A new poll from the respected Scripps Research Center at the University of Ohio suggests that more than a third of Americans believe that 9/11 was an "inside job" -- an ignorant, paranoid point of view that not only threatens the future of the Republic, but the welfare of any deluded souls foolish enough to entertain it.

   Thirty-six percent of respondents said it was "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them "because they wanted to the United States to go to war in the Middle East."

   Leave aside the obvious questions -- if these "government officials" wanted to go to war in the Middle East, then why did they attack Afghanistan (in Asia) first? If that war had gone badly (as many experts predicted) wouldn't it have put a kibosh on any future efforts to get rid of Saddam Hussein?

   And if the US government was really behind 9/11, then why do Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahri proudly claim credit for the attacks in all their recent tapes and videos? If you believe that these murderous fanatics are actually working for the CIA, then were they somehow serving the interests of the top-level cabal with all their previous attacks (the first strike at the WTC in '93, the East Africa embassy bombings, the USS Cole, etc)? Were these mass murders somehow intended to get us ready for 9/11? And why were they necessary, with each terrorist incident increasing the chance that the evil conspiracy would be exposed?

   If Bush and his cronies planted dynamite in the Twin Towers (as an alarming 16% of Americans-- or some 45 million of us reportedly believe) then why did they need to go through the whole elaborate charade of the hi-jackings and the crashing planes? After all, it was conventional dynamiting that was used against the World Trade Center the first time (under Clinton). Wouldn't it have been easier and more logical, if you wanted to set up a fake terrorist incident and balme Middle Eastern extremists, to use the same methods those fanatics had been known to use the first time? So much could have gone wrong for the plotters in trying to combine hi-jackings and dynamite. And why bother with Building 7, and bring that one down some seven hours after the planes crashed?

   If Bush knew in advance what was coming, why did he look so confused and indecisive in the first hours of the tragedy? Wouldn't he have prepared for a more heroic posture in the face of attack than continuing to read "My Pet Goat." Moreover, political leaders (particularly in a democratic nation) make every attempt to prside over successes, rather than fiascos. The idea that nineteen terrorists with boxcutters could hi-jack four planes and that the mightiest military in the world couldn't shoot down or intercept even one of them did not make the leaders of the nation look good, or inspire confidence on the part of the shocked public. Yet the "inside job" loon dogs want us to believe that Clinton and Bush, Democrats and Republicans, media and military, all came together to inflict damage not just on the public, but on themselves.   

   Instead of answering such questions, the opportunists, demagogues and truly pathetic lunatics who traffic in speculation of deep, dire 9/11 plots like to focus on details of theirown dishonestly presented (or misunderstood) evidence---the hole in the Pentagon was too small for a big plane, the fire in the WTC couldn't have burned hot enough to destroy the buildings, the debris of United 93 was scattered over too wide an area, and so forth. But all reputable scientists who have bothered to look at these details (for Popular Mechanics magazine in a memorable special issue, and of course in the 9/11 Commission report) have discounted and answered the silly or ill-informed objections of the so-called 9/11 Truth Movement.

   Naturally, the skeptics and conspiracists assume that the 9/11 Commission, with its hundreds of staff, thousands of interviews, and billions of pages of research, is just part of an elaborate coverup. This means that a group of distinguished Democrats and Republicans, representing every faction in partisan politics, decided on a unanimous collaboration to hide the greatest crime in American history. Their final report to the nation found plenty of evidence of mistakes and incompetence (from both Clinton and Bush administrations) but no evidence whatever of willful malfeasance, let alone murder. Meanwhile, any conspiracy to plan (and then coverup) the purported "inside job" must also include the world's media, since any serious indication of a governmental mass murder of this magnitude would constitute the greatest scoop of all time. With hundreds of thousands of individuals and dozens of agencies necessarily involved in a 9/11 conspiracy and coverup (the White House, the military, the FAA, the FBI, CIA, the Congress, the Justice Department, the NSA, the 9/11 Commission, journalists and more) wouldn't we reasonably expect at least one of the particpants to come forward now, at a time the Iraq War has become deeply unpopular, to blow the whistle on the whole evil plan? 

  It's profoundly and obviously unhealthy in a representative Republic to see one third of its populace leaving the political mainstream and isolating themselves on the fringes on a matter of such grave, transcendent public import. People who believe in the "inside job" delusion will be less likely to vote, to participate in civic affairs, or to take any part in the wicked world around them beyond trolling endlessly on the internet for ever more confirmation of their wild and woolly version of reality. Think about the conclusions this point of view requires: conspiracists must conclude that top government officials knowingly allowed dedicated fire fighters and other rescuers to rush into burning buildings, knowing that the buildings would soon be demolished. Nearly 400 of these heroes perished on September 11th. If any American honestly believes that top officials are capable of such monstrous cruelty, wouldn't that justify the most extreme measures (including violence) in resistance to such vicious tyrants?

   This demented view of American institutions not only threatens the nation at large but also menaces the success and welfare of the individuals who embrace it. Any psychologist, sociologist or businessman can tell you that paranoia, alienation and deep pessimism about the world will undermine chances for professional or personal life success. In order to win the trust of others you must grant trust to others, and assumptions about 9/11 as an "Inside Job" will lead to the most distrustful possible attitude to your fellow Americans. True believers in this insanity must assume that the rest of us are either participants in the conspiracy, or mindless dupes in the control of nameless, all-powerful forces. The tragedy is that the conspiracy-mongering about the darkest day in our history exactly echoes the fanatic and psychotic global anti-Americanism which, in other parts of the world, leads young men to strap dynamite to their bodies to become homicide bombers. Most observers can see the way that obsessive hatred of the US and its government paralyzes whole populations and damages chances of progress. The same process will apply to the U.S., if enough of us actually endorse the paranoia.

   The best way to counter the growing popularity of 9/11 conspiracy theories is to expose them for the shabby frauds they are and to highlight the harm they can do to individuals as well as society at large. The new polling suggests we need more conversation about this alarming trend, not less, and a concerted effort (on the radio and elsewhere) to help our temporarily misguided fellow-citizens leave behind the fetid fever swamps of fear, to return to the real world of challenge and logic, and to get a grip.