tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2103721720555568681.post1907210746104947156..comments2023-11-03T02:36:34.462-07:00Comments on Conspiracies R Not Us: Excellent ArticleNeighborhood Rationalisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07479889538108100486noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2103721720555568681.post-19263527396909376572009-12-28T21:24:28.037-08:002009-12-28T21:24:28.037-08:00Great questions that get at a lot of issues, which...Great questions that get at a lot of issues, which people have felled millions of trees and spent swimming pools of ink in answering! Steve Coll's "Ghost Wars" and Lawrence L. Wright's "The Looking Towers" are great places to start. In most cases, terrorists (including those in past successful and failed operations) couldn't keep a secret at all. One of the reasons why we know al Qaeda was behind 9/11 is because of the dozens of people from the organization who have come forward or turned themselves in to help describe al Qaeda's operations. Also consider that yes, clearly a complex series of operations were at work here - but every version of a 9/11 conspiracy theory is infinitely more complex, and involves people with infinitely more attention from that press and media on a daily basis. An independent press junket doesn't follow around Ayman al-Zawahiri on a daily basis - except for the occasional propaganda video.<br /><br />Over the past few decades, the US has thwarted, intercepted, and repelled thousands of terrorist attacks. It strikes me as a statistical inevitability that a near-perfect safety net has to face the "near" at some point.<br /><br />We know that al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11 because of the forensic and genetic data available from the planes; from the suicide videos, pasts, associations, and networks of the hijackers and those who have come forward and been captured from al Qaeda; from the decades-long histories of extremist movements working for and against Russia and its satellite states, and the United States, etc.; and so on. Most of what Loose Change claims is false, so you can dismiss that one pretty cleanly.Neighborhood Rationalisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07479889538108100486noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2103721720555568681.post-42659077881754711552009-12-28T20:06:54.734-08:002009-12-28T20:06:54.734-08:00(Apologies for the above) All kidding aside, I tak...(Apologies for the above) All kidding aside, I take it by your support for this article that you still favour the middle ground in that there had to be at least *some* conspiracy in this set of events. It is ironic that in rejecting a conspiracy (us), you have to accept another conspiracy (them) in order to make sense of the tragedy.<br /><br />While I can't dismiss much of "Loose Change" either, it does blame too many actual people for which the film has little evidence, and I haven't watched it more than twice, and that was a couple of years ago. Their conclusions are too easy to make, and that makes them suspect.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00754990934830936281noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2103721720555568681.post-15986113508671647422009-12-28T19:45:39.943-08:002009-12-28T19:45:39.943-08:00Hi. I watched one of you on a re-run of The Agenda...Hi. I watched one of you on a re-run of The Agenda here in Toronto, and have read your Gwynne Dyer article here on the blog. I would like to take the anti-conspiracy theory further, since we both don't like conspiracies, as I can see, and that is to say that it is pure poppycock to say that the Al-Qaeda was in on it. The reason I give, is because that would make it a conspiracy too. That makes Dyer a conspiracy nut, also.<br /><br />How can so many Al-Qaeda keep a secret like that anyway? How can they coordinate the breaching one of the most tightly-secured regions in the world, militarily, in separate regions of the country, all on the same day? Heck, we are talking about a press which seemed to keep track of every irrelevant, albeit secret, detail of celebrities; and an intelligence system that can track every phonecall in America as well as every email; so how is it that they could have missed the coordinated efforts of at least 19 Al-Qaeda suspects?<br /><br />Conspiracy, indeed! HA!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00754990934830936281noreply@blogger.com