Off Topic – Did this really happen?

[salo_t]

Hey Perry, I was actually being sarcastic with my thank you’s so don’t be offended that I left you out. hah.
I have never used the term conspiracy when describing what happened. Its my opinion that the administration knew more about the pending attacks than they let on to. Now whether they did or didnt is up for debate but its really something that none of us will probably ever know.

[bgates]

Perry, thanks for giving me the chance to argue against a completely different asinine viewpoint than the conspiracy nuts. You’re claiming that now that the US is in charge, corruption is a big problem in Iraq? I know you had no interest in the country besides what fraction of its problems can be blamed on Republicans, but Saddam was actually not terribly ethical. You blame ethnic strife in the country on Bush? What do you call the slaughter of 100000 Shia by the Sunni government in 1991, or the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Shia soldiers in their war with Iran? Whose fault are the assassinations in Lebanon, or the civil war there? Whose fault is the violence between Fatah and Hamas? Are you aware there were terrorists even before Bush took office? That the 9/11 plot started before Bush took office?
Whose fault was the 1979 Islamic Revolution?

Bush has made mistakes, like every government ever, like everyone besides geniuses like salo_t, to whom I must now sacrifice a goat since the football game is over.

You fault Bush for what you think is a bad strategy, now you fault him for reconsidering the strategy. So much for coherence. Your posts are an embarrassment.

[PerryChase]

I’m not the only one faulting Bush — Republicans are. Did you watch the talk shows this past weekend? If not you can catch them online. Colin Powell and Newt Gringrich are also criticizing Bush. Before long you’ll have all sorts of Republicans running away from Bush.

http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/ftn/main3460.shtml

 

[PD]

Salo_t’s last line of defense – the Insurance Policy. Hmm, on the surface it certainly is a big coincidence that the buildings were insured within weeks of the attack. However, lets ask ourselves how long it took from the point when insurance was REQUESTED to when it actually went into effect. Insuring the Towers is not as simple as getting homeowners for your house. It takes a lot more than a couple of phone calls where you get quotes on the spot. No doubt there were months or years of phones calls, reports, investigations and number crunching. This was a huge policy. The insurer would have gone through a great deal of due diligence before offering a policy. Further, it is possible that it took years or decades before a policy was offered that was accepted (because of cost or other limitations). It is very possible that the owners of the Towers had been trying to insure the them since the first bombing. Would you have insured them after they had already been bombed?
Since Salo_t is using the insurance as proof of foreknowledge, the important date is not the date the insurance went into effect, rather, it is the date the insurance was requested. When was that Salo_t?

[Anonymous]

Yep, you guys are in trouble, now that you’ve got bg and PD fighting mad!

[bubba99]

I love conspiracy theories, but in the case of 9/11 lets stick to some absolute facts.

First the two planes did bring down the twin towers. With a modern skyscraper, each floor supports the many above it. Like a row of dominos, when one floors steel support structure fails, the millions of tons of material above cause the subsequent floors to drop one at a time. Witnesses said the aviation fuel caused the steel to be heated white hot, causing the structural failure. An unfortunate design flaw of modern building is a mudsill on each floor to make attaching the wall structures easier. The mudsill held in the burning fuel allowing the overheat to cause the steel to fail.

Second, we know the Osama bin Laden (OBL)hated the Saudis for stripping him of his citizenship and family. We know that many of the supposed 9/11 hijackers (9) who were supposed to be Saudi were in fact imposters. The info left in the van (details of the identities of the supposed hijackers left by “late” arriving terrorists)pointed to names of people who had their identities stolen. At least four are still alive. This points to a “get even” ploy from OBL that also taints the Saudi’s as the perps. This also explains why the US govt. worked so dilligently to get important Saudi’s out of the country in the days just after the incident – they were at risk from a mislead public.

