` When I ask about the role that Middle-Eastern terrorists have to play, they don't have much to say - never mind the fact that we've been getting threats and actual bombings from them for several decades!
` Their arguments are amazingly unimpressive and fail to take into consideration many mundane facts about the laws of physics and the architecture of the buildings involved. They also fail to address revealing photographs showing the full extent of the damages.
` Furthermore, other supposed evidence of a conspiracy including certain actions and quotes immediately lose their suspicious status as soon as they are put back in context!
` In September, I was thinking of writing an article on the subject, though I had no a clue how to start rambling on about it. Luckily, I found an article by Phil Molé - which describes his trip to a Truth Convention - that organizes the arguments very well. This has inspired me to follow his example. So, I shall:
` First of all, he admonishes, what everyone reading this should keep in mind, is that the Truth Movement members (which I've begun to call 'Truth-ites') do not question their assumptions and do not care for contradictory information, even if it is demonstrably true. Their mantra is; 'we already know'.
` Those are their convictions, and they are not willing to change them. As one such member said at the 2006 Truth Convention; “We already know this stuff; we’re here to reconfirm what we already know.”
` As Molé's investigation further revealed, the whole thing is for strengthening group identity; these people did not form this organization to investigate critically. He found the arguments presented at the conference to be easily disproven by abundant evidence. And here it is:
` One of the Truth Movement's main assumptions is that the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers was due to a controlled explosion, based on dubious signs that explosives were used to demolish the towers and that the steel was melted when it couldn't have been. For example, they cite the fact that the towers 'pancaked' straight down instead of keeling over sideways. An article by David Heller is often cited:
The official story maintains that fires weakened the buildings. Jet fuel supposedly burned so hot it began to melt the steel columns supporting the towers. But steel-framed skyscrapers have never collapsed from fire, since they’re built from steel that doesn’t melt below 2750° Fahrenheit. No fuel, not even jet fuel, which is really just refined kerosene, will burn hotter than 1500° Fahrenheit. [2005, “Taking a Closer Look: Hard Science and the Collapse of the World Trade Center.” Garlic & Grass, Issue 6.]
` Gee, that's funny. Did anyone say anything about steel having to melt in order for it to be drastically weakened?
` Sure, there were reports of molten gray metal found at Ground Zero, so he maintains that some kind of substance that would melt steel would have caused it. Dr. Steven Jones had a popular article about informal observations of flowing and pooled gray metal, alleged to be steel. (Also, I thought that steel glowed yellow when it was melted!)
` Importantly, one should keep in mind that there was more than just steel making up the structure of the WTC towers and that any kind of melted metal coming from a bombed building is likely to be referred to as 'steel' by almost any observer.
` Any expert could tell you that a simple laboratory test - for example, an atomic absorption test - would be needed to actually establish what type of metal it really was. Average eyewitnesses are actually useless for that detail.
` So, what other kind of 'gray metal' would fit the description? Aluminum! Indeed, an important component of the WTC structural material was aluminum, which melts quite readily into gray pools: Its melting point is actually so low that it is also prone to bursting into flames!
` Other than that, there is no evidence of any steel having been melted: The fire in the North Tower was estimated between 1,000° and 1,800° F, well below the 2800° needed to melt steel. But then, if the steel wasn't melted, then how could the buildings have collapsed on their own?
` For this you must take into account another well-known fact - that steel loses 50% of its strength at only 650° F, and can indeed lose as much as 90% of its strength at 1,800° F! [Eager, Thomas and Musso, Christopher. 2001. “Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse: Science, Engineering and Speculation.” JOM, 53(12), 8–11.] Also, temperature differences dramatically warp steel, which tends to pull various attachment points and supports out of place. Furthermore, when you take into account that the WTC towers had a very unique, lightweight structure that would inherantly have exaggerated the problems of weakened steel, a different picture emerges.
` It is true that 95% percent of the towers' interiors were nothing but air because they were a 'perimeter tube' design, in the center of which was a 27x40 meter core, designed to provide additional support. [Eager, Thomas and Musso, Christopher. 2001. “Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse: Science, Engineering and Speculation.” JOM, 53(12), 8–11.] Joists connected the outer beams to the core at each story, which provided much of the overall support for the weight of each floor.
` And yes, they were indeed insulated, though when impacted by a huge airplane, the spray-on insulation was probably very easily jarred from around the steel beams, which were then more vulnerable to the heat.
` Not only did the 1000-or-so-degree heat cause considerable weakening, but the steel trusses eventually expanded at each end until they were too tall to support the weight of the building's floors, and so the collapse was imminent. So, not only does the fact that the steel was rendered not terribly strong have a role to play, but, significantly, so does the expansion and warping of the steel due to such temperature differences. [ Eager, Thomas and Musso, Christopher. 2001. “Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse: Science, Engineering and Speculation.” JOM, 53(12), 8–11.] So, it is no surprise that the trusses had gone limp below the floors they were meant to support.
