Flatfooted

 I have very good friends who believe that 9/11 was an inside job. I'm in comfortable position as a Socratic because I can say a convenient "I don't know" to their assertions. We can stay friends. 

However, I don't think it was. And I'm going to tell you the most convincing piece of evidence IMHO in that regard.

It was George W. Bush, the president of the United States, sitting in that schoolroom for eight minutes, flummoxed, fugued and otherwise stumped.

If 911 was an inside job, it was a huge one, and the whole advantage to be gained was PR, then wouldn't Dubya have been rehearsed better? Not sit there until he had to be walked out of the room?

What kind of choreography was it that allowed the Republicans to let BILL CLINTON get to Ground Zero before George Bush? What kind of embarrassment was it, while all planes were grounded, to fly the Bin Laden family out of the US in full public view? 

But above all, there was that embarrassing eight minutes. This was not a man with a plan. A man who was about to launch the American Empire?  It looks like a man who doesn't know what to do. (And if you want to tell me that Bush could have brilliantly imitated a bewildered man, I shall have to ask you to step outside.)

The media churned with both rotors to make the plane disappear, turn GWB into a hero (a docudrama with Bush shouting defiance at OBL and commanding them to turn the plane around so he could strap himself into his trusty old National Guard interceptor so he could deliver the knockout punch to Al-Qaeda personally!) and paper over the delays, the gaffes, and the thousand-yard stare. I think there was a whole lot of people covering up--but what they were covering was the pants-wetting, bewilderment, and back and fill after the disaster they wanted to turn into Their Finest Hour.

Okay, just to give you proper value for your entertainment dollar, I'm going to move of the 'I don't think so" square and present you with my favorite conspiracy scenario. I've put this up in comments in various places, or parts of it, but here's the whole thing. It has a coherence to it,  and explains a number of things. Do I think it's true? Probably not. My affection for it comes from a love of a good plot. However, it's a crazy trick but it just might work. And it's more fun than just differing with my friends.

The core: the terrorist attack the neocons wanted, the Pearl Harbor mentioned on the PNAC website, was the anthrax letters. 

Anthrax was perfect: very deadly, but not contagious. Easily deliverable, and easily containable. In many ways scarier than a crashing airliner, because while you might not believe someone, no matter how evil, is going to crash an Airbus into your house, a deadly envelope is another story. 

And the targets? Tom Daschle and Pat Leahy. The major networks. The New York Post. And--the National Enquirer.

Now they had notes saying Islam is great, and Death to  America on them, so they were ntended to point towards the Middle East. The networks were an obvious choice. But Pat Leahy? Tom Daschle? Most Americans didn't know who these guys are--and probably still don't. Neither of them were big AIPAC supporters, neither of them were Jews. Nothing sent to the White House, by far and away the most logical target? 

No, it was supposed to both terrorize America, give us a casus belli in the Middle East, and be a horse-head-in-the-bed warning to the Democrats. 

And the Enquirer? Men In Black theories aside, remember that it was the Enquirer that broke the Rush Limbaugh drug story.

What happened was that, as the neocons were getting ready to stage this perfect terrorist attack, along comes Osama Bin Laden and trumps them by several orders of magnitude. 

The cosmic coincidence is that it happened just a week before their launch date. (Whether Cheney et. al. decided on the morning of the attack to let it happen, I don't know. But I tend to believe that it's a hard pill to swallow that four airliners hijacked at once just were overlooked because of bureaucratic inertia.) And since they had to have a great deal of distance from the process, it was too late to call it off. And, some might have said, why should they?

But on the day, one guy got caught utterly flatfooted, and that was George W. Bush. In this scenario, George had been coached and rehearsed on his actions and the speeches he was going to make on Der Tag, but when he was in the little Florida classroom, and he got the word that 'America is under attack," what went through his mind was, "What is this? It's too soon! It's not for a week yet! Did they move up the schedule and not tell me? Or did our guy snap or something? Is the jig up?Are we exposed? Or is it a false alarm? Shit! Do I make the speech or don't I? Here I am in front of these damn kids and I can't ask anybody what to do! Is the plot on or is it off?"

That could occupy a mind for eight minutes; I don't think simple surprise could. Simple confusion? That neither, but serious mixed signals very well could.

And of course the Anthrax Killer is still at large, but coverage of the search--and mention of it's history--have fallen right down the memory hole. If, as seems to be the case, the Republicans seem intent on scaring the public to remain in power, why have they not used the eeeevil Anthrax Killer who sends fatal letters, that even you, Mr. and Mrs. America, could get in the mail tomorrow? Why are they, who are so eager to invoke the bogeyman, absolutely silent on the matter? Why has there been no docudrama on that?

There's no investigation because they promised that the guy would get away free. There's no investigation because of the ties right to the top. And nobody is worried about this murderous bioweapons expert still at large with a mad on against the United States--huh? what? Still at large?--because the top knows, and the next level down have been told that he is not a danger any more.

That's my scenario, which is mine, and what it is too.

(An elk? Where?)