9-11/anomalies/straw men

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9/11: anomalies: denial

Overview

Although a number of reasonable questions relating to the events of 9/11 have been raised, a great deal of effort continues to be expended discussing only the most "far-out" objections and presenting them as if they represented the entirety of the case against the official account of 9/11, when in fact they do not represent it very well at all.

Critics seem to focus on theories such as:

• Bush arranged to have the planes flown into the WTC towers and/or the Pentagon
  • nugget: Bush was certainly looking for an excuse to do many things, including invade Iraq and generally grab more power, but one would want to have a great deal of direct evidence before making such a claim; there is none at present.
  • nugget: The US government has certainly, in the past, contemplated deliberately causing acts of terrorism against US property or citizens to be blamed on another country in order to gain support for military action: Operation Northwoods
  • nugget: video of filmmaker Aaron Russo discussing earlier conversations with Nick Rockefeller: "There's going to be an event..."
• The planes were flown by remote control
  • nugget: There were reports that the terrorists reported to have flown the planes performed terribly in flight school and could not have performed the necessary maneuvers. It is not clear at present whether these reports are based on fact or rumor, or whether the maneuvers attributed to the terrorists could realistically have been performed by them given their flight school performance. (One possible origin of confusion is that the flight school instructor mentioned that they did terribly at landing, probably because they had no interest in it; this would not necessarily have affected their in-flight maneuvering skill.)
• What crashed into the Pentagon was not a plane, but a missile
  • nugget: These arguments often show pictures of a missile-sized hole in the Pentagon wall as evidence – the photo is real, but it is the exit hole, on the inside of the ring penetrated by the airplane.
  • nugget: The few frames of released video (out of all the many confiscated video records of the impact) don't make it clear what the craft was, and the administration has declined to explain why they will not release all of the video. The wreckage found and photographed, however, appears to be consistent with AA77. (Again, though, it should be noted that the photographs which have been posted publicly are a mere drop in the bucket to the thousands that surely must have been taken during the investigation.) (Update: more complete description of evidence availability is here)
• WTC1 and WTC2 were taken down by explosives planted on orders from the Bush administration
  • nugget: Although there are several pieces of evidence pointing to controlled demolition, there is as yet no evidence pointing to who might have planted the explosives or how they were set off, much less that it was done deliberately
  • nugget: The situation would not have been quite as unprecedented had the buildings remained standing, and almost certainly Bush would not have been given as much rope to play with by stunned citizens and legislators. As implausible as the scenario is, it is certainly understandable that some more impulsive individuals might presume method upon seeing the intersection of motive and opportunity. Again, though, one would need a great deal of direct evidence before one could credibly make such a claim, and there is none yet.

In each case, there is a nugget of truth which has, one way or another, been blown out of proportion to the actual evidence available to support it, thus delivering an easy target for criticism and ridicule.

Links

• Perception & Propaganda: Misinformation
• 9-11 Review: Info Wars
  • Trojan Horses
  • Parade of Errors
  • Divide-and-Conquer
  • Intimidation
  • Propaganda
  • Shell Game
• 2007-05-24 The Loony Left's 9/11 by Peter Hannaford: one long argument by ridicule, with a bit of straw man and a side order of appeal to calmness. Mentions Alexander Cockburn.
• 2006-09-10 The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts by Alexander Cockburn
  • 2006-12-12 Cockups Are Worse Than Conspiracies by Alexander Cockburn takes some of the ideas (and text) from the earlier article and launches into criticism of conspiracy theories in general
• 2006-09-07 White House Targets Conspiracy Theorists As Terrorist Recruiters: George W. Bush implies that "conspiracy theories" about 9/11 are themselves a conspiracy to support terrorism