Poll : Only 16% of Americans think Govt. is telling truth about 9/11

[shance]

According to a new New York Times/CBS News poll, only 16% of Americans think the government is telling the truth about 9/11:

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/13469

"Do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the truth, are mostly telling the truth but hiding something, or are they mostly lying?

Telling the truth 16%

Hiding something 53%

Mostly lying 28%

Not sure 3%"

The 16% are probably a waste of energy: if they still believe the official story, then they are unlikely to change their minds based on facts. (If you have the patience to never give up, then more power to you).

The 28% who say "mostly lying" are probably already 9/11 truthers. They may, however, simply believe that the government LET 9/11 happen on purpose, without understanding that 9/11 could not have succeeded unless elements within the government had actively ASSISTED in the attacks. So you might want to discuss some of the facts regarding the war games and the Mineta testimony, for example.

The 3% who are not sure are certainly worth reaching out to.

[Justice Is Comin]

1. This may be an underlier that hasn't shown in the polls of so many

people that can't be reached for polls.

The indicators show people want this mafia turned inside out with investigations. And how sw-e-e-et it is.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[malaise]

4. Bushco's credibility

has long been shot to hell. Take them away in chains and handcuffs - war criminals and murderer's of their own constitution. When will Bush himself reach 20% support

I'm loving it.:popcorn: :popcorn: :rofl:

[reprehensor]

5. Sounds about right.

And dwindling fast.

[reprehensor]

24. Previous Zogby poll from May

http://www.zogby.com/features/features.dbm?ID=231

[mirandapriestly]

6. and they all post on DU.lol..eom

[FourScore]

89. Can someone tell me what

eom stands for?

By the way, this poll is great news. I constantly live in doubt that this cabal will ever see justice. I just don't believe the world is ready for it. My fear is that the crimes committed on 911 will go down the same path as the JFK assassination. No justice. Let's hope I'm wrong.

[Homer Wells]

95. !!

End Of Message

eom

[FourScore]

97. Thanks.

[SidDithers]

7. And yet Steven Jones still hasn't published a peer reviewed paper...

interesting.

Sid

[petgoat]

53. So why don't you wrangle up some reviewers? nt

[oblivious]

57. Have any of the government results been submitted for peer review?

[pauldp]

59. No, but Bob Woodward has published a book

Showing there was what amounted to a policy
of ignoring the threats of an Al Qaeda attack.

[akushuki]

8. You want me to believe that this incompentent adminstration helped

carry out the September 11th attacks?

They knew it was coming, and they dropped the ball. They did the same thing with Katrina and with the Iraq occupation.

I really don’t think it was compliancy so much as incompetence.
They may be suppressing really damning memos that were worse the 'bin laden determined to attack' or how they didn’t have any terrorist meetings for the first 8 months of their administration.
I am really more likely to believe Richard C. Clarke then any of this loose change shit.

[Phrogman]

9. Thats what they want you to believe

The incompetency is the act, and chimpo is their star actor. Thats why he was chosen.

Nothing so far has been an accident, nothing.

[akushuki]

11. ....

ORLY?

[Name removed]

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[tridim]

16. South Park is a cartoon, not real life.

[Phrogman]

17. I don't watch "South Park" so I don't know what your talking about

Try turning off your TV for a while.

[ComerPerro]

69. I think you misunderstood

he was saying that the administration wants you to believe it is incompetent, not that they did 9/11. As others have said in this thread, the incompetence is a smokescreen

[petgoat]

54. Ooops! I let 9/11 happen. Approvals go from 55 to 90.

Ooops! I invaded the wrong country. All my cronies get big
fat contracts. Iraqi oil (production cost $1/barrel) is taken
off the market, prices soar.

Oooops! I let Afghanistan become an opium farm. CIA and
al Qaeda make billions.

Oooops! Sorry about your Constitution. Just trying to
keep you safe, you know.

Oooops! Exit polls don't match vote counts. Well mistakes
happen, you know.

Ooops! Port of New Orleans destroyed. Traffic shifts to
Port of Houston.

