One of the standard claims of 9/11 “truthers†is that they are merely sceptical individuals with a healthy and understandable desire not to swallow US government propaganda at face value. The mantra “just asking questions†allows them to pose as wary and intelligent souls too accustomed to the concept of duplicity in high places to accept the “official story†of Al Qaeda’s role in planning and perpetrating the largest mass casualty terrorist attack in modern history. It also allows them to adopt an indignant tone when dealing with their critics, and to conflate attempts by debunkers to undermine their claims with both unquestioning acceptance of an “official cover-up†(irrespective of whether the debunker happens to be a supporter of the current US administration or not) and a systematic effort to deprive them of freedom of speech. It goes without saying that in the process the “truthers†set up two straw-men for them to knock down, but then they’re not very good at dealing with tougher critics.Â
The “just asking questions†approach has three further advantages to those of a paranoid mindset and a less than scrupulous approach to evidence and facts (if George Orwell were alive today, he’d appreciate the irony of serial disinformation merchants like Dylan Avery and David Ray Griffin posing as members of a “truth movementâ€, given their fast and loose approach to the historical record and scientific fact). Firstly, conspiracy theorists know that mud sticks: if you can make an accusation against an individual or group through innuendo and sly hints the latter has the hard task of proving the calumnies against them to be false. Film buffs will no doubt recall George C. Scott’s performance as the malevolent prosecutor in Anatomy of a Murder, and his repeated question to the defendant Ben Gazzara: “Exactly when did you stop beating your wife?†This approach sums up “truther debating tactics nicely.Â
Secondly, the claim that one is “just asking questions†is liberating, as it frees the truther of the obligation of actually constructing a coherent alternative theory - based on the evidence at hand - which is more convincing than the “official theoryâ€. Why worry if the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolitions or not? Why worry if the hijackers were patsies or ghosts? Why worry if the Pentagon was hit by a missile or a jumbo jet piloted by remote control? Why worry if the passengers of the four planes are alive or not? With one or two exceptions (notably Michael Ruppert), 9/11 conspiracy theorists and their supporters do not actually outline a scenario which explains how and why the US government (in cahoots with the Israelis, or the military-industrial complex, or whoever else) slaughtered nearly 3,000 people - most of whom were American citizens - in a co-ordinated series of attacks which were then blamed on Arab Islamist terrorists. Most truthers lack sufficient moral courage to produce a real theory about 9/11 being an ‘inside job’ which combines motive with method and which can be tested against the evidence. Deep down, they know that once they venture into specific claims their case will be torn to shreds, and they will be exposed as ignorant frauds.
Thirdly, it makes the task of a truther an easy one: all he or she (there seem to be few female truthers around, which hopefully means that they won’t reproduce) has to do is google to get the appropriate “story†from Prison Planet, 9/11 Blogger, What Really Happened or a similar website. Hey presto, they get what they want: “The FBI said there were no phone calls from AA77!â€; “4,000 Jews didn’t turn up to work at the WTC on 9/11!â€; “Silverstein ordered the demolition of WTC7!†And so on and so forth.Â
Any genuine sceptic dealing with truthers - whether online or in the flesh - then has to (1) work out what the hell his or her interlocutor is talking about, and (2) ask themselves how exactly they made this claim, and if it has any substance. Anyone lacking either patience or detailed knowledge of the events of 11th September 2001 may be tempted to give them the benefit of the doubt. Debunkers are left with the time-consuming task of researching the historical background, and trying to assemble the relevant technical and scientific information, before they can actually verify the facts for themselves. Â In short, the truther can throw out a red herring or an outright distortion in a matter of minutes, leaving it up to other net users to take the time and trouble to verify their origin and accuracy.
Fortunately, yeoman work has been done by scores of individuals to actually put the record straight. Pat and James from Screw Loose Change, Mark Roberts, 9/11 Myths, Debunking 9/11 and 9/11 Guide in particular provide a valuable resource. The James Randi forum is particularly useful in that it provides commentators with specialist knowledge - military veterans, pilots, flight engineers, physicists, architects, forensic experts etc - with a platform to expose the anti-scientific claptrap and historical illiteracy of the truthers. This is the main reason why the JREF and its commentators arouse such hatred from the 9/11 conspiracy ghouls.
It’s time to turn the tables on the truthers. Rather than accept a situation in which the nutjobs and kooks who subscribe to 9/11 conspiracies can make their accusations willy-nilly, it is high time that their critics decided that they can “just ask questions†too. This particular debunker has decided that maybe, just for once, the onus for actually demonstrating the validity of their theories on the basis of systematic and critical analysis of the evidence belongs to the truthers, not to those who wish to expose their fallacies. As someone whose academic bias is based on history, I would like to pose the following challenge to the conspiracy-mongers:
Let’s take your thesis (that 9/11 was an inside job perpetrated by the Bush administration, and covered up by a coalition of US government agencies, allied powers, big business and the media) as read. The following questions point to logical and factual gaps within that thesis. It is now up to you to answer these questions and explain why your theories are still valid. For your answers to be credible, they need to be detailed and based on verifiable evidence. No suppositions, no speculation, no unsupported assertions, just the facts. Stop “asking questionsâ€, and provide answers. These fifteen initial questions will do for starters.
(1) On 9th September 2001 Ahmed Shah Massoud, the most effective military commander of the anti-Taliban coalition (the Northern Alliance, or NA) was killed by two Arab suicide bombers posing as journalists. The assassination of Massoud had taken months to plan, and the latter had received the bogus request for an ‘interview’ in May 2001 (See Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, pp.574-576; Jason Burke, Al Qaeda, p.197; Daniel Byman, Deadly Connections, p.210. Two days before 9/11, Al Qaeda killed the Taliban’s main enemy, who had also played a pivotal role in keeping the NA factions together, and who would have been the obvious figure to liase with if the Americans had decided to effect regime change in Afghanistan. If Al Qaeda were not responsible for 9/11, then why was Ahmed Shah Massoud’s assassination so well co-ordinated with the attacks on New York and Washington?
(2) Conversely, prior to 9/11, the US government had minimal contacts with Massoud and other Northern Alliance figures, much to the latter’s frustration (See Coll, passim). If 9/11 was a “false flag†operation intended to justify a pre-determined plan to invade Afghanistan, then why didn’t the CIA and other US government agencies do more to facilitate ties with the NA?Â
(3) Just before 9/11, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other key Al Qaeda personnel left their quarters in Kandahar to hide in Tora Bora (Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, pp.356-358). Why did bin Laden and al-Zawahiri suddenly leave their known locations and go to ground, if they were not anticipating imminent military action by the USA?
(4) In the days following 9/11, the Bush administration asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a plan to invade Afghanistan. The JCS had to admit that they had no contingency plan for such an invasion, and in the weeks preceding Operation Enduring Freedom the CIA and the Department of Defense were obliged to improvise a plan of attack against the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies (Benjamin Lambeth, Air Power Against Terror; Bob Woodward, Bush At War). If 9/11 had been an inside job, and if there was a long-standing intention by Bush and his advisors to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban, then why did they have to scrabble around for a workable plan? Why was one not prepared beforehand?
(5) We are being asked by the truthers to believe that the 19 hijackers were “patsiesâ€, or non-existent. If that was the case, and if the intention of the real plotters in the US government was to justify military interventions to overthrow hostile regimes in the Middle East, why were 15 out of the 19 ‘bogus’ Al Qaeda terrorists given Saudi nationality? The other four hijackers consisted of an Egyptian, a Lebanese and two citizens of the UAE. We are being asked to believe that the conspirators behind 9/11 decided that they would make the hijackers citizens of allies of the USA, not enemies. Why were they not given Iraqi, Iranian or Syrian identity? Why were they not given forged links with terrorist groups (such as the Abu Nidal Organisation, the PLFP-GC or Hizbollah) with closer links to Tehran, Damascus and above all Baghdad? If we are supposed to believe that the Israelis had a hand in 9/11, then why were none of the patsies Palestinians linked to Fatah or Hamas? What kind of conspirator sets up a plot to frame an innocent party without forging the evidence to implicate the latter?
(6) Following on from this point, if the identities and the nationalities of the hijackers were faked, then why did the Saudi, Egyptian, Lebanese and UAE governments accept that citizens from their own countries were involved? What incentive did Saudi Arabia have for accepting that 15 of its own people had committed mass murder on US soil? Why would the Saudis co-operate in a plot which would blacken their country’s name, benefit Israeli interests in the Middle East, provide the pretext for the overthrow of one fundamentalist Sunni regime in Afghanistan, and contribute to the destruction of a Sunni Arab dictatorship in Iraq long seen by the Saudi royal family as a bulwark against Iran?Â
(7) Afghanistan is a landlocked country (truthers may need to be reminded of this fact), and any invasion is logistically impossible without the support of its neighbours. Prior to 9/11, Pakistan was a staunch ally of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan (see Ahmed Rashid, Taliban, passim). The former Soviet Central Asian states of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan backed the NA, but were also wary of antagonising their former imperial master, Russia. Pre-September 2001 these states would not have contemplated admitting any US or Western military presence on their soil. Although Russian President Vladimir Putin backed the USA’s invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, it took the Americans considerable effort to persuade him to permit the US and NATO forces to use bases on Uzbek and Tajik territory as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. It also took time and considerable pressure to force General Pervez Musharraf to abandon the Taliban - despite resistance from the military and ISI. Given the geo-political realities of Central Asia in mid-2001, there were no guarantees of any host nation support for any attack on Afghanistan. Assuming againt that 9/11 was an inside job, how could the US government realistically presume that the Russians and Pakistanis would actually permit the USA to effect regime change against the Taliban?
(8) Assuming that claims of Mossad complicity in 9/11 (â€dancing Israelisâ€, etc.) are correct, can the truthers suggest a feasible motive for the Israeli government conniving in an act of mass murder on US soil? Since 1967, the mainstay of Israel’s security and survival has been its alignment with the USA, and the military assistance it has received as a result. This relationship is based on a bipartisan political consensus (both the Republican and Democratic parties are predominantly pro-Israeli) and considerable public support in the USA. Why engage in a “false flag†attack against the civilian population of an ally, when you have so little to gain and so much to lose if your responsibility is ever disclosed?
(9) Following on from this, assuming that the “five dancing Israelis†story isn’t a complete fabrication, what kind of secret service recruits undercover agents who compromise themselves by acting so ostentatiously in public? And if the five arrested Israelis were part of a conspiracy organised with the US government, then why did the FBI hold them in custody for over two months, instead of releasing them on the quiet a matter of hours and days after their apprehension?
(10) If the WTC towers in New York City were destroyed by controlled demolitions rigged by US government agencies, then why were the fake terrorist attacks used to cover up these controlled demolitions so insanely convoluted? Why concoct a scenario involving the hijacking of planes which are then crashed into tower blocks (involving complicated planning involving remote controlled flights timed with explosives detonated in the towers, which allow plenty of opportunities for gliches and technical errors)? Why not use a more simple means, such as a truck bomb?
(11) Assuming that Niaz Naik’s account of his alleged meeting with retired US officials in July 2001 is true, then where were the 17,000 Russian troops who were supposedly ready to invade Afghanistan when it came to the commencement of military operations in October 2001? And if the main motive behind the invasion was to build a natural gas pipe-line which would be under US control, then why was no attempt ever made to build one once the Taliban were overthrown?
(12) We are being asked by the conspiracy theorists to assume that NORAD was stood down on the morning of 11th September 2001 so as to enable the success of the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. NORAD is a combined command, not a purely American one - it has a binational staff drawn from the US military and the Canadian Forces (CF). We are either supposed to believe that the CF personnel assigned to NORAD were too stupid to notice anything amiss in their headquarters - and query it - or that the Canadian government and the CF were complicit in 9/11. Which of these scenarios is true?
(13) If Al Qaeda were set-up for the 11th September attacks, then why have its leaders and spokesmen repeatedly affirmed their responsibility for - and pride in - these attacks (see here, here, here and here for examples)? Why are we supposed to believe that repeated video pronouncements by bin Laden and Zawahiri are fake, while just one written statement allegedly from bin Laden denying responsibility - which was handed by courier to al-Jazeera without any confirmation of its origins - was genuine?
(14) If the hijacking and crashing of four passenger planes was engineered by the US government, then why did UA93 crash into an empty field in Pennsylvania? Why not crash it into a target which would add to the death toll on 9/11, and further inflame US public attitudes and popular demands for revenge against the supposed perpetrators?
(15) Finally, if the US government is institutionally ruthless enough to organise the massacre of thousands of its own citizens in a series of “false flag†attacks, then why is it too squeamish to arrange for the deaths of the supposed “truth-seekers†(David Griffin, Kevin Barrett, Steven Jones, Richard Gage, the Loose Change team, Alex Jones, etc.) who have exposed their complicity in one of the most heinous crimes a government can commit against its own people? Why are these people still alive and well, and in a position to publicise their “theories†on radio, television, in print and online?
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257 responses
Splendid. But don’t hold your breath…
The following excerpt from the above article is possible evidence the writer is COIN and playing mind games by revealing truth hidden in what poses as a debunking of the 9/11 conspiracy. The writer also wants to convince you that the word “conspiracy†is defined as “boogyman.â€
[Conspiracy] n., Two or more persons acting in secret to commit a crime.
Google the term conspiracy in news and you will find stories every day of people being charged with conspiracy to commit crime much like the Governor of Illinois is at this very moment.
George Orwell would be overjoyed at our ability to see through government lies.
“(10) If the WTC towers in New York City were destroyed by controlled demolitions rigged by US government agencies, then why were the fake terrorist attacks used to cover up these controlled demolitions so insanely convoluted? Why concoct a scenario involving the hijacking of planes which are then crashed into tower blocks (involving complicated planning involving remote controlled flights timed with explosives detonated in the towers, which allow plenty of opportunities for glitches and technical errors)? Why not use a more simple means, such as a truck bomb?â€
If you can look at the hundreds of uploaded videos of WTC 7 and say all is normal then you lack common sense or you are COIN.
Who do you think uploaded all those building 7 videos? Joe blow from Chicago? It was media personnel…
The author has apparently not yet learned that a government that accuses individuals of mass murder bears the moral and legal burden to prove its accusations beyond reasonable doubt. The US government has failed to do so. It has presented exactly zero evidence proving that the 19 alleged Muslims boarded on the four aircraft that they alleged hijacked, let alone committed the crime. It is not the duty of ordinary citizens to prove that these 19 individuals were NOT on the aircraft, but the government’s duty to prove that they WERE there. Until this author can present that evidence, his demands on the truth movement should be ignored.
One answer to fifteen questions, and another question.
All fifteen questions are psychological in nature; i.e., they ask why individuals or groups or people would or would not do something. Such questions will always be open to differing answers, as well as the observation that actions are not always successful. I believe a better question to consider is: how can a steel-and-concrete structure turn into dust in the space of ten seconds because of a brief event that occurred an hour before?
Michael, was that an attempt at a response? Can I remind you of the challenge I set?:
‘This particular debunker has decided that maybe, just for once, the onus for actually demonstrating the validity of their theories on the basis of systematic and critical analysis of the evidence belongs to the truthers, not to those who wish to expose their fallacies.
It is now up to you to answer these questions and explain why your theories are still valid. For your answers to be credible, they need to be detailed and based on verifiable evidence. No suppositions, no speculation, no unsupported assertions, just the facts.’
Your comments are an ill-focused ramble, not an answer.
I think you also need to be reminded that ‘COIN’ stands for ‘counter-insurgency’, which I think is a somewhat dramatic phrase to use to describe an exchange of views online. Perhaps you mean COINTELPRO. But the whole point about COINTELPRO in the 1960s is that FBI agents posed as members of the civil rights movement, the CPUSA, Black Panthers etc. In which case, again you’re using the wrong analogy. I am not posing as a ‘truther’. I am making my opinions clear. I am challenging you and other conspiracy theorists to answer my own questions pointing out the glaring holes in your arguments, and inviting you to present the evidence to back up your responses. Why is that so upsetting? What’s wrong with asking you to back up your ‘theories’? Is it a problem because - deep down - you know that you and other ‘truthers’ cannot actually substantiate your claims.
Oh, and Elias Davidsson, ‘zero evidence’ I presume includes the following:
http://graphics.boston.com/news/packages/underattack/images/aa_flight_11_manifest.gif
http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/ST00001A.pdf
http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/ST00001B.pdf
http://www.911myths.com/html/flight_11_passengers.html
http://www.911myths.com/html/flight_77_passengers.html
http://www.911myths.com/html/flight_93_passengers.html
http://www.911myths.com/html/flight_175_passengers.html
And if you download the following you will have the complete passenger lists onboard the doomed flights from the Moussaoui trial:
http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/OG00010.html
So the evidence has been presented. It’s just that you refuse to see it.
Are you going to ignore my challenge as well?
TWO COLLAPSING TOWERS - WALL STREET AND THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
While we observe Wall Street go through an implosion and our lawmakers mortgage the future of America with the associated bailout, let us keep an eye on another adjacent and related tower with a weak foundation, teetering dangerously in the wind. The Military Industrial Complex (MIC) is also subject to bad decision-making by misinformed and manipulated government officials.
HISTORY
Congress has just funded the MIC at only slightly less than the 700B now necessary to bail out the US Financial catastrophe. The MIC is monumentally dangerous and has led our country into a continuing series of costly, fraudulent wars since Korea. Eisenhower forecasted the danger in his departing speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY
The most recent MIC adventure is being fought in the memory of 3,000 dead civilians attacked by a terrorist the US created by not leaving the Middle East after the first Gulf War. That excursion has killed thousands of our finest youth and maimed the lives of countless others. The average American will pay for this ruin in decades to come through taxes supporting hospital care, social services and veteran’s homes.
HOW DO I KNOW?
I am a 2 tour Vietnam Veteran who recently retired after 36 misguided years working in the defense industrial complex on many of the weapons systems being used by our forces as we speak. Given a clearly defined mission and the best armaments and systems in the world, I believed that another Vietnam could be avoided for the American Soldier.
I was wrong.
I live in a Veteran’s home, having recently undergone treatment through the VA for PTSD and Depression, long overdue some 40 years after the Tet Offensive that cap stoned my military 2nd tour in Southeast Asia with a lifetime of illness:
http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com/2006/11/odyssey-of-armaments.html
Politicians make no difference. I saw this on a daily basis from inside the MIC.
ABOUT THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
It is corrupt and driven by corporate influence:
http://www.playboy.com/magazine/features/lockheed/index.html
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/11/halliburton200711
It is broken and riddled with incompetence:
http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com/2008/04/us-federal-government-procurement.html
http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com/2007/01/what-american-public-must-know-about.html
THE COLLAPSE
The MIC, like Wall Street, will go bust and then be re-scaled, fixed and re-designed to run efficiently and prudently, just like any other big machine that runs poorly or becomes obsolete or dangerous. The situation will right itself through yet another trauma.
A government ENRON is on the horizon, with an associated house cleaning. The next president will come and go along with his appointees and politicos. They will try to fix the financial mess and become pawns of corporate America in widening our military influence attempting to mend corporate bank accounts. But the MIC tower will implode as well - the next big event in government you will watch is the collapse of that establishment.
HOPE
Non-profit visionaries and small business know the course that must be taken and they are taking it:
http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2008/04/einstein.php
These “Action People†are not in our government. They are more practical than that. They are the communicators, the true venture capitalists setting up worldwide non-profit foundations (Gates and Buffet for example). They are like the Bill Moyers, perpetually exposing waste fraud and abuse and then going one step further to fix it from the inside. They are the young inspirational members of the small business base in this country that will be tasked with picking up the pieces and re-inventing the future so our government can follow along.
As a volunteer counselor, handling 30 cases a week through SCORE I see every form of unique small business inventiveness imaginable - efficiently created, using technology to the max and not seeking financing to the hilt - only the opportunity to succeed:
http://www.smalltofeds.blogspot.com/
http://www.score.org/
The US GDP is still the largest in the world.
Our high technology cannot be matched.
We have enough weapons systems and science to beat all our competitors and solve our problems.
We need to come home.
As some of the comments indicate, asking such logical questions of the “Truthers†is an exercise in frustration. Why waste time arguing with people who will never, ever admit their whack-job theories fail to hold water?
Donald Stahl, You cannot possibly be as stupid as you sound. Or, maybe you can be. Same for Michael and Elias. PLease wait until After your 12th birthdays to render an opinion. Apparently, you have trouble keeping up with the grownups. You should never offer an opinion when you have not a clue what you are talking about. All it does is make people embarrassed for you, when you don’t know enough to be embarrassed at yourselves. You sound like a collective bunch of idiots.
