Reply #63: No, they're loaded, politicized questions [View All]

[anigbrowl]

There are questions worth asking, and I also think the 9/11 commission report is flawed in a variety of ways. But even so, I consider the petition as reproduced above to be a piece of agit-prop on behalf of those who make a cottage industry from shopping tales of conspiracy.

One part of me wants to write a short essay demonstrating the shortcomings of this approach, but long experience has convinced me that it's largely a waste of time to do so. Let me summarize this way: to convincingly refute the official version of events, one needs to present a credible alternative hypothesis. Examining unanswered questions and inconsistencies is part of that process, but not the end result.

Treating the existence of questions as evidence in and of itself is the same intellectual mistake (or tactic, depending on your point of view) found in creationist challenges to evolutionary theory. It's not scientific, it's rhetorical.