More People Think the Government Was Behind 9/11

I'm not making this up. A new survey:

More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll. Was 9/11 an 'inside job'?

I remember a couple of years ago arguing with a French friend about this. You know they've thought it all along, and it really made me mad that he was taking the theory seriously, that the Bush administration was behind the 9/11 attacks. It was crazy, malicious, impossible.

But now, after seeing how it's all played out, more than a third of Americans -- not Frenchmen, but Americans -- think that's probably how it happened. Imagine: we live in a time when a good proportion of the population actually believes that our national leaders would slaughter thousands of innocent American citizens, in order to gain power for themselves.

Well, look at yesterday's Washington Post, telling us that the 9/11 commission almost called for an investigation of the Pentagon's lies:

Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.

You've got to wonder: why would they lie to the commission that was investigating the terrorist attacks, unless they had something to hide?

Look at the new Vanity Fair report, going through the NORAD audiotapes, catching the Vice President lying to the press about giving the order to shoot down Flight 93. Caught him with his pants down.

Cheney echoed, "The significance of saying to a pilot that you are authorized to shoot down a plane full of Americans is, a, you know, it's an order that had never been given before." And it wasn't on 9/11, either.

Why would he lie?

I'm not saying that 9/11 was a Bush administration job, don't get me wrong. But there's no doubt that they lied about it, and you wonder why. It is mind-boggling to see that more than a third of Americans suspect that our own government might have committed an act of terrorism on American soil. Not just that it would do something horrible to its own people under some vague hypothetical conditions, but that it did.

From the news story about the survey:

Widespread resentment and alienation toward the national government appear to be fueling a growing acceptance of conspiracy theories about the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
...
Seventy percent of people who give credence to these theories also say they've become angrier with the federal government than they used to be.

Thirty-six percent of respondents overall said it is "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them "because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East."

I'm sorry, but I don't think America has ever been like this before.

University of Florida law professor Mark Fenster, author of the book "Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture," said the poll's findings reflect public anger at the unpopular Iraq war, realization that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction and growing doubts of the veracity of the Bush administration.

"What has amazed me is not that there are conspiracy theories, but that they didn't seem to be getting any purchase among the American public until the last year or so," Fenster said. "Although the Iraq war was not directly related to the 9/11 attacks, people are now looking back at 9/11 with much more skepticism than they used to."

The current administration has shown enormous expertise in persuasion, getting people to believe one thing after another that was just not true. Often, they don't even really pretend they're telling the truth, they just say something over and over until people forget it's wrong. They have found just the right combination of hypocritical self-righteousness and unfocused fear -- the American people now jump anytime they're told there's a shadow. Don't even have to actually see it.

Like, did you see the survey last week that found that half of Americans still think Saddam had weapons of mass destruction? Tell me how that happens -- you can say it proves people are stupid, I think it proves how skillful the administration is at manipulating the public.

Those "terror alerts" before the election: a masterpiece, unbelievable. These guys are tops in their craft.

But they've pulled the same tricks too many times now, and some people are starting to doubt everything. That's not necessarily any better, or at least any more accurate. We don't know if the Bush administration was behind 9/11 or not. And that, in itself, is terrible.