G. Holmgren author
The Looniest of all 9/11 Conspiracy Theories
Sat Nov 1 23:31:11 2003
69.43.13.52

The looniest of all 9/11 conspiracy theories

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by Gerard Holmgren

Astute observers of history are aware that for every notable event there
will usually be at least one ,often several wild conspiracy theories which
spring up around it. "The CIA killed Hendrix"; "the Pope had John Lennon
murdered"; "Hitler was half Werewolf"; "Space aliens replaced Nixon with a
clone," etc, etc. The bigger the event, the more ridiculous and more
numerous are the fanciful rantings which circulate in relation to it.

So its hardly surprising that the events of Sept. 11, 2001, have spawned
their fair share of these ludicrous fairy tales. And as always, there is --
sadly -- a small but gullible percentage of the population eager to lap up
these tall tales, regardless of facts or rational analysis.

One of the wilder stories circulating about Sept 11 (and one that has
attracted something of a cult following amongst conspiracy buffs) is that it
was carried out by 19 fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil
genius named Osama bin Laden, with no apparent motivation other than that
they "hate our freedoms."

Never a group of people to be bothered by facts, the perpetrators of this
cartoon fantasy have constructed an elaborately woven web of delusions and
unsubstantiated hearsay in order to promote this garbage across the Internet
and the media to the extent that a number of otherwise rational people have
actually fallen under its spell.

Normally I don't even bother debunking this kind of junk, but the effect
that this paranoid myth is beginning to have requires a little rational
analysis, in order to consign it to the same rubbish bin as all such silly
conspiracy theories.

These crackpots even contend that the extremist Bush regime was caught
unawares by the attacks, had no hand in organizing them and actually would
have stopped them if it had been able. Blindly ignoring the stand down of
the U.S. Air Force, the insider trading on airline stocks (linked to the
CIA), the complicit behavior of Bush on the morning of the attacks, the
controlled demolition of the WTC, the firing of a missile into the Pentagon
and a host of other documented proofs that the Bush regime was behind the
attacks, the conspiracy theorists stick doggedly to a silly story about 19
Arab hijackers somehow managing to commandeer four planes simultaneously and
fly them around U.S. airspace for nearly two hours, crashing them into
important buildings, without the U.S. intelligence services having any idea
that it was coming, and without the Air Force knowing what to do.

The daunting task of analysis

The huge difficulties with such a stupid story force them to invent even
more preposterous stories to distract from its core silliness, and thus the
tale has escalated into a mythic fantasy of truly gargantuan proportions.

It's difficult to apply rational analysis to such unmitigated stupidity, but
that is the task which I take on in this article. However, it should be
noted that one of the curious characteristics of conspiracy theorists is
that they effortlessly change their so called evidence in response to each
aspect which is debunked. As soon as one delusion is unmasked, they simply
invent another to replace it and deny that the first ever existed.
Eventually, when they have turned full circle through this endlessly
changing fantasy fog , they then reinvent the original delusion and deny
that you ever debunked it, thus beginning the circle once more. This
technique is known as "the fruit loop" and saves the conspiracy theorist
from ever having to see any of their ideas through to their (ill)logical
conclusions.

The fruit loop

According to the practitioners of the fruit loop, 19 Arabs took over the
four planes by subduing the passengers and crew through the use of guns,
knives, box cutters and gas, and then used electronic guidance systems which
they had smuggled on board to fly the planes to their targets.

The suspension of disbelief required for this outrageous concoction is only
for the hard core conspiracy theorist. For a start, they conveniently skip
over the awkward fact that there weren't any Arabs on the planes.

If there were, one must speculate that they somehow got on board without
being filmed by any of the security cameras and without being registered on
the passenger lists. But the curly question of how they are supposed to have
got on board is all too mundane for the exciting world of the conspiracy
theorist.

Who's on first?

With vague mumblings that they must have been using false ID (but never
specifying which IDs they are alleged to have used, or how these were traced
to their real identities), they quickly bypass this problem, to relate
exciting and sinister tales about how some of the fictitious fiends were
actually searched before boarding because they looked suspicious.

However, as inevitably happens with any web of lies, this simply paints them
into an even more difficult corner. How are they supposed to have gotten on
board with all that stuff if they were searched? And if they used gas in a
confined space, they would have been affected themselves unless they also
had masks in their luggage.

