By Jefferson Flanders
When I walked across Cooper Square last Thursday just after dark, I found two columns of bluish light rising into the Manhattan night sky, an illuminated reminder of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The “Tribute in Light” was a sight that stirred memories of that tragic day in New York seven years ago, and all that has followed.
It is a changed country now: innocence lost; American soldiers and marines in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq; and many Americans deeply conflicted about the “War on Terror” and what focusing on homeland security means for civil liberties in a democratic society. And, after the terrorist bombings in Madrid and London, and numerous foiled plots, there is a deep unease about our continued vulnerability to terrorism.
Others have responded to the danger of Islamic terrorism, however, by minimizing the threat, or blaming the victim, or embracing conspiracy theories that obscure the reality of 9/11. I found evidence of that last week when, along with John Ray, a very bright Carnegie-Mellon student who blogs at Conspiracies R Not Us, I appeared on Toronto-based show “The Agenda with Steve Paikin” to offer the skeptics’ view of the “evidence” behind 9/11 conspiracy theories. Also on the show: two Canadian academics, Graeme MacQueen and Michael Keefer, who argued that the American government deliberately staged the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to provide a pretext for war in the Middle East. (You can view the program in its entirety here.)
I was somewhat surprised that MacQueen and Keefer proved to be such fervent members of the 9/11 “Made it Happen on Purpose” (MIHOP) school, because it’s a hard position to defend with its logical gaps and inconsistencies. For starters, MIHOP advocates won’t concede the obvious: that 19 Arab terrorists hijacked four airplanes on 9/11; that Al Qaeda engineered the attacks; that jetliners loaded with fuel made effective weapons; and that the explanations of structural engineers and fire safety experts for why the World Trade Center towers and nearby buildings collapsed make sense. Instead, most in the MIHOP school contend that the Twin Towers and World Trade Center 7 were brought down by controlled demolition; many think the Pentagon was hit not by a plane but by a missile; and few accept what they call the “official story” about the crash of United 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. MIHOP believers see “an inside job” and/or a “false flag operation” behind the events of 9/11 and blame the “neo-cons” in the Bush Administration (and sometimes, with an anti-Semitic twist, the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, as well).
Occam’s Razor and 9/11 conspiracies
As I pointed out on “The Agenda,” these grand conspiracy theories violate Occam’s Razor, the insight of a 14th century Franciscan that the simplest explanation for a phenomenon is the best. These theories also run afoul of basic logic: Why crash airliners into buildings AND bother rigging them beforehand for controlled demolition? Wouldn’t the attacks alone be enough of a provocation? For that matter, why bother with hijacking planes? Wouldn’t a massive truck bomb, or bombs, work just as well and present fewer logistical challenges? Why not replicate the 1993 truck bombing of the World Trade Center (or Oklahoma City)? Why make the conspiracy so elaborate and so complex?
The controlled demolition theory doesn’t make much sense either. To rig a large office building with explosives takes professional demolition firms months to accomplish. How could massive amounts of explosives been placed secretly in three skyscrapers, let alone one, without detection? And as John Ray noted, the larger the conspiracy gets, the greater the number of people involved—to the point where hundreds of thousands must be part of the “cover-up.” Would they all remain silent? Would no one be moved to confess? With all of the media attention following 9/11, wouldn’t the secret have leaked out? Further, there isn’t any evidence of controlled demolition, something that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) noted in its reports on the collapse of WTC 1, 2 and 7: no witnesses, no seismic record, no demolition equipment in the wreckage.
The “Alice in Wonderland” nature of the MIHOP fantasies makes them relatively easy to debunk. The Let It Happen on Purpose (LIHOP) argument, on the other hand, while also flawed, relies on a more subjective approach to the question of 9/11. LIHOP advocates say 9/11 happened because the Bush Administration had advance knowledge of Al Qaeda’s plans and, eager to fight a war for oil, either turned a blind eye to the plot, or worked to facilitate it. There is no “smoking gun” evidence for LIHOP, and the record suggests incompetence, indifference, and ignorance on the part of the authorities, not collusion, but since LIHOP asks us to assume the worst about the U.S. government, it has gained adherents from the far Left and Right, and will continue to attract support.
