9/11: Wild Conspiracies and Rational Concerns

[Bolo Boffin]

Alternet

There's a pretty clear dividing line between the idea that the Bush administration's ideologues used the attacks of 9/11 to consolidate power and the idea that they participated in those attacks. The former is a fairly mainstream liberal critique; the latter is rank conspiracy theory, unsupported by any serious evidence.

Having taken a long bath in the world of 9/11 conspiracism, I still think the most likely scenario is that the Bush administration was obsessed with rival powers -- Russia and China -- and ignored the terror issue. After the attacks, the security agencies were under enormous, unrelenting pressure to show Americans they were in control and they needed to show that they were on top of the investigation at all costs. These things would certainly require sanitizing in the 9/11 report and other official narratives for the sake of expediency and creating the appearance that the government was on the job.

Having said that, I'd also be receptive to evidence that the Bush administration had a far greater degree of knowledge about the how and why of the attacks, and looked the other way and let them happen. All I'd need to buy that would be a bit of evidence. After all, we've recently learned in a report published on AlterNet that New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who had a direct link to the most powerful office in Washington (Dick Cheney's), said she had been warned of a terrorist attack.

But that kind of evidence is almost certainly not forthcoming; there will be no further serious investigation into the events of 9/11. Ironically, that's largely because of the 9/11 "truth movement" itself -- by embracing fanciful notions that the government blew up the World Trade Center with thermite charges, or that the Pentagon was hit by a missile -- makes it hard for the rest of us to express rational skepticism of the official account.

[KJF]

1. Typical

Maybe if he had a nodding acquaintance with the relevant facts he wouldn't write such nonsense.

Just a few examples:
(1) He does the mostly untrue and almost totalling meaningless "hijackers still alive" story, in the usual slipshod manner to boot;

(2) "Besides the doubt around the identities of the hijackers, there were also two passports belonging to the hijackers that were supposedly found, intact, near the World Trade Center." Several of the hijackers' passports were found after 9/11, but only one was found by the WTC (Satam Al Suqami's), the next closest was Al Omari's, which was found at Logan in one of the bags Atta checked. Lots of other documents (including several belonging to the hijackers, at least one of which had been tampered with) were found at the crash sites. This is typical of plane crashes - documents survive, people get mashed.

(3) "There's a pretty clear dividing line between the idea that the Bush administration's ideologues used the attacks of 9/11 to consolidate power and the idea that they participated in those attacks." That's a false dichotomy. For example, shooting down United 93 would not be participating in the attacks. As far as I can see, he's setting it up out of ignorance and laziness, not out of malice aforetought.

(4) "I still think the most likely scenario is that the Bush administration was obsessed with rival powers -- Russia and China -- and ignored the terror issue." For example, how does this account for the failure of Saudi and UAE intelligence? Khalid Al Mihdhar passed through both countries after they learned he was a terrorist and Saudi Arabia even issued him a new passport, even though they make a point of not issuing known terrorists new passports. AFAIK nobody has ever even asked them why they didn't alert the CIA. The NSA intercepted calls from a known Al Qaeda facility to the hijackers in the States, but didn't track the terrorists down in the US. The Bush administration should really have nothing to do with this failure, as it occured on a lower level. If it was LIHOP, maybe it was lower down. That's not a conclusion I'm peddling, but I don't rule it out in advance.

(5) "there will be no further serious investigation into the events of 9/11. Ironically, that's largely because of the 9/11 "truth movement" itself -- by embracing fanciful notions that the government blew up the World Trade Center with thermite charges, or that the Pentagon was hit by a missile -- makes it hard for the rest of us to express rational skepticism of the official account." Plenty of people have managed to express rational scepticism of the official account (including the author of this piece on AlterNet, assuming you think his scepticism is rational, that is). I don't like the no-planers either, but they don't make it any harder for me to express scepticism, whether rational or otherwise. I think they MIGHT make it harder to convince some people, but we'll see. Also, the majority of the "9/11 truth movement" believes in explosive demolition of the WTC, but doesn't believe no-plane arguments, so he shouldn't really lump them together without pointing this out.