Is there a legitimate reason to question the official narrative*?

[JayUtah]

There is absolutely no evidence that an alternate theory might even be possible, and a great deal of evidence that actually contradicts alternate theories.

- Of course, if continued study of the engineering helps to make buildings safer, I've no problem with that.

That's why this is a poor question. It's easy to get people to disagree with the notion that some particular investigation is all there should be, and that it is complete and correct in all its particulars. Most people will agree with the abstract notion of further study and will not act to forestall it, even if the expected return is poor. Further, we are culturally predisposed toward suspicion, even if the conclusions we suspect are in fact well founded.

To "question" something can mean a great many things, not all of them compatible, and to lump them together in opposition to "No, there is no legitimate reason to question this," is dishonest. For example, I can question the "official narrative" on grounds that doesn't hold adequately responsible the officials tasked with detecting and preventing such occurrences, or responding to them. That would be entirely different from proposing that some other agents or mechanisms were directly responsible than those named in the narrative.

This is the same rhetorical stunt the JFK conspiracy theorists use. Regardless of how little evidence favors any of the alternative explanations, and regardless of how much evidence contradicts them -- and of which the respondents are likely to be largely unaware -- the type of question asked here is misleading in the context of support for conspiracy theories or new investigations.

 

[George 152]

911 happened.
Buildings and aircraft were destroyed.
Nearly 3000 innocent people were murdered by followers of a primitive belief.
Nothing more and nothing less

 

[JayUtah]

Poorly worded, worded (loaded) such as to invoke a specific interpretation, or insufficiently worded to avoid a specific interpretation.

Indeed there's an art to writing this sort of question if you want a meaningful answer.

"Do you believe that Al Qaeda terrorists were responsible for 9/11?" is a different question than "Do you believe the government's version of the events of 9/11?" although they ostensibly treat the same set of facts and conclusions.

 

[NoahFence]

* = Official narrative being the 9/11 Commission Report, the 2002 Joint Congressional Investigation Report, the F.B.I.'s investigation, NIST's reports, etc etc other government sponsored reports and/or investigations as well the statements of government workers and the leadership.

So, in your opinion, is there a legitimate reason to question the official narrative?


1. Yes
2. No
3. Undecided

No, nope, and nada.

Absolutely nothing.

 

[NoahFence]

Unfortunately, my eyes are open. I've seen the dirt under the rug and now it's all that I see, again, unfortunately. I'd much rather it not be this way, but, I don't always get what I want, you know, none of us do. We've got what we've got, and that's that.

Jango - would you mind elaborating on that highlighted portion?

 

[smartcooky]

I vote "NO". Read my signature

 

[Jango]

Jango - would you mind elaborating on that highlighted portion?

The obligatory dirty laundry list of historical events that up to late 2011 I was completely unaware of -- human experimentation, torture, assassinations, coups, sabotage, terrorism, renditioning, propaganda, etc etc. All things I had never thought that we did to anyone else or let alone to fellow Americans and service members. I was blind to that aspect of history entirely.

 

[NoahFence]

The obligatory dirty laundry list of historical events that up to late 2011 I was completely unaware of -- human experimentation, torture, assassinations, coups, sabotage, terrorism, renditioning, propaganda, etc etc. All things I had never thought that we did to anyone else or let alone to fellow Americans and service members. I was blind to that aspect of history entirely.

That stuff can all be true, and is probably the cause of 9 - 11, but it falls well short of the government being actively involved with it.

 

[Jango]

That stuff can all be true, and is probably the cause of 9 - 11, but it falls well short of the government being actively involved with it.

You're right, past behavior is just that, past behavior. But at what point when looking through U.S. History (or any country's history for that matter) is there a section when People In Positions Of Authoritah didn't Abuse Their Power? Hint: It Has Never Stopped And It Never Will.

