What's crazier, believing the U.S. orchestrated 9/11 or that Saddam did?
9/11 Truths
by Jack Hunter
Charleston City Paper
April 08, 2009
...there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against Americans." —Stephen F. Hayes, The Weekly Standard, 2003
When discussing politics, if there's one thing that sends people running for the hills, it's conspiracy theories — or worse, conspiracy theorists.
As with those who are deemed "racist" or "isolationist," conspiracy theorists are automatically dismissed by polite society, not necessarily because they are wrong, but because of the nature of their arguments. And because their ideas and opinions are outside of consensus politics or the mainstream media, conspiracy theorists lack credibility simply for being outside the realm of respectability.
Take, for example, what is commonly known as the 9/11 Truth Movement, a collection of conspiracy theories that claim the terrorist attacks in 2001 were orchestrated by the U.S. government. Watching 9/11 Truth videos online like "Loose Change" or "Zeitgeist" raises many interesting questions, and might cause even the most reasonable of folks to at least question the conventional wisdom on the subject. Yet, by and large, the 9/11 Truth conspiracy remains a fringe movement, taken seriously by few and laughed at by most.
But if 9/11 "Truthers" are wacky for believing the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by Uncle Sam, what about the conspiracy theorists who tried to convince Americans that 9/11 was orchestrated by Saddam Hussein? Consider the following from The Weekly Standard's cover story "Case Closed" written by Stephen F. Hayes in November of 2003: "Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda — perhaps even for Mohamed Atta — according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by The Weekly Standard."
After the memo Hayes cited was immediately and entirely dismissed by the Department of Defense and virtually every intelligence official, Newsweek decided to investigate Hayes' claim further, concluding "the memo doesn't actually contain much 'new' intelligence at all. Instead, it mostly recycles shards of old, raw data that were first assembled last year by a tiny team of floating Pentagon analysts whom [Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J.] Feith asked to find evidence of an Iraqi-Al Qaeda 'connection' in order to better justify a U.S. invasion."
Hayes went on to write a book called The Connection based on the same false memo, and as the Bush administration went on to make the same case that Iraq had something to do with 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney told the Rocky Mountain News that Hayes' Weekly Standard article was the "best source of information" on collaboration between Hussein and Al Qaeda.
Of course, this was all fantasy. It was a conspiracy — not between Saddam and Osama — but amongst the Bush White House and their media allies to construct a "connection" between Hussein and Al-Qaeda that had never existed, an irrefutable fact reflected by every piece of U.S. intelligence before the invasion of Iraq — and proven again after it. Yet today, you will still find the random conspiracy kook who still believes that Saddam was behind 9/11.
So what is the difference between conspiracy theorists who believe the U.S. government orchestrated 9/11 and those who believe Saddam Hussein did? For starters, the 9/11 Truth conspiracists have arguably more circumstantial evidence for their case than men like Hayes or Cheney ever did for theirs. But the most significant difference is that while 9/11 Truthers are relegated to the internet with no mainstream media support, 9/11 Saddam Hussein conspiracists like Hayes were the media and worked in conjunction with the government to perpetrate their fraud.
While I try to keep an open mind, I do not believe the U.S. government orchestrated 9/11 precisely because I don't believe our government is competent enough to pull off such an elaborate scheme, and if they did, it would certainly be too incompetent to cover it up.
But 9/11 Truthers and similar groups don't concern me half as much as the conspiracy theorists in our media and government, who have the power to start wars, end lives, and damage nations, based on their own self-aggrandizing-fantasies.
And if I had to choose, there's something much more healthy and patriotic about those who take their distrust of government to what some might consider a ridiculous degree, than those whose unquestioning trust in government is not only unhealthy — but completely ridiculous.
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conspiracy theories
conspiracy theories conspiracy theorists conspiracy incompetent conspiracists blah blah blah.
Very good title. Thanks.
John A MITCHELL
Herblay FRANCE
bonsoir ,
I am going to use the title to provoke discussing here in France
What's crazier, believing the U.S. orchestrated 9/11 or that Saddam did?
Quoi de plus fou, croyant que le US a orchestré 9 / 11 ou que Saddam l'a fait ?
Yours
John
I Do Believe In A Conspiracy...
