You say the motives line up, I say they don't.
I didn't say they perfectly line up. After all, Iraq only came in 2003. If anything, Iraq is the weakest link in this story, however you look at it. But, and it is a proven fact again, 9/11 was used to some extent to convince American people in the necessity of the war. It was not the only argument, it was not the main argument, but it
did play neatly to the plan, despite there was
no proven connection, as with WMD.
I have to make it clear at this point that I made up my mind about the whole thing being a cover-up solely based on facts and events that either preceded 9/11 or happened within months of it. With a few exceptions of witness interviews and scientific studies which took place later.
To bring this back to the topic at hand, a conspiracy would work like this fudged data. There's a clear line between the data fudged and the results intended. They want to get people using less carbon emissions and start a strong environmental movement, possibly to get more research funding. They tweak data and get a documentary out the door that supports their viewpoint and gets global warming in the spot light. We have a direct link between the desired effects and the actions taken to get there. A few high publicity moves, and suddenly we've got people buying hybrids and wanting to do more research. Clear cause and effect.
Well, as I said, the intended result is the fear of terrorism and willingness to give up civil freedoms as a small 'bonus'. Since terrorists "have no face and no nationality", you can basically point at anyone and claim something along the lines of "intelligence reports on terrorist activity", "terror threats", "national security threats", "possible attacks".
Conveniently, they were "absolutely certain" that there were WMD in Iraq, and it posed huge threat to the American public. No WMD were ever found, no real evidence of potential threat except some verbal abuse from Saddam. Everyone sort of shrugged and forgot it. So why was Iraq invaded, again? What was the
real reason, if we set aside all conspiracy theories?
Northwoods again, you've got the desired effect - invasion of Cuba - and the proposed plan to get there - coordinated "terrorist" attacks in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. There's a strong link between the desired effect and the action taken to get there.
I commented on this above, the whole point, in my opinion, was to spread the fear of terrorism. And then anyone and everyone can become a terrorist. Then again, in a country that has just suffered such a huge loss, any military action against an Arab country (which in the eyes of most is a racial category) is justifiable. Hey, we saw a terrorist in a cave there!
Now, your 9/11 inside job theory. The desired effect would be, essentially, an invasion of Iraq, if you consider how things went after the fact. So in order to get there, we have four coordinated terrorist attacks, two of which are unnecessary if you just want to get a point of cross, one of which puts you at great risk (if it's a gov't conspiracy, crashing into the Pentagon isn't exactly a safe move) which use means unrelated to the reasoning to go to Iraq (if you're planning to push WMDs, you're going to use them). Then there's an expensive and resource-stretching go in Afghanistan, an area which the US Military knows is not an advantageous battle zone since they've been there before. If you're going to pick fights for fun and profit, you usually try to find terrain that works for you, rather than against you.
War in Afghanistan came before the war in Iraq, and was strongly linked to the attacks. See no contradiction here. Again, I don't know when and why exactly was Iraq invasion originally planned. I listed possible reasons in one of the previous posts. What I know is that the official reasons are generally accepted to be a proven lie for the lack of promised evidence.
It doesn't work as a conspiracy theory because there's no concrete link between the spark and the after effects. What plans there are happen to be fumbled through and are messy, as though they were hastily drawn up after an unexpected event.
That's the beauty of it. It wouldn't be a conspiracy if there was hard evidence that the military response was planned in advance, after all. I'm not saying that the whole gov-t was involved, there were a lot of people who had no idea. And they did their duty to protect the country. Only *someone* pointed where the threat is supposed to come from. And then a lot of money was earned by the same people or their families. If it was an operation of some sort, it would be a
secret operation, don't you think. I know, I sound like a tinfoil-hat man :lol:
Even if an Iraq invasion was planned well in advance the link to 9/11 is pretty much "oh yeah, and they like terrorists too," not exactly the strongest connection. Are you suggesting that they planned an elaborate terrorist attack and left behind no evidence entirely for what is effectively a footnote?
I wouldn't call the Patriot Act a footnote. Would you?
As for "left no evidence" - here I disagree. There is enough for me to base my opinion solely on it, without any "final goal" implications, which do not look contradictory to me either. Not very convincing, in the case of Iraq, but not the least bit contradictory.