Don't forget the prior: "The official account of big conflicts with a lot of different interests involved will always leave some things unexplained or otherwise suspicious." "Government agencies who fail on a massive scale don't like to be transparent about how the failure happened."

"Governments in general, and the U.S. in specific, have a history of lying to justify war. I can think of several incidents where an official casus belli turned out to be either a lie, as in the second Gulf of Tonkin incident or the Iraqi WMD allegation; or at least significantly doubtful, such as the sinking of the Maine. In these cases, the 'conspiracy theorists' and peace activists were right; and I can't think of any where they were wrong. So they have more credibility than the official report."