to all those who disparage "Conspiracy Theorists" here on DU: chew on THIS:

[Lerkfish]

OUTING A CIA COVERT AGENT
It is a known conspiracy involving more than one person without broad public knowledge to:
A. leak the identity of Valerie Plame to several reporters in order to punish Joe Wilson
B. Deny the leak occurred from the administration, lying to the public and congress
C. Shut down an ongoing covert operation to detect and interdict programs of weapons of mass destruction.
D. Instruct underlings to lie under oath to a grand jury to protect upperllings in the administration

US ATTORNEY FIRINGS
It is a known conspiracy involving more than one person without broad public knowledge to:
A. Remove existing USattys unwilling to act ENOUGH as partisan political operatives, and replace them with loyalist willing to do so.
B. Lie to the public about the job performance of said removed USattys
C. Have underlings either lie under oath to congress, or refuse to testify to congress.
D. Possibly committing obstruction of justice by removing USattys involved in investigating republicans, like Abramoff and Cunningham.
E. Possibly as part of an overall scheme to game the 2008 elections.
F. This was accomplished, in part, by sneaking a provision into the patriot act under cover of night and without informing congress that allowed the president to remove and replace USattys without congressional approval.

SPECIAL RENDITION OF DETAINEES FOR PURPOSES OF TORTURE
It is a known conspiracy involving more than one person without broad public knowledge to:
A. Special planes, using several airports in various NATO countries, often without knowledge in the individual countries, under cover of secrecy illegally transported prisoners to locations like Syria and Egypt with the intent of torturing those prisoners against the Geneva Convention and not on US soil.
B. Gonzales crafted a legal justification for allowing torture, abolishing habeas corpus, and relegating detainees to perpetual imprisonment without trial until their deaths, to circumvent the US constitution and Geneva Conventions.
C. Lie to the american public about the nature of the offenses of said detainees, which as it turned out later more than one third were released for being innocent of charges that were never brought.
D. Falsely Dishonorably discharge a chaplain at Gitmo who brought to light some of the offenses occurring there, in an effort to silence and coverup those abuses.

EXTORTION AND MALFEASANCE DURING NATURAL DISASTER
It is a known conspiracy involving more than one person without broad public knowledge to:
A. Threaten a public official with witholding desperately needed assistance for victims of Hurrican Katrina, unless she turned over her state to the federal troops waiting outside the disaster area, in violation of Posse Comitas and obliterating state's rights. In effect, martial law.
B. Lie to the american people that certain programs, headed up by a Karl Rove, would administer sufficient funds to rebuild New Orleans. Those funds and that program failed to materialize
C. Lie to the american people that prior knowledge of the strength of the damage could not have been known ahead of time, when in fact they were warned by experts of that very eventuality.
D. Brought in, without congressional approval or oversight, Blackwater mercenaries to "keep the peace", with advanced crowd control equipment.
E. Prevented any non-federal groups from effecting rescue or providing equipment.
F. Deny events on the ground, or intentionally mischaracterize them, even in spite of news broadcasts presenting contrary evidence.
G. Suppress actual victim counts, even to this day, of how many people were lost in the tragedy.
H. Coverup previous assessments of the risk and danger of a type 5 hurricane as nonexistent, when they in fact existed.

FALSELY CLAIMING IRONCLAD INTELLIGENCE OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION IN IRAQ
It is a known conspiracy involving more than one person without broad public knowledge to:
A. Ignore intelligence provided by normal agencies that indicated a lack of WMDs in Iraq, and to KNOWINGLY use "cooked" or outright counterfeit intelligence, even when protested by intelligence agencies in the State of the Union Speech.
B. Use Colin Powell to lie and present false evidence to the UN security council with the intent purpose of affecting sanctions and then use those as justifications to regime change Iraq, when they knew the evidence was false.
C. lie to congress and the american people in order to pressure congress to pass legislation giving Bush a carte blanche to invade or attack any country on his own volition.

-----------

There are many, many more, evidence of conspiracies within this administration which hopefully other dutiful DU members will affix to this thread.

My point is: instead of belittling what you consider "conpiracy theorists" outright, it would behoove you to consider the KNOWN CONSPIRACIES already committed by this administration, and those are only the ones we know about. Your energies might be better spent helping us track down the actual conspiracies as we discover them.

thanks for you kind attention.