9/11 revisited

[cgannon64]

Simply put, I don't think there was a single suspect aside from Osama bin Laden; if the government waited three hours to accuse him, that was a show of restraint.

 

[luiz]

al-Qaeda admitted it. End of discussion.

(Unless of course someone belives that AQ actually works for the US government, that is controlled by the evil learned elders of Zion who manipulate everybody in their eternal quest for world domination and enslavement of the rest of mankind).

 

[JtheJackal]

This I copied from a March 2005 issue of Popular Mechanics in an article called "Debunking 9/11 Lies". It debunks all the major conspiracies that I've heard. This one is about how the buildings weakened enough to collapse, note their use of experts and facts.

“Melted” Steel​

CLAIM: “We have been lied to,” announces the Web site AttackOnAmerica.net. “The first lie was that the load of fuel from the aircraft was the cause of structural failure. No kerosene fire can burn hot enough to melt steel.” The posting is entitled “Proof of Controlled Demolition At the WTC.”

FACT: Jet fuel burns at 800 degrees to 1500 degrees Fahrenheit, not hot enough to melt steel (2750 F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn’t need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength-and that required exposure to much less heat. “I have never seen melted steel in a building fire,” says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse of Burning Buildings: A Guide to Fireground Safety. “But I’ve seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks.”
“Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100 F,” notes senior engineer Farid Alfawakhiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. “And at 1800 F it is probably at less than 10 percent.” NIST also believes great deal if the spray oon fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.
But jet fuel wasn’t the only thing burning notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of the seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832 F.
“The jet fuel was the ignition source.” Williams tells PM. “it burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down.”

 

[Bugfatty300]

That was an excellent artical. I was going to post some of it.

Its funny how 9/11 conspiracists ignore that little jewel when ever someone brings it up against their theories.

We as a society accept the basic premise that a group of Islamist terrorists hijacked four airplanes and turned them into weapons against us. Sadly, the noble search for truth is now being hijacked by a growing army of conspiracy theorists........Those who peddle fantasies that this country encouraged, permitted or actually carried out the attacks are libeling the truth -- and disgracing the memories of the thousands who died that day

 

[amadeus]

Simply put, I don't think there was a single suspect aside from Osama bin Laden; if the government waited three hours to accuse him, that was a show of restraint.

That's right. Who else would have had the incentive and the financial support to do such a thing?

 

[JohnRM]

I remember having heard a radio show about Bin Laden few months before the 9-11. They were saying the CIA considered him as the #1 Public Ennemy since the 1994 bombing. The show was picturing him as a billionaire living in a cave and hating the US since the Gulf war. After the African embassies attacks and the USS Cole, it's not as if Bin Laden hadn't already attacked the US. It's rather natural he became fast the first suspect once the second plane crashed, proving then it wasn't an accident but a terrorist attack.

That is all fine and dandy to suspect Bin Laden, but to come right out and say that 'we know it was Bin Laden' is just ludicrous.

 

[JohnRM]

As far as I am concerned, there were enough questions raised to warrant further investigation. While I respect the viewpoints of the many of you whom dismiss the conspiracy theories, entirely, there is none among you with any credibility to do so. You, like many of the conspiracy advocates, are simply repeating the same "facts" that were handed to you by the government and the media, not reporting actual data that you have discovered or obtained from an independent source.


What concerns me, are the facts that are not in dispute.


