9/11 - What do you think?

[Dr. Love]

I read that whole article you posted, FORD. That guy is an arrogant propagandist. I saw more condescension than I saw any attempts at citing actual facts (not just random statements posed as facts).

He even says that he is citing his claims, but I don't see any indication of it. Maybe it's because you copy/pasted. At the risk of lowering my own IQ, do you have a link to the original (or did my mind get so numbed by that nonsense that I missed it?)

I have a hard time taking the individual seriously based on how he's written the article. If the evidence is so strong, as he claims, then just put it up and let it speak for itself. Construct a narrative around it. Don't be condescending and sensationalist.

And actually, facts don't defeat belief. Perception matters much more than reality.

Why do you think there are so many adherents to organized religion? There's no proof and the story has a lot more glaring and bizarre holes in it than the official 9/11 story ... holes that require a much larger suspension of disbelief. Contradiction?

[Nitro Express]

I wouldn't even say it was just the US. A helluva lot of the western world has clung to 9/11 in quite a creepy way. And to those who do make money off it, it's the gift that keeps on giving. Because nobody is ever gonna have the guts to come forward and say "we should forget about it now" (not that I'm suggesting it SHOULD be forgotten...because it shouldn't, just perhaps remembered in a more dignified way)...so every year for at least as long as this generation lasts they're gonna have their pay day. I swear we're a hop, skip and and a jump away from having "Happy 9/11 Day" greetings cards even here in the UK.

I will just turn the TV off. Not buy anything promoted by the tragedy. Pay some respects to the people who were actually hurt or killed by what happened and be grateful there were some brave people in the military willing to defend democracy even though the politicians horribly misused them. If anything 9/11 tested our government and it flunked. Like all tests it uncovered the truth through whatever bullshit facade is put on. I think we learned our government is even more corrupt than we ever imagined it being. Now the question is what do we the citizens do about it.

[Nitro Express]

why? the official government version is highly believable. the fact is that middle eastern terrorist groups have been after the U.S. for a long time. why? because they don't like that the U.S. supports regimes that keep them out of power. so they tried in 1993. remember? that was actually a pretty big bomb. although "only" 6 people died, it was a significant attack. every wonder why the 9/11 conspiracy theorists don't mention the 1993 attack? because it doesn't fit in with their logical-as-long-as-you-don't-consider-anything-but-what-we-tell-you story. there is NO WAY the government failed at attacking the WTC in 1993 and decided to wait 8 years to try again. no way. so it's clear that 1993 was a real attack.

given that, and given that there ARE groups that want to, and in fact, DID attack the U.S., why is it so hard to believe that eventually they'd try again?

It's much like trying to convince the general public that the CIA shot Kennedy. Sure there was a motive because Kennedy wanted to break up the CIA and throw it to the wind. People know there is a lot we don't know but are skeptical at any conspiracy theory. 9/11 has it's own questions. Why did building 7 go down? Why did the owner of the building say they were going to pull it? Why did he purchased buildings that were already unprofitable and needed a shit load of asbetos removed? Lot's of questions and even if there was a government investigation we wouldn't believe the investigation. If anything it gives George Noory lots of stories for people to tune into so he can sell lots of advertising so he can live in Hawaii and run Coast from a beautiful new studio in Kona. I don't think he is heeding the advice of many of his guests to get away from the oceans and get high up. Noory just views that as less people on the beach to deal with. Maybe he is the smart one in all this.

[Seshmeister]

During the past 10 years I have not met a single individual who, after doing research on the subject, switched from questioning the official narrative of the events of 9/11/2001 to believing the official narrative of those events..

Really?

Surprising because that is the position of myself, all the serious media and almost all the world's structural engineers.

[Seshmeister]

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/israel.asp

[Nickdfresh]

During the past 10 years I have not met a single individual who, after doing research on the subject, switched from questioning the official narrative of the events of 9/11/2001 to believing the official narrative of those events..

Only the most flaming, arrogant of cockbags would ever make such an assertion...

