9/11

[AdamAndWill]

O boy. I still don't see how anyone in their right mind can believe stuff like that, Mike. What other govt conspiracies do you believe in? I know better than try to argue with someone who argues for a hobby. I dont trust the govt more than you do but believing they killed over 3000 people and destroyed billions in buildings and aircraft just to scare people takes a real warped mind to believe.

Will: Thank you Ray. Most of the rhetoric here has left me...speechless. People can always find so-called evidence to support whatever theory they embrace.

My friend Alex is a former Navy SEAL who now works for Homeland Security (the new and unnecessary police) - He's a pretty smart guy, and when I see the sacrifices he and his family make for his job, I find it hard to believe that he's being a dupe for the Evil Forces of Darkness. And those who want to preach about what civilian cops do and don't need, should join me on the streets. You just might be surprised.

It's easy to sit in your nice, safe living room and disrespect those of us who are actually out there doing something to try to make a difference..

So yeah, thanks Ray. And thank you for your service man...

[MikeW]

...Whilst we can forgive the Twin Towers for collapsing, because lets face it they were hit hard in the initial collision, thus undoubtedly weakening the structure, and most likely the blast wave of impact did in fact knock of the fire coating of the steel structure.

Ah, but that's the point. The fuel fire burned off in the first minutes. Wether the "fire coating" was dislodged is irrelevant. Steel melts in the neighborhood of 1370 degrees C (2500°F). You can NOT achieve those temperatures from an office furniture fire. Ever. And yet pools of molten steel were found beneath the WTC for DAYS afterward. Cf:

One source of data is a thermal map of Ground Zero created from infrared data collected by a NASA plane that overflew the site on September 16. The map, created by the U.S. Geological Survey, shows hot spots on the surface of the rubble that were above 700ºCelsius. After five days of cooling and despite being sprayed with water, they were still above the melting point of aluminum.

Moreover, had the buildings merely "collapsed" the collapse would a) have been asymmetrical (the damage was asymmetrical) b) would not have proceeded at near free-fall acceleration (the exact time of the tower's collapses is somewhat debated but is in the area of 9 to 11 *seconds* --- think about it, they were 110 stories tall -- that's a speed of TEN FLOORS PER SECOND -- *virtually NO resistance [aka support] from the lower, undamaged structure.* and c) there would have been huge chunks of concrete from the floor pans. All of the concrete was turned to extremely fine powder (in which explosive residues *have* been found).

[Anocxu]

My condolences to anyone hee that suffered the loss of a family or friend. ..

[Iceblink]

I admit I am a somewhat cynical and mistrusting person, but as much as I do not like or respect George W, I am not so cynical that I can ever believe he had any direct responsibility and I can't even believe he had specific knowledge this attack was coming that day. My cynicism just doesn't go that far that even this bad president would ever go that far to let thousands of Americans die in attacks on American soil. Anything out there suggesting the direct responsibility of this attack was anyone else but the terrorists is just speculation. Did the U.S. mess up in their handling of the aftermath in our handling of the war on terror and some of our privacies and freedoms? Yes. Were we lied to by people like Cheney and Rumsfeld about Iraqi involvement in the attack to lead us into war there? Yes, but this isn't information from links to obscure websites, it is information reported in our newspapers, television news, and major online news agencies in the U.S. and across the world. I am a cynical and questioning person, but that also includes questioning everything you see on the internet, because I am just not going to be one of those Jenny McCarthy anti-voxx, Obama birthers, who believes the government knew thousands were going to be killed on 9/11, Malaysia Flight 370 landed in Russia or North Korea where its passengers are being held, global warming is a scam, Princess Diana did not die in an accident but was killed, and man never landed on the moon. The internet is filled with claims that could make you believe any of those things, but it doesn't mean any of it is actually true.

[SHOman93]

September 11th is always a big deal in my household. Before I was born my mom was a flight attendant. She actually knew the pilot of the plane that crashed into the first twin tower. She always sends his family a card.