` There is also the allegation that explosives called 'squibs' could be seen in the video. I will not contest that sprays of debris flying horizontally from the buildings are present. But, the mechanics of the buildings' collapse indicates another cause:
` When you see a controlled demolition, you can see all the squibs going off at the same time in all the major support points of the building. Just after that, the entire building - at the same time - free-falls to the ground.
` When you watch the World Trade Center towers falling, you cannot see any 'explosions' going off at all prior to the building's collapse, nor do all the sections of either building collapse simultaneously. What you see is this:
` The parts of the buildings that were above the plane impact points begin falling first - meanwhile, the lower parts of the buildings are completely stationary until the top has collapsed upon them, subsequently causing supports and other structures on the floors below them to bend and burst like bubbles, debris flying out the sides. [You can see for yourself in the PBS NOVA Documentary Why The Towers Fell.]
` In other words, the plumes of debris seen in the videos cannot be from squibs as they do not actually begin until after the buildings have begun to fall! If they were controlled explosions, of course, they would have to go off before the collapse in order to cause it. Instead, such plumes are clearly due to all of the immense pressure from the millions of tons of towers bending and popping, which would blow chunks of concrete out of the windows!
` Controlled demolitions do not collapse like this, though it is precisely what you could expect from such buildings that had been hit by airliners and went up in flames. ...And yes, you could say that the buildings could be rigged to fall from above the impact points first, but it would be extremely difficult knowing just where the impact points would be!
` On further observations, looking at the South Tower (Building 2), you can clearly see that it did not fall straight down - as the North Tower had done - but indeed, the tower tilted toward the impact point and began 'pancaking' downward at an angle.
` This makes sense because the North Tower (Building 1) was hit between the 94th and 98th floors, the plane tearing through to the center of the building. The South Tower was then struck between the 78th and 84th floors, at an angle, which severely damaged the entire northeast corner. [2005. “9/11: Debunking the Myths.” Popular Mechanics. March, 2005.]
` Therefore, when you compare the two towers, the South Tower sustained damage that was both lower down and less evenly distributed. The weakened point, therefore, had to support considerably more weight, which is why one could predict that it would be tilted and that the top of the building would have fallen before the North Tower had, despite being struck afterward. Not surprisingly this is exactly what had happened!
The Other Tower
` Of course, WTC building 7 also collapsed because, as it is claimed by Truthites, that there were more bombs there!
` On the website wtc7.net , one can see a typical claim: “fires were observed in Building 7 prior to its collapse, but they were isolated in small parts of the building, and were puny by comparison to other building fires.”
` Revealingly, their one-sided argument seems to be intimately linked with their literally one-sided images of Building Seven! They only use the north-facing views, such as the one to the left. Note the smoke pouring up and out of the far (and non-visible) side of the building.
` In fact, the only way that it could appear that this building was not extensively damaged would be if one did not see the south side (below). As is plain, the buidling was in fact missing the smoke-pouring side and was otherwise extensively ravaged by fire from top to bottom.
` Richard Banaciski, a firefighter who was working at the site, reports this very thing:
We were told to go to Greenwich and Vesey and see what’s going on. So we go there and on the north and east side of 7 it didn’t look like there was any damage at all, but then you looked on the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors. [“World Trade Center Task Force Interview: Richard Banaciski.” Interview conducted on December 6, 2001. Transcribed by Elisabeth F. Nason.]
` Does that look puny to you? It should also be mentioned that the emergency response workers who were there noted that the lower south section of WTC7 looked as if it might collapse by 3pm - almost two and a half hours before it did collapse. [“World Trade Center Task Force Interview: Richard Banaciski.” Interview conducted on December 6, 2001. Transcribed by Elisabeth F. Nason.] In other words, their assessment was that the building was doomed.
` Also, the authors of the aforementioned web site claim that in order to cause the pancaking of this building, that the falling debris would need to be symmetrical from both WTC1 and WTC2.
` Looking at actual footage, one can clearly see that the south wall of the building gave in first, which makes sense because that was the side that was burning and crumbling in.
` Like the south tower, the way the building fell was consistent with what we know about it and damage done to it by flying objects - in this case, debris that came from a building which had fallen over slightly to the side. There are no mysteries here!
` If you were to add a planned demolition hypothesis, then how could you explain why the collapse began where the damage was most extensive? Did the conspirators know exactly where the debris would strike WTC 7?
` Indeed, the tower did not fall 'straight down into a convenient pile' as alleged by creators of the documentary Loose Change. The rubble was 12 stories high and 150 meters across. What's so convenient about that?
