Huh?

I admit to being a bit staggered by Ezra:

So far as Flight 93 goes, various folks have convinced me that the plane was actually shot down by scrambled fighter jets. I don’t tend to go in for conspiracies, and I don’t think it much matters one way or the other, but I basically trust the sources here. As I understand it, the way the plane’s wreckage lay wasn’t consistent with an on-the-ground crash, but rather with an in-air explosion. Various parts of the engine were miles away from each other, debris was found eight miles from the crash site, etc. If you’re interested, there’s a collection of info here, but as I said before, I fail to see how it matters.

Apparently Amanda Marcotte believes the same thing. I think it’s absurd; indeed, I think that it goes a fair bit beyond absurd. You have to believe that the Bush administration would willingly (and, really, in a few minutes) concoct a cover-up for something that was genuinely justified. If a fighter shot down United 93 on the orders of someone in the Bush administration, there would have been, literally, zero political heat. If, on the other hand, the administration had managed to shoot down 93 and quickly covered it up, there would be enormous heat if the facts ever got out. Given that the administration can barely be bothered to cover up the things it should be ashamed of (Gitmo, Abu Ghraib), you’ve got a long way to go to convince me that something happened here other than the standard narrative. If Cheney/Bush ordered Flight 93 to be shot down, they’re heroes; why wouldn’t they publicize it?

Part of the problem, I suspect, is that most people genuinely don’t understand how bureaucratic organizations, including the ones tasked with national security, function. They operate by a set of standard procedures fixed around expected threats. When other threats materialize, it can be difficult for them to shift focus in short periods of time. It’s not at all difficult for me to believe that the fighters scrambled over Washington did nothing useful on the morning of September 11.

Please, leave the conspiracy theories to the right-wingers who believe that Saddam Hussein sent all the WMD to Syria…