But specifically related to 9/11 -- there is so much information running counter to the pleas of ignorance and incompetence uttered by the government post-9/11. Investigations done post-9/11 like by the 9/11 Commission were tainted by political pressures I.e. the POTUS, VPOTUS and the White House. They didn't want 9/11 to be investigated. They succumbed after enough of the American public started speaking out. They tapped Kissinger to lead it initially but after meeting with the Jersey Girls, Kissinger recused himself -- due to the conflicts of interest that he was pointedly asked about. So what happened next? Philip Zelikow took his place. The same Philip Zelikow who had been on Bush's transition team and who was friends with the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and who had written reports about Catastrophic Terrorism in the late '90's.

The saturation of media coverage 9/11 got has exposed the majority of the core official government narrative tenets to be rendered with scattershot giving the narrative as a whole a Swiss cheese lookin' appearance.

 

[HotRodDeluxe]

Loaded poll...pass.

 

[Dave Rogers]

The obligatory dirty laundry list of historical events that up to late 2011 I was completely unaware of -- human experimentation, torture, assassinations, coups, sabotage, terrorism, renditioning, propaganda, etc etc. All things I had never thought that we did to anyone else or let alone to fellow Americans and service members. I was blind to that aspect of history entirely.

Maybe that's part of what makes a conspiracy theorist. Having always been aware that governments and nations, including the USA (and of course the UK), do bad things, I've been in a better position to assess the types of bad things they do, and the practical limitations on them. If I'd started out wearing the same kind of rose-tinted spectacles that would be needed for anyone to believe otherwise, maybe I too would find, on having them forcibly removed by the latest set of revelations, that I started seeing a lot of things that aren't really there.

Jango, I think you may need to re-calibrate your cynicism. It may have gone from under- to over-tuned. Neither is accurate.

Dave

 

[JayUtah]

But at what point when looking through U.S. History ... is there a section when People In Positions Of Authoritah didn't Abuse Their Power?

Red herring. "People abuse power, therefore I'm right about this specific abuse of power," is not a valid argument.

...there is so much information running counter to the pleas of ignorance and incompetence uttered by the government post-9/11.

Yet in 13 years and counting, no one has been able to put all that alleged counterevidence together to form a coherent story that better explains all the evidence. Instead what we get are amplified tidbits clearly aimed more at making certain people sound more important, relevant, and knowledgeable than they really are.

This is the same broken, nonsensical line of reasoning that all conspiracy theories use. The theorists pick this or that outlying data point, lament that the "Official Story" apparently ignores it, and on that basis declare that The Official Story and the Powers That Be who formulated it must, by any standard, be discarded in favor of some farfetched, speculative nonsense for which the author is taking donations -- you know, to keep up the good fight.

Investigations done post-9/11 like by the 9/11 Commission were tainted by political pressures I.e. the POTUS, VPOTUS and the White House. <rest of ramble snipped>

And this sort of acerbic, rambling innuendo is all we ever get, followed by excuses for why the government is somehow responsible for conspiracy theorists' inability to prove their case. It's just like the JFK conspiracy theorists who have been rambling on this way for 50 years -- every JFK theory ends up being an incoherent rant against the Warren Commission. And the UFO theorists who have been rambling on the same way for nearly 70 -- everything is a rant against the Air Force, NASA, and the CIA. It doesn't go anywhere because your brand of conspiracism is epistemologically and rhetorically broken in a very fundamental way. It's based not on marching toward some increasingly evident truth; it's based on marching away from something -- in any or every direction -- you've decided you don't believe.

Your poll is quite exemplary of this broken approach. You ask only whether people should consider running away from some idea. You don't even broach the subject of whether there's a better idea to run toward -- because you don't have one.

 

[Meed]

You're right, past behavior is just that, past behavior. But at what point when looking through U.S. History (or any country's history for that matter) is there a section when People In Positions Of Authoritah didn't Abuse Their Power? Hint: It Has Never Stopped And It Never Will.

I've long dismissed 9/11 conspiracy theories and it's because I put in the effort to objectively look into a large number of claims made by conspiracy theorists and found them to be fallacious if not outright lies. Not once did the thought "The US government couldn't have done it because they're too moral" cross my mind. I'd suggest that anyone who does have this thought is either very uninformed about the history of US foreign and domestic policy or they have a heavily distorted and biased view of history and/or morality.

