Inside job.

As a side note - I ditched my TV for good some 6 months ago. If it weren't for reddit, I wouldn't know it was 9/11.

I wouldn't know it was 9/11.

It's not November yet...

I wasn't quite sure how to answer the last question. It makes sense to me that human behavior is disposed (genetically?) to look for causality and motivation in patterns, leading to these types of beliefs. So it is "meh" human nature. But when looking at it from this perspective, it seems "crazy." However, I will allow the possibility that I am also genetically biased here, and this has affected my vote.

Wait - maybe the government has genetically modified me into not believing conspiracy theories! It's probably something they have been putting in the public water supply since the 70's...

One of my professors at BYU was a figure in the conspiracy movement - Steve Jones. He was a cool if unusual professor, but he was also at the center of the whole fake-cold-fusion nonsense a few decades back. Fool me once...

I think that any kind of attack that costs innocent lives is worthy of thorough and impartial investigation into cause and responsibility.

The problem with an attack like this is that finding enough people to be impartial is going to be damned near impossible. At the very least you are going to have to look outside the host country in order to do so and I doubt the US G'ment is going to like the idea of foreign nationals poking around at their data to see what happened.

As I'm here I might as well throw my take on things out there;

Did the g'ment know? Well, I'm going to say the Intelligence community probably had some idea that something was going on, however at this point you drop into the whole 'human element'; just because they knew something might be going down at the time it might not have looked like a 'credible threat'. I dare say if we had access to related intelligence now then it would be easy to join the dots, however as they say hindsight is 20:20, at some point someone decided this threat wasn't likely or at least not likely right then.

End of the day mistakes happen, if the various Intellgence Agencies around the world were perfect then we'd never have any issues; but stuff slips through the cracks. Lets face it if someone had come to you on Sept 10th 2001 and said "tomorrow someone is going to fly two aircraft into the WTC buildings' you wouldn't have considered it likely as it simply wasn't a scale of terrorism most people could concieve.

At this point it is easy to point at the wave of civil liberites which got eroded and the wars which broke out but even that isn't as unlikely as it seems.

The wars first; the Afgan war is somewhat 'legitimate' in that it was sparked by the ruling parties refusal to give up the people considered the mastermind behind the attacks. Granted after that it got a little sidetracked but the primise wasn't a problem. There was probably an element of 'this is handy' about it as it would allow for the removal of an unstable/troublesome element in the region and place someone in position who was more sympathetic to Western causes/positions.

Iraq... well, we all know that was sold on a series of lies and fear mongering statements which anyone with half a brain would question. That one was all about removing Saddam as he was an 'unstable' element in the region. Granted, other countries could be considered 'unstable' but with the last war still reasonably fresh in people's mind it was pretty easy to paint him as a big enemy and given he was a relatively 'soft' target in the region it made sense to go in there. Yes, the oil was probably a factor, however wars are rarely waged for simple reasons like that these days; world geo-poltics is a large and complicated beast.

The speed at which these wars where enacted might seem a bit fast but I think you'd be kidding yourself if you didn't think that the various miltaries around the world DIDN'T have a plan on paper somewhere to invade various countries (including current allies) "just in case". I know I would have and I'm hardly a miltary man ;) Also keep in mind Iraq took a little while to pan out so that's no great shock there; Afgan was quick but given the size and distrubtion of US forces around the world not too quick to have been anything more than a reaction.

The civil liberties issues; well this could be put down to people in power wanted to stay in power and have more control. That might sound a little paranoid but have you ever met someone with large amounts of power who wants to give it up? Much like the miltary invasion plans these plans have probably existed on paper for some years now in the hope that something major would happen soon to let them take advantage of it. Given the aggressive forign policy of the time and the 'human failure' aspect I wouldn't be surprised if they were expecting something soon. Maybe not on this scale but certainly something 'big' as it really was only a matter of time.

"Human nature" seems at the core of the events which have played out over the last 10 years and, even if it wasn't, you aren't going to find a paper trail for something like this anyway. Proof that you allowed 5,000+ people to be killed is unlikely to go down well, even with 'core' supporters (I dare say some people would shrug and say it was worth it however) and so leaving any sort of proof is unlikely anyway.

Of course, what should have happened is that people should have reacted to this reduction in liberties and said "this won't stand" and found a way to protest and stop it happening. However most people are living lives where they don't/won't think about things like this or simply don't care because it doesn't affect them right now.

In the face of a large attack and mass apathy you can get away with many things it seems...