Ever since I started Your Friday Dose of Woo (YFDoW) back in June, I had always intended that someday I wanted to expand this loving deconstruction of various forms of woo beyond just medical woo and quackery. True, having a little fun with woo that claims to treat disease or restore health is something that I've gotten pretty good at. You may wonder why I would want to move beyond medicine occasionally. After all, there's no shortage of medical woo to deal with every Friday, and I'll almost certainly return to it next week.
Sometimes a skeptic needs a change of pace, and this is one of those times. Believe me, there's lots of really potent and strange woo out there that has little or nothing to do with medicine or health. There's paranormal woo, various forms of pseudoscience, and there are conspiracy theories, among other things. All share the same sort of magical thinking, cherry picking of data to support bizarre beliefs or conclusions, and the tendency to discount vast quantities of data that do not support their woo. So, consider this an experiment. If it doesn't work out, I'll drop it. So what woo did I have in mind this week? Well, this week marked the 65th anniversary of the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor; so I had contemplated Pearl Harbor conspiracy theories, but in reality very few people believe in those any more, other than a certain commenter yesterday. However, there is an event as traumatic that occurred a mere five years ago that is sometimes conflated with Pearl Harbor and that has already spawned a cottage industry of woo greatly beloved by the tinfoil hat brigade. So I decided to pull a particularly bizarre bit of 9/11 woo out of the woo folder on my computer in which I store potential targets for YFDoW. It's woo so strange that, until a few weeks ago, even I, connoisseur of all that is woo, hadn't even heard of it.
No doubt you've heard of the 9/11 "skeptics" who don't believe that the impact of two large jetliners was enough to bring down the Twin Towers. These and conspiracy theorists like them have been responsible for the movie Loose Change (the producers of which, contrary to their claims that they are doing this "for the victims," have some really vile and despicable things about those who died) and the 9/11 "Truth" movement. These guys love to spin tales about how somehow the U.S. government (sometimes, depending on who's telling the tale, with the help of the Mossad) was actually responsible for the attacks, how supposedly the planes alone were not enough to bring the buildings down, and how there must have been bombs or other devices already in the towers. All of this was done, if you believe the tinfoil hat brigade, for nefarious purposes like giving the government a pretext to invade Iraq, to enrich Haliburton, or a variety of other reasons connected to reality only in the most tenuous way, if even that. One of the more prevalent among the many competing claims (some of which are mutually exclusive) is that it wasn't really commercial jetliners that struck the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon at all, but rather missiles or refueling military tankers. Never mind the thousands of eyewitnesses and the copious photographic, documentary, and physical evidence that do in fact support the conventional idea that it was suicidally murderous Islamic terrorists who hijacked these jetliners and piloted them into these buildings. It must have been the government or the Jews who did it. Popular Mechanics and the most recent episode of Skeptic Magazine have deconstructed the conspiracy theories of the 9/11 "Truth" movement quite well, as has the blog Screw Loose Change and the website Debunking 911, including its claims that the fires in the building couldn't have weakened the steel enough to cause the buildings to fall and that there must have been explosive charges that caused a "controlled implosion."
So what do some 9/11 conspiracy theorists do when faced with such copious evidence refuting their crackpot ideas? They descend deeply into woo, of course! But what form does this woo take? Easy! Some argue that, even though so many photos, videos, and eyewitnesses documented commercial airliners crashing into the towers, it still wasn't really airliners because the government cleverly did something to disguise what really crashed into the towers. And how'd the government supposedly do it? And what sort of woo could top the woo already purveyed by the more "conventional" 9/11 "Truth" movement?
Holograms, of course. They postulate what is known as The Hologram Theory to explain how those alleged cruise missiles could appear to be jetliners:
The "Hologram Theory," as it relates to 9/11, proposes that no commercial airliners hit the World Trade Center on Sept 11 2001. Proponents of the theory contend that rather than full sized airliners, the World Trade Center was hit by "Cruise" type Missiles which appeared to the naked eye to be airliners through the use of sophisticated hologram technology. Rosalee Grable is one the the theory's leading proponents. One eyewitness described the 'airplane' he saw: "It just disappeared. It disappeared like a, like a, bad special effect. Disappeared right into the building." Eyewitness Accounts. This theory is controversial even among 9/11 researchers.
I never knew our government was so sophisticated. I wonder why it can't track down Osama Bin Laden. Oh, wait, according to some of these woos, our government in actuality doesn't want to find Bin Laden. Never mind. This "hologram theory," though, goes truly beyond the pale, far beyond conspiracy theorists who claim that there was never any plane in sight, but that it was all missiles hitting the buildings, and that the photographic evidence was misinterpreted, probably intentionally, or nearly every video that was taken that day was somehow altered. But let's hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Here is a purveyor of this particular brand of strange woo named Stefan Grossman putting forth the case for holograms:
The hologram theory says that south tower (WTC2) was not hit by a large Boeing 767-200 (flight UA175) but by a small USAF cruise missile or drone with a large holographic cloak around it that made it look like a flight UA175, i.e. a flying deception.
The hologram theory has been attacked and ridiculed like no other theory relating to 9-11. In fact, however, it is based on stringent science, on reports from the military community and on careful analysis of the photos and mainstream media news videos of the alleged "plane" crash into south tower and of at least 11 military stealth crafts close by the south tower.
Woo.
Serious woo.
Breathtakingly amazing woo, so much so that I stand in awe of how anyone can believe this stuff. And it amazes me even more that Mr. Grossman seems disturbed that this theory has been "attacked and ridiculed like no other." What reaction did he expect? People to slap themselves on the forehead and exclaim, "How obvious!"?
And there's more:
1. Based on the MIT study of the attacks and twin tower collapse, it is established science that the visible flying craft could not have done any, nor all, of the following:
- the entering craft is in south wall's shadow wedge but parts of the craft shine white like a lamp
- the visible flying craft emits a yellow flash instants before nose-touch-wall event
- the visible flying craft cuts six floors which is impossible (Prof. Wierzbicki, MIT)
- the entering craft creates dust pimples that blow outward as from explosions
- the sensitive wing tips do not bend or break off, nor do they flip forward
- the sensitive tips of tail rudder and elevator (winglets) do not break off
- no veer or teeter despite flying in at an angle (about 13 degrees)
- no deceleration despite calculated loss of kinetic energy of 26%
- no deformation, crumple or smash-up of the visible flying object
- no explosion until the visible flying object has faded out of sightPeople who are not dumb brainwashed American hoodlums and idiots, i.e. people who can use their senses and their brains, have observed that all the videos that CNN, ABC, NBC and other mainstream news stations showed on 9-11 and the days and weeks thereafter document beyond any doubt that the visible flying craft at south tower did all of the above.
According to the video documentation, not contradicted by any eyewitnesses, the outer skin of the visible flying craft did not react with the solid steel-column south wall of south tower as a physical solid object. It behaved like a purely visual thing like a hologram. It is very clear that "something" that made a (unusually deep) plane-like noise did fly into the south wall of south tower (and then faded into the building out of sight like a TV special effect, the explosion being delayed nearly for one whole second, etc.).
2. There is sufficient news from the military community to establish a prima facie case that such a hologram technology did exist on 9-11-1. See e-book "T MINUS 9-11" at www.gallerize.com with many links in the hologram chapter, further the web sites mentioned above.
There are two military project code names for this, namely project "Ghost Gun" and project "Blue Beam".
We actually have full proof of the existence, function and commercial useability of such 3D virtual imaging technology in form of so-called "Zebra holograms", see www.zebraimaging.com/ a spinoff of MIT and military research.
In keeping with statements from the military community, an Air Force theory manual outlines an "airborne holographic projector" that projects clouds, mountains, troops, tanks, airplanes in the air in order to deceive enemies or enemy populations, see
http://www.au.af.mil/au/2025/volume4/chap03/b5_6.htm
These conspiracy theorists are big on pictures that purport to show that the planes supposedly "disappeared" into the buildings in a way that, according to them, was not physically possible. For example, here is one such animation. Here are more. Nearly all of them involve heavy manipulation or the dubious interpretation of what might be dust or artifacts. For example, here is a picture that purports to show the "hologram generators":
Convinced yet, or are you just another one of those "dumb brainwashed American hoodlums and idiots" (which you obviously must be if you don't buy this woo)? Then how about this picture?
Nahhh, those dots couldn't possibly be specks of dust on the lens of the camera, distant aircraft, or other things. Nosirreee, they have to be hologram generators. But I see from your silence that you're still not convinced. Well, then, how about this picture?
See? It's clear as day. It couldn't possibly be smoke or debris falling from the building, given how close the highlighted area is to the tower, could it? Perish the thought! It must be hologram generators. At least it is to the woos:
Diligent research has proven that these and many related photos are undoubtedly authentic. Apart from the hologram theory there is no other explanation for the many cloaked orbs in the air (nearly invisible due to their accommodation to their respective background, chameleon-type) together with the non-solid "ghost plane" that fades like a Hollywood special effect in a reactionless way into the steel highrise. The orbs were airborne holographic projectors, and the visible flying craft that did not crash but glided reactionless nearly a second prior to the explosion through the steel wall was a holographic projection, probably with a much smaller cruise missile inside (such as would fit the merely 99 foot wide entry hole). This is well within reach of the military technology and the rabidly insane intentions of the Bush-Clinton idiocracy.
So let me get this straight. To accept this woo--I mean "theory"--you have to believe a lot of highly improbable things. First, you have to believe that the U.S. government would commit mass murder of its own people in order (1) to provoke a war; (2) consolidate power; (3) protect Israel, and/or (4) eliminate civil liberties and bring about a dictatorship, plus whatever other unclear reasons that the tinfoil hat woos like to put forward. Now, I really, really don't like President Bush, but I don't think he's capable of such cold-blooded murder of Americans, and I doubt even the most rabid Daily Kos diarist or commenter does, either. Even if he were, I highly doubt that he or anyone in the present government (or in the Clinton Administration, for that matter) was competent enough to pull off something like this. Next, you have to believe that the U.S. government possesses some sort of secret hologram technology so sophisticated and so convincing that its images could fool tens of thousands of witnesses, photographers and TV cameramen, many of them professionals and many of them taking pictures and amateur video from a variety of angles, into thinking that little Cruise-type missiles were in actuality big passenger airliners. Of course, these guys also seem to neglect to explain how so very realistic a roar was created as the "hologram plane" flew overhead, given that Cruise missiles are neither as large nor as loud as a passenger airliner. And, of course, the "no plane" 9/11 conspiracy theorists seem to have little or nothing to explain what happened to the passengers on the planes who died. But if you can swallow all of that with utter credulity, you still have to believe that a government in command of such awesome secret technology would use it to disguise missiles as passenger airliners when it would be far more straightforward and inexpensive to use real passenger airliners rather than such elaborate trickery (trickery that might be discovered), not to mention that the government would intentionally destroy a section of the Pentagon and kill its own soldiers and employees to achieve this and that it would crash a plane in Pennsylvania to provide a "myth" of passengers resisting the terrorists.
And that's just the minimum you have to believe to buy this "hologram theory." Truly, magical thinking that leads to serious woo is not something that is restricted to quacks.
Of course, looking at the pictures above, it reminded me of the sort of evidence that UFO mavens like to produce in favor of their brand of woo. Yes, it's all there, the grainy pictures that don't definitively show a recognizable object, the pseudoscientific analyses of photos and video, and the fervent belief that the government is hiding something from them, the only people "smart enough" to "see through" the deception. Naturally, it's therefore not surprising that some "no plane" 9/11 conspiracy theorists would start saying that UFOs--yes, UFOs--were responsible:
2. Apart from these three large UFOs there were many strange things in the air around the Twin Towers in the morning of 9-11-1. Such as:
birds, some of them seeming unusually large
cruise missiles flying by/from the Woolworth building
helicopters buzzing above the attack site in that day's no-fly zone.
none of them identified or identifiable (not even the birds...).Let me put all those things aside here. They have been discussed, to the extent that they are important.
In the remoter drawers of their archives, researchers silently keep the records of the strange UFOs of 9-11. When I say strange, I mean: strange. - Details:
3. I totally agree that the UFO community is distracted with Aliens and ETs in a way that makes them sound like Chicken Little (the cartoon which runs around saying "the sky is falling").
In other words: Believing in a massive plot by the government to use sophisticated holographic generators to hide the use of Cruise missiles to destroy the buildings and murder thousands, all in order to start a war and consolidate power, is reasonable, but don't bring aliens or ETs into this. That's just crazy talk. But he goes on:
Here, it wasn't the sky is falling but the towers and the Pentagon. It takes no Chicken Little to reiterate that these buildings were attacked and fell (at the Pentagon, only a building wing, the WTC altogether). At the Manhattan towers, the many cameras of that day unwittingly captured a flotilla of unidentified and strange flying objects. Commonly acronymed as UFOs.
These appear to be advanced forms of electrokinetic/antigravity experiments of secret military programs, see:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ufophysics/grangemouth.htmIn particular, Los Angeles has its share of observable encounters with flying orbs, see:
http://forum.cropcircleresearch.com/cgi-bin/cutecast.pl?session=LQY2J5A…
5. A specialized site for the Los Angeles type orbs and comparing them with the WTC orbs of 9-11-1 was the site: http://www.orbwar.com
This site by early April 2005 was killed, presumably because it was blabbing out hot military secrets relating to the Pentagon's stealth technology. Fortunately for the cause of the truth coming out, archive copies exist on disk. Now I am happy to see that the site is back on the air again.
Hmmm. Not a very effective goverment conspiracy if it couldn't shut down a simple website like Orbwar and keep it from ever going back online, is it? (Maybe its owners failed to pay their ISP bandwidth charges or something.) I mean, if there really were such a conspiracy and I were in charge of it, I'd make damned sure that websites like this went down and stayed down (or never appeared in the first place). I suppose this "conspiracy" could be letting such sites remain because they are so kooky and cast discredit upon the "real" 9/11 "skeptics," but I probably wouldn't take the chance. In any case, these guys look less and less like Dr. No and more and more like Dr. Evil.
But if you really want to know just how loony this "no plane" woo is, consider this quote:
Advocates of the 'blue screen' or 'hologram' theory hold that the planes that hit the World Trade Center, or at least Flight 175, were ghost aircraft and that sophisticated image projection technology was used to fake the illusion of them entering the towers.
The evidence they present to validate this notion is the contention that Flight 175 should have "bounced off" the tower yet sliced through it like a knife through butter.
The vast majority of the evidence is supported not by scientific analysis of what one would expect to happen when a large commercial airliner impacts a skyscraper at over 500 miles per hour, but with grainy Internet videos and hastily interpreted statements made by news reporters at ground zero.
If we are to believe, and the evidence suggests it to be so, that western intelligence agencies are carrying out acts of terror, to go to such lengths mandates the necessity of multi-layered fallback options if the criminals are caught red-handed. This is why a large scale terror attack is always shadowed by an almost identical government drill, as was the case with 9/11 and the 7/7 bombings. If significant and damning evidence were to be presented in a court of law powerful enough to have any impact that implicated high officials in acts of gross treason - the fallback option that it was "just part of the drill," remains as a last chance saloon.
If we are to consider that some form of high-tech hologram technology was utilized as part of a David Copperfield style sound and lights magic show that only made it appear as if Flight 175 had hit the south tower - then we are seriously entertaining the notion that the criminals who ran the attack did not bother to construct any fallback explanation if this massive public stunt had gone wrong.
What if the bombs inside the tower had failed due to faulty wiring or had only detonated a second after the hologram had been sent into the tower? How could that one be explained away? Who in their right mind would make such a huge gamble with no fallback option?
The above was written by 9/11 conspiracy theorist true believer Paul Watson and came from Prison Planet, a veritable cornucopia of conspiracy theories and woo-filled paranoia that routinely posits that Israel knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks and were somehow complicit in them. Pat over at Screw Loose Change has the perfect rebuttal to this:
Yes, and what if the bombs in the tower that caused the controlled demolition had failed due to faulty wiring, or had detonated in the wrong order, causing a bottom-up demolition? Who in their right mind, etc?
But what really amuses me about Paul Watson's article is what it says about the "no plane" 9/11 conspiracy theorists. After all, when people like Eric Salter, another 9/11 "skeptic" who clearly seems to believe that there was some sort of conspiracy to cover up what "really happened" on 9/11) writes a long article debunking your position and then a kook like Watson, who clearly believes that it was the U.S. government, rather than al-Qaeda terrorists acting at the behest of Osama Bin Laden, that was responsible for the destruction of the Twin Towers and the attack on the Pentagon, trashes you (and sounds almost reasonable doing it), that's a pretty big red flag that your position is some pretty amazingly bizarre woo indeed. In fact, it should tell you something when even died-in-the-wool woomeisters like the tinfoil hat brigade that believes that 9/11 was a massive government conspiracy (rather than a result of government complacency and incompetence that allowed terrorists who had been threatening for years to attack the U.S. homeland succeed in doing so) fear being tarnished by association with you and even go so far as to write, "The hologram theory is severely damaging to the credibility that the 9/11 truth movement has fought so hard to obtain and should therefore be sidelined and shunned at all costs."
Woo attacking even more woo-ey woo. It is a delicious irony indeed to savor.
ADDENDUM: Given that Christmas is just around the corner, here's a little bonus woo, a little cartoon poking fun at the woo that is the 9/11 conspiracy movement: The 12 Days of 9/11. My favorite line from this parody? It's got to be:
"Fiiiive dancing Jews!"
I predict that you will be over 1 million hits sooner than you think. Great, comprehensive analysis. I'm still curious how WTC 7 came down, though.
Well, I know what comments section to be reading this weekend!
I'm sure you'll be able to handle it. Have fun...
Abel,
WTC7 was badly damaged in the collapse of WTC1.
Pictures, analysis, and first hand accounts of firefighters on the scene here:
http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/2006/06/wtc-7.html
Oh, if this blog can handle the antivaccination brigade, I doubt the 9/11 tinfoil hat brigade will be too bothersome.
It's had to say. Lots of times, posts that I expect to provoke a lot of reaction to get none, and posts that I never would have expected much reaction to get 100+ comments. Consequently, after nearly two years at this, I've given up trying to predict which posts will provoke a reaction or lots of links and which won't. If I had known about this "hologram theory" back before September 11, I could have posted it then and probably gotten a reaction, though.
Of course, if any of the woos featured in this post notice the traffic coming from here and decide to pay us a visit, things could get--shall we say?--"interesting."
"Unusually large birds"?
WTF?
That is some broad-band hologram, since the planes were tracked on radar too! At what point did the missle get seamlessly switched for the plane?
Or was it a giant hologram at the terminal, too?
And who piloted the holographic planes?
"Please state the nature of the medical emergency."
Do you know "Counterpunch"? A very good, very anti-Bush leftist magazine. Well, after 9/11, the editor, Alexander Cockburn, was baffled by the copiracy theories he heard, and felt the need to debunk them. His strongest argument: you can't conduct such a huge plot and keep it 100% secret. Someday, someone, maybe a disgruntled agent, or one who has remorse, will spill the beans. That's one of the lessons of history. I don't have a link to this very good article, but a search in the counterpunch.org archives will surely lead to it.
I figure the extent of government 'involvement' was that they knew something was going to happen, and did want to use it to justify a war and for political purposes, but they didn't expect anything as bad as what actually happened.
That certainly fits with the story that when a CIA briefer warned Bush, Bush told the briefer "okay, you've covered your ass". And the fact that Ashcroft stopped flying commercial that summer about the time the warnings were going around.
And, really, if there's anything the Bush administration has been consistent in, it's in far underestimating how bad something can turn out.
You know, the beautiful part about the cruise missle theory in general, of which this hologram theory is the most loony variation, is how monumentally anti-Occam the whole thing is. Okay, so suppose you believe that the two airliners, with significant loads of fuel, were insufficient to cause the observed damage; why postulate cruise missles rather than explosives-laden airplanes? Which is easier: disguising cruise missles to look like airplanes (or doctoring a whole bunch of photos and videos and brainwashing a bunch of people), or filling an old jetliner with explosives and rigging it to fly into a target? The latter method is within the reach of existing technology, requiring only a massive government conspiracy and coverup; the former method practically requires hiring Vorlons as consultants.
I ran across a pretty good 9/11 one somewhere last week where the website claimed it was some sort of directed energy weapon (space based, of course) and not aircraft that brought down the towers.
I'll have to see if I can find it again to repost for your viewing pleasure.
You might have gotten it via me.
I was debating this "I'm enlightened because I know about the cover up you sheeple" guy on the Internet, and I referred him to the more common debunking sites. Futile, I know, because the debunking sites were "in on the conspiracy".
Sigh. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Hoo-boy... How do you tell where the woo ends and the paranoid psychosis begins?
Shouldn't that be "birds of unusual size?" Is there a Fire Swamp somewhere near New York City?
Deepakwoo is back for another go!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/the-god-delusion-answe_b_35…
I must concur with Jon H, in that I'm sure the intelligence community knew something was coming, the administration didn't take it seriously enough, and afterwards, they used it as justification to go beat up Iraq.
But holograms? Unusually Large Birds? Maybe the Vorlons just looked like birds to us...
I think 'Unusually Large Birds' needs to become Orac's 'PYGMIES + DWARFS' slogan.
Am I the only one who noticed that this is merely stealing the plot from various episodes of "Scooby Doo"?
Those meddling teens.
World Trade Center Building #7 was not struck by any aircraft and suffered only minor internal fires, yet neatly collapsed into its own footprint in less than ten seconds in perfect controlled demolition style at 5:30 PM, September 11th, 2001. Here's a video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=A-c-6qkbxd0
Let's not forget that this ultra-powerful, secret hologram technology is also simultaneously unable to project a simple blue background to disguise itself.
Or perhaps you could point out that jpeg quantization error is potentially much larger than the spec of dust, err, "hologram projector", in the first picture. Or you could point out that the middle of the "hologram projector" falls on an obvious jpeg block boundary with the attendant DCT/image discontinuity that that implies....
I've seen these theories before -- who hasn't? -- and the one thing I've never seen them try to explain is the Flight 93 which went down in Pennsylvania. There's way too much real evidence there which supports the "official" 9/11 narrative for them to handle.
Hey guys,
Get a clue!
The vast majority of this article is an attempt to debunk straw men!
Those that promote holograms are simply trying to create easily debunked arguments. - which makes all of 911 truth look bad.
Suffice it to say if you look at the official conspiracy theory with a critical eye, they virtually ALL of it falls apart.
I don't pretend to know what happened on that day, but I CAN tell you that the official story is provably false.
Try looking around at www.scholarsfor911truth.org
Here a few questions for you to answer:
William Rodriguez, a janitor at the world trade center, reports hearing and seeing the results of explosions in the North tower basement - seconds BEFORE the first plane hit. His claim is backed up by DOZENS of other witnesses. His claim is also backed up by Columbia University siesmographs, which makes it clear that explosions occurred 14-17 seconds BEFORE the first plane hit - which occurred at a time precisely identified by FAA recordings. Why was there no mention of this in the 911 Commission Report?
Why has the 911 Commission not investigated the molten metal found under the World Trade Center buildings 1, 2 and 7 which stayed red hot for over six weeks? What could possibly melt metal when it is impossible for any building fire to be sot hot as to melt steel? In fact, there has never been a steel frame high rise that has collapsed due to fire. There have been high rise fires that have been MUCH hotter and much longer lasting and NONE led to total collapse, except on September 11th.
Why cannot the 911 Commission and the associated NIST report explain the reason for the symmetrical, total, near free fall destruction of three World Trade Center towers, which completely turned the twin towers into dust? How can the 911 Commission explain the horizontal ejection of multi ton steel beams, some of which were thrown over 200 feet? The 10,000 page NIST report investigated many aspects of the events at the world trade center that day, but has refused to release it's computer model of the collapse, and has admitted that it's model stops at the "moment of collapse inevitability."
We are told that the collapse times of the twin towers were 9.7 and 10 seconds. This is FASTER than free fall.
Why are we supposed to believe that the buildings fell in a way that defeated a basic law of nature?
Why did the 911 Commission not mention World Trade Center building 7 in it's report? The first analysis of building 7 (by FEMA) says that it's best analysis "has a low probability of occurance." This is not surprising, given that building 7 fell faster than free fall speed into it's own footprint - it exhibits ALL the characteristics of controlled demolition. After FIVE years, why cannot the government explain the collapse of Building 7?
There has never been a building that has exhibited all the characteristics of controlled demolition that has not been controlled demolition.
Why didn't the Secret Service immediately protect Bush after the flight 175 hit the second tower? Why did the Secret Service leave the president and all the children in the school unprotected? On 911, the very same Secret Service DID protect Cheney and immediately brought him to a "secure location."
Why did the 911 Comission not investigate the many war games that occurred ON Sept. 11th, including the simulation of an jet attack on the Pentagon, the artificial injection of "hijacked blips" on FAA screens, and live fly planes pretending to be hijacked?
Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers admitted that the many war games that occured on 911 "helped the response time" to the attacks. How can this be true considering that the Pentagon was attacked 34 minutes AFTER the second World Trade Center tower was hit? After the whole world new that America was under attack, how did the military let their headquarters in the most defended airspace in the country be attacked? Who was responsible for this inaction? Why has there been no investigation?
Secretary of Transportation, Norman Mineta testified that he arrived at the Presidential Emergency Operations Center at 9:20, and Dick Cheney was already there. By 9:25, a young man came in and out of the room three times to tell Cheney the position of Flight 77, and asked for confirmation of orders. Orders that couldn't have been a "shoot-down" order because according to the latest Vanity Fair article "NORAD Live", fighter pilots claimed by 10:10:31, they had, "negative clearance to fire." So what order was it? Who is the young man, and why didn't he testify before the 9/11 Commission? Why did Dick Cheney claim that he had given a "shoot down" order? Why did the 9/11 Commission claim that Dick Cheney arrived at the PEOC by 9:58am? Why did the 9/11 Report completely omit Norman Mineta's testimony?