[mirandapriestly]

12. They are NOT incompetent!!!

the things they have done were all planned -destabilizing Iraq, slaughtering 100s of thousands of people , taking away our constitutional rights with the stroke of a pen, stealing elections, no bid contracts to their corporate pals & all of it without being held in the least bit accountable. That is not easy, it is evil , but it is not possible from someone who doesn't know what they are doing. They are not incompetent at all, they know exactly what they are doing. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean they are incompetent.

Also, if only 16% think they are telling the truth, was it done that competently?

[akushuki]

14. Ok now i see, they planned everything!

http://clism34.ytmnd.com/

[Phrogman]

21. Take that crap somewhere else.

Your "link" irritated my sensibilities.

If you've got nothing constructive to share than keep it to yourself please.

[akushuki]

23. Hah,

You really think this government can pull off operations with military precision involving 1000s of experts across a range a fields and fool the vast majority of the scientific community but cant stop a college kid from making and distributing a poorly edited online film? I'd assume that if the government has no qualms about killing 3000 innocents then they wouldnt have a problem(morally or operationally) with killing Dylan Avery, his friends, and his family.

[Ninja Jordan]

25. Killing him would only further validate his claims

Even if "Loose Change" was prevented from release, the story of the deaths would get out.

[akushuki]

26. Really?

So they cant keep killing a guy and his family a secret but can stop all leaks over the september 11th attacks?

[Ninja Jordan]

27. they haven't stopped "all leaks over the Sept 11 attacks"

do some research instead of reading Maddox

[akushuki]

28. what leaks?

No one from the government came forward and said 'lolz, we made the attacks, roflcopter'

There is not one, not one argument that cannot be disproved very quickly by a structural engineer.

[Name removed]

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[mhatrw]

34. Yes, they stopped "all the leaks."

That's why 82% of Americans think they are lying about 9/11.

[akushuki]

41. leaks suggest inside

if its outside its rain. hence Dylan Avery isnt a leak.

[mhatrw]

42. How about Robert Wright, Michael Meacher, David Schippers,

Sybil Edmonds, Coleen Rowley, Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer, Indira Singh, Eric Mays, Randy Glass, Kevin Ryan, Bogdan Dzakovic, John Vincent, John Cole, Behrooz Sarshar, Mike German, Gilbert Graham, Dick Stoltz, Linda Lewis, Mark Burton, Cynthia Cooper, Steve Barborini and Brad Ayers -- just to name a few?

Don't you think just trying to ignore, punish, gag and marginalize all these people works better than killing them suspiciously?

What is with your obsession with Dylan Avery, anyway?

[akushuki]

60. Not sure where you are going here...

These all seem to point to incompentence. The list you spewed out is a crossweave of artists, foreign politicians, and whistle blowers about incompentence. Some dont even seem to match to September 11th at all, wtf Cynthia Cooper?
None of those names said, "lolz I saw the guy press the button to blow the towerz".
Infact, I couldnt find information on most of the names, so could you maybe help me out here and tell me who the fuck those people are?




Rowley testified in front of the senate and for the 9/11 Commission about the FBI's internal organization and mishandling of information related to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Director Mueller and Senator Grassley (R-IA) pushed hard and got a major reorganization, focused on creation of the new Office of Intelligence at the FBI. This reorganization was supported with a vast expansion to FBI personnel with counterterrorism and language skills. She retired from the FBI in 2004 after 24 years with the agency. -wiki

Dzakovic was in charge of the FAA's Red Team -- a small, elite squad who conducted mock undercover raids as terrorists and hijackers. It probed vulnerable areas inside airports. With surprising ease and frequency during routine tests, members of his team slipped bombs, guns and knives onto aircraft. Several days after Sept. 11, 2001, the FAA grounded the Red Team, apparently because it didn't want to be embarrassed by the team's findings. Dzakovic disagreed with this cowardly attempt to bury the truth. And so he took the bold step of filing a whistle-blower disclosure in October 2001 with the Office of Special Counsel, an independent government agency. That document -- the first of its kind by an FAA Security Division employee -- set in motion a lengthy and costly investigation by the inspector general- SFGATE

Cynthia Cooper is an internal auditor and consultant who is best known for being the whistleblower who exposed massive accounting fraud at WorldCom in 2002.A native of Clinton, Mississippi, Cooper worked as the Vice President of Internal Audit at WorldCom. After conducting a thorough investigation in secret, she informed WorldCom's board that the company had covered up $3.8 billion in losses through phony bookkeeping. At the time, this was the largest incident of accounting fraud in U.S. history - wiki

[pauldp]

67. Sibel Edmonds is trying to blow the whistle on corruption

NOT incompetence. She is the most gagged person in US history
and she says she would not be suprised if 911 was an inside job.

