Everyone knows the only valid conspiracy theories are those put forth by the government for consideration by wise judges and noble, attentive jurors. You know – conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to rob a bank, conspiracy to catch a short lobster – serious crimes (the base crimes of murder and robbery simply are not enough; the conspiring, rather than the act, is what counts). Theories about the origin and operation of the Federal Reserve, MK Ultra, Operation Northwoods, Bretton Woods, and the imperfect ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment are the stuff of insane fantasy. Sure, they all turned out to be true but, come on, crazy, crazy, crazy.

No set of such lunatic fancies have a deeper and more fanatical following than those surrounding the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The truth is plain and simple: 19 young, poor, semi-educated men from Saudi Arabia (one or two of whom may have known someone who once said they met Osama Bin Laden), who hated Americans for their freedoms and who did not receive any state support, moved through and received some training in Germany and England, arriving in their base of operations in the United States where they carried out the most sophisticated terror attacks in history without any warning whatsoever, thus justifying wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Syria. Clear as a bell, really.

The crazies come up with all sorts of wholly unbelievable drivel regarding this simple event. They ask why Larry Silverstein insured the World Trade Center for twice its value and specifically against terrorist attacks a few months before 9/11. They ask why Israelis were stationed around New York like spectators at a football game on 9/11. They ask why President Bush didn’t immediately react once told of the attacks. They ask why Saudis were allowed to freely travel out of the U.S. on 9/11 when all other travel was banned. They ask why a CIA Clandestine Services agent would seem to have so much information about the attacks as to basically narrate them as and before they  unfolded. So many damned questions! Are they trying to learn something!?

These jokers actually insinuate that explosives were used to bring down the Towers that day; they claim airliners were insufficient for the job. The “proof” they foist on the sane consists of things like the following: That the modern buildings were specifically designed to withstand crashes by jumbo jets. That jet fuel fueled fires are not hot enough to melt steel. That the maximum temperatures in those fire were around 1800 degrees while months later hot pockets revealed temperatures in excess of 4000 degrees. That there were traces of titanium diboride found in the rubble. These nuts even claim the BBC reported the collapse of WTC building No. 7 twenty minutes before it happened. This screen capture from 9/11 disproves that one:

Loons. BBC.

Now we welcome a new nut to the bag – former U.S. Senator Bob Graham. Graham was once chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence so he obviously knows nothing about anything regarding either government or intelligence. I met the man once; he tried to tell me his suit was blue when it was inarguably gray. Now Graham is set to tell another whopper and feed the 9/11 conspiracy furnaces under the internet loony ward.

Sunday he will go on CBS’s 60 Minutes and drop a bombshell of a lie. He seems to think the 19 hijackers had outside, professional and state level help. He thinks the public needs to know what’s on the 28 pages of classified information redacted out of the 9/11 Commission Report. “I think it’s implausible to believe that 19 people, most of whom didn’t speak English, most of whom had never been in the United States before, many didn’t have a high school education, could have carried out such a complicated task without some support from within the United States,” said Senator Nutjob.

There has been great speculation, this year and going back to 2001, about official Saudi involvement in the attacks. Just because the attackers were from Saudi Arabia means nothing. Maybe they met with other Saudis in the U.S. prior to the attacks. Who cares!? Yes, those other Saudis had to leave the country in a hurry – they had flights to catch. Geesh.

Some like Graham are demanding the 28 pages be declassified. They say the time has come, that the classification was only done by the Bush Administration to protect security interests while the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq raged. So what if those wars are history now (and such impressive successes too)? The release would only confuse the literate public about the nature of the original 9/11 Report.

That Report is the gospel truth. Sure the Commission said the government obstructed the investigation. Sure, Cheney and Bush refused to testify under oath. Yes, the Commission co-chair said the Commission was “set up to fail”. Senator Bob Kerrey said the Commission was denied access to evidence. Commissioner Tim Roemer said the government made false statements to the Commission. Yes, Senator Max Clelland walked off the job and called the Commission “compromised” and a “national scandal”. What’s the big deal?

For many more examples of this deranged questioning of the honesty of government read 7 Reasons 9/11 Could NOT Have Been An Inside Job by the Washington Blog, April 5, 2016. An example of the insidious whining:

Much of the 9/11 Commission Report was based upon the testimony of people who were tortured. At least four of the people whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators information as a way to stop being “tortured”.  One of the Commission’s main sources of information was tortured until he agreed to sign a confession that he was NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO READ.

• Blog, citing NBC News source.

If you can’t trust a torture coerced confession, what can you trust? You can certainly trust the U.S. government. It has never lied about anything. Well, except for lying about the Federal Reserve, MK Ultra, Operation Northwoods, Bretton Woods, the imperfect ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, Waco, income tax withholding, income tax brackets, social security, elections, the drug war, Pearl Harbor, the Grace Commission, JFK’s assassination, MLK’s assassination, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the U.S.S. Maine, the U.S.S. Liberty, the Gulf of Tonkin, weapons of mass destruction, global warming, education, VA medical treatment, the national debt, the deficit, trade agreements, the gold standard, Three Mile Island, gun control, immigration and about a thousand other things.

Those with conspiracy theories questioning our benevolent Washington (that’s you, Mr. Graham!) are just plain crazy.