[Seshmeister]

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4085

World Trade Center 7: The Lies Come Crashing Down
Was the collapse of 7 World Trade Center actually a controlled demolition?

Skeptoid #85


Today we're going to point our skeptical eye, once again, at the events of September 11, specifically at World Trade Center 7, the building that collapsed after the twin towers for no apparent reason, in a manner consistent with a controlled demolition. We're entering the weird wild and wacky world of conspiracy theories, men in black, deceit, doubt, mistrust, and delusion. But on which side?

First let's be clear about what the two sides are, then we'll examine the evidence supporting each of them.

The conspiracy theory states that World Trade Center 7 was a controlled demolition, an intentional destruction of the building by our government. The evidence supporting this theory is threefold: First, the video of the collapse and the tidy distribution of the resultant debris appear consistent with known controlled demolitions. Second, photographs of the building before it collapsed showed little or no damage to cause a collapse. Third, fire alone cannot destroy a steel building, and so the cause must lie in high-energy explosives. A great deal more information is put forward by the supporters of this theory as evidence, but it's really only suppositions about proposed motives and observations of events perceived as unusual, and so is actually not testable evidence of a direct physical cause. This information includes government offices located in the building, the establishment of Giuliani's emergency management headquarters on the 23rd floor, and portions of the government's preliminary reports that openly stated that certain unknowns remained.

The competing theory is found in those very same government reports. The first, a preliminary report issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) only eight months after the event, concluded that fires on the 5th through 7th floors caused the collapse, but infamously noted:



The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time. Although the total diesel fuel on the premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analyses are needed to resolve this issue.

Three years later, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) issued a working draft of the complete theory, scheduled to be finished in 2008. This report states that the building suffered two major failures, either of which could have been survived on its own, but not in combination. The first failure was severe damage to ten stories of the south side of the building, dramatically shown in a single frame of video from an ABC news helicopter, which destroyed several major columns. The second failure was the fire, fed in part by diesel generator fuel from high pressure tanks, which proceeded unfought for seven hours due to a lack of water pressure, and caused terminal weakening in the remaining columns that were already overloaded from the loss of the initial columns. Firefighters noted a growing bulge between the 10th and 13th floors and major structural creaking sounds, and finally evacuated. Two hours later, the east wall began to crack and bow. The east penthouse sank into the structure, and eight seconds later, the northeast corner fell, bringing the rest of the building down on top of it.

No evidence of any explosives were ever found, but the conspiracy theory states that this is because the government took away all the debris before it could be independently tested. Since it's normal for debris to be removed following any such destruction, this particular piece of information is too ambiguous to be given serious weight as proof of a conspiracy.

The claim that fire has never before destroyed a steel-framed building seems to hold up well, as it's hard to find a recent example of it. The reason is that modern building fires are always fought, they have sprinkler systems, and their steel is well insulated. Turn the clock back a few decades to World War II, when there was massive worldwide incendiary bombing of major cities, there were no sprinkler systems, and fire fighters had no hope of responding, there were many hundreds of steel framed buildings that were destroyed by fire. Not by bombs; by fire. The Edo Museum in Tokyo has preserved gnarled masses of giant girders twisted into knots by fire. London's Imperial War Museum has thousands of photographs of the same, and even a large collection of contemporary art depicting warped steel girders. Dresden's City Historical Museum also shows examples of steel girders from buildings that collapsed from fire, during that city's most infamous of all large-scale incendiary attacks. These museum collections all predate any alleged September 11 conspiracy.

There are three videos of the actual collapse that are of decent quality, and all show a collapse that appears reasonably consistent with what most laypeople have seen of controlled demolitions on television. The most obvious difference is that controlled demolitions start with multiple series of minor explosions distributed throughout the building to cut various support structures in a carefully planned sequence, followed a few seconds later by the charges to blow the key structural elements in a sequence designed to initiate the collapse in the desired direction. None of the videos of Building 7's collapse show any minor explosions. They simply show the top of the building begin to gracefully sag, as if it's made of clay, and then the whole thing drops. So while the manner of collapse may look superficially similar to a controlled demolition at first glance, a more careful examination shows critically important (and non-ambiguous) differences.

