Why did 9/11 need to be so elaborate?

[MirkoS]

Hello, glad to be here!

I've been wondering something and would like the opinion from those who believe 9/11 to be a conspiracy. Here goes...

All of these people who think that 9/11 was an inside job, I'm curious about something. Alright, the buildings were rigged with explosives and it was a controlled demolition. A missle hit the Pentagon instead of a plane. Flight 93 was shot down. OK, I get it. What I'm wondering is, and which I have yet to get a reasonable answer for no matter how many times I ask this: why in the world would anyone go to such lengths to engineer such elaborate measures, measures that are logistical nightmares, not only to set-up, execute, but also to conceal, when it wouldn't be necessary? Stop and think about it. Pull back from the details of the attacks and look at the larger picture. Why not simply recruit people (say through a radical Islamic organization fronted through one of our intelligence agencies) to fly planes into the buildings and let it play out however it does?

This is what cracks me up about truthers, they're so concerned with the tiniest details they don't pull back and ask WHY. Personally, if I were going to commit an attack on the scale of 9/11 I'd be smart enough to realize three things: 1) the less people involved the better, 2) everyone in the entire world will witness it and it will be recorded by hundreds of people from various angles, and 3) you will have every single expert on the planet in every field of study you can possibly imagine scrutinizing it for many years afterwards with documented footage as reference. This is not to mention those who were part of the attacks and were right in the thick of it. Now how stupid would you have to be to make it such a large ordeal? You keep it a tiny operation with a few in the know moving pieces around the board, execute your plan, and then hands off. Then all these logistics would not need to be a consideration. This is just common sense.

Now you have to ask yourself, with the eyes of the entire world watching 9/11 unfold: why would you risk discovery by using a missle to hit the Pentagon instead of a plane? Why would you risk discovery by bringing down the buildings with explosives? Don't people think everyone would see a missle hit the Pentagon? Or a jet shoot down the airliner? Hell, let's just use F-16s and launch missles at the towers while we're at it. It always amuses me when I hear about these pods underneath the airliners, how their windows were covered and they weren't commercial planes, etc etc. The funny thing is, truthers believe that the U.S. government is capable of pulling off a feat such as 9/11 and keeping the wool over everyone's eyes for all these years, yet the very basis of their argument against it not being a conspiracy stems from incompetent preparation or oversights from that same government.

Do people really think if the buildings had not collapsed we would have not taken the exact same course of action that we have? Their collapse was not necessary to get the rationale for what the conspiracy theorists claim the attacks were meant for. You can bet your ass people would've been just as united behind any action the U.S. would've taken if the towers were still standing today. People go to all the extensive lengths to explain away how the buildings fell, how (and with what) the Pentagon was hit, how phone calls from the flight that crashed were computer generated or whatever, how it was shot down by a military jet, but it simply makes no sense. A small handful of people could accomplish what thousands supposedly did (if the conspiracy theorists are correct), all with much less effort and much more secrecy, and it would immediately make a conspiracy much more plausible.

So what is the advantage? I only see cons. The more complex something is, the harder it is to keep secret. If they wanted to accomplish such a conspiracy they would want to keep it as simple as humanly possible. I sure would. Complexity is the archenemy of conspiracy. What is this morbid need to believe in some massive master plan that was set-up over many years and would require a massive amount of money, many people who would then need to be paid off/silenced, not to mention having to keep it quiet from that point on? Please don't bother bringing up or arguing specifics of the attack, because I'm not interested and have heard it all before. I'm viewing the larger picture here, and would simply like someone to explain this to me. My issue is not so much whether it's a conspiracy or not. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Let's all assume it is a conspiracy for a moment. As such, tell me what is the benefit of making it such an enormous logistical effort to pull off and risk exposure when simply recruiting and helping some extremists to hijack and fly commercial airliners into buildings would accomplish just as well what conspiracy theorists claim the attacks were for?

Again, I just would like to make clear here: I'M NOT ASKING OR MAKING A STATEMENT ON WHETHER 9/11 IS A CONSPIRACY. Just why it needed to be so complex when it wasn't needed.


Thanks for any input.