Collapse, Fire
1. No building, prior to 9/11 has ever collapsed due to fire.
2. An errant B-52 crashed into the Empire State Building. It did not collapse.
3. Many other buildings have burned far more floors for as many as twenty-four hours, without collapsing, whilst these three buildings all did so in less than one hour with less than a dozen floors affected.
4. Multiple eye-witness accounts reporting secondary explosions, some of which we reported to have come from not from the impact area, but from floors much lower.
5. Massive otherwise unexplained damages in the lobbies of the WTC prior to the collapses, which cannot have come from fireballs down the elevator shafts due to them being hermatically sealed to prevent that exact occurance.
6. The collapse of WTC-7, rather than any of the other six buildings which were all closer to the Twin Towers. Even though WTC-5 was covered with debris from WTC-2, suffered heavy damage to its upper floors, was ravaged by fire from top to bottom, and then buried in debris from the collapse, it had to be demolished when it all was said and done. WTC-4 was ravaged by fire and falling debris, yet there was still an entire wing of the building left standing when all was said and done. WTC-3, which again, was ravaged by falling debris, with little evidence of fire, was heavily damaged, yet the steel frame of the building prevented its collapse. It had to be demolished, when all was said and done. WTC-6, with evidence of severe fire, heavy debris damage from the Twin Tower, and two gigantic holes in the roof extending straight to ground floor, did not collapse. Four buildings, right next to the Twin Towers, no collapse like we saw with WTC-7, which was twice the distance from the Twin Towers as the other buildings, which did not collapse (WTC-4 not entirely).


Other Unusual Events
1. Puts placed on various airline stocks in the days prior to the 9/11 attacks, which were in some cases five times the average volume.
2. The hasty removal and destruction of important evidence at the scene, specifically the transportation of the primary steel support structure to India, and other East Asian destinations.
3. The very quick connection to Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, IIRC, no more than three hours after the attacks.
4. The fact that many of the hijackers that were supposed to have been on the flights, were later found to have been alive, in other countries.
5. Not a single jet fighter was to be seen in the skies above the Northeast, even hours after the WTC was hit. Not even after the Pentagon was hit. Not ever. Where were they?



Until someone adequately explains these things, excuse me if I put forth a giant "WTH?"

I have updated the list to show what is left to be debunked, in case anyone is interested. There have been some attempts made, but they were ineffectual.

 

[Merlin]

5. Not a single jet fighter was to be seen in the skies above the Northeast, even hours after the WTC was hit. Not even after the Pentagon was hit. Not ever. Where were they?

This is the only thing that bothers me. Both of the twin towers were hit with highjacked planes. And still the terrorists were able to hit Pentagon an hour later with a highjacked plane. And Pentagon is the Army HQ!

 

[Bugfatty300]

Actually there where F-15 fighters scrambled by 9:00 AM to cover New York. A bit too late to do anything about the WTC.

And more F-16 fighters where sent to intercept Flight 93. Some people actually believe these fighters shot it down over PA. Though I blieve this is false.

Though no fighters had scrambled to cover DC when the pentagon was hit which was a big screw up.

I still think you can strike that from the list also John HSOG since fighters had been scrambled to cover New York and Flight 93.

 

[Red Stranger]

Let me update more for you.

Collapse, Fire
1. No building, prior to 9/11 has ever collapsed due to fire.

No building prior to 9/11 had been hit by two planes

3. Many other buildings have burned far more floors for as many as twenty-four hours, without collapsing, whilst these three buildings all did so in less than one hour with less than a dozen floors affected.

Those buildings didn't have a plane fly into them.

4. Multiple eye-witness accounts reporting secondary explosions, some of which we reported to have come from not from the impact area, but from floors much lower.

How do they know what floor they came from?

5. Massive otherwise unexplained damages in the lobbies of the WTC prior to the collapses, which cannot have come from fireballs down the elevator shafts due to them being hermatically sealed to prevent that exact occurance.

Two planes going through the building would destroy your hermatic seal.

6. The collapse of WTC-7, rather than any of the other six buildings which were all closer to the Twin Towers. Even though WTC-5 was covered with debris from WTC-2, suffered heavy damage to its upper floors, was ravaged by fire from top to bottom, and then buried in debris from the collapse, it had to be demolished when it all was said and done. WTC-4 was ravaged by fire and falling debris, yet there was still an entire wing of the building left standing when all was said and done. WTC-3, which again, was ravaged by falling debris, with little evidence of fire, was heavily damaged, yet the steel frame of the building prevented its collapse. It had to be demolished, when all was said and done. WTC-6, with evidence of severe fire, heavy debris damage from the Twin Tower, and two gigantic holes in the roof extending straight to ground floor, did not collapse. Four buildings, right next to the Twin Towers, no collapse like we saw with WTC-7, which was twice the distance from the Twin Towers as the other buildings, which did not collapse (WTC-4 not entirely).