The Troofers are having problems giving answers. Shocka!
Amazing. There’s no talking to these people. Ask them a question? Shame on you and your psy-ops.
troothers = moonbats
we should have a collection to pay for the meds they are not taking
The answer to #15:
If I were part of the government conspiracy to perpetrate the 9/11 attack then cover it up, I would go so far as to provide secret service protection for the troofers. Their nuttiness - and I’m being kind - provides enough reason to disbelieve any of it. The more they talk, the more it’s obvious that they’re standard net kooks.
“four aircraft that they alleged hijacked, let alone committed the crime. It is not the duty of ordinary citizens to prove that these 19 individuals were NOT on the aircraft, but the government’s duty to prove that they WERE there. Until this author can present that evidence, his demands on the truth movement should be ignored.â€
The courts don’t prosecute dead people.
Stahl, you ask “I believe a better question to consider is: how can a steel-and-concrete structure turn into dust in the space of ten seconds because of a brief event that occurred an hour before?â€
Here’s your answer, in depth and in plain English (although I expect it will go right over your pointy little troofer head):
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html
Oh, that’s right, I’m sure Popular Mechanics is in on the conspiracy. Uh huh.
Hey donald,
go take a physics class. Pay careful attention to the parts on potential energy and kinetic energy. Also, read the book on how the towers were constructed. I have a copy. Those buildings were designed to withstand the impact of a 727. go look at the comparison between the 727 and the 7×7’s that hit the buildings. The plane impact took out the core support for the building. Now go take a class in Statics. You’ll learn about tensile force and compression force. Concrete is a compression member, Steel is a tensile member. The steel when heated was weakened. It didn’t have to weaken a lot, just enough to make the building unstable. With the core taken out on impact the load bearing structure was taken out. THAT’s why the towers collapsed on themselves.
To test this theory. get a friend. You hold 100 pounds of flour over your head. get your friend to hit you in the knee very hard with a baseball bat. Do NOT let the let the flour drop.
as to the dust? well go take a sledgehammer to some concrete. better yet, make sure nobody is around (so nobody gets hurt) and drop a cinderblock off something high onto other concrete . You’ll notice when the block hits it won’t be in one piece.
OTOH, those classes will probably be all to hard for you.
If true, then Obama will reveal all the details and end of story…..
I have lost both my best friend and sweet 19 year old cousin to Islamic terrorists. One in the WTC the other standing innocently at a bus stop in Israel. Those who I knew and considered friends who became troofers, I ended all contact with. Those troofers I meet now are immediately dismissed by me. I don’t waste my time energy or even a tiny place in my soul for them. I am indifferent to them, and always see them as the tin hatted morons they are. I hope they continue their nonsense to the point one day where one becomes violent towards me, so that I may legally defend myself and take from them what was taken from my innocent friend and cousin.
*The author has apparently not yet learned that a government that accuses individuals of mass murder bears the moral and legal burden to prove its accusations beyond reasonable doubt.*
and this is exactly the `burden’ that has never been met by 9/11 troofers with regard to their own `accusations’
*The US government has failed to do so. It has presented exactly zero evidence proving that the 19 alleged Muslims boarded on the four aircraft that they alleged hijacked, let alone committed the crime.*
Oh no? Were the tapes from the Pennsylvania crash not persuasive enough? I mean, what do you need?
*Until this author can present that evidence, his demands on the truth movement should be ignored.*
You see, author of this blog, you ask questions of these troofers, under the expectation (presumably) that you are dealing with rational individuals who really want answers to their questions. But they are not, they are no more rational than those who believe (for example) that the world was created 6,000 years ago.
As soon as any question is answered reasonably, the focus shifts, and you’re back to attempting to answer another one of the conspiracy fabulists entirely specious questions (that has probably been answered already), and around and around it goes.
You can see this now, with the `troofers’ obsession with WTC 7.
The proper question should be only one (IMHO): a 180,000 pound jet, going at least 600 mph, collides with the WTC tower (two incidents thereof), and the momentum of the aircraft was TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY ARRESTED by the impact (in the first crash at least, very little debris came out from the opposite side from the impact point).
Do you not think this is enough to cause massive structural damage, and the towers to fall?
Donald, is this a real question? I seem to recall rather large chunks of steel and concrete at ground zero. The debris took months to remove. Why would it take so long to remove a pile of dust? The brief event you speak of ignited a fire that burned continuously at over 1700 degrees F. The fire didn’t have to melt steel, as many truthers suggest. The fire had to weaken the steel sufficiently enough to a point where it could not support the weight above it. How hard is that to understand?
What I find most illuminating about the conspiracy theories, is that they tend to be so retrospective. They never seem to explain how the conspirators KNEW IN ADVANCE that they would, barring a disastrous slip-up, get clean away with it.
What if one of the buildings failed to collapse, and the explosive charges were found in the aftermath? Buildings rigged for demolition don’t always perform. Even when they are riddled with shaped charges and perfectly calibrated detonation cables all festooned about the place.
What if the patsies chickened out and went running to the press?
What if there weren’t any patsies and it was all done by remote control of the aircraft? Sorry, but you would need a massive black project involving avionics designers, software engineers, test engineers, pilots, ATC, airlines, and the military. It wouldn’t last five minutes.
And if the identities of the hijackers were faked, why have we got tape recordings of them threatening the passengers and cabin crew? It wasn’t someone else, it was them. And let us not forget that some of them recorded “martyrdom†videos. How awfully inconvenient.
What we should do, is build a large, open steel, tower. With an elevator at the centre, to take passengers up to the top. 1300 feet. Into a compartment.
And then we should convey the assembled troofers into the elevator, and up to the top. If they are so confident that the WTC was not brought down by the fire load, they will demonstrate the integrity of their stance, by remaining in the compartment while the steel at the base, is raised to the temperatures caused during the attack. What could they possibly have to fear?
Excellent post, I have linked from Screw Loose Change, so you’ll probably get an influx of Troofers before long.
Elias, what exactly would you accept as evidence? A YouTube video showing Mohamed Atta getting his glass of orange juice from a stewardess who says “Welcome to Flight 11 on 9-11-01″? Of course not.
The fact is there is nothing you would accept as evidence, because your belief that 9-11 was an inside job is not based on evidence but on faith.
Good questions. I am, by no means, a ‘truther’ and I accept 99% of the facts about 9/11 as-asserted by the government. I have TWO major problems with the gov’t story based on my independent, rational research:
1) PENTAGON VIDEOS: Why has the FBI not released confiscated tapes from Virginia Dept. of Transportation traffic cameras located near the Pentagon from the time of the attacks. These tapes would have helped to debunk truther claims that no plane went into the Pentagon (the single grainy, low-frame-rate video released from Pentagon security cameras did not help). Two or more VDOT cameras are located very near the Pentagon on the side the plane went into; I’m sure at least one of them saw something. Even if they are released now, so long after the attacks, truthers will claim they were doctored in the intervening 7+ years, so this is a major missed opportunity.
2) FLIGHT 93: Why was some debris associated with Flight 93 found over one mile from the impact location in Pennsylvania? Why were there reputable reports (from many witnesses, including law enforcement officers) of a second aircraft ‘tailing’ flight 93 shortly before its crash? Why has no record of the last moments of the flight (transcripts, tapes, etc.) ever been released? When you add all of these unexplained oddities together, a shoot-down scenario is plausible (especially given that Bush had, as a matter of record, authorized shoot-down of any further hijacked aircraft threatening Washington or elsewhere). Personally, I would have been just fine with a shoot-down of a commercial airliner in the situation we faced on 9/11, but it would have been a PR nightmare for sure.
Good post. An even quicker way of deflating the Truther’s is ask them just this one question:
“What fact, if proved, would cause you to seriously question your ‘inside job’ hypothesis?â€
Then, the Truther has only two ways to respond: they can suggest a fact, which can then be empirically checked, or they can say something like “nothing will cause me to STOP ASKING QUESTIONSâ€. If the latter, then it becomes clear (if it wasn’t already) that Trutherism is a non-rational belief system based on faith. Then the conversation is over. Trouble for the Truther is, they can’t offer a hypothetical fact that could potentially falsify them, unless it’s a silly one like, “Space aliens admit to doing it.†And once again, the conversation is over.
Karl Popper for the win!
If youre interested to what this Donald Stahl kook lookes like then check out this link….
http://www.troymeetsstlouis.blogspot.com/
He’s the fat guy with the beard and belly button showing. A complete nut.
I see the idiots are congregating.
Notice all the Truthers who have responded here in turn leave another question, rather than trying to answer a single question posed to them in this article.
I would ask why the pre-set demolitions cannot be seen or heard exploding in any recording of the WTC collapses. Watch a video of any other demolitions and they are very evident.
One can explain the physical properties of steel to a truther, but their response is usually something like, “Watch the WTC7 collapse, it falls straight down! Therefore it is definetely a coordinated demolition.â€
Buy my Pentacon DVD and watch it, you’ll see that all your questions are rendered moot by my 13 North of Citgo flight path witnesses. This has been further corroborated by Rob Balsamo and his expert FDR analysis proving that all the aircraft parts, DNA of passengers and crew, hundreds of eyewitness accounts, etc etc are all faked. Also, see my see-saw analogy which renders all mathematics null and void.
If you disagree you are a government loyalist shill who believe the official fairy tale and will be executed for treason after the truther revolution that is sure to come, for we have the support of 85% of the American people.
Please visit our web site and buy our DVDs, coffee mugs, aprons, and other merchandise so we can continue to investigate The Truthâ„¢.
Funny, but the process of using heat to soften (but not melt) steel has been known for thousands of years by armorers and swordsmiths; thousands of additional years by blacksmiths and farriers, if you include iron. It’s part of the forging process. I’m willing to bet you can get more heat from burning jet fuel than from the charcoal fires used in antiquity.
I don’t think there is much hope for these people. They have some kind of need to be the only ones with custody of the secret truths, kind of like latter-day gnostics. What a blow to their self-esteem to think they are really just rather ordinary, at best.
I’m not a truther, but I thought I’d point out that some of the questions above aren’t really in contradiction to an “inside job, controlled demolition/death ray/invisible Godzilla†plan:
1) The assassination could have been just a conincidence. Truthers will make a conspiracy out of even the most innocuous coincidence, so they might find this one hard to explain, but it could indeed be explained as a coincidence if you didn’t know any more about it.
2 is good
3) At first you might think they have gone into hiding because of the assassination in question 1, but since the NA did not have the power to retaliate on their own, this is still a good question.
4, 5 and 6 are good
7) One could argue that the US would use the “inside job†attack to pressure Russia and Pakistan into allowing attacking Afghanistan. That still raises the question of why they’d attack Afghanistan rather than more “important†countries.
8, 9 and 10 are good
11) One might explain this one away as things didn’t go exactly according to plan, or that somebody found out the plan and pressured them to change it. Not with evidence though, just speculation.
12) Good question, but truthers believe in conspiracies where in the end a large percentage of the world’s population must be in on the plan (all structural engineers in the world, all firefighters in New York etc. etc.) so it wouldn’t be a huge leap for them to think the Canadians were in on it too.
13, 14 and 15 are good
Maddox from the Best Page in the Universe asked question 15 a while ago, and the fact that these blowhards still are alive and spreading their conspiracy theories without being disappeared might be the best indication that they are wrong.
“I believe a better question to consider is: how can a steel-and-concrete structure turn into dust in the space of ten seconds because of a brief event that occurred an hour before?â€
Easily. Read up on the effects of fire on the tensile strength of metals, and while you’re at it, read up on the unorthodox design of the towers. Materials failures often start out slow, and then suddenly gain speed as the material, finally, catastrophically fails. This is especially true in metal structures, such as vehicle or building frames.
@Scott Bradford:
#1: DOT cameras can point 360 degrees to show off traffic and survey a scene. There’s a significant (if not majority) chance the camera was looking where you would expect a traffic camera to be looking (down at the road) and not at the sky. Assuming, for whatever reason it wasn’t pointed down at the road (watching traffic), you’re hoping that it was pointed towards the pentagon.
#2: That airframe isn’t built for maneuvers. It’s very likely the airframe exceeded the maximal speed it was designed for while it was hurtling through the sky. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to find out the panels started shedding when the fight started and the aircraft was asked to fly like a fighter jet.
Scott, another possibility is that the cameras were streaming only (many traffic cameras are). It is not listed on the 85 videotapes list here:
http://www.flight77.info/85videos.html
Also on the debris from Flight 93, it is important to consider what types of debris. The plane was carrying mail and light stuff like that could easily have been blown into the air by the explosion of the plane as it hit the ground and been carried away by the wind. If Flight 93 had indeed been shot down, we would expect something more like Lockerbie, where large bits of the plane landed far from each other and the debris field was over 600 square miles.
If one argues with an idiot, he has to go down to idiot’s level.
And than he’ll be defeated by idiot’s experience.
It’s pretty obvious that troofers are unable to make anything even close to single coherent theory that covers whole scenario and is more believable than the “official†story. This should shut this whole circus years ago, but it didn’t. Probably nothing will and even in 100 years you’ll get ppl rambling about some connection in another attack or assassination in whatever country will be on US current territory that had with WTC, Kennedy and faked moon photos.
One can easily make pretty convincing (at first glance) “evidence†that will put doubt in many established facts, let alone complex terrorist situation where perps and only witnessess from the planes got blown to bits.
Queen Elisabeth secretly hating Prince Harry? No problem, take some time analyzing tons of footage of one or another and digging thru layer upon layer of articles about them - you’ll get a lot of “evidenceâ€, even though the claim was just made up. However big picture from it, with some checking with other materials will make this story less believable.
Einstein and his collegues actually plotting Nuclear Armageddon? His remarks about bomb where - ofcurse! - just a smoke screen. Get some time (too much time, some would say) to dig records and articles and you’ll prolly get some grievances in Einstein life on which you’ll pin his alleged armagesuicidal plans etc etc.
Just finding picture that looks like it’s not supporting thesis is not enough.
You need alternate, complete story. Or even more - alternate, complete story that is BETTER than original one.
All these questions have the same answer: the more the U.S. gov’t seems to be innocent, the more certain we can be that they are guilty. Wouldn’t they WANT to seem innocent? It’s all part of the diabolical plan
To me #10 is the central question, though I would phrase it differently: If the conspirators are going to use controlled demolition to take down the WTC, why bother with any hijackings at all? Just blow up the buildings. It would kill far more people (no time for evacuations), and you can still blame it on terrorists. You’re going to cover up the demolition anyway, right? No need to coordinate everything with hijackings that may or may not succeed.
This is the same problem I have with JKF theories: if it’s an inside job, why bother arranging to shoot him in public? Just have something slipped into his morning coffee. You’re going to cover up the autopsy anyway, correct? And there’d be a lot less investigation into an “unexpected heart attack†than a public assassination.
For starters, this website is no less biased than the Truthers. You have decided that the official story behind 9/11, which is no less a “conspiracy theory†than anyone’s else’s, is true. You accept the government’s conspiracy theory, and reject others. In an objective world, you’d have to answer “15 Questions†too.
To invalidate any theory, conspiracy or otherwise, a doubter does not need to substitute another one. All the doubter needs do is knock the pegs out from under the theory being challenged. For instance, if someone doesn’t believe that Oswald acted alone, all a doubter needs to do is show that bullets came from more than one gun.
My own view of the events of 9/11 is that we haven’t been given a believable story. I don’t think the government’s case is plausible, nor do I think that anyone else has offered a coherent explanation for the events.
To me, the 9/11 attacks are in the same category as the sinking of the Lusitania. For years, the U.S. and Britain denied that the ship was carrying munitions. In the 1990s and again in this decade, solid evidence emerged that it was in fact carrying them. There are solid reasons to doubt the official account of the Pearl Harbor attack, and the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
Those who doubt official versions are typically labeled “conspiracy theorists,†when in fact the official versions themselves are conspiracy theories. It doesn’t help, of course, that doubters often tend to be a motley crew, yet governments are very frequently full of suspicious characters too.
The furthest I can go with respect to 9/11 is that the U.S. government’s version is full of holes. The government worked hard (and successfully) to block a thorough investigation. As a result, the 9/11 events will be added to the list of suspicious events whose explanation will never really be trusted.
never try to engage the intellect and humanity of those who posess niether quality. these ‘troofers’ are what happens when people start peeing in the gene pool.
Correction:
For instance, if someone doesn’t believe that Oswald acted alone, all a doubter needs to do is show that bullets came from more than one gun — or that they could not have come from only one gun.
Finally (for now), the ad hominem attacks on “troofers†are par for the course. From the start, the government and its supporters have painted any non-believers as somehow beyond the pale. It’s a time-honored tactic.
Truthers are hemorrhoids on the the ass of absurdity.
Scott Bradford: #2: It’s good that you’re not repeating the “Indian Lake is 6 miles from the crash site†claim I’ve heard before, when it’s much closer than that. The wind was blowing towards the lake, and as mentioned above some of the tail or wings might have come off the plane as it was flying wildly towards the ground. The cockpit recording sounds like the hijackers either deliberately are crashing the plane or are fighting with the passengers.
Alternatively, the high energy of the impact, which drove the plane into a hole in the ground, could have kicked up some pieces of wing and tail.
The main evidence against it being shot down is that there were no armed fighter planes close enough to have shot the plane down, no remains of a shoot-down weapon, and if the plane had been hit in the air it would be spread out over a larger area.
I would like to pose a question to the truthers.
Where are the scores, if not hundreds, of co-conspirators needed to pull off such an event who can come forward and attest to their role in laying det cord, setting explosives, remote piloting the airliners, smuggling people in and out of this country, hiding airline passengers, or planning the event.
There is no way you can claim that sensitive, if not crucial, information such as who was there and participated in the planning or execution of the event could be kept secret in a Bush administration based on the track record of the past seven years…
nomagic: 9/11 indeed seems to be a conspiracy of a few terrorists. But in the English language, “conspiracy theory†has come to mean “a belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for an unexplained event.â€
Your complaint about semantics, is like those Jew-haters in the Middle East who say “we can’t be anti-semittic, because we are semites tooâ€.
Or it’s like saying that “inteligent design†is true because humans intelligently design such things as computers and cellphones - when the established meaning is that it refers to some kind of God creating the universe.
The government - by relying on experts, science and documentation - has presented a rather simple explanation of what happened, including details about who, when, what and how. No alternative has been presented. We have to belive the “official†version until somebody makes an alternative explanation. Isn’t science a bitch, truthers?
Oh boy did you attract the dipshits with this post. Well done!
Great article. Period.
The problem I have with Troofers is that they prevent the world from coming to grips with real Islamic violence. If we are to prepared for real threats, then we must understand them. Otherwise there will be more repeats - makes me wonder, do Troofers think 7/7 and Mumbai were also caused by the CIA/Bush/Mossad/NORAD?
The governor of Illinois was selling the twin towers for $1 million, and this was the US attorneys wau of preventing that…
http://www.politicalwrinkles.com
the us govt managed to pull off a conspiracy that would have required the cooperation of half the planet but couldn’t get it together enough to hide a few WMD’s in Iraq……bizarre
So, NorwegianAnoyMouse, am I now an “antisemite?†If so, then who’s the “conspiracy theorist†here? I think the government’s account is riddled with holes. The biggest ones concern the collapse of WTC-7, the crash of United Flight 93, and the unexplained and undocumented (due to destroyed evidence) behavior of the air traffic controllers, NORAD, and the Air Force.
There are many, many more anomalies. You seem to have scooted right past my core point, which is that it’s not necessary to offer Explanation B to disprove Explanation A. This site’s demand that the “truthers†do that flies in the face of elementary logic. It is sufficient to believe, as I do, that the government’s story isn’t plausible, and therefore that we can’t know what actually happened.
I think it would have been a much better idea if the Bush administration had not opposed the formation of the 9/11 Commission, and had not interfered with its workings through back-channel contacts with its chief of staff. Moreover, if Congress had done its job and insisted on a series of public hearings to examine the anomalies, the public interest would’ve been far better served.
I have no idea who was responsible for the events of 9/11, and I frankly don’t think you do, either. You simply believe what the U.S. government has offered. I do not.
Question # 16: Is it true that all 9/11 Truthers live in their parents’ basement?
There has been quite a string of ad hominems leveled here, both directly and by implication, at the so-called “truthers.†I’m not even one of them, but because I don’t accept the U.S. government’s conspiracy theory I’ve already had one commenter liken me to anti-semites and believers in so-called “intelligent design.â€
Other commenters challenge the sanity of the “truthers,†and doubt their credentials when it comes to opposing terrorism. And then there are just plain insults, i.e., calling them “troofers†and “idiots,†etc.
