According to a new Zogby poll, half of all New Yorkers believe that "some leaders in the U.S. government knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to take action."
Jeepers. I know some people think that way, but so many? My guess is that poll respondents simply didn't interpret the question the way the folks who commissioned it did. While it was clearly meant to guage opinions about a deliberate conspiracy -- Al Qaida plans to fly planes into the World Trade Center; let's let it happen so we can reap the benefits -- it's certainly possible to hear it less radically -- Al Qaida plans to attack the US sooner or later but we have other things to worry about so let's not do anything. That fits a broad definition of consciously failed to take action and is vastly more defensible.
But to the extent there are many more people than you probably thought who do believe in the more extreme interpretation of the question, a good deal of the blame for that lies with the Bush administration. Obviously everyone is ultimately responsible for their own beliefs, but secrecy and deception breeds rumor and suspicion. Bush more than earned his wacko opposition.
I had a lot more to say about this, and had already done so, but my fucking computer (not mine, but the crappy old iMac they give me at the office) crashed and I lost the entire post, and don't have time to reconstruct it. Suffice to say I had some very interesting observations about why you won't read about this poll in the mainstream press and about how, even if you don't buy the conspiracy, the poll proves that that the 9/11 commission, widely lauded as a complete success in explaining what went wrong, actually failed dismally.
