Verbal

Plenty of evidence of motive? Like what?! Because as sure as **** that list of yours is pathetic. Yes, there were ideas among the Neo-Cons that Iraq should be invaded prior to 9/11 So what? Rebuilding America's Defenses is a policy document written by a right wing American think tank, not the government. And again, so what? Pre-emptive war doctrine proves the OPPOSITE of your case. The doctrine - quite an old one! - states that the US should reserve the right to invade pre-emptively. Therefore it wouldn't need some hugely convoluted conspiracy to attack itself in order to achieve this. All you needed were the claims about WMDs. And that's exactly what the basis of the invasion was. The money made selling heroin in Afghanistan? Are you kidding? Benefits in oil contracts was a result of the Iraq War. As I say, that did not require anything remotely as preposterous as an attack on the twin towers and the Pentagon. Western-friendly governments in the ME? What does that MEAN? That 9/11 was necessary because there are (or were) such governments? So, yes - you're right on one thing at least. No motive s at all. Even I thought you could make a better fist of it than this. Oh, and about Aziz ElHallan? EDIT: Oh, I see. The conspiracy nuts have already taken him apart. What a surprise. He's a Mossad agent apparently. That link of yours is interesting in that it seeks to cast as an outright liar everyone who witnessed the plane going into the building. What charming company you keep.

You mean like this guy (although having an Arabic name naturally makes him part of the conspiracy):

Well if you READ the books I'm suggesting it might help. I'm happy to think about any credible evidence. I won't take seriously 'evidence' based on sophomoric mistakes, ignorance and paranoia. I also come back to plausibility, because you have to be something of a demented fool to think it's worthwhile spiralling after ever more arcane bits of 'evidence' if it's not in pursuit of a plausible scenario. But you deal with this with a simple logical fallacy: because governments have a record of lying, they are not only lying about 9/11 but are at the heart of it. Of course governments lie. For example, the British government lied about the existence of Gulf War Syndrome, the Chinook crash that killed a number of senior special forces operatives working in Ireland, the removal of the indigenous people of Diego Garcia, etc, etc, etc. In EVERY case, though, the government lied for plausible reasons. You could see why they acted as they did, as reprehensible as it was. But to kill thousands of people, to attack and destroy the emblematic buildings of American economic and military might? Or to bomb the Underground and a bus? Give a PLAUSIBLE reason why they should do this. What - as I keep asking you - is their MOTIVE? And let me see if I understand your point about the books. You're saying that because these books are already 'narratives' they are less trustworthy 'in the first place'. What on earth does that mean? I have Ahmed Rashid's email address - would you like to tell him, given his experiences, that his book is merely 'a narrative'? Do you even know who he is and what he's done? Do also tell us about the conspiracy theories you have that provide an alternative explanation for Dar Es Salaam, Nairobi, The Cole, Luxor and the murder of Masood.

It's not 'the one book' at all. I'd recommend Dexter Filkins' The Forever War, or Ahmed Rashid's Descent into Chaos, or Peter Bergen's Holy War, Inc. Or any number of others written by journalists who used a little more than google to get out there and research. Of course, they're part of the conspiracy too, no doubt. As for Power of Nightmares, a film I know very well, you miss the point completely. It is NOT about the formation of Al Qeada. Curtis is arguing that there is an ideological parallel between the Neo-Cons and Sayyid Qutb. He is NOT arguing that 'our politicians' wilfully do anything - only that the Neo-Cons and Qutb (who spent time living in Colorado before going on to be the inspiration for Zawahiri) have a mutual interest in creating a mythic view of a world worthy of destruction. It's kind of funny that truthers exist outside the US, because the movement is really the bastard child of an old ideology indigenous to the US - American exceptionalism. The truther variant is: how DARE anyone suggest that 9/11 could be carried out by anyone but the most technologically sophisticated country in the world. THAT is the circular argument that the flag wavers of the truther movement wrap themselves in, and it seems more than a little slavish being repeated by impressionable googlers outside the US. As I say, read Looming Tower, because you talk as if 9/11 was the only event Al Qeada was involved in. Unless, that is, you have a headful of conspiracy theories for The Cole, Dar Es Salaam, Nairobi, Luxor, as well as the murder of Masood on 9/10, etc, etc.

Yes, I saw that garbage. It is the essentially racist argument that a bunch of ignorant A-rabs marooned in the Afghan desert couldn't possibly bring down the crowning edifices of US economic and military might. It then wraps itself in knots with the idea that the story is 'brought to you' by 'the media', all and every one of them wrapped up in the conspiracy. The sooner you get started on The Looming Tower the better. You need to get away from your computer.

