When Al-Qaeda themselves claimed responsibility, even with overwhelming evidence aside? Why were so many people still reluctant, I was researching about this stuff and was shocked to see people who I respect a lot believe in this
When Al-Qaeda themselves claimed responsibility, even with overwhelming evidence aside? Why were so many people still reluctant, I was researching about this stuff and was shocked to see people who I respect a lot believe in this
I didn’t actually believe this, but it was fun to entertain the idea.
Here’s why. At the time, there were a bunch of very odd coincidences. I’ll do my best to remember the best of them.
Next!
Next!
Edit: forgot one!
There are more, but it’s been 20 years and my memory is hazy.
Overall, there were some oddities around the whole event that, when allowing yourself to think completely outside of reality, make sense as to why it was an inside job.
Finally, personally I believe the Saudis did it in cooperation with Bin Laden and their goal was to bankrupt America. They did a pretty good job, from their perspective.
I can’t vouch for the veracity of most of your content but I wanted to add that building 7 was also announced to have collapsed before it actually did.
Yep. There was also the quotes from Rudi Guilani where he said something along the lines of “Pull Building 7”, where pull is demolitions parlance to set off the charges. This was like a day of audio snippet. Its also basically impossible to find the original footage that isn’t pure conspiracy drivel, but I remember it from the time when all of this was happening. There was so much going on in the wake of 9-11, with the country pretty much instantaneously jumping into war mode, being immediately handed a narrative around al-Qaeda with no investigation into the causes or veracity of the government claims around al-Qaeda.
The push back on questioning the narrative was surreal. Like, you would be drawn and quartered publicly for doing so. The ‘feeling’ at the time was that the investigation into what actually happened and how felt like a complete sham that the government didn’t really want to do because so many people weren’t accepting the party narrative.
Also, keep in mind the context. There was a strong anti-war sentiment in 2003 going into the invasion of Iraq. The “9-11 was an inside job crowd” found themselves running with the anti-war crowd as general anti-institutionalists. This was when Alex Jones was just finding his footing and definitely wasn’t quite fully right wing. He was more accurately (at the time, in historical context) anti-establishment. The modern right-wing movement hadn’t fully formed, although it found its roots in this historical period (the Tea party would also come out of this period).
So just broadly consider the different vectors operating on public perception at the time. We were basically instantly construction a “Going to War is the Solution” narrative within hours of 9-11 happening, and the narrative around that construction was found to be fully formed as soon as it emerged, almost as if the institutions of the US government and its surrounding media had been prepared for this exact moment. Push back against this was effectively an instantaneous scarlett letter and there basically was none in US mainstream media*. There was a strong push back against any kind of independent investigation into the events leading up to the event. We got reports from the CIA and FBI, but considering the context, like, if those are the parties in question, do you believe them? Then you had the Saudi Bush family connections, the fact that we were basically going to war with Afghanistan when we knew it was the Saudis that did 9-11, which was like a pretty big red flag. Then there were the reports that globally, many governments warned about this happening to US intelligence agencies, but it seemed like they just kind of let it happen. Which is really where the conspiracy was focused. These days it gets too wrapped up in ‘inside job’ etc, but the general scheme was more about 9-11 being allowed to happen as an excuse for a Bush invasion into the middle east. This wasn’t a conspiracy that was built in hindsight, the speculation was built in real time (before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq), and then go figure, Bush invades the middle east, and specifically, goes after Iraq. This basically fully validates the theory, and to put a cherry on top, the evidence on Iraq was all just… fraudulent. So if you limit the scope of the theory to 9-11 was ‘allowed’ to occur to justify a military industrial complex incursion into the middle east, its kind-of like “well yeah duh” because thats exactly what happened.
Wild fukin time and wild bit of history. Important to keep context in mind, and to have sources of information about the past which aren’t ‘edited’ to reflect newthink.
