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!

Just out of interest, why DO you feel the need to be so rude? Are you this rude in real life? Are you just so irate about this it makes you very rude?

"It's not about fellow citizens, it's about people in power. The citizens followed orders in the Soviet Union and in Nazi Germany."

Which you believe, without a shred of evidence, to be equivalent to contemporary western democracies, presumably. Do you have one of those posters showing Obama as Hitler?

"what have civilians and forces died for in Iraq?"

Are that's relevant to the contention that the UK government is quite prepared to kill UK civilians quite how?

"Are you just so irate about this it makes you very rude?"

I'm not the person who believes that the entire population of the UK is only kept from turning into Nazi Germany by...well, whatever it is that stops it from happening, given everyone is so pliant and the government is so evil. I just think that smug, ill-informed soi-disant "cynicism" is worth confronting.

Some years ago, someone told that Kate Adie is a man, because she'd read it on a website. When challenged, she said it was important to challenge received wisdom and speak truth to power. The probably with having an open mind is that if you aren't careful, your brains fall out.

don't you think that some politicians believe that the end justifies the means, as Stalin did? He called western intellectuals who supported him "useful idiots". Do you think they only have the interests of the public at heart?

No, you were rude and irate and horrible earlier in the thread before any of this came up.

I don't know which argument you think you might be addressing but I haven't seen it on this thread and it isn't mine. I think you just made it up.

Talk about Iraq in relation to the US government then. And about the British decision to enter that conflict.

Sorry, could you clarify which UK or US or other western politician you are equating with Stalin? Stalin presided over, for example, mass starvation in the Ukraine: are you worried that Theresa May is going to cut off food to Wales?

It's not clear if you're saying that "some politicians" are like Stalin, or like the people he (didn't, as the phrase originates elsewhere, but I know what you mean) regarded as useful idiots. Either way, could you tell us about the behaviour of western governments that makes you concerned that the holodomor is impending?

Attempting to argue that western democracies are shams because of Hitler and Stalin is preposterous.

I think you are creating straw man arguments. I believe that there are politicians who believe that the end justifies the means, and that is how they justify the deaths of millions of civilians in wars like Iraq. I think you yourself may have in the past called them war criminals. I think they do it because they believe that the end justifies the means. We don't know what future politicians will come to power and what means they think will be justified. I don't think that what happened in Russia, Germany and China could never possibly happen in other western countries.

Can you clarify your response to the motives of the British and US governments in Iraq?

Am not smug. Yes I call myself a cynic -- problem? Yes, I'm as ill informed as you, unless you work in the world of high intelligence and government. Perhaps you do. Perhaps it's a long tea break at GCHQ. Perhaps the world went quiet for a bit so you had time to come and abuse people on here.

Again, what the UK government did in Iraq is entirely irrelevant to the contention that they are indifferent to the fate of their own citizens. Endless whataboutery doesn't change that. That governments are indifferent to the fate of the citizens of other countries is not news; your contention appears to be rather stronger than that. The US government dropped nuclear weapons on Japanese cities; that doesn't mean they are inclined to do the same to San Diego, no matter what the outcome of the superbowl is.

I'm glad I escaped this thread when I did! Tokyo, you are no match for Claig and Apple. At least I can understand what they're saying.

Claig - what aims were furthered by destroying the world trade center, that couldn't be furthered in a way that didn't involve destroying some of the most expensive real estate in the US and killing some of the highest paid people in the country?

SGB's post pretty much sums up what I think "ALways interesting to find out how many previously rational-seeming posters need to be fitted for a nice shiny tinfoil hat, isn;t it?" I am actually stunned that so many people believe in conspiracy theories.

Also agree with Kewcumber that there was no conspiracy on the part of the Bush administration to perpetuate the attacks, just incompetence/lack of readiness. Did any of you see the program that aired on Saturday night? Condoleeza Rice pretty much stated that they were unprepared, that things were happening so fast they didn't know what to do, the secure phones ceased working so they had to use unsecured mobiles, all their preparations for emergencies had been based on traditional Cold War enemies, etc. I'm not a big fan of Condy usually but I was quite amazed how frank she was. The implication was that it was complete chaos.

I don't think you mean "perpetuate" there. Perpertrate, possibly?

"what the UK government did in Iraq is entirely irrelevant to the contention that they are indifferent to the fate of their own citizens."

that's not really true when you think about it

a pedant is hoist .. you don't mean perpertrate either

what you really mean is perpetrate

there are hundreds of incidents where governments did not have the interests of their own public at heart. They are not on the scale of Hiroshima, but they do exist. You should try reading up about them, it may change your mind on how benevolent governments are.

This is one case
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

and there is the claim that the US knew beforehand about Pearl Harbour and let it happen, to persuade the US public to enter the war. Here is a wikipedia article about this
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_advance-knowledge_debate

There are hundreds of similar cases. they are not secret, even the History Channel makes documentaries about them.

appletrees, I'm not sure quite what to make of the fact that your only reaction to my post is to point out that I wrote 'perpetuate' instead of 'perpetrate'. Consider my hand duly slapped .

