The conspiracy theoretist in me suspects, that the most outragous conspiracy theories are there, to dicredit more mundane and realistic conspiracy theories.

Like if THEY are able to blow up the WTC by explosives placed there, why did THEY not pretend Islamic terroists have blown up the WTC with explosives and kept everything else the same. In that theory the planes are just an extra effort, that gives THEM no benefit whatsoever.

But it makes people inclined to distrust the goverment think about and discuss the mechanics of buildings hit by planes and distracts them from thinking about things like how the goverment investigators found their suspects and such.

Indeed. The strangest thing about any government conspiracy is their strangely effective way of covering it up afterwards...

arcosh - that wouldn't allow them to restrict air travel nearly as well, see? Among all the crazy parts of the theory, that one stands out as making a degree of sense in context.

I always thought, that the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq what the purpose of the conspiracy, or the erosion of civil rights, or the destruction of important data on the Enron scandal or other secret documents, that were stored in a section of the Twin Towers (IIRC it was one minor building next to them, that was damaged along with them and had been demolished afterwards). The last one is the only consistent reason so far that i have heared, why it would be neccessary to collapse the towers, all others would have been served as well by planes just hitting them and doing a lot of fire damage, without a collapse.

You can BTW make a smaller and more plausible document destruction theory, if you state, that the ducemnts have been needlessly destroyed during salvage operations, because some quick thinking conspirator saw a good opportunity. You'd need only one corrupt official to make a dubious demolition decision and a handfull of accessories, who need to be convinced, that an investigation would be frivolous, by one way or an other.

Even if air travel regulations are an end* of the conspiracy, you would not have needed collapsed towers for it.

* propably they are paid by the airlines, because the airlines want a liquid ban as a ploy, to make passangers hand luggage lighter.

I think this is it. I remember arguing the JFK assassination with my brother and one thing I noticed, and have noticed about every conspiracy theory since then, is that embedded in them is the hope that there is a plan. That it isn't possible for some random event to completely shatter our daily experience. They don't want to live in a world where a random nut with a rifle can kill the president. Or a random nut with a semiautomatic military derived rifle can shoot their way into a school and kill a couple dozen children. Or that a group of twenty dedicated but twisted individuals can hijack airplanes and use them as weapons

How much safer, how much more comfortable the world is, when every disaster was planned by someone who is actually in control. Sure, they're evil. But at least it isn't random, at least there is control.

Eta Carinae will explode. If its poles are aligned with Earth (they aren't), it will irradiate the planet and kill everything that is not an underground bacterium. A meteor slammed into the Yucatan and wiped out the dinosaurs. A lone gunman killed our president (three times). A nutcase shot my Representative through the head. The world is not planned and control is an illusion.

And as far at the 9/11 truthers are concerned, my uncle is an AA pilot and knew the crews who went down. My aunt had an office in the E ring of the Pentagon at the time. It happened.