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Primary reason why 9/11 CT is bunk

Piggy

Unlicensed street skeptic
Joined
Mar 11, 2006
Messages
15,905
I've been following the 9/11 conspiracy theories -- as much as one can be said to "follow" anything as disjointed as that -- ever since they raised their empy heads on this board.

And I've checked out their Web sites, their YouTube posts, their boards and blogs.

And sure, it's true that they argue from ignorance, that their experts have no expertise, that they make unsupported and often unsupportable claims, that some of their statements are contrary to fact. Yadda yadda yadda. So what?

That's not the primary problem.

The primary problem is this:

Even if their claims regarding the motivations behind, and the goals of, the alleged conspiracy were accurate....

And perhaps they are. After all, just this week we've seen long-buried evidence come to light demonstrating that the military, under the Kennedy administration, developed plans to bomb US targets and blame it on Cuba.

And there's ample evidence that this administration was planning war with the Musulman as early as January of 2001, and their willingness to lie is beyond question.

But even if they had these motivations and goals, here's the trick, boys....

No one would ever have thought to propose such a complex, resource-intensive, high-risk plan as what the CTers are proposing, when there are any number of cheap, quick, low-risk, low-cost alternatives that could be devised.

And even if anyone had proposed such an ambitious, expensive, and likely-to-fail plan which required involving so many contractors in an ultra-sensitive scheme, no one with the power to give a green light would have approved it.

And even if someone had approved it, it would never have passed muster and made it to the planning stage, much less gone through to execution. (Note that the Kennedy-era military plans -- which were simple and low-resource -- were squelched and never made it past the drawing board.)

Hell, even Liddy's Watergate plan -- which cost a couple hundred K, posed very low risk, and involved a mere half dozen outsiders -- was only approved after at least 2 previous plans, which were more costly, complex, and ambitious (but still nothing near what the CTers are describing) were flat-out rejected. And Nixon had no scruples at all.

So you see, all this back-and-forth over details (which the CTers have never been able to push beyond "coulda been" in any case, and which they are demonstrably wrong about in all other cases) is a bunch of sound and fury over nothing.

Their very premise reveals them to be utterly ignorant of how such decisions are made, or else willing to ignore that reality for the sake of a good story. And of course, the elaboration of the theory reveals them to be utterly ignorant of just about every other issue relevant to the event, or else willing to lie.

It's a non-starter, folks.
 
"You want me to do WHAT?!"

Or, 'Why I agree 9/11 CT is bunk'

I remember very well that morning five years ago.

The newscasters saying that upwards of 20,000 people could likely be dead from the World Trade Center buildings collapsing.

Twenty. Thousand. People. A good-sized town's worth of people. I know that only roughly 3,000 people did die (how bizarre that sounds: only), but if someone were planning something like this, surely that upper number would've been bandied about, don't you think?

So.

Let's, for the sake of argument, say that someone in the US government was somehow complicit in this horror. When you say 'government', you can't mean the entire government. The Senate. The House of Representatives. The Office of the President. All complicit? Don't buy it.

So.

I'm taking it that you mean 'the president'.

Why? So he could start a war in Afghanistan, knowing that it would be easier to jump over to Iraq? OK, he was mad at Hussein for trying to kill his father, is that it?

To blow that fish out of the water, to me at least, wouldn't he at then at some point have some WMD's smuggled into Iraq, so he could point and say, "See? Told ya, now STFU."

I digress.

For the sake of argument, let's say G.W.Bush hatched the plan to kill 20,000 Americans. He couldn't drop the hammer himself, now could he? So now he's got to recruit some people of like mind.

He explains his plan to whomever. If that person were to look at Bush and say, "You want me to do WHAT?!" then that person would have to be killed, or the plot might be exposed.

And not killed eventually, but on the spot. Boom. Head-cored-out-like-an-apple dead. If that person were to be allowed to live, even for one day, that person could leave a "If something happens to me" type of letter.

