9/11 Conspiracy, it's time to get a grip on reality

Six years ago America was attacked by a group of Islamic terrorists from the mid east. Today 36% of Americans polled believe that the Bush administration either allowed, or outright planned the 9/11 attacks. That's hard to believe. The Islamic middle east blames the jews. That's not such a surprise.

As we left the Vikings game Sunday there were "9/11 Truth" protesters handing out information, dvds, and whatnot.

It's really crazy how pervasive the conspiracy has become. It's almost replaced the attacks themselves as the most talked about happenstance.

I don't want to get in a blow for blow debunking of the facts or ideas put forth by the people that think it's a conspiracy. I'm not an expert and the facts have been debunked by experts. The videos are interesting, the ideas are interesting, but they are interesting in the way that watching a documentary on faking the moon landing is interesting.

To me it's so much simpler than blurry photos, circumstantial evidence, and layman's assumptions on architecture and physics.

It's a simple question of "Why?" and an impracticality of population.

Why would the government plan this attack? To justify the war? Say what you will about the reasons for going to war, but 9/11 was a flimsy pretext for a war with Iraq even at the time, let alone in hindsight. What ever money was gained in starting up the war machine was probably lost in the aftermath.

The other thing that is so patently absurd about the belief that 9/11 was an inside job was the sheer number of people that would need to be in on it who are now keeping their mouths shut. The man power to pull off the attacks themselves would have been huge. On top of those people some conspiracy nutters actually believe that the planes that were crashed were swapped out. In other words every passenger on those planes is living out their lives somewhere, everyone of them with grieving friends and family, and everyone keeping quiet. On top of all of that, the entire world was watching it unfold, cameras were everywhere. They weren't going to get away with anything.

I think there are two main reasons that this conspiracy is more pervasive than any other. (The JFK assassination is a pretty well discussed conspiracy, but since the bulk of the conspiracy boils down to if there was more than one shooter or not I don't feel it carries the same weight.) Though I guess both of these points would apply to a both the afore mentioned myths, as well as others.

1) People who believe in the conspiracy believe it so blindly they don't have to listen to reason. Anyone presenting first hand evidence of what occurred is just a member of the conspiracy. Any photographs showing they are wrong are doctored to "throw them off the trail".

2) I don't think people want to come to grips that everything that happened was the result of a relatively small group of guys. No army, no tanks, very little technology of any kind involved. We were that vulnerable, and in many ways, still are. When you're fighting a foe that WANTS to die and puts their mind to harming us, they will. There's really no way to fight that enemy, and that's a pretty big pill to swallow. That's why it gets made bigger than it is. We don't want to believe 4 guys with box cutters brought a skyline and the country to the ground. So we make up stories about military planes and the buildings being pre-wired to fall. (Likewise people don't want to believe one man can just up and assassinate a president.)

Also, maybe this is a minor point: If you believe that the government is really run by a x-files-esq group
of men sitting in a dark room planning how things go and that the government we "see" is just mainly for show then I could see maybe piggy backing this conspiracy onto that one.

If you believe that George W Bush personally planned the attack you are just so far gone that I suspect there's not much we can do to help you. First off, (if I may take my obligatory dig) I'm not sure the Bush Administration could orchestrate a small 10-20 person pot-luck picnic, much less something of this magnitude. Secondly, that's a VERY serious charge, the least of which I'll address. I think it just lacks the fundamental understanding of the system. It's my "population" problem to a "T," and some. The initial planning of the attack would have to involved floating the idea past other people, everyone of which who:
a) Swore and oath to protect us.
b) Wants the job of the person ahead of them.
c) Could at the very least turn their life story into a book and movie about how they blew the whistle on a conspiracy to kill a significant portion of Americans.

SOMEONE would have said something. Some of them could have been the next president.