The neat, tidy arrangement of the debris of Building 7 is another characteristic of controlled demolitions that is claimed by the conspiracy theorists. WTC7.net states that "The pile was almost entirely within the footprint of the former building." In fact, Building 7's debris field was neither tidy nor well-contained within the footprint. The videos of the collapse are all from far away and show only the top portion of the building before it disappears behind the skyline. Lower down, the collapse become much more chaotic. Two nearby buildings were nearly destroyed by it. The Verizon Building suffered $1.4 billion in damage from the collapse of Building 7, but was able to be repaired. Manhattan Community College's Fiterman Hall building, however, was not so lucky, and suffered such major damage that it could not be saved. What remains of it is still being deconstructed piece by piece.

Could a building with such little apparent external damage collapse like this? The photos and videos on the conspiracy theory web sites are from other angles, and show only relatively minor, superficial damage to the building; and even the NIST has said the fire alone would probably would not have destroyed the building. But, let's not forget that Building 7 did have damage: Severe damage, a deep gouge cutting a quarter of the way through the building, ten floors high. Yet even if there was such extensive damage, argue the conspiracy theorists, that fact alone would invalidate the government report. Also from WTC7.net:

"The alleged damage was asymmetric, confined to the tower's south side, and any weakening of the steelwork from fire exposure would also be asymmetric. Thus, even if the damage were sufficient to cause the whole building to collapse, it would have fallen over asymmetrically — toward the south."

This claim forgets that nobody has said the damage alone was responsible for the collapse. According to the NIST report, the initial loss of the columns served only to transfer the building load to the remaining columns, thus exceeding their load bearing capacities, which then gave way after being adequately softened by the fire. In such a condition, the building would have insufficient support throughout. The east side, already sagging, dropped first and pulled the rest of the building down in a slightly diagonal collapse. The conspiracy theorists are correct in that the fall was not entirely symmetric, as it strayed enough to do the aforementioned damage to the Verizon and Manhattan Community College buildings. The conspiracy theorists have hardly proven that explosives are the only possible explanation for the collapse.

There's really nothing that's either mysterious or unexpected about the manner of Building 7's collapse. It was doomed by the damage, the diesel-fed fires, and the lack of firefighting capability. All the physical evidence, photographic evidence, and testimony of the firefighters is perfectly consistent with the government's official report. The conspiracy theory is supported by no evidence and is inconsistent with all of the events in the 7 hours preceding the collapse. The cause of Building 7's collapse is a question where very little critical analysis needs to be applied by a rational person. Judge the evidence for yourself.








References & Further Reading

9/11 Commission. The 9/11 Commission Report. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2004.

Byles, Jeff. Rubble: Unearthing the History of Demolition. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2005.

Eagar, Thomas W; Musso, Christopher. "Why did the world trade center collapse? Science, engineering, and speculation." Journal of the Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society. 1 Dec. 2001, Volume 53, Number 12: 8-11.

Hoffman, Jim. "WTC7.net the hidden story of Building 7: What Caused Building 7's Collapse?" WTC7.net. WTC7.net, 25 Jan. 2007. Web. 8 Dec. 2009. <http://wtc7.net/collapsecause.html>

McAllister, Therese (editor). World Trade Center Building Performance Study: Data Collection, Preliminary Observations, and Recommendations. Washington DC: FEMA, 2002.

Sunder, S., Gann, R., Grosshandler, W., Lew, H., Bukowski, R., Sadek, F., Gayle, F., Gross, J., McAllister, T., Averill, J., Lawson, J., Nelson, H., Cauffman, S. NIST NCSTAR 1A: Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008.

[Seshmeister]

Only the most flaming, arrogant of cockbags would ever make such an assertion...

