9/11: A Conspiracy Theory- The Official Story in 5 minutes


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You can find a transcript of the video, with explanatory links, at

The Corbet Report - 9/11: A Conspiracy Theory

Without endorsing any particular conspiracy theory – some of which are loopy – Corbet makes the point that there's a lot more to the conventional 9/11 conspiracy than we are being told in the conventional news.

To appreciate parts of his video you need to know a bit of history. For example, that girl tearfully testifying was testifying before the U.S. Congress in 1990, claiming that Saddam Hussein’s soldiers were snatching premature Kuwaiti babies from their incubators and leaving them to die. Her testimony was used by senators and the president as a reason to back the dictatorship of Kuwait against that of Iraq in the Gulf War – which the president wanted to do anyway.

It later turned out the girl was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. Her speech before Congress was a theatrical act, a "public relations" stunt thought up by the firm of Hill & Knowlton working for the "Citizens for a Free Kuwait" – the free referring to a dictatorship as brutal as Saddam Hussein’s.

The mainstream media repeated this fraud uncritically. Also the Jessica Lynch fraud, etc. Corbet’s point is that maybe they aren’t doing very well on 9/11 either.

For some interesting articles about what happened on 9/11 see

http://ARIwatch.com/Links.htm#9-11

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I think the problem is that we're just so scared of the possibility that the very governments that we elect into power and their cronies may do things which are so disgusting so as to justify a war that maims millions and in the process feeds the military industrial complex that we'll believe any far fetched story that is given to us by them because they are our leaders and their stories help us all feel at ease and reassured.. If we were to believe that something like the 9/11 official story was not true, we would then have to ask very uncomfortable questions like, if it is not true, then who was responsible for this? Who knew? We would then have to believe that it could be possible that the very foundations of our way of life, our republic had been eaten at by a cancer..

It's like a person who notices that realizes that they have many of the symptoms of cancer, yet due to not wanting to have it confirmed to them that they do in fact have cancer they refuse to get it checked out by a doctor, thinking that simply by not discussing it or acknowledging that those symptoms are there, that the problem will go away.. But all the while the problem gets worse and worse until one day, something gives and with or without the wish of the poor sick person they find out they have cancer and Instead of treating it early and going through some minor surgery or therapy so that the person could live longer that cancer is now untreatable and terminal, and so our sick person will die from it..

That is what is happening, our nations are riddled with a cancer, they were 10 years ago at 9/11, they were 20 years ago when we put sanctions on Iraq, they were 30 years ago when we gave Iraq chemical and biological weapons to use against the Iranians, they were 40 years ago when we invaded Vietnam, they were almost 50 years ago now when we said nothing, when a noble President was murdered and we refused to say anything and simply swallowed that official story..

We've become too comfortable in our lives. Our material wealth. Our lack of having to sacrifice like people in other nations and so we refused to ask questions because if we all did ask those questions, it would mean that an uncertain change would come.. And we are too scared to be around change..

No longer are the land of the free nor the home of the brave..

Instead we've become the land of the compliant and the home of the cowardly.

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I think the problem is that we're just so scared of the possibility that the very governments that we elect into power and their cronies may do things which are so disgusting so as to justify a war that maims millions and in the process feeds the military industrial complex that we'll believe any far fetched story that is given to us by them because they are our leaders and their stories help us all feel at ease and reassured.. If we were to believe that something like the 9/11 official story was not true, we would then have to ask very uncomfortable questions like, if it is not true, then who was responsible for this? Who knew? We would then have to believe that it could be possible that the very foundations of our way of life, our republic had been eaten at by a cancer..

It's like a person who notices that realizes that they have many of the symptoms of cancer, yet due to not wanting to have it confirmed to them that they do in fact have cancer they refuse to get it checked out by a doctor, thinking that simply by not discussing it or acknowledging that those symptoms are there, that the problem will go away.. But all the while the problem gets worse and worse until one day, something gives and with or without the wish of the poor sick person they find out they have cancer and Instead of treating it early and going through some minor surgery or therapy so that the person could live longer that cancer is now untreatable and terminal, and so our sick person will die from it..

That is what is happening, our nations are riddled with a cancer, they were 10 years ago at 9/11, they were 20 years ago when we put sanctions on Iraq, they were 30 years ago when we gave Iraq chemical and biological weapons to use against the Iranians, they were 40 years ago when we invaded Vietnam, they were almost 50 years ago now when we said nothing, when a noble President was murdered and we refused to say anything and simply swallowed that official story..