Investigations done post-9/11 like by the 9/11 Commission were tainted by political pressures I.e. the POTUS, VPOTUS and the White House. They didn't want 9/11 to be investigated. They succumbed after enough of the American public started speaking out.

I don't see why this should be surprising. Such an investigation would certainly have the potential to make them look bad, corrupt, incompetent or any other negative, plenty of which would not mean any sort of direct implication in the carrying out of the crime.

They tapped Kissinger to lead it initially but after meeting with the Jersey Girls, Kissinger recused himself -- due to the conflicts of interest that he was pointedly asked about. So what happened next? Philip Zelikow took his place. The same Philip Zelikow who had been on Bush's transition team and who was friends with the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and who had written reports about Catastrophic Terrorism in the late '90's.

Again, not particularly surprising.

 

[Childlike Empress]

But specifically related to 9/11 -- there is so much information running counter to the pleas of ignorance and incompetence uttered by the government post-9/11. Investigations done post-9/11 like by the 9/11 Commission were tainted by political pressures I.e. the POTUS, VPOTUS and the White House. They didn't want 9/11 to be investigated. They succumbed after enough of the American public started speaking out. They tapped Kissinger to lead it initially but after meeting with the Jersey Girls, Kissinger recused himself -- due to the conflicts of interest that he was pointedly asked about. So what happened next? Philip Zelikow took his place. The same Philip Zelikow who had been on Bush's transition team and who was friends with the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and who had written reports about Catastrophic Terrorism in the late '90's.

Do you know what one of the two co-authors of that article does now? Yup, Ashton B. Carter is awaiting what comes out of his nomination for Secretary of "Defense" by hopey-changey guy Obama. That's how bad it is.

 

[beachnut]

Do you know what one of the two co-authors of that article does now? Yup, Ashton B. Carter is awaiting what comes out of his nomination for Secretary of "Defense" by hopey-changey guy Obama. That's how bad it is.

That is how bad what is? Who is running 911 truth, and why is 911 truth total nonsense with 13 years of failure?

Jango can't answer what was tainted, past the failed opinion stage of BS.

The obligatory dirty laundry list of historical events that up to late 2011 I was completely unaware of -- human experimentation, torture, assassinations, coups, sabotage, terrorism, renditioning, propaganda, etc etc. All things I had never thought that we did to anyone else or let alone to fellow Americans and service members. I was blind to that aspect of history entirely.

And this has nothing to do with 911. Zero. 911 was done by 19 terrorists, not the USA. Your topic is about 911, not some dirty laundry list.
You bring up complaining about NIST not sharing math with you, yet is not a valid reason to question the "official narrative". Your lack of knowledge in engineering is not a valid reason to question the official narrative.
When will you list what was tainted? It is your point you make without reference, or explanation. I am interested as you are, but I think you made up the BS of tainted out of the blue.

Plus, like the UFO painting with Jesus, can I expect you will not be explaining in detail what exactly was torn to shreds.

The first official narrative, in so many regards, was torn to shreds by later revelations.

I was interested in the UFO/Jesus paining, how you were fooled into thinking that would be proof for UFOs, you never came back. Will you detail, like a list of what was torn to shreds related to 911.

I find the OP way too broad to have such a simple poll.

BS from the past is a valid reason to question stuff you don't understand like NIST's math/thingy. Why does the NIST math make you question the official narrative. Why would you want NIST work, you know their conclusion, you can thus come up with your own conclusion based on your own work, and then compare conclusions. Having their work/numbers/math could lead you in the wrong direction. The NIST work is easy to check; fire caused three buildings to collapse on 911, and NIST concluded the same. Bringing up the NIST stuff only exposes 911 truths bias and ignorance.

 

[JSanderO]

As Chris Mohr noted I support the broad and in some cases the details of what is broadly referred to as the official story. I have seen no evidence to suggest that there was a CD or inside job or 9/11 was a false flag and so forth.

I do think that the technical explanations by NIST leaves me less than satisfied. My sense is these two designs were very unique and the designs themselves may have play some role in how they came down or that they collapsed completely. This was a discussion which seemed to be missing. These buildings were not your garden variety high rises by a long shot. The truth guys seems to miss this and the official guys seemed to have not discussed it... ie how other designed might do with the same conditions...

