Y'know the problem with conspiracy theories in general? They never make any fucking sense on a psychological level.
The average conspiracy theorist starts from what they want to believe (generally that the US Government/The Bavarian Illuminati/the Jeeeeewwwws/Citibank/Oprah Winfrey is responsible for all the evil in the world) and work backwards from that.
What they never do is stop to consider "If I were so and so, and I wanted to achieve aim such and such", how would I go about it?
For instance, suppose I'm George W Bush, it's early 2001, and for some reason I've decided that I want to invade Afghanistan. (Possibly so we can build that oil pipeline which last I heard still hasn't been built.) What do I do?
Well, the most obvious thing to do is to invade Afghanistan. Circa 2001 there were already some pretty decent reasons for wanting to go to war in Afghanistan in order to take out those objectively-dickish Al Qaeda (who had already attacked the US on a number of occasions) and the Taliban (who were just plain assholes). The US public could probably have been convinced to go along with this, even in the absence of another terrorist attack. We went along with Obama to Libya, and with Clinton to Haiti and Iraq (Desert Fox, remember) and the Balkans.
But let's suppose they decided that this wasn't enough, and that it was totally worth killing thousands of US civilians for no particularly good reason, in a conspiracy involving hundreds or thousands of other ostensibly-patriotic US government employees, despite the fact that if anyone ever found out about this then they'd all be executed for treason and the fact that everyone involved in this conspiracy has every incentive, before the attack happens, to blow the conspiracy open, save thousands of lives, and become a hero.
At this point I'm gonna skip several paragraphs from my originally planned response, because I'm getting tired thinking this hard about this much stupid. I'll ignore the "wouldn't it make more sense to pick another target" bit and the "surely a smaller scale attack would have worked just as well" bit... and even the "if you're already crashing an airliner into a building WHY THE FUCK would you also need to go to the ridiculous expense and difficulty of doing a controlled demolition AS WELL? Like the war couldn't have happened if we'd ONLY seen the crashing planes and the buildings HADN'T collapsed?
Instead I'll skip straight to my conclusion. The minimum bar which a conspiracy theory has to pass, in order for me to take it seriously, is that it has to make some fucking sense from the point of view of the people who are supposedly the conspirators.
You're right. Any of those scenarios are incredibly far fetched and don't make a lot of sense.
However, that doesn't mean we should just ignore evidence that doesn't fit the official story. If we discover evidence contradicting our current hypothesis, we can't simply ignore it because we don't like it. That's bad science.
All I am saying is that there are holes in the official account. Why are people so afraid to look deeper into these matters?
You are trying to use a straw man to attack any views other than belief in the official account. I have made no speculations about why the government has supressed certain facts. Certainly it's possible there is a more realistic and less flippant answer than "The Bavarian Illuminati/the Jeeeeewwwws/Citibank/Oprah Winfrey", but you are trying to lump curious scepticisim in with lunacy.
That's not fair. It is foolish to assume that either the US Government is not lying, or there is a massive conspiracy. It is also possible that there is a more boring and simple reason why the government has withheld information. But regardless, any questioning of even a minor detail and suddenly you are label a conspiracy theorist.
You are purposefully shutting yourself out to anything contrary to your views; I don't feel that is what I am doing.
The average conspiracy theorist starts from what they want to believe (generally that the US Government/The Bavarian Illuminati/the Jeeeeewwwws/Citibank/Oprah Winfrey is responsible for all the evil in the world) and work backwards from that.
What they never do is stop to consider "If I were so and so, and I wanted to achieve aim such and such", how would I go about it?
For instance, suppose I'm George W Bush, it's early 2001, and for some reason I've decided that I want to invade Afghanistan. (Possibly so we can build that oil pipeline which last I heard still hasn't been built.) What do I do?
Well, the most obvious thing to do is to invade Afghanistan. Circa 2001 there were already some pretty decent reasons for wanting to go to war in Afghanistan in order to take out those objectively-dickish Al Qaeda (who had already attacked the US on a number of occasions) and the Taliban (who were just plain assholes). The US public could probably have been convinced to go along with this, even in the absence of another terrorist attack. We went along with Obama to Libya, and with Clinton to Haiti and Iraq (Desert Fox, remember) and the Balkans.
But let's suppose they decided that this wasn't enough, and that it was totally worth killing thousands of US civilians for no particularly good reason, in a conspiracy involving hundreds or thousands of other ostensibly-patriotic US government employees, despite the fact that if anyone ever found out about this then they'd all be executed for treason and the fact that everyone involved in this conspiracy has every incentive, before the attack happens, to blow the conspiracy open, save thousands of lives, and become a hero.
At this point I'm gonna skip several paragraphs from my originally planned response, because I'm getting tired thinking this hard about this much stupid. I'll ignore the "wouldn't it make more sense to pick another target" bit and the "surely a smaller scale attack would have worked just as well" bit... and even the "if you're already crashing an airliner into a building WHY THE FUCK would you also need to go to the ridiculous expense and difficulty of doing a controlled demolition AS WELL? Like the war couldn't have happened if we'd ONLY seen the crashing planes and the buildings HADN'T collapsed?
Instead I'll skip straight to my conclusion. The minimum bar which a conspiracy theory has to pass, in order for me to take it seriously, is that it has to make some fucking sense from the point of view of the people who are supposedly the conspirators.