to believe some if not all of the 9/11 conspiracy theories

[mrsunreasonable]

NOTE: This is not meant to be offensive and if you suffered as a result of 9/11 you have my deepest sympathies it was a terrible event however it was caused.

Having watched a few documentaries on the conspiracy theories I am partially if not completely convinced all was not as it seemed. The fact that many witnesses that saw/heard things that didn't tie in with the official version have since died in suspicious circumstances doesn't help!

Oh yes, just stalking on MN, but bad enough for me to take all photos off my profile and keep my Facebook details top secret. ( no one gets me there unless they've passed about 10 security checks..... Ha ha)

Have to disappear now.

Oh, just to finish, I visited NY in 2002, didn't want to go near ground zero but we did in the end, all the surrounding buildings were still damaged, and the atmosphere was one I'll never forget. Can't put it into words. The names of all the people who died in the twin towers were on a big board. So sad. And the firemen who died, their names were on the fire engines.
My thoughts and prayers are with all those who died on 9/11 and with their families,

X

Thank you PP x

R.I.P to all

Carmen that's a really solid post - I like that. I also agree with many points you make, to the best of my knowledge anyway which is sadly less than yours.

Giveitago, it's always considered out of order to bring up a poster's religious or political beliefs on a thread on which they have not mentioned them themselves, whether you consider it relevant or not.

It's not your prerogative to cross over between threads when the information is someone else's.

I think you should apologise to DP and ask for your post to be deleted as it was unnecessary and IMO irrelevant.

i digress,a stalker is horrid dp.some people need to be able to get the jist that a discursive forum is just that and much as some views are abhorrent it isnt on to personalise it and permeate into rl.do vigorously pursue it.regardless of where you sit on the attitudinal/political scale you should be able to post and take flak for it.receive and give riposte and then log off.mn shouldnt breach rl

This is all nonsense.

Just imagine if the government had plotted all of this and it had gone wrong. Imagine if we saw on TV the towers just exploding. All those people dead and it being plain for the world to see that the government had done it. That is what they would risk in doing this. Everyone conspiring to do this was risking a mass murder charge. How many people would do that?

and a thousand more s

Ground Zero is eerie. I was there two months afterwards, and the amount of rubble...

yes.ground zero is unnerving to be there

With 9/11 conspiracy theorists, it's always worth cutting to the chase and asking them

1. if they believe that some Jewish staff didn't go to work that day; and

1. whether the holocaust involved the deliberate killing of over five million Jews.

It means you can filter out the whack-jobs right at the outset. Which is most of them.

yes tokyonambu, of course, it's all linked isn't it?

Peasplease, do we really have only 2 choices; your ridiculous caricature or GWB's version?

I studied construction at university and clearly remember being told that steel structures run a real risk of collapse in fire, even when jet fuel is not involved.

The problem with Googling on an insufficient knowledge base is that you can't tell relevant information & analysis from rubbish.

Conspiracy theorists have more chance with "Why is there no plane wreckage in Pentagon ruins?" imho.

I have just read some of this thread and my head may explode. I am not qualified to enter into the O-level engineering pissing competition but I can debunk one theory from earlier in the thread - that it was an insurance job.
Only one tower was insured - no-one could envisage anything that would bring them both down so the insurance only covered one. Massive insurance cock-up - lots of unhappy insurers and reinsurers running around in the aftermath.

I don´t see the OP as offensive or inappropriate at all. As some have already mentioned, It is vitally important to ask questions, and the anniversary is a natural time to be reminded about it and talk about it openly. It´s not like the OP was denying it happened or that it was justified in any way.

For the record, I believe YANBU to have your own point of view, but I don´t believe any of the conspiracy theories personally.

Expat - you friends memorial foundation is wonderful

I will admit to not knowing much about the conspiracy theories so my question comes from genuine curiosity after watching some of the documentaries and dramatisations over the weekend - did any of the black boxes from any of the planes survive ? Particularly of flight 93 ?

I know a number of people in teh UK who are in the army (in intelligence), the police, I know politicians and I know a couple of people who were VERY senior in MI5/6 and even a very well known journalist who specialises in arab affairs.

I doubt their counterparts in the US are significantly different in character/intelligence/motivation etc.

In the 15 years I have known these people I have learnt the following about "conspiracies":

