August 21, 2006

• This is one of those things that even if they are right (and I doubt it), what good does it do to know? So.... THIS time Bush will be impeached, right?
• what good does it do to know? Hm.
• Well? I have many things in my life I worry about that make me unhappy, cause me to stress and live a shorter life. Some of those things I have power to do something about. Here we are, 5 years later, even if these theories are right. Nobody is going to take action on the crimes we know about, let alone ones that are nearly impossible to prove. The forensic evidence is gone already. And I don't have the budget to go to fresh kills, and excavate whats left. Do you?
• I guess what I'm trying to say is, if this was a conspiracy, the conspirators won.
• I'm not going to bother to watch the video, but I'm still going to disagree that any of those claims are in any way interesting at least.
• MonkeyFilter: I'm not going to bother to watch the video, but I'm still going to disagree Mmm tagliney.
• the conspirators won That needs to be on a T-shirt.
• Along with a picture of Kennedy.
• Just fast-forward to the 50 minute mark. It'll take 3 minutes.
• My colleague's father-in-law is a FDNY veteran who is quoted on that video. He believes that bombs were planted. Seems like a very sane and believable person. Just makes me wonder...
• In the spirit of being fair and balanced, I am going to link to Maddox's There is no 9/11 conspiracy you morons. You've probably all seen this before since Maddox's site is the most popular on the web at gets 10,453,234 hits a minute.
• I commend thy valour, petesbet, for attempting to bring attention to a topic so many wish to hide in fear from.
• So we have a government full of incompetent people who start wars based on faulty intelligence, and vice presidents shoot people in the face, but they can manage to keep this a secret. Just like we have thousands of people who spend their entire lives studying evolution and trying to publish papers, but some guy off the street knows better. They must be indigo children or some crap...
• 911 is a joke /Chuck told you years ago
• I'm afraid the current attitude to that event and possible conjectures over what really happened is badly polarized, pb, and there's little that can be done to change it. I recall that, from minute one, the suspicion of qui really bono was up, in me and others around. Soemthing that, for many northaerican citizens, was and still is unthinkable. I've seen all the docs and video analysis, the 'blob' and the other strange planes. The size comparisons at the pentagon. Read about the 'art school spies', the reports of the flight falling in pieces in a very broad area, the incombustible passports and unresolved questions about stock manipulations and the owners of the security firms at the WTC. I've seen the claims of multi-plane switching in mid-air, the dumping of evidence as rubble done asap, etc. etc... I doesn't help that all kinds of outrageous theories get clumped togeteher with sane inquiries in the media mind. I believe there was much more to what the official story is saying, but right now, any inquiry into any of the loose treads of it = 'conspiracy theory'. And even while I'd expected many people to at least consider some questions, specially after what has been happening in these 5 years, it just doesn't seem to be happening. Well. Hopefully our grandchildren will get to know more of this that we ever did. Yes, they won.
• I expect that the Statue of Liberty will lay down and offer her brazen hymen before any true proof of government conspiracy is ever presented. Get a grip, people.
• The official explanation of 911 is a conspiracy theory (19 Arab hijackers). That the offical conspiracy theory has as many holes in it as some unofficial ones should be cause for alarm.
• Hey BruiseB, that's a hilarious website. Quote: "you can bet your ass that the government wouldn't let a couple of pecker-neck chumps with a couple of Macs and too much time on their hands jeopardise their entire operation by letting this stupid video float around on the Internet..."
• Regarding the lack of an engine in the Pentagon. According to Arlen Spector, it was one magic 757 that caused the towers to collapse, hit the pentagon, destroyed the Sulphuric Acid plant in Newark, and finally cratered in Pennsylvania. I am disappointed that no one has mentioned how quicky the Sulphuric Acid plant was covered up. Few people even remember it was destroyed now, the 23100 victims of Newark, or Halliburton's $1.4B contract to rebuild it. But let's face it, have you seen or heard anything from Newark since 9/11?
