tin foil hat time. again.

I love a nice, juicy conspiracy theory. They're good thought exercises and always lots of fun. But most of the time I think what we call conspiracies are nothing more than pure, bastardly, bloody-minded ruthlessness. This, coupled with the informational advance warning that comes with high station, allows the wealthy and powerful of the world to take advantage of opportunities that the rest of us never see until it's too late. Not prescience, but positioning.
I do think "extreme" theories can sometimes lead to truth, or partial truth. I once thought that perhaps BushCo had invaded Iraq to deliberately create a kind of terrorist magnet, thereby Keeping America Safe; but I dismissed that as being too cynical, even for this administration. The America that I liked to think I lived in would never sacrifice tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent people from an uninvolved country just to keep itself safe. Unfortunately, now I hear members of the Administration bragging about how America has been kept safe because the terrorists are going to Iraq instead of here. Worse (in an ethical sense), I know that there is a significant chunk of people in this country who have no problem with this, and a large chunk of those people who are smugly attributing their safety to having voted for the "moral" candidate. It's shameful and nauseating and I fervently hope that these are just the statements of amoral weasels trying to profit politically from the sufferings of others.