I speak of "motive" as that which originates and acts internally in the case of an individual, and can be reached by consensus in the case of a group. In either instance I see this as fundamentally distinct from the attribution of motive, which would be the inference on the part of someone else.

Brumsen was alluding to Daniel Dennett's "Intentional Stance." (Intentional here is a technical term that means, roughly, "goal-oriented", "directed at", etc.) Dennett proposes that we adopt different "stances" as strategies for predicting behavior. For example, say you needed to predict how the Apollo LM guidance system would react given a particular set of conditions. The guidance function is simple enough that you could understand the design and explain the behavior using the design stance.

Now imagine playing a world-class chess-playing computer. There is no way you could comprehend such a complex system at the design level such that you could reliably predict its moves. Your only recourse is to assume the system is rational and ascribe "beliefs" and "desires" to it such as: It desires to protect its queen. It believes it is allowed to move its pawns only one square. And so on. Such as strategy Dennett calls the intentional stance. You consider the computer system as one that acts towards particular goals, that knows such and such about chess strategy, and so on. By adopting the intentional stance toward the computer, you acquire a way to at least somewhat predict its behvior.

As a hardware and software engineer, you may recognize the strategy here. You, the chess player, are black-boxing, encapsulating, or abstracting away the complex details of the computer's functions into a simple framework of beliefs, desires, motives, intents, and so on. You see the computer move a rook there because it wants to trap your king in the corner. It believes that will allow it to checkmate you in a few moves.

Dennett defines intentional systems as any system in which one can explain or predict its behavior by ascribing beliefs, desires, motives, etc. to it. Dennett proposes that human beings are intentional systems and that we adopt the intentional stance towards fellow humans as well in order to explain and predict behavior. After all, human consiousness is too complex to understand from from a design level.

Speaking personally, I don't find this is wishy-washy subjectivism, but perhaps Brumsen has been trying to make it so. Human actions are real, absolute, and you can discover them. They happen for a reason, but like the complex chess playing computer, the reasons may not be easily accessible or understood. We "attribute" motives, as a strategy for getting at the truth in complex systems.

For whatever it is that terrorists bargain for. Release of political prisoners, stop funding Israel, etc. Use you imagination, or use the demands of other terroist plots.

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hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

As a hardware and software engineer, you may recognize the strategy here.

Of course. But I think my approach to it would be backwards.

In the practical sense we actually build such systems exactly that way: we encode small-scale rules and goals that, when aggregated, result in the appearance of complex behavior. It's only an appearance, though; in most realizations it it still fully deterministic. But it is, as you say, beyond the capacity of any one external mind to realize in all its deterministic possibilities, especially when it reacts to an external and adaptive stream of input.

This is the basis of human factors in complex systems. As long as we're going off on tangents, let's go off on one that interests me. One of the guiding principles of complex system engineering is that the behavior of such a system (e.g., a nuclear power plant or an Apollo spacecraft) can never be fully comprehended by a human mind either singly or in concert. This has enormous ramifications for the real-world concept of "operator error".

But this is probably the reverse of the proposition. Instead of building up complex behavior from large numbers of individually deterministic components, we attempt to characterize complex behavior of unknown design by breaking it down (arbitrarily, perhaps) into small "rules", each of which individually is predictive in its domain.

Dennett defines intentional systems as any system in which one can explain or predict its behavior by ascribing beliefs, desires, motives, etc. to it.

I don't see anything wrong with that as a descriptive tool. But you can't treat it as any more than a contrivance. As you say, it's a "black box" approach. You can certainly attempt to characterize its observable behavior in the vocabulary of goals and constraints, but you will never be able to argue that it functions this way. And that argument holds even when you concede that design stance knowledge is elusive.

The classic example is Kepler. There are equations in Kepler that describe the motion of an orbiting body. But from the predictive value of those equations does not follow the notion that a moon solves those equations in order to determine its next move. Hence even to ascribe to someone or something a set of motives that accurately predict its behavior is not qualitatively equivalent to having discovered the motives that actually generated the behavior. When we're interested in the latter, the former does not suffice.

