We all know the drill. A 9/11 Diary appears. Torches and pitchforks spring up. Someone makes a crack about aliens. Folks eyeroll and mutter "dead horse" and "waste of time," but stay on to ridicule anyway. People from all points of view scream about "logic" and "evidence" and accuse other perfectly intelligent kossaks of knowing nothing about science or reason. Theorists get bashed. Credentials get scoffed at. Motives get questioned. Facts and arguments get tossed around. More sarcasm and derision.
Why doesn't it seem to get us anywhere?
It isn't because one camp is retarded and the other is brilliant. It isn't that one camp just won't clue in that they've been "debunked."
It's because people go right away to "evidence" and "experts" minutiae, and try to use it as final confirmation of who did or didn't perpetrate 9/11. This is a doomed strategy, because doing so ignores a prohibitive underlying factor.
The 9/11 issue is unique, because we simply don't start out with clean, unvarnished "evidence" and definitively disinterested "experts" from which we can develop a "whodunit" theory. Why?
Because in order to even consider much of the government-provided, government-handled "evidence," particularly in the context of the government-provided storyline, we must first assume prima facie that US government-insiders were in no way complicit in 9/11. Game over. The "whodunit" debate is dead before it begins.
Let me put it another way. Contemplate, if you will, the position of power the government has been in, vis a vis 9/11. Now. This set of affairs is not a problem if you dismiss out of hand any real possibility of government-insider collusion in 9/11, and if you reject out of hand that government-insiders would manipulate the story, or provide misinformation or disinformation about what happened. The official story then only needs what minimum explanation is necessary to seem remotely plausible. Even if there are big holes and inconsistencies, even if government officials try to scuttle the investigation or are caught in outright lies, even if essential evidence is withheld or destroyed, it doesn't matter all that much.
On the other hand, if you allow for the possibility--just the possibility--that government-insiders might have perpetrated or assisted 9/11, then that introduces a big, fat wrench into the machine. It is hard to wrap the brain around how big and fat a wrench it is.
Government insiders have controlled the narrative of what happened that day and why. They've made the reports and given the explanations. They've both provided and handled most of the evidence. They've been the ones to handle witnesses. They've controlled the leadership of the investigation into 9/11. They've controlled the funding of that investigation. They've been in a position to decide what questions get asked, who goes on record, who goes under oath, what evidence is admitted, what information is classified and withheld, whose testimony gets subpoenaed, whose accounts get ignored or stricken, what "experts" are called forth (and funded), and what happens to people who say inconvenient things.
Unimaginably big fat freaking problem.
Allowing for the possibility of government-insider collusion, all of a sudden what looked like rock-solid evidence starts to get slippery. The set of things we can be absolutely certain of shrinks to a disturbingly tiny pile. Statements like, "Well, there's the DNA recovered from the wrecks!" and "There's the cellphone calls from the planes!" start to sound kind of hollow. What DNA again? Where is it? How do we know it was collected from the wrecks? Who handled it? How do we know it really ID-ed the passengers that we were told were on the planes? The cellphone calls. How do we know they were made from planes? How do we know they were made by hijack victims? Or made at all?
So there is a scrambling for evidence that can't possibly have been manipulated or fabricated. Ok, we all saw planes and crashes at WTC, and the collapses, for sure. Lots of people died there, for sure. Witnesses saw something that looked like a plane crash into the Pentagon. There was wreckage. Something exploded in the Pennsylvania woods..
Truly allowing for the possibility of government-insider collusion, it starts to become spooky just how much of the evidence and official story we have had to take on faith.
It also becomes clear how much the perception of true events depends upon our level of trust that things are on the up-and-up.
Consider the case of Kevin Ryan, the site manager of UL laboratories who questioned the government explanation of the WTC collapse in an email to Dr. Frank Gayle, who headed up the NIST WTC project. Ryan argued that he believed his company had certified the WTC steel to be true beyond the points they allegedly weakened, and asked Gayle to clarify his research. Ryan was fired once this email became public. The company's spokesman, Paul M. Baker, disavowed Ryan's concern and stated that "UL does not certify structural steel, such as the beams, columns and trusses used in World Trade Center." Ryan insists that his firing amounts to silencing a whisteblower, and that his company has fallen in with government liars. UL maintains they simply fired a loose cannon. (Wiki "Kevin Ryan," I can't get kos to accept the links.)
How you interpret this matter depends on your premise. If you reject that government-insider complicity in 9/11 is possible, then Ryan is just a hack. If you allow for the possibility of government-insider collusion in 9/11, then Ryan's might indeed be one more instance of retribution against government critics.
All told, neither the "official story" nor the "government-insider collusion" model has been soundly disproven by the "evidence." A few claims on either side can be shown to be demonstrably false. But a majority depend upon what possibilities you allow for.
We do know that re: the 9/11 investigation, the government has been in an overwhelming position of advantage. Normally, in criminal cases, a possible suspect is not allowed to act as investigator, evidence-collector, evidence-provider, investigation-funder, cross-examiner, jury, and judge. We also know that despite this advantage, the government has withheld evidence, given contradictory explanations, stonewalled, and prevaricated. Does this point to true complicity in the greater 9/11 crime, or just a coverup of incompetence?
I believe the answer is there. But arguing demolition crews and structural engineers vs. physicists out of the gate won't get us any closer, unless we start out being genuinely willing to allow for more than one possible group of suspects, and more than one possible explanation.
So. Before you go to the 9/11 mat, you might want to ask your debate-partner: "are you willing to allow for the possibility--just the possibility--that US govt insiders were complicit in this crime?" Because if s/he says "no," the discussion is wasted--completely wasted--on "evidence" minutiae like how towers collapsed or what did or didn't crash into the Pentagon. You won't get far if you haven't reached a consensus about what can be admitted as "objective" evidence, and who qualifies as a trustworthy authority and witness. You will be arguing at cross-purposes with little shared foundation.
The discussion must cease or turn instead turn to "Why don't/won't you allow for the possibility of government-insider collusion? Is it that you think they could not have pulled it off even if they wanted to? Is it that the form of the attacks, or the apparent evidence, or the storyline make no sense to you, if it was an insider job? Is it that you can't bring yourself to believe that US government-insiders would ever do something so reprehensible?"
If the conversation degrades back to towers and impact holes before you come to an agreement about whether or not government-insider complicity is conceivable, or if someone tries vaguely to argue that "evidence" and "logic" preclude any possibility of government-insider collusion, you're spinning your wheels. The same applies in the other direction.
Here is one suggestion. Start out with a thesis up front--"ok, assuming the official story is correct.." THEN look at the evidence. Examine the available facts against that thesis. Where are the holes in the official story? What is missing and what doesn't match up? What isn't accounted for? What is inconsistent? What does not seem possible? What does not seem likely?
Then start out with the other thesis (if you are so willing)--"ok, assuming possible complicity in 9/11 by government-insiders.." Then look at the evidence through that lens. You will see a very, very different picture. Now test the "evidence" and possibilities against that thesis.
These thought-experiments only work one at a time, because the presumptive lens we start with colors what we see and constrains our interpretations.
Indeed, we might be better off if every point of "evidence" we debate starts either with "Assuming the official story is correct..." or, "Allowing for government-insider complicity..."
Then we may be in a stronger position to examine which theory is best explained by what facts we can actually know for certain.
Or, you can just keep scrapping in the trenches when your opposing premises preclude any meaningful platform for a debate.
Or you can forget it all and go see "V." That's what I'm gonna do. ;)