Hot dicussion of the month! Last Move to top.
The biggest problem with any conspiracy theory is that for any real questions there are a dozen hair-brained ideas as to what happened. No matter what happened on 9/11, the event has become a new Kennedy assassination in the lore of possible conspiracies, with theories ranging from stupidity and a failure of leadership in the face of direct warnings to an Operation Northwoods-type government operation. Those making accusations carry varying levels of credibility, further muddying the waters of the debate.
Kevin Barrett believes the U.S. government might have destroyed the World Trade Center. Steven Jones is researching what he calls evidence that the twin towers were brought down by explosives detonated inside them, not by hijacked airliners.
These men aren’t uneducated junk scientists: Barrett will teach a class on Islam at the University of Wisconsin this fall, over the protests of more than 60 state legislators. Jones is a tenured physicist at Brigham Young University whose mainstream academic job has made him a hero to conspiracy theorists.
According to polls, some Americans believe in 9/11 conspiracy theory.
With the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks quickly approaching, skepticism about the circumstances surrounding the tragedy is strong, as one in three Americans believe officials in the federal government either assisted or took no action to stop the attacks, according to a recent survey. About 36 percent of the 1,010 respondents in a national Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll said that they thought U.S. government officials were involved in the Sept. 11 atrocities because they wanted the U.S. to go to war in the Middle East.
Some accusations come from unusual sources.
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s publishing arm has released a book that says President Bush organized New York’s Sept. 11 attacks. The decision by the 160-year-old Westminster John Knox Press, the trade and academic publishing imprint of the Presbyterian Publishing Corp., to attribute the attacks on the World Trade Center brings into the U.S. religious mainstream a conspiracy theory long held by the world’s jihadists.
In ‘Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action,’ author David Ray Griffin calls the United States the world’s ‘chief embodiment of demonic power, says he initially scoffed at 9/11 conspiracy theories.
Of course, there are also many who dismiss conspiracies. There are a number of people loudly decrying conspiracy theories, so not all the noise is from those thinking the government was behind 9/11.
So what do you think? Ignorance, conspiracy, or terrorist act?
Sigh…there is no point in even trying to explain anything to some people. You’re right Frank, in one ear and out the other. Almost to the point of being unrational.
Paper burns at 451? So, because of that science fiction book and movie, all paper….no matter what…burns at precisly that temperature?
What the hell am I doing…forget it. Fine Roc, yeah, Bush and everyone planed the whole thing out….whatever.
Roc –
Rocky –
One mistake that I notice that you are making consistently, is confusing with the temperature at which a substance ignites, with the maximum temperature said substance can burn.
Another error you make is assuming that a small volume of a given substance will burn at the same temperature as a large volume of the same substance.
You remind me of that guy who used a bird cage topped by a cinderblock as a model of the WTC. Or are you that guy?
4. Don’t believe images without seeing video. Those “squibs” from the “explosion” in the towers? They were billowing out slowly as the building began to fall. Watch a video, you’ll see what I mean.
You can see how some people just blindly live for a conpiracy: JFK, moon landings, alien abductions.
I hate to break the news, but what part of two 767s jets weighing about 280,000 lbs and holding over 10,000 gallons of fuel, each flying directly into buildings is so hard to understand that this would bring them down?
The steel in the floor trusses expanded and twisted due to being heated up, overstressing the connections between the joists and the columns. Now do that experiment Roc.
http://www.ccdominoes.com/lc/LooseChangeGuide.html
RBG
Rocky –
You will note, if you actually read the excerpt from the Popular Mechanics article, that fighters were scrambled within minutes of the first call to NORAD, which was actually quicker than what happened in the case of Payne Stewart’s plane.
From where are you getting this notion that “someone” gave the order to “belay” the scramble, Rocky?
If you had actually bothered to read the article… there were four calls to NORAD –
1) The first identified flight 11 as hijacked, 10 minutes before it crashed into the north tower.
2) The second said that flight 11 was headed for Washington, when it had actually crashed into the north tower 35 minutes earlier.
3) The second said that flight 175 had been hijacked, within a minute of when it crashed into the south tower.
4) The fourth reported erroneously reported that another airliner (Delta 1989) had been hijacked.
The fighters were based in Falmouth, Massachusetts and Hampton Roads, Virginia.
How do you expect the fighters to be able to intercept the flights under those circumstances?
#102
Believe it or not… Response time was, as I understand the report I heard a few days ago on NPR, further complicated by a standing order not to start the engines until a launch order is given… A policy intended to save on fuel.