The 911 Comissioners now admit that they knew that NORAD generals lied about what happened on 911. The commissioners even considered criminal charges. NORAD ended up giving three contradictory timelines of the day. If the last timeline was correct then the first two were either lies or represent criminal negligence. If negligence, why has no one been reprimanded?
We are told that the fire at the Pentagon was so hot that it "vaporized" the plane that hit the Pentagon, yet we are told that the DNA for most of the passengers has been identified. How can a fire be so hot as to melt, multi ton titanium engines, and the entire airframe, seats, luggage, and all the bodies, yet the DNA (which is very fragile) from most of the passengers survived?
Bush has now acknowledged that Saddam had nothing to do with 911. The FBI now admits that there is "no hard evidence linking Osama to 911." If it's not Saddam and not Osama then who was responsible and why have we seen NO trials in America of the alleged purpetrators of 911? (Note that Zacarius Massoui admitted complicity in a plot that was NOT related to 911.)
How can the 911 Comission say that the financing of 911 is "of no practical significance."
Yet, put options (bets that stock prices will do down) against American and United Airlines, placed before 911, were never fully investigated because "they led to individuals that could not possibly have anything to do with 911."
This is meaningful only if Al Qaeda was truly behind 911. So far, there has been NO such proof.
Why did the 911 commission not investigate the wiring of $100,000 from the head of the Pakistani intelligence services to Mohamed Atta a week before 911? This is particularly curious when you consider that the head of Pakistani intelligence services meet with Senator Bob Graham and Porter Goss on the morning of Sept 11th.
These conspiracy theorists are unimaginative.
Why believe there ever was a World Trade Center? The apparent World Trade Center was obviously a giant pair of stereo speakers.
I heard Noam Chomsky interviewed a while back, and the conspiracy theory -- specifically, the "must have been controlled demolition" argument -- came up. The core of his response, as best I can recall it, was:
Whatever your view of his politics, it's clear that Chomsky shares at least this portion of reality with the rest of us.
In fact, the calculations needed to demonstrate that "pancaking" is expected (indeed, inevitable) once a dynamic failure begins are perfectly straightforward. The duration of each floor's failure is extremely brief, approximately the same length of time that a conspiracy theorist takes to consider the evidence when you explain all this to him.
this is indeed Woo of Unusual Cruddiness.
but, does anyone happen to know: what is that unmanned dual-rotor helicopter pictured? judging by the photos, it looks useful for traffic reporting, military and police surveillance, possibly even the search part of search and rescue. who builds that cool toy?
I love it!
Just in the time it took to compose a brief comment, I see that solar roller has posted a breathtakingly goofy comment. If I may, Mr. Roller, I'd like to address just one point in your comment, viz.:
In free fall, x=a*t^2/2.
Solving for time, we have t=sqrt(2*x/a)
The roof of the WTC was 1368 feet above ground. This gives us
time (sec) = sqrt(2*1368 ft./(32.17 ft/sec^2)) = 9.2 sec.
... which would appear to be shorter than the times you've quoted as "FASTER than free fall."
In fact, the exact time for either tower to collapse is difficult to determine, because the cloud of debris made observation difficult, and portions of the towers stood after the bulk had fallen. Just the same, from the numbers I've just quoted you, there is no way on God's green earth that the towers fell faster than free fall. There -- did that convince you? I thought not.
And I want to see that funny helicopter, too!
Source, please. This, even more than the crap you posted, sounds like misinformation.
Woo.
If that were true (and it's not, by the way), then it wouldn't have the characteristics of a controlled demolition. The laws of physics make it impossible for a building (or anything else) to fall faster than its "freefall speed" unless some external force pushing from above or pulling from below adds to the force of gravity, something that does not happen in controlled free-fall demolitions. Perhaps next you'll propose that it was some sort of repulsor beam pushing down on the building from above or a tractor beam pulling from below.
I'll let a pro give your statement the ridicule that it deserves:
You don't say.
So, before this thread goes completely out of hand... something I've been thinking about lately is that there really needs to be some kind of good single central FAQ or other resource covering the arguments used by 9/11 deniers. If you run into an evolution denier, you have the talk.origins FAQ. If you run into a tax protester or a holocaust denier, there are good itemized FAQs. In the case of the 9/11 deniers, though... there's a couple good pages on Scopes and there's this "screwloosechange" blog linked above (which I'd never heard of, but it looks pretty good), but there's no single claim/debunking index like there are in all those other cases.
Meanwhile, this is a subject on which a source for credible details is needed. Although most of the 9/11 denial arguments are so transparently badly thought out that they can be debunked without understanding the underlying issues, a lot of them do have to do in one way or another with specialized knowledge-- stuff having to do with architecture or engineering.
Although (like biology or climatology) these are subjects best commented on by someone with background and experience in the subject, architecture and engineering seem much simpler than they really are, so it's very easy for someone who lacks a factual background in these things to get fooled, or fool themselves, by running across an argument that looks good on the surface but falls apart if you actually know anything about large buildings. On the other hand though there are people like me who don't really know anything in particular about architecture and engineering but are openly willing to admit it; on running across such an argument, it's often quite easy to show that the denialist argument is flawed or poorly supported, but without specific engineering background it's generally not easy to explain exactly why the denialist argument is outright wrong. The "reality-based community" people are at a disadvantage in such situations, because the 9/11 deniers are generally perfectly happy to make stuff up on the fly to win an argument, but those of us who wish to argue from fact cannot be so nimble.
So it would be really great to have an index of "here's some common 9/11 denial argument / here's what an ACTUAL engineer has to say about the subject", possibly like the talk.origins FAQs in that they explain or link the relevant engineering knowledge to the reader as they go. In addition to being convenient, though, I think that something like this is more or less necessary. The 9/11 deniers are starting to put together relatively sophisticated media packages for themselves, things like these new couple of "documentaries", or whatever that long report was concerning "problems with the official story" compiled by that particle physicist (a particle physicist, meaning that, like most of the people who attack evolution or the scientific consensus for climate change, he was working out of his field, but hey who'd ever notice that...). In face of this increasingly well-organized bunch of delusions, the truth needs to be organized as well.
Wow, it's very much like dealing with creationists, isn't it?
Look at the long rambling post by "solar roller"; it's filled with half-truths, misinformation, cherry picked data, and unreliable anecdotes.
When presented with solid evidence that their assertions are wrong, rather than change their assertions, they just get louder.
I almost expect something like "if you don't think that bush/clinton/cia/fbi blew up the WTC, then why are there PIGMIES + DWARFS???"
solar loon writes; "Why has the 911 Commission not investigated the molten metal found under the World Trade Center buildings 1, 2 and 7 which stayed red hot for over six weeks? What could possibly melt metal when it is impossible for any building fire to be sot hot as to melt steel?"
Um, steel isn't the only metal. Copper, tin, lead, aluminum, brass, and bronze are some of the metals which would be plentiful in the WTC, in the form of miles and miles of wires and conduit, thousands of computers, thousands of phones, etc.
Ire:
I'm just a regular guy and I'm certainly not a physicist.
I do stand corrected in my statement.
The WTC Towers 1 and 2 fell at roughly freefall speed (NOT faster) and the times are based on those stated by the 911 Commission.
I agree that the timing is difficult but that is what they said!
Since you AGREE that they fell at roughly freefall speed then tell me how the alleged fire induced collapse of the top of the buildings could fall through massively built, cold steel and concrete - the path of MOST resistance?
The official story is essentially telling me the top section hit the ground as though there was NOTHING below it!
Thank you for pointing out my error in my statement.
How about the rest of my questions?
Orac:
You asked for a source for the FBI allegation:
First, notice that the FBI's most wanted website does NOT refer to Osama as being wanted for the events of 911.
Is that credible enough for you?
As for the statement by the FBI saying that there is no hard evidence linking Osama to 911 go here:
http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html#_ftn1
As for my statement that Building 7 fell faster than freefall....
I stand corrected. Building 7 fell at freefall speed JUST LIKE A CONTROLLED DEMOLITION.
Are you disagreeing that it fell into it's own footprint and exhibited all the characteristic of a controlled demolition?
Please don't put words in my mouth regarding what really happened.
I have no clue.
I just know the official theory is false...
Coin, here are a few resources you might find useful:
Mark Roberts' "Loose Change Viewers Guide". Although this is aimed at examining the claims made in "Loose Change", it's still pretty general-purpose because those same claims are and will be endlessly regurgitated by the paranoid conspiracism industry:
http://www.loosechangeguide.com/LooseChangeGuide.html
Mark has also produced another paper, "World Trade Center Building 7 and the Lies of the 9/11 "Truth Movement" ":
http://www.911myths.com/WTC7_Lies.pdf
Mike Williams' site, http://www.911myths.com , examines a great many popular CTer claims in a fair-minded, evidence-based fashion and is organized in an easy to navigate, near-FAQ way- sort of a Clavius for the 9/11 deniers.
Mike's put a lot of research effort into his work, and the site also hosts papers from other contributors and other valuable material.
The "conspiracy theories" section of the JREF forum is also well worth exploring:
http://forums.randi.org
I hope this is helpful.
Raymond:
You say: "Look at the long rambling post by "solar roller"; it's filled with half-truths, misinformation, cherry picked data, and unreliable anecdotes.
When presented with solid evidence that their assertions are wrong, rather than change their assertions, they just get louder."
I'm just saying that the official conspiracy theory has not been proven.
My rambling post asked a lot of questions.
Please don't just call them half truths, misinformation and cherry picked without giving some details.
I'm not getting louder, I'm just asking questions...
Jon H.
Sure there were many metals at the WTC - you are correct.
But steel represented the majority of it.
I urge you to look at the work of Physicist Steven Jones, formerly a professor at BYU.
He says that all examples of the molten metal he has examined are iron and or steel.
http://worldtradecentertruth.com/volume/200609/WhyIndeedDidtheWorldTrad…
Hey, you don't have to insult me to get my attention.
If you don't agree with me that's fine...
Just try to answer some of the questions I raised....
From the FBI's most wanted site:
From wikipedia's entry on the "FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" list:
The lack of a reference to the September 11 attacks on that one "most wanted" website means nothing; the FBI is simply following their own procedural rules here, as they should.
Well, that pretty much just sums it up, doesn't it.
And here's the quite reasonable explanation why:
There you go. The only reason they aren't listed as being wanted for the 9/11 attacks is because they haven't been indicted yet for that particular crime.
Try again
As for you other comment, in which you said:
Actually, if you bothered to look at the link that I provided, it suggests that that WTC 7 actually fell slower than free fall:
Popular Mechanics also points out that WTC 7 was much more compromised and that fires burned in it for a long time.
Coin:
Thank you for the clarity on who shows up on the FBI's most wanted list.
OK, then the question is.. WHY has Osama OR ANYONE ELSE been indicted for the crimes of 911?
You would think we would have SOMEONE under indictment by now...
After all, we supposedly have the mastermind of 9/11 in custody? (Kalheed Sheik Mohommed)
Where's the indictment or trial?
Please don't bring up Zacarias Moussaoui...
He was NOT put on trial for 911, nor did he confess to any involvement with 911.
Orac:
You said:
"Actually, if you bothered to look at the link that I provided, it suggests that that WTC 7 actually fell slower than free fall:
More important, the amount of time that it took WTC 7 to fall was significantly longer than either of the two towers, at least according to the seismic readings that the Truthers cite as the source for the information that WTC 1 and 2 fell in 10 and 8 seconds, respectively. WTC 7 was a much smaller building than the two towers and yet it fell in 18 seconds according to seismic readings.
Popular Mechanics also points out that WTC 7 was much more compromised and that fires burned in it for a long time."
WTC 7 tooked LONGER to fall than the twin towers?
Are you saying that the MANY videos for all three collapses are all fake?
Just time the videos yourself!
I DID glance at the link that you provided. There is a lot there, so I can't absorb it quickly. I WILL look at it though..
Sure Popular Mechanics SAYS that WTC 7 had lots of fire.
I certainly haven't seen any photos to prove that.
Have you?
Please post them for all to see if you have...
Even if the south side of WTC 7 had some fire, how did the building's columns fail ALL AT ONCE in a way exactly like controlled demolition?
Please answer me - regarding the twin towers... How did the tops of the buildings fall through the path of MOST resistance at roughly free fall speed?
Ktesibios, thanks for the links.
Gee..holograms. I never guessed that those planes that I watched fly into the towers, the explosions and flames that followed it, were holograms. Forgive me, but watching that and the fall of the towers was too horrific to even review mentally. I am not a builder or a physicist or an architect, so can't answer your questions, but I would imagine they fell that way because they were built in that manner.
"practically requires hiring Vorlons as consultants"
Ooooh!
"Vorlon Consulting Agency, this is Lyta speaking. How may I direct your call?"
"Yes, I'd like to speak to Mr. Kosh."
"Which Mr. Kosh would that be, sir?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, there's more than one?"
"Yes, sir. We have quite a few Koshes here."
"Ah. Family concern, is it?"
"You might say that."
"Well, I'm afraid I didn't get a first name. Last time we spoke he said he was late for an appointment with some vicar. Said something about calling back at the 'hour of scampering' or something like that. I thought he might have meant rush hour, so I hope I'm not catching him on his way out...?
"Ah, you must have spoken to Mr. Kosh. One moment please."
"Well, yes, but I didn't get his first--"
(Click. Tangerine Dream plays briefly. Click.)
"You have...a question?"
"Mr. Kosh! Oh, glad I got through to you. I wasn't sure your secretary understood who I wanted. Sorry, I didn't actually get your name...?"
"Kosh."
"Yes, sorry, it's actually your first name I missed...?"
"We are all Kosh."
"Yes, I've...heard. Uh. Anyway, I was wondering if you could help us out. You see, I represent the government, and we're having a bit of a PR problem. Yeah, I know, big shock there, but you see this is a strange one. A lot of people seem to think we faked the 9/11 attacks. Sure, we've done our fair share of the cloak-and-dagger, but we had nothing to do with these, and what's worse, the conspiracy nuts have some utterly bizarre ideas...I mean, holographic planes? We've heard you can be very effective in altering public perceptions, and--"
"The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."
"Um...does...that mean you don't think you can help me? I don't think I understand."
"Understanding is a three-edged sword."
"I'm beginning to realize that. Tell me, am I already being billed for your time, or do you contract per week?"
"Yes."
"I see...covering all the bases?"
"You have forgotten something."
"Sorry? That's pretty much the situation as it stands, don't think I'm missing anything. (background murmur) What? Dinner with IPX was next...this week. Oh. Damn. Mr. Kosh, I'm sorry, I've gotta go, I'm late for a dinner date with a bigshot defense con--wait...how did you know...? Uh...nevermind. When can I call you back?"
"I will always be here."
"Workaholic, eh? My kinda guy! Well, talk to tomorrow then!"
S.R. - With all due respect, answering an endless series of questions from you is a mug's game.
To be taken seriously, you have to answer a few yourself. For example:
Why did you think 9.7 and 10 seconds duration was faster than free fall? Did you do the calculations for yourself?
When you said that the towers fell faster than free fall, what mechanism did you have in mind that might have made them accelerate more quickly than they would have under gravitational acceleration?
As you must know, this is the most thoroughly examined structural failure in history. Engineers with specific expertise in this area have analyzed the towers' collapse and described exactly why, how, and how fast they fell. Do you think they are simply wrong, or part of the conspiracy?
solar roller:
A question I have wanted to ask someone who thinks the WTC and building 7 were controlled demolitions: if they were controlled demolitions, why not just set them off as controlled demolitions, and blame it on terrorists? Why the whole involved scenario with planes or holograms or whatever?
It's not as if the American people would say "I can believe terrorists hijacking jets and crashing them into skyscrapers -- but NO WAY would terrorists plant bombs in a building beforehand and set them off later. That's just *inconceivable*."
ire:
With all due respect to you, my questions are not endless and I DID correct my statement about faster than freefall.
Here is my statement above, directly to you:
"Ire:
I'm just a regular guy and I'm certainly not a physicist.
I do stand corrected in my statement.â¨The WTC Towers 1 and 2 fell at roughly freefall speed (NOT faster) and the times are based on those stated by the 911 Commission.â¨I agree that the timing is difficult but that is what they said!
Since you AGREE that they fell at roughly freefall speed then tell me how the alleged fire induced collapse of the top of the buildings could fall through massively built, cold steel and concrete - the path of MOST resistance?
The official story is essentially telling me the top section hit the ground as though there was NOTHING below it!
Thank you for pointing out my error in my statement.â¨How about the rest of my questions?"
These conspiracy theories and woo definitely give credence to the old adage "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".
Most of these people get their "expertise" from watching Discovery Channel specials on unrelated subjects, random magazine articles or just plain guessing. They put more stock in statements given in the heat of a disaster than carefully researched conclusions. Somehow it is thought that a complete novice examining a jpeg on a web page is worth more than a team of experts examining reams of first hand evidence.
Debating them is similar to debating IDers, alties, and such. There's always one more question they can ask and if you can't answer that one question immediately (no matter how relevant) it is taken as validation of their theory and a complete repudiation of reality.
I see all this woo as ego, pure and simple. It makes the woo believer more important. They somehow have the secret knowledge that others don't. That makes them special. A run of the mill life suddenly becomes adventurous when the believer possesses a secret that others don't have.
Admitting they're wrong would cause their whole word to come crashing down and they would once again become another average Joe or Jane, so that ain't gonna happen.
Sastra:
You are asking me to delve into speculation as to what really happened.
I have no clue what really happened.
That being said I CAN speculate....
IF the buildings were destroyed by controlled demolition, then it clearly points to an inside job. If it were an inside job, the true perps would have wanted to misdirect attention away from the true cause. The crash of the planes and their subsequent destruction produced enough "shock and awe" to convince the average American of the need to "strike back at the terrorists."
A story about fire induced collapse could be just a cover for the true cause of their destruction.....
By the way, those that promote holograms and no planes have VERY few adherents..
Orac would like you to believe otherwise...
solar roller wrote:
An "inside job?" You mean someone or someones who had a lot of access to the building?
Why couldn't terrorists be posing as plumbers or electricians or office workers just as easily as demolition experts hired by the owners could? It seems unlikely that anyone could get away with it, but if it could be secretly done by one set of people why not the other? It's not as if someone "official" was needed to go through the necessary paperwork.
I've read allot about 9-11 theories and I have to say that whole "no plane" theory represents about 5% of the people out there questioning what happened that day. Spending so much time on debunking that is disingenuous.
There is allot of material to examine about things like the collapse of WTC 7. If it was so damaged by the collapse of WTC 1 that it collapsed, how do you explain the way it collapsed? Straight down into it's own footprint, just by accident. The collapse of WTC 1 and the uncontrolled fires wouldn't have had any impact on the north face of the building, yet all those steel columns would had to have snapped (54 external and 27 internal I believe) within a one second timespan for the building to kink at the top and slide straight down, instead of say collapsing toward the damaged side in a messy crumbling collapse.
Can anyone address that one point for me?
Great post, I'm happy to link you over at Screw Loose Change (although you'll probably get visited by quite a few of our Denier readers). To cover a couple points quickly:
1. Some of the diarists and commenters at Kos might like to indulge themselves in 9-11 Denial, except that Kos himself has issued an edict that bans such posts and comments. Free speech is free speech, but he does pay the bills and we commend him for this decision.
2. The Star Wars Beam Weapon post is indeed quite amazing. Believe it or not, the Scholars for 9-11 "Truth" have basically expelled Steven Jones from their membership for refusing to go along with this kooky idea. So the notion that the Scholars are the serious guys has to go out the window.
3. The conspiracy theories are all constructed backwards which makes it impossible to dissuade many of the Deniers. The Deniers start with the assumption that 9-11 was an inside job, and work backwards to find evidence that supports that conclusion. Even if you debunk that evidence, they will not change their mind, just change the evidence they point to.
4. One of the more maddening things about 9-11 Denial is that the Deniers can actually be quite skillfully at debunking the parts of the CT that they do not agree with. Indeed, I have sometimes speculated that all the conspiracy theories have been debunked by other conspiracy theorists with different ideas.
Pat from Screw Loose Change
*sighs* "Tower 7 was not hit by any airplane, but the damage to the main towers did cause both structural damage and fires to it. An analysis of the steel from the ruins of the tower shows that the steel had a high content of sulphur, which can happen when steel is misforged. The sulphur, in addition to burning on its own, also lowered the temperature at which the steel would soften and melt." -Source
Sastra -
Reasonable question. WTC 7 contained offices of, among others, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the FBI. They don't let just anybody off the street walk in there - fake janitor's uniform or otherwise. WTC7 fell at nearly free fall speed - about 6.5 - 7 seconds. All the resistance on each floor had to have been simultaneously removed to get that rate of acceleration. That can only be done through careful study of the building blueprints and expert placement of explosives and sequentially timed charges. If Arab terrorists had the luck to get in there as necesary, they couldn't possibly have covered it up. Hence, the most reasonable explanation is a true inside job.
Of course it wasn't an inside job, Osama had our air defenses stand down from his laptop in a cave, everyone knows that.
Gonzo -
Predictable replay of a time-honored tradition: attack the messenger when the facts aren't on your side. Are you saying 30 - 60% of Americans fit your little character analysis/assassination? Perhaps you'd like to direct your criticism at some of these inside job proponents: physics professors, structural engineers, professional pilots, former Bush I and II administration officials, fire fighters, demolition experts, former CIA analysts, past and present FBI agents and the list goes on. Average folks in their own right, I'm sure.
The woo, it burns.
Before even going any further, though, I have my main question - same one I have for the people who think the Holocaust is fake. That question is, if this wasn't planes, then where did those passengers go? How do you explain away all those dead people (not the ones in the towers, the ones on the planes). They all bought tickets, and they didn't come home, and they have left grieving families and friends behind who are witness to those people having gone missing.
So where are they? Did the government kill them too as part of the plot?
Or maybe they're down in the undisclosed location with Mr. Cheney?
/continues reading more juicy woo goodness
//maybe it was chemtrails!
More on Freefall.
Corpocorrupticus: "Damn peacenicks, why won't they fight and blow up much stuff so that I can sell more and inflate my stocks on the bloated bodies of dead sandnigros and cameljockeys?"
Uncivilservantallious: "Well my dear blower of capital dong, you see, the rabble just don't share our righteous lust for spilt gut. They like "family", "friends" "love" and something they call "freedom and free trade". But, if we bend their minds with our NewDoublePlusGood words such a Free Trade and Family [killing] Values, blast some buildings with HEAT and blame it on Far Off Swarthy Freedom Haters... THEN they might get into the fight with more gusto. I tell you, they'll go for it... so long as they think boogymen hide under every bed. You know anyone who could help us out with this?"
Corpocorrupticus: "Sure do. I've got Perptraitorous on speed dial. I'll set it all up. You just leave it to me, better you don't know any of the details anyways incase THEY want some "investigation" or that chimera they so cherrish... you know... "truth"... whatever that is."
Uncivilservantallious: "Dandy, I say. Let's get this whole thing done ASAP! I've heard some stink over at the Department of Lost Treasure and Revenues might drop precipitously if we don't shake them off our tail... and I mean soon, like yesterday. I spoken with the boy, and he can hardly believe we were able to get him past those "Voting Machines"... what a dolt that kid is... but he'll go along with anything we want to cook up, he knows he's in good hands... like he could say anything else. Right? HAR HAR HAR!"
Corpocorrupticus: "MUWAAA HA HA HA! How right you are. So we'll shoot for September, right? I'm thinking the Eleventh... it'll have a nice ring to it for a thousand years to come.
Our government would never ever consider hurting us, read up on Operation Northwoods and you'll see I'm right.
the basic problem with these conspiracy theories has been pointed out repeatedly already, yet still bears restating: if the WTC was destroyed by some form of "inside job" controlled demolitions project, why even bother faking an airplane-crash terrorist plot to cover it up with? it would have been so much easier to cover it up with a fake big-honkin'-bomb terrorist plot down the lines of OKC instead, and such a coverup would have been far harder to uncover after the fact.
it's bad enough having to postulate criminal mastermind conspiracies covering up a inside-job sabotage plot without at the same time having to postulate all the conspirators being as dumb as so many bricks. so, why?
themann1086 said,
"An analysis of the steel from the ruins of the tower shows that the steel had a high content of sulphur, which can happen when steel is misforged."
I say,
Uh oh, did you say MISFORGED?
I smell ignorance
Do you even know what "forge" is?
Please tell us all! how in the hell can "misforging" a piece of steel, give it a high sulphur content?
"SIGH" Forging is the process of pounding and striking a piece of metal into shape.
"SIGH" Forging has nothing to do with how much sulphur or carbon is in the final alloy!
I'm well aware of what forging is.
I was quoting. Perhaps you missed my quotation marks and link.
Sastra said,
"Why couldn't terrorists be posing as plumbers or electricians or office workers just as easily as demolition experts hired by the owners could? It seems unlikely that anyone could get away with it, but if it could be secretly done by one set of people why not the other?"
I say,
absolutely right! lets do some more investigation! reopen 911!
us 9/11 truthers got a thousand more questions too!
One thing I know about eyewitness testimony in incident reporting is that you're going to hear lots of different stories, not all of which will parse with any of the others. That's why especially in air incidents, accident investigators tend to look at physical evidence first and eyewitness testimony as a distant second.
So, yeah, dozens of people could have said something-or-other happened at the WTC on the morning of 11 September 2001, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're right, remembering correctly, or telling the truth...
its probly not a good Idea to quote someone who obviously knows NOT what forging is.
It makes you look.....not so good.....
Physician, heal thyself....
