i watched that last week, and although i am not big on conspiracy theories, i do find it difficult to understand how the pentagon did not have a 757-sized hole in it after being hit by a 757 hard enough to waporize the entire plane.
"757 sized hole"
Long story short - energy transference.
The engineering doesn't bother me. Plenty of things I don't understand on that end that I'm willing to leave to experts. What does bother me is the little fiddly bits that point to Cui Buono.
Plenty of that going on and it's too easy to get distortion into the facts.
As a f'rinstance - ever notice how all the focus in the Kennedy assassination conspiracy stuff is on Oswald and the grassy knoll instead of little stuff like, say, losing the president's brain?
Same schtick here.
What Smedleyman said. Exactly.
Why would we want to preserve the president's brain? Seriously.
In case in the future we ever had a president that badly needed a brain. Duh.
Like now.
Seen this dishonest movie in previous version. Was enough for me. The hole in the pentagon looked pretty damn big to me, considering the building was made of steel reinfoced concrete and airplanes have a tendency to collapse. Even if people did sneak in and plant bombs in the WTC ... all without anybody noticing a single thing out of place AND then conspired to steal planes and fly them into it making it all look like moslem extremists complete with perfect back stories...
These guys aren't gonna be able to prove a damn thing. Its like Kennedy. They're STILL debating it 30 years after the fact, and OJ's "the real killer " is STILL on the loose on a golf course some where. As long as they are on about steel doesn't weaken at jet fuel fire temperatures they don't need to be taken seriously. Its done. Its over. The metallurgy experts have spoken, as has William of Ockham.
The rest of us, We're all tired of hearing 9-11 this and 9-11 that. 3000 people died, and the red cross stole the money for the survivors. More people die on the roads every year.. more people die of heart disease every year. More people die of second hand smoke every year. Yet they aren't putting people in secret detention camps for speeding, overeating, or buying cigarettes. Its time to grow the hell up while doing the delicate balancing act of trying to prevent another one while not destroying the society with fear of random death from cause #3561.
There are enough real problems in the world, solveable problems, without going and creating some dumbass new one to waste all our time with. We could start by impeaching the bastard who still hasn't caught OBL, and who got a couple thousand of our soldiers killed on false premises.
"The rest of us, We're all tired of hearing 9-11 this and 9-11 that."
Don't speak for the rest of us so quickly. I want to hear more about it, just coherent, sane investigation.
"Why would we want to preserve the president's brain? Seriously."
It would be a vitally important part of a murder investigation, as it would contain physical evidence such as bullet-fragment tracks, indicating path & velocity, & ballistic evidence. Further, a missing piece of evidence such as this is astonishing in a case such as the assassination of a president.
Ahem... You mean.. "The tragic events of September the 11th, 2001" to call it simply 9-11 is just wrong of you...
The chances of a conspiracy theory being valid are inversely proportional to the number of people "in on it" who would need to keep their mouths shut.
However, this administration's propensity for lies and deceit lend instant credibility to any and all conspiracies involving them.
Just because there is no acid test doesn't mean it's all fool's gold. Still, I gave up on conspiracies when I noticed not a single person cared about "genuine" conspiracies until the "authorities" told them to. I just can't justify wasting my life anymore thinking it's all shit and deceit in the mouths and ears of lambs.
...and for the record there is nothing tragic or patriotic or brave or honorable or respectable or freedomlicious about Sept. 11. It is just another day; a day in which the world was blessed with another Insolent Chimp. And I don't mean Bush, that's just a coincidence. And could you people please stop trying to ruin my fucking birthday, it's been 4 goddamn years already. If this bullshit goes on for much longer I'll take down the new building myself. For Jehovah, even. Rest in peace, for crying out loud.
Even if people did sneak in and plant bombs in the WTC ... all without anybody noticing a single thing out of place
What are you talking about? Numerous people did notice things "out of place".
making it all look like moslem extremists complete with perfect back stories...
perfect back stories? They have absurd back stories, that don't match the happenings on 9-11. Hell, some of them are still making back stories, by somehow not dying.
The metallurgy experts have spoken
Yes they did, and they said that the steel should've held. That the steel was specifically chosen because of the fact that it can withstand 2000F fires and still retain structural integrety.
The rest of us, We're all tired of hearing 9-11 this and 9-11 that
No, just the ostriches are.
Its like Kennedy. They're STILL debating it 30 years after the fact
It's still being debated because of evidence being missing. Evidence winds up missing because of ostriches that would rather avoid looking at the incident. They're enablers, and part of the problem.
Meanwhile,,
Why Larry Silverstein can’t get it up
http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_611.shtml
"...but I'm already telling my 8 year-old son to keep himself physically fit so that one glorious September morning in the year 2038 ???? he can walk into the National Archives and find out what the CIA and the FBI knew".
Hope never dies.
HO HUM, typical conspiracy stuff. Take a bunch of stuff way out of context, deliberately misinterpret, ignore the advice and opinions of real experts, shake and serve in a tinfoil hat and thong, and you have a conspiracy cocktail.
The fact is that most conspiracies, such as they are, occur after the fact. Most of the time the people in the conspiracy have nothing to do with the event at the heart of the conspiracy. Ex: When Kennedy was killed by a lone wacko it caused people to start turning over rocks in the intelligence community. The FBI and CIA obfustacated and obscured stuff not because they had anything to do with the killing but because they were afraid that other nefarious things they had done would be uncovered.