The whole 9-11 industry self perpetuates by cherry picking data. They just ignore the tons and tons of evidence for the no conspiracy position.

For example they always ignore the evidence of 99.9% of the firemen at the scene. These are people whose expertise is in firefighting and the damage caused and THEY WERE FUCKING THERE LOST HUNDREDS OF THEIR BUDDIES AND INVESTIGATED IT.

Another example of stuff you don't see on these websites is the 30+ sworn witness statements from people in cars who say they saw an airliner fly straight over the top of them very low heading into the pentagon.

There are countless examples like this but as the conspiracy theories are often not challenged because people have dismissed them then you end up with these pseudo home made documentaries, usually with an authoritative calm female voice giving an absolutely manipulative pile of bullshit in a very convincing persuasive way. You scrape away at it objectively and you soon find out the reason that only college drop outs and internet nut jobs are pursuing the conspiracy theories and not 60 Minutes or the BBC or Al Jezeera or whoever is because it does not stand up to proper journalistic investigation.

[Seshmeister]

Every year I promise myself I won't get involved in this stuff and every time they drag me back in...

[binnie]

The reason you get so many conspiracies around events like this is because of their unprecedent nature. The logic is simple: 'this event is so horrifying and defies all conventional narratives and explanations that it must be the result of a malevolent conspiracy by the great 'other' [insert as required].' A mundane - or official - explanation doesn't do enough to allay the shock/horror/grief we feel, and consequently we feel that something must be missing or hidden.

But think about it for a second: for 9/11 to be an inside job, how many people would have to have been involved? Dozens or scores. And not one of them has blabbed for the $$$$ or to clear their consciences? Please.

Same with JFK, same with the moon landings, same with Princess Di.

[binnie]

Every year I promise myself I won't get involved in this stuff and every time they drag me back in...

It's a conspiracy.....

[Seshmeister]

Just say Chimpy pulled the trigger and call it a day.

And RIP all good Americans affected.......

Ok here's the plan George, we are going to murder thousands of Americans so that we can invade Iraq and make billions for the Carlyle Group.

Why do we need to fly planes into 3 buildings and fire a rocket but pretend it's a plane into the Pentagon, why not just 1?

Never mind that George and then we are going to blow them up.

Why?

We just are ok.

Ok I'm going to risk the death penalty and to become the biggest villain in history to make some more money and look a hero.

Look a hero?

Yeah I saw Independence Day, I come in and save the day right?

No George what we want you to do is sit at a childrens school for 20 minutes looking confused and then disappear hiding for most of the rest of the day...

[Seshmeister]

The reason you get so many conspiracies around events like this is because of their unprecedent nature. The logic is simple: 'this event is so horrifying and defies all conventional narratives and explanations that it must be the result of a malevolent conspiracy by the great 'other' [insert as required].' A mundane - or official - explanation doesn't do enough to allay the shock/horror/grief we feel, and consequently we feel that something must be missing or hidden.

But think about it for a second: for 9/11 to be an inside job, how many people would have to have been involved? Dozens or scores. And not one of them has blabbed for the $$$$ or to clear their consciences? Please.

Same with JFK, same with the moon landings, same with Princess Di.

Also at this point it makes money.

I'm surprised that more people don't get annoyed at these people making shit up to make money out of mass murder.

[kwame k]

Look at the Manhattan Project and how much information was leaked and how spies infiltrated key aspects of that.......

There's no way one person wouldn't of come forward by now, no way!

The official reports actually scares me more than a nefarious group of elite hell bent on world domination......that the idiots running this country ignored intelligence reports that had big words in it like planes, hijacking, buildings, and September in it.

[Nickdfresh]

I still have yet to see the official "Inside Job™ " alternative timeline for the events that took place on 9/11. You know? The ones where the black-Kevlar laden ninjas pull passengers off the plane that was supposed to have hit the Pentagon--but actually landed in Cleveland--and murder them all, then dispose the bodies, at a public airport...