"Excuse me sir, why do you have a boxcutter, a gun, a container of gas, a
gas mask and an electronic guidance unit in your luggage?"

"A present for your grandmother? Very well sir, on you get."

"Very strange," thinks the security officer. "That's the fourth Arabic man
without an Arabic name who just got on board with a knife, gun or boxcutter
and gas mask. And why does that security camera keep flicking off every time
one these characters shows up? Must be one of those days I guess..."

Asking any of these basic questions to a conspiracy theorist is likely to
cause a sudden leap to the claim that we know that they were on board
because they left a credit card trail for the tickets they had purchased and
cars they had rented. So, if they used credit cards that identified them,
how does that reconcile with the claim that they used false IDs to get on to
the plane?

But by this time, the fruit loop is in full swing, as the conspiracy
theorist tries to stay one jump ahead of this annoying and awkward rational
analysis. They will allege that the hijackers' passports were found at the
crash scenes. "So there!" they exalt triumphantly, their fanatical faces
lighting up with that deranged look of one who has just experienced a
revelation of questionable sanity.

Hmm? So they got on board with false IDs but took their real passports with
them? However, by this time the fruit loop has been completely
circumnavigated, and the conspiracy theorist exclaims impatiently, "Who said
anything about false IDs? We know what seats they were sitting in! Their
presence is well documented!"

And so the whole loop starts again. "Well, why aren't they on the passenger
lists?"

"You numbskull! They assumed the identities of other passengers!" And so
on...

Finally, out of sheer fascination with this circular method of creative
delusion, the rational sceptic will allow them to get away with this loop,
in order to move on to the next question, and see what further delights
await us in the unraveling of this marvelously stupid story.

"Uh, how come their passports survived fiery crashes that completely
incinerated the planes and all the passengers?"

The answer of course is that its just one of those strange coincidences,
those little quirks of fate that do happen from time to time. You know, like
the same person winning the lottery four weeks in a row. The odds are
astronomical, but these things do happen...

This is another favourite deductive method of the conspiracy theorist. The
"improbability drive," in which they decide upon a conclusion without any
evidence whatsoever to support it, and then continually speculate a series
of wildly improbable events and unbelievable coincidences to support it,
shrugging off the implausibility of each event with the vague assertion that
sometimes the impossible happens (just about all the time in their world).

There is a principle called "Occam's razor" which suggests that in the
absence of evidence to the contrary, the simplest explanation is most likely
to be correct. Conspiracy theorists hate Occam's razor.

Hijacking 101

Having for the sake of amusement, allowed them to get away with the silly
story of the 19 invisible Arabs, we move on to the question of how they are
supposed to have taken over the planes.

Hijacking a plane is not an easy thing to do. Hijacking it without the pilot
being able to alert ground control is nearly impossible. The pilot has only
to punch in a four digit code to alert ground control to a hijacking.
Unconcerned with the awkward question of plausibility, the conspiracy buffs
maintain that on that Sept 11, the invisible hijackers took over the plane
by the rather crude method of threatening people with boxcutters and knives,
and spraying gas (after they had attached their masks, obviously), but
somehow took control of the plane without the crew first getting a chance to
punch in the hijacking code. Not just on one plane, but on all four. At this
point in the tale, the conspiracy theorist is again forced to call upon the
services of the improbability drive.

So now that our incredibly lucky hijackers have taken control of the planes,
all four pilots fly them with breathtaking skill and certainty to their
fiery end -- all four unflinching in their steely resolve for a swift
meeting with Allah.

Apart from their psychotic hatred of "our freedoms," it was their fanatical
devotion to Islam which enabled them to summon up the iron will to do this.
Which is strange, because according to another piece of hearsay peddled by
the conspiracy buffs, these guys actually went out drinking and womanizing
the night before their great martyrdom, even leaving their Korans in the
bar -- really impeccable Islamic behavior -- and then got up at 5 a.m. the
next morning to pull off the greatest covert operation in history.

This also requires us to believe that they were even clear headed enough to
learn how to fly the huge planes by reading flight manuals in Arabic in the
car on the way to the airport. We know this because they supposedly left the
flight manuals there for us to find.

It gets better. Their practical training had allegedly been limited to
Cessnas and flight simulators, but this was no barrier to the unflinching
certainty with which they took over the planes and skillfully guided them to
their doom.

