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!

You really do have blind faith don't you. Praise be.

X posts..how droll

Claig - There is a qualitative difference between actively killing your citizens and failing to protect them. I have yet to see an example of a reasonably democratic government actively harming it's citizens.

The risk of discovery is to great.

To those who say that the secrets would be leaked. In the Tuskegee case, it started in 1932 and only ended 40 years later in 1972. They managed to keep that one secret for a long time. There were hundreds of healthcare workers, nurses, doctors and officials in the loop. None of them spilt the beans. The History Channel has a documentary about it. You see the sickening pictures of the poor black men inviting the nurses into their homes, falsely believing that they were being treated and cared for. These ordinary nurses carried out their orders and duties. This happened in America. It is sickening and it could happen anywhere.

Wow. What has impressed me on this thread, is how courteously Snorbs has explained his/her points on building engineering and physics to those of us who didn't instantly understand, and the measured and calm responses of Appletrees and Flightattendant on this thread to some persistent personal abuse and bullying.

For what it's worth, I'm not a big one for conspiracy theories, and this one is just too far fetched for me - as people have said, the number of people who would have to have been complicit, either in advance, during or since, and to maintain their silence and complicity in the face of thousands of their fellow countrymen and women's deaths, makes this just too hard to swallow for me. So, in the words of Dragon's Den - I'm out.

erm george bush wanted oil thats why!!!!

I dont believe for one second the us government had nothing to do with this.

I also think that you have every right to bring up conspiracy theorys on 11/9. its a day that makes people think for all sorts of different reasons

Appletrees, tsk, tsk

" In the Tuskegee case, it started in 1932 and only ended 40 years later in 1972. They managed to keep that one secret for a long time."

Aside from publishing research papers in journals, of course. It was that secret. What would the point have been had they not published?

Yes, it's an appalling story, but I'm still not quite clear what point you're making. At the outset it was not ethically dubious. Although the way they secured consent for spinal taps was bad, it was no worse than the way Andrew Wakefield did it seventy years later. Fifteen years after the programme started, the ethical situation changes because although at the outset there had been no treatments better than those on offer, now there were. That was the ethical failing: the first fifteen years were either fine ethically, or at worst marginal (the agreement to withhold additional treatment from conscripted men is arguable, given the treatment that would have been given was no better than placebo).

It goes horribly, savagely wrong in 1948, when penicillin is available (although it's worth noting in passing that given the US's lack of healthcare, it's not at all obvious that black men in the deep south who weren't enrolled on the study would have done any better) and it should have been stopped. But by then it's a run-on research project, started many years early, operating on a care and maintenance basis, with an assumption that if it was OK last year, it'll be OK next year? It should have been stopped in, at the latest, 1966 when the CDC became aware of it, and that was a failing by a government body that was, rightly, excoriated when it all became public. But there are other trials which, when started, were ethically OK, but drifted into badness later (the radioactive chapati flour scandal in Coventry in the 1950s, for example: it's a lot more complex than it looks at first glance).

No one would argue, I hope, that governments don't sometimes do wrong. But I don't believe that's a result of "government" being indifferent; it's usually the result of people with a focus on one topic not seeing the whole picture.

you seem to love Tony Blair more than the truth.

yes of course they all published and circulated studies between themselves, studying the guinea pigs. That's why it is so sinister. It was open, it was delibearte and it was not uncovered.

Similar things go on here. This is a newsnight investigation into haemophiliacs who were used as guinea pigs and ended up with hepatitis-C and AIDS. Spend 25 minutes watching it, and your eyes will be opened. These type of things are not one-offs. they are examples of the ends justifying the means.

means justifying the ends
but Orwellian doublespeak probably means that the other way round is also valid.

While I can see the point of bringing up the Tuskegee syphilis case, I don't think it is in any way comparable to the issue of keeping a US-led 9/11 conspiracy silent.

Tuskegee involved a relatively small number of people who were involved enough to appreciate what was going on. It was also perpetrated on poor black men in an area and an era where such people were widely regarded as slightly sub-human. In that way at least it was closer to how German troops viewed and treated the Jews and other victims of the Holocaust. Plus, Tuskegee happened during a time when whistle-blowing wasn't particularly common (Watergate happened after Tuskegee stopped).

