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Sunday, July 10, 2005

Conspiracy

If I've learned anything in 3 1/2 years of blogging, it would be this: It is very hard to determine what the truth is, but much easier to know that someone is lying. As soon as George W. Bush started his bellicose rhetoric (for which he still receives craven praise from idiot Democrats and pundits) following 9/11--"You're either with us or you're with the terrorists;" "We make no distinction between terrorists and nations which harbor them"--I knew he was lying. I didn't know what the truth was; Bush didn't care what the truth was, and didn't bother to find out. The war plans for Afghanistan and Iraq were already drawn up, and 9/11 gave him the perfect excuse to put them into action. Never mind that the FBI never found any evidence linking the supposed hijackers to al Qaeda or Afghanistan, or that they shuffled the passenger lists to make sure that each plane had a hijacker/pilot. We were attacked, we wanted to attack Afghanistan, so Afghanistan was attacked. Evidence? We don't need no stinking evidence!

Another thing I've learned is that most conspiracy theories are false, and some are ridiculous. But few are more clearly false or ridiculous than the official stories from our government. A lone gunman shot JFK from two completely different directions within seconds. A guy hiding out in a cave in Afghanistan masterminded simultaneous hijackings in the US. Two planes crashing into the upper floors of two steel skyscrapers caused three buildings to collapse completely to the ground. The headquarters of the world's largest and most sophisticated military remains unprotected from one of its most obvious threats over half an hour after it was clear to everyone that the nation was under attack because of "incompetence." Now THOSE are absolutely absurd conspiracy theories.

It is still wise to be wary of conspiracy theories, if only because it is likely that the actual perpetrators of various atrocities launch many of these theories to confuse the issue and discredit the suspicious. Popular Mechanics "debunking" of several conspiracy theories about 9/11, most of which I hadn't heard before, was an example of the technique: Some 9/11 conspiracy theories are absurd, so anyone who believes ANY 9/11 conspiracy theory is a nut. All the White House has to do is get a Jeff Gannon-type to launch a web site claiming that 9/11 was caused by PMS-suffering Martian women intent on refuting the claim that women are from Venus, and then point to it and say "look at the conspiracy nuts."

All this, of course, is a prelude to introducing another "conspiracy theory." Mike sends me this link to an article which claims that the London subway bombings occurred just as a security drill preparing for subway bombings was in progress.
On a BBC Radio 5 interview that aired on the evening of the 7th, the host interviewed Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, which bills itself as a 'crisis management' advice company, better known to you and I as a PR firm.

Peter Power was a former Scotland Yard official, working at one time with the Anti Terrorist Branch.

Power told the host that at the exact same time that the London bombings were taking place, his company was running a 1,000 person strong exercise which drilled the London Underground being bombed at the exact same locations, at the exact same times, as happened in real life.
The article describes the similarity of the London bombing to the 3/11/04 bombing in Madrid, and a 1980 bombing in Bologna, Italy, which was linked to Operation Gladio.

Again, I don't know how to verify all this. But watching the actions of Bush and Blair in response to these "attacks," how slowly they move to find out what actually happened and how quickly they move to take advantage of the situation, it is easy for me to reject the "official" story as the most absurd conspiracy theory of all.