It’s an interesting discussion for a website whose ostensible purpose is to combat the spread of irrational beliefs. Is this site about truth and logic, or does it exist to grind an ax?
Defenders 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.â€)
- 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.â€
- 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.â€
- 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?â€
For decades, the U.S. relied on these individuals to collect information essential to national security and provide critical analysis during a time when 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.
More information about these and 1,000 other credible critics of the official account of 9/11 is available at http://PatriotsQuestion911.com/
OMG
What is the matter with some of you people?
Now exactly where are Barbara Olsen and all the kids from the school who were on the flight? I am sure their parents would like to have them back.(I know! I know! On The Island with the rest of the Oceanic Flight 815!)
And was Ted Olsen hallucinating when he got his phone call from Barbara? What about the eye witnesses who SAW the plane hit the Pentagon? Funny that the attendant who phoned in (Sweeney?) on one of the flights into the WTC described the assault in the air and the attacks? Remember?
And then there were the phone calls off the Flight 93. I believe some of the tapes have been released. The families of 93 got to hear the crashing attack on the doors, etc.
Before we knew for sure they were hijacked the attendant described the hijackers including the fact they took out the guy in first class right away — why? He was Daniel Lewin, a former IDF officer and a demonstrably brilliant computer scientist who incidentally created the algorithms which make the delivery of information on the web work. Not to mention a very nice guy, from what I have read. A great loss. Too bad the evil Bushies didn’t plan better, huh?
If the science escapes you, and the Popular Mechanics article is too pedestrian for you, try The Towers and Beyond (MIT) http://web.mit.edu/civenv/wtc/
If you can read.
Occam’s Razor is a step more than some of you guys can handle. After all this time.
You truly should be ashamed of yourselves.
I guess the other thing I’d need to ask is: Why such vitriol against the so-called “truthers?†It’s obvious that there is a whackjob component out there, but it’s also apparent that there have been a series of legitimate doubts that have not been answered.
Yet, you’ve got a whole group of people who offer little but insults. The news media, which have been considerably less than diligent in the recent past with respect to government falsehoods, seem complacent when it comes to looking into the gaping holes in the government’s conspiracy theory.
I can understand why the “truthers†see dark things brewing, especially those of them whose hinges were a little loose to begin with. In a smarter world, there’d be less invective and more inquiry.
@ nomagic
This site’s purpose is indeed to combat the spread of irrational beliefs.
Don’t judge us by the nutters - on either side of the debate!
Nomagic, you keep saying you’re not a troofer, but you sure do sound like one.
Troofers are making an accusation that mass murder was committed by the US government and led by George W. Bush. Why is *your* accusation not subject to proof? I say the US government is innocent until proven guilty. You have presented zero evidence.
As far as ad hominem goes, how’s this? Troofers disgust me. They are scum of the earth. They are bottom feeding, knowledge-sucking, wastes of air. They are delusional crackpots with no logic or compassion who traffic in hate and paranoia, which makes them nothing but parasites.
Ah. I feel better now.
You’ve made a serious accusation. Time to pony up some proof.
I love it when the troofers come out from under the rocks. The Popular Mechanics debunking should have laid to rest all of this. I feel sorry for the families of these nuts. I can’t imagine how embarassed they must be. If the gov’t can’t keep the details of a legal plan to track terrorist money from going public, anyone thinking a plot as huge as these people believe could be kept quiet this long is delusional.
There is another issue, and that’s how “911 truther†is defined. From what I’ve read on the Internet (which, given the lack of serious independent inquiry in the major media, is pretty much where you must go), there isn’t one coherent “truther†organization. So, a demand for “truthers†to answer 15 (or 12, or 28, and 97) Questions is a little foolish, especially when a look at this site’s questions presume beliefs not necessarily held by those who disbelieve the government’s particular conspiracy yarn.
If this site wants to complain about this state of affairs, I think the more appropriate targets would be the government (in particular, the horribly complaisant Democrats circa 2002-2008) and the major media. By not fully airing the inconsistencies and anomolies in the government’s tale, the result has been a proliferation of suspicion that I don’t think will ever go away.
Let’s take a couple of the more explosive elements, pardon the pun. There were the reports of those Israeli “art students,†and of the instant messages supposedly sent by an Israeli communications firm two hours prior to the attacks.
If those questions had been fully aired in the media, you wouldn’t have the ongoing speculation about Israeli involvement in the attacks. Personally, I regard Israeli involvement as being just as far-fetched as the U.S. government’s account. But everything ought to have been thoroughly and publicly investigated.
There is the collapse of WTC-7, which I consider to be suspicious as hell. The building owner was allegedly quoted to the effect that “we had to pull it,†the word “pull†being a common synonym for “demolish.†That sequence of events was never fully examined.
The government refuses to release the video tapes of the jet as it hit the Pentagon. Why? That evidence ought to be public record, and the media ought to be raising a stink about it. Also, the scrambling of aircraft to chase the hijacked planes, and their slow flight to New York, has never been thoroughly examined.
And Flight 93, well, I for one find the story of the passengers overpowering the hijackers and causing the crash to be implausible, to put it mildly. I suspect the military shot it down. The events should be thoroughly and independently investigated.
This is just a short list of the unexamined anomalies. This site’s implicit requirement that anyone who doesn’t accept the official story must come up with a complete alternative theory is ridiculous, as are the ad hominem attacks, many of them quite sophomoric, launched against anyone who’s not buying the government’s story.
nomagic you are deliberately misrepresenting what was said to portray yourself as being the victim of ad hominems.
So, to get that out of the way: your questions are absurd, stupid, whatever insulting term you want to use, and by extension, you are as well.
You have presented no evidence whatsoever to back up your disbelief of the “official conspiracy theory,†by which I conclude, completely unfairly, that you are an idiot. Unfairly, yes, but accurate? Also yes. You are an idiot. There is nothing unbelievable whatsoever in the 9/11 Report, except one part. Namely, that the government should have known enough to stop the attacks but was incompetent and didn’t because different agencies had different pieces of the puzzle and didn’t share anything with each other, either because of bad regulations or simple incompetence. Many of the people responsible for that situation were either never named or had the degree of their incompetence softened by the 9/11 Report.
What are these gaping holes in the government’s “theory,†as you put it? You’ve spent a lot of time expressing manufactured self-righteous indignation and referring to these gaping holes, but no time whatsoever actually explaining what they are.
So I conclude you are an idiot Truther who is just a little bit more intelligent - not much - than your run-of-the-mill Truther, intelligent enough to try to be a little subtle in your Trutherism. But unfortunately for you, you are nowhere near as intelligent as you think - you aren’t intelligent at all, in fact. Everyone knows what you’re trying to do with the style of your comments. Sorry if you had some other idea. Get back to mixing your Kool-Aid and leave the sane, rational people alone, thanks.
I hope I haven’t hurt your feelings too much with my horrible ad hominems and general destruction of your idiot comments.
I hadn’t noticed “Jackson,†who says I “keep saying†that I am not a “troofer,†but “you sure sound like one.†See, there you go again. There’s the ad hominem “troofer,†and the McCarthyite attack on a fellow traveler.
No, the more I see here the more I see ax grinding. I don’t think “counterknowledge†is about knowledge at all.
The Popular Mechanics debunking should have laid to rest all of this
You’re easy to satisfy, that’s for sure. Popular Mechanics Does 9/11? I think Debbie Does Dallas was probably more informative.
Wow nomagic you just did a great job of shooting yourself in the foot.
WTC 7? http://debunk911myths.org/topics/7_World_Trade_Center
Oops, Truther. WTC 7 is your idea of an inconsistency? You just took a butcher knife to your presentation of yourself as someone who isn’t a Truther but just has some reasonable questions about what happened.
You claim you aren’t a Truther, yet your list of questions is a paraphrase of any Truther website. How incompetent you are.
Secret Israeli communications two hours before the attacks? Oops, that’s bullshit too. Flight 93? The same. The Pentagon? Yet again.
You’ve just exposed yourself as a typical idiot Truther, congratulations. What a joke.
“You’re easy to satisfy, that’s for sure. Popular Mechanics Does 9/11? I think Debbie Does Dallas was probably more informative.â€
I think you’ve done a wonderful job of showing yourself to be a moron. The veneer has slipped away, the Truther exposed. Go back to making tinfoil body gloves and drinking your own urine that you’ve put through a Brita filter 60 times please.
#12: NORAD is a joint US-Canada outfit. The Deputy Commander NORAD is a Canadian 3 star. There is a Canadian NORAD region, the deputy Commander over there is a UASF Brigadier-General.
Any bonehead with an ounce of brains know NORAD doesn’t “stand downâ€. Never has, never will.
On 9/11, the Commander NORAD was away, the Deputy Commander was in command. That’s right, a Canadian General was in charge at the time.
That’s why conspiracy theorists dismiss NORAD.. “it was stood downâ€! Otherwise you’d have to add hundred of Canadian military personnel to the conspiracy. And the ones in Winnipeg too (where Canadian Region NORAD is based).
The Canadian 3 star being in charge is no secret. He got a bit of press at the time, spoke about it in public. I beleive he is in charge of AIr Command today. That’s a hint, I’m not going to say his name.
The conspiracy theory says less about the US than about the conspiracy theorist themselves. They beleive thousand of American citizens, soldiers, airmen, firefighters, etc would willingly participate in the mass murder of their fellow citizens and for 7 years none of them had the conscience to step out and say they did it.
These are devastating questions for the gaggle of fact-free morons who describe themselves, in true Orwellian fashion, as “truthers.†It is certain that the tinfoil-hat brigade will not be offering any coherent answers. But everyone knew that.
The insane fantasies of the conspiracy liars are, after all, pure snake oil, a fact that doesn’t deter charlatans and fools from peddling the toxic swill to uncritical America-hating dunces.
In over seven years of deranged screaming, the caconymic “truth†movement has churned out bogus science, distorted quotes, and a blizzard of outright lies–but not a shred of actual evidence supporting its pernicious myths.
The anti-American fraud Elias Davidsson ignores the mountain of evidence amassed by an unprecedentedly massive investigation that included seven thousand agents from the FBI alone. This liar tried promoting on the far-left talk show ‘CLOUT’ the thoroughly discredited canard that no Arab names appeared on the flight manifests. I was also a guest on that show, the token rationalist, so he got caught. Let it be noted that his imaginary conspiracy requires the complicity of many thousands of accomplices.
The ineffable Craig Ranke routinely trots out a cherry-picked handful of witnesses who have one thing in common: they ALL profess to having seen a plane crash into the Pentagon. This, by some form of magic, proves that a plane did not crash into the Pentagon. In order to follow this line of reasoning, it helps to be really, really dumb.
Combine stupidity, ignorance, and dishonesty in almost equal proportions and you get the truth movement.
I hope you realize that you are standing on a dime turning every which way to argue against anyone with a different theory.
There are questions. It is close-minded to deny them.
Why so many insults? New theories are always attacked. Why is this the one theory of the Bush regime no one is allowed to question without being insulted?
It’s interesting to see “Counterknowledge†explode with such venom at those who aren’t buying the conspiracy theory that they’ve bought. Folks, if you think you’re making any contribution here, well, you’re not. What really does puzzle me, though, is the level of loyalty to the U.S. government’s faulty explanation. Between sites like this and the major media, it seems like a lot of people are intent on stopping any real inquiry.
Indeed, we live in interesting times.
I’m a NJ police officer who volunteered to help with the ground zero cleanup. Let me say that anybody seeing the devastation up-close would know that it wasn’t a “controlled demolition.†And just a thought: Three people can keep a secret…if two of them are dead. Too many people would have to be involved for there to be a government conspiracy. I just need one credible person to come forward and admit they were involved in the demolition/conspiracy/coverup for me to become a believer.
They don’t understand why people insult them. Poor babies. OK here’s a hint: You are -casually - accusing thousand of people with collusion and participation in mass murder. Some of those people are known to us.
You are colluding with the free world’s ennemies in undermining the US. Just for politics.
I don’t care if you hate Bush or Republicans. I don’t even care if you kiss Clinton’s butt while he ignored years of terrorist attacks. Have your own politics. But the contempt for human life you assign to thousand others makes you contemptible.
Trutherism is how stupid people convince themselves they’re the smartest people in the room. Denying any of their theories would cost them too much of their identity. It’s useless using logic against what’s really a psychological problem.
How much longer will you continue to accept the Bush regime’s “official story†of Sept 11th and ignore the overwhelming evidence to the contrary???
I do NOT believe our trillion-dollar air defenses & intelligence network was defeated by Osama bin-Forgotten & his 19 lackeys with box-cutters! Hijacked airliners flew all over the eastern U.S. for hours without any meaningful response nor pursuit!? While Dick Cheney just happened to be conducting similar “war games†that fateful morning!? (Yes, Google it!)
Next, an airliner with a 125′ wingspan disappeared though a 16′ foot initial impact hole at the Pentagon! How??? All clear videos of what blew-up the Pentagon are being withheld to this day! Why???
That afternoon, yet another implausible phenomena occurred at a building that housed the CIA, FBI, SEC, IRS, etc. WTC Building #7 had minor damage & small, scattered fires, yet it imploded in a controlled demolition!? Larry Silverstein, the very over-insured leaseholder, said:
“I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander,
telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain
the fire, and I said, ‘We’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the
smartest thing to do is pull it.’ And they made that decision to pull
and we watched the building collapse.â€
Most people are beginning to accept the fact that Cheney allowed Sept 11th to proceed on purpose.
It’s time for all good men & women to speak out about the NWO/globalists, rather than be a gatekeeper of the truth!!! Wake-up everyone now!!!
Exactly Joe! To ascribe the heinous actions and motives to hundreds if not thousands of Americans necessary to carry out a conspiracy like this is a huge insult to them and the country.
So tell us, nomagic, how informative was Debbie Does Dallas?
If I accept your position–that there is one and only one theory about 9/11–we are at an end and there can be no more discussion. This sounds like an old religion that claims sole ownership of the truth.
If you accept my position–that many theories of 9/11 should be explored by many people–we will have fruitful discussions and possibly discover some new truths.
Why the intense polarity on this issue? Is it really so difficult to calmly entertain other possible theories about 9/11?
Good arguments, but you must realize in the end you are contending with the deranged.
Articles like this are most informative, but you’d have better luck arguing with village idiots over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin than you would arguing reason with a 9/11 truther.
Like David Duchovny of the X Files, they WANT to believe. And if somebody wants to believe something, no persuasive argument or mountain of empirical evidence to the contrary will sway them.
You think Rosie O’Donnell would give a shite about anything written here? No. Why? Because she’s a Troof Believer. You wouldn’t be able to penetrate her thick skull with anything short of a nail gun.
’nuff said.
I just wonder why you would crash a plane full of jet fuel into a building rigged for demolition when C-4 burns? If you can answer that question for me I’ll think about your theory.
Stephen Cozen, the attorney suing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on behalf of 9/11 families will be my guest on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com at 5 PM New York time Wednesday December 17.
To talk to Cozen please go to http://www.garybaumgarten.com and click on the Join The Show button.
Thanks,
Gary
How long can conspiracy liars rant mindlessly about a Bush “regime� Bush is returning to his ranch in a little over a month and turning over his carefully-constucted fascist state to Barack Obama. Oh, wait–Obama is in on it too!
No pipelines were built and no oil was “stolen.†It’s time to bring down the curtain on a truly rotten show. And enough already with questions that have been answered over and over. We get the idea that the answers based on real science are terribly inconvenient to the fantasies promoted by cynical frauds, but that’s just too bad.
Thinking that 9/11 is simply a crime, where the burden of proof is upon the legal system in prosecuting “alleged perpetratorsâ€, is mainly evidence that whoever holds that opinion is, at best, innocently ignorant, and at worst a cynical fraud. 9/11 was an act of war of Islamic supremacists determined to bring down the West. Imagining it as equivalent to a mass mugging is ignorant.
The fact that Troofers are alive and free to broadcast their folly, as the brave shoe-thrower in Baghdad will survive to enjoy praise for his “expression of dissent,†proves, as none of their “troof†does, that democratic freedoms are the strength of the West. Children throw tantrums and shoes. Free men and women traffic in ideas, no matter how discomfiting, contrary, and unpleasant.
nomagic said:
I think the government’s account is riddled with holes. The biggest ones concern the collapse of WTC-7, the crash of United Flight 93, and the unexplained and undocumented (due to destroyed evidence) behavior of the air traffic controllers, NORAD, and the Air Force.
1, flight 93 could have indeed been shot down simultaneous to the passenger mutiny without there being a conspiracy.
2. There was no strange behavior from the air traffic controllers other than CYA activity. Controllers were not trained to treat hijackings as suicide missions before 9/11. The centers these guys work in contain hundreds of people–not all of them Bush-loving neocons. Somebody would have broken rank long ago.
nomagic said:
I think it would have been a much better idea if the Bush administration had not opposed the formation of the 9/11 Commission, and had not interfered with its workings through back-channel contacts with its chief of staff. Moreover, if Congress had done its job and insisted on a series of public hearings to examine the anomalies, the public interest would’ve been far better served.
They were probably afraid it was going to turn into a giant finger pointing session aimed at Bush, complete with millions in lawsuits against the Feds. As it turned out it was an exercise in CYA. Are there holes in it? You bet. But nothing to suggest it was anything more than rear end protection. Ask yourself this question, too– why wasn’t there an independent investigation of the First WTC bombing, the Okla City bombing, and the TWA 800 bombing, er crash?
nomagic said:
I have no idea who was responsible for the events of 9/11, and I frankly don’t think you do, either. You simply believe what the U.S. government has offered. I do not.
But this is pretty simple stuff taken in context of the history of Islamic and Arab terrorism. To believe 9/11 was an inside job requires believing all previous Islamic terrorism was fabricated as well, along with things like Bin Laden’s 1998 declaration of war against America. Heck, why not take it all the way back to Jefferson’s days. Maybe the “Barbary wars†were the result of inside jobs, too.
I like Question #15 and kinda of wish the “truth squad†was correct in their insistence that 911 was a inside job. then they be gone (cause that is why bad guys do to humans that get in their way ) and I wouldn’t have to listen to them any longer.
McCloud, stop putting words into my mouth. I didn’t contend that 9/11 was an inside job. I have said that I don’t believe the U.S. government’s conspiracy theory, and for that simple statement I’ve been insulted by whackjobs here who, like Christian nutcases and communists, Islamic fanatics, Jewish extremists, and all manner of ideologues, rail against non-believers.
There is quite a brittleness in you people here. I’ve seen that sort of brittleness among other people, in other times, in other places, and on other issues. But that doesn’t change my point of view. You can’t bully me into believing the conspiracy theory that you’ve embraced.
I do realize how much this disappoints you, but that’s a disappointment that you’ll simply have to live with.
(1) Non-sequiter, your interogative skills are laughable.
(2) Afghanistan was not the motive for the 911 attacks.
(3) Just before 911 OBL went to Saudi Arabia for kidney dialysis, where he met his case worker who probably warned him.
(4) See answer (2).
(5) OBL is Saudi (well, technically Jordanian, but for all intents and purposes, Saudi). Many of the Mujahadin were Saudi, Wahabbist schools in Afghanistan were set up by the Saudis. So if I was trying to frame OBL, I would pick Saudi as the nationality. But that’s just me, obviously you know what happened on that day already.
(6) Irrelevant. The lack of intelligence capabilities of those country’s gov. inside the US would make it impossible for them to disagree, and when you’ve got a ruthless, murderous superpower on a rampaging warpath, it pays not to get in the way. (Yes, yes, sorry for our citizens behaviour, we will let you use our prisons for renditions, and our ports for staging and supply, just please don’t invade us).
(7) See answer to question (2)
(8) First of all, your question is deliberately confusing. Are you asking about motive or risk? Those are two separate things you understand? There certainly are obvious motives for Mossad’s involvement, but as you say, the risks are very high. Lets start with motives. Anti-Semitism is very strong in the US (and Europe), and the Israeli’s are often frustrated by sympathy for the Palestinians in the US and Europe, even when the Palestinians are murdering Israelis every other week. So an attack on the WTC would serve to shift opinion against Arabs, and give Israel some breathing space to do some of their own murdering. Second, the threat to Israel by all of her Arab neighbours is real, but the biggest is probably Iran. Israel may have thought it possible to pincer Iran with American forces, or barring that, the US presence in the Middle East certainly helps them strategically. As for the risks, I think that the ultimate risk was very high, but containment via propaganda has been very successful on the US public in the past, and Israel may have been willing to gamble.