` For further evidence to fuel the conspiracy, Truthites are usually quick to mention that in a September 2002 PBS Special called America Rebuilds, Larry Silverstein says:
` The conspiracy theoriests - such as Alex Jones at prisonplanet.com - will tell you that this is damning evidence of a confession that he gave the okay to detonate the building, because they assume that 'pull it' means to demolish the building.I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, “We’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.” And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse. [“America Rebuilds” PBS Home Video, ISBN 0-7806-4006-3.]
` Lou Ryan, who is sitting here as I'm reading this to him, has just blurted out; "You total moron! Don't you know that 'pulling it' refers to pulling out your group? Everyone uses it, all the time, even in the military when they 'pull out' soldiers! What an idiot!"
` This is true, you know.... For another example of the term, another first responder said that there were “tremendous, tremendous fires going on. Finally they pulled us out.” [“World Trade Center Task Force Interview: Richard Banaciski.” Interview conducted on December 6, 2001. Transcribed by Elisabeth F. Nason.]
` So yes, it appears that Jones is taking this way out of context. On top of this, to clarify what Silverstein had meant, spokesperson Mr. Dara McQuillan said on September 9, 2005:
In the afternoon of September 11, Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Center. The Commander told Mr. Silverstein that there were several firefighters in the building working to contain the fires. Mr. Silverstein expressed his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building.
Later in the day, the Fire Commander ordered his firefighters out of the building and at 5:20 p.m. the building collapsed. No lives were lost at Seven World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
As noted above, when Mr. Silverstein was recounting these events for a television documentary he stated, “I said, you know, we’ve had such terrible loss of life. Maybe the smartest thing to do is to pull it.” Mr. McQuillan has stated that by “it,” Mr. Silverstein meant the contingent of firefighters remaining in the building. [See “9/11 Revealed? A New Book Repeats False Con-spiracy Theories.”]
` Hello? In fact, there is abundant evidence, besides McQuillan's indications, that there had been many firefighters evacuating the tenants in the building, and they worked there until shortly before the collapse occurred. For example, Daniel Nigrois said in a NYT interview:
The most important operational decision to be made that afternoon was [that] the collapse [of the WTC towers] had damaged 7 World Trade Center … It had very heavy fire on many floors and I ordered the evacuation of an area sufficient around to protect our members, so we had to give up some rescue operations that were going on at the time and back the people away far enough so that if 7 World Trade did collapse, we [wouldn’t] lose any more people. We continued to operate on what we could from that distance and approximately an hour and a half after that order was [given], at 5:30 in the afternoon, World Trade Center collapsed completely. [“World Trade Center Task Force Interview: Daniel Nigrois.” Interview conducted on October 24, 2001.]
` Indeed, there is large agreement between McQuillan’s response and the testimony of the firefighters, including facts such as firefighters being at the WTC 7 site, rescuing and evacuating people until late in the afternoon, that they predicted that collapse was imminent, and that they acted on this by pulling back and waiting for the building collapse at around 5:20 pm.
` So, when you look at the Truth Movement's story, you find that it is full of gaping holes, much like the ones found on WTC 1, 2 and 7, and so inevitably cannot stand up to scrutiny. Larry Silverstein could not have destroyed the WTC building (presumably for a huge insurance payoff) for all of those reasons - plus the fact that his alleged confession was on a PBS special and therefore seen by millions seems a bit weird.
` Furthermore, he does not have any link with the U.S. government, which are supposedly the real terrorists. And if our terrorist government were the ones who blew up the building, why wait until everyone was evacuated?
` Indeed, 3,000 people died in towers 1 and 2, but nobody died in WTC 7! Plus, if 1 and 2 both needed to throw debris out to hit WTC 7, and then all three buildings need to be wired for demolition in order to collapse, why bother? Why not just blow the buildings up with bombs and then blame terrorists? Why would they need planes?
` Prepping a building for demolition takes a considerable amount of time - first, it needs to be partly gutted, and then extensively wired! And those are huge buildings, so that would take ... what? Weeks? How could the building be utterly untouched and occupied until the last moment? That means that this would have had to have been going on without anyone working there noticing it! "What is in that giant briefcase? What are those noises? Why did I just fall through the floor?"
The Pentagon
` Many of the Truthites also believe that the Pentagon was not struck by Flight 77, but instead, used a strategically fired missile or some kind of bomb. Thierry Meyssan wrote his book Pentagate, that the damage done to the Pentagon was too limited to have resulted from the crash of a Boeing 757. Loose Change claims that the damage was “a single hole, no more than 16 feet in diameter,” totally without remains of an airplane.
` Such is only true from certain angles! The 9/11 conspiracy theorists selectively use pictures taken at such a perspective that shows that the damage to the Pentagon looks small, and try to ignore pictures that show - more accurately - the full extent of the damage.
` They also seem to expect that a crashed airplane will leave an airplane-shaped hole in a solid building, i.e. a shape showing the wings, as they did with the glass-covered WTC buildings. The truth is, when an aircraft - which is deceptively light and delicate - slams into nine feet of concrete, the wings shear right off pretty easily!