Third, the various intelligence agencies did surface the basics of the plot, but were ignored by their own management. Not an executive conspiracy, but standard government ineptitude. There had been talk of plots using hijacked planes back as far as 1996, but no one took any action. Mohammed ATTA the supposed ring leader was on everyone’s radar. Just to be funny, when he applied for his visa to come to the U.S. he used a name that was a joke just to prove how unfamiliar with Muslim names our experts are.

Forth, the supposed perfect hole in the pentagon is a puzzler until you find out the wings of the plane had already come off after contact with the ground. The hole was caused by only the perfectly round fuselage.

The only fact I can find that supports a conspiracy is that
Al Queda has never been able – before or since – to launch an operation of this complexity. Transferring money, getting flight lessons, coodinating 21 peoples movements and living arrangements, planting misleading evidence. This was two orders of magnitude more complex than anything else they have done. Pointing to the possibility that Al Queda was not the criminal. Supporting this assertion is the fact that OBL has disappeared off the face of the earth. If your believe there was a conspiracy, and that a sitting US President would not ever allow such a travesty, then to whom can we look for the ability to perform complex dirty tricks types of foreign operations that had something to gain from 9/11.

[bgates]

Perry, I’m not faulting you for criticizing Bush. If you get an adult to help you read my last post, he’ll tell you that I said that Bush has made mistakes. I criticized you because you don’t make criticisms from any set of principles, you just type whatever comes into your pretty little head. You don’t want Bush to keep doing what he’s been doing, but you ridicule him for announcing he’s working on changing his strategy. That’s not good faith, constructive criticism, it’s useless bitching.

Powell and Gingrich both criticized Bush, but from different directions – Gingrich would support sending more troops under certain circumstances, Powell doesn’t think that will help. You can’t cite both of them as though they supported your point of view unless your point of view is no more sophisticated than ‘whatever Bush does is wrong, no matter what it is’ – which I think you’ve demonstrated is a fair summary.

Since we’re citing Republican luminaries, I can’t help but point out that I’ve criticized you and others for describing Iraq as hopeless and unwinnable; my position is that that description is wrong. Gingrich and Powell both support my position – Gingrich says the only exit strategy is victory, and while Powell says, “we’re not winning, we are losing,” he also says “We haven’t lost.” So Gingrich, Powell, Bush, and I all think Iraq is winnable, and you think what, exactly?

[PerryChase]

I believe exactly what Tom Friedman expressed — 10 months or 10 years. Either we put in the resources to completely rebuild Iraq in 10 years (unlikely the voters would support this proposition) or get out in 10 months.

[powayseller]

Thanks for the interesting comments,pd, bgates and salo_t. I look forward to you responding further. I can’t believe I had never heard of this theory before this week. I also don’t have any idea who would have planned this. Maybe the terrorists put the bombs in the building as a backup plan, in case the plane didn’t make them go down. And the politicians just allowed it to happen.

Kevin Ryan of Underwriters Laboratories, the company that certified the steel used in the WTCs, wrote this letter to NIST.

He writes “the results of these tests appear to indicate that the buildings should have easily withstood the thermal stress caused by pools of burning jet fuel.

There continues to be a number of “experts” making public claims about how the WTC buildings fell. One such person, Dr. Hyman Brown from the WTC construction crew, claims that the buildings collapsed due to fires at 2000F melting the steel (1). ….

We know that the steel components were certified to ASTM E119. The time temperature curves for this standard require the samples to be exposed to temperatures around 2000F for several hours. And as we all agree, the steel applied met those specifications. Additionally, I think we can all agree that even un-fireproofed steel will not melt until reaching red-hot temperatures of nearly 3000F (2). Why Dr. Brown would imply that 2000F would melt the high-grade steel used in those buildings makes no sense at all. ”

Kevin Ryan was fired.

Hot fires are aglow, like the Windsor fire in the photo above. They are bright yellow. Cool fires are black, because combustion is incomplete. The WTC fires were under 500 degrees Celsius. I am most troubled by the fire theory because it does not add up. Where is the fireball burning for days on end? A low temp fire burning for one hour can not destroy such a strong building as the WTC.

