I think everyone here believes 9/11 conspiracies to a certain extent. Hell, I think most people believe in certain variations of them. The extent of which is where your mileage may vary.

  • Bush/Cheney/Rumself knew about it and intentionally did nothing to stop it
  • The Saudis did it

These two are pretty universally accepted in these circles (and beyond them). But I'm curious to where everyone here feels about the more nitty gritty theories:

  • Do you believe that the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld-lead cabal actively coordinated in ways to make it easier for the hijackings to be successful (such as disrupting the NORAD response, intentionally allowing the hijackers into the country and coordinating freely, etc...)

  • Do you believe in the controlled demolition theory?

  • Do you believe Flight 93 was shot down?

  • Do you think the people the official narrative claims were flying the planes were actually flying the planes? This seems to breakdown to two different scenarios:

    1. The hijackers were never actually flying the plane (Which is a theory I don't support)
    2. The hijackers were "flying" the plane but it was actually being piloted as an autonomous drone (I think this is way more likely)

  • Do you believes the planes that crashed into the buildings weren't actually the reported planes and the passengers were disposed by other means?

  • Do you believe a missile hit the Pentagon?

  • Do you believe that certain people were aware of what was going to happen and tipped off about it, allowing them to execute lucrative securities trading?

For me, I believe:

  • That the involvement of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld-lead cabal definitely took active measures to make sure it succeeds
  • Flight 93 was shot down
  • The planes were being autonomously piloted

I am agnostic to the controlled demolition theories. The physics and engineering component of it goes a bit over my head, so I'm left to trusting certain peoples analysis. I've seen people I trust provide arguments for both sides.

I'm curious to hear where everyone else falls on this spectrum?

  • FidelCastro [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I believe 9/11 likely happened as reported. If anything, the intelligence community may have seeded some of the first conspiracy theories out of embarrassment and to distract oppositional groups in the ramp up to launching the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

    One thing I'm recalling is that we know the feds did warn Bush that Bin Laden might be planning something, but the office doing so was a holdover from Clinton which hadn't been cleared out yet and were effectively ignored. Not a plot, just politics as usual.

    It can be very hard for those in the imperial core to believe that a small group of radical guerillas from the global south were able to outmaneuver the American empire and catch its defense mechanisms off guard. The concept of The State as all powerful is ingrained deep in America's culture and it finds weird outlets. Recent example of this is the liberal and conservative embarrassment over the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

    The Saudis may have thrown some funding to Al-Qaeda, I could see that, but I doubt they were paying enough attention to understand how that funding was being used. They'd want to maintain distance and also keeping a guerilla group tightly aligned with your goals takes work. The rich and powerful hate working, they're going to do the minimal amount possible. It's much easier to just throw money at some psychos and trust they're going to destabilize their region for you.

    I haven't looked into the arguments for Flight 93 being shot down, but that's also something that would have already leaked if it did happen. People are bad at keeping secrets and a panicked response during a total meltdown of US security would have probably had too many people in the room to effectively lock that information down.

    It can be comforting to believe the people in the seats of power are competent and have a well defined plan. The reality is that they rarely do and are most often reactive, especially the American government. It was captured by corporations and has been reorganized over decades to function in line with the quarterly (ie 3 month) rhythms of the market.

    Again, using the withdrawal from Afghanistan as an example, there was close to zero planning in place leading up to the event. 20 years of occupation and no one had maintained a withdrawal plan in the event it became politically necessary to execute. Does that look like a State entity that has its shit together to you?

    • Chapo_is_Red [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      It can be very hard for those in the imperial core to believe that a small group of radical guerillas from the global south were able to outmaneuver the American empire and catch its defense mechanisms off guard.

      Yeah, I don't see a grand conspiracy. Just arrogant failure of the US security apparatus. It's like the Death Star

      • OgdenTO [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        The CIA fed Lucas the idea for the Death Star plot to set the seed for avoiding the conspiracy theories for 9/11 24 years later.

      • FidelCastro [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Exactly. At that point, America hadn't even had an ideological rival for almost two decades to compete against once the USSR collapsed. It's security apparatus had atrophied.

      • FidelCastro [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Depends how far down the truther hole they are, but yeah. The ones who are full on "only a white man named Dubya could have done this" are pretty sus and have some western brainworms.

    • TankieTanuki [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      It can be very hard for those in the imperial core to believe that a small group of radical guerillas from the global south were able to outmaneuver the American empire and catch its defense mechanisms off guard.

      This might apply to a very small number of people who never believed the official story to begin with, but this doesn't comport with the fact that the vast majority of people who now doubt the official narrative (including Brace Belden and myself) believed it for years. We stopped believing it because we saw something that changed our minds.

      I think an opposite psychological barrier is in play for the people who still believe the official story. It can be very hard for people in the imperial core to believe that our own authorities are capable of such evil. At the same time, Western propaganda has been dehumanizing Muslims for decades to create the the impression that Muslims are.

      Even though at an intellectual level I understood that imperialism was the most violent force in the world, I was reluctant to consider them capable of murdering "their own people" for a long time. This manifested itself in a belief that if it had been an inside job that at least one of the plotters would have had a guilty conscience and come forward to foil the plan.

      Then I realized that the exact same logic applied to the Muslim hijackers. Why didn't any of them get a guilty conscience?