(9) Quote “What kind of secret service recruits undercover agents who compromise themselves by acting so ostentatiously in public?â€. Certainly not Mossad, if that’s what you are getting at, but the Can’t Identify Anything agency has certainly shown itself to be that stupid.
(10) A truck bomb is not plausible. Planes are not plausible to a scientist either, but to a moron (80% of the US population and 100% of people who watch Fox News) a plane IS plausible. Planes are BIG mkay, and they have lots of jet fuel mkay, which burns very very hot mkay, and that weakened the beams mkay, which brought the building down exactly like a controlled demolition, except IT WASN’T mkay. Lastly, passenger planes are a much greater security threat generally than trucks, so now you can get citizens of the land of the free to submit to a humiliating human rights abuse at the airport, and they thank you for it.
(11) See answer to question (2).
(12) I’ll come back to this if I feel like it. I don’t want to work to do your research for you.
(13) Without forensic determination of the video’s authenticity, it is impossible to determine the answer to that question, so it really is a pointless question. Besides which, the number of videos is irrelevant if they are all fake. If I were trying to misdirect attention with a fake video, and it appeared to be working, I would make more of them. Oddly enough, that’s exactly what OBL did every time a poll showing declining support for the war and/or president was released. Ahh, art of propaganda, how far you have come in a mere 50 years.
(14) It didn’t, so your question is irrelevant.
(15) The containment team only murders those who have information that cannot easily be contained via counter-intelligence, such as Hunter S Thompson. Alex Jones is a demagogue who doesn’t really know anything.
As a final note, this event and it’s mythology shows just how far knowledge of basic science has declined in the US. As a scientist, one can only come to the conclusion that the official explanation on both the Pentagon and WTC violates both physical and chemical laws, regardless of who planned and carried out these attacks. By focusing on the WHO, you are attempting to distract people from the impossibility of the HOW, which places you squarely in the propagandist camp, which as a scientist leads me to discount anything you say.
Wow…just Wow…I watched the entire event unfurl (after the first strike on the WTC) on CNN while traveling on business in Malaysia. I sat in complete disbelief for several hours, saw the second plane hit while CNN was trying to verify the hit at the Pentagon. To believe it was something other than the hits by the airplanes on the building requires irrational thinking. WTC7 collapse was fully explained by NIST in Aug 08, with both scienctific measurements on the debris and computer modeling, there was in fact. aircraft debris at the Pentagon and photos of it, in all of the building collapses, the fire sprinkler systems were disabled by the attacks which lead to out of control fires, and finally there were recorded phonecalls to 911 (not Federal agency), where the last words of the victims on those airplanes clearly described the events that took place. There is so much evidence, visual/audio/scientific, that proves the planes were hijacked that to believe otherwise, is simply irrational fear of our American government and that is truly pathetic.
Thank you all for your responses, positive and otherwise. I’m actually surprised this has generated so much traffic. This comment from ‘Silly Allah’ stuck out:
‘do Troofers think 7/7 and Mumbai were also caused by the CIA/Bush/Mossad/NORAD?’
As a matter of fact, conspiracy theorists are starting to work their magic on these events too:
http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2008/11/29/mumbai-conspiracy-theory/
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/02/28/silly-goose/
‘Alan Miller’ refers to General Albert Stubblebine, and his comment here - “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?â€
I remember Gen Stubblebine from Jon Ronson’s documentary ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’ (broadcast on 7th November 2004), and was quite struck by the good General’s state of mind near the end of his career. He kept on trying to leave his office by walking through the wall - without using the door which had been provided. The founder of the ‘First Earth Battalion’ sounds like an appropriate candidate for counterknowledge (listen from 4:45 minutes in):
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ylV6fQVgLiQ
Monty Python could not have made this up.
You will never get them to answer any of these questions, answer any reasonable objection, or admit to any relevant facts.
The convoluted, complex and ridiculous schemes serve to reinforce a pre-existing view of the world that is based on a combination of irrationality and fear.
The common thread is an underlying (unrecognized) desire for control. Life as random is too terrifying to accept. The ability of random people to cause mayhem is too threatening, so they attach to any ideas that some outside or secret group has everything managed.
In the west they are overwhelmingly leftist misfits, people who are underemployed, unemployed, on the lowest tier of society. They have no control of their own life, no real understanding, these plots explain away their condition. There is a denial of individual responsibility at all levels.
Someone high up is pulling the strings that leave them powerless.
Consider the JFK murder. It could not possibly have been the lone loser with the rifle who shot the man, it had to be some mysterious invisible secret agent in the bushes, directed by evil people in control behind the scenes.
Live films of giant airplanes crashing into buildings will never be obvious proof for these people. This just cannot happen, life cannot be that random. Someone has to be in control.
In the west they are primarily leftists, screaming and crying about evil government while voting and insisting on more of it.
As if only the right people were in control, these things would not happen.
These views are widespread in the third world and are fundamental to the “America is always wrong†idea. America is obviously in control, America is the cause, so all effects are America’s fault. Everything that happens is the result of this control.
Someone, somewhere “meant to do thatâ€.
It dominates terrorist ideology, they simply point to a different group in control. Remove the Jews and all problems are solved.
It is far from harmless, and worthy of serious psychological study.
Seven,
I have answered the questions, even though most of them are straw-man arguments. Give me your opinion.
I will now look at ‘Jolinar’ and his feeble (and I note unsourced) efforts to answer my questions:
‘(1) Non-sequiter, your interogative skills are laughable.’
It’s spelt non-sequitur, and by definition it means something that does not logically fit a preceding statement, just like your statement below.
‘(2) Afghanistan was not the motive for the 911 attacks.’
Then why invade the country? Time of month? Again, evidence for your assertions would be helpful.
‘(3) Just before 911 OBL went to Saudi Arabia for kidney dialysis, where he met his case worker who probably warned him.’
Glaringly wrong. This myth has been refuted comprehensively:
http://www.911myths.com/html/bin_ladin_met_the_cia.html
‘(4) See answer (2).’
That is not a response.
‘(5) OBL is Saudi (well, technically Jordanian, but for all intents and purposes, Saudi). Many of the Mujahadin were Saudi, Wahabbist schools in Afghanistan were set up by the Saudis. So if I was trying to frame OBL, I would pick Saudi as the nationality. But that’s just me, obviously you know what happened on that day already.’
But that doesn’t answer my central question. If 9/11 was concocted (as per the conspiracy theorists) to justify an attack on Afghanistan and then Iraq, would it not make better sense to frame the evidence so that it fits up an enemy, not an ally? You can’t answer that question, can you?
‘(6) Irrelevant. The lack of intelligence capabilities of those country’s gov. inside the US would make it impossible for them to disagree,’
So the Russians have no record of intelligence activities in the USA, do they?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldrich_Ames
And a nuclear power with parity with the United States can really be bullied into doing Washington’s will. Yeah, that’s right. After all, Bush said ‘Stop your attack on Georgia’ last August and it just halted the Russian army in its tracks.
‘and when you’ve got a ruthless, murderous superpower on a rampaging warpath, it pays not to get in the way. (Yes, yes, sorry for our citizens behaviour, we will let you use our prisons for renditions, and our ports for staging and supply, just please don’t invade us).’
Bear in mind here that both the Russian Federation and Pakistan are nuclear powers.
‘(7) See answer to question (2)’
And see my response. Assertion is not fact.
‘(8) First of all, your question is deliberately confusing. Are you asking about motive or risk? Those are two separate things you understand? There certainly are obvious motives for Mossad’s involvement’
Such as destroying the alliance upon which has been the bedrock of Israel’s security since 1967?
‘but as you say, the risks are very high.’
That’s your first sensible comment, that is.
‘Lets start with motives. Anti-Semitism is very strong in the US (and Europe), and the Israeli’s are often frustrated by sympathy for the Palestinians in the US and Europe, even when the Palestinians are murdering Israelis every other week.’
This conveniently forgets the fact that US administrations have been solidly pro-Israeli since Johnson’s time. There is in fact little in substance to differentiate the policies of the Clinton era with those of Bush Junior. And legislative and public opinion in the States is far more pro-Israeli than it is in Western Europe (see Walter Russell Mead’s article in a recent edition of ‘Foreign Affairs’, here):
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=115&sid=b1775fbb-5e91-44ce-af5b-60e31c12c66b%40sessionmgr109&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=mth&AN=32554874
‘So an attack on the WTC would serve to shift opinion against Arabs, and give Israel some breathing space to do some of their own murdering.’
But by the thrust of your own argument, it would make better sense to stage a ‘false flag’ attack on European soil. After all, it’s the Europeans who tend to be more pro-Palestinian and critical of Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza. If the aim of a false flag attack is to radically change the attitude of a target’s attitude, and to con them into supporting you, it’s Europeans (notably the French) who need convincing in this respect, not the Americans.
‘Second, the threat to Israel by all of her Arab neighbours is real,’
A second sensible comment. Well done.
‘but the biggest is probably Iran. Israel may have thought it possible to pincer Iran with American forces, or barring that, the US presence in the Middle East certainly helps them strategically.’
Despite the fact that - as Juan Cole notes - Iran has been one of the biggest post-9/11 winners because of the overthrow of two hostile regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their replacement by two pro-Iranian ones (Maliki and Karzai):
http://thebluevoice.blogspot.com/2006/02/juan-cole-on-shiite-crescent-today.html
And if the aim of the attack was to weaken the Iranian threat to Israel, why just aim for containment. Why not arrange for an attack which could be blamed on Tehran? After all, it’s not as if the Iranians and their proxies have never been implicated in terrorist acts overseas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_AMIA_bombing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Embassy_Attack_in_Buenos_Aires
‘As for the risks, I think that the ultimate risk was very high, but containment via propaganda has been very successful on the US public in the past, and Israel may have been willing to gamble.’
By carrying out an attack which - if their complicity was revealed - would turn the US body politic and populace against them? Yes, that makes sense on some other planet.
(9) Quote “What kind of secret service recruits undercover agents who compromise themselves by acting so ostentatiously in public?â€. Certainly not Mossad, if that’s what you are getting at, but the Can’t Identify Anything agency has certainly shown itself to be that stupid.’
But according to you ‘truthers’, US government intelligence agencies are smart enough to commit a ‘false flag’ attack (either in concert with Israel or otherwise) which has fooled governments, the international media, and public opinion. They are either stunningly smart or exceptionally incompetent. Which is it?
‘(10) A truck bomb is not plausible. Planes are not plausible to a scientist either, but to a moron (80% of the US population and 100% of people who watch Fox News) a plane IS plausible. Planes are BIG mkay, and they have lots of jet fuel mkay, which burns very very hot mkay, and that weakened the beams mkay, which brought the building down exactly like a controlled demolition, except IT WASN’T mkay. Lastly, passenger planes are a much greater security threat generally than trucks, so now you can get citizens of the land of the free to submit to a humiliating human rights abuse at the airport, and they thank you for it.’
Evidence would be nice. And it still doesn’t answer the basic question - why choose such an insanely complex plan for a ‘false flag’ attack when easier means - which involve less risk of something going wrong - can be carried out with the same results?
‘(11) See answer to question (2).
(12) I’ll come back to this if I feel like it. I don’t want to work to do your research for you.’
That somes up the ‘truther’ response nicely - ‘I’ll make my wild assertions. Just don’t ask me to back them up with the facts’
‘(13) Without forensic determination of the video’s authenticity, it is impossible to determine the answer to that question,’
That’s ‘videos’ plural. My links (which you clearly did not bother to consult) also included Khalid Sheikh Mohamed’s interview with Yosri Fouda (conducted in March 2003, well before his arrest) in which he states that ‘â€I am the head of the al-Qaida military committee … and Ramzi [binalShibh] is the coordinator of the Holy Tuesday operation. And yes, we did it.â€â€˜
’so it really is a pointless question.’
Translation - ‘I can’t refute the evidence so I’ll pretend it doesn’t matter’.
‘Besides which, the number of videos is irrelevant if they are all fake. If I were trying to misdirect attention with a fake video, and it appeared to be working, I would make more of them. Oddly enough, that’s exactly what OBL did every time a poll showing declining support for the war and/or president was released. Ahh, art of propaganda, how far you have come in a mere 50 years.’
Bear in mind that one of the links I forwarded (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/02/080602fa_fact_wright) showed Ayman Al-Zawahiri not just justifying 9/11, but also responding to a series of criticisms and condemnations of AQ’s methods from the Moslem world (notably from his former mentor, Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, AKA ‘Dr Fadl’). Perhaps you can explain how that can be faked. And like I said, evidence would be helpful.
(14) It didn’t, so your question is irrelevant.
‘It didn’t’ what? Are you trying to say there was no crash? That really was a schoolboy error on your part:
http://www.911myths.com/html/there_was_no_plane.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,265160-5,00.html
http://wtc7lies.googlepages.com/flight93page1
http://wtc7lies.googlepages.com/flight93page2
http://wtc7lies.googlepages.com/flight93page3
‘(15) The containment team only murders those who have information that cannot easily be contained via counter-intelligence, such as Hunter S Thompson.’
Old Hunter, the ’smoking gun’ in 9/11? Are you honestly trying to claim he didn’t commit suicide? That’s the first time I’ve seen that claim made by anyone. Family and friends are convinced that he took his own life:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0307051thompson1.html
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7605448/football_season_is_over
Going back to my original point, if you make a claim, you’ve got to substantiate. So it’s now up to you to say why Thompson’s son, daughter-in-law and grandson (who were at his house when he shot himself on 20th Feb 2005) were NWO agents complicit in his faking his death.
‘Alex Jones is a demagogue who doesn’t really know anything.’
As if that makes him different from any other ‘truther’.
Stop NWO/globalists, Nomagic are two of my favs right now. They cant answer ANY of the questions but feel there right anyway.
But Jolinar takes the cake. All of his “answers†are jokes. He ignores the challange to back up his claims and instead just give his opinion (which any court would tell you to leave if thats all you got) and we are supposed to believe that as fact.
The best has to be the Norad question. He cant even come up with a BS response so he decides he shouldnt have to.
I gained a little insight into the reasoning and mentality of truthers a couple of years ago when I attempted to help one of the better known truthers gain a little knowledge. This person was talking on his website about the capabilities of various types of aircraft, and using his “knowledge†of aircraft to bolster his particular theory. The problem was, he had absolutely no clue about even the most basic principles of aerodynamics and flight. It was embarrasingly bad.
Now, I am not a truther, but I like to keep an open mind. I told this guy that although I didn’t agree with him, I respected his right to believe in his conspiracy theory. I am a pilot, and I tried to talk to him and give him some solid info on the basics of piloting an aircraft. He was not very receptive. I discovered that this guy lived just a few miles away from me. I e-mailed him and told him that I could secure an hour on a flight simulator where I work, and that I’d like to meet him and take him for a “ride†in it. I figured I could at least help this person understand how wrong his conclusions were in regards to aircraft performance. Let him take the yoke and toss the sim around for a bit, and go over some of the other basics including how an autopilot system works. At the very least, I figured he would have a better understanding of these things so he could better present his case, even though I did not agree with him.
Part of me hoped that he could begin to see just how impossible his theory really was, and maybe he would change his mind about his choice to become a 9/11 Truther. He agreed to meet me at the flight school and sounded fairly excited about the prospect of flying a commercial flight simulator. I even promised him I would not brow beat him or try to debunk him. We would simply fly the sim, and he could learn a few things and then do what he wanted with the knowledge either way.
We set a time, and unfortunately, he was a no-show. I e-mailed him to ask what happened. I got no response for a couple of days. Then, I get an e-mail saying things like “nice try you shill, you almost fooled me into taking your baitâ€. When I asked what he meant, he went off and called me a disinfo agent, a govt loyalist, a shill, a sheeple, pretty much all the standard truther labels they give to anyone who does not agree with them. He actually accused me of changing all the various performance parameters of the sim so it would do things that in reality are impossible. And all of this was done to fool him. I was banned from his site, and I never heard from him again.
I was never rude, sarcastic, or in any other way a jerk to this guy. Our conversations via e-mail were all very civil, and I thought ,even positive. Today, he is still peddling his ideas and theories with the same ignorant zeal as before. The absolute closed minded and inflexible ideas these people have is not conducive to being an Investigator at all. With their absolutely rigid single minded ways of conducting themseves one has to wonder how they ever reached the conclusion that 9/11 was an inside job in the first place. The truth is, they do not want the truth in any way shape or form. They are their own worst enemies and have not accomplished anything in the last seven years. And with their mentality and attitude, they never will. How sad.
RB
The psy-op that was 9/11 worked flawlessly on the weak minded. Case in point, look at all the rage from posters here at “radical islamâ€. “they†want to bring down the “westâ€! im not gonna claim racism, but it is telling how easily some of you fell for the official story of 9/11. its because you wanted to fall for it. its because you cant believe the alternative because it goes against your pre-conceived notions of american/israeli/british exceptionalism and “muslims are terrorists who want to bring down the west blah blah blahâ€. it just HAD to be arabs who did it, westerners would never engage in terrorism for geopolitical ends! oh no! quick dummies, theres an “islamofascist†under your bed! boo!
“The author has apparently not yet learned that a government that accuses individuals of mass murder bears the moral and legal burden to prove its accusations beyond reasonable doubt.â€
“Elias Davidsson is a moron. My apologies for allowing him to exist.†- God
That’s weak, CR.
Firstly, let us see what radical Salafis who engage in terrorism actually want to do, and what their intentions are, in their own words. From the most significant:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1998.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver
To the footsoldiers:
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9635
And of course you could actually go through the time and trouble of reading these to learn more about Al Qaeda’s ideology and objectives. But somehow you don’t strike me as the kind of person who wants to let the evidence get in the way of a good rant:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Looming-Tower-Al-Qaeda-Road-11/dp/037541486X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229328710&sr=1-2
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Architect-Global-Jihad-Strategist-Columbia/dp/023170030X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229438526&sr=1-2
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inside-Al-Qaeda-Rohan-Gunaratna/dp/1850656711/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229438551&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jihad-Trail-Political-Gilles-Kepel/dp/1845112571/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229438614&sr=1-2
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Globalised-Islam-Search-New-Ummah/dp/1850655987/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229438633&sr=1-1
From reading these, you might get a better and more informed idea of this subject than that which you already have. In particular, the phrases ‘near’ and ‘far enemy’, ‘takfiri’ and the distinctions between AQ and other Islamist groups (e.g. Moslem Brotherhood, AKP) will become apparent.
As for your comment about ‘racism’, I hate to break this to you, but Moslems are not a distinct racial group, and the same applies to adherents of AQ. They include Arabs, but they also include Chechens and other Caucasian nationalities, Turks, Pakistanis, Indonesians, Malays, and Filipinos (notably Abu Sayyaf’s groups). There are also the converts (notably Richard Reid and Germaine Lindsay in the UK’s case, and also the German converts arrested in May 2007; http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,503959,00.html). Parenthetically, it’s also worth noting that many of the victims of AQ and affiliated groups (notably the Algerian GSPC) are in fact fellow Moslems.
Ironically enough, the ones who are the closest to the ‘racist’ tag here are the ‘truthers’, notably those who chant the mantra that ‘Arabs in a cave couldn’t conduct 9/11′. Not only does this paint an inaccurate picture of AQ’s capabilities in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan - and its character as a ’state within a state’ from 1996-2001 (see Rashid, as linked in my earlier post - but it also implicitly suggests that Arabs are so backward that they lack the conceptual skill and technological knowhow to make four hijackings happen concurrently. Not only is this a fatuous depiction of the plotters and attackers themselves (Osama bin Laden, the builder and engineer; Ayman al-Zawahiri, the physician; Mohamed Atta, the engineer and urban planning graduate), but it also misses the past precedents for terrorist activity. Anyone who thinks its impossible for a terrorist group based in a weak state with a compliant or powerless government has to explain how - for example - the PLFP was able to co-ordinate four seperate hijackings across Europe in September 1970 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawson%27s_Field_hijackings). Anyone who finds the idea of Islamist terrorist planning to crash a plane in the centre of a city absurd might want to address the question of why the four Algerians who hijacked Air France flight 8969 in December 1994 planned to do the same (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/age_of_terror/7306318.stm).
The people who are sticking their heads in the sands and engaging in cognitive dissonance over 9/11 are the ‘truthers’, not their critics, and the clearest sign of their intellectual incoherence and descent into fanaticism is their inability to offer a coherent answer to any of the 15 questions I outlined above, which point to the logical flaws which undermine what they laughably call their ‘theories’.
I have a theory on why twoofer claims are so laughably stupid and pointlessly complicated: because that’s exactly the kind of inside-job scenario you’d end up with if you put a twoofer in charge of it!