[akushuki]

74. Thats not whistle blowing on September 11th government involvement in

the attacks. The biggest problem with conspiracies is that they assume the government can keep a secret

[mhatrw]

82. Well, how come they can keep their incompetence so quiet then?

The biggest problem with conspiracy deniers is the entire history of the human civilization.

[akushuki]

85. uh they havent?

Katrina, Iraq occupancy, Afganistan rebuilding, No Child Left Behind.
Most of the country realize they are incompentant fuckwads.

Personally, I dont think Richard C. Clarke wrote "Agaisnt all Enemies" to throw off the public by pretending they are incompentant so they could all get away with the September 11th attacks. Though thats the leap in logic I would have to make to accept this conspiracy.

[mhatrw]

100. How about if Richard Clarke believes a limited hangout because

that's all he knows?

What do you believe about the Gulf of Tonkin incident?

[pauldp]

104. Clark apparently didn't know about the CIA meeting with Rice and

Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld. Woodward's revelations show that Clark was not as informed as
many would like to believe.

[pauldp]

105. they've done a pretty good job keeping Edmonds gagged.

the CIA commits 100,000 crimes a year minimum. How many of those do you hear about?

[Name removed]

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[mogster]

56. Who knows what will befall mr. Avery in time to come

"You really think this government can pull off operations with military precision involving 1000s of experts across a range a fields and fool the vast majority of the scientific community"

Yes. They did, when lying the US and others into the Iraqi invasion, remember? We were fooled, any opposing voices were ridiculed and harassed, and the lies of the establishment (politicians, media) were framed as truth in a charade that is now proven beyond any doubt to be false.

Killing Dylan Avery today would only reinforce the cause of the 911 truth movement because it can't be kept under wraps. Now, if they've known the impact his film would have, they'd might have arranged it before his film was published. But they didn't, so that proves your point; the government isn't perfect in foreseeing the reactions of the people, and the ingenious ways the people will use to get the news across, despite a press corps more or less fully under control.

[mirandapriestly]

84. So you think Osama Bin Laden outsmarted NORAD,

our Air Force, the FAA, and the airlines from a cave in Afghanistan? Everything on DU that is being discussed in shock and anger has been made possible because of 9-11 (and election fraud). The illegal war and deaths of 600,000+ Iraqis, rolling back our constitution and rights' protections that have been in place since the beginning of our country, calling people unpatriotic for criticizing the administration, thereby silencing the media, Congress, and most Americans, spying on US citizens and the removal of habeas corpus. Believe me it's not incompetent, they know exactly what they are doing. PNAC is real and called for a "new Pearl Harbor" and that is exactly what they got. A plan almost the same was submitted to President Kennedy by his Joint Chief Of Staffs 40+ years ago, it is a matter of public record, look it up. Kennedy fired the guy, Bush went along with it and promoted those who helped make it possible, fired those who tried to do their job and stop it, or report wrong doing.
Loose Change is not a barometer for a factual description of what happened on 9-11 unless you are the kind of person who can't form opinions or come to conclusions for yourself. You're criticizing "Loose Change", but do you trust the corporate media? Do you trust the Bush administration? Because that is where you are getting your information on 9-11 and that is the only place this "theory" came from. There has been no trial and there has been no investigation.

[akushuki]

86. I trust the NIST report along with the structural engineers.

Interestingly, everyone and every entity that debunks the conspiracy theory seem to be immediatly thrown into the conspiracy.

http://www.debunking911.com/index.html this, a website that scientifically refutes the conspiracy, or a hand of the corrupt, pretending to be incompentent, Bush Cabal international terraaaist organization?