""what have civilians and forces died for in Iraq?"

Are that's relevant to the contention that the UK government is quite prepared to kill UK civilians quite how"

No, it is relevant to your contention that governments are not prepared to endanger or sacrifice lives for what they believe is the right course of action.

"I'm not the person who believes that the entire population of the UK is only kept from turning into Nazi Germany by...well, whatever it is that stops it from happening, given everyone is so pliant and the government is so evil."

You are so funny and simplistic.

" secure phones ceased working so they had to use unsecured mobiles,"

It went offline quite quickly, as it's hard to imagine all the laws it breached, but shortly after the attacks a radio ham in New York posted a transcript of the radio conversations between the command and control people and the F16s that finally were scrambled, and with an airborne command post that the USAF finally managed to get up in the ensuing chaos. It was a total shambles: the reason the transcript existed was that they didn't even have shared secure radio systems between the national guard aircraft and the airforce aircraft, so had to use open radio. Most of the conversations were about trying to get their head around what they could possibly do.

On the ground it was worse, because the towers were the radio base station for most of the mobile comms in lower Manhatten. Which is another thing the theorists can't answer: even accepting, arguendo, that destroying an iconic US structure is a good way to provide a pretext for a war, why go out of your way to choose the buildings that ensured that the collateral damage would be maximised? Why not blow up the Statue of Liberty, or the Golden Gate Bridge?

And why on earth would you risk a large explosion in the Pentagon, if you're the military?

tokyo, you must have read too much of Dick Cheney's memoirs. You probably also believe what Tony Blair has written in his memoirs, the 'Journey'.

TheCoalition, I have read theories about the reasons why. But I am no expert, so I don't know what is true or not. However, all of the questions taht you and tokyo are asking have been answered by the conspiracy theorists. Mnay of them have spent years looking into it, some are PhDs etc. They have answers to all of these questions. They don't work for Dick Cheney. They are mainly just ordinary Joe type figures. They are usually right-wing and yet they are anti-Bush. They don't have the usual axes to grind. It is interesting that the left-wing gives them no credence.

"there are hundreds of incidents where governments did not have the interests of their own public at heart. They are not on the scale of Hiroshima, but they do exist. You should try reading up about them, it may change your mind on how benevolent governments are."

I'm well aware of the Tuskagee experiment. At the time it started, there was no effective treatment for syphilis and no likelihood that there would be, so it was not unethical. By about 1950, when penicillin was an effective treatment, the study should have been re-evaluated, but wasn't, and was clearly unethical after that point. It's not clear how many people knew about it - rather than your claim that this is "government", this was unethical behaviour at a local level. The behaviour of the CDC in the mid-1960s, when they became involved, was hideous, but it became public by 1972 and was torn apart by federal government. As soon as "government" knew about it, there were congressional hearings and massive compensation. That's not evil government doing systematic evil, that's a small group of racist doctors (the deep South in the 1930s) behaving badly and getting stopped fairly rapidly after news got out. Better it hadn't happened, but hardly proof that big government was being systematically evil.

The Pearl Harbour conspiracies are pretty much the same sort of confusing evil with sloth. Most of the investigations didn't have the power to get evidence from the NSA and its predecessors, and the claims of fore-knowledge rest on at the time undisclosed crypto capabilities (especially the early breaks into Purple). It's like the Burgess and Maclean theories, and the foolish decision to clear Philby in parliament: they were revealed by Venona, but at the time the project was still live and not likely to be disclosed. Purple didn't carry much about Pearl Harbour being attacked, and there is a lack of clarity about how much progress had been made against JN25 or how current the reading of the messages was.

In order to spark a war, the USN didn't need to risk its entire capability (the oil tanks at Pearl Harbour weren't hit; that was good fortune, and one or two stray bombs would have put the fleet out of action for months). All it needed to do was have a destroyer sunk or a few planes shot down, see Gulf of Tonkin twenty years later, if the intent was to enrange the US population.

"Mnay of them have spent years looking into it, some are PhDs etc. "

There is no idea so stupid you cannot find someone with a PhD to support it. Shockley had a Nobel Prize, after all.

Here is a quote from the Tuskegee syphillis case, where black men were deliberately not given a cure for the disease

"For the most part, doctors and civil servants simply did their jobs. Some merely followed orders, others worked for the glory of science." - Dr John Heller, Director of the Public Health Service's Division of Venereal Diseases

They followed orders. That's how it works, that's how it is done. That's how Stalin, Hitler and Mao did it and that's how future leaders like them will also do it. That's how Big Brother did it.

tokyo, I am just giving two examples. There are hundreds more. Maybe you already know about them all, and think that it was just isolated individuals doing it. Keep an open mind and read up about it.

Tokyo: you're in a honey trap. Your own response to the syphilis experiment is proof of our posit that terrible things can happen in the name of justifying an end.

Tony Blair is Catholic, but his word is not gospel.