The latest hero of this movement is Dr. Judy Wood, formerly of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Clemson University. Dr. Wood has released a long article on her supposed evidence that the World Trade Center buildings did not collapse, but in fact were destroyed by energy beams.
After reading through the tedious article, which was filled with leaps of ill-logic and lots of photos that showed no evidence of directed energy weapons, or phaser fire, or “molecular dissociation”, I am amazed that people can so easily confuse science fiction with science fact.
I am not going to bother refuting the arguments anymore, that has been done very well by others. I am much more interested in what I feel is a concerted effort to divide, demoralize, and discredit the progressive movement.
George Bush and Dick Cheney were in charge during the worst attack against Americans on US soil in US history. They blew it as badly as anyone in charge could have blown it. They ignored all the warnings and did absolutely nothing to protect the country. As Democrats and progressives began scoring points against the administration by pointing out their extreme ineptitude and negligence, Karl Rove comes up with the idea of circulating wild 9/11 conspiracy theories all over the Internet to discredit detractors.
Everyone knows that hired Republican trolls prowl progressive websites and comment sections. It would be very easy for them, posing as liberal commenters, to begin spreading rumors that were outlandish to most people, but intriguing to some. The initial conspiracy theories suggested that pre-planted explosives and cruise missiles were involved in the destruction of the World Trade Center and the damage to the Pentagon. All sorts of details were eventually added, including who had access to the buildings in such a way that the detonation charges could have been planted, who might have actually pressed the button to detonate the charges, etc.
More recently, the conspiracy theories have turned clearly away from doubtful yet plausible explanations such as controlled demolition to the idea that top-secret military molecular dissociation energy beams were used to deliberately destroy the buildings. In case you hadn't noticed, this is precisely what phasers from Star Trek were supposed to do.
I am sure that many conspiracy theorists are well intentioned progressives, and are also very sincere, yet I have a very strong feeling that some small proportion of the 9/11 conspiracy movement includes planted conservative trolls. That's my conspiracy theory. And it's just a theory, not a fact. Their purpose would be to discredit all 9/11 conspiracy theories as outlandish. It also helps confuse the issue, and tarnish the left-wing progressive movement in general because the movement is composed of people who can not even agree on simple basic facts such as the fact that there are no such things as phasers.
If George Bush and Dick Cheney had taken the presidential daily brief’s warnings seriously throughout August 2001, and had implemented tighter security measures at airports, the disasters of September 11, 2001 could have easily been avoided. I believe that the conspiracy theory they wanted to distract everyone's attention away from is the one that seems most plausible. The administration was looking for a so-called “Pearl Harbor-like event” to galvanize the country behind a war against Iraq. The news that an attempted terrorist attack against the United States was imminent, maybe a small bomb on a Subway train for instance, might have actually been considered good news to Bush and Company.
Then came a Pearl Harbor-like event beyond their wildest imagination.
Think of the expression on George Bush's face as he sat reading My Pet Goat to a gradeschool class, and then was told about the second plane striking the World Trade Center. His expression was completely consistent with them expecting a small, ineffective attack, and just like everything else he has ever done, getting it completely wrong.
This is still the only 9/11 conspiracy theory I have heard that makes any sense whatsoever, and it is the one I believe they are trying to distract everyone from with the outlandish ideas being offered by people like Dr. Wood. Whether Dr. Wood believes these things, or has other motives, I can not say, but this type of conspiracy theory divides progressives, and tarnishes them all with an unfairly broad brush.
“Fire the phasers Dick!”,
“No Mr. President, you have the honor”.
