I ran across this interesting article about who people thought was responsible for the attacks of 9/11. This article just indicates numbers but what I wonder about is why people think what they think. I have some ideas but that's neither here nor there.

I just thought you all might find this interesting too.

(UPI) – The idea that al-Qaida was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States is not universally accepted, a poll indicates.

A WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 17 nations released Wednesday found majorities in only nine believe al-Qaida was behind the deadly attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York, the Pentagon in Washington and a jetliner that crashed in Pennsylvania.

On average, 46 percent said al-Qaida was behind the attacks, 15 percent cite the U.S. government, 7 percent blame Israel and 7 percent think there was another perpetrator. One in four said they don't know who was responsible.

"Given the extraordinary impact the 9/11 attacks have had on world affairs, it is remarkable that seven years later there is no international consensus about who was behind them," Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org, said.

Fifty-six percent of Britons and Italians, 63 percent of French and 64 percent of Germans believe al-Qaida was behind the attacks. But 24 percent of Germans and 36 percent of Turks cite the U.S. government, and 43 percent of Egyptians say Israel was responsible.

Kenya (77 percent) and Nigeria (71 percent) had the highest percentages blaming al-Qaida.

The poll, managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, of surveyed 16,063 people July 15 to Aug. 31. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3-4 percent.

Other countries polled included China, Indonesia, Jordan, Mexico, the Palestinian Territories, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan and Ukraine.

And some say it was an inside job

That would be the 15% that cite the US government.

Israel is responsible? Umm yeah about that....it dosn't make sense.

I know, that's the first time I've heard that one.

I don't think I'd go so far as to say the entire US government was responsible, but I could certainly see that prick Bush doing it.

Had he been in office long enough to stage it? Well, 9 months I guess. Although I've heard that the first warnings we had about it were while clinton was still in office and they did nothing. If so, you can't really blame it on Bush. But I know many people who try. Not defending him. Hate the man. Just being 'fair'.

its a valid point, however Clinton was too busy defending himself from Impeachment, because the Republicans werent too pleased with the fact that he was getting jiggy in the White House with one of his Aides...perhaps if he had been left to do the job he had been elected to do, 9/11 might never have happened at all....

I thought the whole thing was a controlled demolition that went bad. Was I informed incorrectly?

Look, when we go to the point of placing blame, we have to ask, what was the motive for the destruction of the towers? The answer is simple. The United States left a military base in the Middle East. By doing so, we showed an agressive stance from an "infedel" country, it wasn't going to be long before some crackpot televangelist wannabe was going to come along and yell "jihad!" So who is to blame?

We are. The people, the citizens of the United States of America. We have taken a lazy approach to the checks and balances of our own government and of the people we've put in place to run it. By doing so we've let people make bad descisions for all of us, and have paid the price for our government's arrogance. We took our roll as "world's policeman" too far, and started invading houses (much like we do here, without cause or warrent), and we made them quarter troops. This was done on Bush Sr.'s watch, and carried on through Clinton's into W's. By our own Constitution this would not be allowed here.

The thing is, when something is on a scale this grand, "who is to blame" cannot be placed on one person. There are always so many mitagating factors, that no one thing can just be pointed too. Who do blame, no matter what the situation, is always the wrong question anyway. The correct one is, "what can we do to keep this from happening again?" I still believe we are going the completely wrong direction when we tried to answer that one too. There is no vision in Washington, do something about it in November.