Ø It is rather disingenuous of you (to throw back the term) to say that Ellsberg’s position does not support mine. I proferred Ellsberg’s position quite specifically because he does share all my baseline positions. I did not ascribe the ‘incompetency theory’ sentiment to you necessarily, but to the lbo list. I reiterate that Ellsberg *is* like most of the 9-11 movement, he doubts the official story – that is the common point of departure. I don’t see what bearing Popular Mechanics’ frantic efforts to prop-up the official story has on whether or not the 9-11 Truth Movement is comprised mainly of reasonable, thoughtful people. Ø Ø Now that you have acknowledged that you have doubts about the official story – which makes you a de facto member of the 9-11 Truth Movement – you are now trying to beat a retreat. From what I can tell, most people on the lbo list have few if any doubts about the official story and have very little tolerance for those who do – and the tar and feather brigade are always ready to tarnish any doubter as a ‘conpiracy theorist’ or ‘kook’ etc. Ø Ø It is clear to me that you are projecting your own anti-conspiracist extremism onto the 9-11 Truth Movement who are for the most part a pretty tolerant and patient lot. They kind of have to be since the official narrative is constantly reinforced in both mainstream and establishment left discourse. Ø Ø You ask whether I believe the following: 1) - That the Pentagon was struck by a missile2) - That the WTC was razed by demoliltion-style bombs3) - That Flight 93 was shot down by a white jet4) - That the planes which struck the WTC were not commercial, but military5) - That the US Government or agents within it instigated or allowed it to happen in order to advance an otherwise unlikely agenda 6- That these are repsentative of the 9/11 Truth movement 1) I don’t know, it seems likely that it was a plane but I’m more interested in how a novice pilot managed that maneuver and why the air force failed to intercept the plane. This is a big bone of contention among 9-11 reseachers who are in at least three camps – the plane people, the missile people and the ‘we don’t know, but it probably was a plane people’. Ø 2) Again, as I am not a construction engineer or anything like that I cannot offer an opinion. It is possible that the buildings fell as a result of being hit by the planes and it is possible that WTC 7 collapsed entirely due to fire damage. My interest, again, is more upstream – why did the air defenses fail? How did the alleged hijackers manage to elide the US air defenses and why did the authorities lie to or evade the 9-11 Commission as two of the commissioners have claimed in a new book? why were there war games simulating hijacked planes flying into building going on that day? What was the role of the Pakistani ISI and Saudi Intelligance? I feel that some of my 9-11 Truth brethren spend too much time on the physical evidence and I don’t think that is where the real answers lie. Ø 3) I don’t know what happened to Flight 93. I’ve heard that the crash site seemed to not fit the usual pattern, but the guys who told me that seemed kind of weird. Ø 4) I have no idea. Ø 5) I think there is a lot of prima facie evidence pointing in that direction, though I would not say that the evidence is incontrovertible. Ø 6) Yes, some of these ideas are representative of certain factions of the 9-11 Truth Movement, but if you spent any real time moving in those circles, you would quickly find that there is as much debate within the movement about the questions you raise as between movement people and people like yourself. We just don’t worry too much about how our brains look when they have no clothes on. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20060824/362adb3a/attachment.htm>