Yeah But...

The "Yeah But" page, also known as Frequently Said Stuff, attempts to respond to a few common things that people say to object to all this government complicity stuff.

1. Yeah but, Osama bin Laden already confessed! Well, maybe. And if he did, what would it prove? I mean, the one video where he supposedly confessed, he looks like he weighs about twice as much as usual and has a new face. That video is widely suspected to be a fake. I think that was the one that the military miraculously found, playing in somebody's TV, when they invaded their house, probably in Iraq, which had nothing to do with Osama or 9/11 in the first place. It's a fishy video. But you do have other indications, like supposedly an intercept from September 9 where he tells his mother something big is going to happen in two days and then you won't hear from me for a while. So I'll tell you what bothers me: On the one hand, the government complicity theorists are saying that the US government did it, and on the other hand they're also saying the US had foreknowledge of the attacks from specific advance intelligence, and that specific intelligence was about Al Qaeda. Those two things seem contradictory, UNLESS — are you ready? — both things are true, meaning bin Laden, who was created by us, is still working for us, never left us, and there's a US-Al Qaeda partnership going on, shady style. And we do have the evidence of financial ties, Pakistan's intelligence agency (supported by the CIA) providing money, the US involved in funneling money from heroin operations to Al Qaeda (see the Sibel Edmonds testimony), so as crazy as that might sound (and yeah it sounds pretty crazy) it might be the only thing that makes sense from the weird bunch of facts we have at our disposal.
2. Yeah but, a conspiracy like that would involve so many people, somebody would have talked! Well, people are talking. And they're suffering as a result. Sibel Edmonds, for example, the FBI translator who not only testified for the 9/11 Commission but went to Congress with what she knew; she received a gag order for her troubles. Or you've got Tony Shaffer, who worked for Able Danger, the US Special Operations Command project that identified and started tracking four of the hijackers as terrorist threats two years before 9/11. He was prevented from sharing his information with the FBI before 9/11, and when he told the story after 9/11 he was suspended and had his security clearance revoked. His testimony was ignored by the 9/11 Commission too. A lot of testimony before the Commission indicates a lot of funny business, and it all got left out of the official report. You've got pissed off FBI agents whose investigations were squashed. You've got firefighters claiming to have found the black boxes from the WTC planes. You've got firefighters and lots of other people who saw and heard bombs at the WTC. Many testified; all were ignored. The actual core group of planners might not be such a big group, and they'd be a tight group of the most ambitious and ruthless people in the world; these guys would never talk, they'd have no incentive to. But other people are talking and their words are being suppressed. It's there, though, if you look for it. And more may yet come out. But you also have to realize a lot of people might think something was funny that day, say a fighter jet pilot who thinks his orders were weird, but they wouldn't have enough information to make any kind of particular case. So what are they going to do, risk their careers and go against all their training to go out on some limb where the most likely result is they get branded loonies or traitors? Not when they see what's happened to people like Sibel Edmonds and Tony Shaffer.
3. Yeah but, that nice Nova show on PBS said how the WTC collapsed and it all sounded really plausible. Agreed, they make it sound plausible. They do so by bending and omitting and inventing many facts. They essentially reproduced Eagar's pancake theory, which starts from the conclusion and fits "facts" around it, e.g., the steel must have softened enough for it to buckle, and that could happen around 1300 degrees, therefore the fire must have been about 1300 degrees. But there is no evidence it was that hot, and much evidence to the contrary (e.g., firemen at the 78th floor saying the fires were small and controllable). And if they were that hot, for any of the steel to reach that temperature would have taken much longer than the buildings even stood after the crash, because steel is a great conductor of heat and the whole structure would act as a big heat sink. In August 2004 NIST took a scale reproduction of a WTC floor and put it in a 35 foot furnace for two hours in an attempt to reproduce the kind of buckling they required in this theory. It didn't happen. So they threw out the test results and invented a computer simulation with unpublished parameters; in other words they just cooked the model with secret numbers until it collapsed, without regard for reality. Remember, "Just because a scientist said it doesn't mean it's science." Eagar is with MIT; MIT relies very heavily on the military for its research funding. I'm just saying.
4. Yeah but, people saw a plane hit the Pentagon! Well, they saw something. Some people say they saw an airliner, others say they saw a very small plane, others say they saw a missile, and others say they saw two planes. One investigator tried to track down the people who said they saw an airliner, and upon further questioning, not one of them actually said they saw it hit. They said they saw an airliner in the sky, and then they heard an explosion. There's room for some funny business in there. But yeah, the Pentagon issue is basically one where the physical evidence (damage inconsistent with plane hit; flight data indicate plane too high) conflicts with eyewitnesses testimony. So we have a Groucho Marx situation: "Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" This question divides the so-called 9/11 Truth community. To me, what hit it isn't as important as that it got hit, over half an hour after Tower Two got hit, with no fighter jets over the capital. Other things that worry me more include the flying skill involved when the supposed pilot was Hani Hanjour and the unnecessarily difficult targeting of the best protected and least important wedge, including the quite leisurely three-minute spiral descent indicating lack of concern over interception. So, missile or plane, take your pick, the official story smells funny no matter which way you slice it.
5. Yeah but, no way! The government just wouldn't do that! You gotta ask yourself one question: couldn't that be wishful thinking? It seems to me there are two things going on in this country. One is we all get taught in school how government is supposed to work and that our government is basically good although a few bad apples might make some mistakes. The media generally echo that to us our whole lives. The other thing is the unrelenting swampfest of secret dirty dealings that is what is actually going on on a daily basis. We have a limited capacity for seeing this second thing because of the first thing (our common brainwashing by school and media). You have to go way out of your way to find out the nasty business the government has gotten up to, at every level, and guess what, it gets pretty nasty. Dirty, lying, cheating, stealing, murdering nasty. Now, 9/11 would pretty much be the topper, but can you really say it's beyond the pale? No. You can't. And if you can avoid any assumptions either way and try to look at the evidence with as open a mind as possible, I think it's hard to avoid the conclusion, at the very least, that there are some pretty good questions that need answering. Also, it's not as if there haven't been precedents. Google Reichstag. Google Operation Northwoods. Google Gulf of Tonkin.
6. Yeah but, I'm a man of science, a skeptic, and I've heard it all before. I get this one a lot. Like I'm not a man of science. Like I'm a gullible child. I tell them a bit about the evidence but they're not listening. The second they grasp the concept that I'm questioning the official story, and that there is a conspiracy involved, they get that condescending smirk and their heads start shaking with tired wisdom. Then they tell me about some unrelated crazy thing they heard and how it was pure garbage. Or they'll hold forth about how these things never hold up under true scientific light. Or they simply say "Nah, I'm not convinced." Like, without even listening. Well. I've got something to say to you guys: HEY SMUGFACE! I'm a skeptic too! And this is science! It's the official story that doesn't hold up! DO SOME RESEARCH! There. I've got that off my chest. I feel much better now.
7. Yeah but, a lot of these conspiracy guys believe in aliens and stuff and they are nut jobs. I know. What can I tell you? Think of it this way: the official story is also a conspiracy theory. It's a conspiracy theory involving 19 fanatical yet lapdance-loving Muslims who couldn't fly Cessnas yet managed to pull off amazing aeronatical maneuvers and defeat several laws of physics and the most sophisticated defense system in history; it's about as nutty as they get. Don't be a sucker for that one, either.