The carefully laid out scenarios presented by various conspiracy theorists sound plausible at first. Similar to the way defense attorneys and prosecutors present their cases, with each side sounding so believable, until the rebuttal. And that's where we are now, like the jurors who have to decide who's telling the truth.

As for the surveillance tapes from the Sheraton Hotel near the Pentagon being confiscated, and their contents kept secret; that's pretty much exactly how an agency such as the Pentagon would behave. It's what they do...

Thx.

FOLLOWING ON FROM THE LETTERS PAGE LAST WEEK, I THOUGHT I'D WRITE ALL IN CAPITALS IN THE HOPE OF RECEIVING THE COVETED "EDITORS' CHOICE" STARRED LETTER AND I'M ALSO GOING TO STOP WRITING IN COHERENT SENTENCES BECAUSE THAT DOESN'T SEEM TO GO DOWN TO WELL ALSO WITH SALON EDITORS AND IT'S ALL A CONSPIRACY WHATEVER THE PILOT SAYS- HE'S JUST A PAWN AND THEY WOULD HAVE KILLED YOU TOO IF YOU HAD ACKNOWLEDGED THE TRUTH.

Oh, and by the way- it took me 10 seconds to find the screwloosechange site on Google which thoroughly debunks the "Loose Change" video. I will assume that letter posters who continue to rehash conspiracy arguments that have already been demolished by the Pilot and screwloosechange are not just misguided- they are stupid or liars.

Dear Mr. Smith: Your smart-alecky tone, combined with your total dismissal of any aspect of the 9-11 truth movement, does no service to either side of a growing debate. If a bemused aloofness is your best effort, then it’s likely that those people “who believe more passionately in their cause,” will prevail.

Even the one crumb you give up to the official-story disbelievers is unreasonably prejudiced, when you write, “It's not beyond reason that some aspects of the 2001 attacks deserve more scrutiny than the 9/11 Commission lavished on them,” Hmmm… lavished. Like the scrutiny lavished on the neat felling of Building Number Seven in New York that got zip, zero, nada, NO attention in the commission report? Can you appreciate the implications of a narrative in which pre-planted explosives were used in a controlled demolition? The landlord admitted as much. The bogus 9/11 report about an “enemy” attack had the enemy bit single sourced to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man who lasted longest under waterboarding—two-and-a-half minutes, according to braggarts in the C.I.A., and it closes with the “evil-doer” brought to justice, but where exactly that is no one will ever know.

Maybe you think that cartoon cutouts of airplane silhouettes were logical in the twin tower facades, but you’re plain wrong to say, “the exterior of those skyscrapers was a thin wall of glass and lightweight steel. The weight load of the twin towers was carried by heavy steel columns in the core and tightly spaced around the perimeter, which surely should have deflected the onslaught of lightweight aluminum wings belonging to anything capable of flight. And since you write about flight on a regular basis, why quote two pilots anonymously for their mundane opinions? That smells a tad conspirational to me.

I am particularly interested in the photographic record of the Pentagon 9/11 event, which I think reveals the day to be an amateurishly conceived and poorly executed staged Hazmat drill, albeit one that took real collateral human lives.

Some quotes from your review last week of the film “Flight 93,” could describe the overall effect these photographs give as not creating “an atmosphere that is realistic almost to a fault,” far from it. Nor is there “a grit -- a vicious, real-time tension,” anywhere. Just lots of standing around with their hands on their hips. When “forced to bear witness to the horror as it unfolds” secondhand in these passionless, Photoshopped views, the “distortions and inaccuracies” fundamental to fakery and mendacity make the corpus “tedious and unwatchable”—at least for me.

The wounding of the Pentagon on 9/11 was Rumsfeld’s MUNCHAUSEN SYNDROME BY PROXY, and it was used as justification for entering into preplanned wars against Iraq and Afghanistan—wars which have cost the United States thousands of more American lives, billions of dollars, and the respect and affection of the civilized world. We all need to deal with it..

That's great Steven. I admit- your letter was much funnier than mine. And they say that satire's dead!

Of course, some may say it's in bad taste to make fun of the retarded by so precisely emulating their language in your letter. There's also the danger that some readers might take your brilliantly constructed humorous missive for somebody's actual opinion. Howver, I beg to differ! True comedy knows no bounds and it should be 'dangerous'.

Others will claim that it's 'too-soon' to be making jokes (however brilliant) about 9-11. After all- thousands did die, so you could perhaps see that some people might choose not to 'get' your jokes. They might even pretend to be offended!

Not me! I love your kind of humor.

"a preposterous idea based on little more than erroneous interpretations of some pictures and selective, manipulative use of evidence"

Saddam did have WMD! Oh, wait, I got confused.

Fond as I am of discussing conspiracy theories (we'll talk about TWA 800 some other time...), there is one facet of these theories that seems to be only lightly touched upon by the theorists. Unfortunately, this facet touches those of us in the airline industry with a cruel and heavy hand: if the wreckage of AA77 was not in the Pentagon, and the remains of UA93 are not in that field in Pennslyvania, just where the hell are those two airframes that have been stricken from those airlines' operating certificates?

And more importantly, where are their passengers and crew?

It is nice to see a clear rebutal to the conspiracy theories being bandied about. I still would not put the Wellstone accident beyond the GOP. I can think on that and believe, "Yeah, the GOP would do that." Coud they? I don't know. I do believe they would, however.

For the simple reason that three people can keep a secret only if two of them are dead.

However, the Bush administration has exploited the 9/11 attacks and dragged its feet on their investigations to such a degree that it's only natural to assume they are hiding something.