kazzbar said:
I for one cannot understand why these Gosht threads get so grumpy.
Playing nice is not that difficult. I am a fence sitter regarding this case.I think it is possible that there was a ring involved but equally possible it is just a sick perv prowling on young boys. The whole case is very interesting and absorbing but so complicated.
I agree.
I would describe myself as an "open-minded skeptic", if that is not an oxymoron. Fantastic claims require a high level of proof, which is what I am hoping the "pro-conspiracy" advocates can offer. And I am just as interested in seeing the rebuttals by the "no conspiracy" folks also.
My general take on the conspiracy is: If there is a conspiracy, what evidence would we find? To paraphrase the famous story of six blind men trying to describe an elephant: if a conspiracy were an elephant and it was hidden behind a sheet that is the coverup, little portions of the elephant would peek out from behind the sheet every once in awhile. I believe that there is some peeking (the Congressional "Call-Boy Scandal" of the 1980's, current news items of some Congressmen being interested in teenage boys, etc.), but these peeks do not necessarily add up to an elephant.
Some of the more ridiculous claims by the internet conspiracists have Bush the Elder and Dick Cheney raping drugged-up little girls during the Reagan administration, while W was waiting in the other room for his turn. Others have Bill and Hillary savaging a young female abductee in the White House. I immediately dismiss such info as politically-motivated foolishness. This type of nonesense actually takes away from the believibility of a conspiracy that might be true. I recognize that there are rational, dedicated researchers who believe in a conspiracy, and I am sure that they are as equally embarrassed by this stuff as I am repelled by it.
When there are organized pedophile crime syndicates operating openly in Thailand and other countries (with at least the tacit support of their governments), it is probably unrealistic to think that similar organizations do not exist in the USA and some LE turns a blind eye. However, it is equally unrealistic to think that a conspiracy that reaches all the way to the presidency in at least four administrations would be able to (for the most part) hide that information from the press and the public for a quarter of a century. Hell, this administration couldn't even hide the fact that some Al-Queda were being held in jails in other countries - how could they sudden get so brilliant at covering up something much more damaging?
To accomplish such a task would require damn near everybody at all levels of government and LE to be complicit in the conspiracy, which seems ludicrous. I am reminded of some of the broader JFK conspiracy theories that had a similar huge number of participants: why didn't they just wait a year and vote him out instead? They would have had the votes.
I am much more inclined to believe in a smaller conspiracy involving some on the fringes of goverment and a couple of well-placed LE. Unfortunately, one problem with any conspiracy theory is that lack of evidence requires that someone "must be covering it up" and the number of conspirators grows from there. LE cannot find evidence of a pedo ring? - they must be part of the conspiracy. News media not screaming about this every day on TV and in the newspapers? - they must be in on it too. Bloggers who question a conspiracy are agents for the ring designed to obscure. The more inflammatory pro-conspiracy advocates are actually "disinformation specialists" bringing discredit upon the legitimate conspiracy advocates. And the conspiracy continues to grow...
Which is why I say let's look into the source for so much of the conspiracy theory: Paul Bonacci. Before we were stalled with the thread being reviewed, FranklinFiles had emailed Bonacci and Wm. Thomas was going to contact him also. Is there any progress on these attempts to nail down questions that we have for Bonacci? If Bonacci is a money-grabber looking to get a share of $110 million, then the conspiracy theory falls apart. If his story stands up, then there is real evidence that a conspiracy exists.