Confronting the reality of 9/11
My appearance on “The Agenda” provoked further comment in the days that followed: I received several emails from Canadians (including those from a retired pilot and a firefighter) apologizing for what they saw as the anti-Americanism of MacQueen and Keefer, and assuring me that most Canadians accepted the reality of 9/11. I replied that no apologies were necessary, that Canada had supported the U.S. in its pursuit of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and that the leaders of the 9/11 “Truth Movement” were Americans. I also received some nasty feedback from foot soldiers in that movement, denouncing me as a CIA media plant and hinting darkly of the fate that awaited such “traitors.”
Despite their nastiness, my sense is that that the 9/11 “Truth Movement” is losing ground. The debunking done by Popular Mechanics, the BBC, and independent bloggers and skeptics, and the recent release of the NIST’s WTC 7 report ruling out controlled demolition as a cause of the building’s collapse, has put the 9/11 deniers on the defensive.
At the same time, it seems that many in the U.S. are slipping back into a pre-9/11 complacency on the question of terrorism. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released last week found only one in 10 Americans who say terrorism is the most important issue in voting for president, and “concerns about an impending terrorist strike are at the lowest point on record” since 9/11.
Also last week the New York Times carried a chilling op-ed piece by Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic (“On Nov. 4, Remember 9/11“) warning of the dangers of nuclear terrorism and noting that “[m]any proliferation experts I have spoken to judge the chance of such a detonation to be as high as 50 percent in the next 10 years. I am an optimist, so I put the chance at 10 percent to 20 percent.” Goldberg doesn’t flinch from confronting the reality of 9/11 seven years later: “The next president must do one thing, and one thing only, if he is to be judged a success: He must prevent Al Qaeda, or a Qaeda imitator, from gaining control of a nuclear device and detonating it in America.” It is advice that we can only hope that Senator Obama or Senator McCain will heed.
Debunking some specific claims made by MacQueen and Keefer on “The Agenda”John Ray and I tried to refute as many of the outlandish claims made by Professors MacQueen and Keefer during our appearance on “The Agenda.” We didn’t get to deal with all of them, and so, in the interests of setting the record straight, I am offering a more detailed debunking of six of their claims.
1. American air defenses were deliberately weakened by war games on 9/11. FALSE.
While it is true there were a number of military exercises that day, it made no difference in the readiness of the American military to respond to a hijacked jet, and, if anything, might have allowed a quicker response to terror attacks (if there had been more timely communication between civilian air traffic controllers and their military counterparts, which there wasn’t). There were only 14 fighter jets on alert in the contiguous 48 states, none of which were diverted because of the “war games.”
SEE: Popular Mechanics, “Debunking the 9/11 Myths” and the website Debunk 9/11 Myths.
2. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been politicized by the Bush Administration, and therefore cannot be trusted to investigate the WTC collapses. FALSE.
There is no evidence that NIST has been politicized. The WTC reports were reviewed by professional associations of architects, structural engineers, and fire safety experts (for example, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEONY), and National Fire Protection Association) without anyone questioning NIST’s objectivity, professionalism or adherence to the scientific method. The one dissenter cited by Professor Keefer, fire safety expert James Quintere, has differed with NIST over its investigative approach but agreed with NIST’s conclusion that controlled demolition was not involved. In Quintere’s comments on NIST’s WTC 7 report, he dismissed demolition claims, according to Newsday:
Quintiere stressed, however, that he never believed explosives played a role. He said NIST wasted time employing outside experts to consider it.
3. At the Zacarias Moussaoui trial, the FBI testified that conservative commentator Barbara Olson could not have called her husband from the doomed flight (AA 77) that crashed into the Pentagon. FALSE.
