August 31, 2004

• "What is a conspiracy theorist to think?" That some conspiracy theorists have outstanding flash presentation skills. Just out of curiousity, what is the point of this? There's no dispute as to what happened at the WTC, and the Pentagon crash is almost forgotten, where was the benefit to stage a fake attack?
• What I've always wondered is why don't you see a plane hit during the security camera footage from the Pentagon? Everything that I saw on the news was from like one second before, and one second after.
• Just out of curiousity, what is the point of this? There's no dispute as to what happened at the WTC, and the Pentagon crash is almost forgotten, where was the benefit to stage a fake attack? If you want me to go all Illuminati on you, there are theories that 9/11 was the enactment of the "Killing of the King" ritual, designed to invoke mass hysteria and unite the populace. Personally, I want to know where those missing videos are, and having not read 9/11 Commission report in its entirety, I wonder if they are mentioned there at all.
• There's no dispute as to what happened at the WTC Not from anyone rational, no.
• A conspiracy theorist is supposed to think...um...that everything is a consipiracy. It must be very comforting to believe such nonsense. Two questions, then, after watching that flash: 1. What happened to Flight 77, if it didn't crash into the Pentagon? 2. What crashed into the Pentagon? Didn't see either question addressed by the conspiracists.
• There's no dispute as to what happened at the WTC Except for Building 7.
• Man, I'd love to be the guy who plans conspiracies for the Illuminati. "Guys, I've got a great idea, wondering if we could brainstorm it a bit?" "Sure, Jeff." "OK, how about we arrange for some Islamic fundamentalists to hijack these four planes, yeah, and we let two of them fly into the World Trade Centre, right?" "Uh huh. Like it so far. Carry on." "Okay, but then what we do, is we re-hijack this other plane back, and we fly it out of the country - avoiding all radar stations, obviously - and then we "disappear" all the passengers. And instead, we take this smaller passenger jet, which we've modded to act and sound like a heat-seeking missile,and we fly that into the Pentagon instead! And everybody'll think it was the 757 that did it!" "Cool idea. Er... why?" "Because, I don't know, because there's one specific person inside the Pentagon we want to kill? And we can only do that with a heat-seeking missile which looks like a Lear Jet? Nobody would ever suspect, once those other planes had hit the Twin Towers. It's be, like, the greatest bit of misdirection ever. Nobody'd ever think that it wasn't the 757, but our special this-one-guy-seeking missile jet-plane thing which blew up the Pentagon! Especially if we also get some invisible fighter jets to shoot the fourth plane down in a field in Pennsylvania." "Uh, Jeff, I'm really not sure-" "Hey, listen, I'm just the creative guy here, you know? That's stuff, you know, the sort of stuff... we throw that over to the logistics guys. I'm more concept-focussed." "Jeff. I think you need to take a holiday."
• Didn't see either question addressed by the conspiracists. Since when do conspiracists need to have all of the answers?
• The one thing that's alsways troubled me about the Pentagon incident was that it's such a low building ... it's a bloody good pilot who can fly a 757 into a low building so accurately that they hit at ground level and don't damage the lawn ...
• We still know next to nothing about the terrorists, though. It seems fairly likely, to me at least, that they were some sort of special forces unit (or at least had decent training). Four hijackings, all of which were successful, coupled with the dificulty of flying planes into buildings - it all seems to have been a fairly precise operation.
• Four hijackings, three of which were successful (in the sense that they achieved their ultimate goal, not merely in that they successfully hijacked a plane). Two of which, I suspect, were more successful than they planned for - I doubt it was ever their intention to make the WTC fully collapse, given that came as something of a surprise to plenty of structural engineers as well. And the Pentagon - yeah, it takes incredible skill to fly a plane into the ground floor of a building like that, if that's what you're trying to do. However, if you were aiming for, say, the centre of the Pentagon - which is where I'd want to fly my hijacked plane if I was a suicide-hijacky sort of person - it demonstrates, perhaps, a little less skill.
• Except that the center of the Pentagon is just an empty courtyard. Or is it?
• "Just out of curiousity, what is the point of this? There's no dispute as to what happened at the WTC, and the Pentagon crash is almost forgotten, where was the benefit to stage a fake attack?" I want to read that someday, in a history book, extensively footnoted and annotated with photos and videos. I doubt to live long enough.
