but like all conspiracy theories the conclusion was in conclusive
339955
I found the information interesting, but like all conspiracy  theories the conclusion was in conclusive.
4347695
In the conclusion of this excellent book the author Mr. Pearce lists quite a number of things that a believer would have to give a plausible explanation for or believe to be true if one was also going to claim that both Matthew and Luke's accounts were factually true. So when I see reviewers nitpicking individual things to dispute and then claiming that this shows Pearce has failed to show that these accounts are not true, I have to ask have they met Pearce's challenge in the conclusion of his book? I submit that is an enormous hill to climb even if you don't agree with every single thing that is in his list. Certainly almost all of those things must be explained or believed by the true believer.

Like every case for or against something you have to look at the totality of the evidence and the totality of what you must assume to be true given your position.  I think Pearce has compiled an excellent case against the historical truth of the Nativity stories, and that it is ridiculous to believe all that stuff really happened. If these stories were part of a different religion the same believers would laugh them off as myths.
4408677
These modern conspiracy theories are nothing more than the latest manifestation of magical thinking.  Humanity has enslaved itself to superstitious nonsense since it crawled down from the trees. The brain stitches together accidents and coincidences into convincing patterns to support its notions of unseen demons of the spirit world.  Just so, the modern conspirators are equally hidden and mysterious, and invariably interconnected by a byzantine network of coincidences and apparent chains of cause and effect.  This is likely due to our origin as scared monkeys trembling at the unseen leopard, imagining threats at every turn.  Don't be scared monkeys!  The author has spun his tale so thick he's lost in his own web.  Where is the author's skepticism of his own skepticism?  As Carl Sagan said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".  Where is the evidence?  No doubt, it was destroyed with 100% efficiency by the unidentifiable conspirators.  Where are the whistle blowers?  Every one is cowed by threats of death, no doubt.  I believe there may also be elements of racism involved in this.  These conspiracy theorists can't believe that Arabs could possibly execute such a complex plot without the assistance of the white man, or worse yet, being mere dupes of the white man.

As an exercise in creative writing, it's quite entertaining, but a product of reason it is not.  How easily we might slip back into the dark ages.
4471346
Conspiracy theorists come under heavy fire and are labeled paranoid, crazy, unbalanced, and other descriptions.  You do not have to be a conspiracy theorist to know that there was more than one person involved in the murder of John Kennedy.
There have been countless books published on the subject of the assassination and I must have read at least 10 of them.  Of the books I have read, and these are independant authors not in collusion with each other,  they have uncovered unquestionable evidence that points to more than one individual involved with the shooting of JFK.
This is not a personal attack on Gerald Posner himself or my attempt to criticize his efforts, but after reading his book Case Closed, I have to be true to myself and look at this as objectively as possible.
Countless tests and experiments and excercises have been conducted over the years in regards to duplicating Oswalds feat of shooting.  New evidence has surfaced many years after the assassination.  Very highly educated and professional personnel have spent countless hours of research and fact finding and performing studies in relation to this very highly debated assassination.
After all is said and done, and if you are an objective, middle of the road, rational person, it is reasonable to expect you to read and research many works on the assassination to try to get the most complete and untainted answers to make a logical conclusion.
The preponderance of evidence available today, including vast amounts of paper research, photographs, witness testimony, audio information, film, scientific experimentation, and archival data would show that, to an un-biased and objective and clear thinking individual, the information presented in this book absolutely does not represent factual or believable material that lends creedence to a "lone assassin" or "magic bullet" theory or other conclusions arrived at by Gerald Posner.
1076478
This book, perhaps more than any other, will convince hardened 9/11 skeptics that not only was there a conspiracy involving parties in addition to Al-Qaeda, but that the conspiracy included agencies of the US government.

My reason for targeting 9/11 skeptics in my review is simple -- this book presents facts that can all be verified, and does not engage in theories and speculation. The controlled demolition advocates can have their theories debunked, however unconvincingly. The intrepid researchers who attempt to "follow the money", for example the well documented spike in put options on airline stocks before September 11, 2001, are told that such trading anomalies are nothing out of the ordinary. _Welcome to Terrorland_, on the other hand is based on solid on-the-scene reports and interviews with reliable witnesses.

Mr. Hopsicker reveals that the FBI showed a keen interest in the activities surrounding the Venice, FL flight schools immediately after the 9/11 events. Their interest was not in the realm of investigation, however, as they seemed to have a good grasp of the situation before they came. Their interest was in confiscating evidence, intimidating witnesses, and creating a story about Mohammed Atta that was demonstrably false. Two main facets of the government's  Mohammed Atta mythology were that Atta left the Florida West coast in late 2000, never to return, and that he "slipped into the USA unnoticed by authorities". Many credible local witnesses confirm that these are among the many bogus assertions put forth by authorities.

