plotting treachery in the dark.
So - to choose the World Trade Center as an example - there's simply no chance that some things may just have been coincidence, or honest mistakes. And that some of the 'cover up' which followed may have merely been the inept covering up their asses as opposed to the truly evil covering up the unspeakable.
None of this is possible. On the other hand though, any theologian or retired engineering professor or celebrity libertarian who makes claims of conspiracy is assumed automatically to be honest, an expert, and in no need of double-checking.
In a similar vein, while the official narrative of 9-11 is poured over for any inconsistency, no such concern is shown for the flipping great inconsistencies in any alternative narrative that could be created.
As Matt Taibbi puts it:
What is the theory of the crime, according to the 9/11 Truth movement?Up to a point scepticism is a healthy attribute. But it's also one that needs to be applied even-handedly.Strikingly, there is no obvious answer to that question, since for all the many articles about "Able Danger" and the witnesses who heard explosions at Ground Zero, there is not -- at least not that I could find -- a single document anywhere that lays out a single, concrete theory of what happened, who ordered what and when they ordered it, and why. There obviously is such a theory, but it has to be pieced together by implication, by paying attention to the various assertions of 9/11 lore (the towers were mined, the Pentagon was really hit by a cruise missile, etc.) and then assembling them later on into one single story. But the funny thing is, when you put together all of those disparate theories, you get the dumbest story since Roman Polanski's Pirates.
The specifics vary, but the basic gist of what They Say Happened goes something like this:
A group of power-hungry neocons, led by Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Bush and others and organizationally represented by groups like the Project for the New American Century, seeks to bring about a "Pearl-Harbor-like event" that would accelerate a rightist revolution, laying the political foundation for invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Your basic Reichstag fire scenario, logical enough so far. Except in this story, the Reichstag fire is an immensely complicated media hoax; the conspirators plot to topple the World Trade Center and pin a series of hijackings on a group of Sunni extremists with alleged ties to Al Qaeda. How do they topple the Trade Center? Well, they make use of NORAD's expertise in flying remote-control aircraft and actually fly two such remote-control aircraft into the Towers (in another version of the story, they conspire with Al Qaeda terrorists to actually hijack the planes), then pass the planes off as commercial jetliners in the media. But it isn't the plane crashes that topple the buildings, but bombs planted in the Towers that do the trick.
For good measure -- apparently to lend credence to the hijacking story -- they then fake another hijacking/crash in the Pentagon, where there actually is no plane crash at all but instead a hole created by a cruise missile attack, fired by a mysterious "white jet" that after the attack circles the White House for some time, inspiring the attention of Secret Service agents who point at it curiously from the ground (apparently these White House Secret Service agents were not in on the plot, although FBI agents on scene at Ground Zero and in Shanksville and elsewhere were).
Lastly, again apparently to lend weight to the whole hijacking cover story, they burn a big hole in the ground in Pennsylvania and claim that a jet went down there, crashed by a bunch of brave fictional civilians who fictionally storm the fictional plane cabin. The real-life wife of one of the fictional heroes, Lisa Beamer, then writes a convincingly self-serving paean/memoir to her dead husband, again lending tremendous verisimilitude to the hijacking story. These guys are good!
5 comments:
"Your basic Reichstag fire scenario, logical enough so far. Except in this story, [...]."
See, there's your problem. You're attributing wild speculation to a large group of people who mostly don't hold to it. Quite how the nutty bits get so much airtime, well, should be obvious really.
Now, if you want to talk about stories, in the other story an old man living in a cave in Afghanistan did it, without leaving any evidence you're allowed to see, you can't expect anyone to have stopped it anyway, and endless wars against abstract concepts are our only hope for salvation, killing all the bad guys will make the world right.
Seriously.
See, there's your problem. You're attributing wild speculation to a large group of people who mostly don't hold to it. Quite how the nutty bits get so much airtime, well, should be obvious really.
So can you provide me with a coherent narrative of what happened on the day then? I'd love to hear it.
Now, if you want to talk about stories, in the other story an old man living in a cave in Afghanistan did it, without leaving any evidence you're allowed to see, you can't expect anyone to have stopped it anyway...