You seem to have problems with the English language. You talk about 'proof', and then write a highly detailed post that contains nothing but wishful speculation - although I can tell how desperately you want to believe it. And the 'official conspiracy theory'? Again? WTF is that? And who's in on it? Oh, and do have a word with the hundreds of eye witnesses of the Pentagon crash, including motorists sitting in a traffic jam, over whom the plane passed, shedding bits as it struck objects on the ground. Some of these shards were picked up and kept by these witnesses, who clearly describe an AA 757 flying 60 feet over their heads. But I guess there isn't any point, is there? They are part of the official conspiracy too.

No, 'they can't prove who might have been running the conspiracy' (for reasons you're going to find hard to accept, I imagine), but neither they nor you can avoid the clear implication of their/your position on the 'evidence' that there must indeed be one. The problem is that when you follow the logic of this, it just starts to look ridiculous. And - once again with feeling - your reference to an 'official account' is really quite amazingly simplistic and misleading. To repeat: the 'official account' is a catch-all phrase that encompasses everything from the 9/11 Commission report to the work of journalists like Dexter Filkins, Lawrence Wright, Ahmed Rashid, Declan Walsh, Sean Smith and the late Tim Hetherington. These and others have spent the last decade working in the often dangerous margins of South Asia and Arabia to piece together, with copious first-hand evidence and testimony, the story of what happened before, during and after 9/11. To have this kind of work dismissed as 'the official account', and even lumped in as part of the nameless conspiracy merely because it accepts that Bin Laden's acolytes carried out the attacks, is insulting and stupid. Ask yourself a question: who's more credible: a New Yorker journalist spending five years researching first-hand and writing The Looming Tower, or a Google warrior (even a 'professional') jumping to conclusions based on pictures downloaded from google?

It's not that they don't 'say everything'; it's that they say NOTHING. It's a hackneyed old truther get-out clause that they only put the 'evidence' out there and make no comment on it. Such utter CRAP. Of course they have their theories - and in some cases their certainties. When I made the Flight 11 film, I was accused of being an 'Israeli psyops agent' (after all, it IS 'possible, isn't it?). My name and address was published, presumably in the hope that someone would take up the cause... The 'truthers', or the majority of them at least, have some very clear ideas about who they think is responsible. But they hide behind this cloak of feigned disinterest: we're only interested in the 'facts', but these facts do not include putting a name on this epic so-called conspiracy. Don't be too taken in by the 'professional' bit either. In every profession there are paranoid personalities looking for the underlying grand conspiracy that unites all events into a single Matrix-like explanation. As I say, read The Looming Tower and THEN tell me whether you can see that AQ committed 9/11, and that franchises followed up with Bali, London, and Madrid. The one incident that WAS as likely to be intelligence agency controlled was the Mumbai attack. There's mounting evidence for this, including personal testimony and recordings at an ongoing trial, as well as the trial of the one survivor among the attackers. So you have one attack with plausible evidence; the rest - none whatsoever. However, the conspiracy theorist - and I imagine you falling into this trap - will simply attach the Mumbai attack to a bit of false logic and say: if Mumbai, then all the rest too...QED.

Not at all. His handlers in the safe house were clearly manipulating him in at least the minimal sense that they were preparing him to be a suicide bomber. Your contention appears to be that these handlers were not AQ, but some other agency which you refuse to specify or even allow speculation on. Which I have to say simply defies common sense as an argument. What the hell is the point of thinking up wildly implausible 'possibilities'? The only reason I keep coming back to is that deep down you understand the foolishness of your argument and don't want to embarrass yourself by making it explicit. So let's try putting some words into your mouth. Let's assume you mean MI5 or some rough equivalent. If you think it was a British/Western intelligence agency, you've then got to deal with the rather tricky problem of explaining, first, exactly WHO that 'manipulator' might be (rogue operators? officially sanctioned?) what MOTIVE exists for a British agency to attack its own people in the most brutal way. And WHY a British agency would want to do that. As you see, silly isn't it?

You've gone off-piste yet again. Where have I said this? You're also conflating two quite distinct 'possibilities'. They could well have been 'compromised' by any number of people/organisations/security services/Bruce Forsyth. But does that mean therefore that Khan was 'manipulated' by Forsyth et al into committing the Underground bombings? And if so, WHY?!!

Yes or no to what? Your question first needs to make sense. Manipulated by whom? Tell me by whom and I'll give you an answer.

You missed one: blowing up the Underground.

I'm not dodging them at all - it's just that I'm having trouble engaging with the conspiratorial mindset. 1. What 'manipulation' do you mean? By whom? 2. And you're saying it's possible/plausible that MI5 (or who exactly for f*** sake?!) were really in control of the safe house in Rawalpindi. Why? To what end? And is there the slightest evidence of this, however improbable? Sad thing is, pap, I don't think you get how incomprehensible you really are.