It seems silly that the cost of fuel is an issue to national security, but it is more complicated than that. Flight time is obviously limited by fuel supply and with only 14 planes available and no idea how many targets might be involved, and not being preped for in flight refueling, and having no idea how long the fighters might need to be in the air… It starts sounding like it was good policy in theory.
Jared
The “squibs” were not caused by detonations they were cause by compression. Drop a 550 pack of 20 lb paper onto a floor with dust. Watch how the dust fly’s out to the side. It is the same principle that explains that phenomena.
Rocky
Go here and read. These people actually did research on fire and were misquoted in one of those conspiracies video. Frank is correct. The ~1100 F temp he is talking about is called Yellow Book Failure. Take a look at the picture and tell me that steel doesn’t melt or at least bend a whole hell of a lot in an office fire. Those beams also have no load on them. It is just heat and gravity
Link here
If you need a unit converter (and my guess is you will) go here.
http://www.digitaldutch.com/unitconverter/
Just being a lay person when it comes to structural engineering it looks to me that if those I beams melted even half that much I sure a hell would not want to be in that building. LOL
Dennis…did you read the Popular Mechanics article about all this? It explains it all in detail. Yes, building 7 was brought down by fire AND a sizable chunk that was torn out of it by the falling of the towers.
The article also has pictures of the plane at the Pentagon. So please…STOP.
But we all know you’re not going to, don’t we….
Dennis
Nice try!!!
Another typical conspiracy theorist tactic is once they realize that you have the proof to answer their question they bring up 2 or 3 more for distraction it will be endless. One of them usually being a presumptive question like…….”Why haven’t they been released” Nice trick. They force the assumption that there is something being concealed. Well if it never existed in the first place it would be awfully hard to produce it. So you end up in an endless debate because they talk about their proof which doesn’t exist or at the least they have never seen therefore isn’t really proof. This is one of their favorite tricks to use when they realize they have lost a rational debate.
My above statement was about the “surveillance videos” that were “confiscated” by the FBI and such. Where is the proof they existed in the first place. You have the burden of proof because you make the claim they exist. As far as pictures there are dozens! The Pentagon had them on their website at one point. They have been shown on the news and in the paper. Just because you didn’t notice doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Denis –
So you assume that just because the fire in Sao Paulo was in a high-rise, and it “burned for a day”, it reached the temperatures that the WTC fire did?
Denis –
The Popular Mechanics article discusses why Building 7 collapsed.
Go read it.
I’m going to give you four teasers:
1) Burning debris from the two towers
2) Transfer truss
3) Millions of gallons of diesel fuel for emergency generators stored inside
4) No firefighters in the area due to collapse of towers
For Denis –
Passenger windows from Flight 175 Which Hit South Tower
Wreckage of Flight 77 in front of Pentagon
Wow,
Over 122 comments, and its not about religion and/or evolution and/or stem cells…
Who’da thunk…
[ed: Until NOW..thanks for blowing it Mike]
#123
…and i say that if these religion nuts would just admit that evolution is true and allow stem cell research, then 9/11 never would have happened!!!
89,
Prove to me WHOM, or what group did it…
Statement of FACT:
A guard that is placed on duty 24 hours aday, Day in day out, rotateing shifts, and NOTHING happens….
Gets lazy… you rotate guards, and the job becomes BORING and lazy..
The Guard lowers his protection…Thinking NOTHING ever happens, even the NEW guards, become BORED and lazy..
Its a nothing job.
Until 1 person lites a match and TRIES to burn the Door down.
How long can a ‘NO fly zone” be kept up and running before its a “BORING NOTHING TO DO” Job??
10 years, 20, 30???
Lets MOVE Wash DC, out in the middle of NOWHERE…That way if they REALLY need to shoot something OUT OF THE AIR…THEY CAN, and not have it drop on NEW YORK…or some OTHER populated center…
I can see them shooting 50 caliber and 30mm Bullets 10+ miles, and HITTING some poor kid in a PARK…
Or some IDIOT firing a rocket/missle and HIT or MISS, either the missle comes DOWN or the Plane, RIGHT into a SCHOOL 10-40 miles AWAY…
A few interesting facts.
Osama Bin Laden is from a wealthy Saudi family. The Bin Laden’s and the Bush’s have been doing business with each other for years.
Two days after 9/11 the only commercial or private aircraft flying in the United States were Saudi owned. They were “evacuating” Saudi nationals before they could be interviewed by the FBI.
They could not have flown without the express permission of the US govenment.
These facts were uncovered by a BBC documentary.
Here’s another reason why Rocky’s “experiment” with jet fuel proves nothing –
Wood ignites at between 450 F and 500 F.
The average temperature of a typical fireplace fire is around 1000 F, but the embers can reach as high as 1500 F.