Remember that the WTC was very strong. It swayed in the wind, and the people on the top floor often got motion sick. If any impact could topple it, the thing would have fallen over, not straight down.

Further problems with the theory that the fire melted steel enough to cause a structural failure is:

1) kerose burns at 140 degrees, not hot enough to melt steel. Keep in mind the difference between temperature and heat. Putting 4 logs in a fire raises the amount of heat, but not the temperature. Likewise, the kerosene fuel from the airplane did not raise the temperature of the fire but spread the heat to a larger area. Still, the temperature was not nearly hot enough to compromise the steel.

“No kerosene fire can burn hot enough to melt steel. In point of fact, most of the fuel in the jets was contained in their wing tanks. The thin aluminum of the tanks was pierced or stripped as the airplanes penetrated the walls of the towers, and the result was the huge fireball which was seen on national TV, where most of this fuel was burned.”

2) the 2nd tower was hit by a plane which lost half its fuel, so there was only half the jet fuel as in the first tower. Yet it was the first tower to fall (“The Wrong Tower Fell First”)

3) other stell towers in the world burned for several days and did not fall, yet this one fell in less than one hour; the heat generated from kerosene and burning office equipment is not hot enough to melt steel in one hour; the Windsor building fire was 800 degrees C, so you can see the amount of flames that are generated by a fire of such a high temperature. The WTC fire was just a baby fire compared to that, much shorter, not as hot according to firefighter accounts and also the photos.

4) firefighters report only small isolated fires

5) I saw only soot (evidence of low heat fires) and lots of smoke, but nothing like the inferno of the Windsor fire in the photo above

6) there are too many survivors at the level of the plane impact. No way could all those people have survived if the plane hit at the alleged 800 degree Celsius. 20 minutes after impact, employees on floors 93-93 were evacuating. This was possible because the kerose burnt off quickly, some was dropped outside upon impact to the building, and the fires in the building were small, isolated, and of low temperature.

Physics laws are violated in the offical pancaking explanation, because the building collapsed at the speed of gravity, of free fall. Pancaking is not possible at the speed of gravity, because the resistance of the lower floors, where fire had not done any damage, would have slowed the fall. So it is against the laws of physics that pancaking can occur at the speed of gravity. So either the building did not pancake, or it took longer to fall than the data and eyewitness and video accounts.

Although the WTC was designed to withstand the impact of a smaller jet, this larger jet could have shook the foundation of the building, causing it to sway and crash. Yet that is not how the building came down. The fire story is just too far fetched, especially when the firefighters who were in the building tell us that the fires were small and isolated. One photo of a woman standing near the opening of the WTC shows only black smoke. Where is the large fireball that supposedly melted steel?

Then there’s the 9/11 ABC 20/20 interview with Rudi Giuliani, where he says he was told to get out of the towers because they would collapse. No tower had ever collapsed before due to heat, so why would anyone even say that?

It’s possible that the terrorists also placed bombs inside the building, so the impact of planes started the demolition process.

[powayseller]

Bill Manning, Fire Engineering’s Editor in Chief is calling for a full and unbiased investigation into the cause of the WTC collapse.

He writes, “The structural damage from the planes and the explosive ignition of jet fuel in themselves were not enough to bring down the towers.”

[Anonymous]

To add to powaysellers list, I would add:

7) All of the WTC buildings collapsed in exactly the same way. This includes WTC 7. They fell at freefall speed and into their own footprint. The debris clouds were pyroclastic like those in a volcanic eruption, and also associated with demolition.

To me, this suggests the aircraft did not damage the structure
of the buildings as alleged.

[PD]

The very people who certified the steel claim it should not have failed. Of course they are saying that. Saying anything else would open them up to a lawsuit of giant proportions. Sorry, but I don’t agree with anything you have to say on this subject, PS.

