i just thought it was fascinating how otherwise very intelligent and articulate people seemed desperate to reserve the possibility that "American dirty tricks" were behind the encounter of Mr. Strauss-Kahn and the maid.    Despite precisely zero evidence to support that theory.

I could see that pubgoers might come up with this idea.    But for people not imbibing at the time of writing, it's remarkable that a thinking person would even want to consider this conspiracy theory.

However it's certainly true that conspiracy theories of various flavors have been popular on Mudcat for quite a while. I even started a thread awhile ago to try to examine possible reasons for some Mudcatters' delight in conspiracy theories.   Maybe I'll resurrect that thread----particularly since i've recently run across an possible explanation which makes a lot of sense to me.