WTC-7 was hit harder than the others


Other Unusual Events

1. Puts placed on various airline stocks in the days prior to the 9/11 attacks, which were in some cases five times the average volume.

Why would anyone buy airline stock, if they knew the airline industry would take a dive after the attack?

2. The hasty removal and destruction of important evidence at the scene, specifically the transportation of the primary steel support structure to India, and other East Asian destinations.

What are we going to do with the debris?

3. The very quick connection to Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, IIRC, no more than three hours after the attacks.

Everyone knows that it's Bin Laden. Who else could it be?

4. The fact that many of the hijackers that were supposed to have been on the flights, were later found to have been alive, in other countries.

Who? And even if that's true, it just proves that there's no US connection, since the government wouldn't make that kind of mistake if they were involved.

5. Not a single jet fighter was to be seen in the skies above the Northeast, even hours after the WTC was hit. Not even after the Pentagon was hit. Not ever. Where were they?

There was no law at the time authorizing jet planes to shoot down commercial planes. They would've been useless if they were in the sky.

 

[Bugfatty300]

No building prior to 9/11 had been hit by two planes.

More specifically, no tall building has ever been hit by a fuel-loaded jumbo jet traveling a 600 mph and no one can really compare the fire and damage caused by those jets to normal building fires.

 

[McManus]

Since we have had a bit of conspiracytheorism here, might as well post this about the pentagon hit... I'm not going to take sides on this issue, except I think that there _is_ more to the whole thing than meets the eye... Whether its all as sinister as some people paint it or not is a different matter... but watch this nifty little flash... its a few minutes long...
http://www.pentagonstrike.co.uk/flash.htm

Edit: Oh and if this stuff is real, then we live in a scary world indeed...

 

[Chaos_BF1942]

Since we have had a bit of conspiracytheorism here, might as well post this about the pentagon hit... I'm not going to take sides on this issue, except I think that there _is_ more to the whole thing than meets the eye... Whether its all as sinister as some people paint it or not is a different matter... but watch this nifty little flash... its a few minutes long...
http://www.pentagonstrike.co.uk/flash.htm

Edit: Oh and if this stuff is real, then we live in a scary world indeed...

I seen that posted like afew millions (maybe a billion) times.

It is far from real.

 

[Xenocrates]

1. They were designed to fall within a small footprint.
2. Explosives in the basement failed to knock them down in 1994.

1) Many who deny the possibility that the official explanation may be wrong point to the fact that the building's strength was in the wall. A wall that had been damaged on one side. The part of the building above would have toppled towards the direction of the impact. The point is that they weren't designed to fall with a small footprint, they were designed to stand up! The possibility of a plane strike hadn't been considered by the architects so I reject this argument.

2) True, but a demolition engineer would know how to succeed here. Simply put - different explosives were placed in different places. Many smaller detonations on key joints to ensure no visible explosions.


You know my hypothesis so consider this: What if the buildings had withstood the plane crashes?

They would have stood for weeks as a testament to the failure of the US military.

They would need to be demolished.

People would need to evacuated from the whole area.

The insurance issue would have been difficult.

It would have had a more damaging effect on stocks and would have cost a fortune to sort out.

New York demonstrably couldn't have coped with this.


I contend again that bringing the buildings down was planned. I DO NOT contend that the attack was instigated by US forces as some do, but that the buildings were covertly demolished afterwards to avoid the possible extra deaths and the results mentioned above.


To those that think that heat may have mostly come from a fire of material within the building: that's obviously true. But you try to make another building fall down in the style of a demolition using a combination of fire and an impact/explosion to one side of the building only. Now you try to do it twice (thought experiment only please!).


To those who don't believe conspiracy theories, the official explanation itself is a conspiracy theory....

Don't forget the anthrax letters, the PUT options (6 * above average levels), the many warnings given by many foreign intelligence agancies including this one:

"Late July 2001: Egypt Warns CIA of 20 al-Qaeda Operatives in US; Four Training to Fly; CIA Is Not Interested" http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&before_9/11=foreignIntelligence

and the failure of the hijakers to hit Indian Point...

