Are we being targeted by an Anti-Conspiracy Conspiracy?

[JailBush]

Lots of people are talking about conspiracy theories because two of America's most famous possible conspiracies have been in the news lately - the assassination of JFK and the death of Paul Wellstone in a plane crash.

What's amazing is the ferocity with which a number of individuals are attacking conspiracy theorists. Are they just left-wing loonies, or are they right-wing operatives? With Campaign 2004 approaching, Paul Wellstone and even JFK will be creeping into many conversations, and it's to George W. Bush's advantage that the public is continually remind that anyone who suspects fould play is a "tinfoil hat" conspiracy theorist.

Of course, the #1 conspiracy theory is 9/11, and God forbid that anyone thinks that Republicans assisted with the planning or even just sat by and let it happen - even if George W. Bush did sit on his butt reading a story about a pet goat before he ran away and hid in Nebraska.

[Devilock]

1. Well

Like Gore Vidal said on Charlie Rose a couple of hours ago, "It's not a conspiracy, it's a coincidence."

[JailBush]

2. Define "it."

[Devilock]

3. erl

Vidal was talking about the connections between nearly every one of Bush's administration having come from oil and gas. Personally I don't think our last 2 bombing campaigns have had anything to do with oil, but I do find it strange that Bush, Cheney, and Rice (among others) came from oil.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. I love a good conspiracy theory...

and have my own personal one for JFK.

But, over the years I've seen far too much crap, halftruths, and urban legend. In far too many cases, the theorists are working on faith, not evidence. Debunking evidence is often hard to find, and buried somewhere in files by people who are working on a case, not thinking about the legends around it. We see the conspiracy "evidence" but little else.

My Exhibit A, although not exactly conspiracy theories, is von Daniken. He makes a great case, but the book "Crash Go the Chariots" blows him away. Two of the events mentioned in "Crash.." I was directly involved in, and can at least vouch for the author's veracity on those. Others are well documented elsewhere-- if you know where to look. Without the debunking evidence, though, von Daniken looks really good.

Flght 800 is another one. I spent many years insuring ships, and was privy to investigations of explosions and fires. When it blew, I asked some aviation experts about gas freeing the central fuel tank, and was told there was no need to. Gas freeing of ocean and coastwise vessels is a normal procedure, and still some blow from "empty" tanks full of fumes. Apparently, no one considered the possibility of an ignition source within the plane's tank, but the NTSB found one.

The explanation given for the explosion was entirely reasonable, and the alternatives much less so. That the FBI was involving itself in a turf battle over the investigation and found no evidence for its theory of sabotage lends even more credence to the official explanation.

[JailBush]

5. Von Daniken?

Was he the guy who suggested Earth was colonized by extraterrestrials, or something of that nature? If so, I wouldn't call that conspiracy theory so much as scientific theory, except his evidence was so scattered, science never took him seriously.

A better example of a conspiracy theorist is Admiral Rickover (spelling?). I believe he's the one who investigated the sinking of the Battleship Maine and concluded it was an inside job.

[TreasonousBastard]

7. Yeah...

I kinda hate to use von Daniken, because he's a liar and a crank. Your basic publicity hound who probably didn't really believe his own bullshit.

But, it was all I could come up with at this hour. Sleep awaits.

[WoodrowFan]

8. Rickover did nOT say it was "an inside job."

Jeeze, Rickover did NOT say the Maine was "an inside job." He said it was NOT a Spanish mine that blew up the ship but was probably an internal explosion.

(begin excerpt)
What did happen? Probably a fire in bunker A16. Fires of this kind had happened before. Instances had occurred in which bituminous coal of the type carried in the Maine bunkers had ignited through spontaneous combustion. Such fires were difficult to detect. Often they smoldered deep below the exposed surface of the coal, giving off no smoke or flames, or raising the temperature in the vicinity of the alarm. The bunker on the Maine had not been inspected for nearly 12 hours before the explosion; a period which experience had shown was ample time for a bunker fire to begin, heat bulkheads and set fire to contents in adjacent compartments.

http://www.usm.maine.edu/~rklotz/exhibits/rickover.htm

[CaptainMidnight]

6. PUH-LEEZ

Just cuz it wasn't sabotage = official story is TRUE?

Nice Straw Man Argument you got there.

Do your research!

It was a Naval missile.

INTO THE BUZZSAW

GOOGLE: Kristain Borjesson

Captain Mike