9/11 without Osama

I don’t know what to think about this. Loose Change (2nd revision) is an alternative documentary on the 9/11 attacks. Using a hypothesis of 9/11 being an inside job it explores inconsistencies between the official 9/11 report, media footage and reports at the time, and intersperses this with other evidence. I don’t want to review this as a film. It is leagues ahead of Fahrenheit 911’s content – a film which also aimed to provoke with one-sided arguments. Stylistically very minimal, with just a voiceover, quotations complementing the footage, it still runs to an hour and a half of freaky, conspiratorial arguments. But I can only discuss its documentary intent and not its content per se.

Alternative versions of the events on and surrounding the attacks are rife on the internet, in left press and in scientific peer-reviewed journals. In fact it is common for traumatic far-reaching events to harbour contrary theories – as individuals try to understand the motives surrounding it. These are normally pejoratively termed conspiracy theories – a moniker which the authors often disregard as prejudicial - and may not be wholeheartedly justified here. Critics of conspiracy theories point out they suffer from major flaws in logic and deduction – and unfortunately Loose Change has some of these flaws. Its investigative approach is that it starts with a premise and go on to research if it is true. This is a logical error fallacy known as conformational bias. An error in logic in which more weight is placed on information which confirms our hypothesis than which refutes it. It is easy, by ignoring even tiny flaws, to prove anything to be true. No weight seems to be given to counter arguments which are also rife on the internet – and as such I doubt its method and its neutrality.

The content is very disturbing. Even if 10% of it is true it’s premise makes me sicker than any horror I’ve seen in the last few years. As a film it is exceptionally effective in its delivery. Some of its more controversial evidence argues that the towers were demolished by a controlled explosion, gold reserves were moved out of the WTC (i.e. Wall Street knew), commercial airliners weren’t used in the attacks, and the mobile phone calls from the hijacked planes were bogus. When its not a playing the conspiracy card its criticising the 9/11 report. Using simple well established facts it notes that the 9/11 Commission began investigating 411 days after the attacks with a budget of $15 million. The attack on Pearl Harbour and JFK assassination began after 9 and 7 days respectively. As for money allocated to the 9/11 commission, $50 million was set aside for the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia, and $40 million was set aside to investigate Bill Clinton’s lying about his indiscretions with Monica Lewinsky. Remember this, then it all starts to sound a little odd...