And not just the first person. Anyone to whom the president or his agents approached with the "so, we're planning the cold-blooded mass-murder of, oh, 20,000 people" line, responded with "You want me to do WHAT?!" would have to be killed right there, or the secret would be in jeopardy.

So who actually threw the switch? Some fanatically loyal Republican Elite Tactical Commando Hitsquad?

And where's the trail of bodies?
 
This points to the central contradiction in the 911 CTs:

The evil government planned to kill thousands of its own citizens to get an excuse for invading some countries on the other side of the planet, to tighten airport security, and in other ways to reduce the freedom of citizens.

What is fundamentally wrong with this scenario?

... A government that would contemplate, let alone execute, such a plan would not need an excuse to do those things. They would simply DO them.


Hans
 
If there ever was a case for Occam's Razor, this is it.

It is even sillier than the JFK conspiracy, because it involves a LOT more people and a LOT more planning.

Gunning down one guy, compared to orchestrating multiple hijackings (or making it seem as if there were hijackings!), placing bombs in the towers beforehand, etc, etc?
 
All the points above have merit. Especially the absurd notion that the U.S. government could somehow convince the military to kill up to 20,000 of its own civilians without someone breaking his silence along the way. But to me, the main reason that 9/11 CT is obvious crap goes back to the idea that a government willing and able to pull of an operation of this scale without a hitch would somehow fail to come up with a way to deal with a couple of college kids who threaten to expose the whole plot.

This is known as the Scooby-Doo theory:

Evil-Government: "Oh, man! We thought of absolutely everything else! And it would have worked too, if it weren't for those meddling kids!"
 
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Or, 'Why I agree 9/11 CT is bunk'

The newscasters saying that upwards of 20,000 people could likely be dead from the World Trade Center buildings collapsing.

You should be careful with statements like this. As, I believe, has been demonstrated the CTs seem to put more weight on news reports that came out on or around 9/11/01 itself. Any research later on is just the government trying to cover up their crimes. So, somewhere, there has to be a CTer going.

'Man, the news reports said 20,000 people man. But the lying BushCo. Regime say only 3000. Where are those other 17,000 bodies man, what are they trying to hide?'

Though, I could see where it might be fun living that completely detached from reality. Except of course for the raging paranoia.
 
I think the primary reason the 9/11 CTs are bunk is because they are not supported by evidence.

I mean, certainly occam's razor says these nut-job theories are not likely, but if they could provide the evidence to support their claims, I'd believe them. I mean, I'd start to wonder what the guy who approved the plan was smoking at the time, but evidence is evidence.

The tiny little obstacle in the CT theory is

THEY DO NOT HAVE A SINGLE SCRAP OF EVIDENCE

-Andrew
 
The primary problem with the conspiracy theory is that it's just that - all theory.

Full list of synonyms....
approach, argument, assumption, base, basis, code, codification, concept, conditions, conjecture, doctrine, dogma, feeling, formularization, foundation, grounds, guess, guesswork, hunch, hypothesis, idea, ideology, impression, method, outlook, philosophy, plan, plea, position, postulate, premise, presentiment, presumption, proposal, provision, rationale, scheme, shot*, speculation, stab*, supposal, suppose, supposition, surmise, suspicion, system, systemization, theorem, thesis, .....

But the teller is the antonyms....
fact, proof, reality

Gumboot said - they have not a shred of evidence. "Well it seems to me that a building shouldn't fall like that" does not qualify as evidence!
 
