This is your take? I mean, the insider trading stuff is pretty heavy evidence that people knew ahead of time. People with money and resources to act on this foreknowledge. And the case that we are presented with by the commission is, well, a story of people close to important state actors conspiring to commit the crime. The state dept story is a conspiracy theory, even if truncated, obfuscated, covered-up, that is still what they presented us with. Oh yeah, and that many in the intelligence community knew of the attackers presence in the US, others knowing of an impending attack, and the attackers being closely related to Saudi intelligence, ya know, the intelligence service buttresses with US technology and training in close partnership. But yeah, just like “UFO’s”.
Some folks are presented with facts which should cause alarm and suspicion but instead reel and dismiss, and I can only point to a lack of intellectual curiosity, ideology, or a motivated viewpoint based on a perceived in-group’s general opinion which steers then into taking the state department position, and that of the Atlantic Monthly. “Actually it’s all chaos and accident, and our pattern seeking brains project meaning onto events which are random.” I’m nit saying that’s your position, but it is a common refrain to dismiss real conspiracies, and reminds me of Parenti’s take on historians who talk about “the reluctant US empire who rose to the occasion at a critical juncture to bumble its way into global dominance”. Like, no calculation or conspiring required.
As if these shit hole leaders are braying at every opportunity to make money dropping bombs. Just god smiling on them I guess. Nothing to see here.
Ok, dismiss everything. My point is that there is a ton of data points which should raise eyebrows of researchers, and to dismiss with such certitude in the face of unanswered/unanswerable questions is just as unreasonable as being credulous with every conspiracy theory posited. Your conflation of people troubled by these data points and questions with the fringest of conspiracy theorists reeks of unmerited condescension. A more reasonable position would be to state your personal feeling on the matter but acknowledge that there are unknowns and unknowables and certain evidence that make any sort of confidence one way or another impossible at this point in time. Instead it’s “this is just UFO shit” and I was surprised this is your take.