Besides, are we really supposed to believe that a conspiracy involving airline officials, air traffic controllers, and thousands of others could be kept quiet?
I think I come down in the area of "what rocket88 said." I don't think people are as good at keeping secrets as would be necessary for most conspiracy theories to be true.
I was there, heard it, saw it. Then followed news. On the spot reports, all that. Stunned, shocked, indescribable. Didn't believe official hype at the time, don't now. Too bloody convenient. Enough money, enough power, patriotic beatup to shut mouths, threats, fear, ridicule, lose jobs/house/everything, people locked up - no question. Fascists did/do it real well. Some mob reckons they got the right to rule and off you go. Population control's easy. Just find the tag and you got it. Organised religion is the topper on that one, been doing in for centuries. Take a good look around. As for why? Because they can!
I agree with Knickerbocker, too. This gives me great hope for the world. It appears all different types of people with all different kinds of world views see something odd in the official story.
"Besides, are we really supposed to believe that a conspiracy involving airline officials, air traffic controllers, and thousands of others could be kept quiet?"
That's kind of begging the question. The short answer is yes, because under the imperative of patriotism, national security & legal threat, large groups of people have successfully kept massive covert operations quiet, in some cases for decades.
The long answer would involve showing that none of the civilian air-traffic controllers, airline officials etc would actually need to know anything about the workings of the 'conspiracy' or plan, if there was one. Many of the kinds of people you mention have reported oddities that day, & continue to do so.
Did you know that six air traffic controllers who dealt with the hijacked airliners on 9-11, made a tape recording a few hours later describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it? Why? And what kind of message does this send to others? A climate of fear goes a long way to shutting mouths.
In any case, all that assumes that the events were orchestrated by the US government & required a lot of people to coordinate it. According to the official story, it only needed 19. What do you find more unbelievable, a bunch of half-trained fundo maniacs pulling it off, or pros? /shrug
InsolentChimp, apologies. But thems the breaks. Sorry you're bummed. :(
Then there is 911 Conspiracy - A Skeptic’s View
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0604/S00363.htm
That whole "people can't keep secrets" bit is pretty naive. You guys must must MUST think that nuclear proliferation has occured to every country across the planet. Because people talk, you know?
One of the biggest difference between a 9-11 leak and a nuclear leak is that the person who leaks nuclear info stands to gain a ginormous amount of money, immediately. They'd be set for life. Just the opposite for a 9-11 leak. Any person that KNEW a 9-11 secret would also know, better than anyone EVER, to keep their mouth shut. Because you don't betray an organization that you KNOW slaughtered 3000+ people.
(I'm not saying the government did it. I just find the rational of "people would talk" to be incredibly naive. frustratingly naive. pull-out-my-hair-and-hit-you-over-the-head-with-it naive.)
Besides, if the govenment did it, making this public would be a terrible thing and will cause this country to desintegrate. Oh wait, that was on 24.
I think the conspiracy theorists have come up with some fascinating questions that defy easy answers. However, they leave behind another set of puzzles which they cannot answer and that are just as troubling. For instance, if it was not the 757 that crashed into the Pentagon, what happened to the plane and the people aboard? I would think it would be pretty hard to scuttle a radar-tracked commerical 757 in broad daylight. Were there no cell phone calls from that plane? Are all those related to the dead keeping mum for some reason?
I should've appended this to the grassy knoll thread! Sorry, petebests.
It's a pretty good FPP by itself. This court finds you not guilty by reason of fishtickyness. Case dismissed!
*thwack!*
I haven't looked in to an explanation for the PUT volume daily averages the film quoted for the week before 9/11/2001, but saying that PUT options are created to profit on the dropping of a stock value is only half of the story. For every PUT buyer (bears) there is a PUT seller (bulls). Then, saying the volume quadrupled without telling you what the value did is like hearing crying when someone hears they are pregnant. Without further information, you don't know if it's a good or bad thing.
If all of their "facts" are like that, their case is pretty flimsy.
"if it was not the 757 that crashed into the Pentagon, what happened to the plane and the people aboard?"
I've heard this question from critics of alternate theories & I don't get why people ask it. In a hypothetical situation where the government or people in it have orchestrated the events of 9-11 2001 & killed nearly 3,000 people in the WTC, they aren't going to shirk at killing the passengers of the 'real jet' to keep 'em quiet, if we are talking about a switcharoonie type deal. Maybe they set the autopilot direct into the Atlantic. Maybe they lock the passengers up in some klink inside a base, never to be allowed contact with anyone. Maybe they shoot them in the back of the head & bury them in a ditch in the Mojave desert. Who knows? They junk the plane, no problem there.
The *other* question I always hear asked is, what about the relatives? Why don't they say something? Well, why would they? They're not in on the conspiracy, if that's what it is. They don't know anything more than us. They believe the official story.
How hard is it to get rid of a radar-tracked commercial jet in broad daylight? Not as hard as all that! There are hundreds of jets in the air at any given time in the US, & they can only be identified to the ATC by their transponder signals, AFAIK. In order to evade identification, you turn off the aircraft's transponder. Bam, the plane just becomes a nameless blip on the screen. That's exactly what the hijackers did, they turned off the transponders & changed the flight course dramatically. If you are pulling a switcheroonie deal, you fly up another plane into the same course as the 'real one' is put into descent under radar range.