1 - you will rarely find enough people intelligent enough to plan a conspiracy of the magnitude most people beleive in, even if you trawled the whole of Her Majesty's operatives.
2 - someone always gets pissed off and someone ALWAYS talks
3 - someone, somewhere probably did know something beforehand that might have allowed the government to prevent the relevant disaster but either didn't recognise it until afterwards or the information didn't work it way to the people who might have recognised the clue in time... because most government department/organisations are better at protecting their turf than communicating.
4 - administrations always cover something up because they don't want people to know something and then they can't admit it because what was covered up was so embarassingly dull and insignificant that had they not covered it up, no-one would have actually noticed.
4 - government administrations are lumbering behemoths and find it tricky to organise piss ups in breweries without someone leaking it or cocking it up. The level of sophistication required to carry out the majority of conspiracies is way beyond their capability. FFS they can't even deduct tax accurately using computers when junior accountants can do it with a calculator and some tax tables!
5 - (only one directly relevant to WTC) the media and government in the US had gone ballistic about arab terrorists in the wake of the Oklahoma bombings only to have massive egg on face when it was discovered to have been a home grown terror attack. In the wake of 9/11 everyone studiously avoided making assumptions to avoid this and probably let the Bin Laden family (who perhaps were tipped off to leave the US but probably not in advance) pull strings to get themselves out of the country in the immediate aftermath. No doubt senior administration figures are embarrassed by this and in avoiding addressing the issue are making a conspiracy out of a cock-up.

In conclusion fellow MN'ers if you had met the people I have met, you would be way more inclined to believe in teh "cock-up" theory over teh "conspiracy" theory.

Damn I kept meaning to post the cock-up over conspiracy line, but kept getting side-tracked.

She was a wonderful person, Sassy :).

She loved her job. She had a neat little office around the corner from the copy room on the 5th floor where all the traders and their staff and all the portfolio managers and their staff sat, with lots of pictures in frames.

She loved to hike. I first met her through a hiking club.

She was excited about coming to NYC as the company made it really worth one's while - great hotel room, full expenses paid, etc. She had messaged a friend and former colleague working in Two World Trade Center to let him know she was in town and they made plans to meet after work for drinks and dinner shortly before the first plane struck.

Instead he watched her death as he stood in the street in utter disbelief.

A huge nightmarish cock-up, yes, and the manner in which the events have been exploited have inflamed the conspiracy theories. (Classic Black swan stuff, articulating facts retrospectively so they fit the theory.)
Going to war with Iraq as the most obvious next move really got things going, because no one could justify the link satisfactorily.

Carmen that was a great post.

I don't understand the anger and the insults either, the abuse, random muck raking and spitting fury.

It's a bit unnerving. It's as though there's been a sea change. To consider yourself a cynic and a sceptic you once had to question authority. Now anyone who does that is labelled stupid, thick, troofer, idiot, insane etc. Now you pride yourself on cynicism and scepticism if you buy the whole official line on everything and dole out abuse to those who don't.

It's as though left has become rights in attitude and approach, and the right have become the questioners, the "left" in tone if not in viewpoint.

Perhaps it is a hangover from the past decade. But it doesn't seem to be going away.

It's great when someone like snorbs comes on and says "actually it was like this". But the abuse and name-calling from Tokyo and expat and so on, where does that come from? It's a complete overreaction.

very good point Appletrees. I am amazed that left-wingers, who are very anti-Bush, are nearly all anti-conspiracy theories and don't believe in them. It is amazing that all the major figures in the conspiracy movement are right-wingers.

"To consider yourself a cynic and a sceptic you once had to question authority. Now anyone who does that is labelled stupid, thick, troofer, idiot, insane etc."

Because conspiracy theories have become the new orthodoxy amongst those that fancy themselves as "sceptical". If they were half as sceptical about the nonsense peddled on troofer websites (now, remind me, were the buildings pre-wired for demolition, destroyed by remote control aircraft or destroyed by cruise missiles? And where do David Shaylor's holograms fit into this?) as they purport to be about the general consensus, they might have a point. But any fool can assume that everything they're told by the government is a lie: it requires no thought, no insight, no intellect. You just go around telling people that 9/11 was a put-up job by Mossad / the US Government / the Illuminati / our Lizard Overlords and think yourself a genius.

I forget who it was who said that the advantage of anti-Semitism is that even morons can think themselves supermen. But it's true of 9/11 troofers in their echo chamber: they think they are profound thinkers with a line to the troof, when in reality they're just a bunch of nutters. They laughed at Einstein. But they also laughed at Coco the Clown.

"It is amazing that all the major figures in the conspiracy movement are right-wingers."

Because they are anti-Semitic whack jobs in large numbers, and those that aren't are "UN trying to rule us, Federal government stealing our guns" whack-jobs. Bush, for all his failings, was never one of either camp.

yes they are "UN trying to rule us, Federal government stealing our guns" and they are anti-Bush. I don't think the major figures are anti-semitic though.

Kewcumber that all comes under the heading "you don't seriously think..."

Actually there are some very nasty things planned and carried out with full knowledge of the suffering that will or has ensued. and where dwarf rates far exceed that if 9/11. Tobacco for a start. And the pharmaceutical industry is particular adept at profiting at human expense. Someone mentioned Vioxx earlier, for example.

What is frightening now is that it's considered "sceptical" to say "pshaw. Don't you believe what you're told? are you mad or stupid?"

That gives me the creeps. I like people saying bollocks to it. I like a bit of agitato and some truly cynical bastard fisticuffs. Even if they're wrong we need people to stick two fingers up. Sneering is cowardly.

Ho claig:)

Tokyo you are so angry. It can't be good for your blood pressure. Take a breath.