The FBI identified one interrupted phone call from Olson, and could not determine who was the source for four other calls from the plane. It is likely that this unidentified calls were made by Olson, as reported by her husband. The 9/11 Commission reported:
The records available for the phone calls from American 77 do not allow for a determination of which of four “connected calls to unknown numbers” represent the two between Barbara and Ted Olson, although the FBI and DOJ believe that all four represent communications between Barbara Olson and her husband’s office (all family members of the Flight 77 passengers and crew were canvassed to see if they had received any phone calls from the hijacked flight, and only Renee May’s parents and Ted Olson indicated that they had received such calls).The four calls were at 9:15:34 for 1 minute, 42 seconds; 9:20:15 for 4 minutes, 34 seconds; 9:25:48 for 2 minutes, 34 seconds; and 9:30:56 for 4 minutes, 20 seconds. FBI report, “American Airlines Airphone Usage,” Sept. 20, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Theodore Olson, Sept. 11, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Helen Voss, Sept. 14, 2001; AAL response to the Commission’s supplemental document request, Jan. 20, 2004.
SEE: 9/11 Commission Report, Note 57
4. The WTC 7 fires “died down†and couldn’t have caused the thermal expansion described by NIST and the resulting progressive collapse. FALSE.
Fires raged, unchecked, on many floors of WTC 7 for some seven hours. Firefighters reported this at the time, and FEMA and NIST found photographic evidence of this.
SEE: Photos here from the scene.
5. The steel sample taken from WTC 7 had damage suggesting the impact of thermite or some unexplained chemical. FALSE.
Here’s what the BBC has reported about his claim.
In New England the claims of the mysterious melted steel from Tower Seven has been unravelled at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute near Boston.
Professor Richard Sisson says it did not melt, it eroded. The cause was the very hot fires in the debris after 9/11 that cooked the steel over days and weeks.
Professor Sisson determined that the steel was attacked by a liquid slag which contained iron, sulphur and oxygen.
However, rather than coming from thermite, the metallurgist Professor Sisson thinks the sulphur came from masses of gypsum wallboard that was pulverised and burnt in the fires. He says:
“I don’t find it very mysterious at all, that if I have steel in this sort of a high temperature atmosphere that’s rich in oxygen and sulphur this would be the kind of result I would expect.”
SEE: BBC News, “The Conspiracy Files”
6. WTC 7 is the only steel-framed skyscraper in the world to have collapsed solely because of fire. TRUE.
WTC 7 is also the only steel-framed skyscraper with vulnerable long-span construction subjected to unchecked fires for seven hours (a sprinkler system was disabled when the water main broke). 9/11 “Truth Movement” advocates point to office tower fires in Madrid and Caracas which didn’t bring those structures down, yet fail to note that these buildings had their steels columns encased in cement (unlike WTC 1, 2 and 7).
SEE: Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories
An extended commentary on the 9/11 “Truth Movement” can be found at “Exposing the 9/11 conspiracy fantasies.”
Copyright © 2008 Jefferson Flanders
All rights reserved
Reprinted from Neither Red nor Blue
26 users commented in " Confronting reality: Occam’s Razor and the 9/11 “Truth Movement” "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackDefenders of the official account of 9/11 would have you believe there are no credible critics of the official account. However, consider the following:
– Raymond McGovern, PhD, former Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) and 27-year CIA veteran. “I think at simplest terms, there’s a cover-up. The 9/11 Report is a joke.” (According to the CIA, NIE’s are “the most authoritative written judgments concerning national security issues”)
– William Christison, former Director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis, overseeing 250 CIA analysts. 29-year CIA veteran. “I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe. … An airliner almost certainly did not hit The Pentagon. … The North and South Towers of the World Trade Center almost certainly did not collapse and fall to earth because hijacked aircraft hit them.”
– Melvin Goodman, PhD, former Division Chief of the CIA’s Office of Soviet Affairs and Senior Analyst from 1966 – 1990. “The final [9/11 Commission] report is ultimately a coverup. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
– General Albert Stubblebine, former commanding general of U.S. Army Intelligence. 32-year U.S. Army veteran. “I look at the hole in the Pentagon and I look at the size of an airplane that was supposed to have hit the Pentagon. And I said, ‘The plane does not fit in that hole.’ So what did hit the Pentagon? What hit it? Where is it? What’s going on?”
For decades, we relied on these individuals to collect information essential to our national security and provide critical analysis during which time the U.S. faced far more real and much more serious threats than anything today. We cannot now ignore their stunning condemnation of the official account of 9/11.
