I was reading this Yahoo!7 story today about debunking 9/11 conspiracies, and while the article itself is just fluff journalism, I was interested by the comments section at the bottom.

Yahoo!7 is run with a severe right-wing/conservative bias, and from reading their comments sections over the years, the demographic seems to me to be made up of ordinary, middle-of-the-bell-curve, average red-neck conservative, xenophobic, religious, fearful white Australians. So given this, I was pretty amazed to find 9 out of the first 10 comments dismissing the article and supporting "conspiracy theories"... This leads me to believe that the average conservative Australian citizen doesn't believe in the official 9/11 story, which is fascinating to me as I thought the average Joe would accept what the authorities tell them to believe rather than be branded a "conspiracy nut".

So, I thought I'd conduct an anonymous straw poll here to see how people on a more American-centric forum feel! Sorry about that in advance.

N.B. I take no responsibility for the flaming that's sure to occur at some point. Keep it classy.

I was reading this Yahoo!7 story today about debunking 9/11 conspiracies, and while the article itself is just fluff journalism, I was interested by the comments section at the bottom.

Yahoo!7 is run with a severe right-wing/conservative bias, and from reading their comments sections over the years, the demographic seems to me to be made up of ordinary, middle-of-the-bell-curve, average red-neck conservative, xenophobic, religious, fearful white Australians. So given this, I was pretty amazed to find 9 out of the first 10 comments dismissing the article and supporting "conspiracy theories"... This leads me to believe that the average conservative Australian citizen doesn't believe in the official 9/11 story, which is fascinating to me.

So, I thought I'd conduct an anonymous straw poll here to see how people on a more American-centric forum feel! Sorry about that in advance.

N.B. I take no responsibility for the flaming that's sure to occur at some point. Keep it classy.

Inside job.

As a side note - I ditched my TV for good some 6 months ago. If it weren't for reddit, I wouldn't know it was 9/11.

I wouldn't know it was 9/11.

It's not November yet...

I wasn't quite sure how to answer the last question. It makes sense to me that human behavior is disposed (genetically?) to look for causality and motivation in patterns, leading to these types of beliefs. So it is "meh" human nature. But when looking at it from this perspective, it seems "crazy." However, I will allow the possibility that I am also genetically biased here, and this has affected my vote.

Wait - maybe the government has genetically modified me into not believing conspiracy theories! It's probably something they have been putting in the public water supply since the 70's...

I'm American, middle-of-the-bell-curve, religious, definitely a redneck (not xenophobic, though) and I am most certainly suspicious of many things surrounding the 9/11 attacks. The subsequent infringements upon our basic civil liberties (the so-called "freedom for safety" tradeoff we've made), and how quickly the attack was used as justification to wage a number of highly profitable and very damaging wars, just don't sit well with me or with many of the people around me. It's taking the easy way out to just write off my particular demographic (I have a 4WD vehicle with a BYU bumper sticker on one side and a "Support the Troops" sticker on the other, and a rifle in the window rack) as a bunch of crazy religo-nuts fanatically in support of whatever ultra-rightwing crud is shoved down the pipe at us, but it's not really the case. There is a pretty healthy population of us who support the idea of civil liberty, compassion in foreign affairs rather than war-mongering, education and respect for science and scientific advancement, critical thinking, etc... But believing in God and wanting to support the troops (and that means, of course, wanting them to remain safe and alive and engaged in boring, every-day, non-war related work, rather than being blown up by some kind of roadside IED) doesn't necessarily mean I am in favor of the TSA violating my wife at some Checkpoint Charlie like they did a few months ago because she refused to expose herself and the baby she was bearing to scanner radiation; or in favor of trading basic civil liberties and freedoms for some kind of illusion of safety; or willing to swallow whatever explanation for the 9/11 tragedy is endorsed by the official line without raising my eyebrows at a few of the inconsistencies and out-and-out contradictions.

I think that any kind of attack that costs innocent lives is worthy of thorough and impartial investigation into cause and responsibility.

It was propably just some random peeps flying to the towers and al queda was the first one to say they did it lol.

Unless theres evidence, no idea xD

One of my professors at BYU was a figure in the conspiracy movement - Steve Jones. He was a cool if unusual professor, but he was also at the center of the whole fake-cold-fusion nonsense a few decades back. Fool me once...

I think that any kind of attack that costs innocent lives is worthy of thorough and impartial investigation into cause and responsibility.