Every single 9/11 conspiracy thread brings out the loons who post the same ol’ tired canards. I see that someone even made the hilarious “pull it = demolition†claim.
Quite simply, they have a belief system that is akin to a religion. It cannot be falsified. Show them proof and they’ll claim its fake. Ask them for proof and they claim it’s all covered up.
And we wonder how Holocaust Deniers do it!
“For starters, this website is no less biased than the Truthers. You have decided that the official story behind 9/11, which is no less a “conspiracy theory†than anyone’s else’s, is true.â€
Except that the official story is based on the observed facts and chronology, and the other side is primarily based on supposition and conjecture.
CR,
Have you ever considered the idea that people who disagree with you and the Truth Movement are not all “weak mindedâ€, or “dummiesâ€? Did it ever occur to you that people in this world see things from different perspectives than you and that they simply disagree with you? I don’t agree with your ideas, but I don’t think you are a weak minded dummy. You believe what you believe, just like me. You don’t have to insult and stereotype every person who comes down the pike who doesn’t see things your way. A domestic conspiracy involving the events of 9/11 could be a possibility, but until some credible, solid evidence is discovered indicating that, the only logical thing we can conclude is that the events of 9/11 happened pretty much the way the official account says it did.
You know your dealing with Truthers here right. Logic, evidence, and common sense has nothing to do with their “factsâ€. They don’t want to hear that they can’t justify their view. You must learn to treat the nonsense known as truthers facts as just background noise and ignore it, they can’t prove anything and will not listen to reality.
@ Jolinar
“(12) I’ll come back to this if I feel like it. I don’t want to work to do your research for youâ€
Sorry? How does telling people to go and find it out for themselves help your “truth movement� I thought it was all about gathering evidence that contradicts the official report and promoting it. Is the promotion of this “evidence†not as important as the gathering of it?
I was under the impression that the idea behind the movement that the more people who believe your story the more it gets taken seriously until you get what you want, which is a full investigation.
Surely dismissing the argument and telling people to go and look it up for themselves, when given an opportunity to tell us what you know (or think you know), goes totally against what you supposedly stand for.
So perhaps you’d better answer the question then.
RB–People who are not weak-minded dummies have the courage to accept answers, even when the answers prove their theories wrong. Twoofers love to thump their chest about how courageous they are for “just asking questions.†There is no courage in asking a question. Any 4-year old can ask a question.
Serious adults eventually make fact-based conclusions. They dont say “I have no idea exactly who, what, when, where or how they did it. But Im sure they did.†They accept the fact that innuendo and rumor is not proof of anything.
Elias attempts the absurd point that because HE is not convinced Alqaeda attacked is, that somehow is proof of an inside job. Sorry, Im an educated man, but Im afraid Ive never seen anything in any science, physics, logic et cetera that requires Elias to be convinced before something can be true.
If Elias is unconvinced that Alq attacked us, thats fine–he’s entitled to that opinion. But opinions are NEVER proof of anything.
Most amusingly, embarassed at the stigma, desepate to salvage a shattered reputation, the love to remind everyone of what the word conspiracy means.
While the word conspiracy has its own definition. Its not the same thing as a conspiracy theory. Take the term “Gun control.†Simply defining the one word “Gun†does note define what gun control means. Just as Kookspiracy theorists cant legitimize their theories as rational, just by reading the definition of conspiracy.
What we have here is cognitive dissonance. Some folks are unable to believe the “official†version of the story because they are skeptical of what they feel is the source of that story. The initial premise is that the story is wrong. It doesn’t really matter what the story is. The reality itself doesn’t matter to them either. All that matters is that the source is wrong.
This leads to a thinking system that is based on confirmation bias. Data is collected and present to sow doubt in the official story. The data does not have to be reliable. The data does not have to be reproducible. The data does not even have to be compelling, or properly interpreted. It merely need be presented in a manner that supports the “theorist’s†view that the official story is false.
Most often these people are not educated in the fields needed to interpret the data properly. They have never before been exposed to the procedures, vocabulary, science, and technologies behind the information they research to support their opinions. This tends to make their assertions pretty comical to those who have had previous exposure to the types of data that are offered.
“Fire doesn’t melt steelâ€
“Pentagon hole too smallâ€
“Towers fell faster than the speed of gravityâ€
People with even the most remote exposure to the topics above know with a high degree of certainty that the theorists who use this information to attempt to debunk the official story are blowing smoke out their asses. The premises themselves belie the notion that they have any idea at all what they are talking about.
What’s ironic to me is the level of gullibility of these people. The high amount of disinformation that gets spread around during the construction of a conspiracy theory is NOT due to a concerted effort to make stuff up. It is a direct result of the confirmation bias required to keep the theory alive. One theorist might get a fact one, or intentionally fudge information, and that mistake ripples through the conspiracy minded like a wave of sewage without any applied critical thinking at all. They regurgitate the misinformation not out of malice or intent to misinform. They do it because it’s just another item that supports their view.
The tin foil hat 9/11 troofer wackjobs just keep crawling out of the woodwork. Among the “conspiracies†they believe:
The lunar landing was faked
Elvis is still alive
Hangar 18 is a storage unit for aliens from outer space
Area 51, diito
The earth is really flat
Their lives are being controlled like Jim Carrey’s character in The Truman Show
It was ‘all about oil’
Note to Ken Larson:
I’m a retired Soldier, former Intelligence Analyst, and Iraq War vet. You are so full of shit, it’s not funny.
Your quote: “The most recent MIC adventure is being fought in the memory of 3,000 dead civilians attacked by a terrorist the US created by not leaving the Middle East after the first Gulf War. That excursion has killed thousands of our finest youth and maimed the lives of countless others. The average American will pay for this ruin in decades to come through taxes supporting hospital care, social services and veteran’s homes.â€
Is total unmitigated horseshit. We should have finished the job when I was there the first time. We did leave. That’s the problem.
Secondly, thousand of veterans, including myself have received treatment at Bethesda and Walter Reed. We got some of the finest care anywhere. The VA has had its share of problems through the years, but the scutiny and publicity over the flaws and shortcomings have resulted in drastic changes.
This war is being waged against two civilizations–the West and Islam. That’s exactly what the terrorists had in mind when they started it.
Mohammad declared the war in 692AD, and the muslims started prosecuting it in 693AD.
For years, Al Qaeda and the Taliban trained thousands of terrorist cells across the Middle East, North Africa, Indonesia, and Southwest Asia.
In other words, radical muslim terrorists existed long before our invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Islamofascist vision of a world Caliphate will continue unless we kill them all off. These 21st Century Ottoman wannabes are simply following the precepts set down in the Koran. Islam is, at its very core, a violent theocracy. They fired the first volley in this war decades ago, and no one took it seriously. Even after victory is officially declared in Iraq and Afghanistan, this war ain’t over by a long shot.
One of the letters we intercepted from Ayman al-Zawahri to the now in hell Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, specifically mentioned the establishment an Islamic Caliphate in the “heart of the Islamic worldâ€, to include Iraq. He mentioned this as being vital to Al Qaeda’s war against Western civilization. Despite this, you Dem sock puppets keep spouting the line that Iraq is a “mistake†.Well, looks like Zawairi refuted that notion. Zawahri also said that Afghanistan is “just the groundwork and the vanguard for the major battles which have begun in the heart of the Islamic world.â€
Leftwing nuts and the anti-war crowd have yet to say where and when it would be a good idea to take up arms against an enemy hellbent on making the world into a Caliphate. You want to wait until Ahmed nails a decree of Sharia Law on your front door? If you think we should have or could have limited this war to just Afghanistan, you’re even more ignorant that I thought. Terrorists cross borders, and are not limited to any one Middle Eastern country.
Personally, I’d have leveled several countries including Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Afghanistan, Jordan, and Pakistan, for starters, on 12 September 2001. But I’m a former Soldier, not a diplomat.
9/11 was the Pearl Harbor of the 21st Century and all you can do is spout off about your PTSD.
Take your meds.
Hey there Magic, and Edge,
I hear what you are saying, and you are right. To expect any sort of rational response from these people, or even simple civility, is a futile waste of time. The arrogance and paranoid tendencies of these people make any reasonable discussion with them impossible. Live and learn I guess
To SFC Cheryl McElroy US ARMY (RET):
First - “Islamofascism†is a term coined by David Frum…so let’s not get too carried away;
Second - the “take your meds†comment is STUPID. Why don’t you just tell people to stick their heads in the sand…at least, it doesn’t cost them any more money, and the same desired result is achieved.
I understand that you don’t wish to take ownership for a failed campaign, but there it is.
SFC McElroy,
Very well said, I could not agree with you more on all of your points. And thank you for your years of service to our country.
hANOVER fIST :
Victory in Iraq and eradication of the al Qaeda is a ‘failed campaign’? You’ve been taking notes from Harry Reid, haven’t you?
Denial ain’t a river in Egypt, sweetpea.
There is is, indeed.
hANOVER fIST :
BTW: I take credit for being part of that successful campaign.
Steveoh:
My sympathies on your loss. You are filled with hatred, and your hatred seems placed on the wrong people. You wish for the opportunity to kill a truther, not because they were responsible for deaths on 9-11, but because they have a different viewpoint than your own. I am a truther, so you’d like to see me dead for that viewpoint. We may differ on who we believe to be responsible for 9-11, but no one is claiming me guilty, and I have killed no one. Also, truthers are not morons, nor stupid, nor whack-jobs. Truthers are only seeking the truth, and there is nothing immoral about that.
Actually the term “Islamofascism†was coined by the Algerians.
http://www.terrorismawareness.org/news/76/why-islamo-fascism/
As the Algerian sociologist Marieme Helie Lucas explains, the term “Islamo-Fascism†was “initially coined by Algerian people struggling for democracy, against armed fundamentalist forces decimating people in our country, then later operating in Europe, where a number of us had taken refuge.â€
Another question for the truthers:
If the US government was willing and able to stage an event as complicated and risky as 9/11 (fake phone calls, rigging buildings with bombs, faking plane crashes, fooling the experts)…..then why didn’t they plant some WMDs in Iraq?
Finally, physical evidence of all the conspiracy theories: http://moneyart.biz/cn/cn-1-obv.html
nomagic, here are my responses to you. I’m in a different time zone so please forgive I had to go to bed and work before returning.
“So, NorwegianAnoyMouse, am I now an “antisemite?â€â€
I have no idea, but probably not since you haven’t blamed the Jews for 9/11 yet. I said you were misusing language like people who said those kinds of things. And yes, anti-semites in the Middle East have tried to use that exact reasoning, but it doesn’t make you the same as them just because you use the same fallacy. Why do you take that personally? I was just using an example to illustrate how your use of “conspiracy theory†is mistaken.
On Inteligent Design, they do actually do like you do and say that Evolution is just a theory and because of that we should hold both theories equally valid. You yourself compared believing in the “government theory†with beliveing in a religion. It’s not a religious belief. A model explaining reality based on facts. Like a scientific theory we have to use model which most closely fit the facts.
“it’s not necessary to offer Explanation B to disprove Explanation Aâ€
True, but you can’t even disprove A. I would at least be interesting to see an alternative explanation.
“It is sufficient to believe, as I do, that the government’s story isn’t plausible, and therefore that we can’t know what actually happened.â€
This is what it comes down to isn’t it? You have a religious-like inability to belive that a few angry guys could cause so much destruction, so you choose to belive they didn’t do it in spite of a mountain of evidence which proves they did.
Most of us demand to be convinced with evidence
“You simply believe what the U.S. government has offered.â€
The government belives in the best explanation because it’s the best explanation, it is not the best explanation because the government belives it.
I am skeptical of government-held beliefs on global warming, but I’m not going to be some guy who is religiously unable to belive in it.
“we had to pull it,†the word “pull†being a common synonym for “demolish.â€
Not in the building demolishing business. You don’t pull down buildings that big. He was talking to the fire-fighters and THEY decided to “pull it†out. It being the fire fighting effort. Pull the plug. Stop trying to save a building without people in it when the the firefighters’ lives were at risk. Fire fighters will risk their lives when people are at stake, but not when doing material loss reduction.I hope you’re not saying the firefighters were worth more than WTC 7 or that the firefighters were in on the conspiracy.
“I for one find the story of the passengers overpowering the hijackers and causing the crash to be implausible, to put it mildly. â€
Why is that more implausible than a small group of people hijacking the plane in the first place?
@Joseph Welch: You mixed up his point 6 and 7. At first reading I did too. As you correctly say, Russia probably has inteligence capabilities in the USA, but that is pretinent to question 7, which he didn’t answer.
He answered question 6 with that instead. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense, so your confusion is understandable. What he said was that the gulf states had little inteligence capability in the USA, which is probably correct. But it still wouldn’t make sense for those coutnries to admit that those people were their nationals if they were not. They didn’t need inteligence capability in the USA for that. They just would have needed to say “Hey now, we have no record of these people existsing and nobody in this country knows them eitherâ€.
@CR “westerners would never engage in terrorism for geopolitical ends! oh no! quick dummies, theres an “islamofascist†under your bed! boo!â€
Have you ever heard of the IRA? ETA? Bader Meinhof? The Weathermen? Timothy McVeigh? Abortion clinic bombers?
Of course there have been terrorists other than radical Islamists, but those other terrorist groups didn’t do 9/11. Muslim is not a race. And radical Islamist terrorism does not include all Muslims either, of course.
@SFC Cheryl McElroy US ARMY (RET): Whoa there. You seem to have your facts right, but I don’t think we should be pushing for a war of civilizations. That’s what the extremists would want to happen. Of course they would lose said war, but many innocent people would be killed.
FACT: the 9/11 Commission actually claims that the black boxes of i believe 3 out of 4 flights were not found while a passport from one of the hijackers who was in one of the planes that hit the towers was. intact. right out of his pocket and out of the inferno and on to the streets of NYC. FACT: a majority of people on this site see no problem with that or the myriad of other anomalies surrounding 9/11. FACT:Philip Zelikow co-wrote a book with Condi Rice and served on the Bush/Cheney 2000 transition team and also, as executive director of the Commission had final say on what did and didnt make it into the final report(he had more power than Kean and Hamilton). FACT: a majority of people on this site have no real problem with that conflict of interest. what a bunch of pseudo-intellectual dupes we have here……….(hey “counterknowledge†moderator, maybe you can actually allow my post this time?)
Oh, and i should add the black boxes were initially reported as being found by NYFD(as reported in People magazine among others) before they were reported as having NOT been found. again, most here have no problem with those types of shifting narratives. NORAD had what, like 4 different timelines so far? again, they see no problem…….
This is what we call a straw man argument. None of these questions legitimately counter the question being asked about the official 9/11 story.
These questions are completely speculative and circumstantial.
I will demonstrate.
1. If Al Qaeda were not responsible for 9/11, then why was Ahmed Shah Massoud’s assassination so well co-ordinated with the attacks on New York and Washington?
We never said they weren’t responsible. Some did yes but others simply stated that it was allowed to happen. Also It is well known that Al Qaeda was created by the CIA to carry out operations against the soviets. This is done so the US cannot be easily tracked back to wrong doing. The US is doing the same thing right now in Iran by funding and arming anti-Iranian rebel groups to carry out attacks within Iran in order to provoke a response.
As for him being assassinated, there are many reasons why it could have happened. He could have had information that would compromise the mission or maybe would have been suspected of talking afterwords.
In conclusion this question is irrelevant and unanswerable by us truth seekers who are simply asking questions.
2. If 9/11 was a “false flag†operation intended to justify a pre-determined plan to invade Afghanistan, then why didn’t the CIA and other US government agencies do more to facilitate ties with the NA?
Again another unanswerable question. We do not know the inner workings of compartmentalized government operations.
A possible answer is not wanting to incorporate certain groups in the operation in fear of not being able to control the flow of information within these certain groups.
3. Why did bin Laden and al-Zawahiri suddenly leave their known locations and go to ground, if they were not anticipating imminent military action by the USA?
Again, Who knows, we aren’t in a position to be able answer questions like this.
Maybe its the same reason members of the Bin Laden family were flown out of the country. They need to protect their assets and since Al-Qedea was created by the CIA than surely certain people within in it are assets who cannot be compromised.
4. If 9/11 had been an inside job, and if there was a long-standing intention by Bush and his advisors to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban, then why did they have to scrabble around for a workable plan?
It was reported that they did have plans to attack Afghanistan before 9/11 Check the following links below for more info.
Its highly possible they pretended to be disorganized and not ready for a retaliation in order to further the idea that this attack was a complete surprise.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4587368/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1550366.stm
5. We are being asked to believe that the conspirators behind 9/11 decided that they would make the hijackers citizens of allies of the USA, not enemies. Why were they not given Iraqi, Iranian or Syrian identity?
Again, another question that is completely unknowable and unanswerable to someone simply asking questions about the official version. We do not know the inner workings of compartmentalized govt. black op programs. There are hundreds of reasons why they wouldn’t or couldn’t have given the hijackers different identities or country origins.
6. If the identities and the nationalities of the hijackers were faked, then why did the Saudi, Egyptian, Lebanese and UAE governments accept that citizens from their own countries were involved?
Answered above but to further reiterate my point we do know that the US and Saudi Arabia have intimate connections. You scratch my back I scratch yours. Why would Saudi leaders care if the hijackers were from their country wouldn’t be attacked? In fact that point alone gives the US more reason to use Saudis. Use patsies from a country that they know wont cry wolf about it. Any other country not in on it could have opened an investigation about the anomalies.
7. Assuming againt that 9/11 was an inside job, how could the US government realistically presume that the Russians and Pakistanis would actually permit the USA to effect regime change against the Taliban?
Because the world thought that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda was behind it. No country in the world following 9/11 doubted what had happened and who had did it. But again still we don’t know the true relationship of these countries or their prior knowledge of the attacks. We do know the head of Pakistan ISI had funded Muhammad Atta and was meeting with US politicians and officials the weeks leading up to the attack. So right there that shows a conflict of intrest on all sides.
These questions are straw men arguments that cannot be answered and does not dissprove in anyway the legitimate questions being asked about 9/11.
But I digress and will continue.
8. Assuming that claims of Mossad complicity in 9/11 (â€dancing Israelisâ€, etc.) are correct, can the truthers suggest a feasible motive for the Israeli government conniving in an act of mass murder on US soil?
Again we do not know who perpetrated the attack or the true relationship between the US and Israel. However we do know that the attack on the USS liberty was a false flag event committed by Israel. This fact has been cooborated by survivors of the USS liberty.
Eye witness and whistle blower reports can be found here:
http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0693/9 …
9. Following on from this, assuming that the “five dancing Israelis†story isn’t a complete fabrication, what kind of secret service recruits undercover agents who compromise themselves by acting so ostentatiously in public?
Again a question that is unknowable with a cornucopia of possible answers. But my logic would say that the best recruits are those who know the least about the operation. Those who cant give up any real knowledge or information about the event.
10. If the WTC towers in New York City were destroyed by controlled demolitions rigged by US government agencies, then why were the fake terrorist attacks used to cover up these controlled demolitions so insanely convoluted?
Again another speculative question that doesn’t discount the physical impossibilities of that day. We do not know the reasons thought. Maybe for effect, maybe to shock people so much as to not question the events. There are so many reasons as to why things happened the way they did as well as assuming that things didn’t go as fully as planned. These are questions that cannot be answered by truth seekers who are simply pointing out holes in the official story.
11. where were the 17,000 Russian troops who were supposedly ready to invade Afghanistan when it came to the commencement of military operations in October 2001?
Again unknowable by anyone on our level. But its not hard to believe that plans and operation change or are even planted to spread dis info. We do not know how compartmentalized black op programs are run and we do not know these details or claim to know, we are simply asking questions about the anomalies of the events surrounding 9/11.
12. We are either supposed to believe that the CF personnel assigned to NORAD were too stupid to notice anything amiss in their headquarters - and query it - or that the Canadian government and the CF were complicit in 9/11. Which of these scenarios is true?
We dont know if they were told to stand down. However we do know there were multiple war game scenarios being carried out that morning involving hijacked airplanes. This could have led to confusion and scrambling of jets to the wrong place. Confusion works a lot better than blunt stand down orders wouldn’t you think?
13. If Al Qaeda were set-up for the 11th September attacks, then why have its leaders and spokesmen repeatedly affirmed their responsibility for - and pride in - these attacks?
Why wouldn’t they? Al Qaeda was created by the CIA and obviously just an arm of the agency. Why wouldn’t they use their proxy terrorist group to further the evidence that it was Al Qaeda? Also a child can tell that the video of Bin Laden are not of the same person. Refer to the following image:
http://www.911lies.org/911PRESS/which_bin_laden_fa …
14. If the hijacking and crashing of four passenger planes was engineered by the US government, then why did UA93 crash into an empty field in Pennsylvania?