[ryanus]

30. Ha ha. I think 9/11 was an inside job, but that video was still funny

Sometimes you have to laugh a little just to keep sane. Kind of like that Seinfeld where they do the JFK "back and to the left" thing, but with Kramer getting spit on. Doesn't really diminish the importance of the JFK assassination, it's just funny.

[ComerPerro]

70. don't tell me you can't see the difference between 9/11 and a small crash

[akushuki]

87. Sure

the planes on September 11th hit with over 334 times the force then that plane. Thereby causing the buildings to collaspe.

[Raksha]

44. I agree with you that the "incompetence" is pretty much a smokescreen

to cover up true evil, but they don't appear to have planned for what they would do when the people finally caught on to them, their rubberstamp Congress got hauled off to the slammer one by one, the real Iraqi death toll became public and everyone in America (except for 16-30% koolaid drinkers) got truly pissed off at the same time! I know about all the tinfoil-hat theories (the mass detention camps, etc.) and to some degree I take them seriously--but there sure are a hell of a LOT of us!

[Dover]

93. As were their claims of incompetence in response to Katrina

and the acceleration of violence in Iraq, the deaths of reporters from "friendly fire"...etc. Etc. ETC.! They ARE incompetent...by design.

So, such "incompetence" should certainly not be rewarded with positions in government. In fact, a jail cell and living with the policies they themselves have set into motion would start them on the road back to a new appreciation of freedom and rights and Constitutional Law.

[oblivious]

101. That's the point. There was nothing competent about it.

The OCT is so full of holes, inconsitencies, BS, amateurish coverups, etc that even people who have no time to read the research can see the obvious. They surely never envisioned the thoroughness of some 911 rsearchers. Can you imagine what would happen if an honest government seeking the truth offered potential whistle-blowers a reward for coming forward instead of threats.

[pauldp]

40. I seriously doubt Halliburton calls them incompetent.

Do you think the Carlyle Group and Bechtel call this administration incompetent?
Do you think the oil industry calls this administration incompetent?
Whose interests are they serving?

911 was the Neocon wet dream.

[flyarm]

76. what i want to know is why have no pilots and flight crew from

either airline been able to testify to all the proceedures that failed that day..that would most likely prove negligence at the least...and why no one was held to account for all the major failures!!

from a flight crew of one the the airlines involved...fly

[proud2BlibKansan]

78. They are NOT incompetent

They have an agenda and they are meeting it.

[flyarm]

81. absolutely!! proud2Blib..they are not incompetent!! to believe

they are ... one would be very fool hearty!

fly

[sofa king]

79. Haven't you noticed the pattern?

They're only incompetent about the things they don't give a shit about.

Hurricane Katrina? Didn't give a shit about it. Incompetent.

War in Iraq? Very much gave a shit about it, got it, making billions off of it, don't want the flow of money to stop.

You can't tell me that the carefully orchestrated campaign to de-fang the inspector general in Iraq and then lie to Congress about it wasn't a successful, well orchestrated plan. In a year or two it's going to be time to pay Halliburton again for the reconstruction they didn't do in the first place. That's a plan, not incompetence.

[AntiFascist]

90. One problem with the CT crowd is that they keep claiming that 9/11...

was an "inside job." Bush I, formerly a CIA director, specifically split off portions of the CIA and made them privatized so that they could continue to carry out questionable activities - particularly for things like Iran/Contra. According to insiders, he even helped train pilots in Saudi Arabia as part of these "shadow government" activities. Part of the incompetence of the Bush II administration may be that the left hand may have looked the other way regarding what what the right hand was up to.

[FourScore]

98. Interesting.

I'd love to know more about that.

[AntiFascist]

103. Here's some of the information as reported by Canadian media...

An interview with Bill White, former business partner of James Bath:

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/conspiracytheories/white.pdf

IN THE MID SEVENTIES WHEN YOU FIRST CAME IN CONNECTION WITH
JIM, WHAT DID YOU LEARN THROUGH BATH ABOUT THE EXTENT OF THE
BUSH CONNECTIONS AND THE BUSH HISTORY WITH SAUDI ARABIA?
Well Bath explained to me that he had been tapped by George Senior to set up a
quasi-private aircraft firm that would basically engage in CIA-sponsored activities funded by the Saudi Royal Family. He explained that the Saudis had basically entered into a quid pro quo relationship with Bush and that Bush when he was CIA Director worked with the head of Saudi Intelligence and the CIA trained the Palace Guard to protect the Saudi Royal Family who was concerned about a fundamentalist revolution. And it was at that point I think that this thing got kicked into high gear and the Saudis agreed to provide surreptitious funding to the United States to fight it’s secret wars in Afghanistan and Nicaragua. Payback came when Bush as Vice President sent AWACS and F-15 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia and supported Saddam Hussein under the adage that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. We had the Iran-Iraq War at the time so that’s really how the relationship evolved.


