Last week, the Pentagon released video footage of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, because of a lawsuit filed by a not-for-profit watchdog organization named Judicial Watch. The Pentagon released it amid hopes from both federal officials and Judicial Watch that conspiracy theorists could finally be at ease with the new footage.
Those hopes didn't come true. Not only are conspiracy theorists among message boards and chat rooms across the internet still holding onto beliefs that the government not only knew, but planned, the September 11 attacks, they're making up new ones that coincide with the new video. They say a plane the size of Flight 77 could no way look as small as it did in the video, and it must have been a missile.
No amount of reasoning with conspiracy theorists will ever get them to stop. When you point out how disgraceful it is to the victims of 9/11, they say that you should "stop being a sheeple" and question everything the government tells you. When you ask where a missile could possibly be seen in the video, they remain silent or come at you with some link from "9/11 Truth".
Conspiracy theorists aren't only disgracing victims of 9/11, they're also making the people they usually align themselves with, namely liberals, look bad. I'm not exactly sure what makes them distrust the government so badly to insinuate that the government kills completely innocent people just to go to war with a country or obtain oil, but I'm tired of it. If Donald Rumsfeld himself came out and told the country that the government had planned it, conspiracy theorists wouldn't be satisfied. They would question why he was telling us, and then come up with new theories as to why.
So, here's my plea. Cut it out, conspiracy theorists. Pretty please?
Article comments
1 - JP
The Pentagon incident has never been one that struck me as questionable. I do question the numerous reports of explosions from people around and in the Twin Towers, however, and several other aspects of that day.
You have a point, some people do take it too far, but I don't agree with blanket statements against "conspiracy theorists," either. Just because someone thinks something's a conspiracy doesn't mean it's not one.
Further, it is in no way disrespectful to demand the complete truth about what happened that day--and in fact, it is in their honor and on their behalf that those questions *should* be asked. We as Americans show disrespect to the victims by believing the crimes were perpetrated in some way by Iraq, when even our President says they weren't involved.
2 - Russell Pickering
Casey,
I understand your points. Some "conspiracy theorists" do not have the sensitivity that is appropriate for the loss of life.
However, I feel it is truly the government that is ultimately responsible for creating the void the 9/11 researchers are trying to fill.
Remember there is not one single still photo or video of an identifiable 757 anywhere near the Pentagon that morning. That is unusual in a media town that had about 40 minutes of TV/radio coverage of the events in New York.
They held the video for all these years. There was nothing in that video to justify holding it for legal reasons. The real kicker is that they are holding 83 more.
The reason they refuse to release those is because of the language of the FOIA. It only requested video of the impact. So, when you read their final report you could get away with not releasing the other video from the facade of the Pentagon because it might not have been looking down enough to see the impact. They are playing games with words instead of killing the theories.
Also, on this official military website you can see a quote from Donald Rumsfeld in an interview with Parade Magazine where HE says it was a missile that hit the Pentagon. They have never published a retraction or an explanation.
The other reason for suspicion is that the Pentagon originally claimed that their security videos did not catch the incident. We now know that was a lie. my article
The original 5 video frames again showed nothing clearly and had the wrong time/date stamp on them. The history of the video processing shows that they are nowhere near original. scholarsfor911truth.org
This is just the obfuscation of the video evidence. I won't go into the passenger/cargo manifests that have no Arab names on them, the autopsies that don't have Arab names on them, the missing physical evidence of the aircraft they won't release etc. etc.
I believe the government has it in its power to squash conspiracies if they want to. I feel they should if they can. It would be the consideration for the victims and the families that you are seeking.
Take a minute to review my website for the details.
Russell Pickering
3 - some dude
I don't know about the pentagon or the WTC towers, but go watch some video of WTC 7 and tell me it wasn't imploded intentionally...
4 - Russell Pickering
Good point!
