7 thoughts on ““Bin Laden Determined To Attack…””

  1. I’d bet that, among people who read the 9/11 Commission Report (and it was a bestseller when it came out, not to mention that there’s a “graphic novel” version that’s out now), the percentage of people who believe that President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks before 9/11 would be higher. The report made it pretty clear, and there’s nothing that’s come down the pipe since that’s undermined that (quite the contrary : “now you’ve covered your ass” has augmented our image of how Bush dealt with the threat that summer).

  3. A 22% total isn’t surprising. After all, look at other poll results from a 2005 Gallup survey of American beliefs:
    42% believe in demonic possession
    37% haunted houses
    25% astrology
    21% witches (the broom-riding evil kind, not Wiccans)
    31% telepathy
    21% talking to the dead
    20% reincarnation
    24% aliens contact with Earth
    If a belief gets much below 20% in the US it tends to be because it doesn’t get much media play. For instance seances where a psychic “channels” a spirit, which used to be extremely popular, doesn’t show up much any more so it’s down to 9%.

  4. A couple of weeks past, a couple of crewcut men approached me while I was street-protesting.
    After some supportive comments, a few questions (and my answers surprising them), the men told me that they were retired Air Force Intelligence. They said, “We have to tell you — we all know this is bullshit. This is all bullshit.”
    And I said, “Oh, like when the Pentagon supposedly has NO air defense?”
    And they said, “So you know. All of us know. It’s horrifying.”
    And then they left. So ridiculing the Nine-eleven conspiracy (which is blatantly obvious) in the face of all the exposed malfeasance, conspiracy, and odd situations like a 600 page ‘Patriot Act’ being ready to go within a week (but no one gets time to read it, rush, rush), is just whistling to your dead grandmother at the cemetary.
    You can pretend you hold a tune better than she does, that’s about it, Keith.

  6. One more comment: Unlike that list of fallacious beliefs, concern about DISCREPANCIES as large as those surrounding Nine-eleven is a rational process. So you are comparing apples and oranges, Keith.
    Secondly, I hope you all realize that we are going to eventually find that Bush wrote many tens of thousands of secret Presidential orders binding everyone from the Chief of the Button to the secret King of your block.
    So when the cork comes out — stand back — that elephant hasn’t shit in a decade.

  7. The question whether “Bush knew” is a red herring. The question that should be asked is whether there was internal US government collaboration, which is a different question.
    For 9/11 to have happened, there simply had to have been some internal government collaboration. The number of people who actually knew what was going on was no doubt very small. The rest would have been mere cogs performing tasks whose real origin and import they did not know.
    There is no evidence whatsoever that Bush knew. His reaction to the event was not that of a person who had prior knowledge. I can’t think of any reason why he would have needed to know.
    This is not a defense of Bush. Along with most of my fellow-Americans I think he is a total putz. He is also stupid and lacking in curiosity, which means he does not know a great deal about anything and is easily manipulated by people who cater to his many weaknesses.
    Aside from the deliberate disinformational aspect of the “Bush knew,” meme, it feeds off a very simple fallacy: Though some degree of US government collaboration is a virtual certainty, the nature of it is not so easy to discover. But Bush is, or is assumed to be, the leader of the US government. Therefore “Bush knew.” The kind of thinking that 22% of Americans are capable of.

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