9/11: Did America do it to itself?

Interestingly enough, the poll is confirming what I susected. The Org is certainly not short on conspiracy theorists, but even here, the best we can come up with is a small percentage that thinks the administration knew but did nothing about it. Nobody is actually suggesting that we did.

Yet, there's that poll... and believe it or not, these people are out there. Same talk radio station, different program. Michael Graham had the editor from Popular Mechanics on and he went through every piece of evidence the conspiracy theorists have offered (building 7, heat of fire, impact force of jet carrying it right through the building, etc). And these people were calling in, enraged, screaming and wailing "They got to you too!!!" and started in with these crazy theories that Popular Mechanics of all magazines was bought by the CIA in 2003, just to cover it up. So these people are out there.

Now granted, I haven't seen Byzantine Prince or Idaho weigh in on it yet, but I would like to thank you all for, thus far at least, restoring my faith in the intelligence of man.

I can prove the Bush administration couldn't have pulled this off just by mentioning one name... or better yet, let's just leave you all with this picture as a testimony to the slick, well oiled but diabolical machine that resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Ask yourselves folks, would somebody that diabollically brilliant EVER have nominated... her:
https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...hmiers-100.jpg

It would be ridiculous for the US Government to use such a method to get into a war and inconceivable that it would remain secret. Conspiracy theories in general require a enormous suspension of disbelief from me. Certain intelligence elements may have had information that could have led to knowing it would happen ahead of time, but intelligence agencies are flooded with information and have to decide what to trust, what is relevant, and put two and two together. Like in the Pearl Harbor case, the information may have been there, but not the knowledge.

Ajax

gah.

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Originally Posted by Don Corleone

Ronin, Watchman... if the two of you care to start your own thread debating whether or not the USA deserved the 9/11 attacks

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Now now, Don. Ronin made a clear distinction between deserving and being at the root cause of it. He speaks of ulterior causes for the attack, causes that he thinks are rooted in American foreign policy. Disagree with it or not, but is a fair answer to the question 'Did America do it to itself?'
It is similar to answering to 'did I set my own house on fire' that no, you did not want to start a fire, and no you didn't deserve it, but you did smoke in bed and fell asleep...


One could claim that your quote below is far more damning to the US. You dismiss 9/11 conspiracy theories not through lack of malice, but only lack of competence on the part of the US government. :inquisitive:

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I really, truly want to know how 36% of my population, 50-something% of Germany, 75% of UAE and other places of educated, thoughtful people can actually believe that the US government, which cannot manage to accomplish anything without massive internal leaks, pulled this one off. The same government that couldn't keep the lid on Colin Powell's unhappiness or Bush's DUI or a whole host of other things managed to engage hundreds, if not thousands of Americans from many walks of life in a massive ploy to savagely, cruelly, execute close to 3000 of their fellow citizens.

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Meh, DP.

I don't want to rule anything out, but I dout that the US actualy kiled so many of its own people. Had that been the case, I would hop all of Europ would be cleansing the USA of the government that planned such events.

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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat

One could claim that your quote below is far more damning to the US. You dismiss 9/11 conspiracy theories not through lack of malice, but only lack of competence on the part of the US government. :inquisitive:

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Absolutely. I have, for lack of a better word, devolved into pure cynicism, at least as far as government at the national level is concerned (and I ain't all that sure about local). I wasn't trying to club Ronin over the head with the flag with the indignant air of "how dare you suggest such a thing", I was trying to keep my thread on track.

Ronin, Watchman, Crazed Rabbit, if you took my comments as "shut up, I don't want to hear it", I apologize. I assure you, I simply want this thread focused on just how strongly this "America did it to itself" theory has legs, and from what corners does it come. No offense intended.

Don Corleone, I'm sure you already knew this, but polls aren't exactly the most reliable of things, and the answers might not just be as straightforward as the polls made it to be...

You stated cynicism; I agree, this is probably cynicism on the part of most Americans, rather than actually believing in those tinfoil-conspiracy theories that float around. It's an attitude of, "Absurd, my government is. I don't care anymore, we might as well do it to ourselves," or something similar, if less drastic.

As far as I'm concerned the only possible stretch that does not challenge logic heavily is that parts of the intelligence community had their hands on the information, but fails to act on it. That, of course, does not imply the reason to be conspiratory; incompetence is more plausible, even if neo-con nutjobs are still possible...

No dumb President would blow up his own economy for short-term support so early in his reign, anyway. Every decent politician ought to know that crisis popularity, patriotic war rally, and their respective compliments are as short as the crisis itself, a Bush especially so. And I don't think the dumbarses who advocated American Imperialism (neo-cons) are *that* entrenched in the Administration.

For what it's worth Don, I used to work with a woman who truly needed to believe that there was a conspiracy. Well, to be accurate, more of a conspiracy than nineteen men conspiring to blow stuff up under the guidance and funding of AQ.

She seemed to derive exactly the same sort of satisfaction from believing this that I've previously noticed in people who anticipate the rapture and/or armageddon. I got the sense that she would be profoundly disappointed if it turned out to be what it appeared to be -- she believed that she had gained special insight into the event by reading the right web sites.