We've become too comfortable in our lives. Our material wealth. Our lack of having to sacrifice like people in other nations and so we refused to ask questions because if we all did ask those questions, it would mean that an uncertain change would come.. And we are too scared to be around change..

No longer are the land of the free nor the home of the brave..

Instead we've become the land of the compliant and the home of the cowardly.

Yes. Some people here on OL seem to forget that, back in the early 1960s, we Objectivists were fed reviews, in The Objectivist Newsletter, of conspiracy theory books about World War II. Now, maybe those conspiracies were real, while that alleged of 9-11 was not (those...were not?). But being people who cut our teeth on checking premises, questioning authority, and smelling a statist rat behind every domestic and international crisis, are we to be blamed for wondering whether the folks in charge are trying to pull the wool over our eyes at every turn?

REB

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NBI Book Service used to sell Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, an anthology edited by Harry Elmer Barnes. ( Here's an excerpt. Here's the whole thing for download. An interesting point is that it came out from Caxton, first American publishers of Anthem.) That's one book, not "books," and the Objectivist Newsletter never reviewed it. Some contributions were about conspiracy and coverup stories, but more were about foreign-policy matters, such as Lend-Lease, that were public record.

Even if the book had been nothing but conspiracy theories, #7 is

a. an argument from authority;

b. a non sequitur if it says (as it does, in a deniably-phrased way) that if Pearl Harbor was a conspiracy then so were the 9-11 attacks.

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An apt analogy: That some people can’t deal with the extent of their own government’s corruption is like a man in a state of denial over his fatal disease.

The psychology might well be the same. Many people who allege a conspiracy – in the legal sense of the term – were unhappy to discover the conspiracy. Like most people they would rather their government be honest. Some people want so much for their government to be honest that they just tune out when you try to point out the evidence that, for example, Vince Foster was murdered, or there was a lot more to the Oklahoma City bombing than Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, or that Edgar J. Steele (a free-speech attorney who defends unsavory characters) was framed, or the CIA and DEA engage in cocaine smuggling, or that the Underwear Bomber was facilitated by the feds.

But the analogy doesn’t cover another important factor: peer pressure, the tendency to mindlessly go with the perceived crowd.

Ayn Rand not publishing a review of a book promoted by NBI hardly negates her implied endorsement.

Other old-timers have told me that NBI sold several "conspiracy" books but so far I haven’t been able to find out what the titles were other than Perpetual War by Barnes.

Ayn Rand published favorable reviews of the following books which describe acts by government personnel that were criminal even by the government’s own alleged standards and which the government tried to keep secret:

East Minus West = Zero: Russia’s Debt to the Western World
by Werner Keller.
The Objectivist Newsletter
, November 1962.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Roosevelt Myth
by John Flynn.
The Objectivist Newsletter
, December 1962.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roosevelt’s Road to Russia
by George Crocker.
The Objectivist Newsletter
, January 1964.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development: 1917-1930
by Antony C. Sutton.
The Objectivist
, January 1970.

Edited by Mark
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More psychologizing. One more QED.

The books you mention deal with documented history, not conspiracy theories. They have nothing to do with the case you're trying to make. I'm not surprised to see that you elide the distinction.

You fail to mention the Illuminati, the Insiders, the Elders of Zion or the Homintern (an international network of homosexuals bent on controlling entertainment, fashion and the arts) - not to mention the reports that the Duchess of Windsor was a female impersonator. I wonder how well you know even the stuff you're peddling.

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You fail to mention the Illuminati, the Insiders, the Elders of Zion or the Homintern (an international network of homosexuals bent on controlling entertainment, fashion and the arts) - not to mention the reports that the Duchess of Windsor was a female impersonator. I wonder how well you know even the stuff you're peddling.

I'm sorry, who is peddling this?

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More psychologizing. One more QED. The books you mention deal with documented history, not conspiracy theories. They have nothing to do with the case you're trying to make. I'm not surprised to see that you elide the distinction. You fail to mention the Illuminati, the Insiders, the Elders of Zion or the Homintern (an international network of homosexuals bent on controlling entertainment, fashion and the arts) - not to mention the reports that the Duchess of Windsor was a female impersonator. I wonder how well you know even the stuff you're peddling.

Well, if they weren't called "conspiracy theories" they'd be "conspiracy facts."

Conspiracy theories don't give me "food for thought" - except to wonder about the psychology of the theorists themselves. What makes them so badly WANT to believe?