Just to clarify, I'm using the term "primary" in the sense of "first". It's a non-starter cause it makes no freakin' sense than anyone would dream up a scheme like this, much less plan and execute it. Carry on.
 
there you go, trying to bring logic into all of this mess. thankfully i think most of us on boards like this one take the "truth" movement much more seriously than the average person. my wife doesnt know why i even bother following what they say because, to her, it is too ludicrous to even waste time considering. i mean, she saw the airliners hit the building, so she uses her common sense and when she sees the video where the couple says "it was a military plane" she just uses that common sense to say "wow it shows how confused people were with the whole situation" rather than "See, a first hand witness (a mile away, in shock) knows the truth!!!!"

but, i know i take it seriously because i hear people around my office eating it all up...
 
i take it seriously because i hear people around my office eating it all up...
Yeah, that's what bothers me, too. Which is actually why I think my argument in the OP is important.

Once you get tied up in arcane topics like structural engineering, video analysis, and the physics of falling objects, it's easy to make a bogus argument seem credible to lots of people.

It can be effective to say, hold on, wait a minute... before we get into that, let's consider this....
 
The primary reason I don't believe in a 9/11 conspiracy is this: John Kerry Is Not President.

In 2001, John Kerry was a highly-placed elected official with oversight of military, intelligence and budgeting operations. His knowledge of executive operations only increased between 2001 and 2004. If there was any evidence at all of any involvement of the Bush government in 9/11, it would have guaranteed Kerry the White House for the next 8 years. Hell, it would have guaranteed the Democrats the White House for the next hundred years.

Kerry didn't even hint at a conspiracy. He didn't even have a stand-in hint about it so he could deny having said it himself. Kerry isn't President, ergo no conspiracy.
 
Yeah, that's what bothers me, too. Which is actually why I think my argument in the OP is important.

Once you get tied up in arcane topics like structural engineering, video analysis, and the physics of falling objects, it's easy to make a bogus argument seem credible to lots of people.

It can be effective to say, hold on, wait a minute... before we get into that, let's consider this....

yeah its a good point- my wife never listened to enough "Details' to get really confused by them...which i thin happens a lot...tunnel vision ensues and people cant see the big picture anymore...

something else i noticed, all the people around my office that "eat it up" hate bush really badly (and anyone connected to him) so i think they are really predisposed to believing and throwing away their critical analysis cause they want to believe whatever makes bush look bad. i dont like bush, but dang!
 
Just because I happened to be thinking about this last night - I totally agree with the OP.

I was thinking about comparisons to the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. Certainly, there is little or no evidence of a conspiracy. But the degree of the proposed conspiracy is generally plausible - for some reason, let's say, mob/CIA/Castro/whoever wants president dead, someone finds loser with communist ties, seduces him with promises of glory, then gets rid of him when it's done. No evidence it happened that way, but the degree of the proposed conspiracy is within the realm of possibility.

Then, turn to the 9/11 conspiracies. Where to start? The whole degree of the proposed conspiracy is just so frickin' ludicrous that I find it hard to believe that anyone who is not actually, medically, mentally ill can possibly believe such a thing could be pulled off, even if you were to stipulate that for some reason the U.S. government wanted to. Frankly, even if for some reason the goverment did want exactly this thing done, the simplest way would have been to pay Bin Laden to do exactly what he did, especially if the CTers already think he's in bed with the CIA. The whole web of thermite/explosives/missles/fake planes/replaced planes/fake passengers ad infinitum - sometimes I'm just flabbergasted.
 
As I've mentioned before:

Such a convoluted plot, involving untold hundreds of people -- not only in the initial planning, but the execution, and an ongoing coverup for the rest of time -- when it would have been exceedingly simpler to just detonate a few bombs in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and the like. Plant enough evidence to determine a 99% plausibility, if not 100% guilt, of terrorists, and voila! Gets the job done.

Furthermore, if this huge secret band of government hoodlums were predisposed to construct and carry out such a cold-blooded, murderous scheme as 9/11...

Where have been the follow-up attacks?

Follow-ups designed to keep the citizenry on edge and backing the President and his administration's plans, whatever they might be. Follow-ups designed to keep the Democratic party off its game and out of power for who knows how many election cycles. Follow-ups designed to save face for all the pols and pundits who supported the Iraqi war and its peripherals.