Except that OBL didn't do it: a group of Jihadi's ideologically affiliated and with some connection to Al Qaeda carried out the attack. There is evidence aplenty of this to be found in what happened on the day and the histories of the attackers.
and endless wars against abstract concepts are our only hope for salvation, killing all the bad guys will make the world right.
Of course, one can oppose these laws without buying the conspiracy theory. They are wrong even on the terms they are being sold on.
So can you provide me with a coherent narrative of what happened on the day then? I'd love to hear it.
The warmongers got exactly what they wanted, and it couldn't have happened without the things they did.
Narrative? Foreknowledge of basic plan for at least six months. NORAD and FAA procedures interfered with in ways that make said plan more likely to succeed. Unusual entry into the US after names were taken off watch lists. Learning to fly at military and security service airfields. Agents put off investigations. NORAD distracted on the day by a drill covering hijacked airliners being crashed into significant buildings, also serving to make foreign warnings seem expected. Pilots that opened the cockpits and passengers who didn't know to fight back. PATRIOT act already written. Afghanistan planning complete.
The Taliban tried to hand over OBL through the Pakistanis, even without evidence. Not to mention Iraq. Everyone wanted to assist, no one wanted the wars.
Executive suppression of huge amounts of information, leading to wild speculation, the most wild of which is widely publicised. Refusals to testify under oath. Inquiries that were often not allowed to inquire about anything. A great deal of lying about it all from officials.
Dick Cheney and co. wanted to do a lot of adventurous stuff and they needed something spectacular like this to happen to get the support for it.
"the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."
It was in their interest to be completely incompetent in effect, and make very sure everyone else was too; while having all the answers at the ready and fingers pointed immediately afterward.
You know there was a real terrorist, a Polish, Jewish, Communist guy, that set fire to the Reichstag.
As a result of this "incompetence" they've made their connected friends and families hundreds of billions of dollars. George Bush may well have some severe alcohol related brain damage (or just be a talented actor, that's certainly not his natural accent), but he's from a very smart and well connected family, and his crew have repeatedly shown themselves to be some of the smartest and most manipulative sociopaths on the planet.
Tussock,
Just very quickly. The conspiracy you are now talking about is quite different from the one that Loose Change, and most conspiracy theorists, advocate. You are claiming that, rather than missiles and explosives, the conspiracy was merely that the Bush administration knew in advance about the attack and chose not to act (and got in the way of anyone who might have).
This, at least, is remotely plausible (unlike the Loose Change 'theory'). I still think it highly unlikely as even this plot would have required the involvement and coordination of many people - all who now must absolutely faithfully maintain their silence about a horrific crime. All of whom work for an administration which, regardless of George W's secret intelligence or not, has fucked up everything it has touched. This seems much less likely to me than the official story. Still if you are willing to provide me some links to the claims you make I am happy to look into them more.
Oh, don't bother about the PNAC one though. That's just silly - if you were really planning a new pearl harbour - would you actually mention it in advance in a publicly available report?????
most conspiracy theorists
I doubt that characterisation, but couldn't prove either way. Unanswered Questions, moveon.org, and similar groups seem to have very much larger memberships than the sort of thing you're talking about.
[GWB's administration] has fucked up everything it has touched.
You know a good majority of those
"fuck-ups" made his ultra-rich corporate buddies billions of dollars. They look different if you consider the administration to be a bunch of crooks, fucking up the poor for the short term gains of the rich.
Still if you are willing to provide me some links to the claims you make I am happy to look into them more.
... Dude, even sorting through the stuff on my hard drives would take weeks. It's a very big topic, and chock full of red herrings anyway. You'll excuse my cop out, but I'm not an investigative journalist.
if you were really planning a new pearl harbour - would you actually mention it in advance in a publicly available report?????
I'm neither insane nor a genocidal psychopath, so I wouldn't be planning a new pearl habour at all. All I can suggest is you look at the other things they said they were going to do, like invade Afghanistan and Iraq, ignore international relations and treaties, and so on. They did everything else, no matter how fucked up it obviously is, killing hundreds of thousands of people, after being very up front about it all.
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