According to some people, there was a simulated NORAD hijack training-exercise that same morning, adding more confusion. We all know about the astonishingly long response time before interceptors were sent up, this may explain that in part. There was a lot of confusion that morning, & I remember there were reports of multiple hijacked or unidentified jets at one point. /shrug
The subtext of the questions like those above is, really, "our government wouldn't do this to us!" - which isn't a question, it's a declaration. Of faith. In which case it's time for the person making that declaration to really ask themselves, do they really think the government is incapable of doing these things, or it doesn't contain people able to do these things?
I don't know what to think, a lot of the conspiracy theories are too far out, or obviously just wrong. I only know that the government story is bullshit.
Hit the 20 x 3 Chyren. Govt's got military, military follow orders. People wanta believe their lot are the good guys. Bullshit's swallowed faster than fact. Fact's boring. Bullshit slides down easy, it's flavoured with lotsa herbs and spices and fills a lotta empty bellies.
Let's throw a few more thought into the mix!
how the pentagon did not have a 757-sized hole in it
I didn't buy into any conspiracy theories, but I did wonder about that pentagon plane for a while, until...
Have you seen the film footage researchers dug up from a couple decades ago, where the military crashed a jet at full speed into a concrete wall to see what happens? Plane completely disintegrates, wall stands firm.
Its like Kennedy. They're STILL debating it 30 years after the fact
I like to think of Kennedy as recursively baffling. The more you look into the details, the more impossible it becomes to reach any conclusion or understanding at all. Except possibly about the complexity of happenstance.
this administration's propensity for lies and deceit lend instant credibility to any and all conspiracies
But have they really managed to keep anything quiet? Truly deceive anyone paying attention at all?
This administration lies as standard operating procedure, and tries very hard to avoid giving out any info that isn't to their direct partisan advantage, but they haven't really managed to really deceive anyone for very long. That requires too much administrative competency.
Cheney's energy task force, the administration's screw-up contributions to 9-11, Abu Ghraib, sweet-heart deals for Halliburton etc, the Plame leak, illegal NSA programs, Bush's signing statements, Cheney's hunting accident! Etc, etc, etc!
The administration has done a great job managing these scandals, and shifting people's attention while keeping the blame from being pinned down, but BushCo hasn't been able to keep anything under wraps for very long.
Even before the invasion of Iraq the evidence about no WMDs was out in the open. They just convinced more people not to pay attention to it.
said that the steel should've held. That the steel was specifically chosen because of the fact that it can withstand 2000F fires
I happened to read a profile within few weeks of 9-11 with a very well respected architectural professor who was tortured on that fateful day with the immediate knowledge that the towers were coming down as soon as the planes hit, and there wasn't anyone he could get hold of to warn.
The problem supposedly wasn't the steel, but how it was put together.
large groups of people have successfully kept massive covert operations quiet, in some cases for decades
I would argue that they only kept things quiet because no one happened to be looking in that direction. Everyone's looked at 9-11. Everyone's looking at BushCo.
They kept the Manhattan Project quiet, but at the time who would have expected the government to embark on a ginormously expensive research project to build a Doomsday Weapon based on then esoteric principles of physics in the middle of a world war?
Any person that KNEW a 9-11 secret would also know, better than anyone EVER
Except keep in mind that the bigger the conspiracy, the safer the leaker.
The danger to a leaker is always that the leak will be traced back to them. But the bigger the required conspiracy, the more impossible it becomes to attempt to narrow down who could have leaked. There are too many possibilities, and too many chances for the leaker to cover their tracks. After all, the smartest leakers never leak info that they're supposed to know.
Furthermore, the more public a scandal, the greater opportunity for the leaker to get away with leaking. When the scandal blow up in a big way, or even bigger way, worrying about who the leak was becomes one of the last priorities.
President's Brain: Tastes great, less filling.
As someone who stood in downtown Manhattan and saw/heard/smelled the events of that day (I missed seeing the first plane, but heard the explosion as I was ascending the subway steps - - then saw the second plane and the resulting explosion in all of its glory), my gut feeling is that nothing more than two planes impacted the WTC (i.e., there were no explosive devices, etc...). It was immediately and painfully clear to me that the structures wouldn't be able to sustain themselves with such tremendous forces having acted on them. While I find most of these conspiracy theories to be completely far-fetched, I wouldn't be surprised if some elements within the US Government had advance specific knowledge of what happened on that day.
Yeah, and I'm one of those people who is sick to death of hearing about this day - perhaps because it affected me so acutely
I've got some good digital pics that happened to catch the second plane
Oh yeah, I rememeber the last time I visited the WTC. I was standing at the base of one of the buildings and looking straight up (have some good pics of that as well) and wondering to myself, "I wonder what it is that will bring these buildings down one day in the future??" - - of course I was imagining that it would be in another lifetime...