Some comments about conspiracy theorists:

a.They believe that it is only they who have the 'Gospel' on inside information, while everybody else is a naive dreamer (nope, at least 50% of people I've met personally are "theorists", so they are as guilty of being sheep too) ;

b. believe one "theory", and they are inclined to believe most, or all of them;

c. if just one component of a "theory" is shown to be factually correct, then, QED, the whole conspiracy must be correct;

d. for some strange reason, the more intelligent they are, the more they "believe" (a failure of common sense?)

e. their common accusation to a doubter is "paucity of imagination", when all they are doing is regurgitating someone else's Hollywood script, so, they are the ones lacking vision and imagination. (I have enough imagination to make up my own dark plots, thanks very much: in fact, send me $5, and you'll get the real low-down on 9/11.)

The real truth is mostly obvious and self-evident (what you see, is what you get), and often also extremely complex - requiring historical perspective, analytical powers, constant checking of sources, and non-stop thinking.

(Anyway, who is claiming, too, that Government/Big Business, etc does not attempt to cover up some things, sometimes?)

"Theories" are enticing and exciting - but mostly provide one a convenient package for avoiding hard thought.

A bleak view of the world and humanity, lack of independence in their own cognition, the suspicious 'us' and 'them' mentality, and a childish desire for simplicity - that is the composition of regular conspiracy theorists for me.

Tony

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As used here "conspiracy theory" is an anti-concept.

From " ‘Extremism,’ or The Art of Smearing," The Objectivist Newsletter, Sept. 1964, reprinted in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal:

"It [the technique] consists of creating an artificial, unnecessary, and (rationally) unusable term, designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concepts – a term which sounds like a concept, but stands for a ‘package-deal’ of disparate, incongruous, contradictory elements taken out of any logical conceptual order or context, a ‘package-deal’ whose (approximately) defining characteristic is always a non-essential. This last is the essence of the trick."

From "Credibility and Polarization," The Ayn Rand Letter, Oct. 11, 1971:

"Intellectual confusion is the hallmark of the twentieth century, induced by those whose task is to provide enlightenment: by modern intellectuals. One of their methods is the destruction of language – and, therefore, of thought and, therefore, of communication – by means of Anti-Concepts. An anti-concept is an unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept. The use of anti-concepts gives the listeners a sense of approximate understanding. But in the realm of cognition, nothing is as bad as the approximate ... .

One of today’s fashionable anti-concepts is "polarization." Its meaning is not very clear, except that it is something bad – undesirable, socially destructive, evil – something that would split the country into irreconcilable camps and conflicts. It ... serves as a kind of "argument from intimidation": it replaces a discussion of the merits ... of a given idea by the menacing accusation that such an idea would "polarize" the country – which is supposed to make one’s opponents retreat, protesting that they didn’t mean it. Mean – what? ...

It is doubtful ... that one could get away with declaring explicitly: "Let us abolish all debate on fundamental principles!" ... . If, however, one declares; "Don’t let us polarize," and suggests a vague image of warring camps ready to fight (with no mention of the fight’s object), one has a chance to silence the mentally weary. The use of "polarization" as a pejorative term means: the suppression of fundamental principles. Such is the pattern of the function of anti-concepts.

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Things have never been the same since the Reichstag Fire.

Perhaps Robert Kolker knows what he meant by that remark, but his flippant manner of expression is out of place.

The Reichstag (German parliament building) fire in 1933 was arson perpetrated by Marinus Van der Lubbe. He claimed he acted alone, and from what I've read that's probably true. However the Nazis claimed he was in the vanguard of a communist invasion and used the fire as reason to suspend civil liberties in Germany and ramp up their police state apparatus.

The Nazis worried about communist agents and sympathizers inside Germany in the way one mob of gangsters worries about another mob taking over their territory. To the German public the Nazis claimed to be their protector from the communist menace.

Some claimed that Van der Lubbe was a patsy and the fire was a Nazi operation. If true it wouldn't make the Nazis look any worse than they do already, so I think it's a historical detail of little consequence.

You often see the analogy made between the Reichstag Fire and 9/11, that is, the Reichstag fire was to the Nazis as 9/11 is to the Neoconservatives. It's a good analogy in that the Neoconservatives yearned for another "Pearl Harbor" in order to make the U.S. more belligerent towards Israel’s enemies than it was already. Other elements in government may also have wanted another "Pearl Harbor" because "war is the health of the state" – lust for money and power explains a lot. In any case 9/11 might as well have been made to order for them.