` Tellingly, numerous photos show that there are parts of an airplane in the wreckage. Parts that have clearly been fragmented and charred by plowing through nine feet of reinforced concrete at four hundred miles per hour or so. It's pretty typical of plane wrecks in which the plane hit a very solid object.
` For example, here is the landing gear:
` The engine:
` Curved chunks of fuselage can be seen here:
` Even a wheel hub:
` You can actually see it on the right in this picture of the impact:
` Like I said, the plane would not have made an airplane-shaped hole in the building because this is not a cartoon: In real life, the wings would be expected to be utterly destroyed.
` Not much of the plane is recognizable because of the sheer strength of the building and the immense speed at which the plane crashed. However, bits and pieces were recovered that surely look like part of a plane:
` Said Truthites will just write these off as 'planted' plane wreckage or faked photos. And they will ignore anyone's eyewitness accounts such as the one from blast expert Allyn E. Kilsheimer, who was the first structural engineer at the crash site. He describes (in an article in Popular Mechanics) what he himself observed:
` So, why do they claim that CNN correspondent Jamie McIntyre told Judy Woodruff that he couldn't see anything of a plane crash? Well, let us look at the transcript:I saw the marks of the plane wing on the face of the building. I picked up parts of the plane with the airline markings on them. I held in my hand the tail section of the plane, and I found the black box....
...I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?” [“9/11: Debunking the Myths.” Popular Mechanics. March, 2005.]
WOODRUFF: Jamie, Aaron was talking earlier — or one of our correspondence was talking earlier — I think — actually, it was Bob Franken — with an eyewitness who said it appeared that that Boeing 757, the American jet, American Airline jet, landed short of the Pentagon.
Can you give us any better idea of how much of the plane actually impacted the building?
MCINTYRE: You know, it might have appeared that way, but from my close-up inspection, there’s no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon. The only site is the actual site of the building that’s crashed in, and as I said, the only pieces left that you can see are small enough that you can pick up in your hand. There are no large tail sections, wing sections, fuselage, nothing like that anywhere around, which would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon and then caused the side to collapse. [Transcript.]
` Conspiracy theorists, on the other hand, only cite the one sentence, “From my close-up inspection, there’s no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon.” Given the situation, what this clearly means is that he could not see evidence of the plane touching down 'anywhere outside of but nearby the Pentagon'. Taken out of context, it does seem like he meant that there was no plane debris around.
` There was a film called United 93, about the hijacked airplane that crashed into an unoccupied area because the passengers actually fought the terrorists. The premiere was attended by the creators of Loose Change in order to, as one forum member put it “bite these bastards where it hurts, and have this Fight 93 movie backfire on them.” [Quote.]
` To them, there have been two outcomes of Flight 93, depnding on who you ask. Some of them say that the plane landed safely, which stems from the initial AP reports which confused Flights 1989 and 93. It was Flight 1989 that landed in Cleveland Hopkins Airport, not 93, and the AP did correct the error later on. [Kropko, M.R. 2002. “September 11 Tension Vivid to Controller.” Associated Press, August 15, 2002.]
` The second allegation is that the plane was shot down by a plane from the conspirators themselves - the U.S. military. It has been asserted that the main body of the engine and other large chunks were found scattered over miles away. Actually, we know that the engine was found 300 yards away, no doubt about it, and it was in a position that was consistent with the direction the plane had been moving. [“9/11: Debunking the Myths.” Popular Mechanics. March, 2005.]
` The black box, also found, clearly records the struggle that had been going on before the crash. Besides, why on earth would they just abort the mission if it was going so well?
` The Truthites also believe that NORAD had supposedly ordered a 'stand down' to actually let the planes reach their destinations. This is because they assume that NORAD actually had the capability of both locating and intercepting planes on 9/11, and that because they did not it must have been deliberate. There had been 67 other interceptions in history, yes, but take this into consideration:
In the decade before 9/11, NORAD intercepted only one civilian plane over North America: golfer Payne Stewart’s Learjet, in October 1999. With passengers and crew unconscious from cabin decompression, the plane lost radio contact but remained in transponder contact until it crashed. Even so, it took an F-16 1 hour and 22 minutes to reach the stricken jet. Rules in effect back then, and on 9/11, prohibited supersonic flight on intercepts. [“9/11: Debunking the Myths.” Popular Mechanics. March, 2005.]
` Planes are very difficult to intercept and it happens only rarely. First off, the NORAD personnell have to radio contact the planes to rule out mundane problems, and then they must contact military personnell to scramble planes after them.
` The 9/11 case was actually much harder than usual because the terrorists had turned off or disabled the plane's radar transponders. Therefore, it would have looked like a moving blip among many others on NORAD's screens, making it impossible for them to even locate and intercept them in the short window of time available.
