The Science of Conspiracy Theories

9/11 Conspiracy Theories

Author's notes:

Conspiracy theories are fascinating and the bread and butter of tabloid magazines and TV. This series explores these theories in a logical and scientific manner.

Conspiracy theories have been around throughout human history. Some, like the Kennedy Assassination, have been debated and written about ad infinitum. As a matter of fact, most of the major conspiracy theories have evoked documentaries where these popular opinions have been regurgitated and explored in detail. Many of these conspiracy ideas have crept up because of political ideology or even religious fervor. Almost all great events, including wars, assassinations, terrorist attacks, and murders of famous people, have spawned conspiracy theories. These populous reactions are the life bread of tabloid magazines and TV shows. In most cases, however, they remain as knee jerking speculation without any verifiable evidence. I wish to take a different approach and examine them from a scientific viewpoint. For this reason I will concentrate on the more recent events because the science is more attainable.

All rights reserved Copyright @ 2015. No offense to anyone or anything is intended. Much of this is my opinion, but I have made a great effort to verify the facts.

9/11 Conspiracy Theories

It's hard to figure out where to start here. It seems that all sorts of wild conspiracy theories bloomed right after the 9/11 attacks. I assume that readers are familiar with the event itself. Two commercial jetliners--American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001. American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon and United Airline Flight 93 was brought down in a field near Shanksville, Pa. 2,996 lives were lost, including 19 hijackers.

As it turns out, many events before and after the attack lend some credence to conspiracy concepts. However, some of these theories can be dismissed easily. One is that NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, issued a stand down order and deliberately prevented any intervention in the attacks. Yes, I know that Dick Chaney was responsible for NORAD. However, despite Dick, better known as Darth Vader, having something to do with it, NORAD was not designed to prevent an internal attack. This military branch was created to intercept Soviet bombers from invading Canada and United States. Soviet bombers don't take off in the Unites States. They come from Russia over the North Pole.

The fact that only 14 fighter jets were on alert in the 48 states is not surprising. We weren't at war with anyone. Think about the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. The United States military gets careless and lethargic between wars. That's because most Americans hate war, as was proved by the extensive demonstrations about the Vietnam War.

Supposedly, there was a female F16 pilot that was ordered to take down Flight 93. She didn't have ammunition. Fortunately for her, the plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, and it wasn't shot down with a missile either because she didn't have missiles. The passengers were able to force the terrorist pilot to ditch the plane into the ground. The F16 pilot would have had to give her life to save others on the ground, unless she tried to use the Nazi pilots' method of trying to crash their fighter planes into the B17 bombers over Germany. The plan was to clip the tail off of the bomber and then bail out.

A foreknowledge theory is involved with every major event like this. Many people, especially in Europe, came to the conclusion that the United States, and president Bush in particular, knew that these attacks were going to happen and didn't do anything about them. They figured that Bush used this attack to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. We can dismiss the Iraq invasion idea because the reason for that had nothing to do with 9/11. The invasion of Iraq was blamed on the possibility that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. If Saddam did have WMD's he gave his chemical weapons to Assad in Syria and any nuclear technology to Iran. The American army didn't find any in Iraq. Bush and him administration can be blamed for this fiasco.