We don’t know if a plane even crashed there. First responders on the scene reported no debris and no bodies, simply a hole in the ground. The following video shows evidence from satellite pictures that the scar in the ground where UA93 supposedly crashed had been there for years before 9/11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-59kouBgO_s
15. Finally, if the US government is institutionally ruthless enough to organise the massacre of thousands of its own citizens in a series of “false flag†attacks, then why is it too squeamish to arrange for the deaths of the supposed “truth-seekers†(David Griffin, Kevin Barrett, Steven Jones, Richard Gage, the Loose Change team, Alex Jones, etc.) who have exposed their complicity in one of the most heinous crimes a government can commit against its own people?
Because all that would do is raise more flags. If you were involved in a covert operation that resulted in the death of thousands of Americans why would you then go around killing all the people talking about it. These people are crazy and ruthless but they are far from stupid.
Now everyone needs to logically and objectively ask themselves why these types of straw men arguments are being brought up and presented. Supposedly to disprove the real questions being asked by us truth seekers. I would recommend everyone look at the following website and see for themselves the type of people and the types questions that are being asked. Its not just kids on the internet asking these questions its govt officials, scientists, aerospace experts, and family members. Do not let this piece of disinformation propaganda lull you into not searching for yourself about the truth that happened that day.
http://www.patriotsquestion911.org
Now, I am not a truther, but I like to keep an open mind. I told this guy that although I didn’t agree with him, I respected his right to believe in his conspiracy theory.
It’s good to respect each others’ rights. For instance, I respect your right to believe in the U.S. government’s conspiracy theory.
The psy-op that was 9/11 worked flawlessly on the weak minded.
The events of 9/11 were not a “psy-op.†Three thousand people died. There was lots of propaganda afterwards, though, and disinformation. I have a vivid recollection of one of them: A few hours after the attacks, CNN broadcast a video purportedly of Palestinians celebrating the attacks.
In fact, it was a clip of a completely different demonstration. I remember this so well because I was completely taken in at the time, and was outraged at the demonstrators. Later, I wasn’t too happy with CNN for having displayed the disinformation.
the official story is based on the observed facts and chronology
The government’s story is based on cherry-picked evidence, much as its false claims regarding Iraqi WMD and Saddam’s ties to al-Qaeda. As for the so-called “truthers,†there isn’t a central organization of these people, so their claims are all over the map.
I have yet to see any convincing account of the events of 9/11. Not from the government, and not from anyone else. For reasons that we can only guess at, the powers that be don’t want the public to know the story, so we’ll never get it.
until some credible, solid evidence is discovered indicating that, the only logical thing we can conclude is that the events of 9/11 happened pretty much the way the official account says it did
I don’t think the U.S. government has even bothered to provide the basics of a coherent account, nor have the media even bothered to perform the most basic journalistic checking of what was provided. It’s remarkable, to put it mildly.
Every single 9/11 conspiracy thread brings out the loons who post the same ol’ tired canards
The U.S. government’s incoherent accounting is no less an incredible “conspiracy theory†than, say, the explanations by people who insist that the planes were remote controlled, etc.
Serious adults eventually make fact-based conclusions. They dont say “I have no idea exactly who, what, when, where or how they did it. But Im sure they did.†They accept the fact that innuendo and rumor is not proof of anything.
No serious adult who spends any time looking at the U.S. government’s conspiracy theory about 9/11 would accept it, just as no serious adult would believe that, say, the airplane that crashed into one of the WTC towers had an extra fuel tank underneath one of the wings.
You and most of the posters here seem to think that anyone not trusting the U.S. government + Popular Mechanics magazine (!) is a tinfoil-clad nutcase. I, on the other hand, think people should pursue the facts wherever they go, and demand that facts hidden by the government be released, and that inconsistencies in the government’s far-fetched tale by examined and resolved.
I have no idea, but probably not since you haven’t blamed the Jews for 9/11 yet.
“Yet,†you say. Veiled threat noted.
You yourself compared believing in the “government theory†with beliveing in a religion. It’s not a religious belief. A model explaining reality based on facts
The government has offered a conspiracy theory based on an incomplete set of facts, and a series of explanations parts of which are virtually incoherent. You believe it because you want to, or need to, believe it. I don’t think there has been anything close to a thorough and objective investigation, so until there is one I remain a non-believer.
You have a religious-like inability to belive that a few angry guys could cause so much destruction, so you choose to belive they didn’t do it in spite of a mountain of evidence which proves they did.
I have no inability, religious-like or otherwise, to believe that the attacks could have happened exactly as the government claims they did. But the facts to establish the government case have not been released, and contrary evidence has remained unexamined in any thorough way.
Instead, there is a mountain of contrary theorizing out there on the Internet. It is disorganized, and much of it is infused with hypotheses that are dubious to put it mildly. Having spent some time looking at it, I currently concluded that no one has established a plausible case for what happened.
The government ought to be in the best position to do that, and in fact I do think that someone(s) in the government do know the reasonably complete story but aren’t telling. What that story is, I can’t say, but I don’t think it’s the one we’ve been told because the one we’ve been told is riddled with holes and inconsistencies.
Not in the building demolishing business. You don’t pull down buildings that big. He was talking to the fire-fighters and THEY decided to “pull it†out. It being the fire fighting effort.
Prior to 9/11, I don’t think there had been any demolitions of 50+ story buildings, so it’s meaningless to say something like, “You don’t pull buildings that big.†Maybe 9/11 was the first time someone did it. As for the fire-fighting effort,I think Silverstein’s phraseology was curious if “pull it†referred to human beings.
In any case, we’ll never know what caused the destruction of WTC-7. The government has a conspiracy theory that covers it, but its just a theory and there will always be — and should be — a great deal of public doubt surrounding it. This is what happens when there aren’t credible, independent investigations of something like this, but instead a group-think rush to embrace the claims made by the U.S. government, which has a checkered track record when it comes to its accounts of controversial events.
Why is that more implausible than a small group of people hijacking the plane in the first place?
There are numerous competing accounts citing other aircraft in the vicinity, and eyewitness accounts not consistent with the sort of plane crash included in the government’s conspiracy theory.
There has been no serious, independent investigation of the demise of Flt. 93, so I’m not buying the official story. Again, this is what happens when you don’t have outside, independent, and rigorous examination of controversial events. We didn’t get those investigations, and that’s why there’ll always be substantial and well-founded doubts about the government’s conspiracy theory.
I have lost both my best friend and sweet 19 year old cousin to Islamic terrorists. One in the WTC the other standing innocently at a bus stop in Israel. Those who I knew and considered friends who became troofers, I ended all contact with.
I lost several friends at the WTC, including a firefighter who left four kids and a wife. But that doesn’t cause me to do what you’ve done, which is mindlessly grasp an explanation offered by the most convenient authority figure.
It causes me to want to know what happened, and why, and to require that the case be made completely and forthrightly, and then be tested in public. None of this was done even remotely to my satisfaction with respect to the events of 9/11.
You yourself compared believing in the “government theory†with beliveing in a religion. It’s not a religious belief. A model explaining reality based on facts
Incidentally, I went back and checked. I never compared believing the government’s conspiracy theory with believing in a religion.
It’s amazing that conspiracy liars are still trying to pretend that demolition professionals acknowledge “pull it†as industry slang for “bring down the building with explosives.†They don’t. I have contacted over two dozen demolition companies (the liars have never bothered to contact any) and not one of them recognizes the phrase, except when referring to the specific technique of attaching cables to a relatively small structure to literally pull it off its center of gravity.
Firefighters, by contrast, do talk about “pulling†a contingent of rescue workers out of a dangerous environemnt. Larry Silverstein was talking to a firefighter. His use of firefighter jargon was natural. Had he asked the FDNY to blow up his building, he would have sounded insane, almost as insane as the loons who continually distort his meaning.
This ain’t rocket science: the fire chief stated that operations at WTC 7 were being suspended and Silverstein agreed that, in view of the great loss of life that day, pulling the men out of harm’s way was probably the best idea.
Rism,
“We never said they (Al Qaeda) weren’t responsible. Some did yes but others simply stated that it was allowed to happen.â€
Some did? “Inside job†has been the #1 truther chant for the past three years! If anything the LIHOPers seem to be a minority in the TM ranks.
“Also It is well known that Al Qaeda was created by the CIA to carry out operations against the soviets.â€
Nonsense. Al Qaeda didn’t exist until about 1994. It included many mujahedin, true, but AQ was not created in the 1980s.
“There are hundreds of reasons why they wouldn’t or couldn’t have given the hijackers different identities or country origins.â€
Give me your top 5 reasons why the US wouldn’t or couldn’t have ID’d hijackers from enemy states.
“We don’t know if a plane (flight 93) even crashed there. First responders on the scene reported no debris and no bodies, simply a hole in the ground.â€
It’s called a SIMILIE. Look it up.
“Because all that (bumping off truthers) would do is raise more flags.â€
Raise more flags? A good 99% of the population don’t even know you people EXIST.
It’s remarkable to see how many people here seem compelled to act as Larry Silverstein’s public relations staff. All anyone else needs to do to get a reasonable exposure to intelligent alternatives to the U.S. government conspiracy theory’s explanation of WTC-7 collapse is a Google search on the following: “pull it†demolition
Hmmm., doesn’t seem to be a way to respond to a specific comment, just comment vomit at the end of the trail.
I make no claim that the US government were responsible for 911. What I do claim is that a 737 cannot vapourise into a 2 meter hole and that a plane crashing into a building will not cause it to collapse.
Therefore, I also claim that the official explanation is a lie, and that leaves us to find out the truth of WHAT happened on that day, but the WHO is largely irrelevant. I know it is important to the propagandists such as yourself, but ultimately it really isn’t.
It’s like arguing about who burned down the Reichstag. Was it an agent of the National Socialists, or was it really a stupid person from the communist party who conveniently played into their hands? It doesn’t really matter. What matters is WHO BENEFITED from the event. Once you determine who benefited, then you have your most likely culprit. Not determinative, but certainly gives motive. If you can determine HOW it occurred, then you have opportunity.
So I say again, a plane crashing into the WTC would not cause it to collapse like that, and so even if it was Saudi Arabian terrorists on the plane, they didn’t bring down the towers, something else did.
Likewise with the Pentagon. It is a physical impossibility for a 737 to vapourise in a two meter hole that way. It just breaks the laws of physics, but if you insist that a 737 hit the Pentagon, the most surveyed and photographed building in the world, without one photo showing said 737, then I just can’t take anything you say seriously.
Oh, by the way, someone expressing an opinion on TV or in a newspaper is NOT physical evidence, it is simply hearsay. So all of your references to people’s opinions does not change the overwhelming physical evidence.
Personally, I believe the motive for the attack was financial, and if you were to follow the money, you would find the most likely culprits of this crime. There is plenty of financial forensic evidence that points to certain persons, but it is not conclusive. The physical evidence on the other hand is conclusive. There were other factors besides commercial airliners that caused the destruction to WTC 1 and 2, and there was certainly no engineering reason to pull WTC 7, and I find it very unlikely that demolition engineers were able to get into WTC7 and plant explosives in that environment, but hey, maybe they were super-duper fast demolition engineers.
I know you find the idea of Americans killing Americans offensive, but people murder other people over money every day of the week. 3000 people seems like a lot, but it is peanuts compared to the number of people the US military have killed in foreign countries in order to secure ‘America’s interests’. US Marines killed nearly 3000 civilians in the Panama invasion alone, and that was over financial concerns. What makes you think the people with billions of dollars at stake wouldn’t kill 3000 US citizens?
Following on from Rism’s post, can I remind the ‘truthers’ here of the challenge I set?:
‘This particular debunker has decided that maybe, just for once, the onus for actually demonstrating the validity of their theories on the basis of systematic and critical analysis of the evidence belongs to the truthers, not to those who wish to expose their fallacies.
It is now up to you to answer these questions and explain why your theories are still valid. For your answers to be credible, they need to be detailed and based on verifiable evidence. No suppositions, no speculation, no unsupported assertions, just the facts.’
I cannot say that I’m surprised to see that the response of Rism and other commenters who subscribe to 9/11 conspiracy theories is to dodge the issue. I have outlined at least 15 (and believe me, I can offer more) major flaws in evidence and logic which undermine the veracity of the MIHOP-’inside job’ thesis.
Rather than actually address these issues, the collective response is to ignore them. What does this say about the ‘truther’ mindset?:
Firstly, it says that evidence doesn’t matter. Rism can keep claiming that Al Qaeda was a CIA creation, despite what those with actual expertise have to say on the issue (’truthers’ are welcome to actually read the authoritative books on this issue which I have linked to). The Risms of this world can also repeat the myth of UA93 not crashing in Pennyslvania, despite the glaring evidence to the contrary (already linked to by previous commenters here).
Secondly, it suggests that subconsciously they lack the confidence to argue their case. You do not win a debate or an argument by refusing to address your opponents points and by claiming that they are ‘disinfo’ or part of the cover-up (and for my part I can assure you that the NWO is not subsidising my somewhat modest paypacket).
Thirdly, the fact that ‘truthers’ are taking umbrage with someone who has turned their own methodology on its head and is ‘just asking questions’ speaks volumes.
Fourthly, not one of the responses from the ‘truthers’ actually offers anything other than assertion, claim and counter-claim, opinion or rumour. Not one of them actually substantiates their case with the evidence at hand. Again, that speaks for itself.
Finally, and I think this point is made well by Pat Curley on ‘Screw Loose Change’, the fact that the ‘truthers’ are unable for themselves to establish a coherent and feasible counter-narrative to the real and verifiable truth - that Al Qaeda was involved in a successful conspiracy to murder thousands of people in a barbaric terrorist attack - speaks volumes. ‘Truthers’ claim that their critics are setting up straw men when they draw attention to the inconsistencies and howlers behind the ‘no planes’ or controlled demolition ‘theories’, but if they don’t offer a tangible alternative theory, then what are we supposed to do?
Following on from Jolinar’s points:
‘What I do claim is that a 737 cannot vapourise into a 2 meter hole and that a plane crashing into a building will not cause it to collapse.’
Well maybe you have some expertise in architecture, engineering, physics or forensics which gives you some special insight. In which case, you might want to ask yourself what’s wrong with these. On the WTC towers (1, 2 and 7):
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/research/4278927.html
http://wtc.nist.gov/media/NIST_NCSTAR_1A_for_public_comment.pdf
http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3834688&postcount=12
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9072062020229593250
And for the Pentagon:
http://wtc7lies.googlepages.com/911pentagonflight77evidencesummary
http://www.911myths.com/html/757_wreckage.html
http://911myths.com/index.php/Pentagon_Missile_Batteries
http://911myths.com/index.php/American_Airlines_Flight_77_Crash_Evidence
‘What matters is WHO BENEFITED from the event. Once you determine who benefited, then you have your most likely culprit.’
And following that line of reasoning, we only have one candidate, or rather group of candidates:
http://www.lauramansfield.com/j/zawahiri_122006.asp
Al Qaeda’s message here (and in all their statements since 2003) is unambiguous. ‘We have the war we want, against the enemy we want, and we think we’re winning’. It goes hand-in-hand with all their statements confirming their responsibility for - and glee in - committing 9/11:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/sep/11/alqaida.terrorism
‘Oh, by the way, someone expressing an opinion on TV or in a newspaper is NOT physical evidence, it is simply hearsay. So all of your references to people’s opinions does not change the overwhelming physical evidence.’
This is an astounding statement for a ‘truther’ to make, as it is Jolinar and others who are offering hearsay and opinion in the absence of evidence. The accounts I list to above come from academic specialists, journalists, and (yes) officials who have spent years of their lives studying the phenomenon of Islamist terrorism. Rohan Gunaratna, for example, was researching and writing about Al Qaeda from the mid-1990s. Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon were warning about the possibility of an AQ mass-casualty attack a year before 9/11 (see their article in ‘Survival’, the IISS journal, issue 42/2, summer 2000). Ahmed Rashid’s book analysing the Taliban-AQ relationship was published months before September 2001. One suspects, in contrast, that ‘truthers’ would never have heard about AQ and its ideology and objectives prior to the attacks on New York and Washington.
Moreover, the documents and articles I link to come from people who have talked to the witnesses, interviewed the participants (including surviving terrorists in captivity), investigated the crash sites (in the case of 9/11) and tracked down the relevant documents (flight manifests, hijackers pilot certificates etc). Lawrence Wright and Steve Coll, for example, spoke to the Northern Alliance guerrillas who recounted the circumstances in which Massoud was murdered, and the CIA and NSA officials who noticed AQ’s leadership disappear in the days preceding 9/11. They also spoke to the captives who recounted their ’sheikh’s behaviour prior to and on the day (including his comments to the jihadis rejoicing in the first plane crash into the WTC - ‘Wait, wait’). Benjamin Lambeth and Bob Woodward interviewed the Bush administration officials and the military personnel involved in drafting up a plan from scratch to invade a country which - pre 9/11 - nobody wanted to get involved in (see Richard Clarke’s recollections as well; http://www.amazon.co.uk/Against-All-Enemies-Inside-Americas/dp/0743268237/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229514102&sr=1-1). These people have checked the facts and the evidence before putting pen to paper. It’s an example you ‘truthers’ have failed to emulate.
Ronald Wieck’s comment about actually talking to demolition experts is also instructive. ‘Truthers’ have just speculated that the WTC towers were brought down by explosions without actually consulting any of the specialists who destroy buildings as part of their day job. The reason why is simple - they do not want to be told that their theories are absurd. This is not how sceptics and truth-seekers behave - these people are zealots, pure and simple.
I also recall Jolinar’s comment above - ‘OBL is Saudi (well, technically Jordanian, but for all intents and purposes, Saudi [Actually, his father was from Yemen, but became a Saudi citizen, JW]). Many of the Mujahadin were Saudi, Wahabbist schools in Afghanistan were set up by the Saudis. So if I was trying to frame OBL, I would pick Saudi as the nationality.’ This is not only incoherent drivel, it also exposes a further fallacy at the heart of the conspiracy theories. The ‘truthers’ would have us believe that bin Laden is a ghost (I have seen the phrase ‘Goldstein’ used by one of the few who seems actually to be familiar with books), a complete fabrication along with his subordinates. If that is the case, then why was this fake terrorist mastermind given the nationality of a US ally, and the identity of a scion of one of the most influential families in Saudi life? An explanation - appropriately sourced - would be helpful.
I would also like to quote Pat Curley’s comments on the SLC blog he co-authors (http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/). Stripped of the invective, it is as neat a summary of the intellectual incoherence and mental chaos that lies in the collective mind of the ‘truth movement’. It is this state of mind which explains why not one of them can offer a straightforward rebuttal of my questions above:
‘I am getting rather annoyed at the truthers who come on this blog, like Jon Gold and John Albanese, along with “just-asking-questions†truther figures like David Ray Griffin, who are constantly complaining about “strawmen†arguments anytime we make a comment about their movement. Apparently we are not allowed to point out a single thing said by anyone in their movement unless it is universally held by every member, which would reduce the number of allowable beliefs to basically zero.
Listen you idiots. The scientific method is based on a number of core concepts regarding the strengths of hypotheses, such as the reproducibility, predictability, and falsifiability of your assertions. We are not talking about obscure facts like what was the name, rank, and service number of the pilot of the F-16 which took off from Langley here. The fact that truthers cannot agree on even the most basic facts, such as whether a freaking 200,000 pound airplane smashed into the Pentagon in broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses, is not a sign of strength and intellectual diversity in your movement.
Quite the opposite, it is a sign of the weakness of your argument, the fact that your interpretation of the facts is so (to quote ROD BLAGOJEVICH) F____ screwed up that even your own politically driven movement cannot vaguely agree on what to consider reality. A strong argument is based on the consistency of its supporting evidence. The fact that you can come up with 37 different and contradicting reasons why 9/11 was an inside job, is not better than the one coherent, consistent and well backed argument that Islamic terrorists did it. This is not a multiple choice test, you don’t get credit for guessing.
This is not a good thing, this is not something to be proud about, this is not something to come on blogs to brag about as some sort of defense. This is something about which you should be profoundly embarrassed!’
no magic:
“All anyone else needs to do to get a reasonable exposure to intelligent alternatives to the U.S. government conspiracy theory’s explanation of WTC-7 collapse is a Google search on the following: “pull it†demolitionâ€
And if one googles “pull it demolition†they end up with nothing but mindless truther sites!
