Friday 18 September 2015

All Lockerbie theories, in context

[This is the heading over an item published on this date in 2010 in Caustic Logic’s blog The Lockerbie Divide. It reads as follows:]

Broadly speaking, there are five classes of explanation for the fall of Pan Am 103.

1) Libya did it
 a) via Megrahi, as determined at Camp Zeist
 b) by some other agent
2) Iran did it
 a) via the PFLP-GC using a Khreesat bomb
 b) via some more direct method
3) Someone else did it (CIA, Israel, South Africa)
4) No one did it - the whole thing was an accident
5) It's not clear who or what caused the bombing, but it wasn't Megrahi

The first class is worth discussing, at least in that subset a) is the legally established, officially accepted, and culturally real version (within the US anyway) and b) follows from a) mixed with the doubts of the intelligent over the case against Megrahi. It's what we're debunking here, so of course it gets mentioned a lot and in detail. Tellingly, most proponents of the official 1a) conspiracy theory are less enthuusiastic about discussing the details in depth. They'd rather just point to some judges twice acting as if they believed it all. We know this, and just aren't impressed with their reasoning.

The second category is the most widely accepted alternate to Libya. The circumstantial evidence is strong, and anchored by Iran's epic grievance over Iran Air-655. This all but necessitated they do something like PA103 around the time it was done, and there's reasons to believe the German PFLP-GC cell making altimeter bombs was on this job. I'm all about informing or reminding people about this. To be sure there are many versions that aren't quite correct, like the drug swap theory. But the clues for a London infiltration of the bomb fit superbly with the Iran's desire to actually succeed, and with the known PFLP-GC technology.

Subset b) of "Iran did it" is occupied, to my knowledge, by Charles Norrie only. He also falls into group three, suggesting a joint Iranian-CIA operation. His theory is discussed in this post. Continuing with the scant category three, Patrick Haseldine has proposed - widely, loudly - the notion that apartheid South Africa carried out the bombing. At the Divide, that's discussed here and nowhere else. Andrew Killgore of WRMEA has hinted that - perhaps - Israel was to blame. That's covered here and nowhere else (no need).  

It's the last two categories that I have yet to address. On #4, the sparse allegations that a tragic accident was to blame for those 270 deaths, are - so far as I've seen - too irrational to bother discussing. To the extent I may be wrong, I've just created a post and invite full commentary on such issue there - and nowhere else on my blog, if you please.  For some reason, I've also lumped in different explosion theories in the same post - allegations the blast was too powerful, too far this way or that, a second bomb elsewhere, etc. In short, if your problem is what caused the plane to break up (and there is some room for legit questions), that is where I'd like to have it discussed.

Of these four, only "Iran did it" account for the obvious grievance Iran held in latter 1988. The others, proposing that Libya, or the South Africans, or happenstance, happened to blow up a mostly American plane within six months of its mirror image, while the Iranians apparently decided to let it slide at about the same time raises the question why?What amazing evidence compels you to propose such an amazing coincidence?

On option 5, proclaiming no good guess just always seems to me like a cop-out. Really, after all this time to consider the facts, you still don't have a best guess who or what caused such a historic event? Alright, well I suggest you read up a little more and try to at least narrow it down.

Other than links and some elaborations I may add, that pretty well sums up the allegedly confused field of "whodunnit" conspiracy theories. Five groups, four of which have something concrete to say. One dominates with the collusion of political power, one solidly challenges with the legitimacy of dethroned reality, and two are appear to be just wacky ideas supported by a small handful of persistent wingnuts.

Please do not allow yourselves to be too confused by all this.

[The comments that follow the article are also well worth reading.]

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