Instead, what we're seeing out of those in power are not follow-ups but f***-ups.
 
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I agree. Wouldn't it have been orders of magnitude easier to detonate a biological weapon or small nuke and then claim that it came from Iraq? Why frame Saudi nationals in a plan to invade Iraq? Furthermore, if a government is so sociopathic to murder 3,000 people, wouldn't they just plant some WMDs in Iraq in order to say, "I told you so"?

The evil masterminds behind this nefarious conspiracy should have read this: http://www.pcshock.com/Moo/evil.html particularly number 12 -
One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.
 
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You should be careful with statements like this. As, I believe, has been demonstrated the CTs seem to put more weight on news reports that came out on or around 9/11/01 itself. Any research later on is just the government trying to cover up their crimes. So, somewhere, there has to be a CTer going.

'Man, the news reports said 20,000 people man. But the lying BushCo. Regime say only 3000. Where are those other 17,000 bodies man, what are they trying to hide?'
(snip).

See the last line of my post. Include the missing 17,000 in that.

I agree. Wouldn't it have been orders of magnitude easier to detonate a biological weapon or small nuke and then claim that it came from Iraq? Why frame Saudi nationals in a plan to invade Iraq? Furthermore, if a government is so sociopathic to murder 3,000 people, wouldn't they just plant some WMDs in Iraq in order to say, "I told you so"?
(snip)

Zackly.
 
The primary reason I don't believe in a 9/11 conspiracy is this: John Kerry Is Not President.

In 2001, John Kerry was a highly-placed elected official with oversight of military, intelligence and budgeting operations. His knowledge of executive operations only increased between 2001 and 2004. If there was any evidence at all of any involvement of the Bush government in 9/11, it would have guaranteed Kerry the White House for the next 8 years. Hell, it would have guaranteed the Democrats the White House for the next hundred years.

Kerry didn't even hint at a conspiracy. He didn't even have a stand-in hint about it so he could deny having said it himself. Kerry isn't President, ergo no conspiracy.


[CT_Mode]
Kerry's just another NWO shill. HIS WIEF OWNS TEH KETCHUP!!!1
He's in on it too.
[/CT_Mode]
 
The convoluted and gargantuan scale of the conspiracy is likely what attracts them to it. They get to put together this massive Rube Goldberg conspiratraption with every item linking tenuously to another. And, like Goldberg it requires flights of fancy to move from one part of the contraption to another.

With the purported resources of the NWO, a simple dramatic gesture like blowing up the Washington Monument would have sufficed. You just conveniently nab a "hit team" carrying Iraqi i.d. and wearing I heart Saddam buttons? Would've been a whole lot less expensive and complicated and a lot easier to "prove". Instead, we have what usually comes from any conspiracy theory, this horrible convoluted mass of hints, opinions, and tenuous links to third cousins twice removed.
 
Or, 'Why I agree 9/11 CT is bunk'

He explains his plan to whomever. If that person were to look at Bush and say, "You want me to do WHAT?!" then that person would have to be killed, or the plot might be exposed.

And where's the trail of bodies?

[Warning: plot details ahead.]

Reminds me of Clancy's novel "Rainbow Six". An ex-Soviet spy has done a job fingering a secret international anti-terror unit to the IRA, leading to an hostage assault where the unit's leader (R-6)'s wife and daughter are held hostage and had to be rescued with several close team members dead. Later, this ex-Soviet spy is in a one-on-one with one of his bosses in a Kansas wheatfield. The boss mentions that his group is planning to kill most of the people on earth to "re-green" the planet within 24 hours. With 5 seconds of consideration, the spy casually borrows a pistiol from his companion and then shoots him dead, hurries to New York and sets up a face-to-face meeting with R-6 to spill the beans to someone who definitely would just as soon see him dead.

Now, how would GW avoid that scenario happening to him? As you say, by being prepared to clean the slate.

Very nice argument.
 

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