Am I Now a Conspirator?

If I were Dylan Avery, director of the 9/11 conspiracy video, Loose Change, I'd be telling you that the Canadian Broadcasting Company has become part of the conspiracy to sell the world a false version of the events of that day. Luckily I'm not Mr. Avery and instead am a viewer of the CBC documentary The Secret History of 9/11.

The extraordinary tale of intrigue and espionage begins with the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. The Secret History of 9/11 provides a look at the long, secret war waged against al-Qaeda from the White House, the CIA and the FBI, and examines the key intelligence failures that allowed the 9/11 plot to happen.

I learned some things that I didn't know and expanded upon generalizations with which I was familiar such as that the American intelligence community failed to protect us. I knew this already but found out some more detail as to exactly how they failed us. It was a nice antidote to the bullshit that Avery and Loose Change "researcher" Jason Bermas were allowed to spew on Democracy Now on Monday, the fifth anniversary of the tragedy, when they "debated" a couple editors from Popular Mechanics which has just released Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts. It was very telling that one of the conspiracy mongers began his diatribe by referring to Popular Mechanics as a yellow dog publication. Opening with an ad hominem attack, it was obvious that they hadn't come to debate the fact but rather to malign a couple men who presumably, in their eyes, represented the increasing number of conspirators. Nearly everytime the editors would cite the conclusions of structural engineers, metallurgists, and other relevant experts, the conspiracy guys would change the subject quickly and go off on Bush & Company. These guys said that they made the video in order to get people to investigate the events of 9/11 on their own. And so the editors of Popular Mechanics did so. But when their investigations were contrary to the myths promulgated by these jokers and other like them, Avery and Bermas could only call them liars. So the purpose of Loose Change isn't really to get citizens to look into the matter themselves, it's to get folks to believe in a conspiracy. These guys need to learn about Occam's Razor.

It saddens me that there are many lefties like the one that David Blaka found at the Fighting Bob Fest this year who thought that (local conspiracy monger) Kevin Barrett was "more right than wrong". As fellow Madisonian Matthew Rothschild of the lefty magazine The Progressive wrote this week:

At bottom, the 9/11 conspiracy theories are profoundly irrational and unscientific. It is more than passing strange that progressives, who so revere science on such issues as tobacco, stem cells, evolution, and global warming, are so willing to abandon science and give in to fantasy on the subject of 9/11.

What this country needs right now is more logic, not some counter-Strassian myth. It is demeaning to the victims of 9/11 as well as to their families, friends, and associates to make ludicrous claims about the government kidnapping people who were supposed to be on the flights and that their frantic cell phone calls from the planes were fabricated in a recording studio. As Rothschild also notes, we needn't make up 9/11 conspiracies to hold against Bush and his cronies as they already have a lengthy and legitimate litany of complaints against them.

My favorite site that I've found thusfar exposing Loose Change as complete shite is Screw Loose Change.