Everything I've read on the buildings collapsing said that the steel frame was structurally damaged by the impact, load was shifted to undamaged members that were weakened by exposure to high temperature. I haven't been able to confirm reports of melted metal in the substructure, but I don't know what else was burning, and how much air was fanning the flames. I do know that steel weakens above its annealing point of 600-800 centigrade depending on the steel, which is readily achievable with jet fuel. Airplane engines used to have problems with the 1200 degree temperatures they were generating being too much for their steel. I think now they use titanium, but I'm not sure.
http://www.key-to-steel.com/Articles/Art15.htm
"FEMA and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the organization heading up the WTC BPAT, will announce the results and recommendations of the BPAT report at the hearing. Preliminary drafts of the report reveal that despite the massive impacts that punctured the building's exterior frame of support, the buildings were able to successfully redistribute the weight from higher floors and remain standing. However, the fires in the buildings, fed by jet fuel and flammable building contents, proved too intense, producing at their peak an amount of energy equivalent to the output of a typical nuclear power plant. The fires caused the steel, stripped of its fireproofing by the impact of the planes, to weaken and buckle. With water pipes for fire suppression systems severed, the fires led to the eventual progressive collapse of the buildings."
There have been other steel framed buildings that collapsed in fire, but the US trade center wasn't even such a sturdy design, it was a tube within a tube. Not the usual stacked boxes that most steel buildings have. Besides, who knows that that steel that was used in the trade center didn't have flaws. Lowest bidder makes more sense to me than orchestrated government conver-up. And one flawed member shifting its load to another member eventually passes a critical threshold and starts a cascade.
On the other side, we have guys talking about cutting explosives, planted there, by our government, to orchestrate the collapse of the buildings, our government that can't even keep its other lies straight. How's it going to manage a coverup of this scale when contrary to popular opinion, most government employees are decent people who want to do the public good.
Yes, they're brilliant masterminds of the illuminati. They pulled it off. It was demolition explosives.
Theres ALWAYS something out of place in an office building. ALWAYS.
You can keep at this theory for 30 years just like the Kennedy assassination folks. The president, the CIA, the FBI, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, all have committed real crimes, violated the constitution, and no one is willing to hold anyone to account for THEM. So good luck with this crusade.
There are plenty of real problems that need solving. We've had 5 years to produce the evidence of a conspiracy and have failed to get past the very first hurdle, to get the story straight. Maybe if we could identify a responsible party, they would be getting somewhere.
I would love to think that it took more than a bunch of moslem extremists to bring down the WTC, but no, they did.
This site as well is interesting:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html?page=4&c=y
So feel free to come up with non tin-foil hatted explanations for this osterich.
Nal. I find my self most concerned that I am unable to demolish your view. Good thought provoking points.
What's the author's name on the pop mech article?
The links by retank and Mord are good to read. I wish people would stop repeating the myth that the WTC fire wasn't hot enough. It was plenty hot for the steel to lose enough strength to hold up those freaking enormous buildings. The experts have repeatedly said so over and over, but people just refuse to listen I guess.
I've got some good digital pics that happened to catch the second plane
That's one thing that has puzled me ever since. I'd assume that after the first crash, every person in lower Manhattan with a digital camera and/or camcorder (and that wasn't personally affected or shaken too much by the terrible event) would have started getting as much footage as they could; I've seen a lot of pics and video, but not enough as I'd expect. Am I a heartless bastard for thinking people would put tripods on their windows facing the WTC, or just where is all that material?
"I wish people would stop repeating the myth that the WTC fire wasn't hot enough. It was plenty hot for the steel to lose enough strength to hold up those freaking enormous buildings."
Ok, I buy that. But, if that's the case, why did WTC7 come down in the same way as the towers? No plane hit it, & there was no huge fire caused by jet fuel to heat the steel. It fell down into its own footprint just like the towers. Don't tell me chunks of debris did that. Face it, the official line on that is bullshit. It doesn't add up.
Simple enough conspiracy if you are in league with the moslim extremists. Only a very small group of people would actually know the ‘real’ story. Everything else is just bizarre million to one coincidences.
Okay, so there was a big conspiracy to blow up the towers.
Why was this big conspiracy NOT able to do a simple thing like plant some WMDs in Iraq so we'd all be happy-happy about the Bush war?
Why didn't this big conspiracy NOT blow up some buildings in France to get them Frenchies on side?
The PM article had multiple authors, and their sources are on page 9. I would assume most of the editorial staff of PM had a hand in it, and that information is available from the publisher.
Its like Kennedy.
With the exception that there were lots of bystanding witnesses. Who died mysterious deaths shortly afterward.
This mystery's enigma needs a conundrum.
Power point / PDF link to NIST's preliminary presentation on WTC 7
I don't think that once you back off the claim of giant conspiracy to demolish WTC-1 and 2 that you get to call for a mo'better conspiracy possibilities regarding WTC-7. You've exhausted your credibility as a lay structural engineer.
Nal said: But have they really managed to keep anything quiet?
Because if they did keep a secret, I would know about it!
Seriously, that they've failed to keep some things secret doesn't show they have no more secrets. It shows that they have much bigger secrets to focus on hiding, and the ones that got out are minor in comparison.
who would have expected the government to embark on a ginormously expensive research project to build a Doomsday Weapon based on then esoteric principles of physics in the middle of a world war?
Um, exactly. That's strange though, because you seem to be bringing this up to make a point that's exactly opposite from what I see it make. Did you have a sudden change of stance?
After all, the smartest leakers never leak info that they're supposed to know.
