I work in DC. On 9/11 at around 10:10 am I was in a meeting. There were discussions about whether/when we were going to be sent home. There was suddenly some discussions about what caused the "explosion" sound people just heard and why the building shook.

I hadn't felt nor heard anything, but my meeting was in the center of the building, away from the windows. People I talked with said it was very loud and shook the windows. They'd never experienced anything like it and naturally thought it was another explosion.

I subsequently learned it was around this time that the damaged area of the Pentagon collapsed, so I reasoned that that must have been it (since there was no report of any other explosion around this time).

I heard a few days later that jet fighters had been scrambled from Andrews AFB to intercept the PA plane before it got to DC. The sound was them breaking the sound barrier on the way there....

Well, a few weeks later I heard that there were rumors being discussed on talk radio that the reason why the fighters weren't able to get to the PA plane earlier was because they couldn't violate the noise ordinances in DC and thus couldn't break the sound barrier. It wasn't true.

My point? There are always going to be people who spin rumors against those elements of law or the government that they want to ridicule, etc.

...thinking of the oil/gas lines that need to be run through Afghanistan.

It was here or a link from something here that said that one reason the Saudis supported the Taliban was that they fear losing more control over the oil market if pipelines across Afghanistan make it easy to get oil out of that region. Keep Afghanistan a feudal society and you keep that oil bottled up. Plausible, maybe. But it sounds too cynical to me. I'm more inclined to believe that Saudi support had more to do with support for their religious views than some grand oil conspiracy. (After all, if the Saudis built the pipeline and facilities they'd presumably have a great deal of influence over the government and the facilities and transshipped oil and thus even more control over the oil market it seems to me....)

Anyway, I would take rumors about Bush with a grain of salt.

BTW, do you have a source for the Saddam comment? Thanks.

Cheers,
Scott.