Holograms weren't used (that's old school thought. Catch up). It was most likely the use of CGI coupled with a flyby.
http://killtown.911review.org/2nd-hit.html
Heres a real good 911 truth Question!
everyone knows about the "my pet goat" incident at the elementary school in Florida on 9/11 and probably wonders why George Bush (war president and great protector)just sat there for 7 minutes doing NOTHING! after the chief of secret service Andrew Card informed him,and I quote, "america is under attack mr. president"
but....
the real question is...
why didnt the secret service do anything!!!!
George Bush was in a well publicized location!!!!!
THE SECOND OUT OF FOUR HIJACKINGS had just hit the WTC and there were other hijacked planes flying around the country!!!
the secret service should have said sorry kids, the president has to use the bathroom gotta go!
secret service should have thrown a coat over the presidents head and drove him strait to airforce one and take off flying away from that WELL PUBLICIZED LOCATION!
instead... the secret service put the president (and those children) at great risk by staying there. (about 35 minutes or so)
themann 1086 said,
"Physician, heal thyself"....
I say,
Im fine....thanks
P.S. stay away from those Ignorant websites ha........misforged.......ha ha...
solar loon writes: "I urge you to look at the work of Physicist Steven Jones, formerly a professor at BYU."
Formerly? Why'd he leave? Was he asked to leave? Was he tenured?
Okay, Truthies, lemme splain:
First, the towers. You don't have to be a structural engineer to know two things: 1) Metals tend to soften as they heat up, and 2) while it's rather tough to ignite kerosene, it does in fact ignite, and burns furiously once it does. That's how jet fuel works.
The impact of the planes destroyed the fireproofing of the towers' structural steel, and the jet fuel inside was ignited by the impact and remained burning for at least a week (if not longer) after the towers collapsed. The girders don't have to melt to be weakened -- they just have to soften enough that they can't support the weight above them.
As for WTC 7, well, you tell me. The firefighters' reports stated that the building was seriously compromised in the collapse of the towers, including a huge gash several stories high along one corner of the building. The building was on fire for an extended period of time, fueled by several huge tanks of diesel fuel.
Then you've got these photo artifacts -- isn't it perhaps more sensible, in lieu of better evidence, to assume they were either building debris or compression artifacts in the photo data?
Why does there have to be so much more than this, and why dismiss the simple explanations?
1. The Bush Administration is the single most incompetent presidency the United States has ever had, period. To suggest he and his cronies could pull this off, ignoring the overwhelming mass of physical evidence, stretches reality past the breaking point. This is the group who can't win any of their wars, can't protect major cities from the weather, and can't even leak undercover agents without getting busted, nor maintain their legislative majority in a year that was in their favor [re: Senate]... and you're gonna argue they managed to coordinate 4 hijackings, 3 successful kamikazes, 1 "failed", AND planted explosives in some/all of the WTC buildings, the Pentagon, AND faked millions of videos, photos, and audio recordings? Does no one else see the logical disconnect here?
2. It's a wiki; there's a forum. Take it up with them.
George really wanted to see how it came out.
here ya go john H
http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/PressReleaseJonesretire.html
The Bush Administration is the single most incompetent presidency the United States has ever had, period
I say,
affirmative.
themann 1086 said,
To suggest he and his cronies could pull this off, ignoring the overwhelming mass of physical evidence, stretches reality past the breaking point.
I say,
I suggested no such thing.
Who's mouth are you putting words in sir?
I agree, Bush probly' couldnt plan a picnic
But, he is part of a big coverup
Brian X said,
"You don't have to be a structural engineer to know two things: 1) Metals tend to soften as they heat up, and 2) while it's rather tough to ignite kerosene, it does in fact ignite, and burns furiously once it does. That's how jet fuel works"
I say,
I got a kerosene lantern on my mantle....its easy to light...doesnt get red hot.....doesnt burn furiously.......
and...
..thats how jet fuel "works"....when you dont have a giant turbofan forcefeeding a thound cubic feet of air per second into the combustion chamber of a jet engine.
underdog wrote:
I think you misunderstood my question. I wasn't asking whether or not an "inside job" actually could have been pulled off by terrorists.
I was asking why someone who was capable of rigging a building with explosives this way couldn't have made it LOOK as if terrorists had done it after the fact. Why wouldn't they just claim terrorists had done it?
They could say some of their trusted employees must have been terrorists, killed in the explosion. Admit incompetence or incredibly bad luck. "Gee, we must have messed up on security" or "they outsmarted us somehow" after a controlled demolition would seem to be a much easier lie than a complicated and bizarre faked scenario involving crashing jetliners. The general public is already familiar with the idea that clever terrorists plant bombs and set them off. Looks like they're getting better at it. It would not be a hard sell.
It would seem to be much simpler than the presumed cover-up plot, where hundreds of things could have gone wrong.
Nope. I never said they were a big group. Since you're new here, I'll explain the entire purpose of Your Friday Dose of Woo. It's to take some of the strangest, most out-there woo, and have some fun with it. And the "no plane" loons are perfect targets for such a treatment.
As for being "disingenuous," not at all. I never represented the hologram theory as the mainstream of 9/11 conspiracy theorists. However, upon immersing myself in some of the "mainstream" 9/11 "truth" movement websites, I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that the no-planers are only marginally more loony than the truthers.
Amazing isn't it that the same people who supposedly successfully pulled off a conspiracy to bend the American people to their will via mass murder blamed on Arab terrorists couldn't fake up a bunch of weapons of mass destruction "proving" Saddam Hussein was a clear and present danger and had to be taken out.
A major problem with 911 conspiracy theories is how elaborate the conspiracy supposedly is, with fake airplanes, cruise missiles, controlled demolition, and what have you. If George W. and his nasties wanted to kill a bunch of Americans and blame it on Arab terrorist such a convoluted scheme wasn't needed. All that was needed was to replicate the 1993 WTC bombing on a much bigger scale. A few more trucks with a lot more explosives would likely have worked. At the very least 911 conspiracists would be far more convincing if they claimed that in fact the "official' story is true as far as it goes, but that the attack was actually orchestrated by the CIA or whoever. After all the world is full of young idiots willing to martyr themselves with the right convincing.
"thats how jet fuel "works"....when you dont have a giant turbofan forcefeeding a thound cubic feet of air per second into the combustion chamber of a jet engine."
The impact would create a similar situation, in reverse. Instead of an engine blowing air at a small jet of aerosolized fuel, there were hundreds of gallons of jet fuel propelled at high speed into a building which no doubt turned much of the fuel into a fine mist, which would be far easier to ignite. (See: fuel-air explosive). When it's a fine mist, there's lots of oxygen for each tiny droplet of fuel. That's also basically how a lamp works - the fuel in the mantle burns because the kerosene in the wick/mantle can more easily vaporize than the kerosene in the reservoir, which is cooler and has limited air contact.
The flash point of kerosene, at which it will start vaporizing and can burn, is only 110 F.
Orac, did you DELIBERATELY run this the same night the Sci-Fi Channel was running the "Love and Monsters" episode of DOCTOR WHO? (I agree it was a mess, but, as my wife said, an enjoyable mess.) The conspiracy hunters there had certain similarities to your posters. Watch out for Absorbalofs, guys.
In other words "Calling Agent Scully, calling Agent Mulder!"
Btw, nobody has really looked at the supposed 'motives.' Money and stock manipulation? There are, I'm sure, ways of making twice as much without killing so many people. Causing a coup? Where is it? They even screwed up the election, from this point of view. Invading Iraq and getting the oil? Then why not 'frame' Saddam instead of Osama? Ironically, if Saddam had been involved, and the US HAD invaded Iraq instead of Afghanistan, the world, including the Muslim world -- who did not like the secular Baathist, Saddam -- would have been behind him. Instead, they concocted this scheme so they could invade Afghanistan -- and still didn't capture/kill Osama -- wouldn't they have made sure plans for that were in place -- so they could later invade iraq????? (Of course, I suppose somebody could argue that we REALLY wanted to control heroin, not oil. It's no loonier than the rest.)
To quote my favorite detective:
PFUI!
Actually the REAL conspiracy is....
There are no 911 conspiracy theorists! A secret unit within the NSA created the CT websites and masquerades as people like solar roller in order to distract as many intelligent people as possible into debunking junk instead of applying themselves to useful causes. This secret unit is located across the hall from the one which came up with ideas of banning same-sex marriage and pushing intelligent design.
One snark point and one honest question.
Those Secret Service guys who did nothing at first are odd no matter how you look at it. As usual, you can call it incompetence or conspiracy. So why is the incompetence more incredible?
Faced with a gunman, the SS will lay down their lives; they will also knock down the President of the United States if necessary to get him out of the line of fire. But if an attack has been reported a thousand miles away, is it their job, or a piece of their training, to assess the National Security risk and make a unilateral decison about it? The guy in charge of national security is right there, and he's not showing any signs that there's an international crisis in progress. There's too much dumb and passive here, from the POTUS and the guards respectively, but that sort of thing is all too common.
But the conspirators who planned it all months in advance: they knew the Pres was really in no danger, so they scripted it to look like dumb and passive people (including, let's repeat, POTUS) rather than scripting the kind of reaction you'd get from anybody who's awake? Smart conspirators with plenty of planning time don't want to script something that's conspicuously weird.
Of course, that's jus what they want me to think.
Honest question now. The pancaking is no great surprise; nor is the fact that the 100,000 tons of top floors of WTC 1 or 2 falling onto the supports of the next floor down do not pause there for a moment before falling to the next one. And falling pretty flatly when the entire area of the building has been a steel-softening furnace for some time (rather than collapsing on one side) isn't unreasonable.
But WTC 7 (which was a broader bhilding than the towers, wasn't it? Or am I misled?) seems a little odd. The initial failure would seem to have to be pretty much all across the cross-section of the building, or it would fall askew to some extent, and it's not clear why it would not fail first in some portion of the building rather than allo across it at once. Is there some way in which the failure of one portion would immediately hasten the even faster failure of the rest, so that the collapse would be symmetrical?
Then again, if the first part of the structure to collapse were somewhere in the middle, that would increase the load on all the rest of the softened supports so much that it would all collapse pretty evenly, maybe. It would still be nice to see a convincing treatment of this from someone with the right knowledge of structures.
I think controlled demolitions companies are wasting their time and money spending weeks and months planning and wiring these old building up with explosives, all they need to do is throw some jet fuel into them and watch them collapse into their own footprint. I have to go now, my kerosene heater just melted itself (it's made from steel).
At least the one conspiracy theorist (Elton Pope) did eventually find the source of his conspiracy. But, no, there was no planning involved. Just a coincidence. Really.
BTW, the next episode (Fear Her) is pretty lame too, but the two episode season finale is possibly the best Who that's been done since the series was resurrected.
As long as they also knock out a big chunk of the corner of the building at the same time they set it on fire, just like WTC 7. Of course, that's the point of controlled demolition, isn't it? To be controlled. WTC 7 sat there for several hours burning and damaged. Multiple firefighter accounts say that they were worried that the building might collapse. And the firefighters were right. Several hours later, it did.
But demolition companies wouldn't want to do it that way because they want controlled destruction.
Brian X, Porlock Junior, and Orac,
Lemme splain to YOU....
We are told (by the 911 Commission and NIST) that the impact of the planes destroyed the fireproofing, which allowed the fires to weaken the steel, which led to the outer walls bowing, which led to the failure of the bolts connecting the trusses to the columns, which led the "inevitability of collapse."
Note that the official story does NOT now promote pancaking. It did at first, but apparently NIST didn't think it held up to scientific scrutiny, so they abandoned that idea...
Porlock Junior, take if up with NIST if you still feel that "pancaking is no great surprise."
Brian X, I think we can all agree that that fire could not possibly have melted the steel. (Steel melts at 2800*F and the maximum for hydrocarbon fires in optimal conditions is 1800*F). There is no scientific point of steel weakening. But we DO have the UL Labs certification of the steel assemblies at the WTC to be able to withstand a 2000*F fire for THREE hours. That is FAR more stringent a test that what happened on 9/11 which had black smoke - clearly a sign of oxygen starved fires. And... the building only lasted for 1 and 1 1/2 hours.
NIST's analysis for the planes removing the fireproofing was "proven" by shooting a shotgun at mockups of the fireproofed steel.
Since when is a shotgun a realistic simulation of a jet crash?
And... the NIST computer model of the collapse has NOT been released. They even admit that the first runs did not lead to collapse. They had to "adjust" the input parameters (unrealistically I would say) to get collapse to start.
AND.... they NEVER did any analysis of the actual collapse! Their model stops at the point of initiation of collapse!
And... lets not ignore the effects of heat conduction... heat from the fires in one section of the massive steel columns will be distributed throughout the entire steel structure.
Your comment that " jet fuel inside ... remained burning for at least a week (if not longer)" makes me laugh !
Jet fuel, once ignited will burn up in MINUTES not weeks!
The bottom line is that the observed pulverization of the concrete and steel in the World Trade Center towers cannot possibly be explained by the energy of a gravity driven collapse. There is a great energy deficit in the official story. That energy to pulverize the buildings had to come from somewhere, and gravity simply cannot provide it!
On Building 7, Brian X seems to think that because of some "photo artifacts" and reports that the building was compromised we are supposed to believe that it's the "simple explanation" that the building fell in a way that exhibits ALL of the characteristics of controlled demolition?
I'd like to see the photos of the building that show more than a few isolated fires. There are some photos that show smoke covering up the south facade, but that would imply fire on the south side - which certainly wouldn't lead to symmetrical collapse...
Porlock Junior, you seem to agree that it's very odd that the building fell symmetrically (even though the fires were asymmetric. But then you doubt yourself when you say
"Then again, if the first part of the structure to collapse were somewhere in the middle, that would increase the load on all the rest of the softened supports so much that it would all collapse pretty evenly..."
If that were true, then why should anyone hire firms to do (very expensive) controlled demolition? All they would have to do is to blow the center columns and the entire building would fall neatly into it's own footprint.
Orac, your comment about Building 7 makes no sense. You say that "demolition companies wouldn't want to do it that way because they want controlled destruction."
What way is that? Like the perfect collapse of Building 7? Ask any demolition company about how it LOOKS....
If it really was an accident then they have a LOT of study to do as to how fires could do it so perfectly.
I haven't seen their analysis either...
The fact of the matter is that NO steel framed buildings have ever collapsed due to fire before 9/11 or after.
Yet it happened THREE time on 9/11. Strange isn't it?
i agree that it would be nice to see a convincing treatment of what happened to Building 7. FEMA says that "it's best analysis has a low probability of occurrence." The 911 Commission said NOTHING about it. NIST promise a report but so far we have seen nothing!
Thanks, all, for the documentation on the extensive damage and fires in WTC7, especially to Pat Curley for stopping by and others for informing me about the fabulous pictures at Pat's Screw Loose Change and the links to Debunking 9/11. Orac's link to the Popular Mechanics article is also quite useful.
I was #426 in a Red Cross blood donation line at the time of WTC7 collapse and never really followed the controversy about it much until recently.
Great post Solar Roller,
What NIST has done is to contract out the the analysis of WTC7 in order to come up with the best explanation of what brought the buildiing down. I believe the company that contracted is called ARA, but not certain.
Get this, there is a certain peculiar parameter: The study is to focus only on floors 8 - 46. Why would that be? See http://wtc.nist.gov/media/Draft_SOW_WTC7jan06.pdf
page 2. "The detailed floor analyses will determine likely modes of failure for Floors 8 - 46 under support removal due to failure of one or more columns (at one or more locations),"
As a critical thinker, one wants to know what happened on floors 1-7 and 47 as well.
What you truthies need to remember is than an ad hoc hypothesis is just that, a hypothesis.
Not to mention the fact that so many of you disagree with each other on basic details doesn't say much for your fact-finding capabilities. The more your stories diverge, the less it looks like any one of you is right. (Come to think of it, that's the same reason I stopped being religious.)
Fact is, you guys are just like creationists in a way. Creationists like to draw a line in the sand (or, sometimes, in the middle of a rapidly expanding oasis) and say, "Beyond here, God did it." You do the same thing, along with some digging around in the statistical noise to make it look legit. The sad part is, I'm sure the majority of you are sincere, but you don't know much of anything about investigative protocols.
Consider Paul Brodeur, the guy who claimed cell phones cause cancer. I don't know much about the rest of his reporting career, but I do know his reporting on environmental hazards shows a history of overfocus on money trails while paying no attention to scientific issues (like the difference between ionizing and nonionizing radiation). But he knows how to write a good scare story, doesn't he?
Porlock Jr said,
One snark point and one honest question.
I say,thanks.
Porlock Jr types about the secret service and says...
"But if an attack has been reported a thousand miles away, is it their job, or a piece of their training, to assess the National Security risk and make a unilateral decison about it? The guy in charge of national security is right there, and he's not showing any signs that there's an international crisis in progress."....
.....and then concludes that it is most likely a 35 minute period of incompetence.
I say,
Holy Cow man!
what are you thinking!!!
Damn wrong...
The secret service ALWAYS PLANS AHEAD!!!
they have a "playbook"
They did not follow standard operating procedure!
George Bush stayed in a Sarasota Fla. hotel Sept 10th 11th!
George Bush took a morning jog through Sarasota streets on Sept 11th
WELL PUBLICIZED
with tons of security
c'mon man....get real!
Dick Cheney said,
that on the morning of 9/11 the secret service grabbed him real hard with no questions asked and dragged his butt from above ground at the White House, downstairs to one of the underground bunkers!!!!.....
.....Where he then proceeded to let an apparently hijacked jet fly over his head....
....do a tight high speed loop....
....and watch it crash into the pentagon....
I just read your article. You are wrong. Your assertion about 9/11 truth is without merit.
9/11 was an inside job, and you continue to perpetuate the lie that it wasn't. There is a plethora of information that indicates the government's story is untrue, but above it all, there are three smoking guns that prove this. If you were credible, you would investigate these.
Here are three 9/11 smoking guns that have never been refuted:
1.
The obvious controlled demolition of WTC7
Link: http://killtown.911review.org/video/wtc7/wtc7_cbs_closeup.mpeg
2.
"Seismic Proof - 9/11 Was An Inside Job (Updated Version II)"
Link: http://www.studyof911.com/articles/mirrored/craigfurlong/
By Craig T. Furlong & Gordon Ross, Scholars for 9/11 Truth: http://www.st911.org
The US Government is incriminated by its own facts--how ironic.
Summary:
News Tip: A real 9/11 smoking gun...that no one can debunk (these are facts, not theory).
Airplane "Impact" Times: Incriminating Evidence of 9/11 Coverup & Complicity
The official times for plane "impact" [precise to the second] as declared by the US Government, from both the 9/11 Commission and from NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), are different and yet both are true and accurate times. What can this factual contradiction mean? Looking exclusively at WTC1, there is found an indisputable causal link:
One World Trade, September 11, 2001
American Airlines Flight 11 "impact" time:
8:46:30 UTC, per LDEO seismic data (National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2005)
8:46:40 UTC, per FAA last primary radar contact (9/11 Commission Final Report, 2004)
Q- What caused the 8:46:30 seismic event that occurred 10 seconds before the actual air crash?
A- The only possibility is huge explosions, as corroborated by many witnesses at the time.
Q- Who caused these explosions before the plane hit?
Notes:
In 2004, the 9/11 Commission avoided addressing the earlier seismic time (which had been attributed in error by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, originally in 2001 as plane "impact").
In 2005, NIST avoided addressing the 9/11 Commission's later time for the aircraft's actual impact.
Both the 9/11 Commission and NIST avoided addressing the many witnesses who testified of explosions in the sub-basements before the plane crashed.
Summary:
This precision data has yet to be refuted. It is from the two highest governmental entities charged with looking into what happened on 9/11. Both declared these times as accurate, and in doing so corroborate William Rodriguez and the many witnesses the morning of 9/11 who experienced explosions in the sub-basements of WTC1 before American Airlines Flight 11 struck the building. This is indicting evidence of governmental coverup, and thus implication of complicity.
3.
Observe and analyze the 12 minute scientific sound analysis found inside the movie "9/11 Eyewitness"
{To find it, go in 44 mins 30 secs}
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2939164701791209176&q=%22911+E…
Before it is too late, demand a new 9/11 investigation, except this time a real one.
Justice waits...{and there is no statute of time limitation on murder}
Craig T. Furlong
Before even going any further, though, I have my main question - same one I have for the people who think the Holocaust is fake. That question is, if this wasn't planes, then where did those passengers go? How do you explain away all those dead people (not the ones in the towers, the ones on the planes). They all bought tickets, and they didn't come home, and they have left grieving families and friends behind who are witness to those people having gone missing.
So where are they? Did the government kill them too as part of the plot?
The passengers were beamed up to the secret base on the far side of the Moon.
Isn't funny how similar the wooists and truthies construct their conspiracy theories the same way that Creationists and IDers create theirs?
"the maximum for hydrocarbon fires in optimal conditions is 1800*F"
Amazing. Apparently, acetylene is not a hydrocarbon. Me being a chemist, you might have thought I'd have known that. An air-acetylene flame used for atomic spectroscopy is about 3000 deg. F.
Not that it necessarily matters. I've heated a steel to the point where it deforms with cooler flames than that.
Everyone here talks about "no planes" and "holograms"
Of course they do!
No real Truther talks about any of that crap.
What we talk about are:
**** The Project For A New American's Centuries Document "Rebuilding America's Defenses"
**** 13 times the normal put options for only American Airlines and United Airlines in the week leading up to September 11th.
**** NORAD (In charge of North American aerospace and would be in charge of giving "shoot down" orders) was put in control of Vice President Dick Cheney 6 months before 9/11. This is the first time in history that a non-military official is in control of NORAD. I've personally spoken with military personnel who were in utter shock when they received the memo!
**** The FBI's official site's (go to www.fbi.gov and look for most wanted terrorists) profile of Osama Bin Laden makes no mention of the 9/11 attacks. When the FBI was questioned about this they replied "We have no hard evidence linking Osama Bin Laden to 9/11"
**** The "fat" Bin Laden tape. The tape released shortly after 9/11 showing Bin Laden admitting to the attacks is fatally flawed. Bin Laden is known to be left handed yet he is writing, eating and gesturing with his right hand throughout the video. Also, compare the facial structure with a real picture of Bin Laden. You can see that his nose is MUCH more stubby instead of being long and narrow at the bridge. He is also more pudgy and a bit darker. He is also wearing a gold ring, strictly forbidden in Islam.
**** The 140 Eyewitness accounts in the towers (including 9/11 hero Willie Rodriguez) who refer to "bombs". Of course, some of these may of meant the plane. But there's actual news reporters reporting on "4 different explosions". Multiple news networks were saying the same thing on the day!
**** The CIA's ties to Bin Laden and Al Queda.
**** Pakistani's ISI general wiring $100,000 to lead hijacker Mohammed Atta and then having breakfast with the joint chiefs of staff in the white house on the morning of 9/11.
**** The admitted pulling of WTC7 by Silverstein. And don't give me that "pulling the firefighters" crap. Why would the fire chief be calling a building owner about pulling firefighters? Why does the 9/11 Commission state there was no firefighting in Building 7?
"Pull" Doesn't mean demolish? Why, in the EXACT SAME PBS Documentary, when they are "pulling" Building 6, does the demolition expert say "we're getting ready to pull building 6. OK! Pull it!" Then the building explodes to the ground. I didn't see any cranes or machines "pulling" the building down.
Why would Silverstein refer to the fighting team as "IT". Who, let alone an educated, successful business owner, would use such bad grammar?
And finally, why would the VERY next sentence out of his mouth be "and then we watched the building collapse". So pulling firefighters out of buildings makes them collapse? Oh, I suppose he meant hours later, that's why he said "AND THEN we watched the building collapse"
But he only made $7 billion out of a insurance policy he took out MONTHS before 9/11 exclusively covering terrorist attacks. But no, he has nothing to gain...why would he lie and cover anything up?
It's us twoofers that are lying! Yeah, it's all part of our big scheme!!! We're gonna trick you guys! And we're all homophobic, anti-semetic american-haters and we're gonna get you guys!!! Booooo!!!
None of you want to discuss the facts. You'll attack the crazies who believe in the hologram no plane theories or the crazy space beam.
All you'll do is attack us for trying to straighten out all these questions we have.
None of us knows what really happened. However, the government's account of what actually happened is so absurd it is laughable.
How many of you have really researched this event and others in history. Governments all around the world for centuries have been partaking in "false flag" operations. It's the oldest trick in the book.
The CIA (with Kermit Roosevelt's backing) ADMITS to staging terror attacks in Iran in the 1950's.
It goes so deep that I simply could not type it all up.
It's just sad when all I read is attacks on the flimsiest suggestions that 9/11 truthers bring up.
Someone post a response to all my questions. And try not to call me a name like a preschooler every sentence (if you can!).
CarD51Short said,
"Everyone here talks about "no planes" and "holograms"
Of course they do!
No real Truther talks about any of that crap."
Yeah I noticed that!
where the hell is ONE post on here from one of those hologrammers?....
Its funny to see people like this guy
khan | December 9, 2006 02:13 PM
khan had to answer to a post like that sarcastically because no planers dont exist on this website
"Hologrammers" and "Space weapon proponents" do seem to be few and far between.
Colst said,
Amazing. Apparently, acetylene is not a hydrocarbon. Me being a chemist, you might have thought I'd have known that.
I say,
Hooray! Colst is 100% correct!, acetylene most surely is a hydrocarbon (you chemists are so smart!)!
Colst then makes the true statement(probably)
that...
An air-acetylene flame used for atomic spectroscopy is about 3000 deg. F.
I say,
Hooray, right again Einstien (chemists are obviosly so smart)
and then nails it one more time with this statement
"Not that it necessarily matters".
I say,
I'm sure that everyone will agree with you that acetylene had nothing to do with fires in the World Trade Center!!!