 

[JamesB]

Heh, I once had a truther argue that the more complicated it was, the easier to keep it a secret.

not only were these stories WAAAY back in most cases these stories were broken by one person and then the story spread. There are some stories so simple you CAN'T keep them under wraps (9/11 is a HUGE story with many complex areas to easily cover) And this doesn't change the fact that the media is now controlled.

 

[squealpiggy]

I think that the truther mindset is to automatically gainsay anything that whiffs of authority. Plane hit the Pentagon? Must have been a missile! Buildings fell over after plane impact? Must have been explosives.

My favourite bit of truther nonsense has to be the BBC's mistake about the state of building 7. They said it had collapsed BEFORE it collapsed! That can only mean one thing! The BBC were IN ON IT!

Because if there's one thing a shadowy cabal of secret reptilian overlords needs to do when carrying out their dastardly plots is to alert the world's media.

 

[R.Mackey]

Welcome to the Forum.

The complexity is an inherent property of just about any conspiracy theory, and indeed one way they can be recognized as such. There are a great number of books that attempt to address this subject. For my own observations, here are a few of my older posts:

The Inflationary Theory of Conspiracy Theories
If I Was an Evil Genius
The Gravy Line
Irreducible Delusion
The Great Internet Conspiracy

Hope that helps!

 

[Oystein]

Hello, glad to be here!

I've been wondering something and would like the opinion from those who believe 9/11 to be a conspiracy. Here goes...

All of these people who think that 9/11 was an inside job, I'm curious about something. Alright, the buildings were rigged with explosives and it was a controlled demolition. A missle hit the Pentagon instead of a plane. Flight 93 was shot down. OK, I get it. ...

Ok, stop right there.
Have you really ever come across a truther in recent years who has an opinion on all 3 crash sites and states clearly what he thinks happened instead? Because we haven't had such a truther in this forum for a long time. I have made a Roll Call 1.5 years ago and asked everybody what their 9/11 story is. One guy did in fact tell a story close to yours - and blamed the Jews. Another was staunchly LIHOP (no demos, no missile, no shoot-down), and other than these two, no truther has told us what he does believe. Recently, even the old "Silverstein ordered demo of Building 7" was resurrected, but of course without anyone explaing if and how Silverstein was connected to the attack on the Pentagon. So all we get these days is very partial theories at best, and some trying to poke holes and overall incredulity.


So good luck with your thread. I predict however that you will get zero replies from truthers that satisfy your questions.

Then again, maybe that's the point of this thread!

 

[MirkoS]

Ok, stop right there.
Have you really ever come across a truther in recent years who has an opinion on all 3 crash sites and states clearly what he thinks happened instead? Because we haven't had such a truther in this forum for a long time. I have made a rollcall 1.5 years ago and asked everybody what their 9/11 story is. One guy did in fact tell a story close to yours - and blamed the Jews. Another was staunchly LIHOP (no demos, no missile, no shoot-down), and other than these two, no truther has told us what he does believe. Recently, even the old "Silverstein ordered demo of Building 7" was resurrected, but of course without anyone explaing if and how Silverstein was connected to the attack on the Pentagon. So all we get these days is very partial theories at best, and some trying to poke holes and overall incredulity.


So good luck with your thread. I predict however that you will get zero replies from truthers that satisfy your questions.

Then again, maybe that's the point of this thread!

Not the point but partly expected. Still figure it's worth a shot, I'm genuinely curious. According to the results in your rollcall, apparently there are people out there to whom my question applies, so we'll have to see.

*crosses fingers*

And I don't blame the Jews.

 

[cjnewson88]

The more truthers get debunked, the more complicated the conspiracy becomes in order to work around the debunking. Thats how bombs in buildings evolved from top secrete military to workers to NYPD/FDNY, to media, to everyone, to god vs the devil. This constant changing of stories and digging of a conspiracy hole seems perfectly logical and acceptably to truthers, because theyre not interested in the truth, they follow the idea that no matter what the evidence to the contrary, 9/11 was an inside job, and therefore they work to fit all possibilities/impossibilities to suit.