If they are supposed to have done their flight training with these tools,
which would be available just about anywhere in the world, its not clear why
they would have decided to risk blowing their cover to U.S. intelligence
services by doing the training in Florida, rather than somewhere in the
Middle East, but such reasoning is foreign to the foggy world of the
conspiracy theorist, too trapped in the constant rotation of the mental
fruit loop to make their unsubstantiated fabrications seem even
semi-believable.

A Ryder truck with wings?

Having triumphantly established a circular delusion in support of the
mythical Arabs, the conspiracy theorist now confronts the difficult question
of why there's nothing left of the planes. Anybody who has seen the
endlessly replayed footage of the second plane going into the WTC will
realize that the plane was packed with explosives. Planes do not and cannot
blow up into nothing in that manner when they crash.

Did the mythical Arabs also haul a huge heap of explosives on board, and
manage to deploy them in such a manner that they went off in the exact
instant of the crash, completely vapourizing the plane?

This is a little difficult even for the conspiracy theorist, who at this
point decides that its easier to invent new laws of physics in order to keep
the delusion rolling along.

There weren't any explosives. It wasn't an inside job. The plane blew up
into nothing from its exploding fuel load! Remarkable!

Sluggishly combustible jet fuel, which is basically kerosene and which burns
at a maximum temperature of around 800 C, has suddenly taken on the
qualities of a ferociously explosive demolition agent, vapourizing 65 tons
of aircraft into a puff of smoke. Never mind that a plane of that size
contains around 15 tons of steel and titanium, of which even the melting
points are about double that of the maximum combustion temperature of
kerosene -- let alone the boiling point -- which is what would be required
to vapourize a plane. And then there's about 50 tons of aluminium to be
accounted for.

In excess of 15 pounds of metal was vapourized for each gallon of kerosene.

For the conspiracy theorist, such inconvenient facts are vaguely dismissed
as "mumbo jumbo."

This convenient little phrase is their answer to just about anything factual
or logical. Like a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of a hat, they suddenly
become fanatically insistent about the devastating explosive qualities of
kerosene, something hitherto completely unknown to science, but just
discovered by them, at that very moment. Blissfully ignoring the fact that
never before or since in aviation history has a plane vapourized into
nothing from an exploding fuel load, the conspiracy theorist relies upon
Hollywood images, where the effects are always larger than life, and
certainly larger than the intellects of these cretins.

"Its a well known fact that planes blow up into nothing on impact," they
state with pompous certainty. "Watch any Bruce Willis movie."

"Care to provide any documented examples? If it's a well known fact, then
presumably this well known fact springs from some kind of documentation --
other than Bruce Willis movies?"

At this point the mad but cunning eyes of the conspiracy theorist will
narrow as they sense the corner that they have backed themselves into, and
plan their escape by means of another stunning backflip.

"Ah, but planes have never crashed into buildings before, so there's no way
of telling," they counter with a sly grin.

Well, actually planes have crashed into buildings before (and since). None
of them vapourized into almost nothing.

"But not big planes, with that much fuel," they shriek in hysterical denial.

Or that much metal to vapourize.

"Yes but not hijacked planes!"

"Are you suggesting that whether the crash is deliberate or accidental
affects the combustion qualities of the fuel?"

"Now you're just being silly."

Although collisions with buildings are rare, planes frequently crash into
mountains, streets, other aircraft, nosedive into the ground, or have bombs
planted aboard them, and don't vapourize into nothing. What's so special
about a tower that's mostly glass? But by now, the conspiracy theorist has
once again sailed happily around the fruit loop. "Its a well documented fact
that planes explode into nothing on impact."

Effortlessly weaving back and forth between the position that its a "well
known fact" and that "its never happened before, so we have nothing to
compare it to," the conspiracy theorist has now convinced themselves (if not
too many other people) that the WTC plane was not loaded with explosives,
and that the instant vapourization of the plane in a massive fireball was
the same as any other plane crash you might care to mention. Round and round
the fruit loop...

The "new math"

But the hurdles which confront the conspiracy theorist are many, and they
are now forced to implement even more creative uses for the newly discovered
shockingly destructive qualities of kerosene. They have to explain how the
Arabs also engineered the elegant vertical collapse of both the WTC towers,
and for this awkward fact the easiest counter is to simply deny that it was
a controlled demolition, and claim that the buildings collapsed from fire
caused by the