I have addressed before how preposterous an idea it is that a large group of people spent weeks planting explosives in the building (plus cutting through key supports, which is necessary in the kind of planned demolition you are suggesting). I think too many people have started believing the wild things they see in action movies – like two people on motorcycles impacting at high speed and then having a fistfight, or falling thirty feet and jumping up without a bruise, or being thrown fifty feet from an explosion without any body damage, or building secret high tech cities underwater where some super rich crazy guy tries to take over the world, or getting a huge insurance policy while planting explosives and cutting supports all the while with the knowledge that radical Muslims are going to attempt (this was by no means a certain conclusion) to hijack airliners and are then going to successfully fly them into the buildings. Whew, I’m out of breath on the last one, there were so many variables…

Have a little common sense.

[Borat]

My guess is that the attacks were a combination of Islamic fundamentalist conspiracy, gross governmental negligence, and insurance fraud/capital murder. It is likely that Al Qaeda planned and executed the 9/11 attacks but it is also likely that US/Egyptian/Turkish/Israeli/etc… intelligence discovered the plot beforehand. Perhaps the White House took no action to stop the attack knowing that if the plot succeeded they would have justification to invade Iraq. Also, WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein is a rich and powerful guy who might have some connections in intelligence circles; he could have hired a foreign demolition team of 4 or 5 men to plant the thermite cutting charges in his buildings (they don’t use “bombs” in building demolition) so that he wouldn’t be stuck with an expensive asbestos-filled white elephant afterwards.

We’ll probably never really know what happened. However, Operation Northwoods is proof that the US has at least planned false flag attacks in the past. The fact that CIA operative Luis Posada remains free in the US after executing the bombing of Cubana Flight 455 in which 73 people died shows that US not only deals with known terrorists, but actually protects them. And the USS Liberty incident is proof that even our closest allies have been guilty of treachery against us when acting in their national interest. As I wrote earlier, 9/11 will be the Kennedy assassination of our generation, a hall of mirrors in which the truth will remain forever hidden.

[powayseller]

PD, steel does not bend or weaken at 800 degrees C. The fires were low temp, as evidenced by survivors, firefighter reports, and the black smoke. Hot fires burn yellow or orange, not black. I just gave you one quote from a UAL employee who was later fired. UAL did not give their offical version.

This seismograph shows seismic activity right before the WTC collapsed, and the activity prior to impact was much higher than the activity at impact, which was dispersed at the ground level. Witnesses report hearing several loud explosions just prior to the collapse, and that the ground shook.

The only molten steel was at the underground level, due to the high heat of the explosives used to detonate the building.

As far as taking weeks and weeks to set up the explosives, I have no idea how long it takes. The main explosives were underground. These explosives were recorded on the seismograph and heard by witnesses and firefighters.

PD, you still haven’t debunked the pancake theory and you can’t, because the explanation violates the laws of physics. I also just read that in a pancaking, debris is thrown outward. When the mass from above collapes, then the debris underneath is forced sideways, out. But this entire building collapsed neatly into a pile.

The only question I have, if indeed this is a demolition, why did it start from the top floors? Don’t demolitions start from the bottom and go up?

Why hasn’t the government released the report on the WTC7 collapse?

[PD]

These are conspiracies that I would believe:

The designers of the World Trade Center might have known there were flaws in the design (before, during or after construction) that could lead catastrophic failure. They kept silent and crossed their fingers.

The construction crews may have taken shortcuts to save money.

The construction crews might have made mistakes due to incompetence.

The suppliers of materials might have substituted substandard materials in attempt to cut costs.

As a reminder, the builders of the Titanic touted it as impossible to sink. Oh wait! Hey, what if the sinking of the Titanic was actually a plot to start WWI? Just think about it for a moment…… Maybe it wasn’t an iceberg after all. Maybe it was a German torpedo. Or maybe someone planted explosives in the hull because they knew there would be expensive art and jewels on board and they wanted to collect the insurance. Or maybe aliens had a hidden city under the Titanic’s path and they didn’t want this huge ship passing over all the time.

[Author]

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