If you want a good look at the dept of conspiracy theorist, you can have a good read/laugh through these

 

[Oystein]

Not the point but partly expected. Still figure it's worth a shot, I'm genuinely curious. According to the results in your rollcall, apparently there are people out there to whom my question applies, so we'll have to see.

*crosses fingers*

Uhm the way I read my roll call there was precisely one person to whom your questions applies. That person has in the meantime been banned from this forum (not because of his antisemitic points of view, I hasten to add; the JREF often stresses how even the whackiest opinions are allowed here, as many of them are the very reason this forum exists).

And I don't blame the Jews.

I didn't say you do, or that this would be applied in the complex scenario you outlined in your opening post.

Just that this particular poster who subscribes to your view did.
However, I think "blaming the Jews" can go a long way to explaining why these people find such a complex conspiracy plausible or even likely: They base their thinking on the underlying assumptions that the worldwide Jewry runs the world and manipulates it at will. To them, the complex conspiracy is not an extraordinary event in need of an extraordinary explanation, but the normal modus operandi of the world; multi-layered scheming agains and screwing of the gentiles happens all the time, everywhere, constantly. Nothing big happens unless some Jews will it or allow it.

 

[Horatius]

Do people really think if the buildings had not collapsed we would have not taken the exact same course of action that we have? Their collapse was not necessary to get the rationale for what the conspiracy theorists claim the attacks were meant for.

I've posted on this issue before. One reason these claims get so grandiose is that they insist on latching onto certain things as "proof" of the conspiracy, and then must justify why they think it's proof. For lots of CTists, the collapse of WTC 7 is the "smoking gun" that proves it was an inside job. But what would it take for THEM to have destroyed WTC 7?

See here:

[/B]The question for everyone else is: In what other places (9/11 CTs or no) do you see this type of thinking, where everything that happens has a purpose, a clearly defined set of necessary conditions that lead to necessary conclusions? And what does this tell us about knowledge in general?

I see it pretty much everywhere in the CT movement, and have commented on it before:

A few people have alluded to the same idea, and it's one I wrote a post on a long time ago - that you can't be a little bit MIHOP. For your pre-wired WTC7 (or 6, or whatever one you want to discuss) demolition to look anywhere believable as a "natural" event, it has to have suffered some sort of damage. Otherwise, no one in their right mind would accept it just falling down. So we absolutely, with no ifs ands or buts, need it to be damaged.

To get that damage, we absolutely need one of the towers to fall on it. Where else can we get the damage from? So we need at least one of the towers to fall. Of course, we can't simply rely on the plane to do the job; one might miss, or just barely hit, or might even be re-taken by the passengers, or crashed prematurely like flight 93. So to be absolutely sure that the towers fall, we have to wire them too, and we have to make absolutely sure that the planes hit the towers, and hit them squarely enough that the collapses again look "natural". So now we're into full on woo territory, with some invisible hand wiring all the buildings, while also guiding the planes to their impact, all to make it possible to hide the demo of WTC7. Lose any one element of the plan, and the whole house of cards falls, and everyone watching goes, "WTF?!? Why did that just happen?", and you lose everything you worked so hard for.

You can't be a little bit MIHOP. It's all or nothing.

I'd say this is why they believe everything that happened was required to happen - if any one element had failed to happen, then it would have blown the conspiracy wide open. Their choices then become, recognize that there is no conspiracy, or conclude that everything was engineered to occur exactly as it did.

And of course, they'll never conclude that there's no conspiracy, so we end up where we are, as you've identified.



And in thinking about it, this also explains why they bother with the "Flight 93" conspiracy. Flight 93 must have been shot down as part of the plan. If it had been crashed as a result of passenger actions as reported, that would mean its ultimate target wasn't hit by a plane, and so the target would have been left pre-wired with explosives, because, hey, all the targets were pre-wired, right? There's no way the conspiracy would have allowed such a huge piece of evidence to be left intact, so obviously they never intended for the plane to reach its target. But, they also couldn't have counted on the passengers to do the job, and if the plane had reached its non-wired target, then the target would not have collapsed as all the others did, thus revealing the fact that the collapses were staged. So, not wanting to reveal the plot in either manner, Flight 93 must have been shot down as a necessary part of the plan!

