OzOne wrote
I'm often amazed at the belief that all the Govt tells you is truth,
and all else is a "conspiracy theory".

"All" is such a very big word that's seldom true either way. But I do not
believe the US Gummymint incited 9/11 to justify attacking Iraq as they did the
Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify the 'nam buildup. I say again:

For some yet to be discovered reason Blundering Bush had decided to attack
Saddam long before 9/11 and all of the reasons offered have proven false. That
creates fertile soil for conspiracy theories. But Saddam and the Islamic jihad
movement, that perpitrated the 9/11 attacks are two very different things just
as Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR were two different, though similar
animals. Driven by rational self preservation, Saddam tried to get along with
the USA. His Kuwaiti misadventure arose from a misunderstanding with the US
ambassador about what US response was likely to be to his invasion. Had he known
what would happen I doubt he would have done it. And, since he'd been well
"educated" by Desert Storm, he'd since complied with "orders" as best he could
ever since. So why did we invade? Bush only knows. Maybe "the voices" told him
to do it. But the fact remains that he had made that decision months, perhaps
years, before 9/11 so 9/11 could not have led to it.

OTOH, unlike Saddam, Islamic jihadists are driven by religious furor, not
rational thought. In this they more resemble Bush or Reagan than Saddam. They
seek to impose Islam on the world and perceive secular USA as their biggest
enemy. They had been attacking us for decades before 9/11. 9/11 was just one
more in a string of attacks that would have happened, or at least been
attempted, even if Bush had never been president. A wiser man may have thwarted
it but it's silly to theorize that Bush promoted 9/11 to justify attacking
Saddam.

On the other side of that coin, the jahidists long hated Saddam's government,
arguably the most secular one in the region, almost as much as they despise the
US, and even had a hit out on him. So, any attempts to use jihad attacks to
justify Bush's blunder are equally specious. The chains of events, and command,
leading to the two incidents are entirely seperate.

Back in the 1960's McNamara & friends needed an excuse to invade Vietnam. So
they suckered the North Vietnamese into the Gulf of Tonkin incident. It worked
because *North Vietnamese* boats appeared to attack Turner Joy. However, it
would not have provided an excuse to attack Australia because Oz had no part in
the staged attack. Had Bush wanted to manufacture a similar excuse to invade
Iraq he would have had CIA sucker some *Iraqi* radicals into something like
9/11. Give him (and CIA) a little credit - his advisors, certainly would not
have picked nuts from a friendly nation (Saudi Arabia) led out of Afghanistan
when there were plenty of crazies in Iraq to incite - as witness their suicidal
firings on US warplanes patrolling the no-fly zone and the ongoing insurgency -
when they could have easily incited real Iraqis.

Considering all this, it is almost certain that 9/11 and Iraq are two unrelated
events, despite all the theories pro and con -- and that, if anything 9/11 blind
sided Blundering Bush just like everybody else (Though in hindsight one must
wonder why) and, if anything, interfered with his plans to attack Saddam. This
judgement has nothing to do with any trust or mistrust of government propaganda.