• Yes, and THIS conspiracy theory is a government plant to steer you away from the truth; that they knew there was a threat, a specific threat, and they did nothing to protect you. They aren't protecting you now, and as long as the money keeps going to their pockets, they like it this way. THATS the conspiracy. The stuff about molten metal and missing engines and stuff is just so much chaff to keep you confused. The planes released the energy of a small nuclear bomb in a very large fire, the physics of which are not fully understood. Expect strange things to happen. But less strange than a well orchestrated plan to plow civilian planes into buildings at the same time as you detonate shaped charges to collapse them. There are easier, more reliable ways to fake a terrorist attack.
• But then... that could be part of the genius of the conspiracy, that it has just enough truthiness to LOOK like a conspiracy theory.
• Yes, they won. Well played. I commend whoever pulled this particular wool over my eyes.
• *hides big spool of wool* Yes, we's all living happy in this here wonderful world.
• The wool dries my tears.
• Wool is your happy friend. Maybe some of your friends tell you there's a conspiracy. But who can say? Why think so much when you can wrap yourself in wooliest woolly wool. So happy.
• You wool fetishists are warped.
• The amazing incompetent government, in particular the ultra incompetent administration, led by the ludicrously incompetent Bush...successfully perpetrated an intricate conspiracy, a complex plot woven with deceit at the highest levels--remember, this is the government, YOUR insipidly, disastrously retarded government--and somehow, everyone but a handful of people managed to be hoodwinked. A-HAAAA-MAZING.
• I believe.
• "The amazing incompetent government..." The 'incompetent government' meme is the latest one trotted out by those trying to discredit the 'conspiracy' idea, but it is a strawman argument. Because the conspiracy may not have been run by people within the American government itself. It coudl have been someone else, oh, I don't know, say, the Israeli government, using people they control in certain positions in the US government. Hypothetically.
• It also could have been the the monkeys that flew out of my ass. Or if they had just built the buildings shorter the planes would have flown over them.
• Why f8x you ol' Liddy-esque lurker you! Hey :) Okay I admit, I never ever read the articles linked in an FPP, but if you want to refute/discuss these particular claims you might wanna watch the video. Or, if you're just a lazy cantankerous bastard, fast forward (move the little slidey thing at the bottom of the video) to the 50 minute mark. Check out those little explosions on the towers. If you're so inclined, also check out the multiple witness statements to the effect of multiple explosions and the seismographic data. And no, nobody told George. Pretzel boy just wants to invade Iraq, so let him. Dick will be our go-to guy for all things anyway.
• What's most interesting to me is the part where they show Wikipedia with white text on a black background. How do I get it to do that?
• fast forward (move the little slidey thing at the bottom of the video) to the 50 minute mark. Check out those little explosions on the towers. I checked them out. They're little puffs of smoke or debris that seem to come out in the lower floors while the towers are collapsing. Not too convincing though. Because those "explosions" could be side effects of the building's collaping top stories. The speed of the structural collapse could reasonably be less than the speed of the destruction that's happening inside the building. If there are hydraulic systems inside that are undergoing massive compression, they would likely cause blowouts in the lower stories.
• Because the conspiracy may not have been run by people within the American government itself. Okay, but the unanswered question is this: why did this conspiracy stop at 9/11? Why didn't it go on to show us some nice WMDs in Iraq? (A much, easier thing to pull off than 9/11). Why didn't it mount some faux terrorist attacks in Paris to get the French onside?
• *Sigh* Yes, it's all so provocative. And amazingly detailed. Why isn't this being talked about at the highest levels? Oh yes, because the government has covered it up. Definition of a conspiracy: too much time on your hands. I'm no structural engineer, but I'm not really seeing anything that looks like individual detonations going off. Again, I don't really know what to look for. Neither do most people. Which apparently is why the conspiracy is rock solid. Sorry, just feeling snarky and weary of the tin-foil crack pot stuff. The world's a sucky enough place without having to add sludge to it. This seems very sludgy to me, that's all.
