Nobody said that everything the government says is true, proper, just, or correct. The idea, which some seemed to have missed and failed to refute, is that the definition of successful politicking in Washington is screwing over other people by making them look bad. The (opposite-partied) colleague of a crooked politician has much better access to credible information that any conspiracy theorist ever will and AND a huge motivation to go public with the information.

Of course you should question the government, and of course doing so doesn't make you unpatriotic. I think it speaks to the weakness of your position that the best you can do is knock down arguments that were never made in the first place.

In the event that of the 100 conspiracy theories you believe in 2 happened to be founded in some kind of abstract truth - what are you going to do about it? Nothing. Believe me. Nothing.

As for 9/11, in a situation with 10,000 circumstances surrounding it, I'm not at all surprised that you could cherry-pick 2,000 of them in order to draw a conclusion that you were looking for in the first place. If you want to make a contest out of it, I could go select some 9/11 circumstances that, in a vacuum, would make it indisputable that 9/11 was coordinated and executed by amonia-based aliens from Venus. That certainly does not make it true.

It should be pointed out that any discussion of this is academic because the people that believe in this stuff have made an emotional decision to believe in it, and then went on a treasure hunt to support that decision. Discussion of logic obviously isn't going to make an impact on an emotional decision.