*Democracy Now did exist by this time (finding its establishment after the Seattle WTO protests). If you want to really understand what was going on at the time, this would be the media source I would recommend.
Do you write? I really enjoyed reading your comments, just flowed naturally talented
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it.
I’m a scientist, so I do ‘write’ professionally, but its a very different kind of writing than I do here, and I would say that they are entirely seperate (excepting my discussion sections where I afford a bit more liberty to style, although I tend to be more focused on methods in my publications, where I don’t give myself as much liberty).
I attribute my writing style to years of participating in forums and threaded discussion boards, starting in the early 90s. I try to use quotes from who I’m replying to, hyper links, bold and italics for emphasis, but to use a conversational/ editorial style. When I was coming up on the internet, I truly believed that the internet allowed for the democratization of ideas, in that, on the internet you have no appeal to authority on your credentials or name or background. The only weight you can provide is rhetoric and whatever evidence you can scuff up, and because of that, the best ideas should find their way to the top. Boy was I wrong, but I still believe in the virtue of good ideas, and that belief is part of my motivation for being involved in places like (formerly) reddit or (currently) lemmy.
I would attribute not to all the writing you’ve done, but all the reading.
As a scientist, how did you feel at the time about the railroading of scientist Bruce Ivins for the Anthrax scare?
The vast majority of the time, the pushback was low effort “asking questions” based on fundamental misunderstanding of the subject matter or entirely pulled our of their asses.
Countless incorrect things were announced. Everyone was collectively panicking. That’s odd, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anything considering the building was already visibly damaged.
Incorrect information in a chaotic situation? Would never happen!
A building fire started by jet fuel absolutely can melt steel beams, and the collapse of building 7 occurred exactly as you would expect from a building fire, which happened because the fire in the other buildings was blown across by the wind and explosions. None of the building collapse videos look like a demolition.
If the government wanted to execute an attack on Americans, why not just fund the terrorists and ignore warnings? Let the jihadists crash planes into buuldings. Setting hidden, controlled demolition charges and trying to make it look like a collapse is harder than finding some terrorists willing to die for their cause and teaching them to fly.
It is conceivable to me that members of the intelligence community, the military-industrial complex, and/or the government ignored warnings and allowed the attacks to happen for their own benefit. I would prefer to think it wasn’t true, but I must concede that it would explain many inconsistencies.
It is theoretically possible, but implausible to me, that those same people would coordinate the attacks and support the terrorists to ensure that the attacks would happen as a false flag operation. This is an extraordinary claim with almost no evidence.
It is not in any way possible that the government demolished any of the buildings attacked on purpose and then covered up all evidence of the demolition. There would need to be too many people involved, too many videos altered or destroyed, and too much evidence planted after the fact. It is demonstrably false.
As I said with the very first statement, I don’t believe any of this.
This is exactly what many tinfoil hatters thought and probably still think.
It wasnt the first skyscraper fire, but it was the first and still only skyscraper to collapse from a fire. So no i wouldnt say its expected at all.
Depends on who you ask. https://www.nist.gov/world-trade-center-investigation/study-faqs/wtc-7-investigation#Collapse
Building 7 had one of the towers fucking fall on it, was seen bulging massively before collapsing, and it was pretty obvious what was going to happen, hence people getting confused and saying it had already collapsed.
How can you not believe any of what you wrote but also say that you believe the Saudis did it? The Bush-Saudi connection was known for a decade before September 11th.
Bush Sr. literally invaded Iraq to protect Saudi oil interests. No one at the top actually believed Saddam was an immediate threat to U.S. interests.
The only planes that flew out of the U.S. after the attacks were Saudi nationals who were granted exception by the White House to flee the country.
I’m not the person you’re responding to, but where I land on the question is basically I think there’s a very good chance that GWB knew about a credible threat of something like 9/11 happening and deliberately chose not to interfere. So more like an act by intentionally doing nothing.
