A lot must be determined by the attitude which Julian takes towards the CD hypothesis. In this show

http://breakfornews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4936

Fintan Dunne argues at length against the CD view. But if someone were to start with an assumption made that CD was behind the collapse of the Towers, then you'd have to incriminate the owner Larry Silverstein. Since Silverstein is known for bein good friends with Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=97338&contrassID=3...

this would right away point at the Israel lobby. It simply is not credible to imagine a real world conspiracy which includes Silverstein, Netanyahu, Barak, the Saudi monarchy and the Pakistani ISI. People who complain that a conspiracy theory which involves too many people doesn't work have a point. Any real hypothetical conspiracy must involve only a few people who are really in the know, and any conspiracy theory which includes Larry Silverstein as the owner of the Towers must be prepared to restrict its small group of accused conspirators to people who would be friendly to Netanyahu and Barak in the same way Silverstein is. To throw that argument out, you have to first throw out the CD hypothesis (as Dunne does in the BFN link above). Whichever viewpoint is correct, CD or no CD, logical consistency demands that we recognize this much.

It would also have been better if Julian had clarified his view on "A Clean Break"

http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm

and any possible relationship between the Iraq war and 911. Jeffrey Blankfort

http://dissidentvoice.org/Apr06/Blankfort11.htm

and some others have written extensively on the Israel lobby's influence with regards to US policy in the Middle East. "A Clean Break" shows that people around Netanyahu, with close connections to the later Bush administration, had been pushing for war in Iraq at least as far back as 1996. One doesn't have to assume that the people originally pushing for an invasion of Iraq were actually behind 911, but to the extent that one does it is unavoidable that looking at Netanyahu's connections is the way to go.

Some of this made me think of a dispute between Uwe Adam and Avraham Barkai in Walter Pehle, (ed.), NOVEMBER 1938. Adam argues that the 'Crystal Night' of November 9-10, 1938 was not planned by Third Reich officials, occurred spontaneously, and was opportunistically taken advantage of by Goebbels. Barkai argues that 'Crystal Night' must have been instigated by the highest officials in the Third Reich because it followed consistently with all of their other policies. But Barkai doesn't actually contradict Adam's argument that there is no direct clear evidence of the initial pogrom itself being started by Goebbels or any other official in a similar position. That's similar to the exchange between Chip Berlet and David Ray Griffin. Griffin argues that since the USA PATRIOT Act had been prepared before 911, this may be treated as evidence of foreknowledge. That's similar to Barkai's argument that 'Crystal Night' must have been deliberately planned by high Third Reich officials. Berlet responds to Griffin by noting that things like the PATRIOT Act have been pushed for ever since the Reagan administration and so the fact that people were ready to take advantage of 911 to carry it through needn't be seen as evidence that they knew of 911 in advance. That has more in common with Adam's view that Goebbels exploited 'Crystal Night' but didn't specifically plan it in advance.

Julian is suggesting something like this one way or another. Presumably he regards the use of 911 as an excuse for invading Iraq as a lucky break which the authors of "A Clean Break" got. That's OK and plausible, but it would be better if he specifically argued this out.