illumined horizon

Democracy Now hosted an excellent debate between the Loose Change filmmakers, and two of the editors of Popular Mechanics. For the first time I'm beginning to see some legitimacy to at least some of what the skeptics are advancing. I think I'm not so much a 9/11 conspiracist, as a doubter of the official 9/11 story (it should be called the official 9/11 conspiracy as it is just as much a conspiracy theory as the unofficial conspiracy theories are). The problem I have with most conspiracies is that there is simply not enough evidence to make the connections that are often made in said theories. In this sense the Loose Change folks make a lot of sense, in that many of their claims seem valid, while it's the larger connections that they draw which appear to be (at least on their face) more problematic.

Overall, I thought the biggest point Dylan Avery and his colleague failed to address was the idea, repeatedly advanced by Dunbar and Meigs; that they had talked to the experts, and they had received 'the expert opinion' on many of the claims purported in the Loose Change film. Avery and Bermas should have retorted with expert opinion of their own, but instead they seemed to retort with a new theory or testimonial which ostensibly discounted the expert opinion supported by either Dunbar or Meigs. The debate left me with the same conclusion I had prior to watching it, namely that if anyone wants to get to the bottom of a particular conspiracy, s/he must do the necessary research his/herself. The different sides of the debate, when it comes to conspiracies, both rapidly begin to sound as if they are making assertions that are far-fetched and difficult to believe. One can only resolve the cloudiness that arises from these kinds of debates by delving as deeply into the facts as the folks who have studied the events in question already have.