Colst then lays on the icing for his "cake" with the grand proclamation that he is more than just a genious behind the desk.
apparently he is hands on too as he says that he has heated "a steel" to the point of deformation with temperatures less than three thousand degrees.
I say,
faced with the irrefutable fact that steel melts at 2875 degrees fahrenheit
once again you are correct.(chemists) WOW!(so smart)...
Now please tell the world how a kerosene (or acetylene)fire for that matter, can burn hotter than 1800 degrees without forcefeeding it oxygen.
(if that is your point)?
(maybe you are trying to tell us there was acetylene in the world trade center)
what is your point anyway?
It is fascinating that conspiracy liars endlessly repeat the same thoroughly debunked canards. We keep hearing from people who have "questions," and those questions always turn out to have been answered many times, the answers being available from a wide range of sources. Five years after the jihadist attacks, charlatans peddling agendas and hopelessly deluded fools prattle on about "free fall speeds" and "melted steel," blissfully ignorant of the thousands of pages published by NIST, sites such as 911myths.com, and books such as the one published by Popular Mechanics. Yes, we know--EVERYONE is part of the Impossibly Vast Conspiracy. But, raving about your burning questions might appear a bit more sincere if you took the trouble to discover the answers.
Ronald,
Please answer the questions I addressed above.
I am very interested in your answers. Please do not give me a website to go to and just debunk my silly lies.
I am just looking for some guidance, show me why the 9/11 Commission report is correct and answer my questions above.
Thanks in advance!!!
Ronald Wieck? Is that the Ronald Wieck, editor of Popular Mechanics?
The same Popular Mechanics that was so THOROUGHLY discredited by a regular radio host (Charles Goyette)?
http://www.911podcasts.com/gener8xml.php?vid=158
Want more scientific debunking of Popular Mechanics? Go to http://www.st911.org or go here....
http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/gopm/index.html
I'd say that your first sentence refers quite nicely to Popular Mechanics! YOU are the liars that endlessly repeat the same canards.
Sure, you keep hearing the same questions becuase they are NEVER answered.
Try answering the question before your post by CarD51Short
Try answering the questions by Solar Roller at 2:07 on Dec 8th.
Deal with the issues raised by Craig T. Furlong 2:02 on the Dec 9th
Try answering the questions by CarD51Short at 4:37 on Dec 9th
If that's too much to ask why not get one of the crack editors at Popular Mechanics to do it?
We are waiting.....
And.. if you are so sure of your conclusions, why not DEBATE the scholars for 911 truth in March in South Carolina?
http://www.teamliberty.net/id278.html
They are awaiting you....
/looks at checklist
Yep, got the bit about "why haven't you answered our questions"...
References to known woo sites...
Hm, there doesn't seem to be an entry here for "can't tell the difference between melting and bending"... guess I'll write that one in on the bottom.
Oh, and the trump card, the "debate" challenge. The last refuge of the woo believer, the debate, in which the put-upon party seeks a win on style and rhetorical technique rather than evidence.
And of course completely ignoring the fact that there are people with the ideology, the planning capability, and the budget to really hurt the American people who don't like us and are not currently connected with the US government (true, some were, but that was then, this is 2001).
Lady Diana's driver was drunk out of his skull when he went behind the wheel, and thought he could outrun some paparazzi in a limousine.
Lee Harvey Oswald was a Soviet fanboy with sniper training.
Why do we need conspiracies behind both of those, when there are perfectly simple explanations for both? You Truthies want so badly to believe that George Bush is not merely clueless and incompetent but actually outright evil. To that end, you've gotten the whole thing backwards, and scream and shout and browbeat anytime someone tries to straighten you out on the issue. When those who you have failed to convince walk away, you complain that they're liars and that they haven't answered your questions, when truth be told they just don't want any more to do with you.
And all of you do exactly the same things -- creationists, anti-Semites, 9/11 Truthies, hermit scientists, all of you. Not sure what that says about the limits of human thought, but it's not good.
CarD51short:
Please, have someone explain to you the difference between "lying" and "delusional". You'll find them to be rather fascinatingly different.
There's a lot of people on this board who badly need a dose of haloperidol, and Orac and his supporters aren't among them.
That was one hell of a River Dance, Brian X.
History reminds that Empire, Greed, and Power create patterns which are as obvious as blue sky... at least for those that read, look around and empathize for humanity.
Why does it seem that your ilk "no way America would do such a thing", insist that you inhabit an exceptional location in the universe void of astonishing corruptions? The very same corruption that no culture has EVER been completely free from?
This behavior by ALL governments, all power structures, all societies has been a timeless struggle for the human condition. You are no exception, neither is America. A sense of vigilance is what you seem short on. Your apologies, excuses and what seems an overriding fear to address an ugly (although highly probable) reality... is as slothful, greedy and selfish as the perpetrators themselves.
Brian X:
I'm not sure who the subject "you" is in your first sentence is, (it could go either way)
If the "you" is the defenders of the official government conspiracy, then I stand by that statement. I for one, asked many questions and only referenced ONE site (www.scholarsfor911truth.org).
It would be sad if you think that the many multi-disciplinary scientists at that group are all "woo" but that is your prerogative.
http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/WhoAreWe.html
And you then must think that all the congressmen, intelligence officials, and military officials are all "woo" too.
http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/
If the "you" is the 911 truthers, then you must be saying that WE haven't answered YOUR questions.
If so, there was a reference to questions at another site, (probably 911myths) but I think that anyone that believes in the validity of those questions should have the intellectual fortitude to raise them here.
Of all the questions I (and others raised) the ONLY real challenge was on whether the twin towers fell at approximately freefall speed or faster than freefall speed.
I will leave that discussion to those better equipped than I..
For the sake of the reply to you (only) I will accept the notion that fire induced weakened steel was the sole reason for the collapse.
But then HOW do you explain the fact that the top section of the twin towers fell through the path of most resistance as though the lower portion of cold steel and concrete simply was not there?
You refer to the debate challenge as a trump card and put the word debate in quotes.
If you had the honesty to look at the format for the debate you will see that the debate format is one that follows all rigors of scientific inquiry.
If the defenders of the official story are so confident (which you seem to be) then THIS IS YOUR OPPORTUNITY to but all of us 9/11 truthers out to pasture.
An although Orac craftily tries to weave the fringe theorists about holograms into the mainstream on 911 truth, most 911 truthers (like myself) simply have many questions and many doubts about the 911 Commission report and the followup NIST report.
And those beliefs now represent the MAJORITY of Americans.
Just look at this NY Times sponsored poll...
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/13…
Just 16% of Americans believe the government is fully telling the truth!
53% believe they are hiding something and 28% believe they are mostly lying!
On JFK, which I know very little about.... I think the number of Americans that think that were are being lied to is about 90%.
Here's something to chew on.
Apparently the gun the Oswald used was physically incapable of producing the shots that it was alleged to produce.
The path of the magic bullet took a right angle!
The path of the bullet through JFK was anatomically impossible..
Clearly governments lie and plot to murder.
Just google Operation Northwoods.
Many historians agree that FDR knew the Japanese were going to attack.
Most people even agree.. the assassination of Julius Caesar was an inside job!
I have just one thing to point out, of the many possible. I point this out because I find it to be one of the most glaring examples of the fraud perpetrated by Popular Mechanics in their oft-touted "debunking" of 9/11 "myths". It is one paragraph, straddling pages 40-41, that claims that because the fires in the rubble piles were covered and thus did not lose heat to the atmosphere [sic]they could have easily reached the temperatures required to melt steel. If this sounds OK to any scientists out there, please hand in your slide rule and go back to cleaning out test tubes. For those fortunate enough NOT to have a copy of the PM book on hand, here is a scan of the page in question.
http://www.wtcdemolition.com/PMBS1.jpg
This scientist would welcome some peer review on this bizarre assertion made by PM.
Still waiting for those answers Ronald, thanks for your infinite wisdom in advance. I'm glad there are intelligent people like yourself to point out how stupid the rest of us are.
Justin Moretti said,
There's a lot of people on this board who badly need a dose of haloperidol, and Orac and his supporters aren't among them.
I say,
There's a lot of people on this board who badly need a field trip over to my house for an experiment we gonna do!
Orac and his mindless minions should come...
It will be just like MYTHBUSTERS on Discovery Channel!
I got 2 6ft long Ford pickup truck axle housings!
I'll remove the axles and weld em' together into a twelve foot long tube! (mebbe two hundred twenty five pounds of good steel)
We will stand that sucker strait up in the air! (like a WTC core column)!"sort of"
a few tons lighter than a single WTC column but Im confident....
Then we get a bunch of office furniture and computers and carpet and stuff and make a big pile around it!
(aww Hell I'll even let ya'll stuff some of that seat foam that turns green when it burns inside of the housing)
We can skip the fireproofing since "it was blown off" as you all say....
Then we get ALL the kerosene you guys want for an initial dousing..within reason...
And we will even set up a couple of ACME jet fuel atomizer sprayers for a huge 10 second fireball at the start of the experiment!(although much of the fireball heat will NOT be absorbed by the steel)
Let it burn as long as WTC #2 "50 minutes" (hint,it will be a small smoky fire after 10 minutes, (just like the WTC) but I will let ya'll pour on a little more kerosene and a few more seat cusions!) and after an hour or so....
.......we will take a temperature reading!.....any predictions?
....two hundred twenty five pounds of steel.....
....I predict no hotter than 350 degrees fahrenheit...
I have a magazine published a few weeks after 911 that says "the fires burned at 3000 degrees", so it must be true. The media would never lie or distort facts. Cynthia Mckinney announced a bill to impeach Bush on Friday (pointless, but still a story), I've seen not a word on CNN, heard nothing on news talkradio all weekend about it. I guess there wasn't time to cover that story this weekend in light of all the Britney Spears and Tom Cruise news.
yohnzeye:
Put a car on top of several of those steel posts and you've got a reasonable experiment. (Because, you know, weight of the building above the compromised area and all that...)
Erin S. Myers:
Like others have said, you're going about this whole thing backwards. Try Hanlon's Razor on for size.
And could the US government be capable of such things? I doubt it -- not to its own people at any rate (its atrocities against Americans have been rather more subtle). What I don't doubt is that the Bush administration is highly inclined to take advantage of such things.
solar roller:
Poll numbers? Eat garbage. Ten trillion flies can't be wrong.
As for all that, my final comment: You can't tell someone who Knows (tm).
http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_apc.pdf
No smart comments yet about Popular Mechanics pressure cooker theory of molten steel I see. Good! Now while you work on that one, check out FEMA's own report, in particular appendix C linked to above.
Your next task will be to provide the explanation that they say is needed for the peculiar high temperature corrosion found on steel from WTC 7 which some people still unbelievably claim collapsed due to some mysterious combination of fire and damage from debris which is not documented anywhere.
Real scientists should by now be very curious as to why PM included a bogus claim in its debunking report and why the additional research called for by FEMA in appendix C has apparently never been conducted, and what possible explanations exist for the corrosion observed on steel from WTC 7. Since this was a question raised by the government itself, could PM not have addressed it, or at least mentioned it? How about Screwloosechange--do they mention it? Why is it that those who claim to know beyond question that the official story is accurate can never answer real questions like these?
Brian X:
Is that what we've come to?
Orac represents various straw man, easily debunked, theories to be theories by scientifically minded 911 truthers,
we respond by asking a lot of questions that NO ONE here (or elsewhere) has answered,
and you start hurling insults.
I agree that the truth does not need polls.
Polls just reflect the beliefs of the masses.
However now we have science, truth, AND the masses on our side....
"...WTC 7 which some people still unbelievably claim collapsed due to some mysterious combination of fire and damage from debris which is not documented anywhere."
WTC7 was hit by so much falling debris from the Twin Towers that a 20-story hole was gouged out of the building's facade. This was observed by many firefighters on the scene on the morning of 9/11, and many of those firefighters feared the building would collapse because of it, which it did. Here's an article from the 9/11 Myths website.
Big general problem with all the conspiracies: They all violate Occam's Razor: Why would the government go through such Goldbergian conspiratorial devices when they could have just planted a little bit of weapons-grade plutonium in Saddam's pocket? Or if it was just for money, why not just start up a homeopathy clinic, Multi-Level Marketing scheme? Or both? Those are much more likely to succeed than Pinky and the Brain style world domination plans.
Faster than freefall nonsense: Why would the government strap down-facing rockets on everything? If not down-facing rockets, where's that extra down force coming from? You may also want to look up the original source for your numbers of seconds: Most are completely different things being measured.
Controlled Demolition: Do you have any idea how hard it'd be to plant the sheer volume of explosives and miles of wire without being detected? You'd think someone would notice the spackle. And how'd they make it hushaboom? Controlled demolitions of even smaller buildings are much louder.
Footprint complaints: Gravity pulls things down. Of course, there was enough lateral force to spray some debris around.
Brian X,
My experimental parameters apparently went right over your addled head!
Do you realize that in our experiment
I "gave" away thousands of tons of steel per floor????
against my favor!!!
Think about it!
several thousand tons of steel=(1 floors worth)
...versus....
a couple of tons of office furniture=(1 floors worth)
why even bother to do the math...?
"what is your point anyway?" - yohnzeye
I though it was fairly obvious. Solar roller claimed hydrocarbons can't burn hotter than 1800 deg. F. I pointed out that the claim was quite simply wrong.
Why acetylene? Why not? The claim was about hydrocarbons. A larger point, I suppose, was that repetitive false claims suggest something about the credibility of someone.
The temperature of the particular fuel mix with in the particular atmosphere would obviously be preferable as would the exact softening (not melting) temperature of the particular steel alloy used in the World Trade Center. Some of us, however, prefer not to pronounce ourselves experts on whatever topic is necessary to support our conspiracy theory.
Colst said,
(about his "point')
I though it was fairly obvious. Solar roller claimed hydrocarbons can't burn hotter than 1800 deg. F. I pointed out that the claim was quite simply wrong.
I say,
Solar Roller is correct.
(let me splain')
In the context of the WTC fire (or blg. 7)
under normal atmospheric conditions
Hydrocarbon fires (kerosene, acetylene, diesel..)
do not get much hotter than 1800 derees fahrenheit
everybody knows that an oxy-acetylene or air acetylene torch will cook up to 3000+ degrees...Duh!....
Let me repeat clearly
acetylene is a hydrocarbon
when you fire up a oxy-acetylene torch...
WITHOUT TURNING ON THE OXYGEN....just acetylene...
it will burn! at about 1900 degrees
my point is that you are dead wrong if you are talking about normal atmospheric conditions...
"...WTC 7 which some people still unbelievably claim collapsed due to some mysterious combination of fire and damage from debris which is not documented anywhere."
WTC7 was hit by so much falling debris from the Twin Towers that a 20-story hole was gouged out of the building's facade. This was observed by many firefighters on the scene on the morning of 9/11, and many of those firefighters feared the building would collapse because of it, which it did. Here's an article from the 9/11 Myths website.
Great! We believe you that it was damaged that bad. Can we see a picture of 20 stories gouged out please? Just show us a clear, concise picture of the building's severe damage.
And then you'll have to explain why the building fell straight down. Of course, some floors were blown out that's why there's debris over the nearby buildings. But the vast majority fell straight down. Why wouldn't it fall towards the damaged end entirely?
Also, Buildings 4, 5 + 6 were CLOSER to both towers and suffered visible damage that was greater than WTC7. None of these buildings even came close to falling down. How is it that the furthest building from both towers (and blocked by another building between the towers and WTC7) falls in under 10 seconds due to fire for the first time ever.
If there's no questions, why did FEMA state they had no idea why building 7 fell and NIST is still researching its collapse?
Why wouldn't we know what happened to the first steel building to collapse in history due to fire and debris damage?
You're telling me I can set charges on 20 floors on one side of a building, then set a few random fires on a few floors and the building will fall in the same manner as controlled demolition?
Why isn't the demolition industry investigating this? They could save major cash in not setting charges on every other floor and taking days to weeks setting up controlled demolitions.
On top of all this, the owner admits blowing it up and wins $7 billion dollars due to his insurance policy on terrorist attacks he purchased just months before.
"Big general problem with all the conspiracies: They all violate Occam's Razor: Why would the government go through such Goldbergian conspiratorial devices when they could have just planted a little bit of weapons-grade plutonium in Saddam's pocket? Or if it was just for money, why not just start up a homeopathy clinic, Multi-Level Marketing scheme? Or both? Those are much more likely to succeed than Pinky and the Brain style world domination plans."
You honestly think that planting plutonium in Saddam's pocket would have the same affect on American people as the staged events of 9/11, broadcast on TV again and again? You think Saddam having plutonium would encourage the American people to go to war no matter what? Maybe for some, but not the vast majority of American's who were for the Afghan and Iraq war when they began.
Why would Hitler take the trouble in having his soldiers burn down the Reichstag and blaming it on the communists and jews? Why wouldn't he just plant a bomb in a Jews pocket?
Pinky and the Brain take over the world schemes? Name ONE empire in the history of human kind who hasn't tried to take over more land and dominate?
Faster than freefall nonsense: Why would the government strap down-facing rockets on everything? If not down-facing rockets, where's that extra down force coming from? You may also want to look up the original source for your numbers of seconds: Most are completely different things being measured.
Please. No real truther is talking about rockets strapped to a building. Please stick to the real issues. This is absurd, I've never even heard of this. Anyone who's informed knows the buildings didn't fall at free fall speed. They fell NEAR free fall speed. Steel and concrete should have more than 200% the resistance of oxygen. Free fall speed is 9.22 seconds. 200% of 9.22 is 18.44 second. Both buildings fell UNDER 15 seconds. So steel and concrete resists only less than 2 times what air will resist?
Controlled Demolition: Do you have any idea how hard it'd be to plant the sheer volume of explosives and miles of wire without being detected? You'd think someone would notice the spackle. And how'd they make it hushaboom? Controlled demolitions of even smaller buildings are much louder.
There are multiple accounts of people hearing explosions in the buildings. If you take the Pentagon witnesses into account saying they saw the plane, then you must take these witnesses who are STILL saying they heard bombs.
Footprint complaints: Gravity pulls things down. Of course, there was enough lateral force to spray some debris around.
Then why do demolition teams spend weeks rigging explosives to bring a building down? You're telling me gravity does it for them?
And finally...
Of course none of you have yet answered my questions i posted on the 9th. You stick to straw man arguments about rockets and holograms. That is purely speculation.
Please answer my questions if you can.
Or just keep telling us how "conspiracy therorists" have something wrong with their brains and that we hate Jews and talk about space beams.
Give me a break!
I was FOR Bush and FOR the wars before I found out about this stuff. I laughed at first too and thought I knew what was going on. My goal was to prove the person who told me wrong by researching. I only found more evidence backing her claim up.
It is harder for others to see the truth. People always want the bad guy to be clear cut and visible. Ask yourself why America would want stability in the Middle East. It would be a terrible geopolitical move to let the Middle East flourish with a democracy and an oil empire. They want unrest and have conducted terrorist attacks in the past in Iran in the 1950s which is now admitted by the CIA! Kermit Roosevelt lead a team in pro-American Iran to stage terror attacks and blame it on the president, who rid the country of communism and where a record number of women were obtaining their degrees. The president was jailed for life and complete tyranny has reigned over the people since then. They install these people in power and make us think that they speak for the people!
Imagine Bush and company speaking for us!
This is all indisputable. If you think it's fake, look it up and research and tell me why.
Also, read the Northwoods Document and The Project for A New American Century's report "Rebuilding America's Defenses"
Please just do the research and if you still disagree, I'd love to talk it over.
Colst also said,
"Quote"
"Some of us, however, prefer not to pronounce ourselves experts on whatever topic is necessary to support our conspiracy theory".
I say,
that sounds funny as hell coming from someone who said,
"quote"
"Me being a chemist, you might have thought I'd have known that."
and
"quote"
I've heated a steel to the point where it deforms with cooler flames than that.
ARENST' THOU not proclaiming?(you)THINE OWN SELF an expert (in chemistry) by those two statements above?
I guess you are not in the "some of us" category that you speak of..
Orac,
Where are all of the "hologrammers" and "space beamers" that you speak of?
Right. One atrocity with millions upon millions of failure points is much better than a simple plan with only a handful.
You have to factor risks as well as gains. A Goldbergian conspiracy of the sort you describe has a level of both risk and liability that could defy calculation.
Does it make sense to ruin yourself for a infinitely slim chance of a big gain, or to take a small risk for a chance at a gain?
How can I separate the real issues from the fake ones if every CTer is calling every other CTer nuts?
As for the rockets: That's the simplest explanation I can think of that would explain "faster than freefall" and that chunk of the CT crowd doesn't seem to understand there'd need to be some outside down force for that to happen.
What kind of "resistance" are you talking about? And how do you get 200% "resistance" equals half falling speed?
Who said I was taking witnesses into account for the Pentagon plane crash? Where else did all that debris come from?
Besides, even if I did care about eyewitness reports, explosions don't mean explosives. Real demolition explosives would have been a lot louder, anyway.
Were you even aiming for my point? 'Cuz you missed it by a mile. Buildings fall down when you compromise their supports. Whether that compromise results from weakened steel or demolition charges, gravity still works the same. The direction they fell doesn't change the lack of evidence for explosives. It doesn't undo the truly massive number of man-hours such a job would take, multiplied by the amount of time it'd take to do it stealthily.
What makes such a thing even harder to do is that it would require thousands of people to keep quiet. This isn't some bad sci-fi where the villain has countless obedient robotic/undead minions.
The best conspiracies have a small number of members. Three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
So, care to explain to me how such a stealthy rigging can take place?
All I can assume, regardless of all this back-and-forth arguing about chemistry and physics and engineering, is that nobody who believes there were no planes was actually there when it happened. I lived across the river, was able to drive to the top of the reservation five minutes away and get a clear view. If you asked ten people in the area, at least one or two would have seen it happening (I didn't, but heard about it from someone who did before it came on the news). Everyone up there knows someone who saw it in person. Those planes were not faked or photoshopped or holographic, no matter what someone who wouldn't know manhattan if he tripped over it would have you believe.
They fell NEAR free fall speed. Steel and concrete should have more than 200% the resistance of oxygen. Free fall speed is 9.22 seconds. 200% of 9.22 is 18.44 second. Both buildings fell UNDER 15 seconds. So steel and concrete resists only less than 2 times what air will resist?
Actually, no. What you're missing is that momentum increases proportionally to mass. The more floors collapsing on the next floor, the less resistance each floor gave. The physics of energy transfer is quite well understood in this case.
One thing I thought of that makes the controlled demolition angle even harder to buy: You'd have to have a large team of people who can work in stealth near people who'd they'd likely be killing and doing that work for months without blabbing. I can imagine the government rounding up a few people callous enough not to be affected by it, but just how many would it take to carry out such an operation?
yohnzeye -
No, I'm discussing one topic that I happen to know something about. I'm not claiming to know things on whatever topic is relevant and necessary to support my own conspiracy theory, which is one reason that I'm not trying to address every claim made by every conspiracy theorist in this post.
Your oxygen comment is wrong. You might have noticed, I specifically stated that I was talking about an *air*-acetylene flame. (see, for example, Analytical Atomic Spectrometry with Flames and Plasmas by José A. C. Broekaert.) Again, though, I'm not claiming anything in particular about the WTC fires. I was only pointing out a piece of solar roller's pattern of false claims.
Porlock Junior,
As you question seems an honest one,
"But WTC 7 (which was a broader bhilding than the towers, wasn't it? Or am I misled?) seems a little odd. The initial failure would seem to have to be pretty much all across the cross-section of the building, or it would fall askew to some extent,"
It did fall askew to some extent. So did the other towers, although that extent was obviously "not much".
"... and it's not clear why it would not fail first in some portion of the building rather than allo across it at once. Is there some way in which the failure of one portion would immediately hasten the even faster failure of the rest, so that the collapse would be symmetrical? Then again, if the first part of the structure to collapse were somewhere in the middle, that would increase the load on all the rest of the softened supports so much that it would all collapse pretty evenly, maybe."
Yeah, I would think so. The lateral loads may also be quite important; one of the ways a column can fail is by buckling; a tall column that is braced is much, much stronger than one that is not; unless, of course that bracing is pulling it out of alignment.
"It would still be nice to see a convincing treatment of this from someone with the right knowledge of structures."
That would not be me, unfortunately. (I do, however, have a degree in physics). But I suspect you're barking up the wrong tree; assume you have parts of the building moving sideways at, say 10 m/s (22 mph). Within a couple of seconds of close to freefall acceleration, they will be moving down faster than that, and unless there is some force that continues to push them sidesways, the downward component of their velocity will dominate in very short order. In short, the buildings may or may not have started out coming almost straight down. But I would expect them to end up coming almost straight down as the collapse progresses.
Part of the confusion might be from the assumption that the building's frame will offer significant resistance as the building comes down. I don't think this will be the case; I can't see how it could. Because to offer resistance it would have to transmit force to the falling floors, and how would it do that? Not through the floor beams of the falling floors (which will no longer be connected to the columns). Possibly some resistance might be offered through the floor beams of the floors being fallen upon. But it cannot be that much, as those beams will fail very fast once contact is made. To make much difference they would have to support tremendous forces before failing.
It is notable to me that the truthers are obscessing of the resistance the building's frames are supposed to offer if they aren't cut with charges (which they can't offer either way), and don't mention the one thing that would, must, slow down the collapse significantly. And that is, as the collapse progresses, momentum will be transferred from the falling floors to the floors being fallen upon; it must be, the alternative is for the floors to move through each other, and solid matter doesn't do that. These collisions will slow down the top of the building as it falls, and fairly significantly too. And in these collisions, if they are inelastic collisions, and tremendous amount of energy must be converted from gross kinetic energy of the falling floors to some other form.
