Why was Hitchens intolerant with 9/11 Truthers?

They, and you, are full of untruths.

I think that Americas guard was deliberately dropped so that the president can have a crisis so that he could dip into social security funds. I think that they bit off more than they can chew and the crisis was too big to accept, so it needed to be covered up. I don’t know who Hitchens is, I am a Canadian who was watching CNN and other news channels way back then… I heard at that time that Social security funds can not be used unless of a war or crisis… That’s why G.B. called it a war on terror.

Truthers are nuts. True story.

Hitchens was intolerant with truthers because he viewed their theories as silly distractions from the enormity of the consequences of 9/11.

The US government was involved in the 9–11 attacks…..as a target.

Ok, for the sake of argument let us assume for a moment the possibility that the government was behind 9/11. Why? What would be the motive? What could end possibly have been gained that could not have been accomplished through less extreme and damaging means?

@Darth_Algar :: It was the perfect vector to start the war in Iraq. There would be so many moving pieces to do it there would be no possible way to keep it quite. We just learned who Deep Throat was.

Bush didn’t know about 9/11 and he didn’t cause it. But I am pretty sure he was really fucking happy that it happened. He got to finish the war his daddy started and line the pockets of some donors.

I believe that he gave the truthers far more patience and respect than they deserved. Hitchens was more patience than I would have been.

There is no reason to take crazy lunatics seriously.

@Darth_Algar So that they could enter Iraq.

The problem is there are many ‘truther’ theories out there, but most of the truther claims have been debunked, such as the steel beams, clean up, temperatures, physics behind the collapses, etc. I do think there were several conspiracies leading to the war in Iraq following the aftermath of 911, but I don’t believe the government or Israel planned these attacks.

Bin Laden was on the top wanted list for a long time, and even Clinton tried to take him out. I’m not what one would call an anti-conspiracy theorist, but I just see no evidence for a conspiracy on this level by the government in my opinion, and many truther claims are the results of cherry picking.

I really do believe that the government was planning an invasion of Iraq long before 911 though, and I’m sure they were trying to think of a way to justify an invasion there. 911 gave the warhawks something to work with.

@Mandeblind

Sorry, but that reasoning just doesn’t work. There were a thousand other ways they could have accomplished that end that would have been far less damaging to the US and its economy. It would have been easy enough to, for example, place a bomb on a half-empty US naval vessel ported in the Persian Gulf and pin the blame on Iraq. Something like that alone would have provided them with Casus belli. It’s not like the US has ever had to go to real elaborate lengths to manufacture justification to go to war.

And if the government caused 9/11 in order to go to war in Iraq then why the costly detour into Afghanistan first? We entered Afghanistan on October 7th, 2001. less than one month after the 9/11 attack. We didn’t invade Iraq until March 20th, 2003. More than a year and a half latter. So if entering Iraq was the reason the government caused the 9/11 attack then why the delay in actually going there?

@Darth_Algar Look at all of the truther theories floating around out there, I wouldn’t even know which one to start with (I’ve read most of them). Also most of these criticize each other! I was never a big fan of Hitchens, and there are several issues that I disagree with him on, but I think he was right about this one. Most conspiracies usually involve very few people, and usually become exposed, though perhaps not all of them.

Because they are ridiculous.

Like religions, Hitchens did not believe anything that could not be proven.

Your theory cannot be proven therefore it is not supported by critical thinkers

Hitchens became an apparatchik of the US government towards the end – but I still respect him and his belief that the 9–11 truthers were incorrect. His greatest strength was his humanity and, ergo, his weaknesses.