Only when the usual/legal means to maintain/extend control does not work (that happens frequently). Do U remember the Maine? or the Tonkin gulf? It would be not the first time that a US government simulates to be attacked (even if it costs some American lifes) in order to push its agenda. I'd contextualize: in the summer 2001 Bush popularity was at an historical low and still falling according the polls, while the economy was in a similar if not worse situation. Then there are the oil issues which U know. A lot of reasons to find a casus belli. "Conspiracists" seems also to give more importance to internal/political factors, which are quite unconsidered by "anti-conspiracists": "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy.
All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
Hermann Goering, interviewed by Gustave Gilbert during the Easter recess of the Nuremberg
trials, 1946 April 18, quoted in Gilbert's book Nuremberg Diary.
http://torus.math.uiuc.edu/jms/quotes.html
"the largest and most promising factor of cultural discipline....It makes for a conservative animus
on the part of the populace. During war time, and within the military organization at all
times...civil rights are in abeyance; and the more warfare and armament the more abeyance. .
directs the popular interest to other, nobler, institutionally less hazardous matters than the unequal
distribution of wealth or of creature comforts."
Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise, (1904): 391-3.
"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier - so long as I'm the dictator."
George W. Bush, Dec. 19, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/12/18/bush.wrap/
"The so-called national security state of the past 40 years has meant enormous riches, and power,
for those who are in the game. It has also meant population control - control of the people of this
and many other countries. Bush and his team, and those they represent, will do whatever is
necessary to keep the game going."
Philip Agee, October (1990)
http://serendipity.magnet.ch/cia/agee_1.html
Sometimes it seems to me that "anti-conspiracist" leftist are driven by the fear of exposing that power is often criminal, because that would put in peril the faith in democratic, peaceful changes, or in power itself -whoever has it-, and would make much more harder the political confrontation... What would happen in the US if it will be discovered that conspiracists are right in saying that 9/11 was a setup?
> --au contraire, he's merely questioned whether or not it is terribly
> important if there was a 'conspiracy' in order to condemn the war on
> terror. what is lost if there was no 'conspiracy'? does it lessen any
> our need to oppose the war on terror?
> -------------------------------------------
Should not we be interested in the truth in/for itself?