But yes we did see the usual sort of bureaucratic CYA behavior and the take away is we had a robust national security state which was overwhelmed by a low tech "attack" producing a blow of greater than Pearl Harbor magnitude. That we were attacked and did nothing... feels like something was wrong, yet no one or agency was called out to the wood shed. And what we did is try to blame the Iraqis and invade them when they had no part in 9/11.

And where was the discussion of the causes of 9/11 if it was who they claimed it was? What exactly had the "great satan" done to merit such an attack?

I am not supporting an investigation not because we have all the answers... but because these investigations never seem to get to the bottom of things and everyone gets a pass except the dead guys.

 

[Jango]

Do you know what one of the two co-authors of that article does now? Yup, Ashton B. Carter is awaiting what comes out of his nomination for Secretary of "Defense" by hopey-changey guy Obama. That's how bad it is.

Yep -- or Paul Bremer running Iraq for a while after doing a commission on terrorism in 2000.

 

[beachnut]

... ... if it was who they claimed it was? ...

Got the DNA for 77 and 93 terrorists, and they did it... who it was?
Who it was is known, are you joking?

I can't think of anything we do which UBL would not want to kill us for;
Bacon... death
Honey Baked Ham... death
Shooters... death
Hooters... double death
Beer... death
Sitting down with women outside to eat, women you are not related to... jail
Letting women drive... death
Margarita... death
Make fun of the prophet... death
Having USA troops in SA... death

You can add the political stuff, the way UBL does to rationalize the hate, make excuses for UBL and his dumbed down suicide failed humans; who are thugs who murder, and are so bad at their job, they failed when USA citizens figured out the plot in minutes; Flight 93 Passengers stood up and attacked the failed nuts, UBLs best troops; how long does it take UBL to find 19 more failed humans. How did Hitler rationalize murder, was it political too.

 

[JimOfAllTrades]

It’s always a good idea to question anyone’s version of anything, and the more important the thing the more important the questioning is. And we all know that all organizations, including governments, can make mistakes, bad judgments, or outright lie for many reasons including institutional pressure or simply bad or incompetent individuals.

But we are thirteen years down the road. The big questions have been asked, answered, and scrutinized in incredible detail by many experts. If we can’t say what happened exactly during every second, it’s because of the inherent lack of information and the chaotic nature of the process. But there is essentially no doubt about the broad strokes, and because of the intensity of the investigation and the people involved, an amazing amount of information even about relatively small details is known.

So it’s always a good idea to ask questions. But at some point you have to acknowledge the questions as answered.

 

[Jango]

It’s always a good idea to question anyone’s version of anything, and the more important the thing the more important the questioning is. And we all know that all organizations, including governments, can make mistakes, bad judgments, or outright lie for many reasons including institutional pressure or simply bad or incompetent individuals.

But we are thirteen years down the road. The big questions have been asked, answered, and scrutinized in incredible detail by many experts. If we can’t say what happened exactly during every second, it’s because of the inherent lack of information and the chaotic nature of the process. But there is essentially no doubt about the broad strokes, and because of the intensity of the investigation and the people involved, an amazing amount of information even about relatively small details is known.

So it’s always a good idea to ask questions. But at some point you have to acknowledge the questions as answered.

You know, I would be standing right beside you echoing those same sentiments if I knew that the pressing questions have been answered, but in this instance, they unfortunately have not been answered. While not the monopoly, there are people who lost their child, parent, best friend, the love of their life on September 11th, 2001 whose burning questions have been ignored like the Jersey Girls. They had to fight the government to get an investigation and when they get the investigation their questions are ignored because the investigators have gone into their Praise Of Accolades routine with softball questions while never putting witnesses under oath. It was a political whitewash, one of very large proportions. What's worse is that 9/11 Commissioners have publicly complained about resistance and lack of cooperation from the government and the agencies -- the killer for me was the, We Still Don't Know What Happened On 9/11.

It's FUBAR, man, the cards we've been dealt.