At the Potsdam Conference in 1945, FDR (who was a raptor, which explains the wheelchair -- he was an unusually large raptor who needed a concealed space to fold up his tail) made a deal with Stalin (only working on behalf of raptors) that orchestrated the course of the future space race. The Soviets would pretend to win the early stages -- first satellite, first man in space, etc, when of course they could hardly build a working clock radio. In return, the Soviets would allow the Americans to claim to land on the moon. In reality, of course, space travel is impossible because orbits are impossible, because the Earth is flat.
Meanwhile, the Russians would use the money they claimed to be using on space research to fake evidence of the Holocaust in order to encourage the UN to found Israel, which they knew would lead to instability in the Middle East. This would discourage archaeologists from finding evidence hidden in the Holy Land of Jesus's faked execution and subsequent career selling discount wine, loaves, and fishes in modern-day Luxembourg. As an added benefit, those archaeology students would now be driven toward paleontology departments, where they would begin planting evidence for a very old Earth in order to secure grant money. For the Russians, this was great because it encouraged materialism in Russia, and religious strife in America. The US used the money budgeted for the space program on the development and distribution of crack.
In the early 60's, the Russians were convinced by dastardly Jews (who are behind all major armed conflicts) that they had gotten the short end of the stick, so they used their mob connections to kill JFK, a champion of the space race. This lead to the Johnson administration, and the Vietnam War. US involvement in Vietnam forced the Russians to flex their muscles in Afghanistan, only to find that there's nothing worth having there. In another secret deal, brokered by Free Mason raptors, they agreed to pretend to "fall" in 1989, if the US would agree to take over in Afghanistan by the end of the century. The US President, George H.W. Bush, readily agreed, realizing that in Afghanistan there was a plentiful and ill-guarded supply of opium, to which his son, the current President, was secretly and massively addicted. And so, on 9/11/2001, the government used a single, indestructible, automated plane based on alien technology from Area 51 to carry out the attacks as an excuse to attack Afghanistan.
Open your eyes, people! The truth is out there!
(Found on the xkcd.com fora.)