` Another Truthite 'puzzle piece' is that there was a lot of 'put' trading of airline stock, which is a huge gamble. They surmise that the 'insiders' knew what would happen, and so placed ther bets. Now consider that this is a common event and that the general volume of put trading had also reached the same levels just earlier in the year. Plus, general bad news about the airline industry directly prompted investment comanies to tell their clients that put options would be the best course of action.
` Yes, there was a large spike in American Airlines trade, though this is hardly surprising: the company had released a major warning just before because they had expected possible stock losses. [“AMR Corp Issues 3Q’ 2001 Profit Warning.” Airline Industry Information, September 11, 2001, “Plummeting Profit.” Zeal Speculation and Investment. June 22, 2001.]
` So, what's the point in finding another way to explain it? Is that not sufficient?
` Supposedly, FEMA arrived at the WTC on September 10, 2001 because they knew that the disaster was about to happen. This allegation was based on a statement by Tom Kenney of the Massachusetts task force to Dan Rather on Sept 13, 2001: “We’re currently, uh, one of the first teams that was deployed to support the city of New York for this disaster. We arrived on, uh, late Monday night and went into action on Tuesday morning. And not until today did we get a full opportunity to work, uh, the entire site.” [Schorow, Stephanie. 2002. “Independent Research.” Boston Herald. 5 September (Arts & Life).]
` That seems a bit strange, considering that Monday was September 10. What seems to have happened there was that Kenney confused which day was which - something that commonly happens to people who are working for two long days in emergency response.
` What he apparently meant to say was that he arrived at Ground Zero on the eleventh, which he must have thought was Monday but was really Tuesday, and went into action on 9/12, and did not get a chance to work the whole site until 'today' or, 9/13. In addition, many different sources have documented the arrival of FEMA on 9/11, including Kenney's wife. [Schorow, Stephanie. 2002. “Independent Research.” Boston Herald. 5 September (Arts & Life).]
` Indeed, it is clear that the Truth Movement is not so much concerned with the truth as they are concerned with grossly distorting it.
` Furthermore, the Truthites are curiously silent about al Qaeda, radical Islamic terrorists from Pakistan, or any of our recent history with the Middle East. Do they know about the fall of the Ottoman empire? Do they know about the fragmentation that occurred after WWII? Or the reaction of Muslims to the state of Israel, plus all the frustration about America's support for it? Do they know what Islamic fundamentalism is, or what Soviet Russia has to do with anything?
` The reasons why there are Islamic terrorist groups stem from all of that, and such people have been targeting and attacking America for decades:
` For example, in 1983 Hezbollah truck-bombed a Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 Americans. In 1985, the Palestinian Liberation Front hijacked the Achille Lauro. In 1993, the WTC was bombed via truck, killing six people and injuring a thousand others (ironically, the memorial was destroyed in the 9/11 attack). In January, 1995, thanks to funding by terrorists such as the head of Al-Qaeda (Osama bin-Laden), there was a plan to blow up twelve planes between the U.S. and Asia, though it was stopped. In 1995, bin-Laden had the U.S. Embassy buildings in Kenya and Tanzania bombed, killing twelve Americans, and 200 natives. In 1996, terrorists truck-bombed the Khobar Towers, killing nineteen U.S. military personnel and injuring hundreds more. In 1999, Ahmed Ressam became famous for his attempted attack on Los Angeles international airport. On October 12, 2000, Al-Qaeda arranged a successful suicide boat bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, killing seventeen sailors and injuring 39 more. [Strasser, Steven (ed.). 2004. The 9/11 Investigations: Staff Reports of the 9/11 Commission. New York: Public Affairs Books. More about radical Islam at Rashid, Ahmed. 2001. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. New York: Yale University Press.]
` Clearly, Osama Bin Laden has been funding, organizing, and initiating such shenannigans against the U.S., and there is plenty of evidence to back that up. He has also issued two fatwas - one in 1996 declaring a jihad against the U.S. and one in 1998 “to kill the Americans and their allies — civilian and military is an individual duty for any Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.” [Strasser, Steven (ed.). 2004. The 9/11 Investigations: Staff Reports of the 9/11 Commission. New York: Public Affairs Books, and other sources.]
` Not only is there every reason in the world to think that this was their work, bin-Laden and Al-Qaeda have actually admitted to the September 11 bombings! [Bamer, David. 2001. “Bin Laden: Yes, I Did It.” The Telegraph. November 11.] What would be the point of saying that they were not responsible?
` To all scrutiny, this is but the latest, and worst, attack on us by radical Islamic terrorists because they don't want our 'evil' U.S. foreign policy, along with everything else. Unfortunately, we didn't take them seriously, and so it was American civilians who paid the price.
` ...But how many people actually know about this stuff? The truth is, so many do not that it seems a bit odd when someone does know their history. Therefore, such conspiracy theories are perhaps believable to more people than they could be.