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#14 seems to say that conspiracy theory is an anti-concept because it illegitimately links responsible, well-evidenced accusations with the nutzoid ones on the grounds that both contain accusations of criminal collusion when, in more fundamental respects, the two kinds of accusation are different. This won't fly. Standard usage reserves the phrase exclusively for the latter, and so does my own here in this thread. Thus conspiracy theory is a well-formed concept.

Point c. in #12

if just one component of a "theory" is shown to be factually correct, then, QED, the whole conspiracy must be correct

caught my eye because the same point had occurred to me. The current thread illustrates it handsomely:

#3: There was some cooked testimony in 1990. The media reported the Jessica Lynch story incompetently at first. Ergo the 9-11 conspiracy theories are true.

#7, #9: NBI Book Service once sold a book in which one of the contributors argued a Pearl Harbor coverup. Ergo the 9-11 conspiracy theories are true.

#9: These books reported secret ('twas hoped) criminal maneuvers by government officials. (You hardly need to go to back issues of The Objectivist Newsletter to find this out, with the daily revelations about Solyndra and LightSquared.) Ergo the 9-11 conspiracy theories are true.

#16: The Reichstag burned in 1933. Ergo the 9-11 conspiracy theories are true.

And that's if you don't follow up on the links.

Edited by Reidy
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I find it humorous that people who doubt the 9/11 story are labeled as having a crazy imagination when actually, the official story of 9/11 is infinitely more far fetched than most other explanations, especially when we take into consideration the fact that previous US Governments have drawn plans up to use terrorist attacks against their own people to justify wars and have also lied about attacks on the US to launch wars.

The only difference in this case is that people seem less inclined to accept that their government has lied to them (again). The government wouldn't lie to us, right?

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#14 seems to say that conspiracy theory is an anti-concept because it illegitimately links responsible, well-evidenced accusations with the nutzoid ones on the grounds that both contain accusations of criminal collusion when, in more fundamental respects, the two kinds of accusation are different. This won't fly. Standard usage reserves the phrase exclusively for the latter, and so does my own here in this thread. Thus conspiracy theory is a well-formed concept.

Point c. in #12

if just one component of a "theory" is shown to be factually correct, then, QED, the whole conspiracy must be correct

caught my eye because the same point had occurred to me. The current thread illustrates it handsomely:

#3: There was some cooked testimony in 1990. The media reported the Jessica Lynch story incompetently at first. Ergo the 9-11 conspiracy theories are true.

#7, #9: NBI Book Service once sold a book in which one of the contributors argued a Pearl Harbor coverup. Ergo the 9-11 conspiracy theories are true.

#9: These books reported secret ('twas hoped) criminal maneuvers by government officials. (You hardly need to go to back issues of The Objectivist Newsletter to find this out, with the daily revelations about Solyndra and LightSquared.) Ergo the 9-11 conspiracy theories are true.

#16: The Reichstag burned in 1933. Ergo the 9-11 conspiracy theories are true.

And that's if you don't follow up on the links.

Nice argument.

It is interesting that there is a tendency to make this type of linkage.

For example, I do not argue that the JFK assassination was necessarily a conspiracy, although, I believe it probably was a conspiracy.

What I do assert, based on the evidence of the audio analysis by a colleague at the college I taught at, was that a second shooter existed based on the analysis of the sound waves from the tape of the open microphone on the Dallas police motorcycle escort.

Quite a different argument.

Adam

Edited by Selene
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"... if just one component of a 'theory' is shown to be factually correct, then, QED, the whole conspiracy must be correct"

If someone argued that way they'd be arguing fallaciously. Does Kurt Haskell argue that way, or does he have first hand evidence and reasonable conclusions, and reasonable speculations presented as such, that one might do well to listen to instead of rationalizing inside a hermetically closed cell?

I doubt if many people argue as follows: "The Reichstag burned in 1933. Ergo such and such 9/11 conspiracy theory is true." No one has argued that way here.

I doubt if many people argue this way: "FDR knew more about Pearl Harbor than he pretended, therefore such and such 9/11 allegation is true." Or, because the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a fraud, or because of many other past government lies, such and such 9/11 allegation is true.

But former (now after the fact realized to be) examples of government corruption are worth mentioning in connection with contested government corruption today in that they address the following attitude – apparently held by a few participants in this thread – that our government would never lie to us. It has in the past, many times, so we’d better take a close look at the evidence for it today.