• Who says the building is collapsing as a solid-body? You're just seeing the exterior collapse. The interior core of the building may well have been collapsing faster than the outer core. I think you'ld expect it to; its bearing more of the weight in a more concentrated area. The WTCs were basically tube within a tube design. Those puffs could be from the ceilings on those floors collapsing blowing out shattered plaster through open windows. But I'm not a structural engineer.
• One of the debunking sites says its simply air compression blowing out windows. And raises the good point that why would you randomly set off a couple squids in 2 locations after the thing was already coming down.
• ^squibs
• It's interesting that the makers of the video and many other conspiracy theorists didn't bother to talk to any structural engineers. If they did they would have found out quickly for instance that steel doesn't need to melt to weaken. So a) they have questions but b) they don't seem to be too keen on getting answers other than to say: hey it's a conspiracy! So it's not really about facts is it? Is it some kind of emotional thing?
• >>'why did this conspiracy stop at 9/11? Why didn't it go on to show us some nice WMDs in Iraq? (A much, easier thing to pull off than 9/11). Why didn't it mount some faux terrorist attacks in Paris to get the French onside?' It _wouldn't_ have been easier to plant WMD in Iraq. Consider the logistics of it. I imagine the Bush administration tried to, in fact. Part of it might have been that "they" actually thought there was some there. But more likely, as I heard, the Russians were watching and prevented them moving in any shipments, don't count out the Russians involvement in Mid East affairs, they have irons in that fire. Iraq was swarming with foreign intelligence, naturally. Also, think about Plame -- why did the Cheney administration go out of their way to do something so foolish as to shut her down - something that was highly illegal and dangerous? Couldn't it have something to do with her activities as part of a group actively engaged in preventing the movements of WMDs? I hypothesise that her group actually exposed something going on along those lines, hence the payback. But pure speculation, naturally. As for France etc, it's about control. The hypothetical conspiracists controlled the situation in the US, via moles in the Pentagon (look up a man named Dov Zacheim on Wikipedia, and his particular specialities, why not? I guarantee a paranoid thrill); the covering "exercises" that were taking place that very morning (convenient!) to bamboozle NORAD; media control, etc. You can't control things like that in France or Germany. The British are more accomodating on those sorts of things. (On the issue of the exercises on 9/11, how stupid does one have to be to believe the most powerful, most highly funded defense network in the world could be so bloody useless for so long as all this is happening? When the golfer Payne Stewart's plane went unresponsive they had jets on it in less than 14 minutes. It was something like an hour on 9/11. I mean, come on, that's ridiculous.) I don't know if I can accept the far-reaching conspiracy actually happened, but it was certainly do-able theoretically. Eminently. Certainly we have not been told the truth of what went on. As for keeping it quiet -- well, the military and intelligence communities are heavily compartmentalised, plus anyone in the know is scared silent, aren't they? If your bosses can annihilate huge buildings and thousands of people, they can easily kill _you_. Fear of death is a powerful motivator. Don't think the US government hasn't considered such things before, check out operation Northwoods while you read up on Zakheim. Who benefits from all this? Well, that I leave to others to put in plain language. It's not America.
• >>'didn't bother to talk to any structural engineers.' I have read articles by engineers stating their skepticism of the steel being weakened in that way. Then again, I've read others who agree with the accepted reports. It has to be pointed out, though, that no other buildings of that type have _ever_ collapsed in that way, even after fires that raged for days. Not a single one. The WTC was designed to survive the impact of airliners similar to those that struck it. So much failure and incompetence in almost every aspect of the things we're taught are solid and unshakeable almost undermines ones' world view. Never go up in a skyscraper or fly in a jet again, if you believe all that?
• spelling correction: Zakheim.