You can see that clip here.0n my site
5 - black
Getting ANY supporters at all for your... uhm... the Government's Big Lie, Casey? (I'm not talking about White House spokesmen or Pentagon computers, though)
6 - Chuck Sheen
The writing is on the wall and the cat is out of the bag. This has caused a major truth movement and many catfights. The bottom line is do your own research and watch every video. While I don't have time to debate or discuss peticular things here, UniversalSeed.org speaks for itself.
7 - Anonomous
If you could imagine for a moment that the government was in fact capable and in fact did propogate the events of 9/11, you might get an inkling of our frustration and anger.
Take an honest look at the evidence, wouldjya? MIT engineer Jeff King's lecture is highly informative.
Thanks.
8 - Ozzy bin Oswald
Man, you're as stupid as a bucket of sponges.
Nothing else. You're just a pathetic, unthinking doggy.
Now go lay down in a corner you quisling shill, and die.
9 - Casey
*sigh*
I've looked at all the evidence. All of it. And none of it is credible. You may disagree with the war in Iraq, hate our President with a passion, as I do, but don't keep coming up with idiotic conspiracy theories, for all our sakes.
10 - stickdog
Even if you wholeheartedly believe that 19 ragtag Arabs led by an ex-CIA asset on a dialysis machine hiding in a cave halfway around the world pulled off the biggest, most complicated and most successful terrorist strike ever all by themselves despite the best efforts of the trillion dollar a year mil/intel/justice/customs/law enforcement organizatons of the most powerful nation in world history, whose interests are you serving by promulgating this notion and cautioning those who speculate otherwise?
This is why I've never understood how any well-meaning individual could possibly spend time and energy policing those who question the events of 9/11 in ostensibly intelligent discussion groups. Even if 9/11 was not an inside job, we're far better off treating it as if it were -- because, despite the dubious official "narrative" of that day, the "9/11 changes everything" mantra has been successfully used to justify:
1) an insane invasion and occupation,
2) an Orwellian state of neverending warfare,
3) an all-out assault on our Bill of Rights and our Constitutional separation, balance and oversight of powers,
4) rampant and bald faced war profiteering and a huge increase in dubious mil/intel/security expenditures,
5) an insane doctrine of military pre-emption,
6) torture and rendition,
7) a culture of authoritarian secrecy,
8) the persecution of political dissent,
9) enraging the Muslim world and alienating the rest of the world,
10) etc., etc., etc.
while doing little or nothing to enhance our security or address the root causes OR symptoms of Islamic terror.
Our ports are no more secure than they were on 9/11, and they are being sold to an Arab government that recognized the Taliban. Our nuke plants are just as vulnerable as ever. The CAPPS II no-fly list supposedly protects us against a non-existent threat (when was the last time a US domestic flight was hijacked by a US citizen?) while actually HELPING any terrorist cell with the resources to do a few test runs before the big event. Finally, not one individual has been publicly held accountable for his or her failures on 9/11, and Homeland (Pork Barrel) Security proved its "worth" during the Katrina debacle.
All of this disgusting vileness and much more has gone down in the name of an incredibly dubious official conspiracy theory worthy of Doctor Evil and containing far more plot holes than any Ed Wood feature. And even assuming that this official conspiracy theory is remotely true, the problem of a few thousand hardcore fundamentalist Islamic terrorists would quite obviously be best addressed with a small but expertly trained team of covert infiltrators and special operations forces.
How can anyone with any political interests other than advancing elitist hegemony even further possibly find merit in policing those who rationally draw attention to dubious elements of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory -- regardless of his or her personal beliefs concerning the events of that day? Considering all the heinous shit that's been done in the name of the 9/11, why don't any non-regressives who still believe the official conspiracy theory at least have the common decency to keep quiet about it?
11 - Casey Lunkley
Here's what I don't get though, StickDog. You people are making the mistake of believing that our government is competent enough to pull something like this off. You're also making the mistake of believing the government could keep something as massive as this a secret. They can't even keep wiretapping a secret!
And why now? Why weren't there all these types of conspiracy theorists with the Oklahoma City Bombing? Or the first WTC attack? The government was spending loads on military and intelligence then too, and they had no idea it was going to go down.