Here the classic example is, appropriately enough, the Turkish chess automaton. This was a large desk behind which sat a Turkishly-attired life-size puppet. The top of the desk featured a chess board. The front of the desk was made up of various doors. The audience and opponent were brought in. The doors on the desk were opened in sequence to demonstrate that it did not contain a human occupant. The opponent was then seated and play began. The automaton manipulated the chess pieces and was able to secure a number of victories, even (supposedly) against Benj. Franklin, who endorsed its genius.

Obviously the desk did contain a human occupant who played the chess game through the automaton. The sequence of opening the doors was arranged to allow the occupant to evade detection by means of contortive movements well known to magicians today.

A number of magicians of the day (late 18th century) inferred the operation of the chess automaton based on their knowledge of magic and the observable properties of the apparatus. They produced a written description and a set of illustrations showing how a human occupant could manipulate the puppet and hide from skeptics. This publication was widely circulated in the magic community and became the de facto description of its principle of operation.

Unfortunately it was wrong.

Yes, it correctly provided a scenario that accounted for all observable behavior. But it simply wasn't the way it was done. Much later the inventor of the device revealed its secrets. The human player did not physically enter the body of the automaton, as the inferrers had guessed, but instead manipulated the automaton's arms from inside the desk using a set of rods and levers.

The utility of the early inferences should not be shrugged off. Their idea works in the sense that it would produce the right behavior. But it was wrong in the sense that it did not correlate to reality. I see this as a similar situation. One may indeed have a goal-directed model for reasoning about others' behavior. But the fact that others' behavior is also goal-directed (although complexly and inscrutably so) does not mean goals inferred are goals pursued. One is a predictive tool; the other simply is.

Dennett proposes that human beings are intentional systems and that we adopt the intentional stance towards fellow humans as well in order to explain and predict behavior. After all, human consiousness is too complex to understand from from a design level.

I propose that you don't have to understand it at the "design level" in order to accept that motives can exist independently of an attribution.

The validity of philosophy doesn't concern me; but the applicability does. To me this problem is relatively straightforward.

Speaking personally, I don't find this is wishy-washy subjectivism, but perhaps Brumsen has been trying to make it so. Human actions are real, absolute, and you can discover them.

And human motivations can be real and absolute, and occasionally scrutable. Corporate motives, I believe, more so. I might see an application of such a model in the case where the Pentagon's actions were a manifestation of undirected, uncoordinated motives. Here we would see behavior arise out of a complex aggregate of minor goals. And here, at least, the model would hold compositionally if not in all its particulars.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

What you say is basically a dressed-up version of what Spitfire said. I call it the official propaganda. Branding a group as terrorists, in the safe knowledge that from then on you understand their motives perfectly, strikes me as a tad easy.

Straw man. No one has claimed perfect understanding of bin Laden's motives. What we have claimed is that there is no plausible potential motive for hypothetical US Government conspirators to have attacked the Pentagon (despite turbonium's histrionics), but that there are several plausible potential motives for bin Laden to have done so. You, however, have attempted to muddy the waters by raising doubts about whether those plausible motives we have given were bin Laden's actual motives (which is effectively unknowable), as if your doing so is somehow equivalent to demonstrating that no such motives exist.

I see Madrid and London as reactions to the wars; terrorism as a reaction to those wars, by groups quite possibly independent from al Quaeda.

Yes, of course. That's why bin Laden was among those indicted for the Madrid bombings--is the Spanish judicial system in on the conspiracy, too??

Most conspiracists think that it doesn't have a purpose in that plan, and that that was a hijacking that went wrong, or was about to go wrong. Hence it was either blown up or shut down in order to prevent the uncovering of the conspiracy.

I presume you meant "shot down." If United 93 had no purpose in the conspiracy, why was it hijacked?? And what could have been revealed that some of the loved ones of those aboard had not already learned through phone conversations?

__________________
--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

"This morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas."

Let's assume that you say this sentence twice to us:

(1) You say it with the intent that you were wearing the pajamas.

(2) You say it with the intent that the elephant was wearing the pajamas.

What constitutes the objective difference in intents here?