Sure, there are cranks who advocate crazy conspiracy theories regarding 9/11. That American Airlines flight 77 didn’t strike the Pentagon and so forth is one of them. But remove the crank allegations from the "9/11 truth movement" and what’s left is worth worrying about.

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  • 3 years later...
  • 4 years later...

Our long peace was stopped on 9/11/2001. We have not  won the war with radical Islam, so it is good to reread Charles Krauthammer’s column  that he wrote on the day after. And never forget that they attacked innocent civilians and our country. They are monstrous terrorists. Peter

By Charles Krauthammer. Wednesday, September 12, 2001; Page A29 This is not crime. This is war. One of the reasons there are terrorists out there capable and audacious enough to carry out the deadliest attack on the United States in its history is that, while they have declared war on us, we have in the past responded (with the exception of a few useless cruise missile attacks on empty tents in the desert) by issuing subpoenas. Secretary of State Colin Powell's first reaction to the day of infamy was to pledge to "bring those responsible to justice." This is exactly wrong. Franklin Roosevelt did not respond to Pearl Harbor by pledging to bring the commander of Japanese naval aviation to justice. He pledged to bring Japan to its knees.

You bring criminals to justice; you rain destruction on combatants. This is a fundamental distinction that can no longer be avoided. The bombings of Sept. 11, 2001, must mark a turning point. War was long ago declared on us. Until we declare war in return, we will have thousands of more innocent victims. We no longer have to search for a name for the post-Cold War era. It will henceforth be known as the age of terrorism. Organized terror has shown what it can do: execute the single greatest massacre in American history, shut down the greatest power on the globe and send its leaders into underground shelters. All this, without even resorting to chemical, biological or nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

This is a formidable enemy. To dismiss it as a bunch of cowards perpetrating senseless acts of violence is complacent nonsense. People willing to kill thousands of innocents while they kill themselves are not cowards. They are deadly, vicious warriors and need to be treated as such. Nor are their acts of violence senseless. They have a very specific aim: to avenge alleged historical wrongs and to bring the great American Satan to its knees. Nor is the enemy faceless or mysterious. We do not know for sure who gave the final order but we know what movement it comes from. The enemy has identified itself in public and openly. Our delicate sensibilities have prevented us from pronouncing its name.

Its name is radical Islam. Not Islam as practiced peacefully by millions of the faithful around the world. But a specific fringe political movement, dedicated to imposing its fanatical ideology on its own societies and destroying the society of its enemies, the greatest of which is the United States. Israel, too, is an affront to radical Islam, and thus of course must be eradicated. But it is the smallest of fish. The heart of the beast -- with its military in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey and the Persian Gulf; with a culture that "corrupts" Islamic youth; with an economy and technology that dominate the world -- is the United States. That is why we were struck so savagely.

How do we know? Who else trains cadres of fanatical suicide murderers who go to their deaths joyfully? And the average terrorist does not coordinate four hijackings within one hour. Nor fly a plane into the tiny  silhouette of a single building. For that you need skilled pilots seeking martyrdom. That is not a large pool to draw from. These are the shock troops of the enemy. And the enemy has many branches. Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Israel, the Osama bin Laden organization headquartered in Afghanistan, and various Arab "liberation fronts" based in Damascus. And then there are the governments: Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya among them. Which one was responsible? We will find out soon enough.

But when we do, there should be no talk of bringing these people to "swift justice," as Karen Hughes dismayingly promised mid-afternoon yesterday. An open act of war demands a military response, not a judicial one. Military response against whom? It is absurd to make war on the individuals who send these people. The terrorists cannot exist in a vacuum. They need a territorial base of sovereign protection. For 30 years we have avoided this truth. If bin Laden was behind this, then Afghanistan is our enemy. Any country that harbors and protects him is our enemy. We must carry their war to them.

We should seriously consider a congressional declaration of war. That convention seems quaint, unused since World War II. But there are two virtues to declaring war: It announces our seriousness both to our people and to the enemy, and it gives us certain rights as belligerents (of blockade, for example).

The "long peace" is over. We sought this war no more than we sought war with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan or Cold War with the Soviet Union. But when war was pressed upon the greatest generation, it rose to the challenge. The question is: Will we? © 2001 The Washington Post Company

"Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today, at home, and around the world. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty. ---JOHN F. KENNEDY---

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