Five Years Of The Best Conspiracy Theory

I guess I enjoy the conspiracy theories a bit more than most people because they are almost like reading really good fiction that reads exactly like really good non-fiction (which, technically, it is since the person claiming the theory actually believes it to be true). When Clinton was president it was all about drug running and killing people to get to the top and, always in between, coercing ladies to sit on his jolly roger (and I don't mean his brother). But Bush, well he's got the really juicy conspiracy theories. But my favorite has always been that 9/11 conspiracy. If you haven't heard this one in full detail, it goes something like this:

It begins with the whole Enron scandal which was a company, as you know, that had business ties to both the President and Vice-President because of their large dealings with energy, mainly oil, in Texas. After Enron, the SEC began investigating a multitude of different companies related to Enron and the energy business. These investigative documents were being stored in Building 7 in New York City (whether this is true or not, I haven't the foggiest but I digress).

Next, enter Dick Cheaney and George Bush who, fearing that they will certainly be discovered as crooks greater than even that of Kenneth Lay, orchestrate a plan. They decide to destroy the documents by blowing up the World Trade Center buildings and then, when nobody is really looking, blowing up Building 7 and all of the investigative documents in the process. It was a solid, albeit a bit extreme, plan...sort of like setting off a car bomb so that you could steal a candy bar.

So on September 11th, 2001 the President and Vice President orchestrate their plan by running two planes into the Trade Center buildings and then, later, setting off precise detonations already planted within the building that actually cause the collapse.....oh, and they knock down Building 7 with charges as well but nobody really notices that (which was exactly as planned). They even go so far as to launch a cruise missile into the nearly empty, heavily-fortified side of the Pentagon building. And, sticklers to detail as they are, George and Dick even make up a story about how brave Americans sacrificing themselves in some field in Pennsylvania so that the White House would not be destroyed as well.

But here is the real genius....the amazing brilliance of the plan....they blame the whole thing on terrorists! Brilliant! Now George gets to deccimate an enemy without cause and talk about cherries on the whipped cream on the sundae of this grand theory, guess whose company gets contracted for the multi-million dollar clean up of Afghanistan after we level the place? You got it, Haliburton, the very company once-owned by Vice President Dick Cheaney! This even paves the way to go to war with Iraq, nocking out another vital source of oil energy, and thusly boosting the prices for oil everywhere else. In otherwords, the President's pockets are sure to get well-lined with greenery as well. God, I love the smell of napalm in the morning!

....but there's a problem. Actually, there are a hundred thousand problems but I will address one. It has to do with the Pentagon getting hit by a cruise missile. You see, this is one of the main and most highly touted points in the entire theory. I shall attempt to prove that a plane did, indeed, hit the Pentagon and I shall do it with three counter-points.

Point one, according to the theory, nobody saw a plane anywhere near the Pentagon. Where are the witnesses, they ask? Well, according to this site there were quite a few witnesses talking about a plane flying dangerously low over I-395. In fact, I found so many witness accounts that I must question by what means these theorists go about looking for witnesses? Do they search Yellowbook under Flight 77 Witnesses and when it comes up with nothing, they figure, "Hell, there must be no witnesses," or, maybe, they just walk the streets asking, "Hey, did you see Flight 77 hit the Pentagon?" After a good ten minutes of searching and finding nobody they must then logically assume that there were not any witnesses.

Point two, where is the wreckage of the actual plane? Well, if you read a few of the on-site witnesses a lot of the plane wreckage got covered up with the roof collapsed. However, when you actually google for pictures of the plane, guess what, all you find are websites full of pictures of the plane! I guess the conspiracy theorists have realized this as they have updated their argument to: "Where are any big hunks of plane?" which is idiotic since the 757 was going about 500 mph when it hit the building which means it looked something like this:



It would be tough to find a fully intact anything after a collision like that. But, of course, there is one popular picture of an actual piece of the plane but the theorists even denounce that. One guy even went so far as to attempt to use logic by explaining that while the piece of wreckage was authentic it was on the wrong side of the courtyard. Huh? According to him, there is no functional way a piece of one side of a plane could actually end up on the other side of the yard! I think I might buy the guy the first three seasons of MythBusters so that he might learn the proper way to use the word "logic". Anyway....

Point three, the theorists claim that the suggested flight pattern that the White House claimed was taken by Flight 77 and that the hundreds of witnesses actually witnessed could not have possibly been pulled off by a bunch of terrorists. They even point to the fact that one of supposed terrorists, Akbah Mujah Whatever (honestly, his name isn't important), didn't even know how to fly a small plane let alone a 757. This is pointless unless there is some footage actually proving that Akbah Mujah was the actual terrorist piloting the plane!

Now you may wonder, or maybe you don't really care, why this so important to the conspiracy theorists? It's important because without it, nothing else works. It is vital to the theory that the two planes flown into the World Trade Centers were flown via remote control because claiming that pilots willingly sacrificed themselves to cover up bad energy dealings would be just preposterous! But trying to get people to swallow somebody remotely flying a plane into the Pentagon, because the flight pattern was so extremely intricate, would be a tough sell as well.

Lasty, Why did I write this: Because its five years and, really, this theory should be losing steam and yet it is gaining it like a wildfire every year. They even made a "serious" documentary about it. Two-thirds of the American population actually believe it! Its time to tune this one out, change the channel, stop listening, stop watching. Besides, anybody with half a brain knows that the aliens are behind everything anyway.

UPDATE (9/12/2006): Actually, it's one third of Americans believe in part of this conspiracy. So to the third that I might have offended, I apologize.