That’s your movement in a nut shell, no magic. It’s nothing but an echo chamber of nonsense where a claim is somehow thought to have credibility if it is repeated by a thousand losers typing away in their mom’s basement.
Here’s a better idea: contact some demolition experts and ask them whether “pull it†refers to blowing something up.
It’s called “research.†Try it some time.
This point is sufficiently important to repeat it, loudly and as often as it takes to penetrate some extremely thick skulls: NO DEMOLITION PROFESSIONAL RECOGNIZES THE PHRASE “PULL IT†AS INDUSTRY JARGON FOR “BLOW UP THE BUILDING.
The distortion of Silverstein’s innocuous comment to the fire chief who informed him in a courtesy call of the department’s decision to remove rescue workers and firefighters from an unstable building is yet another example of the 9/11 fantasy movement’s contempt for the truth.
Only conspiracy liars talk about “pulling†buildings. The locution is bogus, a transparent deception fabricated by agenda-driven frauds promoting pernicious nonsense.
I defy any conspiracy liar to find a single demolition company that supports the phony spin applied to the words of Larry Silverstein, a man who has been vilified for nothing more than having a Jewish-sounding name.
Here is a link to the ‘Hardfire’ discussion of the collapse of WTC 7, featuring retired FDNY battalion chief Arthur Scheuerman and debunker extraordinaire Mark Roberts. I list the names of demolition companies I have personally contacted in refuting the “pull it†canard:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8171587265178134516
Rism, on your first point. Massood was very popular in Afghanistan and would have been the first choice to be president of the new Afghanistan, instead of former Unocal board member Hamid Karzai. in other words, he wouldnt have been anybodys puppet like Karzai essentially is. clearly you dont know too much about the politics of Afghanistan.
“None of these questions legitimately counter the questionâ€
Rism, The point of a question is not to counter a question. The point of a question is to receive an answer. Your answers will be used to judge the strength of your thesis. Here are your answers:
1. I don’t know.
2. I don’t know.
3. I don’t know.
4. They were pretending. (without any proof of this statement)
5. I don’t know.
6. Saudis were in on it. (without any proof of this statement)
7. I don’t know.
8. I don’t know.
9. I don’t know.
10 I don’t know.
11. I don’t know.
12. I don’t know.
13. They were pretending. (Without any proof of this statement)
14. I don’t know.
15. The conspirators aren’t stupid.
How do you think that speaks toward the strength of your thesis that the official story isn’t correct?
TO JOSEPH WELSH
Elias won’t reply to you, because he did it allready extensively there (and you’d better take notes and come back after a close inspection of his remarks and footnotes).
http://www.aldeilis.net/english/images/stories/911/noevidence.pdf
Just let the conspiracy theorists babble on. Why even engage in any argument. The weight of their fantasy will collapse on its own. Some people simply have an alternative reality and will not be persuaded otherwise.
This all makes for a great chuckle.
My answers to your questions are here:
http://wtcdemolition.com/blog/node/1969
“There is no evidence that what caused the hole in the ground in Pennsylvannia was UA93 so your question is meaningless.â€
That’s disengenuous and insulting. There’s lots of evidence that flight 93 made the hole in Pennsylvania. You just don’t accept that evidence for whatever reason.
If it didn’t make the hole, where is flight 93 now? Where’s your evidence that it was something else that made the hole?
“some are employed in an attempt to control the truth movement.â€
Paranoid much?
“it is enough to point out the evidence that explosives were employedâ€
The most compelling evidence that explosives were employed would of course be the existence of explosives in the rubble. No such evidence has been found. Such evidence would necessarily be found by someone outside of the conspiracy had explosives been employed. No fireman found any detonators or detonator parts. No police dogs smelled any residue. No passers by found any physical remains of any explosives employed.
I’ve seen arguments based on puffs on grainy videos. I’ve even seen a ridiculous chicken wire tower model argument. I’ve yet to see anyone provide any evidence of actual explosives for any aspect of truther theory.
I think this point is made well by Pat Curley on ‘Screw Loose Change’, the fact that the ‘truthers’ are unable for themselves to establish a coherent and feasible counter-narrative
There you go again. To disprove a hypothesis or theory, one does not need a counter-theory. All the non-believer needs to do is knock the pins out from from the disbelieved hypothesis. The idea that so-called “truthers†need to substitute a full conspiracy theory for the U.S. government’s conspiracy theory is just wrong.
And if one googles “pull it demolition†they end up with nothing but mindless truther sites!
That’s false. I said to Google “pull it†demolition. If you do that, you’ll get a mixture of sites. The second one on the list is a so-called conspiracy theory debunking site. Look, if you’re going to post here, try not to tell lies when doing so.
That’s your movement in a nut shell, no magic. It’s nothing but an echo chamber of nonsense where a claim is somehow thought to have credibility if it is repeated by a thousand losers typing away in their mom’s basement.
I’m not part of any “movement.†In my case, I think it would be fair to say that I wouldn’t be part of any “movement†that would have me, because I don’t trust “movements†of any kind. You, on the other hand, would seem to be someone who absolutely insists that people must believe the U.S. government’s conspiracy theory about the events of 9/11, even though that theory is shot full of holes.
I don’t feel any need to believe anyone’s conspiracy theory. Not the government’s and not those of any so-called “truthers†that I’ve read. All I know for certain is that four planes crashed, three buildings collapsed, one building was heavily damaged, and about 3,000 people died.
That’s pretty much it. Who did it, and how, and why, remains a mystery to me, and to a large segment of the American public. In my opinion, the U.S. government does not want people to know the actual genesis of those events, and what passes for news media in this country doesn’t particularly care about finding out the truth.
I don’t expect that we’ll know the actual story in my lifetime, and probably not in the lifetimes of my children or grandchildren either. Whatever “coverup†there was seems firmly in place. I’m curious about it for obvious reasons, but the reality is what it is. We’ll never know.
The distortion of Silverstein’s innocuous comment to the fire chief who informed him in a courtesy call of the department’s decision to remove rescue workers and firefighters from an unstable building is yet another example of the 9/11 fantasy movement’s contempt for the truth.
Geez, do you work for Larry Silverstein, or what? Why do you feel such a compulsion to act as the man’s spokesman?
By the way, one of my own complaints about many of the so-called “truthers†is their tendency to rise to the bait laid out by believers in the government’s conspiracy tale, i.e. the “truther†attempts to inflate an alternative theory.
I think that’s a blind alley, and that it does nothing but makes various “truthers†look foolish. They’d be much better off to concentrate exclusively on pointing out the holes in the government’s yarn. That’s the only information I pay any attention to, anyway.
Given my disbelief in the government’s implausible tale, I do suspect that at least some of what passes for “truther†“organizations†are likely infiltrated by people who actively seek to push them toward extremes in order to discredit disciplined inquiry. But I only say that as a matter of logical deduction, as opposed to asserting any evidence of it.
The bottom line is that we’re not going to know what really happened beyond the directly observed events. The most anyone can do, in my opinion, is show that the U.S. government’s conspiracy theory doesn’t add up.
“Geez, do you work for Larry Silverstein, or what?â€
His comment has nothing to do with Larry, and everything to do with the distortion of what Larry said.
And here’s what you said:
All anyone else needs to do to get a reasonable exposure to intelligent alternatives to the U.S. government conspiracy theory’s explanation of WTC-7 collapse is a Google search on the following: “pull it†demolition
You said that in order to find reasonable intelligent alternatives search on pull it. The response to that statement was.. That he did not find reasonable intelligent alternatives.
You said that in order to find reasonable intelligent alternatives search on pull it. The response to that statement was.. That he did not find reasonable intelligent alternatives.
His response was: “And if one googles ‘pull it demolition’ they end up with nothing but mindless truther sites!†His response was a lie, as is your false characterization of his response. You know, I do tend to agree that a sizable contingent of so-called “truthers†are unhinged, but so are many of those who are such brittle defenders of the U.S. government’s improbable tale.
You guys really throw the dirt. Ad hominem attacks, accusations of anti-semitism, sympathy with terrorism, and so on. And, to top it off, when challenged in direct conversation you sit there and write lies. It’s remarkable.
My question is this: What are you so afraid of? Even the defenders of the government’s conspiracy theory are forced to acknowledge that it’s full of gaps and inconsistencies. There hasn’t been a full, public, independent inquiry, and much of the primary-source evidence was confiscated by the government and remains locked away.
Not that I ever expect it, but I’d like to see a real inquiry, with all the evidence laid out for all to see. THAT would be my “9/11 truth project.†And, like I say, it ain’t ever gonna happen.
Troofers really just need to buy a puppy. it would chill them out.
I think everyone needs a dog. In fact, I’m going to go out and walk my dog right now.
“His response was: “And if one googles ‘pull it demolition’ they end up with nothing but mindless truther sites!†His response was a lieâ€
By that logic, your comment is also lie, as he did not encounter intelligent alternatives. The site you use to refute his statement ["The second one on the list is a so-called conspiracy theory debunking site."] is a site that does not support alternative theories.
Regardless, this semantics game is weak. You promised reasonable alternative theories by searching “pull itâ€. So far we’ve located unreasonable theories, and sites that respond to those unreasonable theories with support of the one reasonable theory in existence. Does that about sum things up clearly enough?
Um, “reasonable†is in the eye of the beholder. But your buddy lied when claiming the search yields only so-called “truther†sites. In fact, the second site on the page is an “anti-truther†site. And you lied in characterizing his comment.
Look, we can disagree with each other here. If you want to believe the U.S. government’s conspiracy theory, fine. I won’t call you names for it. After all, the government’s conspiracy theory might be correct. I could easily be convinced by means of a comprehensive, independent, open inquiry, and release of all sequestered evidence.
What you and others here shouldn’t be doing, in my opinion, is substituting invective for argument, and flat-out lying about what people post. That’s the sort of stuff you see from unhinged people. It undermines your credibility, and frankly it undermines this site credibility as a spot where people can have a straight-ahead discussion of the issue.
Maybe it’s impossible to do that here.
Who is the mysterious “fire department commander†that Silverstein allegedly had this exchange with, and where has this individual ever confirmed that he had that exchange with Silverstein?
As far as “conspiracy theories†go, only the simplest crimes don’t involve conspiracies. The crimes of 9/11 obviously arose from a conspiracy. The nature of the conspiracy is at issue.
The U.S. government has offered a conspiracy theory that, in my opinion, is woefully lacking in supporting evidence. Various so-called “truthers†have offered conspiracy theories of their own, which frankly are even less well-grounded than anything the government has offered.
There just isn’t enough publicly-available evidence to support any of the extant conspiracy theories available. That’s why the public in general is quite skeptical of all the stories out there, including the government’s tale.
A lot of people on this site, and from the index of articles published here before this one (whose link on memeorandum brought me here), the site owner, appear to believe the government’s tale, and to want to brand as “the other†(insane, idiotic, pro-terrorist, anti-semitic, you name it) anyone who doesn’t share that belief.
A better, and ultimately more constructive, strategy would be for all sides to support a new, objective, authoritative, open, public inquiry, accompanied by the release of all evidence now held by the government. This evidence should be public record and public property.
That’s disengenuous and insulting. There’s lots of evidence that flight 93 made the hole in Pennsylvania. You just don’t accept that evidence for whatever reason.
You say there’s lots of evidence–like what? I’ve seen none. But help me out here and sum it up.
If it didn’t make the hole, where is flight 93 now? Where’s your evidence that it was something else that made the hole?
How should I know where it is? I haven’t even seen proof that it was even in the air that day. Show me an actual copy of the actual flight manifest–not a passenger list–the actual flight manifest, then we can talk. I can’t prove it wasn’t a piece of UA93 but no one has proved that it was–the hole was clearly not made by an intact plane hitting the ground as anyone with eyes can see. Why have no parts with serial numbers matching the plane been produced?
“some are employed in an attempt to control the truth movement.â€
Paranoid much?
Naive much? Or do you really think that anyone actually believes that no planes hit the towers? If that isn’t a prime example of a disinformation campaign then I don’t know what is. The no-planers, Alex Jones and his ilk serve to put into practice Nietzsche’s dictum that “the most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.†It’s really that simple.
“it is enough to point out the evidence that explosives were employedâ€
The most compelling evidence that explosives were employed would of course be the existence of explosives in the rubble. No such evidence has been found. Such evidence would necessarily be found by someone outside of the conspiracy had explosives been employed. No fireman found any detonators or detonator parts. No police dogs smelled any residue. No passers by found any physical remains of any explosives employed.
You conveniently ignore molten iron or steel pouring out of the south tower, molten iron or steel in the rubble piles, small unignited thermate chips in the dust, previously molten iron spherules in the dust, and numerous eyewitness reports to explosions far from where the planes struck. See, you accuse us of the things you yourself are most guilty of, like ignoring evidence, starting with your conclusions, etc. There is a reason why you do this.
One other thing to note is that there will always be anomalies. Therefore, if anyone should think that a new inquiry will yield a story without them, that person will be disappointed (or thrilled, if their motive is to extend the controversy forever).
However, an open and authoritative inquiry — a real 9/11 Commission whose chief of staff doesn’t hold back-channel talks with Karl Rove, for example — accompanied by public release of all evidence, should yield a result that quells all but the wackiest doubts.
As it stands now, more than 40% of the U.S. public doesn’t believe the government’s conspiracy theory. That number won’t go down over time, it will go up. There should be a new and independent 9/11 Commission.
Lies spoken by No Magic:
“A few hours after the attacks, CNN broadcast a video purportedly of Palestinians celebrating the attacks. In fact, it was a clip of a completely different demonstration.â€
This claim was made by a Brasilian student, which was then retracted. The video footage was validated and confirmed as being shot on Tuesday, 11 September 2001.
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/cnn.asp
“No serious adult who spends any time looking at the U.S. government’s conspiracy theory about 9/11 would accept it.â€
I am a serious adult who was spent plenty of time.
“But the facts to establish the government case have not been released, and contrary evidence has remained unexamined in any thorough way.â€
We’re sorely lacking in contrary evidence to examine. All evidence provided by theorists have been thoroughly examined by countless sources and has been found that evidence to be either supportive of the only reasonable theory offered for the events of Sept. 11, or to have been fabricated, misrepresented, or unrelated to the events of Sept. 11.
“Prior to 9/11, I don’t think there had been any demolitions of 50+ story buildings, so it’s meaningless to say something like, “You don’t pull buildings that big.â€
WTC7 was a 47 story building. The tallest building ever demolished was the 47 story tall Singer building in NYC. That took place in in 1968. It’s certainly not meaningless to say something like, “You don’t pull buildings that big.†when the person doing the saying is an expert at large building demolition.
One of the people I know who worked at the WTC, but who wasn’t there that day, told me that for three weeks or so prior to the attacks she saw big moving crews taking lots of stuff out of the building. What stuff she couldn’t say, and of course it’s only one account. Plus, in a building that size you could expect that there’d be moving crews all the time.
So, even though my friend swears it was unusual and that she and others had noticed it and talked about it before the attacks, I discount the story’s significance. Similarly, I discount the friend in New Jersey who told me that the mosques in his neighborhood that were usually open were closed on 9/11, and that taxi drivers were refusing fares to the city before the attacks. I figure that those stories might be the product of overheated imaginations.
But a disciplined inquiry would be able to sort through all of that, along with the various credible reports of these so-called “Israeli art students.†I also think that the plane crash about a week after 9/11 was never very well investigated, although I could be convinced otherwise.
The anthrax stuff is also highly suspicious to me. The recent FBI report is clearly deficient, so there’s an untold story there. Like I say, I’m really not buying what we’ve been told thus far. There simply hasn’t been the sort of fearless, open, fact-based inquiry that we should’ve had. I don’t think we’ll ever get one, either.
I am a serious adult who was spent plenty of time
Fang, I’m sorry but I can’t accept that. You’ve already told a couple of lies in this thread. You’ve got an ax to grind and will lie to get there, so I can’t respect your comments.
Nomagic
Please forgive me if I have misread your responses (as they are quite long) but I cannot really see the substance to your claim that there are “too many holes†in the goverments account of 911.
Could you please detail just the key holes? I am really interested to hear. Like you I am a sceptic of both accounts
“Who is the mysterious “fire department commanderâ€
Have you made an honest attempt to find out? You’re the one who seems to think this warrants investigation. What did you do to locate him? Did you contact PBS to see what else Larry might have said on camera? Did you contact Silverstein to ask him yourself?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3E-26oVIIs
“You say there’s lots of evidence–like what? I’ve seen noneâ€
Pieces of the plane. Body parts. Eye witnesses. Flight data recorders. Ground based radar tracking systems. Radio recordings. Phone recordings. Flight logs.
“the hole was clearly not made by an intact plane hitting the ground as anyone with eyes can see.â€
What should the hole have looked like in your estimation? Have you studied aircraft impact sites? Have you conducted experiments? What are your credentials?
“do you really think that anyone actually believes that no planes hit the towers?â€
Well here you’re saying that no plane hit the ground in PA and I’m supposed to believe that right? Your logic is stunning.
Could you please detail just the key holes? I am really interested to hear. Like you I am a sceptic of both accounts
You’ll need to do that research yourself. This isn’t because I’m afraid of discussing it, but because this is already a very long thread and you’ve (appropriately) noted my long posts. I’m not going to get tangled in the underbrush here. I think it’s sufficient to say that I don’t believe the government’s story.
Now, I’ve been thinking about why the defenders of the government’s tale are so intense about it, and one speculation I can come up with — and it’s speculation as opposed to an assertion — could be that some of the wackier so-called “truthers†have tried to pin the events of 9/11 on an inside conspiracy involving the U.S. government, their neo-conservative (read: Jewish) political allies, and Israel.
I wonder if some of the oomph on sites like this comes from Jews who fear a restatement of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion from the so-called “truthers,†and from conservatives (Jewish or otherwise) who see a leftist effort to discredit the Bush administration.
Personally, even though I’m not believing the government’s conspiracy theory of 9/11, I’m even less inclined to believe the “truther†(some of it, anyway) talk about PNAC, etc. I agree with commenters here who point out that active government participation in the 9/11 events would be VERY difficult to successfully conceal.
On the other hand, I don’t think it would be absolutely impossible, but rather highly unlikely — about as likely, say, that they really did catch an alien in Roswell, N.M. in 1947, and that the body is stored at Area 51 or an Air Force warehouse near Dayton, Ohio, or in Uncle Fred’s basement.
What’s much more plausible, in my view, is that the government did have advance warning, and fairly specific advance warning, and chose to let the attacks happen because of a pre-existing desire to invade and occupy parts of the Middle East. I’d put that on a par with FDR letting the attacks on Pearl Harbor happen, which I think is not only plausible but likely.
Back then, the politics were reversed. The Republican isolationists agitated about FDR allowing the attacks, while Democrats and liberals (successfully) depicted them as nutcases. The specifics were discussed in multiple hearings, but no conclusive evidence was ever found.
Here, we had the 9/11 Commission, which was a whitewash job from start to finish. Evidence was destroyed, ignored, and sequestered. There was high-level interference from the White House. The media were largely silent on the details. The difference is that, these days, there’s plenty available on the Internet. But it’s a very mixed bag, so the end result is a widespread disbelief in any of the stories.
Personally, my suspicion is that the government saw this one coming. But I doubt I’ll ever have enough evidence to say this is what I believe. All I expect to ever be able to say is that I don’t believe what I’ve been told so far. Frankly, from the government’s viewpoint, that’s sufficient.
p.s.: Even though I don’t accept any arguments from Fangbeer, who I don’t think is serious and who might not even be an adult, I do recognize the Snopes link about the Palestinian demonstration, and stand corrected on that particular point.
This size of the hole in the Pentagon thing is incredible. I can’t believe people still expect an airplane size & shaped hole in the Pentagon.
Please look at the size of an armor piercing artillery round and then look at the size of the hole that it makes in armor. The hole is tiny compared to the size of the round.
No Magic
What about just mentioning the biggest hole in the governments story? Surely there must be one ?
If there was one hole it would prove that 911 was an inside job and overcome all the video evidence, seismic evidence, witnesses, forensic evidence and science that backs up the government story?
But Lee, I don’t say it was an inside job. In fact, I actually doubt it was an inside job, in the sense of the U.S. gov’t being actively involved. It’s possible, I suppose, but I think highly unlikely. My speculation is that the government was aware of the plot to a much more specific degree than we’ve been told, and allowed it to proceed.
But that’s my guess, and I make utterly no claims on behalf of that guess. The furthest I’d go in terms of belief is to say that I don’t believe the government’s conspiracy theory. As for tidbits, I’ve always been intrigued by the comment from Willie Brown, the mayor of San Francisco, who cancelled his flight to New York scheduled for 9/11 after talking to someone in the federal government.