We're talking about people claiming that the Pentagon or Pentagon people withheld the video either to hide incriminating evidence or to make patsies out of the conspiracy theorists.

You tell'em, Jay. The conspiracy theorist are charging the Pentagon with a specific act of wrongdoing. They have to burden to prove such an act took place.

The conspiracy theorist are charging the Pentagon with a specific act of wrongdoing. They have to burden to prove such an act took place.

A CT worry about the burden of proof before opening their mouths to spew forth? Yeah Right, like that's ever going to happen.

__________________
Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Well, I say it can happen....... right after we prove the Laws of Thermodynamics wrong

__________________
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

You can certainly attempt to characterize its observable behavior in the vocabulary of goals and constraints, but you will never be able to argue that it functions this way.

That is true, but most of the time we are not concerned with the underlying function of our colleagues, friends, and loved ones. A wife who values all her husband does for her is not necessarily concerned with the underlying details of the physiological processes that occur in her husband's body as he devotes himself to her with good deeds. The processes can change without her knowing or caring as long as the actions are invariant.

In some cases it matters that the chess automaton is implemented by rods and levers as opposed to a human inhabitant. In others, that is just a hidden implementation detail. There can be cognitive efficiency in overlooking the details, but, as you point out, at the price of sometimes being wrong.

Dennett sometimes charges philosophers with "physics envy", meaning they always want to look to the underlying mechanism to answer questions. Sometimes that is the right place to look, but consider trying to understand the role of a pawn in chess by cutting open a pawn piece. Sure, the wood that comprises the piece is relevant in that the piece has to have some shape that is the same as other pawns but different from the other types of pieces, but you are not going to learn much with that form of study in this case. A better way to discover the pawn's role is to watch it move during a game and to observe how the actions of the other pieces relate to it. It is what surrounds the piece that matters, not what is inside it.

Motives are similar. If Bobby hits Johnny, and Johnny hits him right back, is not the motive for Johnny to hit Bobby right in front of us? What could be discovered by looking inside Johnny? Our lives are full of such actions and reactions going on around us all the time (not hitting, necessarily, but you know what I mean). We learn what the various motives are by observing and partaking in such actions. To discover the motive, look to what "surrounds" Johnny here--Bobby's hitting first, and if needed, their prior history. What both say (or do) afterward can be informative, too.

I propose that you don't have to understand it at the "design level" in order to accept that motives can exist independently of an attribution.

I agree as long as you don't mean "exists" as if, perhaps, science could one day extract a "motive" from a person's body and store it in a jar. There may be things like that inside people, but I think talk of motives is indifferent to such entities.

(Structural redundancy can be said to "exist" in a building, of course, without it being, say, a separate box in the basement labeled "Redundancy", or without it being a special substance baked in to the steel support members.)

My purpose here, by the way, is not to defend Brumsen, but to pick up Dennett and drive him home. I fear Brumsen has unjustifiably dragged Dennett to the conspiracy theorist table.

Turbonium said:What sort of questions are unresolved for you?

I note that in succeeding posts you questioned why the terrorists would want to attach the Pentagon the way they did, in the belief that it would be both easier to hit the Pentagon, and easier to damage it, by diving down on it from above.

Well, that's as may be.

But I was wondering if you had any problems with the specific evidence that a plane hijacked by five members of Al Qaeda struck the Pentagon? That is, given the evidence of air traffic control, eyewitnesses, debris and DNA, is there any doubt in your mind that an American Airlines flight took off from Washington, was hijacked by five of its passengers, and flown into the Pentagon?

Let's assume that you say this sentence twice to us:
(1) You say it with the intent that you were wearing the pajamas.
(2) You say it with the intent that the elephant was wearing the pajamas.
What constitutes the objective difference in intents here?

I'm not sure what you're asking. Maybe I'm thinking too literally. Are you asking what I think would be evidence to you of my objective intent? Or are you asking what the essential nature of such an objective intent would be?

The conspiracy theorist are charging the Pentagon with a specific act of wrongdoing. They have to burden to prove such an act took place.