It's not going to be possible to leak something you aren't attached to. It'll just be rumor and theory, what we have now (and what you are talking about here wouldn't even be leaking, that's just flat out espionage). It would be necessary to have your name attached to any leak, to validate the claim. Otherwise you have "The brother of a friend of my dad said that he was one of the guys flying the RC Boeing!!!" which is less than worthless.
You're also forgetting:
1) that the reason they'd have any info is that they're complicate (they're guilty, why leak?)
2) that the reason they're complicate is that they morally/politically agree with the action they took (so why leak?)
3) that they were involved because they've demonstrated their an immeasureable amount of loyalty/trustworthiness to whoever it was that involved them.
Mord said: There have been other steel framed buildings that collapsed in fire
No. Never. That has not ever happened. Ever. Except on Magic Day in Fantasy Land, with pretend fires and imaginary buildings. And even then, no.
but the US trade center wasn't even such a sturdy design
Are you high? The WTC towers were architectural wonders, not houses of cards. You really have to be grasping at straws if you need to resort to a claim like this.
Anyways, Here's a clickable link to the first page of the Popular Mechanics article Mord referenced. It doesn't get meaty until the second page, though. (was there something special about the fourth page, Mord?)
Herearemanydifferent debunkings of that Popular Mechanics article. If none of them do it for you, there's plenty more floating around. The Popular Mechanics article was debunked within like hours of hitting the stands (might've been almost a whole day). It was a notoriously poor effort at attacking 9-11 skeptics, and is probably responsible for more skeptics than true believers.
Mr. K, the only person grasping here is you.
Your argument boils down to "I've never heard of a steel building collapsing from fire, so it can't possibly have happened". This is argument from incredulity, and is just like the argument for creationism.
Secondly, the design of the WTC was heretical at its time, and it has been subject to much criticism which you don't seem to be aware of.
I trust popular mechanics and NIST over you and a bunch of idiots with a website. Just because somebody says PM, SciAm, NIST, FEMA are wrong doesn't make it so.
Also, I'll thank you not to call me an ostrich. My opinions are informed and well-reasoned, thank you very much.
And for reference, please see partial collapse of Alexis Nihon Plaza in Montreal, and One New York Plaza.
Those buildings weren't hit by planes and debris in addition to a fire.
There has never been a good example of such a severely impacted steel framed building with fire to support a conclusion that such collapses are impossible.
Not to mention to my knowledge, WTC-1 and 2 were uniquely designed, so drawing conclusion from conventional steel box buildings is unwarrented.
I squeeze as many thoughts as I can into one post, much like a val-pack ceral product or perhaps a sausage machine.
And now here's something we hope you'll really like -
who would have expected the government to embark on a ginormously expensive research project to build a Doomsday Weapon based on then esoteric principles of physics in the middle of a world war?
The possibility of an atomic bomb was known well before the Manhattan Project. Nuclear fission was discovered in the 1930s. Lise Meitner had already envisioned a nuclear chain reaction using uranium.
The secret that they tried to keep during the Manhattan Project was the actual recipe. But in the history of keeping secrets, it's not a good example. Volunteer spies, including the notorious Klaus Fuchs sent a continual stream of information to the Russians, resulting in a successful Soviet A-bomb test in 1949.
First off, you are theone to call yourself an ostrich. Except you said "osterich", but still, that was you who did that. not me.
And, no, a steel-building has never collapsed from fire damage. It's not that I haven't heard of it happening, it's that nobody anywhere on the entire planet has ever heard of it happening. Because it's never happened. never ever ever. Am I talking to fast? I t h a s n e v e r h a p p e n e d .
Not to mention to my knowledge, WTC-1 and 2 were uniquely designed, so drawing conclusion from conventional steel box buildings is unwarrented.
That's what people have been trying to explain to you. Are you trying to say that you are starting to figure it out?
So a project to blow up the WTC? By the standards of the Manhattan project, which managed to keep its secret for less than three years, well, we should have gotten the smoking gun for 9/11 by 2004.
No smoking gun, well, uh, that's a problem. And by smoking gun, we're talking names, testimonials, hard evidence, not a collection of questions.
A complete collapse never happened until 9-11. The conclusion you are drawing is still wrong. It never happened before, so it can't happen now. DID YOU MISS LOGIC CLASS WHEN YOU WERE IN SCHOOL?
Furthermore, I'm not going to play stupid distracting games on how osterich is spelled. You are utterly full of it, your references are crap, and you're on an ego trip. I'm not going to play this game.
Any person that KNEW a 9-11 secret would also know, better than anyone EVER, to keep their mouth shut. Because you don't betray an organization that you KNOW slaughtered 3000+ people.
Really?
Richard Nixon was responsible for the deaths of a lot more than 3000 people in Vietnam. Probably hundreds of thousands including American GIs, NVA, Vietnamese civilians.
This did not stop W. Mark Felt, the No. 2 official at the FBI in the early 1970s to play a pivotal role as "Deep Throat", the informant who helped break the Watergate scandal.
... not a good analogy...
Sorry, what exactly would be the goal of this vast eeeevil conspiracy that couldn't be achieved by, say, actually hijacking four planes and flying them into important buildings?
... not a good analogy...
why not?
Because he's not killing his own people.
Because if they did keep a secret, I would know about it!
