WHAT IN GOD'S NAME IS GOING ON HERE?

While this press release makes available the poll's methodology, it fails to make available the way questions were actually worded, so it is impossible to tell precisely what this means -- but I am sitting here with my mouth literally hanging open as I read, via Allahpundit, a press release that says a new poll proves a shocking number of New Yorkers now believe that the government was complicit in September 11th.

What do you even say to this?

Assume the questions were rigged, meaning the numbers are inflated.
It's still depressing beyond all words.

To say that the government was complicit puts us in Middle Eastern the CIA-and-Mossad-did-it-the-Jews-got-a-call-the-night-before territory.

I mean, this is Cynthis McKinney territory.

Oh my God, I think I'm just going to go to bed for a week.

And you see what's driving this. Everyone kept treating the families as if they had some special insight. They submitted hundreds of questions to the 9/11 Commission which, big surprise, the Commissioners for the most part didn't use.

But everyone keeps telling them their insight is privelaged.

So now the fact that their questions weren't used isn't evidence of the fact that they aren't, you know, experts in intelligence, systems analysis, the Mideast, al Queda, Islam, etc etc etc, but instead of something nefarious, and now the 9/11 Commission goes in a heartbeat from being the most complete government investigation in history to being a whitewash and a 21st century version of the Warren Commission.

So much for the hope of avoiding the creation of an entire cottage industry of conspiracy theories.

I hope the people pushing this forward, some of whom are doing this for cynical political purposes, realize how unbelievably corrosive this will be. If this takes hold the public sphere will not recover for a generation.

Comments

[Bryon Gill]

No, what was driving it was Bush's unwillingness to empanel an independent investigation of the events of 9/11. His stonewalling made it look like he had something really bad to hide.

And if you're worried about the corrosion of politics, too late- see Foster, Vince.

[Mithras]

And in the most recent poll I have seen, a majority of Americans think the hijackers were Iraqis and Saddam was behind 9/11.

What's driving this? Dumb people are dumb, that's what.

[Ruby Sinreich]

Mithras, you can blame Fox News for such stupidity. The more you watch, the less you know!

[dauber]

Ruby, google Rantingprofs and Pipa. That study is deeply, profoundly flawed, as much as I generally like Pipa's work. Now it's a bumper sticker slogan, and that's a damn shame.

[dauber]

Ruby, google Rantingprofs and Pipa. That study is deeply, profoundly flawed, as much as I generally like Pipa's work. Now it's a bumper sticker slogan, and that's a damn shame. You should also google Howard Kurtz's column on that movie. He's no hack for Fox, but his run through of the "research" that went into it is pretty devastating.

[dauber]

(Sorry, that last post is confusing. I assumed you were linking to the PIPA study and only then clicked on the links and realized you were referring to the movie.)

[Rebecca]

Interestingly, there is a column today in the Moscow Times that echoes the same theme - that "someone on the inside" was involved in the recent terrorists attacks in Russia. http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/09/02/007.html

[Rebecca]

Interestingly, there is a column today in the Moscow Times that echoes the same theme - that "someone on the inside" was involved in the recent terrorists attacks in Russia. http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/09/02/007.html