Information about 1,000 other credible critics of the official account of 9/11 is available at http://PatriotsQuestion911.com/
Google “Architects and Engineers” to see what they say for yourself or go to ae911truth.org
or if that doesn’t surprise you,
Google patriots question 911.
You will be amazed at the calibre of people on these sites, including 25 military officers complete with their pictures and bios, federal engineers, state department veterans, CIA veterans, a fighter pilots and Director of Advanced Space Programs Development for the U.S. Air Force like Robert Bowman. Also, firefighters question 911. When you see this evidence you will be shocked and angry that the main stream media has kept this from you.
The reason planes were used instead of bombs alone is because whoever orchestrated this false flag terror wanted to maximize the horrific VISUAL nature of the event. They knew that the images of the planes going into the buildings on every news channel would shock the nation into a state of war mongering fear. They also knew the planes alone were not enough to bring the buildings down, so they used explosives to finish the job. This is why it is so complex. And despite occam’s razor, complex military operations CAN actually be executed in our life.
Sorry, Jeff Flanders. The Popular Mechanics material has been debunked to kingdom come. The BBC relies primarily on Popular Mechanics to defend the official story. And as for NIST, it is an agency of the Bush Dept of Commerce. As if a govt agency would be allowed to produce damning evidence which would implicate the govt in the attacks. Please.
Finally, Occam’s Razor is not correctly applied by the author or, for that matter, whoever else invokes it when trying to rebut 9/11 truth. OR dictates that the simplest theory WHICH ACCOUNTS FOR THE EVIDENCE is the most likely theory. Therefore, using OR, the official theory has to be thrown out because it doesn’t account for all the evidence.
Great post, I guess for some the truth is just to hard to grasp. I would like to make a comment on a news interview that occured before 9-11. I’m not sure if it aired in the summer of 01 or a couple of years earlier. All these years later and I can’t even prove that it exists. If my memory is correct I believe it aired on CBS and it was an interview with one of the “big shots” of Al-Qaeda. I can’t remember who the journalist was but during the interview Mr terrorist smiled and said something to the affect of how easy it would be to attack America, when he was asked to elaborate he said “we will use your own planes against you”. I have never seen that footage replayed to this very day. Does anyone have any info on this? It has nothing to do with the conspiracy nuts but I do think if the footage was found then a few questions should be asked. When I watched the planes hit the twin towers I immediately thought of that interview. I sure would like to see that footage again. There is no way the US government carried out the attacks of 9-11 but they sure as hell could have done a better job in preventing them.
WTC Building #7 simply collapsed. Watch the videos on YouTube — especially the superb series by arie, titled “The Third Tower” (and laugh at the recent BBC piece of poor journalism by the same name). Arie’s videos show newsreel footage and interviews only. Remarkable stuff.
The NIST provisional report on WTC #7 is quite an odd document. It invokes a never-before-seen phenomenon involving ‘thermal expansion’ of the steel support structures to account for the collapse of WTC #7. The building would have needed a huge amount of explosives to bring it down, says the report; yet relatively small fires inside, it says, worked fine somehow — an odd contradiction that the head of NIST could not explain in his press conference on the topic.
Comments sent by engineers and architects (see http://www.ae911truth.org/) to NIST about the report dismantle it.
Unfortunately, you’re not applying Occam’s Razor in this article. You’re actually applying Occam’s Boxcutter.
Also, BBC’s and Popular Mechanics’ “debunking” have been exposed and debunked. Sorry.
Wow, that’s a lot of words. kameelyun is right. OR is badly misapplied here.
The collapse of WTC7 was predicted. The prediction was recorded. The prediction was correct. Prediction means the cause was known. NIST said the cause was unknown and the collapse unpredictable. A fatal contradiction between the video record and NIST’s hearsay.
Why did you say that many dispersed charges would be needed to bring down the towers? Is that what it looks like? You are arguing that a single local event completely destroyed a tower. Was your allusion to truck bombs meant to suggest that a limited locus of events, high or low, would destroy a tower? How does that jibe with your “Occam’s razor” slice at thousands of necessary personnel?
You are just waving your hands with recitations taught by your protective authorities.
And why did you patch a call to kill more Muslims into the middle of your argument?