In the "official version", much of this energy goes into fracturing the concrete; puleverising it into rubble and rather a lot of dust. Contrary to solar roller's assertion, there is enough energy to do so; I've seen the calculations. And it's plausible for there to be enough energy; the energy to fracture the concrete will come originally come from the gravitational potential energy of the buildings; and the WTC towers were very tall so there will have been a hell of a lot of gravitational potential energy.
But this doesn't help the truther's case one bit. Because the dynamic is identical between a pancake collapse and a top-down controlled demolition simulating a pancake collapse; to bring the building down at freefall speed, the controlled demolition would have had to reach mid-building when the top had only fallen through 9% of the distance to the ground.
One thing I thought of that makes the controlled demolition angle even harder to buy: You'd have to have a large team of people who can work in stealth near people who'd they'd likely be killing and doing that work for months without blabbing. I can imagine the government rounding up a few people callous enough not to be affected by it, but just how many would it take to carry out such an operation?
I think that is a worthy question, but it is unlikely to have any effect on a CTer who always willing to assume the worst of a government employee (or a CIA/NWO/"Zionazi" conspirator who cares nothing about his countrymen whatsoever).
One of the things I have never heard substantiated is the very premise of the controlled demolition/freefall connection. Even granting that it fell at freefall speed (it demonstrably did not), why would a controlled demolition solve that problem? Even compromising the support beams (note that I said "compromise" and not "destroy", as the latter is impossible to do covertly) would leave in place a significant amount of the resistance, which would still prevent freefall. AFAIK, no CTer has ever explained why a covert controlled demolition is made more plausible by a freefalling tower.
You honestly think that planting plutonium in Saddam's pocket would have the same affect on American people as the staged events of 9/11, broadcast on TV again and again? You think Saddam having plutonium would encourage the American people to go to war no matter what? Maybe for some, but not the vast majority of American's who were for the Afghan and Iraq war when they began.
"Right. One atrocity with millions upon millions of failure points is much better than a simple plan with only a handful."
How many failure points would 19 hijackers (With at least 5 on the FBI no-fly list) hijacking 4 seperate planes and managing to steer them into their targets? How would they know they would not be blown out of the sky even a full hour after being hijacked?
You can say the same thing for the terrorists: Why didn't they just walk into a stadium or a busy shopping center and blow themselves up in different parts of the stadium? Killing thousands with no risk of hijacking the actual airplanes (with boxcutters and small knives), then hitting your target with no resistance from NORAD (which was just put in control of Dick Cheney months before).
What if they missed their targets? What if they got detained and they found small knives in their baggage? What if the one's on the no-fly list got recognized? What if they met resistance (like they supposedely did on Flight 93) from all the planes?
You make it seem like hijacking airplanes and hitting buildings is an easy thing to do. This is an insane plan! What kinda plan is it, anyways?
"You have to factor risks as well as gains. A Goldbergian conspiracy of the sort you describe has a level of both risk and liability that could defy calculation."
Once again, the official story's version of the terrorists is extremely high risk. Why would they begin their jihad with an extremly high risk mission that required gross negligence from the US government to pull off?
Please. No real truther is talking about rockets strapped to a building. Please stick to the real issues. This is absurd, I've never even heard of this.
"How can I separate the real issues from the fake ones if every CTer is calling every other CTer nuts?
As for the rockets: That's the simplest explanation I can think of that would explain "faster than freefall" and that chunk of the CT crowd doesn't seem to understand there'd need to be some outside down force for that to happen."
I never speak on rockets and I've never even the heard the theory and I've been researching for years so I can't speak on the rocket theory.
They fell NEAR free fall speed. Steel and concrete should have more than 200% the resistance of oxygen. Free fall speed is 9.22 seconds. 200% of 9.22 is 18.44 second. Both buildings fell UNDER 15 seconds. So steel and concrete resists only less than 2 times what air will resist?
"What kind of "resistance" are you talking about? And how do you get 200% "resistance" equals half falling speed?"
200% of the freefall speed (9.22) equals 18.44. The towers fell in 15 seconds tops we'll say. So that's less than 2 times the resistance there would be if there was no bottom floors. So you're saying however many floors under where the plane hit resisted less than 2 times what pure air would resist? How are those floors giving in so fast from below?
There are multiple accounts of people hearing explosions in the buildings. If you take the Pentagon witnesses into account saying they saw the plane, then you must take these witnesses who are STILL saying they heard bombs.
"Who said I was taking witnesses into account for the Pentagon plane crash? Where else did all that debris come from?
Besides, even if I did care about eyewitness reports, explosions don't mean explosives. Real demolition explosives would have been a lot louder, anyway."
How loud were the explosions? Did you hear them? How loud should the explosions be? What was it that newscasters were reporting as a "Secondary explosives" many times on September 11th but never after that day? Why would the fire Chief say that he "believes there were secondary explosives in the building."
Why does 9/11 hero (who was given a medal by Bush) Willie Rodriguez passionately claim that he heard explosions rocking the building constantly before and after the plane hit. What does he have to gain in believing this? He is constantly ridiculed by government apologists.
Then why do demolition teams spend weeks rigging explosives to bring a building down? You're telling me gravity does it for them?
"Were you even aiming for my point? 'Cuz you missed it by a mile. Buildings fall down when you compromise their supports. Whether that compromise results from weakened steel or demolition charges, gravity still works the same. The direction they fell doesn't change the lack of evidence for explosives. It doesn't undo the truly massive number of man-hours such a job would take, multiplied by the amount of time it'd take to do it stealthily.
What makes such a thing even harder to do is that it would require thousands of people to keep quiet. This isn't some bad sci-fi where the villain has countless obedient robotic/undead minions."
How would they keep the Manhattan Project secret for years with hundreds of scientists and military officials in on the job?
How would the CIA keep their false flag terror attacks (which the know admit to) secret in Iran for 50 years until the declassified documents were released in the 90s?
How would Hitler keep his soldiers burning the Reichstag secret when many were involved in it? Germany was a super power at the time and Hitler had not shown his evil ways yet.
How were the NSA wiretaps kept secret until earlier this year for years with so many people on the inside?
How were the Iran-Control scandals kept secret for years while US dealt arms to support terrorists?
A secret only stays a secret for so long.
"The best conspiracies have a small number of members. Three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
So, care to explain to me how such a stealthy rigging can take place?"
How would i have inside knowledge on how they did it? I can speculate since there were many witnesses saying there was decreased security in the weeks leading up to 9/11. There was even a power shut down on the weekend before 9/11 that was issued with extremely short notice.
Who was one of the heads of security for both Dulles airport (where two of the hijacked planes flew out from) and the WTC buildings? None other than Marvin Bush himself!
How can I say what happened exactly? None of us know that.
What I DO know for sure, is that the government's story is false.
200% of the freefall speed (9.22) equals 18.44. The towers fell in 15 seconds tops we'll say. So that's less than 2 times the resistance there would be if there was no bottom floors. So you're saying however many floors under where the plane hit resisted less than 2 times what pure air would resist? How are those floors giving in so fast from below?
Did you even read the link I provided you with? You are displaying a grave ignorance of very basic principles of physics that are taught at the high school level. I'd suggest doing some research before making such grandiose claims.
What I DO know for sure, is that the government's story is false.
And here we have a classic conspiracist tactic, the marginalization and downplaying of opposing viewpoints. The "government's story" has been informed by several independent organizations (NIST, Underwriter's Labs., the American Society of Civil Engineers, the National Fire Protection Association, etc.), and the WTC collapse is one of the most studied engineering failures in the profession. It's not just "the government's" story, no matter how much you wish to imply guilt by association.
Some say follow the money. My mantra is follow the wishful thinking.
Find a reason for some unsupported idea to appeal to a person's wants, wishes or vanity and you really have to look no further. What I find so amazing is how hard human minds work to defend such fictions without ever seeming to notice what we are doing.
Really, really don't want to die or lose a loved one forever? Afterlife.
Stressed by a cruel, unpredictable environment? Personal deity.
Too hard to make informed decisions on complex issues? Organised religion.
Overwhelmed by one's insignificance in the universe? Special creation.
Doctors too busy to listen, explain and sympathise? Alternative medicine.
No one pays attention to your ideas in conversations? Conspiracy theory.
Is this kind of self deception a well established area of research by psychologists? It would seem to be on the edge of the brainwashing, marketing and propaganda fields. Theologists, like technologists don't really have to know how the system works, they only have to be able to make the best use of it.
CarD51Short -
That's quite funny.
How would they keep the Manhattan Project secret for years with hundreds of scientists and military officials in on the job?
It wasn't a secret to the Russians, who had complete spy information on the project.
How would the CIA keep their false flag terror attacks (which the know admit to) secret in Iran for 50 years until the declassified documents were released in the 90s?
CIA/MI6 involvement in the deposing of the Iranian government in the 1950s was/is very well known. Given that this was an open secret to begin with, who cares about the details?
How would Hitler keep his soldiers burning the Reichstag secret when many were involved in it? Germany was a super power at the time and Hitler had not shown his evil ways yet.
Well, there were only a few people in on it, and the siezure and imprisionment of those most inclined to question the 'official story' tended to stop people questioning.
How were the NSA wiretaps kept secret until earlier this year for years with so many people on the inside?
They were secret?
How were the Iran-Control scandals kept secret for years while US dealt arms to support terrorists?
You'll notice that the secret actually came out.
Thanks to Andrew Wade for a sensible reponse to my question about why the wide WTC7 didn't collapse more asymmetrically due to one part starting to collapse sooner than another.
Actually I woke up the following morning (after which I had no Net access for two days) with an odd insight: the reason for the pretty regular collapse pattern is similar to the reason why a tall old brick chimney (which does topple when you dynamite one side of the base) breaks in two as it falls. Not obviously a parallel; the explanation is left as an exercise for the reader, though I may write it up somewhere. Anyway, the transfer of all the weight to the remaining structural members, crushing the weakest among them (and repeat until all are gone) is a very fast process compared to the speed with which something falls in the first moment after support fails.
Big differences between Manhattan Project and a 9/11 CT:
1. I doubt the people working on the Manhattan Project thought nukes would be used against American civilians, and thus had fewer issues going on with their conscience.
2. I don't think they had to dance around civilians at every moment.
3. There's a big difference between writing up schematics based on then-obscure physics and cutting halfway through a support pillar to hang a bunch of wires from it.
please don't tell me that this is your honest, best understanding of basic physics.
...then again, it does have a certain echo of the average conspiracy theorist's seeming understanding of human nature and motivation...
This drives me nuts.
What happened on 9/11/01? An organized series of attacks were orchestrated by Al-Qaeda operatives, using hijacked airliners.
What happened after that? A disorganized presidential administration made ill-advised decision after ill-advised decision, including going into a war that was at best peripherally involved with said attacks.
To me, arguing whether 9/11 "happened" is like arguing whether the sun rose today. Sure, you can come up with elaborate theories that say otherwise, but all that shows me is that you have way too much time on your hands.
Andrew Wade said:
"In the "official version", much of this energy goes into fracturing the concrete; puleverising it into rubble and rather a lot of dust. Contrary to solar roller's assertion, there is enough energy to do so; I've seen the calculations. And it's plausible for there to be enough energy; the energy to fracture the concrete will come originally come from the gravitational potential energy of the buildings..."
You've SEEN the calculations? Care to share them with us?
You are saying that GRAVITY has enough energy to collapse the building, pulverize all of the concrete AND most of the steel? I'd love to see that!
Tyler DePietro said:
"no CTer has ever explained why a covert controlled demolition is made more plausible by a freefalling tower."
I say... no defender of the official conspiracy theory has explained how fire induced, gravity driven collapse theory is made more plausible by a freefalling tower.
Bronze Dog said:
"Gravity pulls things down. Of course, there was enough lateral force to spray some debris around."
Bronze, how can you contradict yourself so quickly? Last I looked, the force of gravity vectors straight towards the center of the earth. Were is there "enough lateral force" to spray multi ton steel beams over 200 feet? (NIST has photos of that) And how does a gravity driven collapse of the north tower supposedly severely damage the south facade of Building 7. That is over 300 feet! That's a lot of horizontal force for a vertical energy vector!
I would like everyone to take note on how my questions that I posted on December 9th were totally ignored.
No one has any valid answers for these questions so they attack the Controlled Demolition of the buildings and get into arguments about physics.
Why would the terrorists begin the start of their holy war on America by "planning" the riskiest move in history? They needed TOTAL government failure (which, of course, happened) for their plan to succeed.
Anyone here read the PNAC report?
Northwoods document?
No?
Keep giving us your advanced reports on how a conspiracy theory thinks and how we are kooks living in our mom's basement. And avoid the real questions. Keep apologizing for the government!
How would they keep the Manhattan Project secret for years with hundreds of scientists and military officials in on the job?
"It wasn't a secret to the Russians, who had complete spy information on the project."
So the Russians knew? The Russians (and most of Europe) know 9/11 was an inside job, as well. Most governments around the world know about 9/11. I'm talking about the common people...they never know.
How would the CIA keep their false flag terror attacks (which the know admit to) secret in Iran for 50 years until the declassified documents were released in the 90s?
"CIA/MI6 involvement in the deposing of the Iranian government in the 1950s was/is very well known. Given that this was an open secret to begin with, who cares about the details?"
So you admit the CIA has been involved in false flag terror attacks in the past? But there's NO way they are still conducting them after being 100% successful?
You're telling me it was open and printed in the news that the CIA was staging terror attacks? No way! The documents didn't get released until the 90s (due to the Freedom of Information Act). Show me proof that the American people had full knowledge that their government was conducting terror attacks in the Middle East.
And you're OK with that?
How would Hitler keep his soldiers burning the Reichstag secret when many were involved in it? Germany was a super power at the time and Hitler had not shown his evil ways yet.
"Well, there were only a few people in on it, and the siezure and imprisionment of those most inclined to question the 'official story' tended to stop people questioning."
How few people were in on it? Show me proof of the German people knowing that it was a false flag operation but they just couldn't question it? Hitler hadn't shown his evil side yet. He wasn't kidnapping people and killing them just yet! If the German people all knew that the event was fake, why would they still continue to back Hitler? He hadn't reached the pinnacle of his power yet. In fact, the whole event was what gave him his power!
How were the NSA wiretaps kept secret until earlier this year for years with so many people on the inside?
"They were secret?"
Well, obviously, informed people knew about them. But the American public was in the dark until earlier this year. They were conducting them for years until they finally admitted it.
How were the Iran-Control scandals kept secret for years while US dealt arms to support terrorists?
"You'll notice that the secret actually came out."
And you'll notice I said "for years" not "forever". Obviously we know about it...but for how many years was it kept secret?
We know about 9/11 and it's only been 5 years.
Answer my questions below please
Everyone here talks about "no planes" and "holograms"
Of course they do!
No real Truther talks about any of that crap.
What we talk about are:
**** The Project For A New American's Centuries Document "Rebuilding America's Defenses"
**** 13 times the normal put options for only American Airlines and United Airlines in the week leading up to September 11th.
**** NORAD (In charge of North American aerospace and would be in charge of giving "shoot down" orders) was put in control of Vice President Dick Cheney 6 months before 9/11. This is the first time in history that a non-military official is in control of NORAD. I've personally spoken with military personnel who were in utter shock when they received the memo!
**** The FBI's official site's (go to www.fbi.gov and look for most wanted terrorists) profile of Osama Bin Laden makes no mention of the 9/11 attacks. When the FBI was questioned about this they replied "We have no hard evidence linking Osama Bin Laden to 9/11"
**** The "fat" Bin Laden tape. The tape released shortly after 9/11 showing Bin Laden admitting to the attacks is fatally flawed. Bin Laden is known to be left handed yet he is writing, eating and gesturing with his right hand throughout the video. Also, compare the facial structure with a real picture of Bin Laden. You can see that his nose is MUCH more stubby instead of being long and narrow at the bridge. He is also more pudgy and a bit darker. He is also wearing a gold ring, strictly forbidden in Islam.
**** The 140 Eyewitness accounts in the towers (including 9/11 hero Willie Rodriguez) who refer to "bombs". Of course, some of these may of meant the plane. But there's actual news reporters reporting on "4 different explosions". Multiple news networks were saying the same thing on the day!
**** The CIA's ties to Bin Laden and Al Queda.
**** Pakistani's ISI general wiring $100,000 to lead hijacker Mohammed Atta and then having breakfast with the joint chiefs of staff in the white house on the morning of 9/11.
**** The admitted pulling of WTC7 by Silverstein. And don't give me that "pulling the firefighters" crap. Why would the fire chief be calling a building owner about pulling firefighters? Why does the 9/11 Commission state there was no firefighting in Building 7?
"Pull" Doesn't mean demolish? Why, in the EXACT SAME PBS Documentary, when they are "pulling" Building 6, does the demolition expert say "we're getting ready to pull building 6. OK! Pull it!" Then the building explodes to the ground. I didn't see any cranes or machines "pulling" the building down.
Why would Silverstein refer to the fighting team as "IT". Who, let alone an educated, successful business owner, would use such bad grammar?
And finally, why would the VERY next sentence out of his mouth be "and then we watched the building collapse". So pulling firefighters out of buildings makes them collapse? Oh, I suppose he meant hours later, that's why he said "AND THEN we watched the building collapse"
But he only made $7 billion out of a insurance policy he took out MONTHS before 9/11 exclusively covering terrorist attacks. But no, he has nothing to gain...why would he lie and cover anything up?
It's us twoofers that are lying! Yeah, it's all part of our big scheme!!! We're gonna trick you guys! And we're all homophobic, anti-semetic american-haters and we're gonna get you guys!!! Booooo!!!
None of you want to discuss the facts. You'll attack the crazies who believe in the hologram no plane theories or the crazy space beam.
All you'll do is attack us for trying to straighten out all these questions we have.
None of us knows what really happened. However, the government's account of what actually happened is so absurd it is laughable.
How many of you have really researched this event and others in history. Governments all around the world for centuries have been partaking in "false flag" operations. It's the oldest trick in the book.
The CIA (with Kermit Roosevelt's backing) ADMITS to staging terror attacks in Iran in the 1950's.
It goes so deep that I simply could not type it all up.
It's just sad when all I read is attacks on the flimsiest suggestions that 9/11 truthers bring up.
Someone post a response to all my questions. And try not to call me a name like a preschooler every sentence (if you can!).
CarD,
Quite a bit of your comment is circumstantial evidence, and is not directly connected the the collapse event. Such evidence is far from damning and does not supercede evidence of the involvement of Qaeda. Much of the rest of your comment was already refuted. Regarding the Pakistani ISI general, it is well known that Qaeda and the Taliban recieved quite a bit of support from the ISI. As for the fat OBL tape, I don't know what you are talking about, but in Arab culture, you eat with your right hand regardless of left/ right handedness.
Doesn't really mean much. If we answered them, the answers would likely be ignored. If we didn't answer them, it still doesn't really mean anything. We aren't paid to answer questions that usually wind up being moot thanks to false premises, or unproductive, since ignorance isn't something you can base a theory on.
And no true scotsman puts sugar in his poridge. But, of course, I don't need to take on just the extra-sillies.
Most people who say this don't even know what the official story is. Of course, the demolition CTs are all inherently absurd. How do you secretly tear down a building's walls every day, cut through support beams, precisely plant explosives, and put them back up while the building is occupied?
So, why did he lose money? And why perform such an absurd scheme when there are much more profitable means that don't involve creating an investigation-worthy scenario? The cost of demolishing the towers with set explosives, hush money, and hijacking planes would be an administrative nightmare.
Evil Overlord list #85: I will not use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. "Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse." Instead it will be more along the lines of "Push the button."
So.... today is Monday, FOUR days after Oracs initial post.
I placed a post with many questions at 2pm on Friday
Immediately, Ire called my post "breathtakingly goofy."
Raymond soon said my post was "filled with half-truths, misinformation, cherry picked data, and unreliable anecdotes."
Note that I have agreed to be corrected on the issue of "faster than freefall."
I stand corrected on that ONE issue.
I will repost my questions WITH corrections.
Is this the best that science blog posters can do?
If so, these question sure do NOT look to be goofy or misinformed to me......
--------------
William Rodriguez, a janitor at the world trade center, reports hearing and seeing the results of explosions in the basement - seconds BEFORE the first plane hit. His claim is backed up by DOZENS of other witnesses. His claim is also backed up by Columbia University siesmographs, which makes it clear that explosions occurred 14-17 seconds BEFORE the first plane hit - which occurred at a time precisely identified by FAA recordings. Why was there no mention of this in the 911 Commission Report?
Why has the 911 Commission not investigated the molten metal found under the World Trade Center buildings 1, 2 and 7 which stayed red hot for over six weeks? What could possibly melt steel framing members when it is impossible for any building fire to be so hot as to melt steel? (Physical analysis of the WTC molten metals shows it to be primarily iron and steel) In fact, there has never been a steel frame high rise that has collapsed due to fire. There have been high rise fires that have been MUCH hotter and much longer lasting and NONE led to total collapse, except on September 11th.
Why cannot the 911 Commission and the associated NIST report explain the reason for the symmetrical, total, near free fall destruction of three World Trade Center towers, which completely turned most of the twin towers into dust? How can the 911 Commission explain the horizontal ejection of multi ton steel beams, some of which were thrown over 200 feet? The 10,000 page NIST report investigated many aspects of the events at the world trade center that day, but has refused to release it's computer model of the collapse, and has admitted that it's model stops at the "moment of collapse inevitability."
We are told that the collapse times of the twin towers were 9.7 and 10 seconds. This is almost free fall.
Why are we supposed to believe that the buildings fell in a way that defeated a basic law of nature?
(The tops of the buildings fell through the path of MOST resistance as though there was nothing below it)
Why did the 911 Commission not mention World Trade Center building 7 in it's report? The first analysis of building 7 (by FEMA) says that it's best analysis "has a low probability of occurance." This is not surprising, given that building 7 at virtually free fall speed into it's own footprint - it exhibits ALL the characteristics of controlled demolition. After FIVE years, why cannot the government explain the collapse of Building 7?
In fact, there has never been a building that has exhibited all the characteristics of controlled demolition that has not been controlled demolition.
Why didn't the Secret Service immediately protect Bush after the flight 175 hit the second tower? Why did the Secret Service leave the president and all the children in the school unprotected? On 911, the very same Secret Service DID protect Cheney and immediately brought him to a "secure location."
Why did the 911 Comission not investigate the many war games that occurred ON Sept. 11th, including the simulation of an jet attack on the Pentagon, the artificial injection of "hijacked blips" on FAA screens, and live fly planes pretending to be hijacked?
Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers admitted that the many war games that occured on 911 "helped the response time" to the attacks. How can this be true considering that the Pentagon was attacked 34 minutes AFTER the second World Trade Center tower was hit? After the whole world new that America was under attack, how did the military let their headquarters in the most defended airspace in the country be attacked? Who was responsible for this inaction? Why has there been no investigation?
Secretary of Transportation, Norman Mineta testified that he arrived at the Presidential Emergency Operations Center at 9:20, and Dick Cheney was already there. By 9:25, a young man came in and out of the room three times to tell Cheney the position of Flight 77, and asked for confirmation of orders. Orders that couldn't have been a "shoot-down" order because according to the latest Vanity Fair article "NORAD Live", fighter pilots claimed by 10:10:31, they had, "negative clearance to fire." So what order was it? Who is the young man, and why didn't he testify before the 9/11 Commission? Why did Dick Cheney claim that he had given a "shoot down" order? Why did the 9/11 Commission claim that Dick Cheney arrived at the PEOC by 9:58am? Why did the 9/11 Report completely omit Norman Mineta's testimony?
The 911 Comissioners now admit that they knew that NORAD generals lied about what happened on 911. The commissioners even considered criminal charges. NORAD ended up giving three contradictory timelines of the day. If the last timeline was correct then the first two were either lies or represent criminal negligence. If negligence, why has no one been reprimanded?
We are told that the fire at the Pentagon was so hot that it "vaporized" the plane that hit the Pentagon, yet we are told that the DNA for most of the passengers has been identified. How can a fire be so hot as to melt, multi ton titanium engines, and the entire airframe, seats, luggage, and all the bodies, yet the DNA (which is very fragile) from most of the passengers survived?
Bush has now acknowledged that Saddam had nothing to do with 911. The FBI now admits that there is "no hard evidence linking Osama to 911." If it's not Saddam and not Osama then who was responsible and why have we seen NO trials in America of the alleged purpetrators of 911? (Note that Zacarius Massoui admitted complicity in a plot that was NOT related to 911.)
How can the 911 Comission say that the financing of 911 is "of no practical significance."
Yet, put options (bets that stock prices will do down) against American and United Airlines, placed before 911, were never fully investigated because "they led to individuals that could not possibly have anything to do with 911."
This is meaningful only if Al Qaeda was truly behind 911. So far, there has been NO such proof.
Why did the 911 commission not investigate the wiring of $100,000 from the head of the Pakistani intelligence services to Mohamed Atta a week before 911? This is particularly curious when you consider that the head of Pakistani intelligence services meet with Senator Bob Graham and Porter Goss on the morning of Sept 11th.
Perhaps the 911 conspiracy supporters can explain to us what proof they have they are not dupes in a conspiracy, whether it be to weaken the international image of the United States, help draw attention away from negligence that lead to the 911 attacks, or any of what are probably a dozen other motives for trying to convince the paranoid and guillible Osama bin Laden and his minions didn't execute the Sept 11th attacks.
Let's suppose, for a moment, that the 9/11 woosters are actually 100% correct in their woothiness. I fail to understand why anyone should care. The fact is that whether the "official story" or the woothy one is true or not, the administration still callously manipulated the nation's collective shock (and awe?) to strip civil liberties, start a couple of wars, and open up a gulag in Cuba.
