Government involvement in 9.11? Probably not. Though I always thought that you cannot rule that out entirely.
Shortly after "9.11 doubt" started to surface in America and there was a surge of videos and articles on 9.11 inconsistencies and questions, I was watching one video (I think it might have been "loose change", I'm not sure). At the end there was a random, nameless, old woman shouting in the street about 9.11. She said, something along the lines of, "if you think anyone could have pulled off all this without government being involved, you're crazy". I had to admit that that was very true.
I never was much of a "conspiracy theory" person, until I started to read about things like "Ruby Ridge" and "Waco" (though admittedly they weren't "conspiracy theories" as most of the fact with regard to these two things have never been disputed).
I always thought there was "something very fishy" about the JFK assassination, but I never formulated any opinions. I am just absolutely convinced (now after reading about it) that there was far more to it than the mainstream media told us.
As for 9.11, I believed the official story for all of about an hour until I got to work (I worked at the time in a shop selling and repairing computers and TVs so I was surrounded by different images of the towers collapsing, all day) and someone pointed out to me that the official story was utterly fantastic and denied the basic laws of physics. Then that day the mainstream media (I didn't even know at that time that there was any other media) was hammering the stock exchange angle and what a "coincidence" it was, the millions made on put options etc.
That was enough to sow the seed of doubt and the more I looked into it, the more ludicrous the official story was proven to be. Then I read about Mohammed Atta's amazing fireproof passport and that the "aeroplane" that hit the pentagon "disappeared into a whole far smaller than it should have" (again a physical impossibility), I pondered the collapse of bldg 7 in exactly the same manner as 1 and 2 and saw that it was never even claimed that it was hit by a plane and I saw footage of people like first responders talking of "explosions" and what totally clinched it was reading about the massive amount of moulten steel and realising that it would be impossible to convince even a backward three year old that fire (from jet fuel) could melt steel.
It may have been that other government members were involved, I don't know. But I'm sticking with my theory that Bush didn't know any details, but was just told "something big is going to happen on the 11th, so just shut up and do exactly as you're told to do and look suitably shocked". This is because his demeanour on the day when he was visiting the school in Florida (in my opinion) told us that. I also remember seeing a picture on the cover of a magazine (might have been time) a few months after 9.11. It depicted a close up of GW Bush in a helicopter hovering over NYC and as he saw the devastation a tear rolled down his face. Pretty hard to fake that reaction. I think he was expecting something, but not something as devastating as that. Maybe it was never meant to be that bad, but went terribly wrong. Maybe it was meant to be worse. Who knows.
As for theories of who was behind 9.11. I really have absolutely no idea, I don't know enough about American politics, the government certainly gained a lot out of it, but then so did a lot of others too, Larry Silverstein and not only the money he made from the insurance, but the money he saved by not having to have the buildings made free of absestos, the beneficiary of the missing trillions and the missing gold, and the beneficiaries of the destruction of the files involving cases against corporations for corruption etc. (Enron was one, but I can't recall others right now).
Then there are other "conspiracy theories" that I have a hard and fast opinion on. For instance I will never believe that the death of Vince Foster was anything other than murder, after reading the facts (just the basic facts like the position the corpse was in etc.) made that obvious in my opinion. Maybe "Vince Foster" is not a conspiracy theory either because there is so much evidence to point to "suspicion".
I must have got really cynical in my old age because a little while ago when I came across an article about the news story of the "suicide" of Dr Ivins the "anthrax suspect", I immediately started looking for evidence that it wasn't a suicide, mainly because the "anthrax thing" was - I had assumed - so transparently "inside job" and as far as I was concerned the theory that anthrax was sent to people by "unknown terrorists outside the USA" was widely discredited - well I thought so anyway. To me Ivins genuinely committing suicide was out of the question, I didn't even consider that it was true. Just after I read about it, I went to a Christian discussion forum that I frequent and someone had posted a news story on Dr Ivins' "suicide" and I was surprised to see that a couple of people had taken what the news story said to be fact beyond a doubt and said things like "well thank goodness, doing an awful thing like sending anthrax through the mail". I was horrified because I assumed that everybody had "smelled a rat" just as I did and replied saying "... the elephant in the room .... " and the response I got (pretty quickly considering that it was the early hours of the morning in America) was almost hostile. I realised that that wasn't the forum to discuss things like that, and dropped it.
I have always believed that "7.7 - or the London Bombings" in 2005, was a UK government job. I have never wavered on that opinion and base it on correspondence via email I was having at the time with an old friend who has lived in London for 20 years.
Separating fact from fiction is a problem with "conspiracy theories" as there is so much information on (say) 9.11 and it all cannot be true.
My solution is that I believe the things that seem most logical to me, things that "add up".
Check out "operation Northwoods" if you have trouble believing that any government could be that sneaky. (This (ON) started a theory that plans for 9.11 had been round for some time and had been submitted to every incoming president since WWII and Bush was the only one dumb enough to say "sure boys, that's a great plan, go ahead". Well it's an idea anyway.