• The airliners that struck the towers were much larger than those in use when the towers were designed. Not that a logical argument will sway any minds, in this case.
• Religion, I continue to find, takes many forms.
• There were no other buildings as big, built with tube-within-a-tube reinforcement, or hit with as big a kerosene fire. Most steel buildings are built as stacks of boxes. Not the WTC. Steel becomes plastic at much lower temperatures than were achieved in that fire. Thats a scientific fact, look in any metallurgy reference. Drawing inferences along the lines of "it hasn't happened before so it can't happen now" are magical thinking. Some things that can happen haven't happened before. The only thing I don't understand is why there was molten metal in the wreckage. But, there were oxygen tanks on the plane, there were filing cabinets in the offices, and I don't know what metal it was. However, it would take a LOT of thermite to leave that much molten metal around, so I don't buy that hypothesis. I find a jet fuel furnace much more plausible.
• Steel becomes plastic Please to define.
• Steel bends easily when heated, but below the melting point.
• It _wouldn't_ have been easier to plant WMD in Iraq. Consider the logistics of it. I find this funny because those who claim a conspiracy for 9/11 are definitely *not* considering the logistics needed to blow up the WTC buildings and keep it quiet. I'm a retard but given the choice between two clandestine assignments a) blow up the WTC and b) implicate Saddam with WMDs. I'd definitely pick b). Why? Because I don't even need working A-bombs, i could plant a few centrifuges or some radioactive waste. I could do all this without going outside US government circles. Blowing up the WTCs on the other hand, would require me to recruit Osama. Plus assure the silence of hundreds,if not thousands of people (depending on which conspiracy variant we're talking about). But more likely, as I heard, the Russians were watching and prevented them moving in any shipments.. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, US Armed Forces could go anywhere and do anything in Iraq. They could seal off areas completely, kill folks at will. It was and still is a lot easier to do covert action in Iraq than in New York City. If you don't believe me, compare the amount of footage we've got of 9/11 in two hours with the amount of footage we have of Fallujah, even though Fallujah was a battle that lasted a month.
• Is it not odd that both towers fell directly down and not, y'know over? Originally I thought that was pretty odd. If it's another one of the "those are the only two buildings like them in the world, and we don't know if" questions then I'll throw it on the pile with the other questions about them. So the claim is made that the OBL who is videotaped laughing about the attacks is left-handed and the "real" one is right-handed (or vice-versa). That would seem to be an easy one to debunk. Any takers? Thanks for the spirited debate btw.
• >>'US Armed Forces could go anywhere and do anything in Iraq. They could seal off areas completely' quite true, but they have to get the materiel in via conventional means. They don't have transporter technology yet. Large movements of WMDs would be rather obvious to observers. >>'those who claim a conspiracy for 9/11 are definitely *not* considering the logistics needed to blow up the WTC buildings and keep it quiet.' Piffle. The military and intelligence communities are designed to keep things quiet, by the mechanism of compartmentalisation. A brief study of the history of intelligence operations shows quite baroque and nasty operations by large groups of people being kept successfully secret for long lengths of time. These include massive projects such as the building of large scale installations in classified locations requiring heavy equipment and hundreds of engineers, technology, vehicles and scurrilous activities in other countries. Once again, for people actually involved in an operation like the assassination of JFK or an Operation Northwoods-style 9/11, the fear of death is a very efficient way to make people shut up. As is the controlled use of disinformation in the media to ridicule actual research by members of the public. Be that as it may, I'm merely talking hypothetically, obviously. The one question I genuinely would like answered, is the advance knowledge of the attacks shown by the high volume of put-option purchases and other trading, on the markets prior to the events. I've read that it would be possible to track down who was making these transactions, but no investigations have taken place. I dare say all this is a coincidence as well, but they do seem to pile up around 9/11. The official commission's explanation for these was vague, although they did say it wasn't the terrorists. 'Drawing inferences along the lines of "it hasn't happened before so it can't happen now" are magical thinking.' I don't believe I made an inference. Said that the event was unique. Inferences are made by others. Given that there are so many unknowns about the physics, it seems odd that many people are keen to brush it all aside without asking too many questions. All the structural steel was sold off to China and never examined, the rubble buried in a landfill. One would have thought that studying the steel & other remains would have been valuable to future engineering projects, given the historically unique nature of the collapses. Same goes for the aircraft remains.