It's worth noting that she, like I, was an eyewitness to the attacks on the World Trade Center. In fact, everyone I worked with was an eyewitness. Most of us dealt with it by helping out, and eventually moving on. This one lady was completely stuck on the event, and couldn't put it into any sort of context without building up this giant glass edifice of conjecture and conspiracy.

It was quite sad, actually. She wound up moving to France. (Insert the obvious jokes here.)

DC - I think Meirs just might be shrewd political conniving, in the overall scheme of things. So bad example. ~;p

I believe AQ is responsible. Occam's razor and the ineptness of the federal government are very persuasive.

I think anyone who believes the US government was behind it has been led astray by the tinfoil-hat crowd.

The only conspiracy theory that I can find realistic (but still highly unlikely) is that the Administration figured it out that a terrorist attack was emminent, but not what kind of attack and choosed to ignore the information to get an excuse for thier Middle Eastern adventure and some other stuff on the home field, in the way that 9/11 has been used. More likely is that they used the atttack for thier own purposes afterwards without prior knowledge.

We know for sure that the intelligence services knew it but didn't put it together (from what I've heard, even the French intel varned about some of the hijackers).

The Bush administration isn't entirely incompetent, they just wish-thinks too much and got some suspicious ideas from the beginning.

Voted 5 (AQ did it). There's still a possibillity that there's some minor things is still unknown to the public, but I don't think it changes the official line much.

I would be remarkably surprised if there was any conspiracy beyond the Al Q'aeda plans. My own reading of the available evidence and experience in counter-terrorism tends to confirm my belief that it was a very lucky strike by the Al Q'aeda cell, somewhat exacerbated by the intelligence community's failures to believe the few clues that were around. As ever in counter-terrorism intelligence, those clues look awfully obvious after the event, but without hindsight, are random dots that are not easy to connect. The US had a long history of being unaffected by terrorism, and this laissez-faire plus a lucky run of events for the terrorists brought the outrage. I am convinced that the leadership of Al Q'aeda were as surprised as anyone when it actually came off so spectacularly - I suspect they were hoping they might hijack one plane and crash it in the sea or force the President to have it shot down.

Lemur's direction to Occam's Razor is a good one, and applies to both sides. Democratic governments are very poor at developing conspiracies unless they control all aspects of the intelligence, military and political institutions. There's almost always a whistle-blower, before or after the event. Compare with Putin's Russia, where the Chechen apartment block bombings where almost certainly orchestrated by the FSB to bolster Putin's reputation.

On the other side, terrorists are almost always not the Dr Evil mad geniuses that our leaders like to make them out to be. They are usually poorly rational, badly educated, fanatical and dumb as a rock. They get lucky because free societies have easy targets and loop holes to exploit, like the very relaxed airport regulations that prevailed in the US at the time.

A sensible strategy for 9-11 would be to have many sleeper cells embedded in the US long before bringing off the big attack. If you knew you could bring 9-11 off on schedule, you would make it the opening shot in a campaign of terror. Then you could have paralysed the US for years by smaller, diverse follow-ups - they wouldn't be attacking Afghanistan, but rooting through their own citizenry for terrorists. Look at the Washington snipers later on in the year - brought the capital to a halt, and really terrorised the population witless. If that had been found to be an Al Q'aeda terrorist, all hell would have followed. Nothing like that has happened, despite the constant wailing of 'security' warnings (where the government is manipulating the 9-11 issue) because Al-Q'aeda, like almost all terrorist groups, is a bunch of illiterate morons.

So, no conspiracy, but a lot of manipulation of people by governments. I suspect that most citizens have a sneaky feeling that all the rhetoric since 9-11 is self-serving for the politicians, and thus they are being made more cynical about what happened on that day.

Oh, and SSNeoperestroika makes a good point - President Bush would have been much more decisive than the Pet Goat situation if he had any fore-knowledge. Compare again with Putin, who was ready to go and 'manly' the moment the TV turned up (and this was not because he's a better leader).

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Originally Posted by Don Corleone

Absolutely. I have, for lack of a better word, devolved into pure cynicism, at least as far as government at the national level is concerned (and I ain't all that sure about local). I wasn't trying to club Ronin over the head with the flag with the indignant air of "how dare you suggest such a thing", I was trying to keep my thread on track.

Ronin, Watchman, Crazed Rabbit, if you took my comments as "shut up, I don't want to hear it", I apologize. I assure you, I simply want this thread focused on just how strongly this "America did it to itself" theory has legs, and from what corners does it come. No offense intended.

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No problem...


Like somebody has said before I did not mean no imply that america "deserved" what happened on 911....no country deserves to have something like that happen to it´s civilian population....I merely pointed out that your poll options failed to completely paint the picture of what I believe the underlying root causes of 911 to be....

as for this other bs conspiracy stuff "bush knew it was comming and all that"...I don´t believe that at all.

I think that when something as big as 9/11 happens people want it to be more significant then it really is. All it says is that 36% of the americans need to have their head examined, if it was an inside job, something much smaller would have been sufficient.