Conversation With A Conspiracy Theorist

ME: So you believe President Bush had something to do with 9/11?

HIM: Yes, he had at least something to do with it. Too much doesn't add up.

ME: So he conspired in actually killing 3,000 Americans.

HIM: I think it's very possible.

ME: Okay, I'm confused about something.

HIM: What's that?

ME: What is absolutely destroying Bush's presidency right now?

HIM: Iraq.

ME: I agree. His popularity numbers are as low as Nixon's. Rock bottom.

HIM: Right.

ME: And you think he arranged a conspiracy in which literally thousands of people would've had to take part--all secretly--in planting explosives in the Twin Towers and detonating them on national television.

HIM: They probably would've been disguised as workers. Those buildings were really big, so they probably wouldn't have noticed a few hundred people dressed as telephone repairmen or maintenance people or whatever.

ME: While they were planting explosives all over the building.

HIM: Right.

ME: Here's my question then. If George W. Bush is so malevolently competent as to be able to pull off a conspiracy of thousands of people, all of whom have remained silent, to destroy the World Trade Center on national television and blow up part of the Pentagon, why couldn't he have arranged to have a few weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq?

HIM: Well, there weren't any there. If there had been, they'd been smuggled out.

ME: Yeah, but he's doing all this for his own nefarious purposes anyway. Under your theory, the whole war is just a pretext anyway. And it's destroying his presidency. So if he's able to pull off 9/11, surely he's capable of planting a few weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to legitimize this war, right?

HIM: Well, I think there's also an Iran angle, and you have to remember...

ME: No, no, no. Respond to what I'm saying. Why couldn't the man who was capable of pulling off 9/11 stick a few WMD's out in the desert, which would have legitimized the war, saved his presidency, shot his approval ratings into the stratosphere, and perhaps even set us up for further wars to benefit whoever this is supposed to be benefitting? Surely a guy who could do what was required to pull off 9/11 could arrange to stick a few chemical weapons out in the Iraqi desert somewhere. What would that take? Maybe a hundred people?

HIM: Well, but what about the fact that the military was late scrambling planes to get the airliners on 9/11?

ME: [Banging head against wall and whimpering.]

(This conversation really happened.)