The attacks on the US on September 11 2001 were part of a web of events that interconnect with oil, drugs, money, organised crime, imperialism, existing institutions and us. And religion, and a lot more money.
The most important conspiracy theory about 9/11 rarely gets mentioned by writers like Brooker and Phillips. In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq the White House made every effort to link Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida. Far from being a production of what commentators like to call the tinfoil hat brigade, this particular paranoid fantasy emerged from the work of a highly focused and skilled group of people.
They worked in secret to manipulate the American and the global public and we can trace the impact of the efforts over time. So here is a (true) conspiracy to promote a (false) conspiracy theory. The White House's psy-war operatives were doubtless a professional and measured lot. I am sure that they knew how to behave in socially appropriate ways and enjoyed their work. They also helped pave the way for an illegal war in which more than half a million people have died. There's a 9/11 conspiracy theory hard at work, right there. It doesn't matter what sort of person you are, whether you are coolly rational or groping around for meaning in an indifferent world, America's spooks conspired to stampede the public into war on a false prospectus.
A congressional investigation has produced new details on the degree to which senior Bush administration officials favored using the Clean Air Act to limit greenhouse gas emissions — until pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, ExxonMobil and others in the oil industry led the Bush administration to change course.
Felons are asking President Bush for pardons and commutations at historic levels as he nears his final months in office, a time when many other presidents have granted a flurry of clemency requests.
