XJW and under_believer, I'm with you guys on this one. It's not that I don't believe there are conspiracies, I do, it's just that what these people are asking us to believe about the WTC attack and 9/11 is 1000 times more absurd than what we actually saw with our own eyes.
Where most of these conspiracy theories fail is that they ask us to accept something that is so hard to believe on so many levels, and which lacks any kind of definitive proof, while the official version just makes a hell of a lot more sense. When one of these theories makes sense, has evidence, fits the facts - well, I certainly would give it considerable serious consideration. But most of the 9/11 theories I hear about are, well, about as stupid as the "moon landing was faked" theory.
Instead of a small group of 19 terrorists, financed by an international terrorist group, hi-jacking planes and flying them into buildings - something we watched happen with our own eyes, they ask us to dismiss this and instead believe that our own government arranged the whole thing, had the buildings wired with dynamite, and used the planes as a ruse. WTF??!! A simple clear, fits the facts explanation is replaced with an outlandish theory, that would involve perhaps hundreds or thousands of Americans, and of course not ONE of them has breathed a word about it. Oh, and one other fatal flaw - the very terrorists who were blamed for the incident have released a film gloating over the incident and praising the 19 plane jackers.
I was hired a few years ago by a wealthy and, at the time, very close friend, to research and write an article on the origins of AIDS. She was convinced that it had started as a US government plot. I made some good money on that article, but couldn't produce a shred of actual evidence for her theory. Yes, there were a few strange meetings, requests for funds for research projects, etc., that seemed unusual, but that in actuality amounted to nothing of substance.
This friend, a really intelligent woman in many ways, had what I would say was a degree of mental illness when it came to these kinds of ideas. She tended to see conspiracy in all sorts of areas, and it was very hard to try to reason with her about it. I'm not saying these 9/11 theorists are mentally ill, but I do know this woman had some issues, and she's definitely in this conspiracy camp. Logical reasoning is not her strong suit, and these ideas became an obsession with her. I had to start cutting back on the amount of time I spent with her, because these ideas were just so hard to swallow coming as they did one on top of another.
Anyway, those are just a few thoughts on this. I'm not trying to insult anyone here, just some observations.
S4
