How Do I Critique a Book Based on the Title?

Jon Gold wonders why I'm ignoring the above book. To answer:

1. It just came out two weeks ago.
2. I haven't read it.
3. I haven't read any substantive reviews of it.
4. I'm not going to buy it.
5. The local public library doesn't have it on order.

Now, Jon Gold himself doesn't let a mere thing like not having read the book hold him back from reviewing it:

Kevin Fenton has been a contributor for years [...], and the "Complete 9/11 Timeline." He has provided countless pieces of helpful information for anyone concerned about the "official account" of 9/11. I highly recommend this book.

So Gold's review boils down to, "I like Kevin Fenton and therefore his book must be good." Like I said, I haven't read any substantive reviews.

Update: Gold claims to have read the book; you'd never know it from that ridiculous "review".

BTW, that's Jon Gold's second review on Amazon. His first? Back in 2006 for a Grifter book:

Years From Now Dr. David Ray Griffin will be mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King, and Ghandi(sic).

Hey, I mention them in the same breath all the time. David Ray Griffin is a moron who led a bunch of other morons off an intellectual cliff, unlike Dr Martin Luther King and Gandhi.

The publisher does provide some information:

Questioning actions taken by American intelligence agencies prior to 9/11, this investigation charges that intelligence officials repeatedly and deliberately withheld information from the FBI, thereby allowing hijackers to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Pinpointing individuals associated with Alec Station, the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit, as primarily responsible for many of the intelligence failures, this account analyzes the circumstances in which critical intelligence information was kept from FBI investigators in the wider context of the CIA’s operations against al-Qaeda, concluding that the information was intentionally omitted in order to allow an al-Qaeda attack to go forward against the United States. The book also looks at the findings of the four main 9/11 investigations, claiming they omitted key facts and were blind to the purposefulness of the wrongdoing they investigated. Additionally, it asserts that Alec Station’s chief was involved in key post-9/11 events and further intelligence failures, including the failure to capture Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora and the CIA's rendition and torture program.

Bolding added for emphasis.

So it's a LIHOP book. We don't talk about LIHOP much around here, but it seems to me that's even less tenable than MIHOP. Why? Because at least with MIHOP, the plotters can choose whom they let in on the conspiracy. With LIHOP, the people who have found out through their work about the terrorist attacks all have to be trusted without any prior selection by the elements who allow the attacks to happen.

Poll Thoughts

1. My first reaction was "Wooooooo!"
2. Yes, there are an awful lot of LIHOP people out there. And it's not like we can quibble about "Well, they could have read the question the wrong way." This is about as specific a question as you can imagine a pollster asking on this topic. However, as with all these questions, you have to look at the specific crosstabs closely for other patterns. First, the demographic most likely to agree with LIHOP is the 18-29-year-olds, with an astonishing 62.5% agreeing that the government knew the attacks were coming but consciously let them proceed. But among older demographics the numbers didn't even break 25%. And the pattern with regard to education holds true as well here; 35% of high school grads with no college, 28.2% of those with some college, and 21.1% of those with a college degree.
3. The numbers do portend at least some problems for the Democrats. Over a third of those describing themselves as liberal or progressive buy into LIHOP, although, oddly enough, the progressives seem to be very much less likely to buy into MIHOP with only 1.7% there as compared to 5.0% for liberals. Note: because of the much smaller number of respondents in those categories these percentages may have a very high margin of error and may even be not meaningful. It's an appalling number, but we haven't been battling LIHOP here much at all.
4. There is no way to spin this positively for the MIHOP crowd. Dylan may say that he wants people to come away from his film believing in LIHOP at a minimum, but this movement is not about LIHOP. I mean, who's the guru of 9-11 Troof who's selling the Lite version? Paul Thompson?
5. In short, I am very, very happy today!

Bottoms up!



Update: You know what the Truthers' real problem here is? Managing expectations. They have oversold their movement to the point where a 4.6% MIHOP result seems staggeringly low, even though it fits far better with what we see than the oft-quoted 36% from the Scripps-Howard poll last summer.

I would caution against overinterpretation of the LIHOP figure; something is clearly wrong there as a little bit of analysis reveals. Let's assume that there are liberals and others out there who may believe Bush and/or Cheney should be impeached, but not at all over the events of 9-11? Do you believe that animal exists? I certainly do; I think their numbers are pretty substantial.

Then where do they fit in this poll? I think we can safely assume that if you believe the Bush Administration either made or allowed 9-11 to happen, really believe it, then you must favor impeachment, right? Then why is the total for impeachment of Bush and/or Cheney (308) lower than the total for LIHOP and MIHOP combined (312)?

