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CB: I endorse at least not dismissing out of hand the *'ed items below.
In the law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act. Saying "conspiracy" in the legal context does have the hysteria creating effect that it has on this list. This list ought emulate the legal attitude to "conspiracy", and drop the current one. All a conspiracy means is that several people planned it rather than just one person. Obviously, when people plan to do something wrong, they conceal their plan before and after the act. Much of what the U.S. government does in these areas is a few people secretly planning it. In this sense, conspiracies are rife. But fear not, this does not threaten the Marxist principle that social groups, not small conspiratorial groups , make history. So, it is ok for leftists to discuss capitalist conspiracies as conspiracies without falling off the wagon. Every discussion of conspiracy does not evince a "conspiracy theory" political epistemology.
Before the argument was that U.S. prior mass murders in the region did not JUSTIFY the Sept. 11 attacks. Now , as I have thought we would, the U.S. attack on Afghanistan is being JUSTIFIED by Sept. 11. NOT !
This is why denial of the U.S. attacks and mass murders that were prior to Sept. 11 is part of a demogogic gambit. This did not start on Sept. 11 . It started back in 1991 at least.
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This article isn't exactly non-conspiracist. It doesn't discount the possibility of a conspiracy, except insofar as it alludes to analyses by means of that terminology. If I had to guess, it would be that the author believes some of this stuff and but chooses to present it indirectly as what others are saying.
There is a difference between a conspiracist tale wherein Israel or the CIA engineers the hijackings, and all of the following, for which I have no particular evidence but I think are completely plausible:
* the U.S. Gov had contacts with the Taliban and/or OBL, possibly related to oil, that it has not informed us about;
* that the hijackings had something to do with the outcome of these contacts;
* that present U.S. deployments have not *only* to do with fighting the Taliban and OBL etc., but also with long-standing and overarching geo-strategic considerations, in part related to the geographic distribution of oil reserves and potential routes of resource transport.
I don't see any of these latter three points as 'conspiracist.' They could be wrong. Or they could all be spot on, and the U.S. mission to Afgh would still be justified as reponse to 9-11. I think these are separate questions. Jumbling them together probably leaches credibility from the political- economic issues more than not, since the issue of U.S. motives in the region, comprehensively considered, is spattered with improbable, unverifiable tales. Maybe there is a conspiracy to allege conspiracy.
mbs