• Please to stop with all this conjecture and pulpit when Sept. 11 rolls around?
• [quote>It has to be pointed out, though, that no other buildings of that type have _ever_ collapsed in that way, even after fires that raged for days. Not a single one. The WTC was designed to survive the impact of airliners similar to those that struck it. So much failure and incompetence in almost every aspect of the things we're taught are solid and unshakeable almost undermines ones' world view.[/quote] Thats an inference, that we've never seen it before, so it happening now is quite suspicious. No, its not. The physics studies were done and said it was caused by high temperatures raising the steel above its annealing point, and the thing fell. Its not wierd at all and it doesn't undermine my world view one bit. Finally, the structural steel WAS studied, extensively, before being landfilled. They came to the same conclusion I just gave, namely, that the plane impact blew the insulation off the support girders, burned very hot, created a local region of flexibility in the support structures that cascaded, essentially dropping the upper floors onto the floor beneath the fire, which was not prepared to take that much impulse and failed immediately, propagating the whole process downward. The End. No Conspiracy.
• Unique building, unique modes of failure, all in line with what the dynamics of the situation would predict. They didn't fall over because solid body dynamics shows it wouldn't fall over, that million tons of upper floors wants very badly to go straight down. (and in fact it didn't go EXACTLY straight down, you can see it canted off to one side a bit in the video, some of the tower hit building seven, some landed in the street, but pretty much straight down, as a rock dropped from a great height is want to do)
• Consider how many people would need to be involved (a thousand? ten thousand?) to pull this conspiracy off, and then consider the possibility of keeping them all quiet. Someone would have talked by now.
• Large movements of WMDs would be rather obvious to observers. They might be, if that was the only thing they were shipping in. But it'd be trivial to sneak something in amidst the hundreds of thousands of tons of equipment that was shipped to Iraq. And we're not talking about an entire nuclear arsenal. All they needed was some proof of culpability. Sending over a dozen centrifuges would be as easy as shipping a dozen tanks or APCs. A brief study of the history of intelligence operations shows quite baroque and nasty operations by large groups of people being kept successfully secret for long lengths of time. I agree. But they were inevitably revealed(I add to your list, the secret collusion between Israel and Britain behind the Suez Crisis). I guess what I'm saying is, if 9/11 is a conspiracy let's see the investigative evidence for it. The fundamental law of secret-leaking applies. The bigger the conspiracy, the greater the danger of a leak. It's an exponential relationship. Double the cabal size and you quadruple the leak risk. The Manhattan Project is a nice example. This was probably the most secret project of the last century, yet the Soviet Union knew about it while it was in progress and they later managed to get the entire inside scoop from Klaus Fuchs, one of the physicists at Los Alamos. And the threat of death/treason charges did not stop it from happening.
• The one question I genuinely would like answered, is the advance knowledge of the attacks shown by the high volume of put-option purchases and other trading, on the markets prior to the events. I've read that it would be possible to track down who was making these transactions, but no investigations have taken place. I've read this also. Sadly this throws no light on the conspiracy issue because it could just as easily have been Osama's bankers who did those trades. In fact, this article claims exactly that.
• Is it not odd that both towers fell directly down and not, y'know over? Mord said it in other words but the towers didn't fall over because the towers aren't monolithic, you can't really "push" it over. If you tried you just end up caving in the part of the building you're pushing on and causing a collapse(which was basically what happened). You can sort of replicate this at home with a tower of playing cards. If you take a pencil and poke at one of the stories, the tower will come down, not fall over. So the claim is made that the OBL who is videotaped laughing about the attacks is left-handed and the "real" one is right-handed (or vice-versa). I think he's supposed to be left-handed. But in one of the videos he's waving with his right hand. The easy explanation is that he injured his left hand.