Yes, that's the way I see it. But the question has become uselessly polarized. I'm not demanding a smoking gun. My question was merely upon what basis the claim of motive was being made: was the motive inferred or was there evidence for a it? A smoking gun would be nice, of course, but I'm not holding my breath. If the claim is inferred, it's inferred. There's no need to make a big production out of it; most conspiracy claims are inferred. No surprise there. But if there is evidence specifically of a different motive than the Moussaoui trial claim, it would be nice to see it.

If someone states his belief and labels it as a belief, why should I have a problem with that? But if someone states his belief and alleges it to be fact, then I will want to see a more objective argument for it. If you can believe it, my question was merely what standard of proof should apply.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

A wife who values all her husband does for her is not necessarily concerned with the underlying details of the physiological processes that occur in her husband's body as he devotes himself to her with good deeds.

Agreed. But in the infrequent case where that husband's motives do demand first-class attention aside from his actions, how shall we reason about them? And if the argument is written such that motives are argued first, and then upon that conclusion is based an assertion that action was taken, how shall that supplant evidence of the action?

There can be cognitive efficiency in overlooking the details, but, as you point out, at the price of sometimes being wrong.

And I suspect that while some conspiracists may believe that the Pentagon is setting them up or has suppressed vital evidence, they accept the possibility of being wrong. If their argument is simply that such a motive would be consistent with other inferences, then that is one order of credibility. If there is specific evidence supporting a claim of collusion or deception on that point, then that is a higher order of credibility. It is the difference between an argument that Jane must have murdered John because she had a mind to, therefore John is dead; and evidence of John's death.

As you're aware, conspiracism relies greatly on an "appeal to motive" -- the notion that if someone had a motive to do something, he naturally did it whether the results are visible or whether it was even possible to do. This is a weaker argument than the typical corpus delicti. I hate to use legal terminology since it can bring with it the legions of artificial restrictions and definitions that jurisprudence imposes. But in this case I think corpus delicti is based on a sound philosophical principle. If you have no evidence that something was done, inferring motives on the part of the alleged perpetrators is simply folly. It does not provide a proof structure that tests coincidence with reality.

If Bobby hits Johnny, and Johnny hits him right back, is not the motive for Johnny to hit Bobby right in front of us? What could be discovered by looking inside Johnny?

Nothing discovered by examining Johnny, of course. But carrying it further, is the motive truly right in front of us? Doesn't this amount to attributing a motive of retribution to Johnny? From your description of Dennett it seems straightforward to explain Johnny's behavior in terms of a reasonably universal human trait. His behavior and our model for it are consistent with previous examples of human behavior. It is attributional, to be sure, but defensibly robust.

A more interesting example would be if Bobby hits Johnny, but Johnny hugs Bobby back instead. Here an intent-based model can go many directions. We lack a singular, universal human rule by which to interpret Johnny's behavior confidently. (I use "rule" in the computational sense: when certain stimuli occur, a certain response is produced.) If Johnny were compelled to reveal truthfully his motive, we might hear such things as, "He is my brother; I take his abuse with familial patience," or "Bobby is autistic; he doesn't know he's not supposed to do that," or "Jesus said to love your enemies; and I want to be like Jesus."

We could derive these ourselves as hypotheses (without Johnny's help) and use them attributively to predict and characterize Johnny's behavior, but we may not have sufficient experience with his behavior to validate that intentional model. Just like our magicians, we would be correct according to all our observations, yet wrong.

The interesting questions are not the straightforward ones -- although they often serve to illustrate points. The interesting questions are the ones in which the contemplated model might break down.

I agree as long as you don't mean "exists" as if, perhaps, science could one day extract a "motive" from a person's body and store it in a jar.

I don't. An individual's motive is a thought. It exists inasmuch as a thought can be said to exist. A group's motive exists according to a different and more problematic way of thinking. We're not considering an individual's motive.

(Structural redundancy can be said to "exist" in a building, of course, without it being, say, a separate box in the basement labeled "Redundancy", or without it being a special substance baked in to the steel support members.)

