Today is the tenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, and considering that there are so many unanswered questions, it's worth giving this whole matter another look. I've posted about this (repeatedly), and the most comprehensive post I've seen recently in the blogosphere is this one by Bizblogger (which includes a review of Jayna Davis's book.)

You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to agree with a former CIA Director (James Woolsey), and a former CIA and FBI director (William Webster) that something stinks. For starters, they still haven't listed the correct number of victims.

Glenn Reynolds (who was kind enough to link my missing leg post) offers an excellent retrospective on Oklahoma City, featuring his observations on the country's mood at the time. His closing words are just as true now (if for different reasons):

This country's political establishment should think about what it has done to inspire such distrust--and what it can do to regain the trust and loyalty of many Americans who no longer grant it either.

Coverups inspire distrust.

The problem is, once coverups get started, they cannot be undone because of the Dreyfus principle -- fear of public exposure of the fact of a coverup. So even if we assume for the sake of argument that foreign involvement in the Oklahoma City attack is being covered up, it must and will continue to be covered up.

Regardless of the soundness of their arguments, those who suspect coverups are condescendingly dismissed as "conspiracy theorists," and lumped in with genuine nuts.

That's why the best allies of coverups are always wackos like these. I'm not easily excited by wacko theories and I try to practice what I described last year:

While I am very skeptical of conspiracy theories, the fact is that occasionally, there are unexplained conspiracies. By definition, unexplained conspiracies (until they are explained) logically demand the utilization of (for lack of a better phrase) conspiracy theories as a tool of examination. There is no question that terrorism -- whether domestic or international -- always involves a conspiracy. In attempting to analyze unsettled and vexing stories, I try to avoid the following common pitfalls:

the temptation of believing what I want to believe

the temptation of disbelieving (denying) what I don't want to believe

the temptation of clinging too tenaciously to my own conclusions (if any)

the temptation of being adversely influenced by emotions instead of logic (loud and ugly tones, or harsh rhetoric make me distrustful; reasonable tones engender trust and can create illusions of truth)

I'd rather not think about it at all.

(Couldn't they have just buried that leg? I'm tired to death of digging this stuff up....)

MORE: Rand Simberg proposes calling today "National Self Defense Day" as he reminds us that it's also the anniversary of Lexington Concord, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the massacre at Waco. (Via Glenn Reynolds.)