` Another reason why some people like conspiracy theories - in general - is because they are able to keep their eye on what they believe to be dangerous, and so they know who to expect danger from! After such a horrible event, this is understandable for some people. However, the truth here is most important to implement in the future, because only the truth can be used to prevent future terrorist attacks!
` This is quite suspicious. Obviously, such people can be expected not to trust the American government, especially the Bush administration. I can understand that. Need anyone mention Watergate or the Iran-Contra scandal? They did lie to us about the costs of Vietnam, and some of the military tactics were quite unethical.
` And as for the current administration, it has mislead the public about global warming, stem cell research and other science, failed to be as helpful as it could have to victims of Hurricane Katrina, and waged war because of evidence - that never existed to begin with - of weapons of mass destruction! But would it bomb thousands of its own innocent civilians for any reason?
` Plus, let us stop and think a moment: How do we know about all of these things in the first place? Because the government generally cannot keep its bad decisions a secret! There is nobody running around and arresting people for finding these things out. If the U.S. were a police state - as the Truthites accuse - then surely the Truth Convention would have been crashed, or at least the Truth Movement leaders would have been arrested for exposing the U.S. Government's deepest, darkest secrets.
` And when you think about it, if the conspiracy theorists really believed that they were in trouble, they would have acted like it. Yet, Molé reports that they did not seem to give it a second thought.
` As for me, I don't really trust Bush and his flunkies much myself. Even so, is that a reason to say that he's a terrorist on his own country? I'm sorry, but if you are to claim that someone is suspicious in some way or another, you have to back it up. This clearly hasn't been done.
Posts
22 comments:
9/11 was clearly a “false-flag” attack! Wake-up! Our nation is in peril!
Bin-Laden (from an Afghani cave) & his 19 flunkeys could not have defeated our trillion dollar defenses with box-cutters! Evidence shows the 19 were incompetent & couldn’t fly a Cessna. Yet, “they” flew airliners with hostile intent all over the eastern U.S. for more than an hour and struck the Pentagon of all places! This, while evading NORAD & U.S. military & FAA! (5 years later, our gov’t still refuses to release a clear video of “what” exploded at the Pentagon.)
Close examination of the WTC towers reveals that they erupted & exploded in top-down demolition rather than being brought down by fire. Massive WTC building #7 also collapsed in a free-fall demolition, despite the fact it was not struck by a plane & all evidence shows it had superficial damage & a few small fires. (It did house the CIA, FBI, SEC, Giuliani’s bunker, Goldman Sachs, etc., & perhaps the plans/controls for 9/11.)
For much information, please visit any of the hundreds of 9/11 truth websites: 911Truth.org ● patriotsquestion911.com ● scholarsfor911truth.org ● journalof911studies.com ● 911CitizensWatch.org ● ny911truth.org ● 911citizenscourt.com Justicefor911.org ● 911inquiry.org ● questioning911.com ● cooperativeresearch.org ● 911Research.WTC7.net ● 911revisited.com ● 911review.com ● 911eyewitness.com ● v911t.org ●mujca.com ● 911Blogger.com
interesting article. Too bad you are wrong with most of your scientific assumptions.
Visit http://911research.wtc7.net/ for a thorough analysis.
IMO Jim Hoffman is a scientist.
You might be "mad" but I don't think you're a scientist.
` As for my first commenter - I know that one of the pilots, Hani Hanjour, may have been a not-terribly skilled pilot, though his chief instructor did say of him: "Despite Hanjour's poor reviews, he did have some ability as a pilot." and "There's no doubt in my mind that once that (hijacked jet) got going, he could have pointed that plane at a building and hit it."
` Seriously, those planes are easier to fly than they look with all their automatic doo-dads!
` If you had taken the time to read my post, you would have seen that it is practically impossible to track planes without identification transmitters, and only one civilian plane has been stopped down within the entire decade before Sept. 11!!
` I think you need to read the part of my post about how the specific kind of top-down collapse of towers 1 and 2 is consistent with the laws of physics.
` In fact, on this web page, you can see pictures showing the buckling of the steel beams for several minutes before they collapsed. As you may know, explosives don't work in slow motion!
` As for tower 7: If you had read my post, you would have seen the interviews - and the picture - demonstrating that tower 7 was missing one entire side! That's not dust!
` The reason is, apparently, because a piece of WTC 1 hit it as it collapsed - it didn't 'pancake' down as straight as it might appear. The tower actually spilled debris everywhere - unlike what would have happened with a controlled demolition.
` As for my second commenter - I'm sorry, but your opinion has nothing to do with who is a scientist and who is not!
` There are those who practice a little thing called critical thinking and use the scientific method- called scientists - and those who like to play with select information, weeding out things they don't agree with - to make themselves feel like they're doing something important.
` They are called pseudoscientists, and they have a tendency to pander to the public because professionals usually know enough not to take them seriously.