Yes, but that's only because you think you're being 'cute' by refusing to spell out the mountainously bizarre consequences of your 'possibilities'.

As I say, I'm only trying to help. Being so poorly read is hindering you, I can tell. Seriously - read The Looming Tower. It's the Verbal Book Club Book of the Month. And what does Khan's training have to do with anything? I imagine that the training in bomb-making, for example, had some bearing on events on 7/7, wouldn't you say? Or are you saying it's 'possible' he was actually trained by John Prescott (or some equally shadowy British figure) in a turban? You're relying on a kind of reductio ad absurdam with this 'how does that exclude...' guff. ANYTHING is 'possible' in the sense that physics doesn't deny it. Common sense and practicalities on the other hand...

So the plot thickens...as it always does when theorists head off in this direction. You're now saying that despite Khan's extensive training in Pakistan, and residence at a now-known AQ safe house, it's 'possible' (see? I'm being careful!) that actually the plot was discovered and then taken over by...who exactly? And WHY? We come back to the same tiny problem: that you end up saying how 'possible' it is that the Labour Party (or MI5, or WI, etc) blew up the Underground. Doesn't that sound funny to you? No offence, but I suspect part of the problem is that like JS you're poorly read. And I mean poorly read around serious writers who really do know their stuff. Read The Looming Tower and then tell us about your 'possibilities'.

In what way 'unwittingly directed'? And by whom? What plausible circumstances could possibly explain this little hypothesis of yours. And if the 7/7 attackers were 'directed', surely the buffoons on 21/7 were also 'directed'. But if so, wouldn't we know by now, since they are all not only alive but doing 40 years each at HM's pleasure. Don't you think it might have come up, at least in mitigation, at their trial, that they were really foot soldiers for John Prescott or whomever?

It's only 'possible' that Mohammad Siddique Khan and his idiotic chums carried out the 7/7 bombings? Is that what you're saying? Really? No more than possible? Of course, I realise why you're so snippy - it's because when your conspiracy theory is held up to daylight it's really hard not to laugh.

So if you think it's possible, what motive can you think of for such an extraordinary act? Obviously you have SOMETHING in mind, otherwise you wouldn't 'think it's possible'.

The drills? Which ones? There were drills in the Underground and drills before 9/11. I would be amazed if there weren't. But what's to explain? And thanks, finally, for at least part of an answer - that you think the UK government killed its own citizens. What motive can you think of for this extraordinary act?

It's not about beliefs in the strictest sense. It's about plausibility and sense. No data or information exists in a vacuum. An investigator into an unexplained death must work with the information to hand - forensic, physical - and a plausible, non-ridiculous explanation for that data. You can't have one without the other, otherwise it's just meaningless. So, once again, do you think it plausible that the UK government blew up the underground on 7/7 and that the Bush administration orchestrated 9/11, including blowing itself up?

Fascinating why? What meaning do you attach to them? Do you think the British government blew up the London Underground on 7/7? Do you believe the Bush adminsitration sent a missile into its own defence headquarters?

Why should it have scorch marks?

But how hard do you really have to look for conclusive proof - honestly? Try this test. Give yourself 30 seconds to find it. That's really all you need. Maybe even start here (although there are so many places to look) http://www.911myths.com/html/757_wreckage.html And while it may be true to say the evidence is 'highly disputed', it's only true in the sense that the events at the Pentagon are disputed by the groaning weight of 'truther' websites claiming (a) there's no wreckage, and then (b) changing their story to say that the wreckage that's there is planted. It's like arguing with religious fundamentalists, in that no evidence actually counts against their cause. So it becomes a bit pointless. Rebutting John Smith, for example, is a waste of time; no one could possible dislodge his self-satisfying fantasies, and you're just left feeling (very) slightly sorry for him. Oh, and before you shoot back with some claim that anyone who says the overwhelming and obvious evidence is that these attacks were carried out by Al Qaeda is in some way swallowing the 'official version' whole, just remember that most of what's in the public domain today, and published in reputable papers and journals, has been put together by journalists and writers independently investigating the incidents. Only a small amount of what they write is derived from 'official' sources. If you seriously doubt this, check out what is still the finest book, in my opinion, written on 9/11 and the events leading up to it, Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower. I simply couldn't imagine anyone, after reading it, still thinking that 9/11 was carried out by some amalgam of the Bush administration, some Matrix-like masters of a parallel universe, or the Mysterons.

Dear god. Wood and trees come to mind. Or plumbing new depths, maybe more appropriately.