Through a fair amount of argument and debate, I’ve managed to talk an acquaintance back from his position of “Bush caused 9/11, bombs planted in the towers, yada yada”, to simply 1) “the official story of 9/11 isn’t the whole story / complete truth” and 2)“the Bush administration knew about 9/11 and let it happen”.
Where do I go from here? Do I just give up and concede that he could be right? Or alternatively give up based on the fact that I’ve already accomplished what’s usually impossible – changing a conspiracy theorist’s mind about a ridiculous chain of events.
About the only argument I’ve got left is: If Bush knew about and let 9/11 happen, then why would he cop such a stupid looking face on camera when the news of it was first whispered into his ear? If they really knew of it all along, why wouldn’t he jump up and heroically spring into action?
Any advice or suggestions would be helpful on how to proceed?
Ok…what exactly hasn’t been told? The entire thing has pretty much been dissected any number of times. AFAIK, no major questions remain. A good place to start is…what exactly does your friend think is missing? Based on what evidence?
Again, based on what evidence? I’ve seen nothing compelling (or even enough to raise an eyebrow) that says that Bush et al knew anything ahead of time…at least not in any specific way. In general I’m sure they knew it was a possibility…but specifics? Not that I’ve heard. So, a good place to start is to have your friend present whatever evidence s/he thinks they have and then look it over critically…then do some research on it. Doing so will quickly reveal that this, like many of the CT claims about the WTC being dropped by explosives, etc etc, are just a lot of hot air and BS claims by people who don’t really understand the events and how they transpired…and who in most cases don’t really understand things like structural engineering, explosives (or in some cases basic physics)…or in the case of your friends claim, how a government or government organizations function in a crysis when time and information are serious compressed and uncertain (have your friend look up the term ‘fog of war’ sometime and apply that to the events of 9/11…it will give him/her an insite into how such things play out).
Help us out. Why does your friend believe point #2? Most of the hand-wringing I’ve seen is over how the administration could have (should have) responded to the clues it had and intervened, but didn’t. IOW, they were negligent. Personally, I think that’s just Monday morning quarterbacking (and, btw, I don’t like this administration one little bit), but it’s a plausible position. To go further and assert they actually knew requires evidence. Whether your friend can be persuaded to adopt only positions for which there is evidence is more than I know.
What’s the quote? You can’t reason a person out of something they didn’t reason themself into? That sounds about right. You’ve appeared to have done a remarkable job, though.
The last two claims are essentially the same claims made about Pearl Harbor, and the fundamental truth about 9/11 is essentially the same as well. Most people who believe these things think that the administration is completely and irreparably inept and corrupt, yet they are willing to believe that they would be able to keep a complete lid on information and/or actions that would kill thousands of Americans. Hardly consistent thinking. The fundamental truth is that no one (at least no one who could do anything about it) believed that 9/11 could actually happen. This is the same basic flaw that led to Pearl Harbor.
I agree with your argument that if it were a set-up, our response would have been incredibly rapid and successful. The administration also would have been able to prevent many of the deaths from the attacks, and could have emerged looking invincible. It would not have taken 3,000 dead to get the country behind *any * plan for attacking the terrorists - the destruction of the WTC towers and the attack on the Pentagon would have been more than sufficient. That’s another parallel to Pearl Harbor - we would have declared war on Japan even if no one had been killed, and the same is true of 9/11.
There are always unanswered questions and facts that don’t fit neatly into the picture. But the bottom line is that 9/11 really did require us to change how we think about a lot of things, including the seeming invincibility of the continental US and of modern skyscrapers. There are a lot of people who can’t get past that, so they’re looking for other reasons why things happened the way they did.
Well, the official story is not the whole story. There is likely quite a bit of intel no one in the public will know for 50 years. I doubt if it changes the basic story, however.
As to knowing: I like to describe real intel work (as oppsed to airmchair 20/20 hindsight discussions) with an analogy. Let’s say you have a jigsaw puzzle, but only half the pieces, however it is assembled and you have the box top with the picture. It is very easy to see then that this fuzzy white piece is a cloud and that bit of red is a barn. Very easy- now that you know what the end result was. :dubious:
But the real intel work is more like this: you do have half the pieces- and a thousand more pieces for different puzzles.Some of the pieces you have have been deliberately designed to mislead you. And you have no box top, no picture yet.
It’s all very nice to say that now you can see the fuzzy white thing is a cloud and not a sheep, but that is with all the wrong peices gone, an expert has assembled the rest, and you have the solution. 20/20 hindsight. :rolleyes:
I use the same analogy for Pearl Harbor. Sure they knew the Japanese were up to something, but not when, what or where. (It seems like they suspected an attack on the Phillipines, not Pearl.)
In dealing with these kind of events one has to use common sense and personal experience.
Most of us saw 9/11 played out by many different media sources. I doubt they were all in some kind of agreement to fool us. I believe we know the most of it. No, the president didn’t know it was going to happen.
In JFK, the Warren report did not agree with the eye-witness accounts. I believe the eye-witnesses. I believe the first reports on the radio.
In Waco, I saw it on TV live. A tank pushed in the wall rupturing a propane gas tank which torched the building and killed 80 some people unnecessarily. Plain as day on TV. But that was not the government position. Years later they again showed the original film.