Or, it all happened as reported. But that's just silly talk!


Now my brane hurtz!

So, by insisting on WTC 7 as the key piece of evidence, they eventually backtrack themselves into believing all the other crap. If they accept that WTC 7 could have fallen as it was described by NIST, they not only loose their "smoking gun", but they must also consider the possibility that everything else just happened as described in mainstream accounts.

 

[sheeplesnshills]

Again, I just would like to make clear here: I'M NOT ASKING OR MAKING A STATEMENT ON WHETHER 9/11 IS A CONSPIRACY. Just why it needed to be so complex when it wasn't needed.


Thanks for any input.

The complexity is more likely just a symptom is whatever mental aberration causes Conspiracy theories to arise in the first place. It likely similar to the obsession in detail that some Autistic people exhibit.
The complexity probably simply satisfies some need they have.

Of course as the CT gets debunked it slowly becomes more and more complex over time. Poor education contributes something as it lets them accept theories which are laughable to anyone who has skills in the area concerned, and of course mental illness may also be a factor in many CTers which often boil down to a form of paranoia.

 

[slowsmile]

The complexity is more likely just a symptom is whatever mental aberration causes Conspiracy theories to arise in the first place. It likely similar to the obsession in detail that some Autistic people exhibit.
The complexity probably simply satisfies some need they have.

I was thinking that the other day with regard to the "vicsims theory" - the obsession with detail plus the disconnect from any sort of normal human feeling - it just shouted "autism spectrum" to me.

 

[Quad4_72]

To people who believe in conspiracy theories, the complexity is what keeps them hooked. To them, they are an undercover agent with some sort of knowledge that no one else has and it is their duty to attempt to figure out the mystery. It's all a big game to them, and it makes them feel a sense of accomplishment. As if they are an elite, small group of people who know the real truth.

In reality, obviously none of it exists and they are not elite in any way. They have a skewed worldview, one that they think people actually care about them or their movement. You see the same kind of symptoms in people suffering from schizophrenia. "It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social or occupational dysfunction"

Then of course there are the people know damn well that it is all a lie (Dylan Avery, Griffin, Jones, etc) but still sell their nonsense. These are some of the most despicable people within the movement, and will take up any theory as long as it sells, no matter how crazy and who it hurts.

 

[Brass]

There's a ton of all actions that truthers take that make you scratch your head and say "Huh?"

Gravy has always said it best - 9/11 Truthers take little anomalies, but not connecting them to a larger theory.

You can't show them any evidence, as they're in a position that if they turn back now and accept that 9/11 was not a conspiracy theory, they'll be humiliated and feel nothing but pure shame. They're also led by a guy who can't turn back either, and that man is Alex Jones. Jones made a huge decision, commitment and mistake when he decided to start a show that focuses solely on conspiracy theories. He put himself in a corner that he cannot get out of. If he doesn't say there's a conspiracy theory involved in an event, he doesn't have a show, he doesn't get money, he can't feed his family. It's as simple as that.

So why does it need to be so complex? Because it can't fit in with the official story, which is laid out perfectly. If it crosses any boundary between the official story and the conspiracy theory, they're basically admitting they're wrong. Common sense is thrown out the window, especially with 9/11 "truthers".

 

[sheeplesnshills]

I was thinking that the other day with regard to the "vicsims theory" - the obsession with detail plus the disconnect from any sort of normal human feeling - it just shouted "autism spectrum" to me.

By nephew who is high function autistic once started going twoofy on me and I had to put him right on the physics etc I think I nipped it in the bud due to the fact that he knew I was a engineer and we had engineering interests in common.
I warned him not to believe everything people claim on the internet and the example where I could show he was being tricked made that clear. He is much more skeptical now and I've not heard a twoof word out of him since and he's not the type to keep quiet!.

I thinks its highly likely that much of CT is just a form of autism while most of the rest is mild paranoid schizophrenia.

 

[sheeplesnshills]

Then of course there are the people know damn well that it is all a lie (Dylan Avery, Griffin, Jones, etc) but still sell their nonsense. These are some of the most despicable people within the movement, and will take up any theory as long as it sells, no matter how crazy and who it hurts.

