Sardonic though this journal may be, it still has my name attached to it so I am not going to take that dangerous step of posting online test results into it. That aside, I spotted an odd looking online test in Sherrie’s journal yesterday called “Do You Want the Terrorists to Win” and scored 96%.

Later on that day, in the mistaken belief that I still know anything at all about anything, I was asked to write an opinion on 9/11 with regard to all of the conspiracy theories. Did I think they had any merit? Did I think there was a government coverup?

Reading over my reply it struck me that contrary to what the test said I was becoming something of a woolly liberal, hell, I am even fence sitting on the spelling of the word wooly now (both are valid).

In the true spirit of oversharing, I shall include a copy of the summary. It’s not edited for publication so it’s not been tidied up much. It’s a bloody journal, live with it!

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I don’t have a single theory but if I had to write one I would say that my conclusion is that the Whitehouse are probably as confused as we are. They know somebody did it and they have more military intelligence than we do but they still rely on the civilian intelligence they get from the newspapers and broadcast news networks for much of their information. Given that this more often than not conflicts with what they say, things must get quite complicated for the poor dears.

After the attacks happened they quickly came up with a party line that al Qaeda did it; even though there are many questions about whether al Qaeda even existed as an organisation at the time. This conclusion was made on the basis of the quickest evidence found, in response to a nation that was baying for somebody to blame and for somebody to strike back at. Having committed to this belief, the Whitehouse had take appropriate action and wars were started which at the time were good for the Presidency, for many large US businesses and for a perceived majority of the American people. By committing to this conclusion they closed the doors on other avenues of investigation which may well be the biggest mistake of this whole affair. Picking al Qaeda made everything simple because they were the one culprit who were never going to deny, argue, or in any way challenge the accusations.

It would be surprising if many people at the Whitehouse actually believe all of their initial conclusions are completely true any more. Some of the conspiracy theories have some bits of merit and equal amounts of bunkum and there is confusion and bad evidence everywhere. At this point in time, unless somebody who actually planned or organised the act ever comes forward, the whole thing is now buried under so much misinformation, conflicting politics and business interests that we will almost certainly never know what really happened.

It is very easy to blame Bush and the Whitehouse but in a country and culture where two people knowing a secret is two people too many, it is almost inconceivable that this was an operation planned, controlled and covered up by them. In Financial Crime 101 the first thing taught is to “Follow The Money”. In this case the money trails simply don’t lead to the government. Big business interests, arms manufacturers, oil companies, the Nation of Israel all fit the frame and religious or political extremists operate outside of normal financial interests so they end up as likely suspects too but in this case, however clever I think Bush may be in secret, I don’t really think he pushed too many buttons that day.
Many truths are out there – Your choice is probably as valid as any.