(By the way, I'm guessing you never heard of the memo the Bush administration recieved saying that bin Laden was "determined" to attack inside the United States. I think that goes to show that intelligence WAS being used.
12 - stickdog
Who had better means, motive & opportunity to pull this off --
1) 19 ragtag Arab terrorists acting alone,
2) 19 ragtag Arabs with help from some professional black ops experts and some people in high places, or
3) some professional black ops experts and some people in high places?
To me, it's important to keep asking the 100% legitimate and still completely unanswered questions about 9/11 regardless of how you answer this question.
The 100% legitimate questions that I'm talking about are things like this and this and this.
I advocate highlighting all legitimate questions about 9/11 because regardless of whether we're talking about the Big Lie or a lot of smaller cover ups, it's good to get people questioning 9/11 in rational ways, if only to force the government to finally release the information and clear up the myriad inconsistencies it should have in the first place! Furthermore, with all the crap that's happened in the name of "9/11 changed everything," I fail to understand why anybody (other than a dyed-in-the-wool regressive) still believing the official mythology wouldn't at least have the common decency to keep quiet about it.
I'm talking about asking, why did the WTC-7 building fall anyway? Why was NIST unable to recover A SINGLE SCRAP of metal from WTC-7 for their recently released metallurgical analysis? And why did the only WTC-7 metal ever studied (two pieces examined by FEMA metallurgists) show unexplained signs of high temperature sulfidation?
Why wasn't Bush evacuated from that school? Why did he keep reading about a pet goat for a good 10 minutes AFTER Card (supposedly) told him "America is under attack"? Why did he stay there for another 15+ minutes and even hold a press conference there, sitting like a duck just 5 miles from the Sarasota International Airport at a widely publicized photo op surrounded by a bunch of at-risk toddlers? What was the Secret Service doing -- picking their noses?
What was Rumsfeld doing in the 75+ minutes after 9:05 EDT that it took for him to arrive at his command post that morning? Why did General Myers have such a cloudy memory about the events of 9/11 when he testified to the Senate just two days later? Why did he give two contradictory stories about when the military first got planes up in response to 9/11 during this same Senate hearing, stories that were later contradicted by NORAD twice and then rewritten again by the 9/11 Commission?
What caused the seismic explosion signature in the vicinity of Shankstown at 10:06 EDT even though the 9/11 Commission swears that ALL other physical evidence proves that Flight 93 crashed at 10:03 EDT?
Why did Jeb Bush and federal agents seize records from Huffman Aviation -- the Florida flight school of Mohammed Atta and other purported 9/11 hijackers -- in the middle of the night following the attacks of September 11th and load them onto a C-130? And how did Jeb Bush know just hours after the attack exactly where to look?
How can simply asking all of these 100% legitimate questions possibly hurt anyone but those who were, at best, criminally negligent on 9/11 AND in their response to it?
13 - stickdog
About keeping a secret, since when has keeping any truly black op a secret been any sort of problem for US intelligence?
I mean, how long did we manage to keep the Manhattan Project secret?
MK Ultra?
The Gulf of Tonkin incident?
Operation Northwoods?
If this was a black op (and I'm not saying that is 100% certain), it definitely wasn't perfectly executed or else there wouldn't be so many obvious questions about it.
14 - Kyle
I believe it is a conspiracy and i will stick to it until the govnt releases the videos that other areas shot of the "757" that crashed into the Pentagon. ANd to show my how the lack of damage was trully caused by it. And the lamp posts and how the glass that was shattered is right in front of it and not further away like what wouldve happeded. and why the lawn wasnt damaged cause either way the plane wouldve came in, it wouldve damaged the lawn. And many many more reasons why. Until you can convince me, i'll believe you. Everyone deserves to know
15 - t richardson
ok so the conspiracy theorists may over exaggerate things but........there are too many unanswered questions about 9/11, dont you think the american citizens deserve their questions answered?? ive researched the events of 9/11 for the past year and some things just dont add up, there are too many 'why this' & 'why that' for it all just to be consipracy theories!!!!!!