Forest fires, which burn wood just like a fireplace does, can burn as hot as 2000 C (3632 F).
More interesting facts:
Bin Laden Group is one of the Arabic world’s largest construction, engineering, manufacturing, and telecommunications. Construction projects include airports, housing complexes, tunnels, and bridges. The group is also involved in city planning and real estate development. The Saudi Binladin Group is Egypt’s largest private foreign company.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_bin_Laden
I suspect more than just Bush have been doing business with them.
Osama Bin Laden’s father married 22 times and had 54 children. Do you think the father even knew Osama BL?
RBG
Blues makes several statements, some true, some partly true but deceptive, and some blatantly false.
1) Osama Bin Laden is from a wealthy Saudi family.
Partly true. The Bin Laden family is immensely wealthy, its wealth coming from its construction business.
However Osama had been disowned by his family many years earlier, because his activities endangered the family’s relations with the House of Sa’ud. There has never been any evidence linking the rest of the Bin Laden family to Osama’s actions.
2) The Bin Laden’s and the Bush’s have been doing business with each other for years.
True. However, Craig Unger’s House of Bush, House of Saud, which has been the primary source used by Michael Moore and others, to claim that the Bin Laden family had undue influence on the Bush family, never could quite prove that such influence was used to America’s detriment. Instead, Unger’s book goes off on a wild goose chase of
source
3) Two days after 9/11 the only commercial or private aircraft flying in the United States were Saudi owned.
False. All the airports across the USA (with the exception of Washington National) reopened to commercial traffic on September 13, two days after 9/11. The Bin Laden family did not leave until all commercial avation was re-opened.
4) They were “evacuating” Saudi nationals before they could be interviewed by the FBI. They could not have flown without the express permission of the US govenment.
Only partly true. As I said previously, the skies had been re-opened to commercial aviation before they departed. And while I would have preferred that the FBI et al had been able to question the family members, the family’s stated reason for wanting to depart as quickly as possible is perfectly reasonable – that their personal safety was in danger due to the possibility of reprisals.
let me just toss out my standard theory about conspiracy theorists. some people want to believe that Someone Is In Charge. Even if that Someone is an Evil Someone and would know in advance about the attack on Pearl Harbor, put JFK in a crossfire, fabricate the Holocaust, etc.
that is infinitely more comforting to some folks than reality – chaos.
a dozen guys with boxcutters can punch a hole in the Pentagon and take down the WTC. and all the government that we spent all that money on couldn’t protect JFK, couldn’t see Pearl Harbor coming, and couldn’t prevent 9/11. in the middle of the 20th Century a modern nation, defying all our notions of progress, would commit genocide in the middle of Europe.
that’s scary.
chaos is scary, conspiracy is order and order, to some folks, is not scary, even when that order is run by Someone evil.
What a shame inline images aren’t allowed on this blog.
This one would be perfect for this thread. 🙂
Wow a 133 comments.
Thanks for showing the image in 131, John. 🙂
127…How about something Easier…
wind at that height is about 40+ MPH…
ADd that to a flame and you have a Blow torch. tharts from 1200-1800 degrees, with Alcohol based fuels.
Good point re the wind, ECA.
However jet fuel is not “alcohol-based”, it is actually more closely related to diesel fuel, kerosene, and heating oil.
[ED: jet fuel is fact high-grade kerosene]
DONOT LET ANY SQUIRRELS NEAR THIS BUNCH.
I’ll pretend that you’re not being sarcastic, Denis.
For the sake of argument I will say that buildings should be retrofitted to protect them from burning debris from adjacent collapsing skyscrapers.
But seriously now, I’m sure that architects and building managers now realize that keeping fuel for emergency generators INSIDE buildings is incredibly shortsighted and dangerous.
And it’s likely that that no more buildings the size of WTC 7 will be built on such large transfer trusses.
Do not feed the trolls
Frank,
There have been many towering infernos, some burned for 24+ hours and never collapsed. One of them was in LA. I believe the most recent was in Madrid.
“Named” –
The towers in Madrid, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Sao Paolo did not get hit by a plane and experience heavy damage to their support structures.
The towers in Madrid, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Sao Paulo had small fires that eventually became big blazes. They did not have millions of cubic feet ignited INSTANTLY by exploding jet fuel. They did not burn anywhere near as hot as the WTC buildings did.
Denis –
It is the fuel tanks that supply the generators that are the danger, not the generators themselves. The fuel tanks aren’t necessarily inside the buildings, or at least I hope they are not. If they are, then that’s not good.
Sounds like you didn’t listen to the news yesterday or read the papers this morning?