...but not necessarliy the US Govt. I think most folks here are too sophisticated to make a blanket statement that the US govt was behind 9/11. That elements of the US govt might be involved or even behind it is a more realistic view IMO.
The difference is
the neocons ruled the country for eight years with their crazy.
Incompetence? Really?
The "government incompetence" theory does not hold water; it is a misnomer, and relies on intellectual cowardice. The U.S. "Government" is a huge interconnected web and hierarchy of officialdom and bureaucracies across a country of 300 million people in 2 million square miles, and 50 states. "Government" employs hundreds of thousands of people, all the way from local city officials, to the office of the president.
For those who propound the "incompetence" theory, they are relying on the popularly held notion that "the Government" is an inefficient, unwieldy, error-prone dinosaur, and that this huge monolith of thousands was responsible for the attacks. What they fail to mention, however, presumably because it would wholly undermine their case, is that the official story does NOT contend that the plot was planned and executed by a huge bureaucracy of thousands of "al qaeda" agents, but instead, a tiny handful, a conspiracy of 25 at the very most. If it took a mere 25 foreigners with few resources to pull off the crime of the millennium, then by logical extension (and contrast), 25 highly trained handpicked military experts within a strict and compartmentalized chain of command, with access to limitless funding and resources, should also have been able to pull it off! Talk about the obvious......
History demonstrates that "Government" can exhibit extraordinary speed and efficiency, when the motivation is there: for example, the 384 page "Patriot" Act was signed into law in a month. The wrecked freeway overpasses in Los Angeles following the 1994 Northridge Earthquake were rebuilt within a few weeks. The public school system in New Orleans was almost entirely replaced by a private charter system with great speed and precision in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, yet the lower 9th Ward is still like a war zone. When "government" is prodded in the appropriate places, can accelerate very quickly indeed.
The 9/11 government "incompetence" theory is clever disinformation of the most weasly and underhanded variety, because it appeals to not only the populist position of "mistrust of government", but at the same time squarely placing the blame on an outside party (muslims) which the mainstream media has taught us over decades to distrust, or even hate, thus very conveniently killing two birds with one stone. "Incompetence theory" peddlars are also fully aware of the acquired negative connotation of the phrase "conspiracy theory" and they use this mass psychological weapon liberally when trying to deflect the focus of blame away from an obviously guilty party.
It seems as if "Incompetence Theorists" are willing to believe that *our* people in positions of power are all decent, honest, law-abiding folk who are incapable of pulling off such a dastardly event. By extension, they also seem to want to believe that *our* government agencies/departments and traditional institutions have the same unsullied and unblemishable record, despite the lengthy historical record of false flag operations, and wars started on the basis of lies, which have been responsible for the deaths of countless millions. However, when it comes to people of a different national, racial, ethnic, cultural and religious background, the "incompetence theorists" have no difficulty in spreading the notion that the darker side of human nature is more applicable to those "who are different to us".
incompetence?
Pres Bush awarding G Tenet with the Congressional Medal of Honour cancels out the incompetence theory. It's the nations highest award. Your superiors award you when you do well, not when you are incompetent.
Nice job on 9/11 DCI and Well done on Iraq too! Your medal proves it.
All excellent points, of course,
but there's a broader issue involved.
The "incompetence defense" apologists want to have their cake and eat it too. On the one hand, they maintain, pulling off 9/11 would've been such a massive and Byzantine undertaking that the Keystone Kops who run the federal government, even with all the vast resources they have at hand, could never have pulled it off, much less kept a lid on it afterward.
Got that, everybody? 9/11 was just too big for our multi-trillion dollar federal government to have done.
Yet:
The only alternative to that they ever propose is that less than two dozen Mideast nationals temporarily living in the U.S., operating on a budget somewhere in the ballpark of a quarter million dollars, were able to do it.
I'm one of the first to acknowledge that government tends to do things badly. But, for all the federal government's shortcomings, it's simply staggering to dismiss a priori the idea that it was logistically incapable of making 9/11 events happen while simultaneously blithely assuming that a little, very modestly funded team did do it, end of subject.
Of course, learning the details of 9/11 makes it abundantly clear that an al Qaeda cell operating independently couldn't really have pulled off the events that day, even if they were extraordinarily competent (which they weren't). But even one unfamiliar with those details should be able to see that there's a double standard at work here: Networks in the federal government are too incompetent to do this, but a couple dozen private operatives on little more than a shoestring budget are fully competent to undertake same, no questions asked.