I'm honestly not trying to argue against you. Just trying to point out some possible shortcomings in the theories you are considering.
that they've failed to keep some things secret doesn't show they have no more secrets. It shows that they have much bigger secrets to focus on hiding
However...if they have failed to keep a vast array of secrets harmful to themselves concerning a particular event, I find it difficult to believe they would be able to keep any significant secrets surrounding that same event. i.e. why one and not the other?
The only truly logical reason to deliberately fail to keep a personally politically harmful secret is as a distraction from a completely different personally harmful area/event. However, given the vast array of scandals surroundng BushCo's actions, I honestly have difficulty imagining what distinct event (see above), separate from all the others, they could be attempting to distract us from. Seriously, they've covered the water front.
Which leads us to...
because you seem to be bringing this up to make a point that's exactly opposite from what I see it make
I believe you are actually referring here to the altruistic theory of distraction. Allowing a personally harmful secret to come out in order to distract from altruistic actions that must be kept secret. In other words, accepting a personal scandal for the greater good.
I suppose it's possible that BushCo could be allowing these scandals in order to distract from a massively secret altruistic project. Unfortunately I have difficulty imagining these personalities doing so, and what crisis could be so great as to convince essentially the entire GOP to allow themselves to be pilloried.
Invaders from Mars?
It's not going to be possible to leak something you aren't attached to...that's just flat out espionage
No, what I'm referring to is the extreme difficulty in truly compartmentalizing large amounts of info, especially involving large numbers of diverse people. Life gets in the way.
One conspirator visits another in their office and sees a careless folder on the desk, which the officeholder never notices since he trusts his fellow conspirator (at least as far as both are in on the 'conspiracy'). Conspirator one subsequently doesn't leak info from their own compartment, but rather from the folder. Repeat in infinite possible variations of events.
It would be necessary to have your name attached to any leak, to validate the claim
No, you merely have to be convincing enough to get a decent, ambitious news reporter to start peeling the onion.
The possibility of an atomic bomb was known well before the Manhattan Project...But in the history of keeping secrets, it's not a good example
The point I was making was not about keeping it secret in toto, but rather keeping a secret from the general populace, and from the direct enemies at the time.
If the Manhattant Project had been widely known about I'm sure there would have been all sorts of complicating public concerns with the project. (I'll just point out that I'm not subtly arguing against the Manhattan Project here.)
Not directly but he still bears responsibility for putting Americans into harm's way.
I guess my point is that someone can spill secrets with minimal risk to himself regardless of the power of who he's snitching out. Deep Throat remained incognito for thirty years.
Well, the point being he remained incognito, StoryBored. Clearly he's concerned about repercussions, no?
The mathematics of conspiracy:
Watergate - crime: jimmy a lock and enter Democratic headquarters, plant some bugs. Number of burglars: Six. Result: Got caught. Couldn't keep a secret, president impeached.
WTC - crime: blow up the World Trade Center in conjunction with a hijacking and deliberate crashing of four civilian airlines. Contact and work closely with Al-Qaeda. One of said airplanes diverted to some hidden location and the passengers killed. Planting of and detonation of explosives at Pentagon. Destruction of air controller tapes. Destruction and disposal of collateral evidence. Insider trading of put options. Number of miscreants: more than 6? Result: Successfully kept secret, president very popular.
Well, the point being he remained incognito, StoryBored. Clearly he's concerned about repercussions, no?
Yes, he was, but the original poster claimed that no-one would speak out, when clearly the Deep Throat case shows that there are ways to do so safely.
Ok, so there was a big conspiracy to kill millions of Jews.
Why was this big conspiracy NOT able to do a simple thing like....etc.
Perhaps the German folks are more gullable?
Nothing about the Reichstag fire was proven either way. Awfully convenient tho.
“Richard Nixon was responsible for the deaths of a lot more than 3000 people in Vietnam. Probably hundreds of thousands including American GIs, NVA, Vietnamese civilians.”
Good thing he was prosecuted and punished as a war criminal...oh waitaminute.
Any conspiracy that has ever been revealed has been so as the result of powerful enough forces (political or otherwise) in opposition.
In those cases typically the particulars of whatever conspiracy doesn’t matter.
Without a powerful enough group in opposition to the motives of the conspirators - nothing happens.
If you have overwhelmingly powerful forces in opposition to a conspiracy then everyone pays (Guy Fawkes comes to mind).
Hell, I don’t particularly believe or disbelieve any conspiracy regarding 9/11. I simply don’t recognize the government story as fully valid in many particulars.
I also see that some folks have benefited greatly from it.
It just looks suspicious and I don’t buy it. (If someone is TRYING to see something, they’re going to see it anyway. As a f’rinstance: http://www.armageddononline.org/911.php)
I’m not trying to see anything. I don’t have any theory. It’s merely a possibility.
But I don’t have enough evidence either way to justify any course of action.
So why spend so much time trying to convince folks like me the whole deal is square?
Probably the best overall statement I’ve heard on the matter came from a New York firefighter. He said he thought some things were out of kilter, but he didn’t want to know whether there was a cover up because if he knew something like that for a fact, then he’d have to do something about it.
Consider a hundred million people in the streets doing something about it.
