It’s sad, really, when otherwise intelligent-seeming people abandon all common sense and reason to superstition and hysteria. I’ve had people with graduate-level educations claim to my face that the events of 9/11 were some sort of government operation.
The video called “Loose Change” has, in its two incarnations, become somewhat of an internet phenomenon. I’m not going to give its creators any more traffic; you can find it easily enough.
It’s an elaborate mishmash of the usual looney conspirazoid “theories” about 9/11, leading to the inevitable and, of course, entirely reasonable conclusion that it was all a government operation.
Unfortunately, it’s a pack of lies, half-lies and outright fabrications. Just a few samples of its “evidence”:
- In the 60’s a military office proposed staging terrorist attacks involving an empty airliner on Guantanamo Bay to drum up support for an invasion of Cuba. In the Real World(TM), this plan was rejected. Also, recovery personnel at the 9/11 sites could tell you that the relevant airliners were unfortunately not at all empty.
- On the morning of 9/11 there were only 14 fighter aircraft defending the entire continental US. ITRW, this is no more or no less than the usual number of planes in this role since Clinton’s force reductions of the 90’s.
- Recovered engine parts from the (small plane, fighter drone, cruise missle) that struck the Pentagon don’t match the Pratt & Whitney engines of the Boeing 757. ITRW, the particular 757 that struck the Pentagon had Rolls Royce engines, which match the debris exactly.
And so on…
The Screw Loose Change blog — an entirely worthy read in itself — links to an exhaustive debunking of the video, which contains a transcript of the entire thing.
Another good site for injecting a dose of objective reality into the subject is 9/11 Myths.