Well they are just simple sociopaths....twooferim is just their particular con.

 

[Brass]

I love when conspiracy theorists say "how did the government know who did it before an investigation" yet one of their MAJOR points is that the government allegedly knew about this thing all along....

Pick a side, twoofers.

 

[SpitfireIX]

Gravy has always said it best - 9/11 Truthers take little anomalies, but not connecting them to a larger theory.

Although he doesn't deal much with September 11 CTs anymore, JayUtah made the following comment several years ago in a post on BAUT that very neatly describes this phenomenon, IMO.

These various "truth" movements have one thing in common: they concentrate on what didn't happen, not on discovering what did happen. They don't provide a plausible alternative scenario because there isn't one. They have only a rapidly diverging field of speculation. Any organization whose central tenet is, "Well, I don't know what really happened, but I can sure tell you what didn't happen," (i.e., one that predicates itself on the inexorable rejection of a certain viewpoint rather than the conditional acceptance of some other specific viewpoint) will never be able to reach any conclusion or consensus. They serve only to amplify meaningless doubt and attract attention to themselves. [italics original]

 

[Brainster]

Conspiracy theorists do not start from the standpoint of what happened, they start from what did not happen: the "Official Story". Working from the belief that falsus in unum falsus in omnibus they not surprisingly think that if they can prove the OS wrong in any one part, they will have made their case. So they set about that task, but of course any event has thousands of parts, so they gravitate to areas of the conspiracy theory that interest them. One group works on the belief that the hijackers didn't exist and establishes their "evidence". Another chooses the task of establishing that no plane hit the Pentagon, while a third proposes controlled demolition. And that's before we get into the no-planers and Star Wars beam weapon folks.

But, and here's the key, none of them do a terribly good job of it. It's all kind of held together with glue and string and would fall down if subjected to any scrutiny. Thus, knowing the weakness of their own case, they decide not to examine too carefully the flaws in the other sections of the conspiracy theory. This is known as the "Big Tent" approach to building a community of generally like-minded individuals who may disagree radically in private, but agree to put on a happy face for public consumption.

There certainly are 9-11 Truthers who believe this theory:

Why not simply recruit people (say through a radical Islamic organization fronted through one of our intelligence agencies) to fly planes into the buildings and let it play out however it does?

Indeed, there are those who believe that the government did not recruit them, but found out about the plot and let it go forward. And there are others who believe that the government found out about the plot did the controlled demolition to make things worse.

 

[Travis]

Three things to consider here:

1) All aberrations must be included

Truthers frequently look for anything that looks odd to them. Then they backtrack trying to use the oddity as part of the evidence for the plot. Since any huge chaotic event produces all sorts of strange things they eventually end up with all sorts of things they feel the need to include as part of the plot.

2) The cool factor

Complex plots are more interesting. Manipulating actual terrorists to do it? That's boring. Space weapons from invisible orbiting platforms? Now that's something they'll get behind.

3) Conspiracy inflation

As evidence mounts against their ideas they need to include more and more people as being in on it. FEMA thinks it was fire induced collapse? In on it! So does NIST? In on it also! So does China? Totally in on it!

 

[000063]

Three things to consider here:

1) All aberrations must be included

Truthers frequently look for anything that looks odd to them. Then they backtrack trying to use the oddity as part of the evidence for the plot. Since any huge chaotic event produces all sorts of strange things they eventually end up with all sorts of things they feel the need to include as part of the plot.

2) The cool factor

Complex plots are more interesting. Manipulating actual terrorists to do it? That's boring. Space weapons from invisible orbiting platforms? Now that's something they'll get behind.

3) Conspiracy inflation

As evidence mounts against their ideas they need to include more and more people as being in on it. FEMA thinks it was fire induced collapse? In on it! So does NIST? In on it also! So does China? Totally in on it!

4) Truthers are never wrong

Truthers hate to admit being wrong or lack of knowledge on anything, even when they know it is illogical. So you get them saying one illogical thing at one point, and then another illogical thing later. When it's pointed out that the two positions are mutually contradictory, they stick their fingers in their ears and/or call you a poopyhead. Certain Truthers here are quite accomplished at that. And very predictable.