[Virge]

I wish I'd come in earlier on this thread. It's too late for me to try to put up a point by point counterpoint with the massive amount of "blicti' that's already been layed out for a conspiracy that I honestly did my best to >>UNDERSTAND<< from a impartial vantage point before making a decision.

Mike there was one thing that you said way back that really stuck out because I thought the same thing until I talked to a few people like fireman and MINERS who I go to school with. You said.....

reinforced steel structures have NEVER "collapsed" due to fire. Ever.

That's not true.

Here's exactly how it was explained to me and it's more plausible than your explanation.

Essentially what happened on 9/11/2001 was what would result if you drove a fully loaded 18 wheel fuel tanker truck into a skyscraper at over 100 miles an hour where firefighters could not reach it to extinguish the fire.

If you want to understand how structural steel and concrete react under those conditions don't compare them to random fires in other skyscrapers. Compare them to fully loaded fuel trucks on the steel and concrete of INTERSTATE BRIDGES WHERE FIREFIGHTERS DID REACH THEM. That's a fairer comparison.

Here's page one of a search for that. Read your heart out.
[B]fuel truck fire collapses interstate bridge[/B]

Also read up on the "spalling" of concrete under high temperatures versus the temperatures to turn structural steel into pliable putty. Steel gives way first at lower temperatures.

Now picture a fuel truck under an interstate bridge hitting a truck of potato chips and an truck of synthetic fabrics, office supplies and prefabricated furniture made from glue and wood chips and you'll get a better picture of how ti occurred. Monday at school freshmen melted 10 pounds of steel using nothing but a bit of charcoal lighter and the compressed recyclable plastics from the city garbage trucks plus oxygen to reach temperatures over 1600 centigrade.

It's a good thing they didn't have a winged fuel truck or they'd have made international news.

I don't remember the historian's name who said this but I remember reading it in 12th grade and realizing the words had wider implications than to a single historical event........

"faced with great incomprehensible disasters people construct even greater explanations."

In this case honestly .......... how does the conspiracy theory group think differ from the mentality that comes up with "it was god's punishment"???? They both come from people trying to retrofit the reality of the situation to fit within their pre-existing beliefs in either a vengeful god or a massive evil government that conspires to do unimaginable things. The biggest fault of the government is the same one that we see in them over and over ---- the bigger and more bureaucratic they become the more incompetent and thoroughly unable they are to deal with anything other than preserving themselves in circumstances they cannot control. The only "evidence" of a government conspiracy is their perpetual attempts to disguise their complete incompetence.

I'm done with this and hope most of you are too.

[MikeW]

I admit I am a somewhat cynical and mistrusting person, but as much as I do not like or respect George W, I am not so cynical that I can ever believe he had any direct responsibility and I can't even believe he had specific knowledge this attack was coming that day. My cynicism just doesn't go that far that even this bad president would ever go that far to let thousands of Americans die on attacks on American soil.

GWB was a very bad joke played on Americans by people far more cynical and sinister than you want to imagine. They had him right where they wanted him on 9/11, right where he belonged, on TV in front of a group of remedial readers. I doubt he knew very much. These kinds of things are always on a "need to know" basis and GWB didn't need to know much. (Cheney and Rumsfeld, that's quite another matter).

Even so, Bus made several peculiar statements after the fact. One example is what he claimed to be his first thoughts upon seeing the North Tower struck by a plane on television before he went into the school room. He said, "I saw an airplane hit the tower - the TV was obviously on - and I used to fly myself, and I said, 'There's one terrible pilot.' And I said, 'It must have been a horrible accident.'"

Aside from the fact this statement is idiotic even for GWB, there WAS no live video of the first plane strike. How could there be? Or, put another way, if GWB isn't lying (as he often did) then this itself is evidence of foreknowledge.

The video of the first plane strike wasn't aired until hours after the *second* plane struck. It was shot by a French documentarian filming the NYFD. The plane flew very close to them and he pans up from the street to catch it just before impact. Later this same videographer follows his NYFD team into the lobby of the North Tower where his video shows the extent of the damage--marble casing blown off the walls, huge floor to ceiling windows blown out. All, allegedly, from an airliner impact that had occurred 90+ floors above.