Occam’s Razor only works when you consider all the evidence. There is a lot of phenomena that contradict the official story.
Also, a conspiracy does not have to run perfectly. Not everything can go as planned. No one knows how many people were involved, what part each played, and what went wrong. The “why” argument does not help either side.
We should all be asking for more investigation in regards to the worst known anomalies, not brushing it off with whatever’s “simpler” to understand.
Watch the 30, starting with #1 @ http://www.MillionDollarCinema.com and realize that the 4 issues at http://www.CampaignForLiberty.com is what all Americans should be focusing on right now.
Google “Operation Northwoods”
Operation Northwoods, or Northwoods, was a false flag conspiracy plan, proposed within the United States government in 1962. The plan called for CIA or other operatives to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Castro-led Cuba. One plan was to “develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington”.
This operation is especially notable in that it included plans for hijackings and bombings followed by the use of phony evidence that would blame the terrorist acts on foreign governments.
Controlled demolition is the best explanation for the what happened to all three world trade center buildings.
Occams Razor would require you to assume that controlled demolition was the method.
I believe Richard Gage:
September 11, 2008
Peter B Collins talks to Richard Gage, founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, about NIST’s finding that the third building that collapsed into its own footprint at the speed of gravity on 9/11/2001 did so because of a “new phenomenon” they call “thermal expansion”.
http://www.radiodujour.com/people/gage_richard/
You’re crazy to think that the 9/11 truth movement is losing ground…
HAHAHAHA The thing is getting so big, so may important people, scientists, politicians, and famous people have come out to speak the truth…Losing ground, ha…what a bunch of propaganda.
The fact of the matter : With the level of intelligence the US is gathering, the question shouldn’t be whether or not the government had advanced knowledge of the attack, but rather, how could they NOT know in advance?
Don’t you see why people are challenging the official story more than 7 years later?? “You can kill a man, but an idea… an idea is bulletproof.”
Jeff… when faced with cognitive dissonance, you clearly opted to take the ‘deny anything that contradicts my incumbent belief system’ route. What you forget about the 9/11 truth movement is that it is not, by conventional terms, a bunch of conspiracy nuts. There are certainly plenty of ‘fringe’ thinkers in the movement, but the vast majority are perfectly sensible and intelligent individuals, from all creeds and walks of life… who, in most cases, initially accepted the explanation of events that they were given in the days following 9/11.
What changed? They became aware of more and more facts surrounding the event as time went on (no thanks to the government, which tried its best to prevent any investigation/illumination). At a certain critical mass of awareness, an obvious alternative explanation presented itself to them. They had to decide (subconsciously to a large extent) whether to accept and explore the ramifications of this alternate theory, allowing their belief system to evolve in the process, OR deny it at face value, simply because it didn’t fit in with their incumbent view of the world (though for many of us, it was not much of a stretch).
This much is true… the amount of factual evidence and detail on 9/11 in the public domain has grown by leaps and bounds over the past 7 years, and will probably continue to grow in the near future. Furthermore, the 9/11 truth movement *is* growing rapidly, as evident in the growth of various organisations such as Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, We Are Change and 9/11 Truth chapters, and more recently Firefighters for 9/11 Truth. So, for you to suggest that we are in decline only proves that you really do have blinders on.
It is in fact supporters of the official theory who are now on the defensive, and are most guilty of slander and violent threats. What’s next? Locking us up in camps or prisons, as certain other individuals on your side have suggested? You may find the movement is growing faster than you can erect new camps.
Lies are always quick to form and propagate rapidly. The truth emerges slowly, but gathers mass and velocity like a snowball rolling down a mountain. Because this movement seeks the truth and does not fear it, it will continue to grow. It has the means to grow now more than ever… and those who fear the truth are moving to cripple those means, but they will fail because their tools are deceit and suppression, and those who love truth and freedom will not suffer them.
Your pride is worth less than the failing US dollar, Jeff. Such a wonder it is, then, that you hold on to it so tightly.
Mr. Flanders –
As many others have pointed out, you have applied Occam’s Razor incorrectly as your explanations do not account for all of the facts nor the relevant physics.