HAVE YOU SEEN IT AFFECT THE PRESIDENT’S PERFORMANCE DO YOU
BELIEVE? Oh I feel certain that it’s affected his performance. Just hearing about
the Bin Laden family members in this Country who were flown out during the
airways lockdown in the aftermath of 9-11 and he fact that the Administration
blocked both the FBI and CIA investigations into the Bin Laden family members
living in the United States under the auspices of - oh gee the family are all
patriotic citizens except for this one bad apple Osama – I mean I just have a hard
time buying off on that. I can’t help wondering if the money that changed hands
back during my experiences with Bath hasn’t influenced or clouded or even
compromised the President’s ability to wage War against Terrorism. I just can’t
imagine how he can be an objective arbitrator of the Bin Laden family’s activities
when in fact he’s taken money from them that’s never been reported publicly. I
think he’s compromised and that’s of great concern to me. And I think that it’s
also a great concern to the families of the victims of the 9-11 tragedy.

...

YOU’RE SURE IF BATH WAS DOING BUSINESS WITH THE SAUDIS, SURE
HE WAS DOING BUSINESS WITH THE BUSHES, BUT NEVER THE TWAIN
WOULD MEET? There’s no way. I mean Bath confided in me and told me the
nature of the relationship. His rendition fits every bit of evidence I’ve seen. I’ve met all the players including the Bushes and the Saudis - everything fits and is very consistent.

...

SO HOW IS IT HE WAS CHOSEN TO BE THIS EXULTED ONE? Well if you
recall back in the mid-1970’s the CIA came under fire for trying to assassinate
Fidel Castro,for engineering elections in Latin America and putting friendly
Dictators in power. The Church and Pike committees were empanelled in
Congress to bring the Agency under control. After these Intelligence committees
investigated illegal CIA activities they issued a stinging report concluding that it is incompatible for the Government of a Democratic Society to engage in KGB-type activities. What Bush did as CIA Director, rather than just terminate these
activities, was to privatize them. He began to look for people qualified and willing to form quasi private corporations to take control of these assets and continue to do the CIA’s bidding.
...

The Bin Ladens and the Saudis are obviously involved. Fifteen
of the nineteen terrorists were Saudis and the Saudis, including Bin Mahfouz
and his National Commercial Bank, are known to have been funding the Islamic
charities that have funded the Terrorists. The same people that were doing
business with Bath at Bush’s request and funding Bush’s business interests have
been sponsoring terrorism. The Saudis basically had Bush on the payroll back in
the late seventies and early eighties. Because of this, Bush moved heaven and
earth to keep this information under wraps including calling in chits with Houston
Judges. Concealment of these dealings puts the Saudis in position to blackmail
the President of the United States. This may account for the Adminstration
quashing investigations into Saudi activities including their funding of Islamic
charities.

[Name removed]

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[chat_noir]

15. old CNN poll

[akushuki]

18. too bad thats a straw poll and not a scientific one

[fooj]

43. You've certainly got a horse in this race, don't you?

[The Magistrate]

46. People Who Imagine, Ma'am

That this poll indicates broad popular support for the sort of speculative concoctions common in the September 11 forum badly mis-understand the mood of the public. People are quite convinced the administration is lying about warnings its leaders recieved, and covering up their lack of effective response to same: they are quite correct to be convinced of this, because it is true. That is all this indicates.

[Warren Stupidity]

58. I wonder how you managed to descern your conclusion

from this poll.

"People are quite convinced the administration is lying about warnings its leaders recieved, and covering up their lack of effective response to same: they are quite correct to be convinced of this, because it is true. That is all this indicates."