True, but the structural redundancy, however it is said to exist, is a property of the structure itself and not something that can be attributed to the structure by the arguments of others in a way that causes the property to change if the nature of the attribution changes. Structural redundancy is agnostic per se to attempts to reason about it. We discover it; we do not instill it. If a structure has redundancy, my opinion to the contrary -- however learned -- will simply be wrong. It is not important to the nature of the structure that any person believe a certain way about it.

It's amusing you bring up structural engineering, because that is a field we know to be governed by molecular and sub-molecular effects multiplied over an impossibly grand scale. Our modeling of it has tended in recent years toward such piecewise evaluations, but classicly we do indeed speak of structural members "wanting" to behave in certain ways, and of our design efforts acting either to foil or to satisfy those "desires". We engineers are not so dense as is supposed.

I fear Brumsen has unjustifiably dragged Dennett to the conspiracy theorist table.

Perhaps. I don't discount the general usefulness of philosophy. But I dispute its applicability to a discussion that seems to me primarily to be concerned with (literal) concrete causes and effects. Philosophy doesn't seem well coupled with empiricism, but unfortunately determination of causes and effect in the physical world

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

I will for now stop pushing a Dennettian line on intentions. Unless and until, that is, misconceptions about intentions muddy the waters in the discussion here (again), in which case I will do my best to make clear the relevance of the philosophy that I bring to the table.

Ah yes... but that's the point. Why should I have to use my imagination? It's been almost 5 years since the attacks - ample time for OBL to start his bargaining. But I'm not aware of any such demands.

What is your evidence that the one is easier than the other? Also, why do you assume that a highly inexperienced pilot who knew he was about to die would necessarily calmly and rationally have chosen the "best" way to crash into his target?

I base the claim that it would be easier to fly down into the roof than into the side on my discussions with a friend who has over 20 years of experience as a commercial pilot, having flown both 757's and 767's. His opinion concurs with other pilots who are on record saying that it is much easier to do.

An inexperienced, irrational pilot? From the impossible maneuvers this pilot is alleged to have accomplished? LOL!

Hogwash (with apologies to Jay). This is yet another attempt to make the data fit your theory, rather than make your theory fit the data.

No, it was a response to possible motives for hitting the Pentagon. It has nothing to do with making any data fit a theory. What does data have to do with a question of motives for a Pentagon hit? What "data" are you referring to exactly?

The other problem is, while it makes perfect sense for the terrorists to launch an additional, largely symbolic attack on the Pentagon, it makes no sense for conspirators attempting to stage a "new Pearl Harbor" to do so, particularly if using a missile rather than an airliner is required. The reason for this is that the conspirators' incremental risk is far greater than the terrorists' incremental risk, for several reasons....

Your basic argument is that Arab terrorists must have hit the Pentagon because it would be much more difficult and riskier for insiders to do it. In other words, whoever has the least difficulties in perpetrating the crime is almost certain to have committed it? What nonsense! Why would the party which has (or is considered to have) more difficulty than the other in committing a crime be considered innocent solely on that basis?

Finally and again, please explain how the destruction of the World Trade Center by itself is not a good enough "excuse" to attack Afghanistan and Iraq.

I never said that it would not be a good enough "excuse" to attack those countries! I certainly believe that it would have been enough. The motive(s) for the Pentagon hit were other than for provoking a war, imo.

Well I've got another question for the doubters. If the Pentagon really was struck by a missile or smaller fighter jet, what was responsible for the felled light poles?

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The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

Not totally successful? But at least rather successful.
And don't you realise how well the story you tell here fits with what I said - namely, that it could well have been a motive of OBL to provide an excuse for the US to go to war, thereby inciting islamic fundamentalism, which would be instrumental in order to reach "his objective ... to force the Western Countries especially the US from Muslim lands and to remove their influence upon Muslim lands"?
That scenario seems to me more effective than inspiring the maximum of fear in Americans. The point being that the governments of the islamic countries referred to above in many cases willingly co-operate with US and other western governments, so that in order to reach his objective a strong countermovement in those countries is essential.

My assertion was that it was on the rise since 9/11. By the way, I hope you realize that Bali was after 9/11 and the start of the war in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden has been speaking openly about his motives and ultimate goals in public forums for over a decade. He has given several interviews and made numerous audio and video tapes left at TV and radio stations for years. His beliefs and reasons for doing what he's done are plain to anyone who wants to know.