` Pseudoscientists are utterly worthless in the fact that they fail to contribute any new insights in the world, and are criticized for good reason.
` I should know - take a look around and you'll see that I'm experienced in recognizing this annoying phenomenon.
` And, before anyone else comments that I'm not being scientific, then why don't you read my post first?
` Thank you.
Remarkable! The paranoia is so powerful in here that not only is it off the charts, but the doctor's ability to write grammatically has been affected!! That is unheard of!!
Spoony, I cried when I read your post, and as I write this. Your writing cuts to the heart of the matter in a most logical and decisive way. I am impressed by your throughness and analytically derived conclusions.
I put the 9/11 conspiracy theorists in the same camp with the people who think that NASA didn't land men on the moon in the 60's and 70's. I have just as much contempt for each.
You might have been a little unfair to the present administration in you later paragraphs. I believe a lot of the blame for the success of the attacks on 9/11 can be laid at the feet of the Democrat administration and Republican congress of the 90's. The cost of the laizzes-faire approach to islamofaschism in that period was paid in the blood of the civil servants of NY and WDC, the innocent civilians, and of the service men and women who have bravely stood and fallen to protect and preserve the most basic of human rights.
I'm glad you remember 9/11. I'm glad that you've been able to maintian composure through a very emotional time for all of us and deliver us an objective portrayal of events.
Let's hope that nobody forgets.
` !!! Um, thanks.
` And yes, I agree that the nineties did offer much headway to the terrorists. ...Especially considering that these attacks came so close after Bush was elected.
OH, our governmet would never lie to us every, they have all of our interest at heart. You believe that you all are nutso. Go back to sleep. there is nothing to see go shopping while we bring in the police state. Oh my God it's already here. welcome to terrorland made in the USA. FLase flag operations all through out history is a way of control for the elite. ROme did it HIlter did it. they sunk the maine to go to war the guld of tonkin . all false flag operations. see Operation Northwoods. and if you think the press tells you the truth look at operation mockingbird.
and the army psyops that has been with CNN and NPR. it's on record! dumb stupid Americans.
Look what George Carlin says about you guys.
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=935607276
` Amy, you may be shocked to know that I wholeheartedly agree with George Carlin. "They" don't care about us, for the most part, as long as we are good consumers.
` Tragic, yes, and true. Do you mistake me for some fool who actually buys GWB's War on Terror propaganda or something?
` I don't believe that terrorists were behind this because They say so. I don't believe that terrorists had anything to do with it at all. I merely accept it because that is what critical investigations get you.
` Furthermore, I fail to see what Operation Mockingbird, Operation Northwoods and any kind of PSYOP agenda could possibly have to do with influencing much of the actual analytical content of my post. (Yes, for example, I'm sure that new, secret planted interns changed the videos so that careful analysis wouldn't turn up anything out of the ordinary!)
` You might have caught that detail if you'd read the post you're supposedly making a comment about.
` And, for the record, I am a skeptic to the core. You don't have to go far through my blog's archives to figure that out.
` George Carlin, on the other hand, seems to be talking about people who have not mastered the concept of critical thinking.
` You see, Amy, turning up elaborate 'evidence' to satisfy one's own extreme paranoia of something is not an example of trying to be objective, nor does this way of thinking expose any kind of truth.
` Trusting people who do that just because you have a similar attitude - and because they seem 'nice enough' - is not in any way a type of critical thinking! It's the kind of thing that gets perfectly normal, intelligent people into organizations such as the Truth Movement, or cults, etc. without even suspecting a thing!
` Oh yeah, and I should probably warn you and the rest of you Truthites to hurry up and run for your freedom, since the police state is well past due to arrest you all for having conventions and websites that expose the government's lies about how They were the ones who led suicide missions to kill thousands of their own people and then frame those innocent terrorists who wanted the WTC bombed so much that they gladly took credit for it anyway!
I have read your post thoroughly by now (yesterday) and I just popped by again to say that I think it's one of your best analytical pieces yet.
I wanted also to add that the popcorny foam insulation really doesn't have anything to keep it stuck onto the steel beams! That is why it isn't intended for use with buildings that get hit by airplanes! So, isn't that ironic that it failed to protect the beams when an airplane hit the building?
And, because steel beams exposed to 1000+ degree heat bend easily under the weight of buildings and expand, of course they couldn't hold what they had been supporting! How could anyone say that can't happen? WOW!!!
<--I am amazed this much!!!-->
So and so forth, I am actually very shocked at a few of the assumptions made by Truthites I hadn't heard before.
Why would anyone think 'pull it' means to blow something up, at least when coming from firefighters? I think I know--if you already believe they were blowing it up, it could be contrived to mean that to you because that is exactly what you expect!
And yes, I think that's funny--we've been vehemently threatened and bombed by so many islamic terrorists lately, why don't Truthites like to mention that?