Let’s begin with the most obvious anomaly from 9/11/01, WTC 7. NIST’s latest report on the building depends on an elaborate model which shows the structural steel frame “collapsing” asymmetrically, but every video of the building’s rapid demise clearly shows it imploding symmetrically. Any objective analysis has to conclude that NIST’s computer model is seriously flawed and must be rejected. Additionally, FEMA found portions of steel from WTC 7 that had been vaporized and yet NIST fails to explain this documented phenomenon.
Since you choose to attack the performance of the FAA, let’s consider some significant facts regarding their actions on that terrible day. First, scrambling jets to intercept planes is a routine operation undertaken about every two to three days by the FAA and NORAD, year in and year out. Yet you claim that they failed miserably at this on all four occasions on 9/11/01. Please cite your specific evidence documenting the FAA failure in this regard. Second, on 9/11/01 the FAA managed to land thousands of planes in a few hours safely, an unprecedented achievement. Certainly, this belies the myth that the FAA performed incompetently that day, agreed?
Finally, you seem to be relying on Popular Mechanics for most of your information, but have clearly not read the thoroughly footnoted response from Dr. David Ray Griffin, Debunking 9/11 Debunking. I suggest you get a copy and while your buying books, also get his book, 9/11 Contradictions, as this will step you through 25 well documented unanswered questions regarding the events of 9/11/01.
FYI, the 9/11 truth movement is growing daily and is made up of people from all walks of life and every profession, from pilots to plumbers, polls now show that one in three Americans seriously question the government’s deeply flawed conspiracy theory.
The truth shall set us free. Love is the only way forward.
You claim that pointing out Mossad involvement constitutes an ‘anti-Semitic slant’.
So Mossad can go around spying on Americans with impunity, and if anyone mentions it, they are anti-semitic?
Your obvious ideological agenda blows any claim of objectivity out of your article.
Your attempt to perpetuate islamaphobia is a complete failure. Al CIAda is CIA/Mossad front. A bunch of patsies.
Newsflash: We all see through this transparent, low-IQ propagandist bullsh*t.
I agree with your basic arguments that the MIHOP believers fail to take into account that to do both crashing planes into and exploding the buildings would be overly risky for their purposes and that the 9/11 Truth movement is losing ground.
You did not point out an important possible motive for LIHOP or MIHOP. They actually believed we were are in a “Clash of Civilizations” or Third World War and that the public was not ready for it so an operation that would kill Americans was needed to save many more in the long run. Several members of the neo conservative movement were Holocaust survivors. It is well documented that the Vice President has a very dark view of people. The President is a reformed alcohol (or more) abuser who has been “saved” and has fundamentalist tendencies. Another words it makes sense that this group would view the Islamic fundamentalist terrorist movement in extensional terms that would justify the treasonous act of letting or creating an attack on ones own country.
You stated that us LIHOP folks have no “smoking gun”. I think we have a lot of circumstantial evidence of advanced knowledge but I agree we don’t have that smoking gun and believe it is never going to happen because the 9/11 truth movement is losing ground. You see despite the information explosion one needs subpoena powers to unlock smoking guns which your conspiracy theorists sitting behind his desk do not have. In order to get that you are going to in a matter like 9/11 you need some political support. Why you won’t get it pressure from for this type of thing Republicans and Fox News is obvious. So I will focus on those that have an Air America view of the world. The Republicans have been getting traction from this whole those elitists look down on you campaign. This is nothing new the Republicans have used this with success since the 1960’s. Contrary to popular view for any marketing campaign to succeed it has to have some grain of truth. What have we heard for the last 6 years Bush is stupid, Bush is incompetent etc. Bush was elected twice and the republicans are making it awfully close this year in election that should have been democrat landslides. Be it Iraq, scuttling the constitution and now scuttling capitalism to bail out their friends these dummies have gotten exactly what they wanted from those smart democrats. Over the years we have read from “liberal” commentators every subterfuge that The Bush Administration used to get us in Iraq. When 9/11 truthers accuse the administration of willingness to “do anything it takes” these same commentators are incredulous. Unlike this blogger who uses logic and reason I have read countless times a version of “ I thought it was bad enough the gullible public bought into Bush twice but if they believe these idiots could pull off 9/11 god help us”. So with the conservatives viewing the 9/11 truth movement as treasonous and the liberals viewing it with contempt forget about any investigation. With the Bush presidency ending and time marching on the truth movement will continue to lose stream. I hope I’m wrong
LIHOP –
You clearly need to do more research and review basic physics, as you have a very incomplete understanding of the events of 9/11/01 and the relevant science.