By contrast, if 9/11 was a US conspiracy - with controlled demolitions, faked aircraft, real aircraft passengers being removed and presumably killed etc - then the number of people directly and indirectly involved would be huge. A truck driver tasked with delivering many reels of detonation cord to the loading bays under the WTC. A filing clerk who notices that two, three or four (depending on what you believe crashed where) US Airforce 757s have suddenly vanished from the maintenance records. Teams of highly trained explosives experts. Air traffic controllers being told to stay quiet about what they saw on their scopes. Secret communications to particular VIPs saying "Um, on 11 September, you might want to make sure you're not in lower Manhatten. Or the Pentagon."

And none of them has so much as breathed a word. No-one's had a big enough pang of guilt to feel that they need to speak out. Even though we are now in an age where such whistle-blowing would not only be lauded as the act of a truely brave American patriot, but where it would be so easy to do - bung it up on Wikileaks and Bob's yer uncle.

And that's leaving aside the realisation that if it had been a conspiracy then it was one that went off perfectly. No problems, no hitches, no unexpected early detonation of explosives, no unexploded charges found in the wreckage, no radio-controlled aircraft straying off course, no foul-ups or goofs or glitches. Now compare that organisational and procedural nirvana to the reality of government-led and/or military initiatives, which are infamous for being poorly planned cock-ups from start to finish. Doesn't seem likely, does it?

now I'm confused, ignore that last post. I need a coffee.

but Snorbs, you think that the conspiracy theorists are racists. That means you clearly haven't read or seen their work. They have answers for all the things that you mention. They are not green behind the ears, some of them are knowledgeable.

Conspiracy theories come about because people find the official narratives unsatisfying. One of the reasons that people can find these narratives unsettling is that they cause cognitive dissonance in those whose world view is challenged by them.

If you believe that Arabs are basically a bunch of ungodly stone age tribes living in the desert and that America is the greatest and strongest nation the world has ever seen, then the idea that a bunch of savages managed to damage your country can make you feel uncomfortable.

The idea that the government did it fits much more comfortably with those preconceptions.

The 9/11 conspiracy theories are rooted in racism and US exceptionalism.

My argument would be, not that the 9/11thing is right,but that you shouldn't sneer and question the sanity of those asking questions.

I think it's pretty clear now that that is the case.

No I don't think so. Most people just go with paxmanism: why is this lying bastard lying to me.

That last was to coal's last point.

Appletrees - that's my point. Rather than examining their preconceptions they reject the new information.

I think David Aaronovitch has nicely skewered the conspiracy theorists with his book Voodoo Histories. here

Not at all. And it wasn't really your point.

That's just the start of the interest. Ask the questions. Look at FA's responses. She's genuinely interested. She makes points, Snorbs responds, all very civilised. As with others, though not all. You make too many presumptions and that leads you to accuse people of being unhinged.

Actually I think "why is this lying bastard lying to me" is a very healthy start point. A lot more healthy than three bags full sir.

In other words -- examine your own preconceptions. Physician, heal thyself.

It wasn't your point at all, you said the start point was racism and US exceptionalism. I don't think FA's got any racist preconceptions to examine. Has she? She hasn't shown any. Nor has anyone shown any "US exceptionalism". I'm examining myself for US exceptionalism and struggling very hard to locate it.

No, but you and FA aren't the grassroots or instigators of the theories. You come across them at the point when those who need to convince themselves have pulled together a plausible seeming argument.

Tokyo that's just appeasement. You think it's all OK. Now I see where you are coming from: so long as the intentions are good, collateral damage is acceptable. Even if the end does not justify it, the supposed intentions do. I don't really like that attitude and I don't have much respect for it either. It's rather dishonest.

I think there is as much intellectual laziness in believing that behind any unexpected event lies a conspiracy of evil government agents in bed with big business as there is in believing that good people never do bad things. IMO a little bit of hard evidence is worth a ton of idle speculation. Also, let us not forget that there's money and reputations to be made from conspiracy theories - lawyers, politicians, expert witnesses, journalists etc can all fill their boots.