The whole "who benefitted" thing

Notoriously lousy arguer Kevin Ryan had a post at 911truth.org blaming another significant percentage of the United States for 9/11, this time ranging from most of Cornell University's honor roll, the employees of Bank of Credit and Commerce International, and one of our old favorites, Henry Kissinger. They were all responsible for 9/11 because they, of course, "benefited" from it.

Ryan has helped push thousands of dollars in books, DVDs, and promotional tours based on his beliefs about 9/11, by the way.

Equivocating knowing the friend of a friend from back in college who is the pseudo-affiliated board member of a security firm invested in by companies that work at the World Trade Center with being caught in the basement with a bag of dynamite, Ryan really offers nothing new, which eight years out should be absolutely unsurprising.

The errors of this line of thinking are obvious. Consider an advertising firm that makes millions of dollars designing the marketing campaign for a brand of grape jelly. Kevin Ryan would be forced to infer that the CEO of this advertising firm is secretly the person who invented that brand of jelly. Pretty much everyone in the world benefited from the death of Joseph Stalin. Kevin Ryan would be forced to infer that everyone on earth simultaneously assassinated him.

Also consider that he's just plain wrong: if a fundamentalist Muslim commits suicide with the belief that he's in for an eternal paradise of unending happiness, it is probable that he benefited the most from his actions. There is a deafening aura of stupidity emanating from 9/11 deniers caused by the fact that they have to force themselves to pretend that Muslim extremists don't believe what they believe.

Also, of course, you have to assume that there was no cost to any of the literally millions of people Frank Ryan believe were involved from the deaths of 3,000 of their countrymen. But for those of us in the reality-based community, that goes without saying.