“Let us not tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories,” President Bush stated amid increasingly loud accusations that his administration may have allowed the tragic events of 9/11 to occur as a pretext justifying U.S. expansion of armed conflict around the world to allegedly wage war on terrorism. Curiously, most of the “outrageous conspiracy theories” to which he refers incorporate some extremely sound science, logic and witness testimony where the official version is lacking in those critical areas.

The following is a rather clever and immensely sarcastic approach to the government's explanation of 9/11 - which follows a pattern established by the “magic bullet theory” to explain the assassination of JFK and a Ryder truck full of fertiliser and fuel oil to explain the damage at the Murrah federal building in OK City

Astute observers of history are aware that for every notable event there will usually be at least one ,often several wild conspiracy theories which spring up around it. “The CIA killed Hendrix”; “the Pope had John Lennon murdered”; “Hitler was half Werewolf”; “Space aliens replaced Nixon with a clone,” etc, etc. The bigger the event, the more ridiculous and more numerous are the fanciful rantings which circulate in relation to it.

So its hardly surprising that the events of Sept. 11, 2001, have spawned their fair share of these ludicrous fairy tales. And as always, there is -- sadly -- a small but gullible percentage of the population eager to lap up these tall tales, regardless of facts or rational analysis.

One of the wilder stories circulating about Sept 11 (and one that has attracted something of a cult following amongst conspiracy buffs) is that it was carried out by 19 fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil genius named Osama bin Laden, with no apparent motivation other than that they “hate our freedoms.”

Never a group of people to be bothered by facts, the perpetrators of this cartoon fantasy have constructed an elaborately woven web of delusions and unsubstantiated hearsay in order to promote this garbage across the Internet and the media to the extent that a number of otherwise rational people have actually fallen under its spell.

Normally I don't even bother debunking this kind of junk, but the effect that this paranoid myth is beginning to have requires a little rational analysis, in order to consign it to the same rubbish bin as all such silly conspiracy theories...