A 9/11 conspiracy diary currently sits on the recommended list. The gullibility of some Kossacks is amazing, and everyone who recommended the diary should be as embarrassed as the proud new owner of freshly harvested snake oil.
The diary's hook is a book by 9/11 Commission author John Farmer, called The Ground Truth: The Story Behind America's Defense on 9/11. The diarist attempts to use important questions raised by this book to cast doubt on the legitimacy of accepting the official account of the origin of the attacks themselves. Unfortunately, conspiracy hawkers are given plenty of rope to hang themselves by Houghton Mifflin's poorly written and incredibly irresponsible description:
Tape recordings, transcripts, and contemporaneous records that had been classified have since been declassified, and the inspector general's investigations of government conduct have been completed. Drawing on his knowledge of those sources, as well as his years as an attorney in public and private practice, Farmer reconstructs the truth of what happened on that fateful day and the disastrous circumstances that allowed it: the institutionalized disconnect between what those on the ground knew and what those in power did. He reveals terrifyingly and illuminatingly the key moments in the years, months, weeks, and days that preceded the attacks, then descends almost in real time through the attacks themselves, revealing them as they have never before been seen.
Ultimately Farmer builds the inescapably convincing case that the official version not only is almost entirely untrue but serves to create a false impression of order and security. The ground truth that Farmer captures tells a very different story a story that is doomed to be repeated unless the systemic failures he reveals are confronted and remedied.
Yet Farmer's book is not calling into question the circumstances of the attacks themselves. As the diarist himself notes far down toward the bottom of his diary, Farmer himself does not call into question the fact that Al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks on 9/11. Farmer's book, rather, focuses on the very important fact that the Bush Administration was woefully unprepared for a terrorist attack, and then tried like hell to cover its ass afterward in order to escape blame or scrutiny for its lack of preparedness. The book calls into question the accounts of events that transpired as the attacks were occurring and immediately afterward, that would call into question the readiness not only of air traffic control and first responders, but more importantly of the upper echelons of government itself. Amazon's Canadian site has a much more responsible description of the book's content:
The story that John Farmer, Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, tells is one of monumental bureaucratic failure encompassing our entire government. Farmer exposes "the story behind the story", as the false congressional testimony given by an array of agencies and individuals, as well as misleading reports in the media culminated in the Commission staff's dawning recognition that the public had been seriously misled about what occurred during the morning of the attacks. What emerges with painful, stunning clarity is that "at some level of the government, at some point in time...there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened." The implications of this are profound. And Farmer argues that these lies have prevented real and necessary changes that would make our nation more secure and responsive to subsequent threats and catastrophes--domestic, man-made and natural. Farmer pulls no punches in drawing these conclusions, or making explicit what will have to change to make our nation safe. There is a dispassionate beauty in Farmer's writing and the way in which he allows the facts of this story to unfold. He takes the readers through these terrifying events and revelations with calm, impartial and utterly compelling relentlessness. "The Ground Truth" is the definitive account of all the needs to happen following the tragedy of September 11th.
Not quite as shocking now, is it? Questions about coverups and ass-coverings on September 11th and directly afterward should be asked, and investigations should certainly ensue. But using these questions to promulgate crazy conspiracy theories about the attacks themselves demonstrates severe gullibility at best, and deliberate attempts to deceive at worst.
The fallacy inherent here is the same fallacy used by creationists to attempt to discredit evolution or basic geologic time. It goes something like this:
"Well, science doesn't understand this little detail about evolution/geology/cosmology. How can we trust any of it? GOD must be the answer!"
Similarly, goes this fallacious logic, if Bush/Cheney lied about their competence in dealing with the situation on 9/11, and lied about the reasons for invading Iraq, then surely they could have planned and plotted the destruction of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Makes perfect sense, right?
DailyKos is a reality-based community. That means accepting science, and accepting occam's razor. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. If you choose to disbelieve the widely accepted version of events, it is up to you to propose an alternate version of events that better fits all the facts--not just some of the facts that best bolster your argument.
Poking small holes in the official version of the facts of 9/11 no more proves a malevolent conspiracy than does poking small holes in some aspect of evolutionary theory prove creationism or "intelligent design."
If you choose to believe in a grandiose plot to destroy two buildings with a belt-and-suspenders plane & explosives approach, while hitting the Pentagon with a drone and calling it a 747, while magically disappearing the actual 747, and then blowing up another plane in midair while pretending it crashed, that's your choice. You are also free to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. You're not free to act as though your opinions should be treated with courtesy or respect in a reality-based community.
Kossacks should know better than to recommend misleading, agenda-fueled diaries that use creationist logic to suggest accounts of events not supported by their own actual evidence.