I had a row with someone today over who was behind the September 11th attacks. I told her I would love to have been a fly on the wall of the Oval Office when the idea was pitched.

‘Mr President, sir, you asked me to find a justification for invading Iraq to get our hands on their oil. I’ve consulted with the CIA, and we’ve come up with a plan for a false flag operation that’ll give you all the reason you need.’

‘Then let’s hear it.’

‘We rig a remote-controlled plane to crash into the World Trade Center and blame it on a bunch of Palestinian terrorists controlled by a Saudi mastermind backed by Pakistanis and living in Afghanistan.’

‘And then we can invade Iraq?’

‘Actually, no, that’s not enough of a casus belli. We have to crash a second remote-controlled jet into the other tower.’

‘And then we can invade Iraq?’

‘Actually, no, crashing two planes into the World Trade Center won’t make people support a war.’

‘It won’t?’

‘No, we need the towers to come down completely.’

‘How do we do that?’

‘We rig them with explosives in the middle of a busy, bustling city, without any of the 20,000 people who work in the building noticing anything. Then after the planes hit, we carry out a controlled demolition even though we know there’ll be a thousand cameras pointing at the building from every angle, allowing people to examine it frame by frame for any evidence of a conspiracy.’

‘And then we can invade Iraq?’

‘Actually, no, that’s still not enough reason to go to war. We have to fire a cruise missile into the Pentagon and say it was a plane.’

‘Why not just fly another remote-controlled plane into it?’

‘Because.’

‘I see. And then we can invade Iraq?’

‘Actually, no. We need to crash a jet in Pennsylvania and make it look as though the passengers rose up and tried to take back control from the terrorists. We’ll do that by faking phone calls to their family members and employing actors.’

‘And then we can invade Iraq?’

‘No, then we can invade Afghanistan.’

‘Oh. So when can we invade Iraq?’

‘We wait two years and then make up some crap about WMDs we know they don’t have.’

‘Ah. So how are you going to pull it off?’

‘Sir?’

‘Well, when we invade and the public discovers there are no WMDs, we’re going to look pretty silly. All we need is to plant one chemical warhead on a Scud launcher, and then we can point at it and say, “See? WMDs.'”‘

‘Sorry, sir. We can’t do that. It’s too complicated.’

‘What? You’re telling me we can carry out a false flag operation in full view of the public using remote-controlled planes, cruise missiles, fake phone calls, actors and demolition charges, but we can’t plant a single Scud launcher in the vastness of the Iraqi desert?’

‘That’s correct, sir. It’s very dusty out there.’

‘Okay. Sounds like a great plan. Let’s do it.’

The problem with conspiracy theories is that people take a single ‘fact’ that doesn’t seem to fit, and use this to undermine every other fact, working backwards to locate the perpetrators. I think that if you work forwards, from the conspiracy’s planning stage, it’s pretty easy to see whether it makes sense or not.

To paraphrase a quote attributed to GK Chesterton, it’s okay to have an open mind, just don’t open it so far that your brain falls out.