To Marla: Vive la Difference!

 

[carlosMM]

I had SWORNE to myself I would not enter this debate - but this BS sut forces me....

What concerns me, are the facts that are not in dispute.

Collapse, Fire
1. No building, prior to 9/11 has ever collapsed due to fire.

False. Quite many have. Usually, the roof comes down when the supporting beams let go. Few buildings OF THE TWIN TOWER CONSTRUCTION TYPE have - but there's few of them anyways

2. An errant B-52 crashed into the Empire State Building. It did not collapse.

Way more BS here: it was a B-17, whcih is significantly smaller. It packed much less fuel, and the Empire State is of a totally different construction type.

3. Many other buildings have burned far more floors for as many as twenty-four hours, without collapsing, whilst these three buildings all did so in less than one hour with less than a dozen floors affected.

Which would, if you understood the difference between a small fire that burns what's in the rooms and a large fire that burns tons of jet fuel, be obviously not a point you'd make....

4. Multiple eye-witness accounts reporting secondary explosions, some of which we reported to have come from not from the impact area, but from floors much lower.

When's the last time you have heard an explosion from within a building and been able to pinpoint it?

Hint: there's AC ducts, that transfer sound fairly well...


me bored with debunking the rest, think for yourselves.

 

[JohnRM]

Let me update more for you.

No building prior to 9/11 had been hit by two planes

Neither of the Twin Towers were hit by two planes, either. However, many buildings have been hit by aircraft throughout the years.

Those buildings didn't have a plane fly into them.

According to the experts and some people here, the planes did not bring down the towers, it was the subsequent fire started by the fuel from the planes which did burn off after a few minutes, but ignited other flammables inside of the building. It has been claimed that those flammables, burning, that brought the towers down. Presumably the same flammables in the offices of the twin towers could be found in any other tower.

How do they know what floor they came from?

It is called 'hearing' and 'perception', which is not always reliable, but when you have dozens of witnesses and visible damage to extreme lower level areas, without adequate explanation...

Two planes going through the building would destroy your hermatic seal.

This is just blatant bullfeathers. You have no idea whether the system would survive or not, and your not gonna get that bullfeathers past me. Hermatically sealed fireproofing systems are ALL designed to shut and seal and become stronger due to blast pressures, not the other way around. If the impact of the aircraft had been strong enough to destroy the system all of the way from the top (80 - 90?) floors, it would have destroyed and killed people on the floors in between. Blast pressures, fire, and energy does not travel straight down, it goes in all available directions. For what you've said to be true, it would have destroyed far more of the upper floors than it did. This is not the case.

WTC-7 was hit harder than the others

Another blatant piece of bullfeathers. I am starting to sink!

WTC-7, after the collapse of the twin towers, with exception to the Banker's Trust building, was the least damaged building. Somehow, the most modern building (1985) of the WTC, with little visible damage from the collapsed twin towers, and a few small fires (sprinkler system?!), ended up collapsing rather than the other four buildings which had massive fire damage, massive holes in the roof and other serious structural damage.

Why would anyone buy airline stock, if they knew the airline industry would take a dive after the attack?

The puts were to sell the stock, not buy it.

What are we going to do with the debris?

Same thing we did with the Titanic metal, or in fact, the debris from ANY major engineering failure. You test it to find out why it failed and what can be done to strengthen and prevent such failure in the future.

Everyone knows that it's Bin Laden. Who else could it be?

Yes, cause we all know that Iran, Iraq, or some other dictator or terrorist leader is incapable of gathering 20 men whom hate the US and are willing to die and sending them the US to hijack four airplanes and crash them into buildings.

Who? And even if that's true, it just proves that there's no US connection, since the government wouldn't make that kind of mistake if they were involved.

At very least it hints at the fact that our government is entirely incompetent. At worst, it shows that they blatantly lied about who was involved.

There was no law at the time authorizing jet planes to shoot down commercial planes. They would've been useless if they were in the sky.

