If you want to start a fight, ask a bunch of Americans whether 9/11 was a conspiracy. Most will say no. If you then note that 19-20 people working together is by definition a conspiracy, they'll get pissed and say they thought you meant "government conspiracy". Which is not what they thought, since we don't know what individual gov workers from the FAA or INS or FBI might have helped the hijackers, eg who let them through the airport with boxcutters or who helped them scope out security. What they really mean is "not a HIGH government conspiracy" or some coordinated renegade group of spooks, no Ollie North and gang.

What I find interesting from this exercise is we let Republicans re-define a word, mostly to protect an unengaged President - and we're doing it 14 years later. There never was a good investigation, but from the article below we know there was plenty *not* done, but we don't know why exactly. We've seen horrid acts from Republicans (and Democrats) wiping out 10's of thousands of foreigners at least, as well as a slough of policies focused directly at hurting Americans - taking away health care to prove a point - as well as conspiracies by banks to steal billions from consumers enabled by gov officials who then gave trillions to protect those same banks. Wasn't George Bush the original "Too Big to Fail"? And wasn't it the original reluctance to believe a group of Americans could conspire to do cold-blooded treachery to other Americans?

But of course they can. Whether they did or not, and if so, who, remains a question, because 14 years later we still haven't gotten past the conspiracy to excuse away one man, one leader's complete incompetence and indifference, who took a month's vacation as president with warnings piling up and who came back to a horrid intelligence and human catastrophe. But it's somehow important not to question him the way they make women stare at ugly fetal operatons before getting an abortion. 6 different hearings exploring conspiracies in a tribal/terrorist attack far away in Libya, but no close look at a conspiracy that leveled 3 buildings and killed thousands in Manhattan.

Any sane observer would say we're plenty goofy,that we're exceptionally good at avoiding facts, for what reason I still don't know - maybe just "because"? Even a Confederacy of Dunces is still a conspiracy. 

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him. - Jonathan Swift

Where is our despised, outcast genius, our lonely prince?

Dislike Trump all you want, he still may be the boy who noticed the Emperor had no Clothes, a useful idiot as Gurdjieff would say. From Huffpost:

...Then came the now-famous August 6 Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) intelligence memorandum to the president, headlined, "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US." Bush was at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on what was to be one of the longest summer vacations any president has taken; none of his senior aides was present for the briefing. Rice later described this PDB as "very vague" and " very non-specific" and "mostly historical." It was only after a great struggle that the 9/11 commission got it declassified and the truth was learned. In its final report, the commission noted that this was the thirty-sixth Presidential Daily Brief so far that year related to al-Qaeda and bin Laden though the first one that specifically warned of an attack on the US itself.

While the title of the memo has become somewhat familiar, less known are its contents, including the following: "Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and 'bring the fighting to America.'" And: "FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." Having received this alarming warning the president did nothing.

As August went on, Tenet was so agitated by the chatter he was picking up and Bush's lack of attention to the matter that he arranged for another CIA briefing of the president later in August, with Bush still at his ranch, to try to get his attention to what Tenet believed was an impending danger. According to Ron Suskind, in the introduction to his book The One Percent Doctrine, when the CIA agents finished their briefing of the president in Crawford, the president said, "All right. You've covered your ass now." And that was the end of it.

What might a president do upon receiving notice that the world's number one terrorist was "determined to strike in US"? The most obvious thing was to direct Rice or Vice President Cheney to convene a special meeting of the heads of any agencies that might have information about possible terror threats, and order them shake their agencies down to the roots to find out what they had that might involve such a plot, then put the information together. As it happened they had quite a bit: the administration had already been notified about some Arabs seeking flying lessons at a flight school in Arizona; what was so noticeable about them was that they unpeeled large amounts of cash for the lessons, which they limited to just wanting to know how to fly the plane in cruise mode, not learn how to take off and land. In July, an FBI agent stationed in Phoenix wrote to headquarters warning of the "possibility of a coordinated effort by Usama bin Laden" to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools.

....

The bipartisan 9/11 Commission, established in November 2002, after Bush gave way to congressional demands that there be a high-level investigation into what had happened, with the commission members appointed by Bush and by Congress--this was after the administration made it clear that it wouldn't cooperate with a congressional investigation into 9/11--went no further than bipartisan commissions can be expected to go, but further than most of the journalism at the time suggested. Bipartisan commissions are a longstanding device for making sure that the findings aren't too disturbing to the principal figures or the public. The responsibility of the 9/11 Commission--made up of prominent Democrats and Republicans and co-chaired by two highly admired figures, former Indiana congressman and chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Lee Hamilton, and former governor of New Jersey Thomas Kean--was to investigate the background of the matter and make recommendations.

When the commission finally succeeded in its demand that Bush testify before it, the arrangement was that only two commission members could be present at a White House meeting where the president was to be questioned for only one hour, without being put under oath and with no notes taken, and with Vice President Cheney present. In fact, the administration fought the commission at nearly every turn. Hamilton and Kean later wrote that they felt that the commission had been "set up to fail"--it had been rushed, its funding was insufficient and it didn't have adequate administration cooperation. They said that in fact the commission had considered seeking criminal charges against officials who had obstructed or lied to it.

When the commission finally succeeded in its demand that Bush testify before it, the arrangement was that only two commission members could be present at a White House meeting where the president was to be questioned for only one hour, without being put under oath and with no notes taken, and with Vice President Cheney present. In fact, the administration fought the commission at nearly every turn. Hamilton and Kean later wrote that they felt that the commission had been "set up to fail"--it had been rushed, its funding was insufficient and it didn't have adequate administration cooperation. They said that in fact the commission had considered seeking criminal charges against officials who had obstructed or lied to it.