• September 11 -- what year? 30 percent of Americans don't know. Wed Aug 9, 2006
• This memory black hole is essentially the problem of the older crowd: 48 percent of those who did not know were between the ages of 55 and 64, and 47 percent were older than 65, according to the poll. Frickin' terr'ist geezers!
• >>'US Armed Forces could go anywhere and do anything in Iraq. They could seal off areas completely' quite true, but they have to get the materiel in via conventional means. They don't have transporter technology yet. Large movements of WMDs would be rather obvious to observers. >>'those who claim a conspiracy for 9/11 are definitely *not* considering the logistics needed to blow up the WTC buildings and keep it quiet.' Piffle. The military and intelligence communities are designed to keep things quiet, by the mechanism of compartmentalisation. Aren't these two assertions contradictory? They could blow up a building in the middle of a city without anyone knowing because they are good at doing things without anyone knowing but they couldn't plant some weapons in an entire country with lots of secret bunkers without anyone knowing because they can't keep secrets? I think that either argument can be turned around and used on the other situation just as convincingly. These arguments are exactly like intelligent design. In both there are a group of amatures who think that they know better than another group who have spent their lives studing and researching such things. In either case, still assert that monkeys flying out my ass is more believable.
• One could make the point that the goal was to enter Iraq. The attack brought the perfect pretext for initiating military ocuppation in that area, with the minimal opposition, both from northamerican citizenship and other governments'. Once they got in, who cares if anyone remembers about yellow cake, WofMD and such..?
• The thing that bothers me about conspiracy theories is the standard of evidence being used. "Fighters weren't scrambled to intercept the planes on 9/11. That sounds like a conspiracy". "Black people have lower grades in school. That sounds like they're genetically inferior". Some people don't have a problem with the first statement but to me it's as logically sound as the second.
• How could someone in the FBI turn down requests 70 times from somebody (FBI agent Harry Samit) who said he thought Moussaoui was going to fly a hijacked plane into the World Trade Center? 9/11 Debunking the Myths CLAIM:At least six eyewitnesses say they saw a small white jet flying low over the crash area almost immediately after Flight 93 went down. BlogD.com theorizes that the aircraft was downed by "either a missile fired from an Air Force jet, or via an electronic assault made by a U.S. Customs airplane reported to have been seen near the site minutes after Flight 93 crashed." FACT: There was such a jet in the vicinity--a Dassault Falcon 20 business jet owned by the VF Corp. of Greensboro, N.C., an apparel company that markets Wrangler jeans and other brands. The VF plane was flying into Johnstown-Cambria airport, 20 miles north of Shanksville. According to David Newell, VF's director of aviation and travel, the FAA's Cleveland Center contacted copilot Yates Gladwell when the Falcon was at an altitude "in the neighborhood of 3000 to 4000 ft."--not 34,000 ft. "They were in a descent already going into Johnstown," Newell adds. "The FAA asked them to investigate and they did. They got down within 1500 ft. of the ground when they circled. They saw a hole in the ground with smoke coming out of it. They pinpointed the location and then continued on." Most of us swallowed "the Bush-Cheney scenario" because we were unaware that, when two planes are less than half a kilometre apart, they appear as a single blip on the radar screen. Thus, the covert switch. Instead of crashing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the flights were diverted by FBI agents on board to Harrisburg, Pa., where the passengers from all three planes were herded onto UA Flight 175 and flown on to Cleveland Hopkins and their deaths.
• Screw Loose Change (a counter-video to the video in the FPP - in multiple parts)
• Mystery 9/11 aircraft allegedly an E4B "doomsday plane".