While many people know or at least suspect that the official 9/11 myth is preposterous, they cannot bring themselves to confront the truly frightening concept that their government could participate in a project that led to mass murder, the subsequent murder of a half million Iraqis notwithstanding. The successful disinformation campaigns that have severely weakened the 9/11 Truth Movement provide the skeptical and the fearful with ammunition for the former and excuses for the latter.

Probably the best way for some people to chip away at their fear and/or skepticism is to take a small but important and well-documented piece of the puzzle like _Welcome to Terrorland_, and educate themselves with it. To the fearful who read this book, I believe your fear will turn to anger and a desire to know more about the US government's 9/11 coverup. To the skeptical, please do read the entire book before closing your mind to the possibility that US government agencies could engage in criminal activity on US soil, including obfuscation and witness intimidation, and other more lethal activities.

Updates to the information provided in this book are found on Mr. Hopsicker's excellent website, which is not hard to find.
4766130
The book itself says that it's fiction so everything that the book says is probably a hoax. Nevertheless, the conspiracies theories that have been expressed in the book are interesting and is worth a debate.
4347479
The essential premise and selling point of this book-the 9/11 Commission was lied to throughout their investigation.  The conclusion-The 9/11 Commission Report is a trustworthy reference for those seeking information concerning 9/11 because it was produced by men who were seeking the truth; men of the highest integrity and noblest intentions.  If this line of reasoning sounds a bit familiar, then you have probably read Orwell's 1984 and recall the notion of doublethink presented therein.  The Ground Truth represents a radical transition in tactic by those involved in the 9/11 cover-up.  Instead of using base character defamation and blatant disinformation/misinformation as the primary tools for misleading the people, seize upon the 'phenomenon' of growing public distrust in the government's tale by presenting the work as belonging in the 'conspiracy' genre, yet reaching the same conclusions the Zelikow team peddled.  An unbelievably bold attempt to distort truth.
2093960
I approached this book with great skepticism.  I am not a big believer in conspiracy theories, thus, when a friend recommended "Houses," I had my doubts.  Let's just say that after finishing the book, as well as cross-checking facts, I am no longer mystified as to what happened to Jimmy Hoffa and who killed JFK.  The author's research cannot be questioned, and the details as told by mafia hit man Frank Sheeran are the first and only explanations I've encountered where all the pieces fit, and all the answers to two of the biggest crimes of the 20th century make sense.  Doubt all you want, but read the book first.  You will, I suspect, find it impossible to doubt any further.
950492
This book was not easy to read, because there was so much information in it. Every source or clue Mr. Lifton followed was referenced, cross-indexed, checked and re-checked again for accuracy.  His entire search for the true nature of the evidence is documented.  No stone is left unturned that can be turned. There is almost too much to digest, but it's worth the attempt.  There are theories about how many shooters there were and where they were, and who they might be, but not too many of them use the wounds on the President's body as a place to start tracing them back to the dogs that were responsible [with apologies to our canine friends.]  When you start looking at the wounds [and there are many gorey pictures of the President's shattered head] and remember what an entrance wound [smallish hole] and an exit wound [much bigger hole]looks like, it becomes clear that the the body was tampered with.  The doctors in Texas say that the President's skull had heavy damage to the back of it, in the occipital and parietal skull plate areas.  There was a much smaller hole in the front of his head.  But if you read the autopsy report excerpts, it describes heavy damage to the front of the President's skull and less damage towards the back of it.  The McGruder film clearly shows almost the whole side and rear of the President's head being blown to bits, which is consistent with being shot from the front and not from the back.  The autopsy photos show the poor President's skull being so heavily damaged that it's being clipped together to keep it from falling to pieces altogether. That is one of the saddest pictures in the book.  It also demonstrates pretty indisputably that after the President has been put into a casket for transport back to Washington, and before the jet arrived, someone went in and destroyed the true evidence of the exact nature of the President's wounds in order to support a cover story.  The President's brain, which should have been preserved as evidence, is "lost" and now we shall never really know what the damage was.  There surely was a coverup of some kind, and Mr. Lifton, in examining the testimony of the doctors, doing experiments on cadavers and other objects and in carefully looking at photos, proves it in this book.  While again not easy or pleasant to read, it's worth your time to look at if you're trying to form your own conclusions about what happened.  The fact that Mr. Lifton stays away from politics and concentrates on physics, anatomy, pherensics and ballistics is refreshing. I recommend it as a first-class examination of how the President died and why it's important that we know.
2620051
Now everything makes sense. The rhetoric matches the the video evidence like never before.
847082