But getting back to Bush even he should have known that a "terrible pilot" could not accidentally fly into the world trade center on a cloudless day. But even if Bush was too stupid to know that, he was certainly surrounded by people -- most notably his Secret Service contingent -- who *would* have known. The FAA knew there were multiple hijackings in progress and that information was in the system. We're supposed to believe Bush's SS detail knew nothing of this. It is absurd on its face.

Bush goes into the classroom and watches children practicing their remedial reading exercises. About 3 minutes into this, Secretary Card whispers something into Bush's ear. We're told he said, "A second plane has hit, America is under attack." Whatever Card said, Bush continued to sit in the classroom for another seven to eight minutes. He then gets up and gives a brief statement to the press. The motorcade finally departs about a half hour after Bush was notified that "America is under attack."

One could say the Commander and Chief was rather nonchalant about the whole thing except that the man who was running the whole national security shown on 9/11, Dick Cheney, *was* in the situation room. I think it is absolutely astounding that the president and vice president only consented to testify before the 9/11 Commission provided a) they were not under oath; b) they did so together; c) it was in closed session; and d) no records or notes of any kind were allowed.

Our Democracy at work.

...Anything out there suggesting the direct responsibility of this attack was anyone else but the terrorists is just speculation. ...

Your statement is itself a speculation. You speculate the information you've been fed through the corporate media from agencies of the US government regarding the identity of the terrorist, the hijackings and so forth, is accurate, factual and complete.

Can concrete be ground into fine talcum powder simply by falling through the air? Can this same powder contain un-ignirted chips of nano-thermite? Can it contain extremely tiny spherical droplets of iron -- iron that had been molten and dispersed as a fine mist that solidified in the air?


http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1165/table_1.html

A micrograph published in a USGS report shows iron-rich spheres in the dust produced during the WTC's destruction.

Either the laws of Newtonian physics were working on 9/11 or they were not. Every action creates a reaction; conversely every reaction is generated by an action. Action is energy. Where does the energy come from to turn concrete and office furnishings into talcum powder, dismember massive steel columns at a rate of 10 floors per second, accelerating some structural elements ballistically, driving them into buildings across the street? Where does the energy come from to melt iron and disperse it into extremely fine droplets -- or to keep the "pile" hot for 100 days after the event?

Jet fuel?

All that is just the short list. Even so, it represents verifiable and demonstrable observations that are not only inconsistent with, but irreconcilable with, the official narrative of 9/11.

[MikeW]

That's not ture

A structural deformation, even a partial structural failure, does not come even close to being equal to what was observed on 9/11. None of these buildings collapsed completely -- let alone at near free fall speed, propelling hundred ton girders across the street while turning the building's contents into fine powder.

[Virge]

I'm disappointed Mike. It appears you've spent a great deal more time trying to convince yourself that you are right than you have trying to prove yourself wrong. Scientific method is a good thing.

You've given a clear outline of your pre-existing contempt for GWB and it doesn't take much imagination to see that had the president been someone you approved of your theory's villian would have been completely different.

"Here's the conclusion I want. Make the facts fit my pre-existing conclusion." Sounds just like what fundamentalists do to me. "Goddidit" would be just as *credible* and saved space.


This has moved past being a search for UNDERSTANDING truth and has gone into being a struggle to BE RIGHT.

I'm going to do my Pontius Pilate routine and wash my hands of this situation and get back to living a life.

Adios.

[trywait]

too much people died; and like with every major world event, there will always be conspiracy theories.

I for one, am saddened by the people that lost their lives on that fateful day. it will forever be etched in time, from the airplane passengers, to the first responders, to those working at the pentagon and wtc. thousands of people died and for that, we should always honor and pay our respects.

and don't even get me started with the amount of troops that never made it home from that gwot. I may not have agreed with certain policies because of some politicians, but I have and will always support the men and women in uniform. and unless you've worn that uniform or became a part of that uniformed family, it is a different way of life.