Start by visiting the following websites:
ae911truth.org
911research.wtc7.net
stj911.org
If you wish to enter into a dialogue regarding 9/11, feel free to email me at crockett911truth@yahoo.com.
The truth shall set us free. Love is the only way forward.
Mr. Flanders, I apologize for all these comments … it turns out that one of my co-workers at the local insane asylum left your article open on a public-access computers, and the inmates all felt a need to comment. I promise it won’t happen again.
Yes, let’s all listen to Albert Stubblebine – he’s not crazy. Well, maybe a little:
“…Stubblebine said he was confounded by his continual failure to walk through his wall.”
“BBC’s and Popular Mechanics’ “debunking” have been exposed and debunked.”
It’s funny, you twoofers keep saying that, yet it doesn’t get any more true.
And, hey, it’s also funny how all these “engineers” and “architects” can’t seem to muster a single piece of peer-reviewed research to back their wacky claims – unless you count Richard Gage’s cardboard box display
In the long-awaited report of the investigation of the collapse of the 47-story building World Trade Center 7 (WTC 7) on September 11, 2001, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) only pretended to tell us why the building collapsed the way it did. Actually they failed at the task, wasting millions of taxpayer dollars in the process.
NIST set out to explain the collapse of WTC 7 by reconstructing the collapse as a theoretical computer model. Instead they constructed an altogether different collapse — not the one that needed explaining, but one that did not occur.
In videos of the actual collapse, such as at the start of http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/wtc_videos/wtc_videos.html, walls and edges of the building remain fairly straight and vertical as the building descends. In the NIST computer model the exterior severely buckles before the building descends. (Pages 107-108 in document NCSTAR 1-9A). The top of the building was not observed collapsing in on itself as NIST claims. See for yourself on the NIST web page http://wtc.nist.gov.
This is not a minor quibble, but a major contradiction. The NIST theory does not fit the facts. It should be a major scandal.
Coincidence theorists are a unique bunch.
Their favorite words are liberal,twoofer,tin foil hat,moonbat and loons.
They love to spam the internet with these words
Coincidence theorists that rush to defend BushCo’s story will have you believe that it’s perfectly normal for passports to fly out of terrorist pockets thru a massive fireball plane crash and float safely to the ground undamaged.
To them paper is stronger than steel and airline black boxes.
As well these coincidence theorists will explain to you that it’s perfectly normal for a plane to nosedive into the ground leaving a large crater in the ground and for the wreckage/debris to run for 10 miles.
It’s also just a coincidence that the day before the 911 attacks Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon announced they had “misplaced” 2 TRILLION dollars and coincidentally the “plane” that struck the Pentagon hit the wing that contained the accounting investigation. 🙂
Coincidentally George Bush’s brother Marvin sat on the board of the Kuwaiti-owned company which provided electronic security to the World Trade Centre, Dulles Airport and United Airlines.
It’s also a coincidence that Osama Bin Laden use to be an intelligence asset for the CIA.
What a surprise that planes were used to attack the Free-est country in the world..no one could have seen that coming..right Condi ?i mean there were the exact same drills happening but thats an unknown coincidence…coincidentally the protocols of the shooting down of hijacked aircraft was altered on June 1, 2001, taking discretion away from field commanders and placing it solely in the hands of the Secretary of Defense,
It’s just a coincidence that John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial aircraft in July 2001 on account of security considerations and had nothing to do with any warnings he might have received regarding September 11, at least that’s what he told the 911 Commission.
The fact that the Patriot Act was written before 911 isn’t suspicious. It’s just a coincidence that they would need to use it so soon after writing it.
it’s true that George HW Bush and Shafig bin Laden, Osama’s brother, spent the morning of September 11 together at a board meeting of the Carlyle Group, but the bin Ladens are a big family. It’s just a crazy strange coincidence that his brother would pull off 911 while he was with that presidents dad.
