The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts (Alexander Cockburn)

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How They Let the Guilty Parties of 9/11 Slip Off the Hook

Alexander Cockburn -- ZNet

Sept. 10, 2006 -- You trip over one fundamental idiocy of the 9/11 conspiracy nuts -- the ones who say Bush and Cheney masterminded the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- in the first paragraph of the opening page of the book by one of their high priests, David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor. “In many respects,” Griffin writes, “the strongest evidence provided by critics of the official account involves the events of 9/11 itself.… In light of standard procedures for dealing with hijacked airplanes … not one of these planes should have reached its target, let alone all three of them.”

The operative word here is “should.” One characteristic of the nuts is that they have a devout, albeit preposterous belief in American efficiency, thus many of them start with the racist premise that “Arabs in caves” weren’t capable of the mission. They believe that military systems work the way Pentagon press flacks and aerospace salesmen say they should work. They believe that at 8.14 a.m., when AA flight 11 switched off its radio and transponder, an FAA flight controller should have called the National Military Command center and NORAD. They believe, citing reverently (this is from high priest Griffin) “the U.S. Air Force’s own website,” that an F-15 could have intercepted AA flight 11 “by 8.24, and certainly no later than 8.30.”

They appear to have read no military history, which is too bad because if they did they’d know that minutely planned operations -- let alone responses to an unprecedented emergency -- screw up with monotonous regularity, by reason of stupidity, cowardice, venality, weather and all the other whims of providence.

According to the minutely prepared plans of the Strategic Air Command, an impending Soviet attack would have prompted the missile silos in North Dakota to open, and the ICBMs to arc towards Moscow and kindred targets. The tiny number of test launches actually attempted all failed, whereupon SAC gave up testing. Was it badly designed equipment, human incompetence, defense contractor venality or … CONSPIRACY? (In that case, presumably, a Communist conspiracy, as outlined by ancestors of the present nuts, ever intent on identifying those who would stab America in the back.)

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