No one, leaker, whatever, is willing to to allow the country to plunge into total chaos unless the stakes are high enough. Here, really, they’re not. It’s just a few thousand people.
If you wanted to justify monopolizing oil resources in the middle east over the long term, you can start a war by faking a ‘terrorist’ attack on yourself and building this ‘terror’ boogeyman into an entire cottage industry. Is there some impossibility there?
Many historians think HitlerCo started the Reichstag fire and there’s proof they did plenty of other things - e.g. promising to end the chaos in the streets that the Nazis themselves had started - when they gained power - voila, the chaos stopped.
It’s a tactic. It’s been used. We see evidence throughout history of it’s use.
Was it used here? I don’t know.
And yet for simply stating that there are enough inconsistencies in the party line to question it, in some quarters people label you a conspiracy nut or some such.
Maybe a wallet can fall out of a plane crashing into a building bursing into flame and land on the ground far away perfectly intact. Maybe. I don't know.
I think the Mexican immigrants did it.
Well, the video loaded i n c r e d i b l y slowly for me on several tries that I don't know what evidence they presented, but one thing I did notice is that there was no attribution to the source. Has anyone got another link that makes me comfortable with the insiderness of the makers?
But, as a general statement, I would say thet the Bush aminimistrtation doesn't have the smarts to pull something like that.
OK, for you after-market smarties: my life depends on it. Who was responsible for 9/11 and how do we stop the next one? Or do we?
I'm honestly not trying to argue against you. Just trying to point out some possible shortcomings in the theories you are considering.
Sorry if that snark seemed like it was an attack on you. It was just the simplest way to convey the idea you don't know about what you don't know about, saying "look, we caught every other lie" doesn't make sense because there is no way to know that you failed to catch a lie. You don't know about any time they got away with a lie, because they got away with it.
I believe you are actually referring here to the altruistic theory of distraction.
?! Not at all. I'm referring to the little boy plugging holes in a dyke. He's plugged all the biggest holes, the most damaging one. While he's doing that though, all these little holes have spilt info. That little boy isn't an altruist, he isn't trying to save anybody except himself.
No, you merely have to be convincing enough to get a decent, ambitious news reporter to start peeling the onion.
No. What? No. Nobody goes for the "brother of a freind of my Dad's" story, except the insane.
One conspirator visits another in their office and sees a careless folder on the desk, which the officeholder never notices since he trusts his fellow conspirator (at least as far as both are in on the 'conspiracy'). Conspirator one subsequently doesn't leak info from their own compartment, but rather from the folder. Repeat in infinite possible variations of events.
Yeah, that's flat out espionage. That's exactly what espionage is, and how it works. People that have been tried for espionage? They performed the steps you just described.
However...if they have failed to keep a vast array of secrets harmful to themselves concerning a particular event, I find it difficult to believe they would be able to keep any significant secrets surrounding that same event. i.e. why one and not the other?
This really sounds like you are saying someone has already leaked something about 9-11. What vast array of secrets about 9-11 has been leaked?
The mathematics of conspiracy:
Watergate - crime: jimmy a lock and enter Democratic headquarters, plant some bugs. Number of burglars: Six. Result: Got caught. Couldn't keep a secret, president impeached.
WTC - crime: blow up the World Trade Center in conjunction with a hijacking and deliberate crashing of four civilian airlines. Contact and work closely with Al-Qaeda. One of said airplanes diverted to some hidden location and the passengers killed. Planting of and detonation of explosives at Pentagon. Destruction of air controller tapes. Destruction and disposal of collateral evidence. Insider trading of put options. Number of miscreants: more than 6? Result: Successfully kept secret, president very popular.
You switched units in your math here. You are counting everyone involved on the bottom scenario (miscreants), while only counting people involved with task X on the top scenario (burgulars). Many others were involved. You're also discounting scenario specific facts that directly contribute. Like the fact that Nixon recorded everything. Or the fact that Watergate didn't involve murder.
If you stuck with the same units when comparing the two events, I don't believe there'd be a magnitude of difference. Maybe one magnitude, that's it. If you the factor in deadliness threat, likelyhood of belief, compartmentalization, and other relevent factors, I'd expect you to find that Watergate has a much higher Likely To Leak Index than 9-11.
Most catastrophes of political or cultural significance are eventually attended by conspiracy theories.- we all naturally ask "What happened?" and our frustration at the impossibility of knowing exactly what happened gives rise to speculation.
The generally accepted expanation of collapse of the WTC buildings seems to me to be quite plausible. A massive airliner loaded with thousands of gallons of aviation fuel is deliberately flown into a 40-year-old office tower that itself contains a large fuel load and lacks adequate fire supression sytems. The ensuing fire would have exacerbated the structural damage caused by the impact. While a great deal of heat is required to melt or burn through iron, any blacksmith or mechanic knows that much less is required to make iron malleable.
The complete collapse of the WTC buildings may actually have been something of a surprise to whoever initiated the attacks and a not entirely welcome one at that. Just imagine the spectacle of the two ruined, smoldering hulks looming over the New York skyline for days or weeks until the authorities were obligated to pull them down. Arguably a more effective impact than a comparatively neat pile of rubble.
I think that the conspiracies we should be concerned with are those that began on September 11 as well the hubris, incompetence and deceit that gave someone motive and opportunity.
So, when you find out what the "truth" is... what are you going to do with it?
