Another Note on Conspiracy Theories
By Some of the comments in this thread deserve a more lengthy response.
On the various question regarding one piece of evidence or another, it’s important to realize that conspiracy theories are, by their nature, impervious to evidence. If the government produced the flight recorder, and all of the data supported the conventional conclusion regarding United 93, it wouldn’t prove anything. If the plane really was shot down, and the government really did want to cover it up, then of course the administration would release a falsified data recorder. You could produce a hundred experts on plane crashes pointing out that passenger planes maneuvering violently at high speeds run the risk of breaking up, and the retort from the conspiracy theorist would invariably be that experts are easy to buy, or that evidence is easy to conceal, or that this other expert said something different. Moreover, the conspiracy theorist would be right; once the conspiracy has been submitted, no evidence can possibly be sufficient to disprove it.
The other argument that some have made is that, while it may be difficult to ferret out the precise motive for a cover-up, the Bushies are congenital liars and really are capable of anything. To an extent this is true, and there are many things that I would believe of the Bushies. But it does not follow that I must believe that everything Bush and Cheney do is tinged with deceit. I am capable of believing, for example, that there were serious problems with vote counting in Ohio (I don’t believe it made a difference, but I don’t think that people who do are out in left field). However, if someone began arguing to me that there was widespread voter fraud in Wyoming, my brain would shut down pretty quickly. Why would anyone ever risk stealing votes in Wyoming, even if they were otherwise deceitful? To me, it makes about as much sense as concocting an elaborate cover-up of the fate of United 93, which is none at all.
Now, if in a year some fighter jock turns up and produces conclusive evidence that he personally shot down flight 93, I will issue a retraction and apology. Until then, however, I’m sticking to my position that this is the first step on the road to madness.