I think it's just like the deal with one of your recent posts where the head of the Russian psychic laboratory who found that double blind trials didn't show psychic ability, and therefore the technique, not the finding, was rejected.
And yet they make so many 'discoveries' over there, even though they're not actually learning anything! Sure, there's plenty of 'evidence' as long as you're willing to forgo careful observation and research!
Like you said, the only way anyone could come up with this BS is to 'already know' something is up, and find a way to 'confirm it' by rejecting information that doesn't agree with their beliefs!
Otherwise, I'm mystified as to how so many people could believe that. It's ridiculous! There is so much you have to ignore or not know about, and then on top of that, there is so much that you have to contrive and fabricate!
It's so hard to believe that people are ridiculing you of all people for doing that!
I don't know what the hell are these people's problems with your post other than maybe they are choosing to ignore it, or probably didn't have time to read it before they commented at first (like I did) because that's a lot of post to read!
Still, I am enjoying the fireworks from these fanatics. I think I'll get some Sweet Maui Onion chips and wait for the next explosion.
I watched the George Carlin video. That's weird...he seems to be talking about people like Amy, not Spoony!
"The only true lasting American value that's left - Buyin' things! Spending money they don't have on things they don't need."
Because we're stupid! The idea is that we are owned by people who want to keep us ignorant so we'll buy stuff, therefore they don't want us to think critically!
That may not be always or completely true of course--I mean if it was, we wouldn't have education at all!
Truly I think that we don't have Critical Thinking classes because of lack of insight, not because it's expressly prevented by Them. But I'm sure They would be irritated by it. At least as far as consumer/political issues go.
"It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."
It's the same way everywhere, in one way or another. I think that skeptical organizations--which of course oppose these silly conspiracy theories--need to be taking over the schools to teach kids not what to think but how to think and analyze!
For example like you said in this post.
Amy, you sound like you're regurgitating a highlights list from an AdBuster article.
Spoony is right, you are just another mindless fool regurgitating your mantra in the face of both quality thinking and the truth.
So, up yours, Amy, and you go, Spoony.
` Thank you both, stranger and person who I already know is annoyed with the Truthites' comments.
I enjoy conspiracy theorists and their theories in and of the fact that they warp things so much to the point of being humorous and entertaining. I'm all for different points of view, but really, shouldn't your pov be based on FACT??? I am one of the most liberal persons I know, and I certainly think Georgie could have done something better, but really, we shouldn't be divided upon political beliefs and parties when it comes to things like national security (reform immigration laws, don't build walls!), health care (not just for rich people), marriage equality (god damn faggots will destroy our culture for sure, they've only been around for millenia), child predators should be punished (gay or straight, democrat or republican, our children SHOULD NOT be exploited by adults), and other matters of "moral values." We all deserve to be safe in our own homes and communities. We all deserve to be healthy and to receive sufficient preventative health care. Love is love, whether or not you are a man loving a woman, a man loving a man, or a woman loving a woman, all healthy normal consentual relationships should be fostered. Children deserve to be safe and in an environment where they can develop emotionally mentally and physically in a healthy manner. All these things should be important to ALL OF US.
just a small comment that i LOVE this post!
` Thank you Mizz and Cassie! Lou says that I should try to publish much shorter versions in various magazines. However, I don't feel that it is - shall we say - original enough. I could probably do it, anyway.
` Indeed, Mizzbeehive! Logically, the only way people can get what they need is to put their differences aside and vote together. Or something to that effect.
` I think conspiracy theorists need to know that this is a democracy (albeit an annoying one) and it allows people to take whatever view they want without being arrested.
` Unfortunately, so many people abuse that privelage in order to go beyond the bounds of reality! It's a tragedy!
Ya Spoony, our government is the worst one ever conceived, except for all the other ones ;)
Ha ha! Sadly, it's the best people seem to be able to do.
Like I always say; Democracy really bites, but at least it bites a lot less than all others.
` Hey, you can't say that! I say that!!!
well, you're probably right about this.
however, bin laden does have major links with the bush family.....
` I wouldn't say that... I mean, they don't even know the guy, do they? Maybe his relatives, though....
"During the war against the Soviet Union, Pakistan Military Intelligence (me- a known CIA influenced group) requested the presence of a Saudi Prince to lead the jihad in Afghanistan. No volunteers were forthcoming and the Saudi leaders recommended the scion of a rich family, close to the monarchy. Osama Bin Laden was dispatched the the pakistan border and arrived just in time to hear President Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniwer Brzezinski giving open support to the jihad'
Tariq Ali - The Clash of Fundamentalisms. I suggest you give it a read, get the politics behind the science. (which was great, really cleared things for me about 9.11)
This jihad led to the rise of extreme Islam. The most extreme type of Islam is Wahabi, in Saudi Arabia, think of Jerry Falcraw (the fundamentalism christian tele-preacher, name escapes me) being the leader of America...
` Interesting! I shall have to read that.
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