I am glad to see the posts by Charles (who was an eyewitness to the crashing of the AA flight into the Pentagon) and Norman, who once again have made good sense. Each day, I receive a number of emails entitled “Bush Administration Planned 9-11” and am also dismayed at some of the people who have signed onto this one.

(While I mention no names, it is instructive to me that some people whom I respect have tried through their writings to convince me that somehow an administration which has proven itself to be utterly inept in everything else in the first eight months of its term suddenly came up with a plot to blow up the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon — the Pentagon people trying to blow themselves up.)

The real scandal regarding 9-11 is how the conspirators were sloppy and inept themselves, giving clues in various places, and still managed to get by our “super” government apparatus. The conspiracy theorists, I suppose, believe that the super-smart federal agents they see on Fox and other network shows, not to mention the movies and Chuck Norris movies are the norm, as opposed to being fictitious characters.

The kind of conspiracy that people are trying to convince me would have been needed for the government to pull off this attack would have required thousands of people to act with near-perfect timing, and that no one would talk. Another problem comes when people declare that since the Bush Administration benefitted initially from the attacks, it must have planned them.This also is fallacious thinking. First, I doubt that the Bushies could have pulled off something this spectacular without leaking information all over the place. Second, we understand the nature of government is to jump on crises after they occur and use them to gain more power. Just because a government might benefit temporarily from a crisis is not in itself “proof” that government agents planned the original action.