So far as leaks are concerned:
Aside from legitimate concerns about a leaker and/or his loved ones being horribly tortured and murdered in the aftermath, the effective blacking out of useful 9/11 information in the (the CIA- and Mossad-dominated) MSM is in itself enough to discourage most any career official from going out on a limb and leaking the truth. (Look at, for example, how UK's MSM has blacked out Annie Machon's story. Or, wherever Mockingbird reigns, the talks given by Willie Rodriguez.)
Israels obvious participation in 9-11
Uncle Sam had alot of help. Or should I say Uncle Sam helped Israel/ Mossad in their attempt to deceive the world yet again. It's getting harder to read "the latest" 9-11 articles and information as they leave out this huge component of 9-11. Is this the Truth hidden within the Truth?? The proverbial "brick wall"?? Or...... Is this now something that the Truthers can't even bring themselves to face??
And Who Are You?
And where have you been? Great swaths of the 9/11 truth movement have covered Israels supposed role in the attacks ad nauseum. The subject has recieved treatment in various documentary films and shorts, websites, and even corporate media.
Now, to say that 9/11 truthers cant bring themselves to face possible Israeli involvement would be disingenuous at best.
________________________
“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
http://www.mikeruppert.blogspot.com
http://www.ubuntu.com
Dont preach it, just mention it :)
good one
Definitely, there needs to be an accounting for Israel's role- the art student spy ring, high fivers, urban moving systems, Amdocs, etc.
And for Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as well
But any effort to deflect attention from those who swore an OATH to defend the Constitution, and who, at a minimum, failed to protect the country, in the face of repeated warnings, is misguided at best; especially when there's been an effort to smear the 9/11 Truth Movement as anti-semitic.
And there definitely needs to be an accounting for why the CIA failed to disrupt the plot when they were monitoring the alleged hijackers at least since 2000, why supervisors at the FBI obstructed efforts to expose and disrupt the plot, why the NSA supposedly didn't alert anyone when they were monitoring the Yemen hub and intercepted 30 messages involving alleged hijackers and associates in the months before 9/11, why FAA/NMCC/NORAD/NEADS failed to follow standard procedures for intercepting off course jumbo jets FOUR times on 9/11- after a summer of threat. etc.
The Complete 9/11 Timeline
http://www.historycommons.org/project.jsp?project=911_project
http://911reports.com
great perspective, minus the "incomptence" excuse
Hadn't thought of this before, kudos to Hunter and the CCP; the Bush Administration, Weekly Standard and the other media that shamefully promoted the bogus Iraq-Al Qaeda connection- to the degree that 70% of Americans believed it at one time, and tens of millions still do- are "conspiracy theorists"- except that as they are the US govt, Republican Party and MSM, they get to pretend they represent rationality.
Last 3 lines are priceless:
"While I try to keep an open mind, I do not believe the U.S. government orchestrated 9/11 precisely because I don't believe our government is competent enough to pull off such an elaborate scheme, and if they did, it would certainly be too incompetent to cover it up."
Yeah- I don't believe "the U.S. government orchestrated 9/11" either; but a powerful faction within and behind it, sure- and if not, why so many holes in the official story, why the illogical refusal to honestly investigate, why the appearance of cover up?
"But 9/11 Truthers and similar groups don't concern me half as much as the conspiracy theorists in our media and government, who have the power to start wars, end lives, and damage nations, based on their own self-aggrandizing-fantasies.
And if I had to choose, there's something much more healthy and patriotic about those who take their distrust of government to what some might consider a ridiculous degree, than those whose unquestioning trust in government is not only unhealthy — but completely ridiculous."
Definitely, lunatic "conspiracy theorists" with nukes and paranoid-aggressive tendencies are a lot more dangerous to peace, stability and international security than bloggers and street activists. And, as Hunter says, the bloggers and street activists calling attention to the fraud of the Official Conspiracy Theory are patriotic, and exercising our Right to speak freely and hold our "public servants" accountable for 9/11 is healthy for our Republic.
http://911reports.com
Incompetence Theory - Partially Correct
Well, as Prof. Griffin has pointed out, the government was indeed too incompetent to pull it off AND cover it up. The holes in the official story are so many and so gaping, they certainly reflect a significant level of incompetence.