The problem with an attack like this is that finding enough people to be impartial is going to be damned near impossible. At the very least you are going to have to look outside the host country in order to do so and I doubt the US G'ment is going to like the idea of foreign nationals poking around at their data to see what happened.

As I'm here I might as well throw my take on things out there;

Did the g'ment know? Well, I'm going to say the Intelligence community probably had some idea that something was going on, however at this point you drop into the whole 'human element'; just because they knew something might be going down at the time it might not have looked like a 'credible threat'. I dare say if we had access to related intelligence now then it would be easy to join the dots, however as they say hindsight is 20:20, at some point someone decided this threat wasn't likely or at least not likely right then.

End of the day mistakes happen, if the various Intellgence Agencies around the world were perfect then we'd never have any issues; but stuff slips through the cracks. Lets face it if someone had come to you on Sept 10th 2001 and said "tomorrow someone is going to fly two aircraft into the WTC buildings' you wouldn't have considered it likely as it simply wasn't a scale of terrorism most people could concieve.

At this point it is easy to point at the wave of civil liberites which got eroded and the wars which broke out but even that isn't as unlikely as it seems.

The wars first; the Afgan war is somewhat 'legitimate' in that it was sparked by the ruling parties refusal to give up the people considered the mastermind behind the attacks. Granted after that it got a little sidetracked but the primise wasn't a problem. There was probably an element of 'this is handy' about it as it would allow for the removal of an unstable/troublesome element in the region and place someone in position who was more sympathetic to Western causes/positions.

Iraq... well, we all know that was sold on a series of lies and fear mongering statements which anyone with half a brain would question. That one was all about removing Saddam as he was an 'unstable' element in the region. Granted, other countries could be considered 'unstable' but with the last war still reasonably fresh in people's mind it was pretty easy to paint him as a big enemy and given he was a relatively 'soft' target in the region it made sense to go in there. Yes, the oil was probably a factor, however wars are rarely waged for simple reasons like that these days; world geo-poltics is a large and complicated beast.

The speed at which these wars where enacted might seem a bit fast but I think you'd be kidding yourself if you didn't think that the various miltaries around the world DIDN'T have a plan on paper somewhere to invade various countries (including current allies) "just in case". I know I would have and I'm hardly a miltary man ;) Also keep in mind Iraq took a little while to pan out so that's no great shock there; Afgan was quick but given the size and distrubtion of US forces around the world not too quick to have been anything more than a reaction.

The civil liberties issues; well this could be put down to people in power wanted to stay in power and have more control. That might sound a little paranoid but have you ever met someone with large amounts of power who wants to give it up? Much like the miltary invasion plans these plans have probably existed on paper for some years now in the hope that something major would happen soon to let them take advantage of it. Given the aggressive forign policy of the time and the 'human failure' aspect I wouldn't be surprised if they were expecting something soon. Maybe not on this scale but certainly something 'big' as it really was only a matter of time.

"Human nature" seems at the core of the events which have played out over the last 10 years and, even if it wasn't, you aren't going to find a paper trail for something like this anyway. Proof that you allowed 5,000+ people to be killed is unlikely to go down well, even with 'core' supporters (I dare say some people would shrug and say it was worth it however) and so leaving any sort of proof is unlikely anyway.

Of course, what should have happened is that people should have reacted to this reduction in liberties and said "this won't stand" and found a way to protest and stop it happening. However most people are living lives where they don't/won't think about things like this or simply don't care because it doesn't affect them right now.

In the face of a large attack and mass apathy you can get away with many things it seems...

It was propably just some random peeps flying to the towers and al queda was the first one to say they did it lol.

Even though I started the tread, I didn't really want to get involved in a discussion, but I've got to point out that "al qaeda" didn't claim responsibility, they actually denied it at first... There is a transcript that is used as "proof" that Bin Laden is responsible, but he doesn't actually claim responsibility in it, he only implies that he thought about attacking the WTC (prior to the 1993 bombing).

I'm going to say the Intelligence community probably had some idea that something was going on, however ... Lets face it if someone had come to you on Sept 10th 2001 and said "tomorrow someone is going to fly two aircraft into the WTC buildings' you wouldn't have considered it likely as it simply wasn't a scale of terrorism most people could concieve.

The CIA did have the foresight to, 6 months earlier, write a TV episode about US false-flag 'terrorists' flying aircraft into the WTC buildings in order to justify foreign wars though ;-P *hums x-files theme*