In Roswell, the information officer called the newspaper and reported the crash of an UFO. Minutes later it was withdrawn, but the paper had already printed the story. Top officers and others at the base years later said the UFO was real. I listened to a former marine stationed at the base tell his story. He said the marines were called out early in the morning in full battle gear and sent to guard a crash site. He personally saw two bodies removed from the undetermined craft that had crashed and put into an ambulance.
Pearl Harbor, yes, FDR knew something was happening but didn’t know what. I think we have the real story on this one.
The point is, each event is different and not to be compared with any other. Listen best to the early reports, eye-witnesses, and video if it is available. Too much second-guessing. Politicians don’t always tell the truth. Yeh.
As for the rest of his post: In the real world, eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable, as most humans are piss-poor observers, especially when they’re observing something unexpected under stressful conditions, and early reports are usually confused and filled with errors.
I don’t know why people need some fancy conspiracy theory. Isn’t it bad enough that this administration essentially put terrorism and Al Qaeda on the back-burner, that Bush first reaction in the minutes after the attacks was pathetic (although he did do better in the hours after that…although that situation is sort of made for a leader to look good; hell, even Rudy Giuliani looked good!), and that they almost immediately were thinking about how to use 9/11 as an excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway (attack Iraq) and eventually did so, getting us into a horrible quagmire that was (despite Bush’s claims to the contrary) completely 100% a war of choice and not necessity?
All of this we essentially know from a very reasonable man, Richard Clarke (among others). I don’t see why it is necessary to then go on and imagine dramatic conspiracies that seem rather preposterous and require an amount of secrecy and conspiracy that frankly seems rather implausible.
I guess the truth isn’t bad enough for some people?
Nope…not familiar at all. I take it that s/he was serious then by your tone.
Exactly. In fact, 2 of the examples he used are classic cases of eye witness confusion and the fog of war effect. 9/11 is an even better example of course.
The administration was told that Ben Laden had plans to attack America. Was the info believable enough to set the CIA and FBI in motion. ? Apparently not. Were they wrong not to get mobilized. ? Hard to say before, afterwards easy. Some group based in Afghanistan had the ability to bring down building in NYC ,at that time not too credible.
They were apparently not convinced. We were all shocked that it happened. Almost nobody said they knew that it was going to happen.
As for the buildings falling down ,the explanation that an airplane full of fuel crashed into the buildings pouring gas down the elevator shafts and igniting causing the buildings to fall works for me. It does not explain building 7 though. It would have to be due to some horribly incompetent design and build.
Or it getting hit and damaged by debris from the falling Twin Towers. It’s not like it was a military installation, built to withstand explosions and shrapnel, after all.
No, I am not kidding. There is plenty of evidence about Roswell to say it really happened. Just read the entire article below. I have been following these things for years and contrary to what some believe about me here, I am very careful with my evidence, personal experience, and what I believe.
I must confess that I find it highly unlikely that a military chaplain would be summoned to give some sort of support to alien survivors of an intergalactic car crash.
It would be more plausible if they summoned a veterinarian (more versatile than an MD) or possibly a vivisectionist.
As for conspiracy theories, I am sure that there are some conspiracies, but their chance of success and not getting rumbled diminishes exponentially with the number of people involved. I once heard from a reliable source that three people is considered too large a number for an undetected conspiracy. I suppose the number increases if one is very careful about screening the participants, but the idea of 9/11 being ‘faked up’ or even anticipated requires a pretty substantial willing suspension of disbelief.
Personally I would not bother trying to change someones mind if they hold such curious views.
WTC7 had, on the side facing the towers, a gash running from the roof down the face at least 20 stories, and possibly all the way to the ground. Eyewitness accounts describe major damage to the lower floors, and fires burning uncontrolled on multiple floors for several hours. Firefighters monitoring the building describe a multi-story bulge on one side of the building (evidence of significant structural deformation) and measurable leaning. I don’t have any problem believing that degree of damage, combined with massive fires fed by the large diesel tanks in the building’s basement, could have caused it to collapse.
I’ve seen the ‘evidence’ before, thanks. Its pretty uncompelling unless you are a true believer. We’ll just leave it at that, since I don’t want to hijack the thread. I was just checking to see if you are serious…you appearently are.
Educate yourself then. No, its no joke…its called reality.
Thanks now you educate yourself. I saw a couple long involved programs discussing the heat treating on the bolts holding the towers up. They discussed the temperatures that were reached and decided that the bolts were insufficient and were improper as a partial reason for the fall. They claimed the fuel was a big factor as it ignited. They were hazy on whether the beams would actually distort but emphasized the support. The architect said that they were designed to withstand a plane crash. Just not one that large and full of that much fuel. I think the builders were negligent in the design and build and got off free. I pretty much could see how the confluence of under design and bad luck brought the towers down.
Of course bldg 7 was different. I missed the airplane bumping into it and dropping fuel down the elevator shaft. I missed the part where high temperatures via airplane fuel were melting beams on bldg 7. s.
Who has ever purported that the 9/11 Commission Report was absolute truth or prescribed exactly what happened? Unfortunately, all of those who actually know what happened that day are all deceased. The Commission report was a “best guess” based on known facts available at the time.