Laughable

Officially, the US government said it couldn't infiltrate Al Qaeda and learn of the 9/11 plot, yet here we have the case of John Walker Lindh, "the American Taliban", who single-handedly infiltrated Al Qaeda and learned of the plot.

Walker was essentially a stupid kid who got caught up in the bad side of Islam. I am assuming there is nothing more to his story than what is officially known. While it is possible that Lindh was an intelliegnce agent who infiltrated Al Qaeda that went bad for some reason-- this seems fairly unlikely. Lindh was apparently a true believer.

Overall, I find it absurd that the US government expects us to believe that all our intelligence agencies and all their assets couldn't infiltrate Al Qaeda-- even when we have "allies" such as the Saudis and the Pakistanis who clearly were very friendly and ideologically aligned with Al Qaeda. This is just one more of the many absurdities of 9/11 the government wants us to accept.

Of course, the American public believes a lot of illogical things-- the Iraq war being a case in point. I guess many people seem to automatically believe what the government says, even fairly sophisticated and educated people-- particularly when they are aligned with the party in power. In this regard, one has a certain amount of respect for people who distrust both political parties, as well as people who naturally distrust the government. There is a certain wonderful freedom in having disdain for both political parties and thus of being detached from the partisan squabbling that goes on all the time (and consumes much of the blog space it seems).