For example, this is a quote from a 1998 "fatwa" in which he and Ayman al-Zawahiri declared war on the US "in the name of the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders":

"[t]he ruling to kill the Americans and their allies civilians and military - is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) and the holy mosque (in Makka) from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, 'and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,' and 'fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah'"


This is a quote from a videotape made in 2001 where he praised and "explained" the attacks and the motives behind them:

As for the World Trade Center, the ones who were attacked and who died in it were a financial power. It wasn't a children's school! And it wasn't a residence. And the general consensus is that most of the people who were in there were men that backed the biggest financial force in the world that spreads worldwide mischief [ta`ithu fil ardi fasaadaa]. And those individuals should stand for Allah, and to re-think and re-do their calculations. We treat others like they treat us. Those who kill our women and our innocent, we kill their women and innocent, until they stop from doing so.


This link is to a short, but very informative article on the basic makeup of Bin Laden's ideology. The article was written by a Turkish non-profit global issues research non-profit. http://www.usak.org.uk/junction.asp?...JLFD0932&ln=EN

Oh, I agree with that. But I would rather say that it was an unconventional kind of war, not a bargaining process.

Not totally successful? But at least rather successful.

Not really. OBL wants the muslim world to fight the oppressers and destroy them, it's not happening. Sure there is a little spat in Iraq. The US has lost 2,000 in over 3 years. In Veitnam they were losing that many a week. On D-Day they lost that many in an hour.

Two Muslim countries are currently involved in conflict, Iraq and Afghanistan. One, Afganistan was already involved in conflict anyway, and the other still had skirmishes with the Allied air forces. Most Muslim countries are not interested in entering the fray and causing this war to spread, in that OBL has failed miserably. Instead many of them are heading away from their past of terror and oppression of the people. Saudi Aradia is slowly allowing it's people more freedoms and is now cracking down on militants and Radicals. Most of the once strong al Quadea structure in Saudi has been crushed. Other countries that were once safe havens have also cracked down including Indonesia, Yemen, Jordan and Eygpt. Jordan, Eygpt and Syria have signed peace treaties with Israel. Syria has withdrawn from Lebanon. Lybia has renounced terrorist and returned to the International fold. Hardly the war that OBL would like....

__________________
Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Now that's a perspective radically different from mine. Makes you wonder, though, why the War on Terror has recently been renamed the Long War, if OBL and his associates are so obviously on the losing hand.

Now that's a perspective radically different from mine.

You have examples of Muslim nations at war with the west? Any Muslim nation will do, just one?

__________________
Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

No, and that's because the problem with islamic fundamentalism is not one of conflicts between muslim nations and "the West". As I've said before, the governments of the islamic countries ... in many cases willingly co-operate with US and other western governments, so that in order to reach his objective a strong countermovement in those countries is essential.

I base the claim that it would be easier to fly down into the roof than into the side on my discussions with a friend who has over 20 years of experience as a commercial pilot, having flown both 757's and 767's. His opinion concurs with other pilots who are on record saying that it is much easier to do.

Even granting that this is true, as Jay pointed out a vertical attack on a building such as the Pentagon would cause less damage, as much of the aircraft's kinetic energy would be wasted digging a hole in the floor of the basement.

An inexperienced, irrational pilot? From the impossible maneuvers this pilot is alleged to have accomplished? LOL!

Apart from the fact that if they truly were impossible the pilot obviously couldn't have executed them, as someone (possibly Sky King) pointed out in another thread, the maneuvers aren't those a professional pilot couldn't perform; they're those a professional pilot wouldn't perform, as they risked damage to the aircraft and injury to the passengers. This is yet another in the long list of conspiracist factoids you've uncritically parroted.

No, it was a response to possible motives for hitting the Pentagon. It has nothing to do with making any data fit a theory. What does data have to do with a question of motives for a Pentagon hit? What "data" are you referring to exactly?

