More 9-11 Conspiracy Stuff
This Hit and Run post on the South Park Conspiracy theory episode and responses from the conspiracy community piqued my interest. I started looking around the 911Truth.Org website until I found this transcript of a 9-11 conspiracy speech. Here's a sample:
It is clear that some agency-either the military or the FAA--failed to follow standard procedures on 9/11. When these procedures are followed, the FAA, as soon as it sees signs that a plane may have been hijacked, calls military officials, who then call the nearest air force base with fighters on alert, telling it to send up a couple fighters to intercept the plane. Such interceptions usually occur within 10 to 20 minutes after the first signs of trouble. This is a routine procedure, happening about 100 times a year.26 (One of the many falsehoods in the recent debunking essay in Popular Mechanics is its claim that in the decade before 9/11, there had been only one interception, that of golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet.27 Actually, at about 100 a year, there would have been closer to 1,000 interceptions during that decade.) On 9/11, however, no interceptions occurred.
Why not? The military's first story was that no planes were sent up until after the Pentagon was hit. The military leaders were admitting, in other words, that they had left their fighters on the ground for almost 90 minutes after the FAA had first noticed signs of a possible hijacking. That story suggested to many people that a stand-down order had been given.28
By the end of the week, the military had put out a second story, saying that it had sent up fighters but that, because the FAA had been very late in notifying it about the hijackings, the fighters arrived in each case arrived too late. One problem with this story is that if FAA personnel had responded so slowly, heads should have rolled, but none did. An even more serious problem is that, even assuming the truth of the late notification times, the military's fighters still had time to intercept the hijacked airliners before they were to hit their targets.29 This second story implied, therefore, that standard procedures had been violated by the military as well as the FAA.
To try to defend the military against this accusation, The 9/11 Commission Report gave us, amazingly, a third version, according to which the FAA, after giving the military insufficient warning about the first hijacked airliner, gave it absolutely no notification of the other three until after they had crashed. But as I have argued in The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, this account is wholly implausible. Besides portraying FAA personnel, from top to bottom, as incompetent dolts, the 9/11 Commission's account rests on claims that contradict many credible and mutually supporting testimonies. In some of these cases, the fact that the Commission is simply lying is abundantly obvious.30 In addition, this third story implies that the military's second story, which it had been telling for almost three years, was almost entirely false. If our military leaders were lying to us all that time, why should we believe them now? And if our military is lying to us, must we not assume that it is doing so to cover up its own guilt?
In sum, the behavior of the military both on 9/11 and afterwards, combined with the fact that the 9/11 Commission had to resort to lies to make the US military appear blameless, suggests that military leaders were complicit in the attacks. A similar conclusion follows from an examination of the attack on the Pentagon.
This is why conspiracy theories don't work, or at least why they're not believable. Even if all the facts here are correct (and I really don't know one way or the other), the conclusion reached still requires a leap of faith unsupported by evidence. Even if we know that yes, the government lied, and yes the government has covered things up, our discussions of why the government may have done this is just speculation. Even if you can prove that someone is lying, your explanation of why that person is lying needs to be supported by some sort of evidence.
I'm not naive enough to think that the government has always told us the entire truth about 9-11 or anything else. I recognize that official explanations can often times have holes. But I'm also not stupid enough to believe an alternative explanation unsupported by any evidence.
It is clear that some agency-either the military or the FAA--failed to follow standard procedures on 9/11. When these procedures are followed, the FAA, as soon as it sees signs that a plane may have been hijacked, calls military officials, who then call the nearest air force base with fighters on alert, telling it to send up a couple fighters to intercept the plane. Such interceptions usually occur within 10 to 20 minutes after the first signs of trouble. This is a routine procedure, happening about 100 times a year.26 (One of the many falsehoods in the recent debunking essay in Popular Mechanics is its claim that in the decade before 9/11, there had been only one interception, that of golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet.27 Actually, at about 100 a year, there would have been closer to 1,000 interceptions during that decade.) On 9/11, however, no interceptions occurred.
Why not? The military's first story was that no planes were sent up until after the Pentagon was hit. The military leaders were admitting, in other words, that they had left their fighters on the ground for almost 90 minutes after the FAA had first noticed signs of a possible hijacking. That story suggested to many people that a stand-down order had been given.28
By the end of the week, the military had put out a second story, saying that it had sent up fighters but that, because the FAA had been very late in notifying it about the hijackings, the fighters arrived in each case arrived too late. One problem with this story is that if FAA personnel had responded so slowly, heads should have rolled, but none did. An even more serious problem is that, even assuming the truth of the late notification times, the military's fighters still had time to intercept the hijacked airliners before they were to hit their targets.29 This second story implied, therefore, that standard procedures had been violated by the military as well as the FAA.
To try to defend the military against this accusation, The 9/11 Commission Report gave us, amazingly, a third version, according to which the FAA, after giving the military insufficient warning about the first hijacked airliner, gave it absolutely no notification of the other three until after they had crashed. But as I have argued in The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, this account is wholly implausible. Besides portraying FAA personnel, from top to bottom, as incompetent dolts, the 9/11 Commission's account rests on claims that contradict many credible and mutually supporting testimonies. In some of these cases, the fact that the Commission is simply lying is abundantly obvious.30 In addition, this third story implies that the military's second story, which it had been telling for almost three years, was almost entirely false. If our military leaders were lying to us all that time, why should we believe them now? And if our military is lying to us, must we not assume that it is doing so to cover up its own guilt?
In sum, the behavior of the military both on 9/11 and afterwards, combined with the fact that the 9/11 Commission had to resort to lies to make the US military appear blameless, suggests that military leaders were complicit in the attacks. A similar conclusion follows from an examination of the attack on the Pentagon.
This is why conspiracy theories don't work, or at least why they're not believable. Even if all the facts here are correct (and I really don't know one way or the other), the conclusion reached still requires a leap of faith unsupported by evidence. Even if we know that yes, the government lied, and yes the government has covered things up, our discussions of why the government may have done this is just speculation. Even if you can prove that someone is lying, your explanation of why that person is lying needs to be supported by some sort of evidence.
I'm not naive enough to think that the government has always told us the entire truth about 9-11 or anything else. I recognize that official explanations can often times have holes. But I'm also not stupid enough to believe an alternative explanation unsupported by any evidence.
posted by lonely libertarian at 10:12 AM
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