The poll question does not seem provide evidence for your conclusion.

"When it comes to what they knew prior to September 11th, 2001, about possible terrorist attacks against the United States, do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the truth, are mostly telling the truth but hiding something, or are they mostly lying?"

I think that you have made the unsupported leap that those who did not select 'Telling the truth' believe only the LIHOON theory. I don't see where the poll distinguishes between MIHOP/LIHOP/LIHOON.

[akushuki]

61. I dont think the information that The Magnistrate used

came from the poll. Though I would agree with his conclusion, the poll also doesnt suggest that the vast majority of Americans think the government executed the attacks. What really is needed is a scientific poll asking,

Did the Bush administration carry out the September 11th attacks?
1 yes
2 no
3 dont know

Did the Bush administration allow the attacks to happen because of incompentence?

1 yes
2 no
3 dont know

Who is more responsible for not preventing the September 11th attacks?

1 Bush
2 Clnton
3 dont know

[Warren Stupidity]

73. I agree, and that was my point.

The poll does not ask the followup questions and from the poll data you cannot conclude anything other than what was asked, and what was asked gives you nothing more than an opinion about the truthfulness of the government.

[The Magistrate]

66. The Conclusion Is Self-Evident, Sir

If asked, "Do you think the adminitration is telling the truth about the September 11 attacks?", my own answer would certainly be, "No, it is not." Would you, therefore, conclude that it is my view the administration arranged those attacks, or that demolition charges were built into the WTC structures during their construction, or any of the other entertaining claims some put forward in the matter? Those last are distincly isolated positions, held by very few people.

[Warren Stupidity]

72. From your answer, "No, it is not." I could not conclude which

alternative you believe, without asking the required followup questions. You are simply assuming data not provided by the poll, which was my point.

[mhatrw]

83. Exactly. Certainly, almost everyone thinks exactly like you do, sir.

[flyarm]

77. sir, you could not tell that to my neighbor who lost her son on 9/11 !!

or families of flight crew of my airline!!

oh and my neighbor is in family therapy with flight crew familes in Princeton..and they mostly all believe MIHOP!!

fly

[stepnw1f]

63. You are Just Trying to Deny What is There in Front of Us All

silly

[greccogirl]

19. It is hard for me to believe

that 80% of the country is that dense.

[akushuki]

20. did you see the south park episode yet?

[Ninja Jordan]

22. huh?

Theyre dense why?

[mhatrw]

36. Because they don't believe the Bush administration is truthful. n/t

[eridani]

55. It isn't being "dense" --

It what inevitably happens when you have lots of people without scientific training who still need to make sense of their basic information surround in order to stay sane, and who are constantly being lied to and having information withheld from them that ought to be made public.

Attack the rapist and not the victim. Attack the liars and secret keepers, not the scientifically untrained who just are trying to cope with being bamboozled. A revised rant of mine on the subject--

To criticize "conspiracy theorists" is to blame the victim instead of taking on the perpetrators. There is a reason why people come up with conspiracy theories--they happen to be a normal and healthy response to the experience of being forbidden access to relevant information and being constantly lied to by people who do.

The radical therapist Claude Steiner once said that paranoia is actually a heightened state of awareness, in which the paranoid put together narratives that make sense of the only information they have available. He gave an example of a woman he treated who believed that her husband was engaged in several elaborate plots on her life. What Steiner did was to interview the husband, who was disturbed by his wife's narrative. The husband was in fact thinking of having her permanently committed to the funny farm, but he always responded to his wife's questions about what was wrong between them by saying "Nothing, honey."

That was the crux of the problem. The wife was in a heightened state of awareness and knew only that "Nothing, honey" was a pile of steaming bullshit. Not having access to real information about what was going on in her husband's head, she invented it. Steiner's ultimately successful therapy was simply to convince the husband to stop lying and withholding information. In this case, the husband did not exactly lead the examined life, and was unaware of the harm that social "white lies" can sometimes cause. Being genuinely concerned about his wife, he agreed to try to be more introspective and commit to being honest about his feelings. The wife agreed to acknowledge this effort, and to be more persistent about asking for information instead of automatically assuming the worst. Of course members of the current administration have no such commitment to making it all better for the rest of us--see the classic Ingrid Berman/Charles Boyer movie Gaslight for a psychological take on their game.

