Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Published in Sweden

No, it's not one of those books that comes in a plain brown wrapper; it's my article on why the Truthers are wrong, and why their theories are dangerous. The English version is here.

The Truthers start with the assumption that the official story is wrong, and grab for any inconsistency in the official story as evidence that they are right. But the sensible way to investigate any incident is to examine the evidence and see where it leads.


And let me say right here and now that I would be willing to debate the two gals in the accompanying picture for hours on the topic of 9-11 Conspiracies. :)

Update: Arcterus at Truth Action:

However, I chuckled a bit when he said that Truthers ignore facts which don't fit their beliefs. How many extraordinary holes in the official story do we point out only for them to be twisted as irrelevant or inconsequential. Like I said earlier, you do not twist facts to suit your theories, you twist theories to suit your facts. And whenever something damning comes up, they simply ignore it. Even in that article, Pat tries to build a case for the Muslims but doesn't bother mentioning how some of them, including Atta, were seen at a strip club engaging in sacrilegious activities including eating pork and even leaving their Korans behind. Debunkers block out information all the time, even if they don't realize it.


This is a fair point, although the examples Arcterus chooses are not the best. For example, the story of Atta and others being seen at a strip club and leaving their Korans behind is dubious at best. It's mentioned in this newspaper article:

He said he told FBI investigators the men in his bar spent $200 to $300 apiece on lap dances and drinks, paying with credit cards. Kap said he gave the FBI credit card receipts and a business card left by one man and a copy of the Quran that was left at the bar.


But note this detail:

The night before terrorists struck New York and Washington, three men spewed anti-American sentiments in a bar and talked of impending bloodshed, according to a strip club manager interviewed by the FBI. John Kap, manager of the Pink Pony and Red Eyed Jack's Sports Bar in Daytona Beach, said the men made the claims to a bartender and a patron.


That would put Atta and other hijackers in Florida on the night of September 10, 2001. So how does Atta get to Portland, Maine, in time to catch his 6:00 AM flight the next morning to Boston? We know he did, because there is videotape of him going through the security checkpoint there.

The claim about Atta eating pork? It comes from Amanda Keller, who has since admitted that the Mohamed she met and talked about to Daniel Hopsicker, was not Mohamed Atta.

But the former Venice stripper now says her boyfriend was another flight student not connected to 9/11. And, for the first time, federal investigators say she's right.

"There's nothing there to corroborate the relationship between the two," a New York-based FBI counterterrorism agent said recently after reviewing 9/11 case files.


Now that is not entirely to say that the hijackers were all a bunch of Islamic choirboys. The 9-11 Commission report notes that some of the muscle hijackers did use prostitutes, and rent pornographic videos. But so did Jimmy Swaggart.