This book is a puzzle, and it is hard to understand how Chomsky came to write it. After 9/11, within hours, a global group of critics and commentators began to question the official account. I recall reviewing a book here at Amazon on Sept 12, scratching my head: the Bin Laden gambit is phony. But the views of people like Chomsky on the left confused me for years, although my first instincts turned out to be right. It was clear from the start that something didn't add up. Chomsky's perspective, present in this book, is almost tailor-made to have opened the challenge to the crafted propaganda in effect from the start in the government and media. He is on the verge of seeing the real issue, but then turns around and demurs. Possibly it was too soon after the event to see what had happened. His book is all ready to go as an expose of the 9/11 conspiracy, and then a blank fire. Thus, he presents the correct background to the issue, such as the complicity of the US government in the creation of 'terrorists' and Bin Laden himself, but drifts off into a completely puzzling acceptance of the cover up. This pattern, we should note, has been present all along in Chomsky's refusal to consider the JFK assassination question, a tricky issue to be sure. To be fair, it took time for the skeptics to get their act together, and it was to be several years until figures like David Ray Griffin began to coordinate the evidence of covert conspiracy. Thierry Meyssan's The Big Lie came a year after 9/11, but didn't properly register with Americans. In fact, it was very hard to put the facts together, and it wasn't, perhaps, until the conclusive evidence that the Twin Towers couldn't have collapsed under the collision with jet planes that many were forced to go 'cold turkey' off the official story. The issue is important still if activists on the left defer to what seems now a false view. It sends a message that the perpetrators can get away with a real whopper. This book has frozen a whole generation of leftists into silence, or second string propaganda supporting a Budh, on 9/11. Whatever the case, after so many years, it is time for leftists to check out the real research here. The covert distortions of American democracy require seeing the reality of what happened on that eleventh day of September.
509287
I wanted to be convinced, but after a while it seemed very one-sided.  Then I heard about the special forces troops that did respond (and more could have been accessed) to fight at the annex, and I just thought the analysis missed this, and therefore wasn't fully credible.
3858116
A mystery from beginning to end with a startling conclusion.
1007799
This is a book about a horrendous assassination of four black residents of a neighboring county of Atlanta in 1946, but it is also a book on Southern culture, as it had existed since the time of the Civil War. The author depicts a close-knit, rural society dominated by white landowners who basically controlled their communities' affairs including the dispensing of justice as they saw fit. Keeping the blacks of the area under a watchful eye and in a subordinate economic position was a huge part of that control. Any deviation from their prescribed roles and permitted behaviors, generally resulted in some form of physical violence being perpetrated upon blacks. Of course, law enforcement personnel, if not assisting in this extra-legal violence, looked the other way.
The assassination of these four individuals screamed across the nation's headlines in the summer of 1946 to the surprise of the local residents. This dispensing of justice, while more egregious than was usually the case, was from the same timeworn mold. The local thought was, Why the clamor? The FBI, the NAACP, and any number of reporters descended on Walton County, Georgia that summer. But all of those parties met with silence, fear, dissembling, conflicting stories, and a decided lack of evidence. Five months of investigation, including the convening of a federal grand jury, yielded only some potential suspects, but the evidence was slight and inconclusive.
The author seemed to have a vague notion that she would be able to sift through the evidence and solve the case, aided by further digging. That thought was fueled by the fact that an alleged first-hand witness to the murders had come forward with his story in the early 1990s. It becomes evident in the course of the book that the new revelation was largely a fabrication, though the motivation remains unclear.
The author's project began in 1997, fifty-one years after the crime. Virtually all of the suspects and witnesses had died by that time. Most of the recapitulation of the days leading to the killings was derived from the extensive interviews conducted by the FBI in 1946. Other sources were newspaper accounts and files from the NAACP. In the beginning, the author attempts to piece together the steps and actions of the principals in the days leading to the murders. Most of the book is devoted to bouncing around the conflicting evidence as it was gathered. Some conclusions can be drawn, but mostly the truth remains obscure.
Of course, anyone reading this book would realize that the crime has not been solved, so that is not a good reason to read the book. And it is a slight criticism of the book that after that much effort, the author does not in the end offer much in the way of speculation as to the perpetrators. The importance of this book is that it lays bare the notion that Southern society treated blacks, though perhaps differently, benignly. Life for blacks in the olden South was nothing short of brutal. One wonders just what it is from the past that Southerners want to defend in the various flag controversies now raging throughout Southern states. This book makes quite clear that atonement for the past should be on the minds of rural Southerners, not preservation.
761921
The backers of mainstream theories of history have a steep road to prove their suppositions are the truth. We are just guessing when we try to envision an entire society from a few shards of pottery.
4911596
Big theme of this book: President Ike was not as dull as he seemed then, or now. Throughout much of the book I thought the point was well-defended. However, by the time I got to the end, the over-arching conclusion seemed to be just the opposite. The hero who won the war was extremely out of touch with the radical new world he'd helped to build. It's hard to accept that a perpetual willingness to use nukes if necessary to defend our interests in remote locations exemplified wisdom more than it signified a failure to come to terms with shifting international political realities. Still, we have Ike to thank for his Farewell Address, and that's something of great value and importance, even though it seems never to have been very well understood by any generation.
2242862
So easy to follow. It seems to refute the conspiracy theory. Will we ever know the truth? So much research went into this. Are all the conversations true?