Tuesday, June 12, 2007

The Horrible Truth


Last night, for some odd reason, I felt like I'd rather bicker with a 9/11 conspiracy theorist on Eschaton than stain and seal my entryway floor.

As you might imagine, I was plied with a fairly stiff dose of snake oil. While suffering through a description of the laborious pre-positioning of Thermate-TH3 charges – an improbable scenario floated by Steven E. Jones from BYU - a thought struck me: Why would they bother?

If 9/11 was intended to serve as a new Pearl Harbor, then flying two planes into the WTC would’ve been more than sufficient to set BushCo’s hair-trigger war machine in motion. Why go to the trouble, expense, and risk of trying to cut dozens of structural columns with something as unreliable (and unproven for the purpose) as thermite or its analogs? Why use micronukes, for that matter, or any of the other demolition methods championed by 9/11 “truthseekers”? How many politicians or journalists were going to say, “We can’t invade Afghanistan…the towers are still standing! Get back to us when something dramatic happens.”

We justified Gulf War I on the grounds that Saddam’s soldiers had murdered Kuwaiti babies by tipping them out of incubators - an atrocity which never actually happened. Call me a Pollyanna if you like, but I think that live footage of flame-enveloped Americans leaping from the upper floors of the WTC made the Kuwaiti incubator story seem like an episode of Green Acres. The shock, the fear, the desire for revenge…all of this could be exploited just as easily whether or not the towers actually fell.

All of which reconfirms my belief that the “controlled demolition” scenario is an escapist fantasy for people who can’t face the truth, and that its overall effect is not to cast doubt on the Administration’s laughable narrative, but to make it seem comparatively plausible.

7 comments:

Mike said...

If it were an inside job there would be some kind of connection to Iraq.

Compared to all the other complexities of the scheme, throwing a couple of dead Iraqis in the plane wouldn't have been hard.

Go to all that trouble and then make it look like your buddies did it and your enemy isn't involved? I don't think so.

Which is not to say that the official version is anything but a pack of lies. But that doesn't make every crazy story true.

Phila said...

Compared to all the other complexities of the scheme, throwing a couple of dead Iraqis in the plane wouldn't have been hard.

Or even just some Iraqi passports...

Which is not to say that the official version is anything but a pack of lies. But that doesn't make every crazy story true.

My sentiments exactly.

roger said...

are you telling us that your time would have been better spent working on the floor?

chris said...

Micronukes???Jeez, I must have missed that one.
The biggest problem I have with this is: whocouldadunnit? That is, who was, or is, capable of the act itself AND maintaining absolute silence about it ever since.
Not likely, in this day and age.
Except, of course, the Illuminati...

Phila said...

That is, who was, or is, capable of the act itself AND maintaining absolute silence about it ever since.
Not likely, in this day and age.


I think that's true, too.

But I think the argument that there was no actual need to bring the towers down is even more fundamental. It seems more fruitful, when arguing with the controlled demo crowd, to make 'em explain why collapsing the towers was necessary, rather than arguing over the logistics...

Anonymous said...

It was necessary to scare the living s@#$ out of us and make sure we toed the line like the lemmings and sheep we are.
I for one wasn't all that freaked out about a plane hitting a building. As the wife of a former Marine pilot and current airline pilot, you get used to maybe some day something bad happening to your loved one.
When we heard about the collapse, now THAT scared the crap out of us, husband included. Don't you think the people who did this researched some parts of human fear, calculated what it would take to wake up the slumbering masses overfed by McDonalds and freak them out but good?
If they were cagey enough to do the operation, you know damned well they had someone smart enough to gauge what it would take to move the US to action.
Follow that line and you might find out exactly who or what did this deed.

Phila said...

When we heard about the collapse, now THAT scared the crap out of us, husband included. Don't you think the people who did this researched some parts of human fear, calculated what it would take to wake up the slumbering masses overfed by McDonalds and freak them out but good?

Nope. On the contrary, I think that it takes very, very little to terrify Americans...witness the immense number of imaginary or unrealistic things they're frightened of or outraged by (which was the point of my bringing up the Iraqi incubator myth). It's not a matter of what happens so much as how it's represented.

I also don't think 9/11 woke Americans up; I'm more inclined to Slavoj Zizek's view that it alowed them to stay asleep.

Last, I think the contemptuous language you use - Americans are "sheep," "lemmings," "overfed," and so on - is revealing in terms of the appeal of the controlled demolition theory, and theories like it. A lot of "truthseekers" seem to feel that the more violent scenario is preferable because more violence is what Americans deserve...that's a big part of the appeal of this fantasy, in my view.