- How else do we explain an aerobatic maneuver in a 757--too complicated even for pilots with decades of experience--being executed by a punk who couldn't fly?
- How else do we explain high-altitude cell phone calls so impossible that even the FBI won't back up the story?
- How else do we explain the fact that the government has had to hand us THREE different, mutually contradictory stories about the military's [non]response to 9/11--each more ludicrous than the one before it? The first story began collapsing within 24 hours.
9/11 itself was pulled off with great skill and precision. But the cover-up has flopped from day one. It's so obviously ludicrous on its face I don't know what else to attribute it to but plain I-N-C-O-M-P-E-T-E-N-C-E.
That's actually a good point...
...it is indeed extremely difficult, for even the most competent government, to completely cover up all evidence and silence all people successfully. Remember though, the "myth of American Exceptionalism," and people's psychological need to feel their government is there to protect them. The perps count on those things when they think they can get away with it.
As competent as they needed to be
How competent were they, regarding both the crimes and the coverup?
Well, look around--what have they gotten away with, and how much of it could they conceivably have gotten away with without the 9/11 official story?
'But the holes in the official story are so obvious,' protest some of you. Surely you're aware that there's still a vast number of people who basically accept the official story--enough to enable the militarist and imperialist and police state agenda to continue with no apparent end in sight.
'Yeah, but most of them must know deep down by now,' you might say. Sorry--for practical purposes, it really doesn't make any difference how sincere or insincere their belief is (we might continue to hope that insincere pretense to belief in the official story is a step along the way towards ultimately rejecting it; but until that threshold is crossed, no practical difference). Denial is one of the many forces of mass psychology--together with the initial mass trauma, and the long-cultivated belief in American exceptionalism--whose role was not merely foreseeable, but foreseen by the promoters of this agenda since before 9/11 (think only of Brzezinski's and PNAC's references to the foreseeable effects on mass psychology of a Pearl Harbor-type event, or the paper by 'public myths' expert Zelikow and his cohorts speculating on the effects of 'catastrophic terrorism' within the U.S.).
Griffin likes to respond to the 'they're too incompetent to have done 9/11' by saying that they were incompetent on 9/11 too, if only the news media had taken the trouble to notice and report on the glaring discrepancies between the government's account and the facts at hand. But again, how can he not appreciate that this performance by the U.S. news media was something else that was entirely foreseeable in advance of 9/11?
The most I'd say is that they probably did fail to appreciate the impact of the internet in enabling people to go outside established news sources. But appreciate it or not, they apparently felt the big event they needed couldn't be postponed any longer, and whatever risks posed by new means of communication (and by conscientious citizens who see through their lies) could be countered later.
Let's face it: for their purposes--for all that was really required--they were as competent as they needed to be. And sometimes it seems that, in a country that began by declaring that 'all men are created equal,' even many truthers have a hard time facing up to the appalling disparities of power that actually exist; disparities whereby small numbers of well-placed people have a good idea in advance that they can get away with doing things which, if the rest of us had performed that way, would result in our getting fired or worse. And they even know that their subsequent cover stories don't even have to be particularly sound. That's how it would be for the rest of us if we had our own peronal Ministries of Propaganda--which is what these militarist cliques do have in the form of the major news media.
A day in the news: Israel intercepts offcourse Delta flt
Based on everyday news, it doesn't take much understanding to realize how farfetched it was that our air defenses completely missed 4 errant passenger jets unless there was complicity inside our government:
Israeli jets scramble to escort Delta flight
AP
US airliner sparks Israel security scare AFP/File – Israel International Ben Gurion airport on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Israeli warplanes scrambled to …
Sat Apr 11, 2:38 pm ET
JERUSALEM – Israeli fighter jets were scrambled to escort a Delta Air Lines plane flying from New York to Tel Aviv after the pilot activated a hijacking alert by mistake.
Transportation ministry official, Dani Shenar, told Israeli media Saturday that nobody was hurt in the incident.
He said two jets hovered briefly over the plane carrying over 100 people and escorted it safely to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport.
A technical malfunction had prevented the pilot from communicating with the airport's control tower.
The transportation ministry said it will launch an investigation.