Look at the wording of the question; it's "certain elements in the US government"... that wording is vague enough to apply to lots of "elements".

BTW, they seem to have stage-managed the support for a new investigation part of the poll. Look at 403 and 404 as questions designed to build support for 405 (at which they actually fail pretty spectacularly). 403 tells them that if they believe they've been told the whole truth, they're in a 16% minority, at which point they get the 50.7% figure they're citing, with 510 people supporting a Congressional investigation. Then 404 hits them with the "Troof" about Building 7, at which point they get 667 people in agreement that the 9-11 Commission should have investigoogled, err, investigated it. And then 405 falls flat on its face, with only 369 supporting a new independent investigation.

Is Zbig a LIHOPer?

We highlighted Luke Rudkowski's mau-mauing of Zbigniew Brzezinski earlier in the week; now comes a blog post claiming that Zbig is a LIHOPer:

Brzezinski is reportedly refraining from accusing the administration of actually aiding the Al Qaeda attacks. Instead, sources say, he claims that a "cabal" of high-level officials knew or strongly suspected that a major terrorist attack was likely to occur but did nothing to stop it in order to create a pretext for an endless war abroad and police-state-like powers at home.

I'm always leery of "sources say" when they're being quoted by a mainstream media source; obviously I'm even more skeptical when it's an anonymous blogger. Especially since the blogger does not appear to be a fan of Zbig:

At 79, Brzezinski is no stranger to foreign adventures and intrigue. A veteran Israel-basher, the Polish-born political scientiist was primrily responsible for the Carter administration's pro-Islamist policy--a revamped version of late 19th century British attempts to harness militant, fundamentalist Islam in the Crown's competition with Czarist Russia (known as the Great Game).

But let's recall that it was only a few months ago (PDF file) that Zbig at least implied during a Senate hearing that the US might resort to a false-flag terrorist attack to justify war with Iran:

A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

(Italics added)

Obviously yellow light on this one.

A (Mostly) Sensible Article

Hitting on something that we've talked about occasionally over here. Mary MacElveen notes:

What I do find astonishing is that several web sites that have posted that President Bush was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks would post this article on their sites, CIA told of al-Qaeda hijack plot before 9/11. This article reports, “FRENCH intelligence services warned their US counterparts, eight months before the attacks of September 11, 2001, that al-Qaeda was planning to hijack a US-bound plane, a media report said today.” It goes onto say, “Le Monde said the document, titled "Aircaft hijack plan by radical Islamists," was part of 328 pages of a DGSE file on al-Qaeda leaked to the paper which it said was practically the entirety of the French intelligence services' dossier on the network.” Do these sites believe the conspiracy or the ignoring of terrorist threats? That is where critical thinking comes into play.

Exactly. These folks seize on anything they perceive as negative to Bush, regardless of whether it makes sense with the conspiracy theory that they are claiming. They are like pack rats gathering up anything shiny. "See! Bush got a warning! Therefore he must have done it!"

Which raises the obvious question: What were the French warning him? Were they warning him of a surprise attack by Al Qaeda terrorists, or were they warning him that the PNAC was plotting their new Pearl Harbor? If it's the former, then it doesn't fit the MIHOP theory at all.

Folks, you are free to believe what you will of 9/11 whether or not the government was behind it. But, what I am asking is that any article that comes across your monitor stating that the government was behind 9/11 is to use critical thinking. Do not automatically believe in your angst against this administration that every article that says President Bush did it is true. To be honest, at one time I believed these theories. It was only through critical thinking and searching out what others of a differing opinion had to say that changed my mind. And no, I am not a collaborator, but a writer who has consistently written negative articles targeted at George W. Bush.

Being a Little Bit MIHOP Is Like Being a Little Bit Pregnant

Terrific point made by JREFer Horatius:

I'd suggest that there's one important difference between LIHOP and MIHOP: You can be just "a little LIHOP", but you can't be "just a little MIHOP".

LIHOP is based mostly on believing that some people in positions of power are more interested in their own gain than in their responsibilities. As such, it doesn't require much in the way of woo thinking, except when the question comes up of how many people would be needed to "let it happen" without others catching on.

MIHOP, however, requires a qualitative difference: you must have people taking an active role: Planting explosives, or whatever. And once you postulate an active role, there really is no limit to what you must start claiming.

I'll explain.

You suggest there was something untoward about WTC7. Let's assume you mean it was a CD, made to look like a result of fire and impact damage.

Well, then, you need to make sure that there was some fire and impact damage, right? Where does that come from? From the collapse of WTC1&2. So we'd better make sure they collapse. Since we can't just assume the planes alone will do the job, we'll have to help them along.

Superb point, well-illustrated. Read the whole post!