Coincidentally FEMA arrived in New York on Sept 10 to prepare for a scheduled biowarfare drill, and had a triage centre ready to go that was larger and better equipped than the one that was lost in the collapse of WTC 7, what a lucky twist of fate.
Multiple military wargames and simulations were underway the morning of 9/11 – one simulating the crash of a plane into a building; another, a live-fly simulation of multiple hijackings – and took many interceptors away from the eastern seaboard and confused field commanders as to which was a real hijacked aircraft and which was a hoax, what a bizarre coincidence, but no less a coincidence.
Remember the anthrax attacks ? coincidentally the
White House went on Cipro September 11 a lucky break or does that just show the foresightedness of America’s emergency response.
Also lucky for the White House that the anthrax was mailed to their opponents…can u say coincidence ?
i could go on and on about the many coincidences that these people ignore but i think instead i’ll turn on some Fox news and take a couple sleeping pills so as not to have any nightmares about muslim boogeyman taking away my freedoms.
Any idea what the terror alert is at ?
please don’t let it be orange.
great piece “jefferson flanders”
Jefferson Flanders ?
Why not use your real name ?
Trying to keep a little credibility in the bank for later ?
Wellll…good luck with that.
Say hi to Chip Douglas and Larry Tate for me.
Yours Sincerely,
Mark David Sirhan Bin Oswald Ray, Jr.
PS: Somebody kill the babysitter.
{{{ As I pointed out on “The Agenda,” these grand conspiracy theories violate Occam’s Razor, the insight of a 14th century Franciscan that the simplest explanation for a phenomenon is the best. }}}
The trouble is we are talking about a PHYSICS PROBLEM. Therefore the simplest explanation that ACCOUNTS FOR ALL OF THE FACTS is the most probable. But do we have the FACTS about 9/11 after EIGHT YEARS?
Let’s just face a few simple facts.
Skyscrapers MUST hold themselves up. They must also sway in the wind. The people who design skyscrapers MUST figure out how much steel and how much concrete they are going to put on every level before they even dig the hole for the foundation.
After EIGHT YEARS why don’t we have a table specifying the TONS of STEEL and TONS of CONCRETE that were on every level of WTCs 1&2? The NIST report does not even specify the TOTAL for the concrete. The total for the steel is in three places. So even if the planes did it that 10,000 page report is CRAP!
Conspiracies are irrelevant. The Truth Movement should be marching on all of the engineering schools in the country.
Watch that Purdue simulation. If a 150 ton airliner crashes near the top of a skyscraper at 440 mph isn’t the building going to sway? Didn’t the survivors report the building “moving like a wave”? So why do the core columns in the Purdue video remain perfectly still as the plane comes in?
That is the trouble with computer simulations. If they are good, they are very good. But if they have a defect either accidental or deliberate they can be REALLY STUPID once you figure out the flaws.
The distributions of steel and concrete are going to affect the sway of a skyscraper whether it is from the wind or an airliner.
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How much does one complete floor assembly weigh?
You know those square donut floor slabs? They were 205 ft square with a rectangular hole for the core. There was a steel rebar mesh embedded in the concrete which was poured onto corrugated steel pans which were supported by 35 and 60 foot trusses. There has been talk about those things pancaking on each other for years.
But has anyone ever said what the whole thing weighed? Why haven’t we seen that A LOT in EIGHT YEARS? The concrete alone is easy to compute, about 601 tons. But the concrete could not be separated from the entire assembly, the upper knuckles of the trusses were embedded into the concrete. So what did the whole thing weigh and why haven’t the EXPERTS been mentioning that A LOT in EIGHT YEARS?
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So why hasn’t Richard Gage and his buddies produced a table with the TONS of STEEL and TONS of CONCRETE that were on every level of the WTC? How much computing power do they have now, compared to the early 1960s when the buildings were designed? I asked Gage about that in May of 2008 at Chicago Circle Campus and he got a surprised look on his face and gave me this LAME excuse about the NIST not releasing accurate blueprints. Gravity hasn’t changed since the 1960s. They should be able to come up with some reasonable numbers.
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