Which Conspiracy Theory?

I used to have trouble believing what I saw in the news, probably partly because I assumed the news media to be liberal. So I figured that a lot of things were staged. I remember seeing footage of a Palestinian man and his young son who were taking shelter as they were being fired upon. If I remember right, his son was shot. Please forgive me if I'm wrong on the exact details, but my point is concerning my reaction. My reaction was disbelief, that possibly those pesky Palestinians had staged the whole thing to make the Iraelis look bad. I thought I was being clinically skeptical, but I was actually believing in a conspiracy theory, wasn't I?

Nowadays, after my conservative to liberal conversion, I realize that when I saw things like that in the news that I should've taken them more at face value. Why? Because the preponderance of evidence says that the event is true. That's all I have to go on, after all.

And now I'm looking at things that, back when I was conservative, I would have considered to be conspiracy theories! I'm talking about things like 9-11 and the buildup to the war on Iraq. See, now we have several situations in which we have either A)- a lot of information that is in contradiction to what we are being told, or B)- conspicuous absence of evidence where that evidence would substantiate what we are being told by our government. Or we have a combination of those two. So, if I'm trying to discern what is going on, I should go on the preponderance of evidence, not on bias or gut feelings, right? If there is a preponderance of evidence contradicting the government's cover story, and/or a dearth of the evidence that they say they have, that would support their story, I cannot think of it as a conspiracy theory, can I?

It is true, that we are not privy to everything that our government leaders are. Some things they have to keep secret, for whatever reason we do not know. But in the case of the 9-11 hit on the Pentagon, for instance, there are several cameras that footage could have been taken from to substantiate their story that it was an airplane and not a missile. Wouldn't it make the critics 'shut up' if they just released the footage, from several camera viewpoints? Why grab up all the tapes from the surrounding hotels and gas stations, etc. and not let us see for ourselves what happened? It would be very dramatic, wouldn't it?

In the case of evidence contrary to the cover story, like the Downing Street Memos, and video tape of various changing answers made by our administration for reasons for going to war, etc. what are we to believe? Are we to believe the cover story, or our lying eyes?

In judging whether or not to believe the various individuals that make up our government, a common sense approach should also be used. Have we found that we can trust them in the past, or have we found that they have betrayed our trust, or been plainly incompetent? Where is all the money flowing? Who is grossly benefitting by these admittedly bad decisions? Who is being indicted, or convicted? Can we get a 'feel' for who to trust?

Finally, do we have to have all the answers ourselves, in order to have the right to demand that questions be asked? No, I don't believe so. I think we citizens have the right, and the obligation, to demand that someone impartial find us the answers!

Until then, the only conclusion I can logically come to is this-- that to believe that our administration is outright lying to us, or at least heavily bending the truth, can not be a conspiracy theory. To deny all the damning evidence that is out there, and to deny the implausibility of the holding back of corroborating evidence, and to instead think that what they are telling us is the truth, this is actually the conspiracy theory.


http://www.911busters.com/
http://www.911blogger.com/
http://www.911truth.org/portal.php?what=link&item=20051205112658960
http://www.st911.org/ (Scholars for 9/11 Truth)