Possible motives are data, which are used in drawing conclusions about likely responsibility for the attacks. By "making the data fit the theory," I was referring to your greatly exaggerating the expected psychological effects of an attack on the Pentagon, in an attempt to make this appear to be a plausible motive that would justify the tremendous incremental risk of such an operation to a hypothetical group of [edit: US Government] conspirators.

Your basic argument is that Arab terrorists must have hit the Pentagon because it would be much more difficult and riskier for insiders to do it.

I said it was much riskier. I don't believe I said it was much more difficult.

In other words, whoever has the least difficulties in perpetrating the crime is almost certain to have committed it? What nonsense! Why would the party which has (or is considered to have) more difficulty than the other in committing a crime be considered innocent solely on that basis?

Straw man. What I said was that a hypothetical US Government conspiracy would have been taking a much greater incremental risk than al Qaeda in launching such an attack, for a relatively small incremental gain.

Also, you are clearly attempting to create yet another burden-of-proof confusion, by insinuating that doubts about al Qaeda's involvement must necessarily equate to doubts about the US Government's non-involvement.

I never said that it would not be a good enough "excuse" to attack those countries! I certainly believe that it would have been enough. The motive(s) for the Pentagon hit were other than for provoking a war, imo.

Please elaborate on this. Exactly what do you believe that "they" had to gain that would have been worth the huge incremental risk? And along those lines, what do you believe that "their" goals were, if not just to stage a "new Pearl Harbor?"

__________________
--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

Are you claiming that there was a hijacking that by sheer bad luck coincided with the US government attack on the WTC and the Pentagon?
The story gets more improbable with every added detail, and I don't see how anyone can seriously think about this and believe that it is true.

Brumsen, you say that "most conspiracists" think this: are you one of them? If not, then this is again one element that distances you from the organisation you are a full member off, and makes me again wonder what you are doing there. What elements, apart from one sentence in the NIST report that you feel is unsupported, make you feel that a new search for the truth about 9/11 is necessary, and that the government is covering up?
And if you don't think what most conspiracists think about the Pennsylvania crash, then what do you think?

__________________
Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

No, and that's because the problem with islamic fundamentalism is not one of conflicts between muslim nations and "the West". As I've said before, the governments of the islamic countries ... in many cases willingly co-operate with US and other western governments, so that in order to reach his objective a strong countermovement in those countries is essential.

And that's where he's losing. Many of the countries that used to give finacial aid and tacit approval have now clamped down on radicals. People who where supporting his ideals have begun to turn their backs on him. Yes there are still recruit, but their support is getting less in most countries. Notice I say most. In some countries it is certainly increasing.

Personally I wouldn't call it a War on Terror or a Long War. War indicates two nations or people battling, this isn't either. It's a battle between ideaologies and between a loose knit network of people and nations. That is going to take time to deal with. Of course the way it is being dealt with is another matter, but not for this thread, or this board.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

OK, well even if that were the case....
Back to how this discussion began.
Which was: is it plausible to suppose that bin Laden's motive was to provoke wars (rather than inspiring the maximum of fear), which leads to the question: shouldn't the official conspiracy theory have a story as well about why the Pentagon was attacked at all?

no, sorry, I must have been unclear. I believe like most that flight 93 was intended to strike the White House or Capitol, and was hijacked with that purpose. Only, it didn't work out.

As with many aspects of 9/11 I don't know what to believe. But yes, I would be inclined to have the same belief as most conspiracists on this matter.

So they had hijacked four planes, flew two in the WTC, one in the ground in Pennsylvania, and one disappeared, while another (fighter) plane or a missile flew into the Pentagon. Is that basically the idea (with additionally the demolition of the WTC, probably) of the conspiracy, at least according to you (as everyone seems to have another idea)?

If so, where is the evidence?

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Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

So you don't know what to believe, but you do know what you want to believe.

I think its safe to say that Brumsen is not going to provide any evidence. He hasn't so far, and I see no reason for him to change his "tactics".

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

Yes. This isn't hard to understand. There are a large group of fundamentalists that would love to bring back the days of their old empire. Bin Laden and others have made that quite clear. This I think, most CT's can't or don't want to understand.

Here's a quick history lesson. Learn

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"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest." - G'Kar