• Maybe long enough to learn HTML... maybe. Crap.
• What a terrible post! This kind of tinfoil hat stuff makes us all more stupid just for having read it.
• Seth?
• The Pentagon is built like a brick... well, it's really well-built. It's reinforced to withstand a nuclear blast, for cryin' out loud. The attack would have been much more devastating if the plane had sort of—sorry for the language here—smeared itself out over the top of all five rings instead of just smashing into the outer ring. The building absorbed and dissipated the impact admirably. Thousands of people could have lost their lives. Now, did the guy flying the plane know this? Was the Pentagon attack a fumble? Or was he aiming right for the base of the E ring? We'll never know. But the thought kinda chills me. So. Back to the merits of the case. If the Pentagon was hit by a missile, what clipped the light standards along Route 27? I don't think cruise missiles do that. Secondly, where did the fire come from? That entire segment of the E ring was engulfed in a holocaust. The Pentagon, being a building constructed entirely of stone, wouldn't have burned like that on its own. The area was obviously doused in jet fuel. Oh, by the way, on the "no debris" thing? Nuh-uh. Of course, the Crazy People™ will say it was planted, but whatever. It hasn't been long enough since 9/11 yet for this to be funny. But someday it will be, I think.
• Nuh-uh Yeah, that pretty much debunks it by itself.
• The thing to keep in mind with any conspiracy theory is that the more people "in" on the lie, the harder it is to pull off (and I would guess the relationship is exponential). This goes for 9/11 conspiracies, the moon landing, JFK, and any other wacko conspiracy you can think of. Once you've got more than 2 or 3 people who need to keep their stories straight, you can pretty much write it off as impossible. In this particular case, you would probably have hundreds of people involved, including White House & military officials, FAA and NTSB investigators, and eyewitnesses. What are the chances that not one of them would come forward with proof of the hoax? Zero.
• it's a bloody good pilot who can fly a 757 into a low building so accurately that they hit at ground level and don't damage the lawn ... Even a heartless insane terrorist understands the value of a good lawn.
• Well, the nice flash makes it more convincing Hunt the Boeing.
• Even a heartless insane terrorist understands the value of a good lawn. That gave me a good chuckle ...
• This is what I posted in another blog several weeks ago: The information that is available on those sites and sites like them are right up there with the "Face on Mars" and "We never went to the moon" "evidence." I've looked at quite a few clips that allege to show "what really happened" and I still donn't see what they are talking about. If there was a shred of credibility to this why hasn't ANY even SEMI-reputable news outlet made a huge deal about it? One might argue that the American Networks are under the thumb of the governement, but what about Free Speech TV or Deocracy Now? Why hasn't Al Jaseera (sp?) shown this footage? I would think that they at least would have a vested interest in "proving" that followers of Islam were not responsible. Or how about China, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Syria? Surely at least ONE of those countries would be interested in revealing "the truth" to their citizens.
• How about if I refute myself, eat crow, and submit that a simple snopes search proves this website wrong. Serves me right for allowing the fancy flash to get me all worked up. This is very bad news for me.
• A conspiracy theorist is supposed to think...um...that everything is a consipiracy. It must be very comforting to believe such nonsense. You know, I hear people say this all the time, but I'm not so sure. I mean, conspiracy theorists think that everything's a conspiracy! How comforting can that really be? Exciting, maybe, but more disquieting than comforting. I'd be freaked out if I were a conspiracy theorist.
• How about if I refute myself, eat crow, and submit that a simple snopes search proves this website wrong. However, the snopes article is based on two articles with very suspicious publishing dates: "Harrison, Rebecca. "Sept. 11 Conspiracy Theory Book Lures French." Reuters. 1 April 2002. Henley, Jon. "US Invented Air Attack on Pentagon, Claims French Book." The Guardian. 1 April 2002." /ducking
• This is very bad news for me. Not at all FreckleFaerie. Thanks to your post, we have learned: A. Flash presentations can really work people into a questioning frenzy. B. Monkeys are good at working through said frenzy, and debunking paranoid untruths. C. Heartless insane terrorists understand the value of a good lawn. Great post.
• Pure crap. Now, whether Flight 93 was shot down... that seems to be pretty well documented.