No?! How come civilian aircraft are prohibited from flying over Washington, D.C? How come they are threatened with being shot down when they do? How come men with Stinger missiles are stationed at the White House? C'mon!


I am not convinced.

 

[PrinceOfLeigh]

al-Qaeda admitted it. End of discussion.

So did a number of other Middle Eastern terror groups IIRC

 

[JohnRM]

I had SWORNE to myself I would not enter this debate - but this BS sut forces me....
False. Quite many have. Usually, the roof comes down when the supporting beams let go. Few buildings OF THE TWIN TOWER CONSTRUCTION TYPE have - but there's few of them anyways

This is partially true. Buildings have fallen apart to some extent, but never have collapsed in its entirety. The buildings lose structure in the areas that were burning, but there is almost always the majority of the metal framework left over, still standing. The undamaged portions do not collapse and not at freefall speed.

Way more BS here: it was a B-17, whcih is significantly smaller. It packed much less fuel, and the Empire State is of a totally different construction type.

Actually, it was a B-25. Jeez, at least when I made the mistake, I read it like a dyslexic, and the mistake was honest. You blatantly pulled this B-17 nonsense right out of your own arse.

Which would, if you understood the difference between a small fire that burns what's in the rooms and a large fire that burns tons of jet fuel, be obviously not a point you'd make....

According to the so-called 'experts' and the recycled testimony given by the people here at OT, the jet fuel burned off within minutes.

When's the last time you have heard an explosion from within a building and been able to pinpoint it?

I would say about the last time would have been when people reported being knocked off their feet on the 8th floor (after the airplanes struck), there was massive, as yet, unexplained damage on many of the lower areas, and you have several dozen people reporting explosions in those areas. What clinches this, is that NO ONE reported the explosions as coming from the top of the buildings. That is what I am going with.

Hint: there's AC ducts, that transfer sound fairly well...

WRONG! AC ducts DO NOT transfer sound very well. This is shear, untampered with bullfeathers. Unless you are within two rooms, you won't hear a damn thing through AC ducts. What is more, is that buildings such as these do not have solitary heating and cooling systems for the entire building. They group each system by a set of floors. Its much easier to get cold air to rise through eight floors rather than eighty floors. If you do that, you will freeze everybody at the bottom and the people at the top will be sweating. Take a freaking AC/Heating/HVAC course if you want to debate me on the physics involved in these systems. Futhermore, if you run your AC ducts from a more local source, you are not running your running it the entire height of the building from one source, requiring more space.


I am still not convinced.

 

[IglooDame]

That was an excellent artical. I was going to post some of it.

Its funny how 9/11 conspiracists ignore that little jewel when ever someone brings it up against their theories.

We as a society accept the basic premise that a group of Islamist terrorists hijacked four airplanes and turned them into weapons against us. Sadly, the noble search for truth is now being hijacked by a growing army of conspiracy theorists........Those who peddle fantasies that this country encouraged, permitted or actually carried out the attacks are libeling the truth -- and disgracing the memories of the thousands who died that day

Another version:

We as a society accept the basic premise that a group of Spanish/Cuban royalists set a mine under the Maine and detonated it, sinking the ship in Havana harbor. Sadly, the noble search for truth is now being hijacked by a growing army of conspiracy theorists........Those who peddle fantasies that this was an accident are libeling the truth -- and disgracing the memories of the hundreds who died that day.

 

[JohnRM]

Another version:

We as a society accept the basic premise that a group of Spanish/Cuban royalists set a mine under the Maine and detonated it, sinking the ship in Havana harbor. Sadly, the noble search for truth is now being hijacked by a growing army of conspiracy theorists........Those who peddle fantasies that this was an accident are libeling the truth -- and disgracing the memories of the hundreds who died that day.

Yet another version:

We as a society accept the basic premise that a group of Vietnamese/Communists attacked our navy destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin. Sadly, the noble search for truth is now being hijacked by a growing army of conspiracy theorists........Those who peddle fantasies that this was an accident (or just a plain LIE) are libeling the truth -- and disgracing the memories of the hundreds who died(?) that day.


Anyone else see a pattern developing here?