It may be possible that all the technical reports are wrong and there was some as-yet undiscovered reason for the buildings' collapse. It may very well be the case the majority of the hijackers were tricked and didn't know it was a suicide mission, which means the REAL number of suicide hijackers would be eight (the rest being murder victims of the hijackers themselves). I'd even be willing to consider the possibility the planes were actually hijacked by some domestic Timothy McVeigh type radical group and Mohammed Atta, et al, was simply blamed because they were muslim.
I'm open to other possibilities, but the thing is that I'd want at least *some* proof to back the claim up, and I do not accept innuendo, selective quote editing, rhetorical questions, and outright lies, as evidence, and so far, every single piece of truther "evidence" has always turned out to be outright embellishment upon closer examination.
Reading this, I realize that we're actually much closer in our thinking than I thought. I do disagree with the last part of the last sentence, as you would probably expect, but the rest is dead on. We're starting with some basic assumptions that are in disagreement, but ultimately we're fighting the same fight.
Here's what I see as our differences:
1. I can't say that I know with certainty what the government (or anyone with lots of power and money) is or is not capable of - in both a logistic and moral sense.
2. You have a chip on your shoulder against the truth movement - I can recognize the reasons for that, though I don't share it.
3. I have a chip on my shoulder against people with lots of power and money - I hope you can recognize some of my reasons for that, though you may not share it to the same extent.
Because of this, I'll keep tending towards suspicious possibilities, and you'll keep tending towards innocuous possibilities. I think there's a lot of evidence for both, and a lack of total proof for either. So we'll keep arguing, but I think now that we both see problems with some aspects of the "official story," and we're both looking for the truth.
As an example: you asked me if the sources I go to told me that 15 of the hijackers were Saudi citizens. Yes, they have. They've also told me that 11 of them got visas through a questionable, possibly CIA-run program at the US Consulate office in Jeddah (sources). Maybe that's all coincidence. It makes me suspicious. And it's one of countless details, from perfectly legitimate sources, that seems suspicious to me just in the background story of the hijackers alone.
To come back to the question of scamming - I'll concede that there are scammers involved in the truth movement, and that there are surely people who have been scammed. The assertion I disagree with is that the truth movement as a whole, or as a concept, is a scam. I also disagree with the implication that I've been scammed. I do remember the Y2K craziness, and I see your point in terms of people taking advantage of urban legends, but I think this is different in a lot of ways.