Like GI Joe says, "Knowing is half the battle." What's your other half?
Great waste of time, tho'.
Well, InsolentChimp, if anybody in this country had any balls, we would all strike up an insurgency, and start doing what real patriots would, do as the world is witnessing in Iraq.
Sounds familiar, but I couldn't tell you the name...
wait, Wishful Thinking by Vivian Green?
And no, I'm not being a pessimist. I asked what are you going to do with the knowledge, not what can be done with it. Not trying to harp on you at all, retank. Talk of revolution is cheap, by the way.
No I like being "Harped on",,giggle,Harp On brother!! Ha Ha(just don't scare the devil out of me)
But, as a general statement, I would say thet the Bush aminimistrtation doesn't have the smarts to pull something like that.
Honestly, I think this is one of the Bush administration's successes (i.e., leading the general public on to believe that the administration is not so smart).
If you the factor in deadliness threat, likelyhood of belief, compartmentalization, and other relevent factors, I'd expect you to find that Watergate has a much higher Likely To Leak Index than 9-11.
That's where we'd have to agree to disagree.
The total number of miscreants involved in Watergate is around a dozen. How many would be involved in a 9-11 conspiracy? You say it would be an order of magnitude more, so 120?
Now compare the footprint of the Watergate crime (a break-in at night), to the footprint of what the conspirators need to do for 9/11. Not only would they have had to carry out the plan flawlessly, they would have had to make sure NO ONE would catch them as they were ferrying and deploying explosives, commandeering and diverting the Pentagon flight, disposing of those passengers, etc. Most of this would need to have been done in broad daylight as well.
So now you either have to be impossibly careful or you need to expand the list of people in the know from 120 to what? 200? 300?
But even at 120 "miscreants", think about the organizational overhead, the communications and management infrastructure needed to coordinate these activities. To maintain secrecy, none of this could have been through any normal comms channel. No paper trails, no phone calls, nothing. But here's the problem, the less you rely on conventional communications, the more difficult it is to get your operation off the ground.
In the Watergate scandal, a conspiracy one-tenth the "size", the conspirators still needed a paper trail to coordinate the burglary. And it was the hard evidence of this trail that helped bring the whole thing down.
I found much of the Loose Change video compelling. What I find most telling though,is the number of voices raised to object to such a theory on the basis of the extant nobility and high moral standards of this administration.
There's the big story.
I don't see many (any?) people here making that argument, Wordswinker. Lots of examples of "they ain't competent enough to have done this and gotten away with it," though.
Sorry, retank, not getting the joke: what's "Harp On" with the caps all about? Am I missing some sort of Xian thing here? To reiterate: not dwelling on you, per se.
I found much of the Loose Change video compelling. What I find most telling though,is the number of voices raised to object to such a theory on the basis of the extant nobility and high moral standards of this administration.
Gee, there's hardly any one here who objects to this based on the "moral standards of the administration".
Nope, it's about standards of evidence.
It's the thought process. It's the same allegation-based-on non-existent-evidence that's been used to justify everything from classic anti-Semitic rants to the recent resurgence of creationists.
Ok, so there was a big conspiracy to kill millions of Jews.
Why was this big conspiracy NOT able to do a simple thing like....etc.
I need help to understand your point maybe...
...because the Germans were able to do lots of simple things during WWII.
The theoretical conspirers behind 9-11 who supposedly blew up the WTC balked at the trivial task of planting some WMDs in Iraq. Why would they balk? After 9-11 they would, if anything be stronger. They would have more resources from Bush's new Homeland Security outfit. Billions of dollars in new funding for the FBI and CIA.
They didn't even need to plant a nuclear device. Just some canisters of plutonium fer Chrissakes and everything wouldda been hunky-dory.
Number of people needed to do it would be less than that required for the Watergate break-in.
/rant
Why would they bother with fake WofMD? What they wanted was to gain a foothold in that area of the world. Nothing more. Plus, it's easier to enact monkey business at home, of course...
Many people = easier for leaks and whistleblowers? While I don't subscribe to the 'big conspiracy, from Dubya down to airport baggage handlers' theory, guess secrets are kept daily by many people, all the time. And everybody is familiar with the 'cell' approach to covert actions, no? Some people might know about their part of some nefarious deed, but not anything or anyone outside it.
While I find demolition theories farfetched (in several videos it can be seen that the towers didn't actually fell down neatly on their footprint, but the top actually went a little to the side) and those plane-switching scenarios too fantastic, guess some of details like the threat to AirForce one, complete with the secret code name and all those drills exactly on that day speak of some inside information... or inaction. That to me is way more scary than lasers and pods and thermite charges.
Finally, about 'how come they could strike a homerun with 9/11 and they bungled Iraq and everything else': 'They' is not real. Many factions, many players, many puppets, many sides to the game. 'The Man' is a multi-headed beast with many interests and allies.
I've lost several friends due to 9/11 discussions. Oh well.
/rant off
It is awfully dodgy, isn't it? Even if you take it as true that a 757 crashed into the Pentagon, now they're suddenly releasing, almost five years later, footage that shows exactly what everyone has been debating since 9/11 and saying it's to disprove the demolition theory.
2038???? he can walk into the National Archives and find out what the CIA and the FBI knew". Hope never dies.