Quote Originally Posted by Throbert McGee View Post
Okay, let's assume for the sake of argument that it was impossible for a small group of highly dedicated and fanatical Arabs to plan and successfully execute these attacks. But granting that...

На какой основе вы исключаете из подозрения российское руководство? Или китайское? Или европейский союз?

("On what basis are you excluding from suspicion the Russian government, or the Chinese, or the European Union?" -- please correct my Russian phrasing!)

Surely these other "suspects" have the sophistication to have planned the attacks -- even if one supposes that Arabs are too stupid and backwards to have come up with the oh-so-complicated strategy of smuggling small knives in their carry-on baggage, slitting the throats of a few stewardesses, and threatening to kill more in order to make the pilots open the cockpit door.

And surely there are theoretical motives for Russia, or China, or the EU to have planned the attacks (possibly to weaken the US's status as "the world's lone superpower", for example).

But while people like Marcus and 14Russian and other "9/11 Skeptics" present themselves as "open-minded" and accuse others of being dull, close-minded sheeple because they accept the official theory that "pissed-off Muslims did it", there is a rather strange limit to the self-proclaimed "open-mindedness" of 9/11 Skeptics!

Their imaginations will stretch exactly far enough to blame the U.S. government (or, possibly, the Israelis too), but not far enough to consider "ex-KGB agents under secret orders from Putin" among the potential suspects.

Why exactly is that?

P.S. To answer my own rhetorical question, I think that Lampada's "wishful thinking" remark is possibly correct: some people want it to be true that the Americans Are Guilty. They don't point fingers at China (for example) because "the Chinese did it" isn't emotionally satisfying to them.

Very well stated, Throbert...

And Americans like cheap Chinese manufactured goods. That's why they don't want to blame the Chinese. No one even calls the Chinese "communists," although I know a lot of Americans who still call the Russians "commies." The Chinese commit horrendous human rights violations (suicide nets just to name one!) and for some reason the media is mostly silent about it, whereas the media never missed a chance to point out all the inhumanities of the co-called "evil empire" (Russia).

Americans like Wal*Mart and the convenience of cheap stuff. They don't really care where it comes from, or how badly people suffered to produce those goods. They don't think about the impact all of this is having on the US economy either! But I digress.

I think Americans are also (deep down) really scared of China. They prefer to think of the Russians as the "bad guys" because Russians were kind of endearing to us as "enemies" - maybe we sensed that they were really just a lot like us. I think those who still call Russia the "number one geopolitical foe" are just nostalgic, and hankering for the comfortable Cold War days, before the "War on Terror" and before the horror of 9/11.

As for all the conspiracy theories out there, I have studied enough of them to see that for the most part they just ask more questions than they really answer. Granted, I am not opposed to asking questions. I just hope we ask the right ones, and do not let our judgement get cloudy by too much "Ancient Aliens" thinking.