Not to fulfill Godwin's Law, but does anyone think Hitler's victims really cared whether the Nazis' "official story" was true about who actually burned the Reichstag? I doubt it.
I only see questions about the "pulling of WTC7", to which you would have to be a firefighter or similar to accurately answer. The rest of the post seems to be about what you find fishy about the whole affair, but not really questions.
I can try and answer one question though, since it was posed as such.
Despite what Law & Order and various other law programs would have people think, taking out an insurance policy is not proof of nefarious planning.
Its proof of...taking out an insurance policy. And since you state the policy is covering terrorist attacks, what would it matter to the policy if it was homegrown terrorists or Al Qaeda, he still gets paid.
Is is a coincidence? You bet.
Does it make him look guilty? Maybe, if you look at it the right way.
Does it mean he's lying? Not without other evidence.
I'm afraid the rest of the questions referring to the "pulling" of WTC7 are out of my depth as I have no firefighting knowledge.
If you care to post actual questions that can be answered (like the melt point of a specifical metal, which has been covered here), then maybe someone can answer it.
But lack of answers to questions (on this case, non-questiosn for the most part) doesn't mean such answers to do not exsist, it simply means the people you asked don't know.
Tim,
Let me remind you that EVERYONE in this thread is a conspiracy theorist, including you. The official story is a conspiracy theory, just one that is not proven, in my opinion. Some of us believe in an ALTERNATIVE theory....
I do not know how to prove a negative.
Do you?
If I am a dupe, I'm certainly not a willing one....
If the answers to the many questions that 911 truthers have raised would weaken the international image of the U.S., then so be it.
I, for one, am VERY patriotic. I believe in the oath that the military takes to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign AND domestic.
Whenever the truth emerges, I believe that America will emerge stronger.
911 truth does NOT draw attention away from negligence that led to the events of 911. The opposite is true.
But please do not assume that mere negligence led to the events of 911.
The truth may be much more sinister than that....
I do not try to convince anyone as to who executed the events of 911.
I do know that Bush said that Saddam had nothing to do with 911.
I also know that the FBI now admits that it has "no hard evidence linking Osama to 911."
I am convinced the the 911 Report is, in the words of theologian David Ray Griffin, "a 571 page lie."
I also know that NO ONE has been held accountable for the events of 911.
If the government is so convinced that Al Queda did it, then WHERE are the indictments? Where is the accountability?
Jess said:
"But lack of answers to questions ... doesn't mean such answers to do not exsist, it simply means the people you asked don't know. "
Fair enough....
But why do my questions, mostly directed at the validity of the 911 commission, have to be labeled as "goofy" and "misinformation" by posters on this forum?
JD:
Wow, that was callous.
I care about 911 truth because I care deeply about America.
I believe in the Constitution and ALL of it's amendments.
911 is the lynch pin of much of what the Bush Administration has done.
I think that the Bush Administration SHOULD be held accountable for callously manipulating the nation's after 911, for eviscerating the constitution, lying to start a couple of wars, and opening up gulags in Cuba and elsewhere.
I'll bet a majority of American agree with me...
"CarD,
Quite a bit of your comment is circumstantial evidence, and is not directly connected the the collapse event. Such evidence is far from damning and does not supercede evidence of the involvement of Qaeda."
Rob, we can debate the collapse of the towers until the cows come home. What I am saying is that there is a VALID reason for the government to stage these attacks like the have done in the past. Even posters here admit they staged terror attacks in Iran in the past.
"Much of the rest of your comment was already refuted. Regarding the Pakistani ISI general, it is well known that Qaeda and the Taliban recieved quite a bit of support from the ISI."
So you are admitting that the ISI has funded the terrorists? Then why was the head of the ISI in the White House on the morning of 9/11? How is this refuting my claim? You seem to be endorsing it, if anything!
"As for the fat OBL tape, I don't know what you are talking about, but in Arab culture, you eat with your right hand regardless of left/ right handedness. "
You don't know what I'm talking about? The tape released shortly after 9/11 where Bin Laden supposedly admits to conducting the attacks. Shouldn't you research this before calling us crazy? Watch the video, it is NOT Bin Laden.
So Arab culture signifies to eat with your right hand no matter what? OK, I haven't heard of that, but maybe it is true. So is it Arab culture to also write with your right hand and gesture with it when you are left handed? On the same video he is eating/gesturing/writing with his right hand.
Also, is Islam against wearing gold or not?
He has a gold ring on in the video.
So, he's so true to the Arab culture that he would eat with his right hand for some reason but wearing gold (strictly forbidden in Islam) is just fine!
"Perhaps the 911 conspiracy supporters can explain to us what proof they have they are not dupes in a conspiracy, whether it be to weaken the international image of the United States, help draw attention away from negligence that lead to the 911 attacks, or any of what are probably a dozen other motives for trying to convince the paranoid and guillible Osama bin Laden and his minions didn't execute the Sept 11th attacks."
So, because we have questions about the biggest event in the history of America, we have to prove we are not with the terrorists?
Do we make you prove that you are not working with the CIA?
What reason would I, someone who was FOR the wars and FOR Bush for the first few years of his administration, have to suddenly reverse everything?
Do you think us believing that the people that are supposed to be watching over us is the real bad guy other than some poverty-stricken, dark-skinned terrorists in a cave thousands of miles away?
The idea that our government is behind the attacks is 100 times scarier than some guys who need gross negligence from the government to pull off their attacks.
Stop saying that we want to believe this...trust me, I don't!
Another thing for everyone to think about:
Read the numerous posts here referring to the thought that the Government wouldn't pull off such an outrageous attack when they could just plant some plutonium on Saddam or some minor act like that.
I ask the same thing about the terrorists.
Why risk all their resources (and 19 of their finest martyrs) for an attack that only went through because of the U.S. Government's incompetence?
How did the terrorists know they were going to meet such incompetence? Why would they risk being found out when EVERYONE seemed to know about it beforehand? Being in a U.S. jail would be the worst fate possible for a Muslim extremist.
Then think about this: The Government needed a huge event for us all to see to get us upset. Simply saying they blew up a building has only a fraction of the effect of showing the building (on live tv, no less) being demolished thousands of times again and again.
Like the video of Pearl Harbor being bombed, it stirred up our anger and made us want to go to war.
Now that we know they lied to make us go to war then how can we not get it through our heads that they CAN (I'm not saying it's FOR SURE) stage this attack.
What is 3,000 lives to people who would lie to go kill half a million and counting?
roller-
But that's exactly my point. I feel it's a tremendous waste of energy for you guys to be running down shaky theories proposed by internet woosters regarding the government's "role" in the attacks.
What is known, and not a made up conspiracy theory, is the way the attacks were propagandized and manipulated. The Loose Change people and their ilk seem to only care about promoting woothiness regarding the attacks themselves. They rarely seem to think about the tens of thousands of dead Iraqis, the people languishing in the Gitmo gulag, or the general way this administration has abused its tenure.
So, callous or not, 9/11 conspiracy theorists are idly barking up the wrong tree.
Regarding molten metals, debunking 911 has a good explanation (towards the bottom of the page) for the presence of molten metal.
Questions as to why or why not a certain item was examined or not by a specific group is an appeal to ignorance.
Asking if it is possible for molten metal to exist after such a long period of time is a question that can be answered, and the link above does so.
Regarding Rodriguez, he is quoted as saying: "We heard a loud rumble, then all of a sudden we heard another rumble like someone moving a whole lot of furniture," Rodriguez said. "And then the elevator opened and a man came into our office and all of his skin was off." We are not given a period of time between evnet A and event B. Also, as he was in the basement, how he can be relied on to note the sound of an explosion seconds before the impact of a plane (which he could not have observed), referring to him is either due to the inherant unreliability of witnesses, changing his story, or quote mining by conspiracy theorists.
Why cannot the 911 Commission and the associated NIST report explain the reason for the symmetrical, total, near free fall destruction of three World Trade Center towers, which completely turned most of the twin towers into dust?
Mostly symetrical. Lots of dust was produced. Crushed concrete often produces dust. Why did this need to be part of the report? Ask why dust (and ash) was produced, in a building collapse where there was a fire, which can be answered.
How can the 911 Commission explain the horizontal ejection of multi ton steel beams, some of which were thrown over 200 feet?
Sorry the collapse wasn't neat and pretty enough for you. You would be asking why this didn't happen if it hadn't. It was an energetic collapse. 200 feet is not a huge distance cross when you look at the height of the building and observe the collapse.
The 10,000 page NIST report investigated many aspects of the events at the world trade center that day, but has refused to release it's computer model of the collapse, and has admitted that it's model stops at the "moment of collapse inevitability."
Why should they release what is likely proprietary information or computer programs? Was the model designed to go past said moment?
After FIVE years, why cannot the government explain the collapse of Building 7?
Because others have, and it isn't the government's job...
Why would a building fall at near free fall speeds, and is this a violation of physics? This does not call for a violation of laws, just that the floors on top picked up speed as they fell, adding mass with each floor, making the next floor less of an impediment.
Why didn't the Secret Service immediately protect Bush after the flight 175 hit the second tower? Why did the Secret Service leave the president and all the children in the school unprotected?
A secret service supervisor either dropped the ball or determined risk to be low.
On 911, the very same Secret Service DID protect Cheney and immediately brought him to a "secure location."
Because Cheney was in The White House. The secure location was downstairs, and the White House was a likely target. Different case, different supervisor, different reaction. But regardless, this is circumstantial evidence unrelated to the collapse. If Cheney had not been rushed downstairs, you might have something interesting, but still circumstantial. Also circumstantial are questions regarding the testimony of Cheney, Minetta, NORAD, etc as well as questions regarding stock sales, the Pakistani ISI, and the non-involvement of Iraq. Again, if the investigatory groups were not asked to investigate these issues, then they wouldn't have. A massive conspiracy is fails the razor, while lax security, incompetance, and CYA easily passes.
The claim that the fire vaporised the plane and contents is new to me. In fact, I'd bet that it is a deliberate misquote. Even if true, there is an assumption being made here that all human remains were obliterated as well, including bones, material insulated by fat, etc, and that no parts were thrown clear of the fire.
"card51short"
Why aren't you blaming the evil joozs????
See what I mean?
card51short:
Yeah, and all those Americans who listened to FDR's speech on the radio were stirred up by the video of Pearl Harbor. In 1942.
Boy, your credibility is impeccable.
You don't know what I'm talking about? The tape released shortly after 9/11 where Bin Laden supposedly admits to conducting the attacks. Shouldn't you research this before calling us crazy? Watch the video, it is NOT Bin Laden.
You say it isn't, others say it is.
So Arab culture signifies to eat with your right hand no matter what? OK, I haven't heard of that, but maybe it is true.
Maybe you should research it first? Oh, you already said that. Google "arab ettiquette."
So is it Arab culture to also write with your right hand and gesture with it when you are left handed? On the same video he is eating/gesturing/writing with his right hand.
Maybe he is trying to be polite? Using your left hand for anything while eating is considered rude (Historicly, it is reserved for trips to the toilet). It is not uncommon for left handed people to have to learn how to use their right hands.
Also, is Islam against wearing gold or not?
He has a gold ring on in the video.
So? Never seen hypocrisy? Beyond that, if martyred, it won't matter anyway.
By the way, Willie Rodriguez has been quoted hundreds of times stating he is absolutely positive there was bombs in the building. Referring to one of his quotes that can be misinterpreted is not good research. He was in a Dutch magazine just last week saying he's 100% sure it was a cover-up.
"How can the 911 Commission explain the horizontal ejection of multi ton steel beams, some of which were thrown over 200 feet?"
"Sorry the collapse wasn't neat and pretty enough for you. You would be asking why this didn't happen if it hadn't. It was an energetic collapse. 200 feet is not a huge distance cross when you look at the height of the building and observe the collapse."
So you're saying, on the record, that it is normal for steel beams to hurdle 200 feet away from the building? If the building is pancaking STRAIGHT DOWN, I could see some debris flying around the building, but how, in God's name, would a steel beam fly through the air if gravity is pulling the building straight down?
Why was EVERY other building in the complex, CLOSER to the towers and WAY more heavily damaged by debris (there's no clear pictures of Building 7 being as damaged as 5 or 6) but didn't even COME CLOSE to falling down and building 7 falls and looks so much like a controlled demolition that even Ted Koppel on live TV says it looks exactly like CD?
So let me get this straight:
Building 7, the furthest from the two towers AND obstructed by ANOTHER large building in between it and the towers, is hit by minimal debris and has a few small fires and collapses? Just a coincidence.
For the terror attacks to even work, the US Government had to show severe signs of incompetence (no airport screeners caught the no-fly terrorists; secret service failed to pull Bush out of the school; NORAD (then in control of Dick Cheney) failed to shoot down the planes; passengers failed to fight back on 3 of the 4 flights and pilots (where at least ONE was a trained military man) let their planes be taken over by men with boxcutters and small knives; FBI agents failed to apprehend the terrorists in their planning stages, even though they trained on American ground and lived here for years.
Another few coincidences that we couldn't stop them.
Al Queda was created by the CIA and the Bush family has STRONG ties to the Bin Laden family.
Just another coincidence!
Talks between the U.S. and the Taliban for building a Unocal pipeline across Afghanistan died just weeks leading up to the attacks. Of course, now, the pipe line is in progess. Who is the president of Afghanistan? None other than a former head of Unocal (along with Condelezza Rice).
Just a coincidence!!!
The fact that Silverstein admitted to blowing up his own building is just another coincidence! He meant the firefighters that the 9/11 Commission report states were not even there! All fire chiefs call the owner of the building before deciding whether to fight the fires or not! Cmon, that's common practice!
Marvin Bush was one of the tops of security for both the WTC Complex and Dulles Airport.
Just a coincidence!
Dick Cheney was put in charge of NORAD in the months leading up to 9/11. For the first time in history, a non-military man was in charge of North American Air Space.
Just a coincidence!
The hijackers, according to mainstream reports, were attending strip clubs and wearing thousand dollar silk suits and gold (both forbidden in Islam). So, they were ready to die for their ideals but attended the occasional strip club and wore gold and silk?
A Coincidence!
It's just another coincidence that Silverstein took out a huge insurance policy covering terror attacks and ended up receiving $7 billion for it!
Someone above posted saying he LOST money!!!
You don't think $7 billion could cover 4 planes and some bombs? You think Silverstein funded the event by himself?
We've seen images of the planes crashing into the towers thousands of times again and again.
Why has the Pentagon not released any conclusive footage of the plane hitting the Pentagon. Even if a plane did hit the Pentagon, why can we not see it?!
Why are they releasing videos with completely obstructed views when they admit to having 80+ videos of the event?
San Francisco mayor Willie Brown admits receiving a call from a U.S. government official telling him not to fly on 9/11. He wouldn't name who it is but he has strong ties to Condelezza Rice (who went to school in Stanford, in the SF Bay Area).
Just a coincidence.
Look, to everyone who thinks we are kooks...forget what we think happened. Forget the buildings being demolished forget a plane not hitting the Pentagon. Forget space beams and holograms just for a minute.
All I'm saying is that the OFFICIAL REPORT IS WRONG!
Draw your own conclusions after that!
J.D. says:
Yeah, and all those Americans who listened to FDR's speech on the radio were stirred up by the video of Pearl Harbor. In 1942.
Boy, your credibility is impeccable.
First of all, out of all the paragraphs I type he picks on me saying they saw the video of the Pearl Harbor attacks. Of course, that was a mistake, since the video of the Pearl Harbor attacks didn't air until a little over a year after the attacks.
But yes, they heard it on the radio...I'm sorry for such a terrible mistake, my friend.
Any other disputes?
You don't know what I'm talking about? The tape released shortly after 9/11 where Bin Laden supposedly admits to conducting the attacks. Shouldn't you research this before calling us crazy? Watch the video, it is NOT Bin Laden.
"You say it isn't, others say it is."
What do YOU say? Have you seen this video? It doesn't look like Bin Laden on closer examination and he talks with a different dialect (so my muslim friend tells me).
So Arab culture signifies to eat with your right hand no matter what? OK, I haven't heard of that, but maybe it is true.
"Maybe you should research it first? Oh, you already said that. Google "arab ettiquette.""
Sorry. You are right, I could of just looked it up. But I took your word for it. I believed you. OK, it is "rude" to eat with your right hand. Is it rude to write with your right hand (When not eating)?
So is it Arab culture to also write with your right hand and gesture with it when you are left handed? On the same video he is eating/gesturing/writing with his right hand.
"Maybe he is trying to be polite? Using your left hand for anything while eating is considered rude (Historicly, it is reserved for trips to the toilet). It is not uncommon for left handed people to have to learn how to use their right hands."
So, on the video where a man is proclaiming to killing 3,000 innocent people, he is trying to be "polite"?
So now using your left hand is considered rude in all forms. You said before that just eating was. So, if being left handed is "rude" and many left handed people learn to use their right hand in the Arab culture, then WHY would the FBI site list him as Left Handed? Wouldn't he just be ambidextrious or right handed? If it is so rude to be left handed, and he cares so much about not being rude, then why would he ever have used his left hand in his life?
Why would he be listed as left handed if he never uses it because it's rude?
This is classic double talk!!!
Also, is Islam against wearing gold or not?
He has a gold ring on in the video.
"So? Never seen hypocrisy? Beyond that, if martyred, it won't matter anyway."
So, you're telling me he's on a holy mission from his God (who forbids wearing gold of all types), in which he is ready to kill and be killed for, YET he completely disregards one of the main laws of Islam in doing so? How come there is not ONE other picture or video of Bin Laden post 9/11 of him wearing gold of any type?
He just decided now to start wearing gold and using his right hand?
That makes sense!
Thanks for clearing that up.
QUICK EXERCISE:
Everyone go to www.fbi.gov
The FBI's official website!
Now, click on the most wanted Terrorists.
Next, click on Bin Laden's picture to get to his profile.
Next, find me ANY mention of 9/11 whatsoever.
Have a good day!
Can't wait to hear your excuses for why it's not there!
Well, of course the official version is wrong. The official version said Iraq was involved in the attacks.
Again, though, I still fail to understand why woothiness-filled speculations about what "actually" happened have any bearing on how the administration spun the attacks to justify its abuse of power.
See The Nation's article about this. It's excellent.
Cheers!
Left handed people who grow up in Arab nations often are made to learn to do things right handed, including writing. I looked it up after my last post. I only knew about eating, but it does go further. That he doesn't wear said ring on film anymore also could mean that he got criticised and changed his on air persona. It doesn't have to mean that the film is a fake. It could mean that OBL is human, with human failings.
Again, your laundry list of evidence is circumstantial, not proving anything.
By the way, Willie Rodriguez has been quoted hundreds of times stating he is absolutely positive there was bombs in the building. Referring to one of his quotes that can be misinterpreted is not good research.
No, but it was his initial comment, which later changed. His position in the basement does not make him to be a good observer of when the plane hit. His claim that he is positive that there were bombs is an appeal to authority, one that has no real authority as a forensic demolitions expert.
For the terror attacks to even work, the US Government had to show severe signs of incompetence (no airport screeners caught the no-fly terrorists; secret service failed to pull Bush out of the school; NORAD (then in control of Dick Cheney) failed to shoot down the planes; passengers failed to fight back on 3 of the 4 flights and pilots (where at least ONE was a trained military man) let their planes be taken over by men with boxcutters and small knives; FBI agents failed to apprehend the terrorists in their planning stages, even though they trained on American ground and lived here for years.
Yep. All reasonable to believe (if shameful) in a non-wartime setting, with an administration that did not consider terrorism to be a major issue, and wanted to put more military groups under civilian control than ever before. Our airport security was (and still is) a joke compared to most European nations, and pilots had been instructed to not resist hijackers.
A previous Qaeda hijacking plan had been prevented with the discovery of Operation Bojinko, so the MO fits, motive, and weapons (planes) were the same, making Qaeda a likely suspect, even without the rest of the evidence.
J.D. and others:
Good! I'm glad you know the official story is wrong.
I can't speak for all truthers but I just want to see an independent investigation so we can have all the answers and all of this craziness will (hopefully) be put to rest.
Most of us are very rational people and almost all of us have been believers of the official story before realizing the errors it contains.
Just realize, there is a very small percentage of us who talk about space beams, holograms or even no plane at the Pentagon.
We simply want a full investigation into the matter and not this "half-baked farce" that we were presented with.
I think we can all agree with this.
JD said:
"I feel it's a tremendous waste of energy for you guys to be running down shaky theories proposed by internet woosters regarding the government's "role" in the attacks.
What is known, and not a made up conspiracy theory, is the way the attacks were propagandized and manipulated. The Loose Change people and their ilk seem to only care about promoting woothiness regarding the attacks themselves. They rarely seem to think about the tens of thousands of dead Iraqis, the people languishing in the Gitmo gulag, or the general way this administration has abused its tenure.
So, callous or not, 9/11 conspiracy theorists are idly barking up the wrong tree."
JD, you and I are not that far apart.
If you are saying that 9/11 is a part of a much bigger picture, then I could not agree more.
As for "running down shaky theories," you didn't see ANY theories from me, I'm just saying that the 911 Commission Report and the associate NIST report is junk.
I think we can prove that the official conspiracy theory is a lie. The implications of that are staggering....
"Left handed people who grow up in Arab nations often are made to learn to do things right handed, including writing. I looked it up after my last post. I only knew about eating, but it does go further. That he doesn't wear said ring on film anymore also could mean that he got criticised and changed his on air persona. It doesn't have to mean that the film is a fake. It could mean that OBL is human, with human failings."
I understand what you are saying about the right-handed thing. I just don't understand why he would be known as a left-hander. If Arab culture dictates that people transfer to using their right-hand in all matters, how would there be ANY left-handers? So he's a left-hander that uses his right hand to eat, write and gesture. What exactly makes him left handed and why would the FBI give that as his description when it would be misleading? Why wouldn't they say he is ambidextrous and might be using his right hand?
And about the ring, you must of mistaken me. I said BEFORE 9/11 there is no pictures or videos of Bin Laden where he is wearing a ring. The only time he wears gold is in this mysterious tape that we think is faked.
So why would the only time Bin Laden has been captured wearing gold is the one who's validity is seriously in question?
By the way, Willie Rodriguez has been quoted hundreds of times stating he is absolutely positive there was bombs in the building. Referring to one of his quotes that can be misinterpreted is not good research.
"No, but it was his initial comment, which later changed. His position in the basement does not make him to be a good observer of when the plane hit. His claim that he is positive that there were bombs is an appeal to authority, one that has no real authority as a forensic demolitions expert."
So are you saying that he could not of known when the plane hit the tower? An impact that loud, I think, would be heard throughout the building. Especially if the impact was big enough to contribute being that massive structure down.
Also, what else could he of been hearing? He has stated numerous times that there were MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS both before and after the plane hit. He said these were not small explosions and they were causing people to fly across rooms.
What could those huge explosions be both beneath him and above him?
What reason we he have to give these bold assessments so passionately? What does Willie Rodriguez have to gain by stating the attack (in which made him a hero) was a false flag operation?
Do you think he could be lying?
For the terror attacks to even work, the US Government had to show severe signs of incompetence (no airport screeners caught the no-fly terrorists; secret service failed to pull Bush out of the school; NORAD (then in control of Dick Cheney) failed to shoot down the planes; passengers failed to fight back on 3 of the 4 flights and pilots (where at least ONE was a trained military man) let their planes be taken over by men with boxcutters and small knives; FBI agents failed to apprehend the terrorists in their planning stages, even though they trained on American ground and lived here for years.
"Yep. All reasonable to believe (if shameful) in a non-wartime setting, with an administration that did not consider terrorism to be a major issue, and wanted to put more military groups under civilian control than ever before. Our airport security was (and still is) a joke compared to most European nations, and pilots had been instructed to not resist hijackers.
A previous Qaeda hijacking plan had been prevented with the discovery of Operation Bojinko, so the MO fits, motive, and weapons (planes) were the same, making Qaeda a likely suspect, even without the rest of the evidence. "
So, if it was just gross incompetence on the part of the US Government, why has no one been held accountable for the worst attack in American history on their watch?
So you admit that if we hadn't total messed things up, we would of stopped the attack, no?
If you can see that, then wouldn't Al Queda, who supposedly planned this attack for years, see that it would take gross incompetence for the attack to go through, too?
Why would they risk years of planning, funding, training and 19 of their finest men on an attack that would take multiple miscues to be successful?
I'm glad to see someone respond to my questions!
Robster's comments are in quotes.
My responses follow his comments...
Robster: "Regarding molten metals, debunking 911 has a good explanation (towards the bottom of the page) for the presence of molten metal..... Asking if it is possible for molten metal to exist after such a long period of time is a question that can be answered, and the link above does so."
A good explanation? You think so? That page essentially proposes that the red-orange molten metal is aluminum and it from the jets!
Wow, they want me to believe various other metals contaminated the aluminum to make it flow red-orange.
I have yet to see any credible metallurgist say that molten aluminum is anything but silver colored.
Physicist Steven Jones' examination of actual samples from bottom of the "pile" show the metal to be iron and steel with much sulfidation. The NY Times called the sulfidation "one of the greatest mysteries of 9/11." I'm out of my league here, but apparently sulfidation will occur when sulfur is used as an accelerant for thermate.
See Jones' work here:
http://worldtradecentertruth.com/volume/200609/WhyIndeedDidtheWorldTrad…
Robster: "Questions as to why or why not a certain item was examined or not by a specific group is an appeal to ignorance."
What questions? Do you mean why the 911 Commission didn't address so many of them? The questions go directly toward whether the commission's fulfilled it's mandate to do a "full and complete" analysis of what happened on 911.
