9-11 Conspiracies Are Still Big News
In our memories it may seem as real as yesterday or remote as that fateful Ides of March which marks the last years of the Roman Republic. And although time can be illusionary there was nothing but cold, frightening reality to be seen on the morning of September 11, 2001.
Before the dust had settled in lower Manhattan; before the fires had died out at the Pentagon; and before the fate of United Flight 93 was confirmed, the first rumors of conspiracy were beginning to work their way into the group subconscious of .
There seems to be almost as many “9-11” conspiracy theories as there are individual “true believers.” In fact, a Google search (via MSN.com) using the string “9-11 conspiracy theories” returned 359,960 web pages/sites and a search using Yahoo.com turned up ~ 4,310,000 “hits” involving the identical string, not to mention the 31 million hits turned up by Firefox/Google. But in the long run it really doesn’t matter which particular theory you want (or do not want) to believe in because, for all practical purposes, all these alleged conspiracies are nothing more than “copycat” versions of each other.
As an example, the single “fact” that can be found within any self-respecting 9-11 conspiracy theory is “George Bush planned the attacks…” or “George Bush knew about the plans but didn’t interfere because…” or the ever-popular “George Bush was acting under orders from…” or some variation along those same lines. The biggest problem with this line of reasoning is that the Bush administration is accused of being one of the most incompetent organizations in the history of public service while simultaneously committing, and then successfully hiding its involvement in, what would have to be the largest and most complex conspiracy in recorded history.
Once the above argument is introduced into “evidence” you can more or less pick and chose the necessary co-conspirators to support your agenda. You can identify “Jews, Zionists and racist Americans” (Louis Farrakhan, Nation of Islam and Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-GA), “big oil & the military-industrial complex,” (David Ray Griffin, retired theologian and author of The New Pearl Harbor), or ” and the Mossad” (Christopher Bollyn, “investigative reporter”). If these names are not familiar, you may take comfort in knowing that they are not well-known to anyone else outside the conspiracy “industry.”
From this point the various theories diverge as each offers its own “conclusive evidence” which is hailed as “the truth” while at the same time attempting to discredit anyone who presents either a conflicting theory of their own or dares to point out that the “conclusive evidence” is taken out of context, may have a very simple alternative explanation, or is nothing more than a blatant fabrication.
As I mentioned previously, there are more theories in circulation than can be mentioned in a single posting such as this. I will instead refer the interested reader to one of the more well-written and researched sources available on the Internet such as Michael Griffith’s Refuting the 9-11 Conspiracies or Cinnamon Stillwell’s The Truth about 9-11 Conspiracies.
A few weeks ago I published a tongue in cheek item here at Associated Content under the title “It’s A Conspiracy!” in which I made the following observations:
“Another nice thing about conspiracy theories is that once formulated and proposed conspiracy theories need absolutely none of the routine intellectual maintenance that other, less exotic ideas such as the Theory of Evolution or the Theory of Relativity periodically require…If someone asks you for proof of your latest-discovered conspiracy, all you have to say in your defense is “I can’t prove it, because the evidence is being suppressed by the conspiracy.”
Keep those ideas in mind the next time, and there will always be a next time, someone wants to insult your intelligence with yet another baseless and self-serving pack of distorted facts known as a 9-11 conspiracy theory.