The bottom line here is that it is a basic requirement of sanity to be able to make sense of one's information environment, and if those people who know what is going on behind closed doors constantly lie to the public and withhold information, the inevitable result is that people will naturally want to fill in the blanks. This process is analogous to the effects of sensory deprivation---float in one of those tanks long enough to deprive your brain of sensory input, and it will quickly start inventing some.

Current official explanations of 9-11 are like a picture puzzle with half the pieces missing. Many people have been taking magic markers and extrapolating from what is visible to fill in the missing spaces in an attempt to put together the entire picture. They are constantly ridiculed for this, and opinion makers who wish to be taken seriously always bog the discussion down in disputes about whether or not the colored-in parts really look like the original pieces. Some will be closer approximations than others, of course; a few may well be wildly off. But the really important issue (which remains for the most part unaddressed) is "What in bleeding hell gives our government the right to hide the pieces in the first place?"

Attacking people who are trying to make sense of their information environments with limited data is highly unethical, no matter how nutty their theories may sometimes sound. It's exactly like putting a rape victim on trial for her previous sexual history instead of going after the rapist. Theories may fall anywhere on a continuum from plausible to seriously off-base, just as women's prior sexual histories may vary from none to extremely experienced. By any objective analysis, some unofficial theories of what happened on 9/11 are prim virgins in high-collared white lace blouses, and some are prancing around in tight red spandex streetwalker outfits. But either way, it just plain should not matter--critics should focus on calling the rapists, liars and secret-keepers to account rather than slandering their victims.

"Conspiracy theorists" are commonly dismissed as irrational or unscientific. It's true that scientific training helps people to cope with not having certain and final answers, and that only a minority of the population has such training. One important part of scientific training is learning to avoid speculating beyond the data, but this requirement of the scientific process depends critically on the assumption (which is almost always valid) that scientists will present all relevant data and methodology to their research community as accurately and completely as they can. Since this condition is not currently met by our government (and most certainly not by the 9/11 Commission), it is outrageous to attack as "unscientific" people who express concern about a government that insists on keeping secrets from them, especially when those secrets threaten the foundation of our democracy. The attacks should be directed instead toward those who are keeping what should be publicly available information from them.

How long will the official arbiters of "reality" continue to defend the rapists, the liars, the secret-keepers who conceal information that in a real democracy ought to be made available to the public? If we could spend $40 million investigating a blow job, surely we could spend more than $15 million on finding out what really happened on the day of the worst attack on our soil. I hope that you will join with those who are demanding more honesty and transparency in the public sphere. The urge to be accepted as a real member of the elite class of reality creators, those who claim the right to lie and withhold information on the grounds that they alone are entitled to decide what the public should know, can be very tempting. Any person who gives in to this temptation badly fails our democratic republic. What is tyranny but a system in which rulers assert the right to know everything about their subjects while keeping their own operations strictly secret?

[marions ghost]

68. excellent

:thumbsup: well said

Without access to truth, you can expect to have conspiracy theories. And who knows, sometimes the theories become plausible. I remember not so long ago when anyone questioning the elections of 2004 was a "conspiracy theorist." Not now.

[pberq]

75. good post - the conspiracy theory advanced by the adminsitration

is just that - a conspricady theory, since so much information has been witheld.

[flyarm]

80. thank you , absolutely!!...and people were never questioned that should

have been.under oath!

this was a sham..a white wash..the 9/11 commission was a cover up..plain and simple!!
no flight people on it..no aeronautical engineers, no building engineers, families had no say ..they were just pacified during it.. to shut them up..it was underfunded ..almost to the very end..throughout most of it the funding had run out!! the initial investment of this administration of the 9/11 commission was $3 million!!!

this was nothing but bullshit..

from a flight crew of one of the airlines involved..NY base.

fly

[FourScore]

92. This is so well expressed.

Thank you so much eridani for putting this difficult issue so eloquently into perspective. I am just blown away by your post. Wow! I will copy and paste it so that I can read it on occasion -- when I am feeling like a victim of this administration, for example. (Albeit, a victim in tight red spandex of course!)