Robster: "Regarding Rodriguez, he is quoted as saying: "We heard a loud rumble, then all of a sudden we heard another rumble like someone moving a whole lot of furniture," Rodriguez said. "And then the elevator opened and a man came into our office and all of his skin was off." We are not given a period of time between evnet A and event B. Also, as he was in the basement, how he can be relied on to note the sound of an explosion seconds before the impact of a plane (which he could not have observed), referring to him is either due to the inherant unreliability of witnesses, changing his story, or quote mining by conspiracy theorists."
Picking a quote out of context does little to support your credibility Mr. Robster...
Rodrequez has made many clear and unambiguous statements to clarify his certainty that the explosions were BELOW his location (in the second sub basement level) and that they were massive and occurred BEFORE the plane hit the North tower. He was a janitor there for 20 years! Many of his statements have been backed up by dozens of other people.
The BEST corroboration is the seismic proof. To remind you of what I said..
"His claim is also backed up by Columbia University seismographs, which makes it clear that explosions occurred 14-17 seconds BEFORE the first plane hit - which occurred at a time precisely identified by FAA recordings. "
My source is here:
http://worldtradecentertruth.com/volume/200609/SeismicFurlong.doc
Robster quoting solar roller: "Why cannot the 911 Commission and the associated NIST report explain the reason for the symmetrical, total, near free fall destruction of three World Trade Center towers, which completely turned most of the twin towers into dust?"
Robster: "Mostly symmetrical. Lots of dust was produced. Crushed concrete often produces dust. Why did this need to be part of the report? Ask why dust (and ash) was produced, in a building collapse where there was a fire, which can be answered."
I'm glad to see you agree that the the destruction was "mostly symmetrical" and produced "lots of dust." Anyone looking at the videos can see that. Let's not forget that the "mostly symmetrical" destruction occurred after asymmetrical damage. And where does any "official statement explain WHY so much dust was produced?
All of this should have been discussed by the 9/11 Commission (and NIST) because it was a MAJOR (and obvious) characteristic of the destruction and this type of destruction has NEVER happened before. Seems worthy of their consideration to me!
Robster quoting solar roller: "How can the 911 Commission explain the horizontal ejection of multi ton steel beams, some of which were thrown over 200 feet?"
Robster: "Sorry the collapse wasn't neat and pretty enough for you. You would be asking why this didn't happen if it hadn't. It was an energetic collapse. 200 feet is not a huge distance cross when you look at the height of the building and observe the collapse."
Energetic? We agree on that! Since when does the vertical vector of a gravity driven collapse translate into horizontal (and upward) vectors? Can you name the gravity driven collapse of anything else (!) that exhibits the characteristics you describe?
The destruction of any tower in lower Manhattan on 9/11 doesn't count....
Robster quoting solar roller: "The 10,000 page NIST report investigated many aspects of the events at the world trade center that day, but has refused to release it's computer model of the collapse, and has admitted that it's model stops at the "moment of collapse inevitability."
Robster: "Why should they release what is likely proprietary information or computer programs? Was the model designed to go past said moment?"
Why should release their computer model? Because NIST is required by Congress to completely and accurately conduct it's investigations. What's proprietary about about the proof of the official collapse theory of the most important event of the 21st century?
Was the model designed to cover the time after the point of "inevitability of collapse." No it was not, and that's the point. Are you saying the actual collapse is not important? Perhaps an accurate model could explain how multi ton steel can be thrown horizontally over 200 feet!
Robster quoting solar roller: "After FIVE years, why cannot the government explain the collapse of Building 7?"
Robster: "Because others have, and it isn't the government's job... Why would a building fall at near free fall speeds, and is this a violation of physics? This does not call for a violation of laws, just that the floors on top picked up speed as they fell, adding mass with each floor, making the next floor less of an impediment."
Others have explained the collapse of Building 7? Really? WHERE?
And why it's it NOT the government's job? Who are you trying to fool? It is PRECISELY the government's role to explain what happened on that day. One of the 9/11 Commissioners is quoted as saying that they didn't investigate Building 7 "because no one was killed there."
I can tell you why I think they didn't investigate Building 7.... Because they couldn't come up with any rational explanations that fit the official theory.
As for the violation of laws of physics I suggest you read up on the law of conservation of momentum....
Robster quoting solar roller: "Why didn't the Secret Service immediately protect Bush after the flight 175 hit the second tower? Why did the Secret Service leave the president and all the children in the school unprotected?"
Robster: "A secret service supervisor either dropped the ball or determined risk to be low."
Pretty weak response Mr. Robster.... Don't you think the commander in chief should command - when the country is under attack? Bush was in a well advertising location so it would be imperative for the secret service to execute their prime directive: to protect the president. With "unknown numbers of hijacked planes" the risk was clearly very high, yet no secret service supervisor was held accountable....
Robster: Also circumstantial are questions regarding the testimony of Cheney, Minetta, NORAD, etc as well as questions regarding stock sales, the Pakistani ISI, and the non-involvement of Iraq.
You call Secretary of Transportation Mineta's open TV testimony to be circumstantial ?
He contradicted the Commission's statement as to when Cheney reached the command center This is crucial because the Commission's timeline puts Cheney out of the loop. Mineta's timeline put's Cheney IN COMMAND of the response to Flight 77!
This is further backed up by Mineta's (infamous) statement of the "young aide," apparently watching radar, who kept asking Cheney if "the orders still stand."
Do you say that the recent written statement that the 911 Commissioners KNEW that the NORAD generals lied is "circumstantial"?
Puleeeze....
Where the massive stock market put calls against American and United before 911 circumstantial? Sure....
But the complete unwillingness of the government to investigate this sounds and smells like a cover-up to me....
Robster: The claim that the fire vaporised the plane and contents is new to me. In fact, I'd bet that it is a deliberate misquote. Even if true, there is an assumption being made here that all human remains were obliterated as well, including bones, material insulated by fat, etc, and that no parts were thrown clear of the fire.
I think you missed my point. How does the government claim to have (very fragile) DNA evidence for all the passengers on flight 77? Yet, we are told that the impact was so severe that the two multi ton titanium engines did not survive. Reasonable people will agree: this doesn't make any sense.
Solar, Try the bottom of that page. As I suggested. Apparently metallurgists who don't care about who you consider to be credible disagree with you.
Since when does the vertical vector of a gravity driven collapse translate into horizontal (and upward) vectors?
When there is something in the way of something in the way, it can either push what is in the way or fall away from the center. With a building that is 1360+ ft, 208 ft wide, with it's primary support at the core, a debris field where a particularly heavy object falls 200 ft away is likely. That it wouldn't happen at least once seems far less probable. Upward vectors? Now that is something new.
Can I name a gravity (and fire and large plane collision) induced collapse of a steel frame skyscraper? No. Because 9/11 was a first.
Debunking 911 (see navigation bar to the left) discusses the collapse of WTC7 in depth. And conservation of momentum would predict that the floors would pick up both speed and mass as they fell and impacted lower floors. Furthermore, the claim of falling at near free fall speeds is suspect, also discussed at debunking 911. Some parts fell at free fall, others, as part of the pancaking mass fell slower. The actual time of collapse is also discussed.
You call Secretary of Transportation Mineta's open TV testimony to be circumstantial ?
Yeah, because he didn't say that Cheney coordinated the attacks. Contradicting testamony doesn't support the CT any more than it does the Bush/ Cheney team being incompetant and Cheney needing to perform CYA.
Pretty weak response Mr. Robster.... Don't you think the commander in chief should command - when the country is under attack?
Weak, or blatantly simple and conforming to the evidence (and Occam's razor). And yes, Bush should have led, by telling the class that he had some important president stuff to do, and that he enjoyed spending time with them, but he had to go now. But he did what he always does when he is confronted with something he doesn't expect. He freezes up.
I think you missed my point. How does the government claim to have (very fragile) DNA evidence for all the passengers on flight 77? Yet, we are told that the impact was so severe that the two multi ton titanium engines did not survive. Reasonable people will agree: this doesn't make any sense.
No. I got your point and noticed you moving the goalposts (and a no true Scotsman, to boot). Portions of the engines were found in the wreckage. You were probably told that the engines didn't "survive" by 911 CTers. DNA is more stable than you have been led to believe. You don't need much in the way of remains to ID them, even if the remains are badly burnt.
card51short -
I'm not exactly sure what the questions are that you want answered. You seem to have a continuous stream of rhetorical questions that you regard as 'damming' despite the existance of simple answers.
Yes, the government was incompetent, look at Iraq for further evidence.
Yes, large organisations of all kinds are very bad at responding to sudden emergencies.
Yes, it was standard procedure to allow hijackers to take over planes, and not shoot them down.
Yes, the combination of damage and fires was enough to take the towers down.
Yes, the fall of 200,000 tonnes through 500 meters generates the energy equivilent of 250 Tonnes of TNT. Which explains the dust..
No, if you WERE doing a huge black-op to allow for the huge expansion of government power, you would NOT involve insurance scams or share put options, for obvious reasons.
No, it is not 'standard knowledge' in Europe or Russia that it was an 'inside job'.
Yes, what happens after collapse initiation is relatively unimportant, as well as virtually impossible to model. But the energies involved could have put a steel beam in orbit, never mind 200 feet away. (I thought it was a controlled demolition, anyway?)
Yes, different witnesses giving accounts of a traumatic event from multiple perspectives will contradict one another.
And finally, yes, asking huge numbers of questions without ever accepting that they might have non-conspiracy, perfectly innocent explanations IS the mark of paranoia.
So Andrew, in other words we shouldn't question the media or the government on anything? We should just accept every story given to us like good sheep? I guess I'm just stupid to wonder why 2 of the alleged hijackers were living with an FBI asset, why some of the hijackers were seen on a gambling cruise (on a ship owned by a member of the Republican party) drinking and gambling days before 911(I mean this IS what devout suicidal Muslims do days before they kill themselves,right?!?), why 10 of these hijackers have been found alive, why Osama isn't wanted for 911, how 2 planes collapsed 3 buildings with fire, or why 5 of these hijackers were allowed to board planes even though they were on a terror watchlist. Even though NORAD scrambled fighter jets 67 times in 2001 in the months before 911 as part of their standard operating procedure to escort/intercept planes for reasons as simple as loss of radio signal, these magical hijackers managed to fly loops around the most protected airspace in the world, hitting the most heavily defended building in the world(nevermind how they even FOUND the Pentagon from 30,000 feet, or how they navigated the plane for 40 minutes to even find Washington DC without any help from the tower) an hour and a half after we knew there were multiple hijackings. Even more amazing, while our country was under an unprecedented attack, our brave men and women working for the FBI had the presence of mind to confiscate the security tapes from cameras at a nearby hotel, and gas station minutes after Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, probably because none of the 80 or so cameras ON the Pentagon caught what hit the Pentagon and they would need that tape to know what happened. Thanks for making it all so clear Andrew, I see the light now..question nothing, accept official stories.
Likewise, your account tells me that all of our intelligence agencies were too incompetent to foil this plot before it happened, even though there were warnings from more then a dozen other countries. They were too incompetent to listen to their own members warnings about a coming attack. Our FAA, and NORAD were too inept too find and stop any of these planes from hitting their targets that day, even more then an hour after the TV coverage had begun. Our EPA was also incompetent in telling the many rescuers that the air at Ground Zero was safe (many of these folks are dying), when the air was really 40 times more toxic then what is considered safe. Even though Guliani was told the towers would collapse before they came down, there was even more incompetence in not "pulling" (pun intended) the rescue workers out. To top off all this incompetence, with all the foreknowledge and warnings including the foiled Project Bojinka plan, workers were told to return to the buildings after the first plane struck the Towers, causing even more deaths.
They were too stupid to stop any of this, but smart enough to know 18 of the 19 hijackers names before Flight 93 even hit the ground. Simply amazing, thanks again Andrew! I think this story is even more fun then holograms !
And we get to the oldest, most insane straw man the CTers have in their arsenal.
"You don't believe in magic stealth explosives planted by the government's undead ghost minions, therefore you must be supporting the government in every way."
Of course, it helps if CTers redefine the government as a monolithic entity that includes everyone who disagrees with them.
As for my position on the issue: The only thing there is to investigate is where incompetence happened, unless you care to conjure up evidence of explosives, and rely on something other than sorcery for sneaking them into the building.
Jack, you do realize that the Pentagon doesn't have pop-up anti-aircraft guns. It's not the most defended building in the US. Reality is not obligated to conform to James Bond.
You've got a decent list of other oldie, moldy canards, too. Try doing some research. See what the skeptics have been saying about them, since you apparently never read anything ever written by a skeptic, given the first sentence of your above comment.
Oh, and there's a big difference between getting a list of names and stopping a hijacking.
Umm then what is the most heavily defended airspace in the US ? Please enlighten me. If there are no missle batteries near the Pentagon, please give me a web address so I can verify your statement. (us "James Bond" types like to verify things for ourselves).
How about you show me their existence before I get involved in proving a negative? Burden of proof is with the advocate, you know.
solar roller,
"You've SEEN the calculations? Care to share them with us?"
Sure. They're layed out in http://www.911myths.com/WTCREPORT.pdf, a document that has already showed up once on this thread. But you may find the analysis a bit obscure so I'll go through in more detail.
"You are saying that GRAVITY has enough energy to collapse the building, pulverize all of the concrete AND most of the steel? I'd love to see that!"
Sure. It looks something like this:
energy to pulverize concrete = (surface area created) x (fracture energy of concrete)
surface area created = (surface area of a particle) x (# of particles)
surface area of a particle = 4 x Pi x (particle radius) ^ 2
(Note: this is the equation for a spherical particle. The article uses an equation for a cubic particle. It's hard to say which is more correct, but it turns out not to make any difference.)
# of particles = (total mass of concrete) / (density of concrete) / (volume of a particle)
= (48,000,000 kg) / (1500 kg / m^3) / ((4 / 3) x Pi x (particle radius) ^ 3)
therefore,
surface area created = 4 x Pi x (particle radius) ^ 2 x (48,000,000 kg) x 3 / (4 x Pi x (particle radius) ^ 3 x (1500 kg / m^3))
= 96000 m^3 / (particle radius)
For a particle size of 60 microns (radius 30 microns), that will give a surface area of
3,200,000,000 m^2, or in other words, 3,200 km^2. (For reference, white flour is composed of particles of approximately that size).
fracture energy of concrete = 100 J / m^2.
(See, for example, Table 3, SFRCI (plain concrete), from http://web.mit.edu/course/3/3.11/www/modules/frac.pdf. N / m are the same units as J / m^2 )
(NOTE NOTE NOTE. This is the fracture energy for _bulk_ concrete. The fracture energy on the small scales we're talking about may be higher. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find any values whatsoever. So this will be a "back of the envelope calculation". WTCREPORT.pdf doesn't mention this, and it should.)
so ...
energy to pulverize concrete = (1,600,000,000 m^2) x (100 J / m^2)
=320,000,000,000 J
(per tower)
This is the figure given in the WTCREPORT.pdf.
Now calculating the gravitational potential energy is even easier:
gravitational potential energy = (mass) x (height of center of mass) x (g)
height center of mass = 417.0 m / 2
= 208 m
(Actually, the center of mass will probably be a bit lower than that. "Back of the envelope" again.)
so ...
gravitational potential energy = (510,000,000 kg) x (208 m) x (9.8 N / kg)
= 1,040,000,000,000 N m
= 1,040,000,000,000 J
WTCREPORT.pdf rounds this off as 10^12 J.
So, in a quick, back-of-the-envelope calculation, the gravitational potential energy is more than adequate to pulverize the concrete.
"Bronze, how can you contradict yourself so quickly? Last I looked, the force of gravity vectors straight towards the center of the earth. Were is there "enough lateral force" to spray multi ton steel beams over 200 feet?"
Yes. Those multi ton steel beams represent a very small fraction of the mass in the towers. They are outliers; most of the mass of the towers didn't go nearly as far.
"(NIST has photos of that) And how does a gravity driven collapse of the north tower supposedly severely damage the south facade of Building 7. That is over 300 feet! That's a lot of horizontal force for a vertical energy vector!"
The force of gravity is always straight down. But it's not the only force operating. You'll have normal forces between colliding components, you'll have overpressure in the building pushing outwards on the walls, you'll have elastic forces in the components, and those forces will not be straight up-and-down either because the columns will not be straight up-and-down in a collapsing region. That being said, the vast majority of the components will not have been given enough of a lateral push to make it all the way to Building 7. It will only be a few outliers that make it that far (or further). But from a 500 Megaton building, a few outliers can still pack quite a wallop.
The links in my post above, without trailing punctuation:
http://www.911myths.com/WTCREPORT.pdf
http://web.mit.edu/course/3/3.11/www/modules/frac.pdf
Sorry.
D'oh,
http://web.mit.edu/course/3/3.11/www/modules/frac.pdf
should be
http://www.ce.utexas.edu/em2000/papers/GAppa_1.pdf
You won't find a Table 3 in the former link. Or you can just trust that F. R. Greening didn't lie about the fracture energy of concrete if you wish.
Thanks for the quick covering of a stupid comment, there Andrew. Seems like CTers only believe in air when it's convenient for them.
Certainly demonstrates one likely reason why many think explosions always mean explosives. Didn't they ever make plastic bottles explode via air pressure? I did it in high school chemistry with dry ice. Wish I could have done it with something like a 2-liter bottle instead of the disposable plastic eyedroppers.
Robster said: "Upward vectors? Now that is something new."
Look at virtually ANY of the videos of the collapse of the twin towers. Debris is forcefully ejected outward AND upwards. Trust your eyes Robster...
"Can I name a gravity (and fire and large plane collision) induced collapse of a steel frame skyscraper? No. Because 9/11 was a first."
Large plane collision are unusual I will grant you that, but the official story is still essentially a fire theory.
Where's the plane collision on Building 7? Since there is no official theory on building 7, you have to agree that it is JUST fire that brought it down. Or... will you add that the south side was damaged because of debris from the North Tower collapse? Oh, well that was over 300 feet and building 6 (between the north tower and 7) sustained FAR more debris damage than 7 and it did NOT collapse!
Kinda puts a hole in your argument I would say...
"Debunking 911 (see navigation bar to the left) discusses the collapse of WTC7 in depth."
I'd like to see an official explanation. Any clue when that might happen?
"And conservation of momentum would predict that the floors would pick up both speed and mass as they fell and impacted lower floors. "
Really? Conservation of momentum predicts that the building collapse time would be much longer than freefall speed...
"Furthermore, the claim of falling at near free fall speeds is suspect, also discussed at debunking 911. Some parts fell at free fall, others, as part of the pancaking mass fell slower. The actual time of collapse is also discussed."
Near freefall time is suspect? Just time one of the many videos yourself! I know that dust obscures the view, but it's really not hard to extrapolate to get close.
I don't need a website to tell me the collapse time.
Don't like that imprecision?
OK then please read the seismic proof link I gave above (for the twin towers).
THAT is exact. It is PROOF that the the official conspiracy theory is a farce.
"You call Secretary of Transportation Mineta's open TV testimony to be circumstantial ?"
"Yeah, because he didn't say that Cheney coordinated the attacks. Contradicting testamony doesn't support the CT any more than it does the Bush/ Cheney team being incompetant and Cheney needing to perform CYA."
Let me get this straight... you are stating that Mineta's testimony is circumstantial because he didn't say Cheney coordinated the attacks?
I didn't say Mineta said that.
I'm saying that contradictory testimony is NOT circumstantial testimony.
And... it is VERY curious that the Commission left Mineta's (what appears to be damming) testimony out of the report.
"Pretty weak response Mr. Robster.... Don't you think the commander in chief should command - when the country is under attack?"
"Weak, or blatantly simple and conforming to the evidence (and Occam's razor). And yes, Bush should have led, by telling the class that he had some important president stuff to do, and that he enjoyed spending time with them, but he had to go now. But he did what he always does when he is confronted with something he doesn't expect. He freezes up."
Again you miss my point.
It's all about the the SECRET SERVICE response. No matter what Bush knew beforehand, just found out, or whatever, it's the secret service who should have acted immediately.
THEIR response indicates that they must have known that Bush was in no danger. How could they have know that?
Solar Roller -
Look at virtually ANY of the videos of the collapse of the twin towers. Debris is forcefully ejected outward AND upwards. Trust your eyes Robster...
Here's an experiment you can do at home, SR. Simply get one watermelon, and a sledgehammer. Place the watermelon on your dining table, and hit it hard with the sledgehammer (try to avoid destroying the table). Now, we can agree that the force vector from the hammer is down - but now look at where the splash marks are! Even on the ceiling! The only conclusion can be that the CIA put a bomb in your watermelon!
Andrew:
I did that!
What a mess!
But.... sadly for you there was no debris on the ceiling.
In fact, the debris all went down and sideways and not very far sideways at that....
So Andrew, in other words we shouldn't question the media or the government on anything?
No, we should be skeptical of any story presented, and apply occams razor appropriately. Controlled demolition requires a vast conspiricy and is not required to explain the collapse. The rest of your post seems to ignore that.
solar roller,
"Perhaps an accurate model could explain how multi ton steel can be thrown horizontally over 200 feet!"
Perhaps. But I think you underestimate the difficulty of modelling the collapse process. You need collision detection. (Computationally expensive, but tractable). You need to model the elastic and ductile behaviour of the steel. (Also tractable). There will be a great many elements to model, which you will need to fit into RAM. (I believe current machines top out at about a terabyte of ram, so maybe). You need to model the fracture of the steel and failure of the joints (um ...). You need to model what the concrete is doing. You can't model every fragment of concrete (there are far to many), so you'll need approximations of the dynamics of concrete rubble in violent motion (it's safe to say they're unknown). You'll probably want to model the (turbulent) flow of the air, but current computers are simply not powerful enough, so you'll need approximations. (Computers a just getting powerful enough to model turbulent 3-D processes now.). There will be large relative velocities during collapse so you need a very small time step size. Combine that with the number of elements to simulate, and current hardware is simply inadequate to model the entire collapse within a human lifetime, even if you could design a model.
Of course, debris being thrown out is entirely expected in a collapse of pretty much any kind. It's not as if the presence or absence of explosive devices nullifies the sheer number and magnitude of collisions and fluid dynamics involved.
So, once again, we have CTers endorsing a perfectly normal event as "suspicious".
Of course, if debris gets thrown out, it's a bomb. If debris doesn't get thrown out, it's a bomb.
solar roller,
"Really? Conservation of momentum predicts that the building collapse time would be much longer than freefall speed..."
Three and a half seconds longer, at most (about 40% longer).
Near freefall time is suspect? Just time one of the many videos yourself! I know that dust obscures the view, but it's really not hard to extrapolate to get close.
I don't need a website to tell me the collapse time.
Don't like that imprecision?
OK then please read the seismic proof link I gave above (for the twin towers).
THAT is exact. It is PROOF that the the official conspiracy theory is a farce.
Parts of the building not in the 208/208 ft square of the building's footprint fell faster than that in the footprint. How hard is that to get? The videos show this. The exterior walls peeled away and fell unimpeded. The core had to fall... through the core. The perimiter walls began to make it to the ground in a bit more than 9 seconds. The core appears to follow at between 11 and 13 seconds (dust, smoke, debris cloud makes it hard to tell exact time).
The seismic proof is anything but. The second collapse event that the seismograph records is less than free fall time, and therefore, cannot be correct. Instead, it shows us what the seismographs detected compared to background signals. So the beginning or end of the collapse was less "noisy" than the ambient vibrations. This teaches us a valuable lesson on attempting to use any device near its limit of detection.
So we have proof that the official story is closer to correct than this supposed gospel truth.
Regarding the fall of WTC7, it is the first time that a steel frame building collapsed after having part of another building fall into it, causing structural damage, accompanied by fire. So another first.
What appears to be material ejected upward could actually be the light alluminum panels that were attached to the exterior of the building, caught in the turbulent airflow, not steel support beams. Some clearly do not follow a balistic path, further evidence that these objects move at the whim of the airflow.
Robster, Andrew Wade, Bronze Dog, et. al.
So you want to get technical?
I recommend that you read the peer-reviewed papers at the Journal of 911 Studies.
http://www.worldtradecentertruth.com/
Relevant to the discussions on this entire post, please peruse the work of Frank Legge, Steven Jones, Craig Furlong, Gordon, Ross, and Kevin Ryan.
You will note that the Journal of 911 Studies has the guts to post a paper by Frank R. Greening.
Naturally there is a reply to Greening's paper.
If you don't like these papers then....
JOIN Frank Greening and Ronal Wieck in the National 9/11 Debate (March 10, 2007, Charleston South Carolina)
Hope to see you there!
http://www.teamliberty.net/id245.html
Here is the summary of article at the Journal of 911 Studies site.
Happy reading....
Volume 5 - November 2006
911 - Acceleration Close to Free Fall
Frank Legge (PhD)
Â
Volume 4 - October 2006
A Critical Review of WTC 'No Plane' Theories
Eric Salter
Â
Volume 3 - September 2006
Why Indeed Did the World Trade Center Buildings Completely Collapse?, PDF Version
Steven E. Jones
Seismic Proof - 9/11 Was An Inside Job (Updated Version II)
by Craig T. Furlong & Gordon Ross
Volume 2 - August 2006
What is 9/11 Truth? - The First Steps
Kevin Ryan
Â
To whom it may concern
Frank R. Greening
Â
Reply to Dr. Greening (See also How the Towers were Demolished)
Gordon Ross
Â
Intersecting Facts and Theories on 9/11
Joseph P. Firmage
Â
118 Witnesses: The Firefighter's Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers
Graeme MacQueen
Â
NIST Data Disproves Collapse Theories Based on Fire
Frank Legge (PhD)
Volume 1 - June 2006
WTC 7: A Short Computation
Kenneth L. Kuttler
Â
9/11 - Evidence for Controlled Demolition: a Short List of Observations
Frank Legge
Â
9/11 - Evidence Suggests Complicity: Inferences from Actions
Frank Legge
Â
The Flying Elephant: Evidence for Involvement of a Third Jet in the WTC Attacks
Scholars for 9/11 Truth
Â
Momentum Transfer Analysis of the Collapse of the Upper Storeys of WTC1
Gordon Ross
peer-reviewed papers at the Journal of 911 Studies.
