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ORIGINAL: Fellow

Yes there could be many conspiracies to attack the US. It does not prove Al Qaeda was able to pull it off. I saw a report that claimed CIA was monitoring the group that allegedly was involved in 9/11 attack for at least a year. You take a plot over and execute it. This is how it was done. You need some kind of evidence and patsies to create the legend.  The men took flight lessons, but they had difficulties to fly a crop duster. Does anybody seriously think they pulled it off. General consensus seems to be the planes were flown by remote control.

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ORIGINAL: Fellow
General consensus seems to be the planes were flown by remote control.

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ORIGINAL: Rule

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ORIGINAL: Fellow
General consensus seems to be the planes were flown by remote control.

That is not true. There were no crashes that day. Only two of the alleged planes did exist and they were flown by real crews - and landed safely.

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ORIGINAL: Hillwilliam
Are you saying this is what happened to all those missing passengers?

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ORIGINAL: Rule

I have no idea

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ORIGINAL: Rule

There are lots of things that I am clueless about regarding 911.

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ORIGINAL: Fellow
Does anybody seriously think they pulled it off.

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ORIGINAL: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-narcissus-in-all-us/200809/paranoia-and-the-roots-conspiracy-theories
Melley proposes that conspiracy thinking arises from a combination of two factors, when someone: 1) holds strong individualist values and 2) lacks a sense of control. The first attribute refers to people who care deeply about an individual's right to make their own choices and direct their own lives without interference or obligations to a larger system (like the government). But combine this with a sense of powerlessness in one's own life, and you get what Melley calls agency panic, "intense anxiety about an apparent loss of autonomy" to outside forces or regulators.

When fervent individualists feel that they cannot exercise their independence, they experience a crisis and assume that larger forces are to blame for usurping this freedom. "For one who refuses to relinquish the assumptions of liberal individualism, such newly revealed forms of regulation frequently seem so unacceptable or unbelievable that they can only be met with anxiety, melodrama, or panic."
...
But what's the actual appeal of believing in conspiracy theories? What purpose do they serve people?

For one thing, conspiracy theories help us cope with distressing events and make sense out of them. Conspiracies assure us that bad things don't just happen randomly. Conspiracies tell us that someone out there is accountable, however unwittingly or secretly or incomprehensibly, so it's possible to stop these people and punish them and in due course let everyone else re-establish control over their own lives. Conspiracies also remind us that we shouldn't blame ourselves for our predicaments; it's not our fault, it's them! In these ways, believing in conspiracies serves many of the same self-protective functions as scapegoating.

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

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ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY

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ORIGINAL: DarkSteven
Per this article, the neocons in the Bush administration rejected the CIA's arguments because it didn't fit their worldview. And the CIA was yelling at the Bushies to listen to their intelligence.

by ...
Kurt Eichenwald, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a former reporter for The New York Times, is the author of "500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars."
Steven ... I suspect we shouldn't jump to his conclusions just yet.
Firm

And, Bush was the one telling Congress that Fannie and Freddie needed more oversight. But, when push came to shove, Congress sat still, and yet, it's Bush's fault Fannie and Freddie skewed the market and caused the fail.

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ORIGINAL: http://kent.academia.edu/RobbieSutton/Papers/1275313/Dead_and_alive_Beliefs_in_contradictory_conspiracy_theories
Conspiracy theories can form a monological belief system: a self-sustaining worldviewcomprised of a network of mutually supportive beliefs. The present research shows that evenendorsement of mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively correlated. In Study 1(
n
= 137), the more participants believed that Princess Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered. In Study 2 (
n
= 102), the more participants believed that OsamaBin Laden was already dead when U.S. special forces raided his compound in Pakistan, the morethey believed he is still alive. Hierarchical regression models showed that mutually incompatibleconspiracy theories are positively associated because both are associated with the view that theauthorities are engaged in a cover-up (Study 2). The monological nature of conspiracy belief appears to be driven not by conspiracy theories directly supporting one another, but by broader beliefs supporting conspiracy theories in general.

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ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY

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ORIGINAL: dcnovice

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by ...

Kurt Eichenwald, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a former reporter for The New York Times, is the author of "500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars."

Steven ... I suspect we shouldn't jump to his conclusions just yet.

Firm

Duly noted.

Which of his points do you dispute?

ETA: I clicked the Amazon link to check out his book. Both the editorial and customer reviews were quite positive.

dc,

My point is that he has a book to sell, and the more attention he can get, the more he can sell.

He's not a historian, and likely has his point of view to support.

Some people are still arguing that Roosevelt knew about the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, and didn't do anything because he wanted it to happen.

How many of the authors sources come from the CIA? ... and I'm sure that it's in their bureaucratic interest to shift blame ... what journalist writing an explosive, tell-all book about recent events wouldn't feel like they are the only ones who have "the real poop", when members of government talk to them, and point all the blame to their political masters?

All I'm saying ... don't jump to conclusions. The truth is usually more prosaic and less exciting, less filled with villains and saints, and more with bureaucratic infighting and organizational inertia.

Firm

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ORIGINAL: Rule

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ORIGINAL: Hillwilliam
Are you saying this is what happened to all those missing passengers?

Everyone who allegedly was aboard either one of the two non-existing planes, or one of the two planes that did fly, is suspect. Anyone who was in whatever relationship to any of the names on the passenger and crew lists, is suspect.

I have no idea - with one exception - what happened to them, but I do suspect that a number of them may have died already in the couple of years before the event.