|
1. As for the polls, there are two polls in this forum now and both show 70% voted either LIHOP/MIHOP or the term "inside job". The 80% number was based on a recollection of an earlier poll that was posted in GD before it was moved here. Although I have no way of verifying this hunch, but my guess is that in fact, the 9/11 forum over-represents OCTers who post here with great persistence. Either way, the great majority of DUers would agree either with the forumulation of LIHOP/MIHOP or the term "inside job."
2. As for the evidence being against the OCT, I can't understand how you could disagree with this assertion. I think you have an inaccurate view of how most "truthers" look at the events of 9/11. Most people are saying we don't really know what happened but the 9/11 Commission is clearly wrong about important aspects, so we need a new investigation to find the truth. The OCTer position is, we know exactly what happened, and it has been explained by the 9/11 Commission Report. You can search the posts by people like Lared and greyl and they have stated that the Commission Report is the best explanation of what happened. I find this unsupportable inasmuch as the Commission members have now admitted that they were lied to, and outside critics have pointed out obvious omissions. The two positions are (1) we don't know what happened and (2) we know exactly what happened. It seems to me that the second position has the burden of proof.
3. As for name calling and strawmen, I think you would have to review the threads. It is common knowledge that most threads started by truthers who have found some new information get hijacked by regular persistent OCTers. There is a lot of PMing about this among non-OCTers and the regular patterns that have resulted.
As for the "truth movement" providing the biggest strawman, I don't see your reasoning. As stated above, there is a choice to be made: either the government and the 9/11 Commission have done their best to tell the truth or they haven't. That's not a strawman argument, that's a simple logical choice. I think the problem with your overall argument and the position of many OCTers is that you mischaracterize the truth movement. You seem to think it is monolithic in its views (MIHOP/LIHOP, CD and alien lizard overlords as a single package) when it isn't.
4. I think you have once again mischaracterized the behavior of truthers here. It is true that occassionally someone will drop in from no where and just write something like, "you're all kooks," and disappear, and those people I think fairly get told off.
As for the hard core OCTers getting accused of being "agents," this is based on a few facts which are sufficient to raise the suspicion of bad faith. For one thing, searches show that there are definitely hard core OCTers here who have posted hundreds of posts here with just one or two posts generally espousing Republican/conservative positions elsewhere. I think that is good evidence that such hard core OCTers are not participating in DU or the 9/11 forum in good faith.
5. "The mechanics of how the towers fell is the absolute fundamental basis of any theory about 9/11. Without a coherent explanation of that, the Truth movement is nowhere."
This is just plain wrong, and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the breadth of the truth movement. If there is one "fundamental basis" of the truth movement, it is the inductive effect of the sum of all the anomalies surrounding 9/11. I am thinking of writing about the episemology of 9/11, which I have already done a few times, but it seems to me the fundamental difference between truthers and OCTers is the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning. Many threads deteriorate here into minute discussions of the particular, whereas 9/11 is best grasped inductively. If you go to the skeptics/science forum, where some OCTers hang out you will find an
astounding incapacity to understand inductive scientific methods. For example, there was once a thread there ridiculing certain public health issues that are based on statistical methods in which the exact method of causation is not known. For example, for this kind of mind, it should not have been possible to show that smoking causes cancer until the exact method by which the carcinogens in smoke case the cell mutations that cause cancer, even if there was overwhelming statistical correlation of smoking and cancer. The same thing occurs here.
The liklihood of LIHOP/MIHOP or other "inside job" theories is best understood by looking at the vast accumulation of anomalies that taken together cannot be explained as just coincidence -- from the 30 year business connections between the Bush and bin Laden families; the many years of official support by the US of al Qaeda-linked terrorists; the evacuation of the bin Laden family; the pre-Bush administration PNAC war mongering; the criminal records of many bush administration officials as a result of former acts of US sponsored terrorism and near treason (Iran-contra); the refusal of Bush and Cheney to be interviewed separately (perfect example of game theory's prisoner's dilemma); the inability of the air force to respond to the hijackings; the utterly bizarre 9/11 behavior and statements of Rumsfeld, the official charged with defending the country; the confusing exercises; the anthrax attacks; the ignored urgent warnings of the CIA and Israeli, Russian, German, Egyptian, Jordanian and other intelligence services; the obviously planted evidence after 9/11; the truly unprecedented degree of administration obstruction of investigations; the disclosure after the 9/11 Commission completed its work that it was lied to; the unprecedented collapse of three buildings within hours; the impossible maneuvers of the plane that hit the Pentagon by a pilot who demonstrated just weeks before that he could not fly a Cessna; the visceral experience in the US (which you I assume did not experience as a resident of London) of a coup-like, martial-law like environment, with National Guardsmen armed with automatic weapons on many subway trains, stations and street corners for almost a year after 9/11 for the first time in US history -- a militarization worse than during WWII, Korea, Vietnam; the evidence that has developed about the un-Islamic behavior of the hijackers in Florida and their connection to drug runners and intelligence figures; the stupifying decision to pull back from Tora Bora allowing bin Laden to escape; the Patriot Act; the abolition of habeas corpus; the illegal, unconstitutional NSA wiretapping program; the massive lying that lead to the war in Iraq ... one could go on and on.
The point is that some people can think inductively and some people can't. Inductive reasoning makes otherwise unlikely theories viable. For example, while I personally don't think that CD has been proven, in this context I'm perfectly willing to entertain it as a viable theory.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