So... We should go to a "journal" that is made up of conspiracy theories, written by conspiracy theorists, reviewed by their fellow conspiracy theorists? Wow. Major appeal to authority. If their work is solid, it would be pubbed in a structural or civil engineering journal. They wouldn't need a cottage journal.
And of course, the fall back to "debate."
Verbal debates are one of the least honest forms of argumentation. It's inherently biased towards the people who can spout the most canards, meaningless questions, and pointless questions. Many of those take a longer time to properly respond to than to ask. Just like with Creationism.
I suggest the CTers stop focusing on quantity of distractions and focus on quality of two or three core questions.
The 9/11 conspiracists need to hang out with the anti-vaccine nuts. They could spin wild tales about how the government is not only poisoning them, but engineering terrorist attacks for FUN AND PROFIT!
I mean, they have the same concept of "peer review".
Frank Legge (PhD) Chemist?
Eric Salter (video editor?)
Steven E. Jones (physicist - previous work in cold fusion)
Craig T. Furlong (Quantitative Methods, Business Administration)
& Gordon Ross (Mechanical engineering, Production engineering)
Kevin Ryan (Former Site Manager for Environmental Health Laboratories, a division of Underwriters Laboratories, apparently a chemist)
Joseph P. Firmage (CEO/ founder of several successful silicon valley companies. Also a UFO researcher (cultist))
Graeme MacQueen (Religious Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies)
Kenneth L. Kuttler (Mathematics, Brigham Young University)
So there is one engineer, though not a civil engineer, and again, note, this is not a peer reviewed engineering journal.
Robster says:
So... We should go to a "journal" that is made up of conspiracy theories, written by conspiracy theorists, reviewed by their fellow conspiracy theorists? Wow. Major appeal to authority. If their work is solid, it would be pubbed in a structural or civil engineering journal.
Clueless crew: the Journal of 911 Studies is made up of people that investigate ALTERNATIVE conspiracy theories about 911.
Let me remind you ONCE AGAIN that the official story IS A CONSPIRACY THEORY TOO.
Is that too difficult a concept?
I know, I know, you're trying to frame to debate and label truthers with the most negative connotation of "conspiracy theorist."
Based on all the evidence, it depends on what theory you believe in.
I could say exactly the same thing regarding ANY of the "debunking" sites you all mention, (911myths, popular mechanics, jod911.com)
These are sites that are made up of conspiracy theories, written by conspiracy theorists, reviewed by their fellow conspiracy theorists.
See, that was easy...
What "authority" does the 911 Commission, NIST, and FEMA have when they blatantly ignore contradictory evidence and only display (or distort) evidence that fits their pre-conceived conclusions. You call that science?
I too agree that verbal debate is not the best avenue of discourse on the topic.
Maybe we should have a website where doubters and defenders of the official theory can hash in out.
To a small degree that WAS done (with Frank Greening) at the Journal for 911 Studies.
Anybody want to setup a neutral debate site?
But... if we take NIST's FAQs on 911 "conspiracy" theories as the first (and ONLY) written response from the government as a start, then I would say the government fumbled the ball BADLY. The NIST FAQs response was embarrassing.
Let's see peer review of the 911 Commission Report, the NIST report, and any of 911myths, Popular Mechanics, jod911.com etc.
Who are the peers that reviewed Mark Roberts article at jod911.com?
I think there is just ONE real peer reviewed article, by Walter Murphy
And Robster, you imply that the lack of a civil engineer somehow lessens the quality of the Journal for 911 Studies.
Let me remind you that 911 is a lot more than civil engineering. There is a lot of physics, chemistry, and mechanical engineering involved.
What "authority" does the 911 Commission, NIST, and FEMA have when they blatantly ignore contradictory evidence and only display (or distort) evidence that fits their pre-conceived conclusions. You call that science?
Are you talking about them or 911 "truthers?" How about that jet engine from the pentagon?
And Robster, you imply that the lack of a civil engineer somehow lessens the quality of the Journal for 911 Studies.
Let me remind you that 911 is a lot more than civil engineering. There is a lot of physics, chemistry, and mechanical engineering involved.
Then the articles should have been subitted to a physics, chemistry, or mechanical engineering journal. The Journal for 911 Studies? A journal of conspiracy theories with a very low number of articles, all of which are too weak to be accepted by real journals. J911S is more of an internet bulletin.
I've heard that "you're a conspiracy theorist, too" line before. Beyond being ad hominem and ridiculous, you are trying to disguise the fact that CTers don't pass analysis of the data or Occam's razor. Evolution is not a conspiracy theory, nor is the Germ Theory of Disease, because they have evidence instead of conjecture, quote mining, (sometimes) willful misinterpretation of data that theory deniers and conspiracy theorists are forced to rely on.
You know, there was a time that even I entertained that perhaps there was "something more to it" with 9/11. But after seen the appalling failure of maths and science that adovacates like "Solar Roller" use to defend their position, I can see why they are just labeled as cranks. Mind you SR is a noisey crank but a crank all the same.
I do enjoy his use of the noun "evidence" in particular ignoring it's traditional use in english :-)
solar roller,
"You will note that the Journal of 911 Studies has the guts to post a paper by Frank R. Greening."
I believe that to be a 'letter' rather than a 'paper'. But be that as it may...
"Naturally there is a reply to Greening's paper."
Unfortunately Greening's "paper" did a poor job of explaining why the idea of significantly increased strain much below the collapse front is stupid. Once a column passes the "point of no return", the stress in it will decrease precipitously. The stress will in fact rapidly become less than the static load the column started with. If anything, the elastic energy from the columns below the collapse should start feeding into the collapse rather than vice-versa.
Now, there will be some vertical forces applied to the columns simply from debris falling on them (and applying normal forces). But the columns will tend to "punch through" the debris; certainly an individual floor will not be strong enough to support the falling section of tower.
"Let me remind you that 911 is a lot more than civil engineering. There is a lot of physics, chemistry, and mechanical engineering involved."
All of which Solar_Roller probably knows little about, other than what he/she reads from the trooth websites of course.
Anybody would think that civil engineers know nothing about physics (only 3 years worth), chemistry (2 years) and mechanical engineering (2 years). But then again, SR betrays he/her lack of understanding of _engineering_. Except what he/she read on the trooth sites....of course :-)
Wow! I can't believe how many people actually believe 9/11 was a huge conspiracy. A friend loaned me "Loose Change" a few months back--after watching it I was really annoyed that I'd wasted two hours watching such crap (my favorite part was the janitor who was a key witness explaining why the buildings collapsed... yep, I'm sure he understands physics and complex engineering concepts). The people running our hugely bloated government are so incompetent they can't even supply our own troops with enough equipment or do basic planning for our military operations (or fake WMD as someone else pointed out--much easier than this proposed plot). How on earth could they arrange a hugely elaborate plot and keep it secret? Ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. This discussion reminds me of arguing with creationists. Neither group can comprehend reason, logic, and hard science.
Thanks for the weekly dose of "woo"!
Yes Jennifer, although they lied about WMD's, lied about the air at Ground Zero, lied about their foreknowledge of the attacks, lied about the timeline of events on 911, didn't investigate the put options, destroyed all the evidence immediately, started and funded Al CIAda, and had the plans to invade these 2 countries before 911. Just because they lied about all of this doesn't mean you should be suspicious of them or the events of 911. You're a genius. Science people are too smart to be fooled by us troothers. I'm guessing you also believe they found a passport in perfect condition from one of the hijackers after his plane hit the twin towers, and that same hijacker left a suitcase behind in a car with the names of all of the hijacker. Jennifer has shown me the light, I now believe that 3 buildings collapsed due to fire, a fire hot enough to deform steel, yet people were photographed standing in the hole left by the plane shortly before collapse. Maybe the people standing in the hole were holograms too! Thanks Jennifer, now I can go back to believing that a hook nosed kidney patient living in a cave, and his 19 evil buddies masterminded 911 from a laptop. They were just lucky I guess. Lucky that standard procedures were ignored. Holograms lol, that's the best yall can do.
Andrew Wade:
You can pontificate all you want regarding elastic loads, static loads, and the point of no return but it still does not explain how the majority of the twin tower's mass fell through the path of MOST resistance, at near free fall speed.
Please told start reminding me about the mass that fell outside the building's footprint. I'm talking about INSIDE the building's footprint...
Robster quoting solar roller:
What "authority" does the 911 Commission, NIST, and FEMA have when they blatantly ignore contradictory evidence and only display (or distort) evidence that fits their pre-conceived conclusions. You call that science?
Robster: "Are you talking about them or 911 "truthers?" How about that jet engine from the pentagon?"
OK, I accept that I make mistakes. I'm just a regular guy after all.
I accept that we were TOLD that the remains of what appears to be a jet engine came from flight 77.
But where is the proof? Any serial numbers from that engine that tie it back to Flight 77?
How about luggage, bodies, and the SECOND engine?
Can you show me any of that?
We are taking about the "official" investigation of the most important event of the 21st century. How can they claim they have DNA evidence for ALl the passengers at flight 77, yet major portions of the plane are simply not there?
I accept that the Journal of 911 Studies should be submitted to "real" journals.
I do not know why they have not... I'd guess that the answer is political, not technical, but I'll have to get back to you on that...
And.... the same goes for all the articles at jod911.com
What journals have they been submitted to?
"I've heard that "you're a conspiracy theorist, too" line before. Beyond being ad hominem and ridiculous.."
It's interesting that you call my allegation that you're a conspiracy theorist to be ad hominem...
Here's the Meriam Webster definitions online:
Conspiracy
1 : the act of conspiring together
2 a : an agreement among conspirators b : a group of conspirators
further defined by the verb conspire:
1 a : to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or an act which becomes unlawful as a result of the secret agreement
6 a : a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or investigation b : an unproved assumption
I'd say that the act of 19 Arab men purportedly hijacking 4 airplanes to crash them into buildings qualifies as a conspiracy.
It's a theory that 9/11 happened as specified by the government because it has not been proven.
Sure, the Commission used it's own "facts" to back up it's preconceived conclusions, but I saw no proof...
"you are trying to disguise the fact that CTers don't pass analysis of the data or Occam's razor"
This gets into what really happened on 9/11. I don't know what really happened that day.
All I've been trying to say is the the official story is a farce.
Occam's razor refers to simple explanations that FIT ALL THE AVAILABLE EVIDENCE. Obviously we disagree as as to validity of various ignored pieces of evidence...
You say:
"Evolution is not a conspiracy theory, nor is the Germ Theory of Disease, because they have evidence instead of conjecture, quote mining, (sometimes) willful misinterpretation of data that theory deniers and conspiracy theorists are forced to rely on."
Who are the theory deniers and conspiracy theorists?
I would agree with this sentence completely if you defined theory deniers and conspiracy theorists to be the defenders of the official story.
shot_info
The next time you go around criticizing other's use of English, please keep in mind that it looks like you have an appalling failure to write a proper english sentence.
"But after seen the appalling failure of maths and science.." should be
But after having seen the appalling failure in (?) math and science...
"SR betrays he/her lack of understanding of _engineering_. Except what he/she read on the trooth sites" should be
SR betrays his/her lack of understanding of engineering. Except what he/she reads on the trooth sites..."
So I'm a "noisy crank" to you?
Talk about ad hominem attacks!
I must be irritating you. Then why are you reading this blog?
solar roller:
Uh... not your blog, man. You've just been squatting here for a week or so.
I must be irritating you. Then why are you reading this blog?
Perhaps shot_info knows that this isn't [ahem] your blog.
Who are the theory deniers and conspiracy theorists? Do I really need to spell it out for you?
You could have looked up conspiracy theory at Merriam Webster, but for some reason, didn't.
conspiracy theory
One entry found for conspiracy theory.
Main Entry: conspiracy theory
Function: noun
: a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators
OK, I accept that I make mistakes. I'm just a regular guy after all.
I accept that we were TOLD that the remains of what appears to be a jet engine came from flight 77.
But where is the proof? Any serial numbers from that engine that tie it back to Flight 77?
How about luggage, bodies, and the SECOND engine?
Can you show me any of that?
We are taking about the "official" investigation of the most important event of the 21st century. How can they claim they have DNA evidence for ALl the passengers at flight 77, yet major portions of the plane are simply not there?
Moving the goalposts again. Luggage bodies, personal effects? Check. All you need to do a DNA test is a tiny ammout of remains. A chip of bone. A tooth. Complete and total incineration would be required to destroy all the DNA. Obviously, this didn't occur.
And.... the same goes for all the articles at jod911.com
What journals have they been submitted to?
Non sequiter.
Occam's razor refers to simple explanations that FIT ALL THE AVAILABLE EVIDENCE.
Again from MW...
Occam's razor
One entry found for Occam's razor.
Main Entry: Oc·cam's razor
Variant(s): also Ock·ham's razor /'ä-k&mz-/
Function: noun
Etymology: William of Occam
: a scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities
Obviously we disagree as as to validity of various ignored pieces of evidence...
The standard theory has solid evidence for it. The CTs require the use of massive ammounts of circumstantial evidence, misinterpretation of data, selective use of quotes, bad math, and a misunderstanding of basic physics (faster or near free fall speeds), huge levels of twists and turns of a massive hidden plot. One passes the razor, one fails.
solar roller,
"You can pontificate all you want regarding elastic loads, static loads, and the point of no return but it still does not explain how the majority of the twin tower's mass fell through the path of MOST resistance, at near free fall speed."
No, it's the momentum transfer analysis that does explains that. The "pontification" is merely some hand-waving about why the column and truss system won't slow things down much further than the effects of momentum transfer (inertia) will. I am not a civil engineer, but I have acquired a smattering of knowledge about structural engineering, so this is a "semi-educated" guess.
Take a straight straw. Put it upright on a table and push down on one end. Notice how much force it will withstand. Now push down on a straw with a kink in it. Notice it withstands much less force. This is how columns behave when they buckle. This is the basis of my "semi-educated" guess, and yes it is "hand-wavey".
I'm not sure a full treatment of the resistance of the column and truss system is even possible; it is a complicated collapse. Now, if you want me to analyze the effects of momentum transfer, I can certainly do that. For that I am an expert. But I doubt I will get a different answer than Greening.
"Please told start reminding me about the mass that fell outside the building's footprint. I'm talking about INSIDE the building's footprint..."
Eh? So am I. At least when it comes to analyzing the fall time. The material outside the footprint fell at anything from free-fall (nothing slowing it down) to days (air resistance for the small stuff). The building did not fall in a free fall, as can be seen by comparing it to the debris that was falling in free fall in the videos. But the slow down was fairly slight, which is what the momentum-transfer theory predicts.
Hey SR,
Go to MS word, type a word (say xxx), put _xxx_ around it and marvel at your grasp of technology.
Remember what I said about engineering? And your proof of your failure to understand it.
Anybody would think that cranks like you should be ignored because they are .... well, cranks. Instead, I just amuse myself watching you continuously try to explain things beyond your understanding.
As for "Ad-hominem", try looking it up. Your arguments are flawed because they are wrong. And you stink. Your arguments don't stink because you stink. But they are wrong and you still stink :-)
Here's a nickel, get yourself some education...(other than on trooooooth websites, although with your lack on understanding, I'm surprised you haven't taken your eye out with your mouse....or perhaps this is why your so one-eyed....hmmmmm).
This is the dumbest bunch of arm-chair scientists I've ever seen, thanks for a good laugh.
"This is the dumbest bunch of arm-chair scientists I've ever seen, thanks for a good laugh."
I gather you are referring to all those "scientists" on the trooth websites? They certainly are a laugh, and not really "dumb" per se but willfully ignorant.
The problem with the phrase "armchair scientists": It assumes that there's some magic barrier preventing people from learning anything about simple physics.
Of course, you don't need to be a scientist to realize that there's simply no realistic way the WTC could have been rigged for demolition while people were working there. Even if it could be rigged, the plan's ridiculously over-complicated.
jack from jersey,
Right back at ya. Gordon Ross may have degrees in mechanical and manufacturing engineering, but he doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to physics. And he's published in a "peer-reviewed" magazine, so presumably his peers don't know what they're talking about either. (They didn't catch his many errors). I have previously explained why I think his model is bunk, but even assuming his model, he makes some grave errors. To be specific:
( from http://www.worldtradecentertruth.com/Journal_5_PTransferRoss.pdf )
This assumption, while false, favours collapse so is not a problem when arguing against collapse.
This is fine if the columns are weakly coupled to the floors, such as if the floors have low spring constants. If the floors are rigid, you need a different formula:
Velocity = (floor height) x Square root (total spring constant for columns of one floor / mass of one floor)
This formula won't actually be correct on the scale of only a few floors. But just for kicks:
Velocity = (3.7 m) x Square root ((31 GN / m) / 4,636 ton)
= 304 m / s
So in .013 s, the wave will have travelled about 4 meters, involving one additional floor. (I'm using Ross's assumption that a 0.2% contraction represents 4 times the static load to calculate the spring constant.) But this "rigid floor" model is bogus.
This part is at least approximately true, assuming flexible floors. But that deflection will be at the columns, not across the entirety of the floors.
Yup.
This part is all ok. If anything he's underestimating the deflection.
Bzzt. See above what happens if you assume rigid floors. If you don't assume rigid floors you have to account for the propagation of the displacement waves across the floors.
(to be continued.)
(continued)
He's still assuming rigid floors...
We have to be careful here. Once we reach the elastic limit, there will be no further stress gradient, and thus no acceleration. What you will have is a gradually broadening compression front where the stories are accelerating downwards and the stress is increasing, and behind that a region where the stress (and strain!) is approximately constant near the elastic limit. That is because at the elastic limit the wave will rapidly attenuate.
The stories in the region of constant stress will actually be moving at a constant speed downward, and this speed is easy to calculate.
V = Velocity of compression wave x strain = 4500 m/s x (0.2 %) = 9 m / s
Ross could have stopped here. If you ignore the floors when calculating the progression of the compression wave (as he does), and you assume the columns start out straight (as he does), and you assume that the collapse start with only one story (as both he and Greening do), the columns would have withstood the impact (barely), never reaching their elastic limit. His model is bunk, but at least with weakly coupled floors it predicts what he says it does.
Again, he's still assuming rigid floors ...
Ok...
Depends on how you define "falling section". There's K.E. in the floors below in this model.
Ok.
Ok.
It's not particularly unreasonably for this story to have gone through the plastic phase simultaneously with the one below.
Bogus. The stress is not constant over the floors. the correct equation for the strain energy is:
E = 1/2 Elastic modulus x Integral over volume of (strain ^ 2)
And assuming the strain drops off linearly over the floors below (as Ross does), and constant cross section, this yeilds:
= 1/2 Elastic modulus x volume x max_strain ^2 / 3
= 1/6 (Elastic modulus x area x max_strain) x (height x max_strain)
= 1/6 (58,000,000 kg x 4 x g ) x (2 x .056 m)
= -42 MJ.
In other words, the factor for the "load profile" is 1/3, not 1/2.
Ok. 58,000,000 / 16 kg is probably a better estimate for the mass of a floor up here than Greening's estimate.
Actually they will not suffer plastic deformation, for the same reason the 24 floors below the collapse don't; the compression wave attenuates strongly in the plastic regime.
Same problem as before; the strain won't be the same for each story. And the compression wave will have reflected off the top of the tower, and the section will be vibrating in various modes caused by the initial failure. In short; a mess to calculate. I won't even try.
Same problem as before. This is likely an over-estimate, which is fine for building a case against collapse.
This is a dubious calculation, it assumes that the pulverization was the same for each floor, and occurred entirely when the collapse front reached that floor.
(to be continued)
(continued)
And this is crap. Gordon Ross doesn't understand inelastic collisions. In an inelastic collision, the energy lost from kinetic energy (what he calls "momentum losses") is what goes into plastic strain energy, pulverisation energy, sound, heat, etc. It doesn't just disappear into the ether. In other words, the "momentum losses" is the energy available in an inelastic collision. (There is some complication here because of gravitational potential energy.)
Like so (using his figures):
Energy sources:
Momentum Losses: 1389MJ
Additional gravitational potential energy:
Additional downward movement 95MJ
Compression of impacting section 32MJ
Compression of impacted section 24MJ
Total Energy available: 1540MJ
Energy sinks:
Plastic strain energy in lower impacted storey 244MJ
Plastic strain energy in upper impacted storey 215MJ
Elastic strain energy in lower storeys 64MJ
Elastic strain energy in upper storeys 126MJ
Pulverisation of concrete on impacting floor 304MJ
Pulverisation of concrete on impacted floor 304MJ
Total Energy required 1257MJ
Or if you want to account for the kinetic energy explicitly,
Energy sources:
Kinetic Energy: 2105MJ
Additional gravitational potential energy:
Additional downward movement 95MJ
Compression of impacting section 32MJ
Compression of impacted section 24MJ
Total Energy available: 2256MJ
Energy sinks:
Kinetic Energy: 716MJ
Plastic strain energy in lower impacted storey 244MJ
Plastic strain energy in upper impacted storey 215MJ
Elastic strain energy in lower storeys 64MJ
Elastic strain energy in upper storeys 126MJ
Pulverisation of concrete on impacting floor 304MJ
Pulverisation of concrete on impacted floor 304MJ
Total Energy required 1973MJ
Incidentally, as Greening points out, Ross forgets to account for the kinetic energy in the 24 floors moving at various speeds (assuming, yet again, rigid floors) below the collapsed floor. Accounting for them would help his case, but ironically only in my accounting rather than his bogus one.
CarD51Short:
"So the Russians knew? The Russians (and most of Europe) know 9/11 was an inside job, as well. Most governments around the world know about 9/11."
Evidence, please.
It appears as though "solar roller" has a very casual relationship with the truth. The Popular Mechanics book explains how the conspiracy liars have distorted the seismograph data from the Lamont-Doherty laboratories.
Nobody has yet produced a demolition expert who takes the fantasists' fabrications and falsehoods seriously (remember, Jowenko said that the collapse of WTC 1 & 2 looked nothing like controlled demolition).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3DRhwRN06I&eurl=
There you go lying again Ronnie, link above to a demolition expert who says it was imploded.
Ronald Wieck,
Any demolition engineer speaking of controlled demolition in the context of the world trade center would probably lose their explosives licence within 24 hours of "coming out! no?
yohnzeye:
"Any demolition engineer speaking of controlled demolition in the context of the world trade center would probably lose their explosives licence within 24 hours of "coming out! no?"
Sure, because we all know that every structural engineer in the WHOLE WORLD works for the US government. BTW, what's a "demolition engineer"?
And we also know for a fact that all structural engineers in the whole world are greedy, selfish bastards who care more about their licenses than about any sort of obligations towards truth and justice, and are all easily cowed by such a threat.
My apologies for all the sarcasmometers I've destroyed with the above.
summerisle said,
Sure, because we all know that every structural engineer in the WHOLE WORLD works for the US government.
I say, my point was that any (American) "demolition expert"... who wants to practice such demolition in the U.S.A. (or Iraq) must be thusly approprietly licenced to handle explosives.
...and that such licence could easily be...denied or revoked...
summerisle said,
BTW, what's a "demolition engineer"?
hmmm... demo engineer..how do I make this up....
they are the like the conductor of an orchestra
coach of a baseball team...I dunno!
If I went to school to learn (or teach)about bringing down buildings,into their own footprints,using explosives. And then graduated (or taught) would I be a demo engineer?
Do they have school for that?
Here's a whacko conspiracy theory if I've ever heard one -
The President of a country, after being informed that two jet airliners have crashed into skyscrapers in a capital city, does nothing more than look stupified while he continues a visit to a school full of young children.
While people are leaping to their death from a flaming inferno seemingly under terrorist attack, the President patiently listens for several more minutes to kids talk about a pet goat.
If anyone is able to rationalize this insane and treasonous behaviour then they must have more than tin foil on their head. To those I extend my condolences.
It's good to see occasional contributions to this thread; it's a gem.
It's also perversely reassuring to know that someone finds significance in the fact that a US president, already regarded by many as ineffectual and not very bright, acted stunned when he received the most stunning news of his life.
Anyone who finds that behavior too unusual to accept at face value, so much so as to accept an elaborate conspiracy theory in preference, will never have enough tin foil.
Once again, the internet leads back to ORAC. Thanks, I needed some help debunking a debunker debunker. Unless, of course, this whole Orac thing is part of a much larger conspiracy.
It seems that some Americans will believe just about anything!
"You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time." - Abraham Lincoln
A recent study published in Science (see Miller et al.) documents that fully one-third of American adults believe that evolution is "absolutely false" while only 14% of adults acknowledge that evolution is "definitely true." In Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, and France over 80% of adults had no trouble accepting the facts of evolution, nor did 78% of Japanese. Indeed, of 33 countries surveyed as to their acceptance of evolution, the United States ended up as 32nd on the list. Turkey finished dead last, while Cyprus beat the US by a whisker. Perhaps in response to the "intelligent design" movement, the percentage of U.S. adults accepting evolution has actually declined over the last 20 years. Supporting this notion, Miller et al. found that "the total effect of fundamentalist religious beliefs on attitudes toward evolution (using a standardized metric) was nearly twice as much in the United States as in the nine European countries." They concluded that "individuals who hold a strong belief in a personal God and who pray frequently were significantly less likely to view evolution as probably or definitely true than adults with less conservative religious views." (Miller et al.)
Miller, J. D., Scott, E. C., and Okamoto, S. (2006) Science communication. Public acceptance of evolution. Science 313, 765-766