United 93 and Conspiracy Theories

With the recent release of the 9/11 docu-drama “United 93”, there have been some strong emotional reactions that have come to the surface. Some have felt that the film’s release has come too soon and that audiences aren’t ready to re-live the dramatic events of that day. Others that have seen the movie have come away from the film realizing how embarrassingly unprepared this country was for such an attack, from the FAA to the military to the Bush Administration. Hurricane Katrina showed that we aren’t much better off since 2001.

A third reaction has come from the 9/11 conspiracy theorists or as they like to think of themselves, 9/11 truth organizations. For these people, United 93 is simply the cover-up version of what occurred to that flight on September 11th. So what is the conspiracy / cover-up that these people believe in? Well, in brief, it is that the Bush Administration staged these attacks and / or had knowledge of them, and that United 93 and American 77 were shot down and did not reach their targets. Alternatively, others believe that a missile struck the outside of the Pentagon and not American 77.

While I’m usually all for conspiracy theories, this one seems especially implausible. Take the premise that the Bush Administration knew about or participated in the plot. I think the reason that some people find this plausible is because of the total breakdown in the response of air traffic control, the FAA, the military and the Administration. The only explanation for such a failure in response must be that they knew! Right? No one could be this incompetent.

Or could they? If there is one thing that the Bush Administration has proved over the last 4 plus years is that it can’t do anything right. There is no way that they could pull off a caper of this magnitude. This Administration can’t even tie its own metaphorical shoes. We’re supposed to believe that the Bushies staged this, let 2 of the planes hit their targets, for some reason shot down one or two planes, covered up the fact that they shot down planes, and then covered up their participation in the whole plot with a thoroughly embarrassing portrayal of their performance on that day? Wow, that’s a mouthful.

For a moment, let’s dismiss the theory that the Bush Administration somehow participated in the 9/11 plot (hard to do, I know), and examine the possibility that United 93 was shot down. My first question is, if the military did shoot the plane down, why cover it up? Shooting down the plane would have been the right thing to do, and on a day in which so much went so wrong, it doesn’t make any sense to hide that fact. Perhaps some of the families of passengers would have been upset, but personally, I would have been impressed that the military could have been mobilized so quickly and reacted successfully in a scenario that few people even recognized as a possibility on that day. Certainly that response would have been more impressive than what was presented in the 9/11 Commission Report, which was thoroughly embarrassing to all parties involved. From that account, military fighter jets were never close to being in position to down any of the planes. Confusion reigned that day and the fighter pilots were continuously misled as to where their targets were located (hmm, maybe that was intentional – a new theory?).


Now let’s say that the Bush Administration knew about or participated in the plot. Why even bother shooting the planes down? If you went through all of the trouble to get these attacks to happen, what’s the point in stopping any of them? It doesn’t really make any sense.

The other confusing thing for me about United 93 being shot down is the crash site. If the plane had been hit by a fighter jet, it most likely would have exploded in mid-air and debris from the explosion would have been spread over a wide area. Large chunks of the plane would have been discovered in several sites. However, the actual crash site is not consistent with this. It is a single, localized impact zone that is indicative of a plane crashing at high speed. There was virtually nothing left of the plane.

I did read one conspiracy theory account that said the military not only shot United 93 down, but also crashed one of its own planes into the field in Pennsylvania to make it look like United 93 had crashed there. Again, this just isn’t plausible and it would require a cover up so massive that it wouldn’t even fit on the X-Files.

To be sure, I’m approaching this topic with a different perspective than the 9/11 conspiracy theorists. I operate under the premise that the Bush Administration is thoroughly incompetent and didn’t have the operational talent to conceive of nor execute such a plan. Conspiracy theorists see the utter negligence of duty exhibited that day and assume that the Administration must have known about the plot and let it happen. They can’t believe they were just “caught with their pants down.”

Unfortunately for all Americans, being “caught with their pants down” is the most plausible and most consistent with the facts explanation that we have. This administration’s performance since that day only reinforces that conclusion.