Bravo! :applause:

[Name removed]

29. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[texpatriot2004]

32. It was an inside job with a little help from * 's friends nm

[DBoon]

37. a "credibility gap"?

Now when did this happen before, hmm

[Zynx]

38. Be careful in interpreting this poll.

This may mean what people think about how much Bush knew ahead of time and how he did nothing or very little to stop the attacks.

[Amonester]

45. Darth Chenious, the Real dicktraitort's "base" (13~18%)...

'nuff said...

:puke:

[nicknameless]

47. Great post.

Thanks, Shance.

[eleny]

48. K&R Thanks!

[nolabels]

49. More people believe in space aliens than the official 9/11 story.

That's some pretty stellar company to be keeping up with

[Dover]

94. And then there are those that blame 9/11 ON aliens.

I've often thought the Bushites WERE alien, so that works for me.

(adjusting my tinfoil for better reception).:tinfoilhat:

[orleans]

50. do you know what the link is to the nyt report on this? i'd love to

have a printed out copy--just to stash away in my collection of bushco crimes against the world (my collection is almost 50 volumes long--and by volumes i mean that i collect the crap in 1" notebooks)

[upi402]

51. It's amazing how much crime is just ignored.

It's like taking a sip from a firehose.
Here's the cited source at the end of the linked article;
<Source: The New York Times / CBS News
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 983 American adults, conducted from Oct. 5 to Oct. 8, 2006. Margin of error is 4 per cent.>

Might be a good start point for the search.

[Justice Is Comin]

52. Right. At full pressure loooool.

[orleans]

96. found it--the link & more

it's in a pdf file
http://graphics.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20061010_poll_results.pdf

78. Do you think that George W. Bush personally knew before September 11th, 2001 about intelligence reports that warned of possible terrorist attacks against the United States using airplanes, or not?

Personally knew Did not know DK/NA
5/19-20/02 CBS 41 43 16
10/5-8/06 57 33 11


79. Was the Bush Administration paying enough or not enough attention to terrorism prior to September 11, 2001?

Paying enough attention Not DK/NA
5/19-20/02 CBS 22 67 11
4/23-27/04 18 75 7
10/5-8/06 16 77 7


80. Was the Clinton Administration paying enough or not enough attention to terrorism prior to September 11, 2001?
Paying enough attention Not DK/NA
4/23-27/04 18 73 10
10/5-8/06 23 67 9


81. When it comes to what they knew prior to September 11th, 2001, about possible terrorist attacks against the United States, do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the truth, are mostly telling the truth but hiding something, or are they mostly lying?

Telling truth Hiding something Mostly lying DK/NA
5/19-20/02 CBS 21 65 8 6
3/30-4/1/04 CBS 24 58 14 4
4/23-27/04 24 56 16 4
10/5-8/06 16 53 28 3

[Name removed]

62. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[stepnw1f]

64. What This Poll Indicates, Is Bush and His People Have No More Credibility

with the people. And that they are in BIG trouble once the Dems win.

[leesa]

65. And yet, I'll bet about 90% of Americans still believe we were justified

to invade and carpet bomb Afghanistan for 10 months even though we have no idea what happened on 9-11.

[oblivious]

99. It's weird alright. I'm wondering how they handle that contradiction.

"Well, they lied to me about 911, but they certainly wouldn't have lied to me about Afghanistan and the Taliban."

[Auggie]

71. Actually, I'm surprised at these results. This is HUGE (and great) news.

[hsher]

88. "At dawn, look to the east..."

Wow. That's stunning news. I didn't expect quite THAT many people to have their heads screwed on facing the correct direction. Have we finally reached our Gandalf and Shadowfax moment in America?

[Fire Walk With Me]

91. Compare the speed with which the "Patriot Act" appeared versus their

inability to form a coherent sentence regarding what to do with Iraq. I suggest that each has equal thought and intent, resulting in power, money, and resources for BushCo.

[grasswire]

102. the underlying "plan"

chaos = profit
more chaos = more profit

It's the one size fits all plan. It worked in Iraq, it worked in Katrina. Beware, if any natural disaster strikes your area. The plan is to allow chaos.