Do I think Dubya sat around in dark rooms in 2001 with Bin Laden, planning every stage of 9/11? Absolutely not. I don’t know any serious Truther who does, either. But there’s no doubt in my mind that some members of the Bush admin and the Pentagon knew in advance that something big was going to happen. That, in my mind, is qualitive enough to be an inside job
The word “serious” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. There are a ton of truthers out there with some truly unhinged theories about 9/11, and I’d say that the unhinged truthers outnumber the reasonable ones by a fair bit.
It’s been pretty well publicized that the lack of collaboration between the three letter agencies allowed them to slip through the cracks. Foreign intelligence knew about it, but domestic wasn’t aware. The fact of the matter is, they aren’t just sitting around getting 1 of these reports every couple months that they have to investigate. They get Thousands of these constantly. There’s a declassified docuseries on Netflix, that despite being “copaganda” to a degree, all describe legitimate threats that could have turned into big things if they were left along. There’s no doubt what the individuals intended to do. I don’t think the Bush Administration left anyone do anything, they simply didn’t let a tragedy go to waste.
Because I knew someone would take the bait. The saudis did it is another conspiracy theory from the time.
The conspiracy theories around 9/11 are almost as numerous and as fun to play with as JFK assassination.
Of course, the meme is a parody of anyone who thinks that’s a legitimate argument. You don’t need to liquify a material for it to lose its structural integrity.
No, people actually believed it from day 1.
Yes, people believed “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams”, but the meme is a parody of people who believed it.
Sometimes parodies are just literal reflections.
The main one for me was that NORAD, for the first time ever, was “stress testing” their system and running every flight sim they had, so when things went down, they had no idea what was real and what wasn’t.
The order to do so, for the first time, unprovoked, unnecessarily and unneededly came from Dick Cheney himself, who didn’t even have the authority to order the Pentagon to do ANYTHING but his orders were followed regardless.
That’s a pretty big discrepancy. It’s really hard for me to rule that one out
Building 7 is a big leap of faith to hurdle.
The twin towers themselves collapsing in a controlled manner, that doesn’t happen without blowing individual floors. Buildings in war zones don’t fall down vertically, they’ll partially collapse or fall over, not straight down - that ONLY happens with controlled demolition.
That’s a big leap of faith.
Like almost everyone else, I was glued to the TV all day on 9/11. I remember when the Pentagon footage was aired on TV. It was played ONCE. That was a missile. It was clear as day. Beyond that, if it was an airplane, where’s the fucking wreckage? Cuz that would be the first plane crash in all of history that left zero wreckage.
That’s a big leap of faith.
It requires to many leaps of faith to believe the given story. Idk the whole of what happened, but I know we weren’t told it.
The Patriot Act was introduced 5 weeks after the attack. 342 pages, no contradictions in the whole thing. Introduced, passed, and signed into law in 4 days. 5 weeks isn’t enough time to read 350 pages of legalese, let alone write it. It was ready to go
Add to all the sus, America’s government post WW2, at least, has not warranted any trust from the public. The CIA has done a LOT of fucked up, illegal shit to us. The Bay of Tomkin was a false flag fucking lie to the people. The incessant lie of Neoliberalism telling us that GDP is up! But everyone’s quality of life is being striped away faster than our rights. Citizens United is bullshit, 2000 election was bullshit, Iraq and Afghanistan were both bullshit, qualified immunity and civil asset forfeiture are fucking repressive FASCIST bullshit and yea, you know, I don’t think the people calling the shots have our best interests in mind, how could you?
“_______ doesn’t happen without _______” all all bullshit based on nothing. NIST has published their findings. They had 200 Experts, 125 of which came from the private sector investigate how the towers came down, and there is absolutely no evidence what so ever that they were brought down in a controlled manner. I even remember watching a documentary that interviewed the owner or engineer of one of the US’s top demolition companies that easily pokes holes in the idea that a major skyscraper with people, furniture, etc could be brought down like that at all. It’s total nonsense. NIST has a FAQ page