“I wonder if some of the oomph on sites like this comes from Jews who fear a restatement of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion from the so-called “truthers,†and from conservatives (Jewish or otherwise) who see a leftist effort to discredit the Bush administration.â€
Wow. Didn’t you just complain about someone calling you antisemitic? So again utilizing your logic *the logic you used to infer that someone called you antisemitic* am I to infer that you believe me to be a not serious juvenile Jew who’s part of the conspiracy to stifle independent review of the events of 911? And you’ve come to this conclusion based on a few posts on a blog? That’s some far out prejudice there man.
Beyond that, I think the government should release every videotape it seized from the various surveillance cameras near the Pentagon. I think those tapes should be independently authenticated, and their full contents published on the Internet. This would settle the question of what hit the Pentagon that day.
I’d better be careful. If you search on the internet long enough, you might find that picture of me in my NSA T-shirt.
By the way, I believe that an airplane hit the Pentagon that day. The only way I could ever accept that whole hypothesis would be if they released the tapes and there was no airplane on them. And that really would be completely mind-blowing.
One thing that a truly independent inquiry can do is bat down, once and for all, some of the wackier stuff out there. I really don’t understand why someone in the government hasn’t just said, “Here, you dummies. Look at the damn tapes and see for yourself.â€
Clarification:
The only way I could ever accept that whole hypothesis (about it not being a plane but a missile) would be if they released the tapes and there was no airplane on them.
The single biggest problem with the official story is the claim that the twin towers and building 7 came down the way they did solely as a result of the planes hitting the twin towers. It is physically impossible per the Law of Conservation of Momentum that the tops of the buildings (the portions above the impact zones) could have fallen as quickly as they did while crushing everything underneath them. Supporting the official story is the NIST analysis which has several serious problems. First, NIST admittedly only modelled on their computers the towers up to the point of collapse initiation. They did this by inputting parameters such as number of columns severed arbitrarily (since no one knows how many columns were severed) until the program spit out the desired result–collapse initiation. They stopped there and simply postulated that once it began it would proceed as observed. They did not in other words explain why the tops should not have simply fallen until the intact structures below arrested their fall. The fact is that because of the rapid rate of destruction IST could not possibly have created a model that under any circumstances would predict the collapses observed (absent the inclusion of explosives and/or incendiaries.) NIST also rather incredibly did not test for explosive or incendiary traces in the debris. This is something that is routinely done in fire investigations and it should concern everyone that such seemingly crucial tests would not have been conducted–one must ask why not.
The fact that people have to resort to denying that there was red hot molten metal flowing like lava when testimony and video evidence to that effect show it conclusively is an indication of how conclusive that particular evidence is. People have resorted to claiming that molten aluminum can glow orange in daylight (it can’t) in an attempt to explain the visual evidence, and have postulated highly unlikely scenarios whereby the rubble pile somehow increased in temperature after the collapses and after being doused with water for days.
In any case, anyone who is genuinely curious cannot do any better than to read the latest book by Professor David Ray Griffin: The New Pearl Harbor Revisited. This is an exceptional well written and researched book and makes clear what is real 9/11 truth and what is irresponsible distraction. I do not expect to convert anyone who has posted contrary views to mine as I liken it to trying to wake someone who is only pretending to sleep. What I hope is that those genuinely interested in understanding what the disagreement is about avoid the purposely bad sources like ALex Jones and not waste any time or money in coming to their own informed conclusion.
No Magic
Thanks for the response, but I have already come across the Willie Brown information, which is intriguing but non - sensical to me. You would have thought if they were in on it, they would have known that no flights from San Fran (were brown would have flown from) were to be hijacked and that therefore there was no need to tell him not to get on the plane?
RT, the problem with that whole branch of this, at least the way I see it, is that the buildings had to be wired with explosives. That implies an extensive conspiracy. I wouldn’t rule it out, and I definitely think it ought to be pursued, but I will be VERY surprised if it happened that way. Too hard to keep secret, I think.
no magic, you should start by researching Urban Moving Systems and Dominic Suter. also, check out AE911truth.org
You would have thought if they were in on it, they would have known that no flights from San Fran (were brown would have flown from) were to be hijacked and that therefore there was no need to tell him not to get on the plane?
Let’s imagine that some in the gov’t knew it was coming. It wouldn’t necessarily mean they knew exactly which planes. It might not even imply knowledge of which day. Maybe a date range, and a knowledge that planes would be hijacked.
All of this is speculation. It’s impossible to know, and given the government’s lack of any real investigation we’re never going to know. But Willie Brown was quoted on 9/11 itself saying that he had cancelled that trip because someone in the federal government had advised him not to fly.
There were a bunch of other cases like that. I believe Salman Rushdie has said he was advised not to fly in the couple of weeks before the attacks. Also interesting was the complete lack of air cover over NY that day; the slow alert when the planes were reported hijacked; the slow interception flight from a distant air base (Otis AFB on Cape Cod, I believe); and the missing air traffic control tapes from that day.
There are all kinds of good reasons to smell a rat on this.
Real Truther
Thanks for the info, but I’m afraid your claim to have more scientific knowledge than nist cannot be true.
Moreover you are just re- hashing old and debunked material. Quite simply it is not scientifically possible for the towers to have been brought down by explosives. Controlled demolition starts at the BOTTOM and works upt. In all the video evidence the collapse starts at the TOP and works its way down. This is blindingly obvious if you watch loose change (and use your brain).
But I do agree with you that Alex Jones is a complete pratt and poor excuse for humanity.
The lack of an independent, transparent investigation means that all angles should be looked at, including the implausible ones. Of course, the government has decided not to do that. I think they’re fine with people not trusting what they’re told, as long as there’s no chance that the actual story is revealed
“It is physically impossible per the Law of Conservation of Momentumâ€
Physics? Well that’s something I know. Through what method did you measure the exact rate of acceleration of the “tops of the buildings.†How did you pinpoint the start of acceleration, and the completion of acceleration? What was the terminal velocity of the “tops of the buildings?†What method did you use to calculate the mass of the “tops of the buildings.†What method did you use to calculate the remaining tensile strength of the fire weakened center column, floor truss members, and perimeter columns?
How do you reconcile your conservation of momentum theory with typical building implosions in which explosive charges are timed from the bottom up, instead of the top down to prevent such interference between structural members? Better yet, have you observed a typical building implosion which violates the law of conservation of momentum? Someone should notify Newton right away.
No Magic
Big Willie has given an interview to debunk what he termed the “myths†around his flight. He said that he called his “security people at the airport†to check on his flight to New York the next morning (i.e he was not phoned by anybody). He got a warning that Americans should be concerned about traveling. He actually was so unspooked that he ignored the warning and was actually waiting for his ride to the airport when he turned on the TV and watched as the World Trade Center crumbled.
The warning was probably based upon a State Department memo issued a week before that went out in a routine press briefing warning that Americans may be the target of an attack from extremist groups “with links to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization.â€
Even less intriguing than I first thought.
I’m not accepting ol’ Willie’s explanation, to be quite honest. I think someone got to him.
On Sept. 12, this article quoted Brown saying he’d received a call. This wasn’t a passing mention in the article, but rather the subject of the story. That’s what I don’t accept Brown’s (much later) revision of his story.
“I think someone got to him.â€
Of course they did.
Can you tell me what sort of magic divining rod you use to tell which part of these people’s testimony you accept and which you reject?†Is it simply that you believe the people when they agree with you, and disbelieve those same people when they disagree with you? When someone says, “That’s not what I said at all,†does that usually mean they’ve been “gotten to?â€
Lee,fangbeer and other shills believe in magic passports than can float out of terrorists pockets, through a plane crash and onto the streets of NYC unscathed(while virtually indestructible FDRs vanish). they also trust Philip Zelikow. why even bother arguing with such density?
“Lee,fangbeer and other shills believe in magic passports than can float out of terrorists pockets, through a plane crash and onto the streets of NYC unscathedâ€
Magic is not required in order for there to be remains and evidence of a plane crash. Do you have some sort of evidence that the passport was “in a terrorist’s pocket.†and that it necessarily floated out of that pocket in order to land where it landed? Do you have explicit details regarding how the passport was found, and what it was found in?
well fang, the passport was on the plane correct? where else would it have come from? so obviously we are led to believe it survived the plane crash and the explosion. well, you believe that, dupe that you are. also, from Flight 93 we are led to believe(well,you are) that a bandana and some of one of the hijackers PAPERS survived that crash fully intact(they even have pics!). look it up in the 9/11 Commission. you have read it correct? magic passports? check. black boxes? sorry……. its amazing what some people will swallow from authority and corporate owned media.
So you’re unable to answer my questions then?
In reality not just a passport survived the crash, but a letter addressed to someone that was later delivered, driver’s liscences of individuals, pieces of paper, cushions. So is it that incredible for a passport to survive?
Nope. Not at all.
But of course, well if a twoofer actually paid attention to details he would know these things. However its pretty clear that in the fact free mind of twoofers, these things bear little meaning.
well fang, the passport was on the plane correct? where else would it have come from? so obviously we are led to believe it survived the plane crash and the explosion. well, you believe that, dupe that you are.
Hey, there’s no need to engage this “Fang†character. He’s a liar, and maybe not even an adult. Better to address others.
No magic
I’m afraid I am going to have to go with Big Willies account, rather than your account of what happened to him. Given the prevelance of Loose Change etc it does not seem credible to claim that people “got to himâ€. The press often quote wrong things, in the heat of the moment and later correct them.
Plus, as mentioned previously, the story does not make any sense. No planes from San Francisco were ever planned to be hijacked. Why tell somebody not to get on a plane that is not going to be hijacked.
Don’t you have anything else? If that is the biggest hole you can find in the official story I do not think you have much and your assertion that the official story is full of holes is, well, full of holes…..
Lee, like others here, you’ve decided to argue in bad faith. The Willie Brown story was one of several things I have cited, but you mischaracterized the Brown story and ignored the rest. It’s clear to me that you and the others here, and the owners of this site, badly want to believe the U.S. government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory, and to marginalize those who don’t buy it.
All of this has worked to some degree. The government is never going to conduct, or permit anyone else to conduct, a thorough and public inquiry. The news media won’t do it either. Therefore, we’ll never know what happened beyond the observable events. It’s unfortunate, but this sort of thing has happened before and it will happen again.
No Magic
I am a little disappointed. I asked you for the biggest hole in the governement story as said that there were many.
You suggested the Willie Brown story was the most intriguing “titbitâ€. I looked into the Willie Brown story. Unfortunately your best witness does not even say what you said that he said. Your biggest hole is not even a hole.
By the way, how have I “mischaracterised†the WIllie Brown “story�
Come on. You must be able to do better than this? There must be something more than this for you to base your beliefs on surely?
“Hey, there’s no need to engage this “Fang†character. He’s a liar, and maybe not even an adult. Better to address others.â€
Is that fear or projection I smell? Could it be a bit of both?
After all, I’ve already proven that you are a liar. I know you later admitted that you were wrong, but I’m going to wave my magic dissonance wand and assume that was just because someone got to you. Just like your assumption about Willie.
And then there’s your inferences that I’m a child and a Jew who’s afraid of the Elder’s of Zion. I think we can safely add paranoia to the list, but should I start to assume that you’re projecting this ‘not an adult†thing because you’re afraid to debate with me? Because you’re not an adult?
The conspiracy liars have hit rock bottom. One tinfoil-hatter cites the discredited fraud David Ray Griffin, whose farrago of errors and lies about the NIST report was destroyed by NASA engineer Ryan Mackey:
http://911guide.googlepages.com/ryanmackey
Griffin had agreed to appear on ‘Hardfire’ to discuss one of his worthless books. After seeing Mackey’s paper, he ran away, tail between his legs.
Needless to say, no fantasist will attempt to read Mackey’s meticulous presentation of the real science behind the collapses when it is so much easier to smear him and fabricate bogus science.
The disingenuous “no magic†prattles about a “government conspiracy theory,†although no such animal exists. The identities of the nineteen hijackers were discovered and confirmed in an exhaustive multi-agency investigation that included 7,000 agents from the FBI alone. The notion that all of these people of widely varying political, religious, and social views are willingly complicit in a monstrous crime and NONE of them ever leaks ANYTHING is utterly preposterous, beyond insane. But the sheer mathematical impossibility of a conspiracy on a such a scale won’t deter the loons.
Osma bin Laden has explained his role in the planning of the attacks several times, but conspriacy liars must pretend that he isn’t real. This embarrassingkly futile exercise lands them in the Osama Conundrum, the graveyard of conspiracy liars: if the Osama who appears in the videos is an actor, why doesn’t the “real†Osama denounce him? If the “real†Osama is dead, why did Bush & Co. accept a crushing defeat in the 2006 elections rather than snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by simply announcing that they had killed the boogeyman? Let’s think about this a bit harder. A band of murderous traitors allowed themselves to be stripped of much of their power when they could have announced the death of a man who isn’t even real?! Maybe they were waiting to play the “Osama Card†the day before Bush retires to his ranch?
Yes, that would be the same group of traitors who started a war with Afghanistan, plunging the U.S. into a recession for which Bush got blamed, in order NOT to build a gas pipeline–the same group that was angling for a war with Iraq, and to further that goal used mostly Saudis (no Afghanis or Iraqis) as the fictitious hijackers in their absurdly convoluted plot.
The conspiracy liars are hopeless jackasses.
How could there have been a controlled demolition of the WTC buildings because if there were a CD of the WTC buildings tuhere would have been a very loud explosion and everyone would have heard it.
Unless of course they were using Bullwinkle’s Hush A Boom the silent explosive.
But i seem to have heard the Bullwinkel used up all the Hush a Boom.
no magic :
“Not that I ever expect it, but I’d like to see a real inquiry, with all the evidence laid out for all to see.â€
Who would fund this “real inquiry?â€
Who would tetsify?
Who would pass final judgment?
No magic:
“I said to Google “pull it†demolition. If you do that, you’ll get a mixture of sites. The second one on the list is a so-called conspiracy theory debunking site.â€
Right - the only non-truther sites in the search results are ones that DEBUNK your silly claim. The only people claiming that “pull = blow up†are truthers! No one else buys it.
“As it stands now, more than 40% of the U.S. public doesn’t believe the government’s conspiracy theory.â€
Which I suppose is why TM rallies can usually be counted on one hand.
Here in Toronto the average loon get-together draws about 5-6 people.
Real Truther:
you folks HAVE been shown evidence that Flight 93 crashed in PA. you simpy refuse to accept it. Flight manigets, phone call records, family statements, crash scene responders, pics of wreckage…..but none of that is enough. It’s all “fakeâ€; it’s all “planted.â€
So what WOULD convince you exactly? What is your burden of proof?
“Or do you really think that anyone actually believes that no planes hit the towers? If that isn’t a prime example of a disinformation campaign then I don’t know what is.â€
No, real truther - those are called CRAZY PEOPLE, not disinfo. That’s right: crazy people are drawn to your “movement†like flies to s****. Does that not tell you something?
Here’s a suggestion for all truthers: take your earth-shattering evidence of demolitions and show it to demolition experts.
Ask them whether thermite is used in demolitions. Ask whether its possible to rig up 3 skyscrapers with bombs without anyone noticing. Ask where CD charges are placed and why. Ask whether charges can withstand having a plane flown into them.
Talk to people who understand these issues instead of wasting your life reading uneducated nonsense from accademic frauds like S. Jones and theology profs like Griffin.
In other words, DO SOME REAL RESEARCH.
“It is physically impossible per the Law of Conservation of Momentumâ€
By all means, feel free to submit your calculations to a peer-reviewed scientific/physics journal!
I mean you were planning on showing your evidence to the scientific community…..right? Surely you weren’t planning on rambling away about the laws of physics being violated without using this info to change the world, were you?
I’m sure the scientistific community of the world will be stunned to learn that they could have missed something so obvious.
I mean if theology profs and people watching youtube clips can figure it out…..
Elias Davidsson’s claims that there is no evidence that the 19 hijackers were aboard the four flights has been refuted already:
http://911myths.com/index.php/No_hijackers_on_the_passenger_manifests
http://911myths.com/index.php/Identifying_the_Hijackers
http://911myths.com/index.php/Hijackers_DNA_profiles
http://911myths.com/images/9/9e/SRD-911-connections.pdf
http://911myths.com/images/4/49/Zacarias_Moussaoui_Indictment.pdf
This paper discusses how the FBI identified the 19:
http://911myths.com/images/e/e8/Data_Mining_CSIS.pdf
The survivability of passport documents from the WTC crashes is also not as miraculous and/or unlikely as the ‘truthers’ claim:
http://counterknowledge.com/?p=1370
‘RealTruther’, I cannot access the link containing your responses. Please check the link or repost them here.
Re: the ‘pull it’ red herrring, one of the comments above asks about the identity of the FDNY officer who ordered the evacuation of WTC7 prior to its collapse. He was Chief Daniel Nigro, and he gives his account here (22:10-23:34):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9072062020229593250
Sorry, this is the link I should have forwarded regarding personal effects:
http://911myths.com/index.php/Personal_Effects_and_the_Crash-Proof_Passport
Jolinar states “What I do claim is that a 737 cannot vapourise into a 2 meter hole and that a plane crashing into a building will not cause it to collapse.â€
Excellent. Then you concur with the official version of events. Never was it claimed the plane vaporized. Nor was it ever claimed the hole was only 2 meters.
These are lies that only the Loose Brains kooks peddle. Amazing to think your source of expertise is an admitted drop-out who delivers pizzas for a living.
Lastly, it was NOT a 737.
Good lord Man! How can you EVER expect to be taken seriously as a researcher when you dont even have the BASICS right? You dont even take the minimal amout of time to be sure what kind of airplane it was. Yet youre supposed to be smart enough to uncover the inside job?
Gimme a break.
Thanks for the info, but I’m afraid your claim to have more scientific knowledge than nist cannot be true.
I only claim to be more honest than they are. And that I am intelligent enough to recognize deceptive language when I encounter it. There are also plenty of qualified experts who share the view that NIST’s report does not come close to proving its hypothesis.
Moreover you are just re- hashing old and debunked material.
Not so, but like I said, it’s impossible to wake someone who is only pretending to be asleep.
Quite simply it is not scientifically possible for the towers to have been brought down by explosives.
This is a remarkable claim, and quite obviosuly false.
Controlled demolition starts at the BOTTOM and works upt.
That is not always so, actually. In any case there was an explosion in the basement of the north tower befor ethe first plane even hit. Not only did people witness its effects in the sub-basement (Felipe David was severly burned by it) but the lobby of the north tower is known to have been badly damaged with wall panels fallen and windows blown out. To suggest that this resulted from a plane impact almost 1000 feet away is absurd.
In all the video evidence the collapse starts at the TOP and works its way down. This is blindingly obvious if you watch loose change (and use your brain).
Since the idea was to make people believe that the planes caused the collapses the towers had to begin falling at the top. This may not be how most controlled demolitions are done (see the demolition of WTC7 for a strictly textbook case) but that does not mean that it isn’t possible. Quite simply, you first remove a section of all the core columns in the vicinity of the impact zone to have the top begin moving downwards, then set off explosions at regular intervals to keep the structure from arresting the top’s fall. The result is quite a bit messier than a conventional demolition but since this was supposed to look like an accident that wasn’t really a concern. The fact that the demolition spilled over onto the rest of the complex provided the excuse needed for the collapse of WTC7. When 7 collapsed it did so exactly like a conventional demolition and did not, like the towers, significantly affect surrounding buildings. The result was quite amazing–every Silverstein owned (WTC7) or leased (WTC1-6) was destroyed yet buildings like the Amex building which was also pelted by debris from the north tower, and the two buildings on either side of 7 remained intact.
But I do agree with you that Alex Jones is a complete pratt and poor excuse for humanity.
Excellent. I hope you understand that citing him as an authority on 9/11 truth is not entirely honest, since he is a charlatan. On the other hand, claiming that David Ray Griffin is a dishonest fraud as some have done here is utterly laughable. You’ll notice that critics of the official theory tend to focus on facts whereas defenders of the official theory avoid facts and instead use blanket statements like “everything that man says has been debunked!†My advice: if we are to engage in real debate we must argue about facts and avoid ad hominem arguments. Ideally we would select a single contention at a time and discuss it thoroughly–keeping a running record of each side’s claims and their supporting evidence.
For example, we could determine to get to the bottom of whether the actual flight manifests of all the 9/11 flights have been made public or if what has been made public is something other than the official flight manifests.
We could discuss the injuries to Felipe David that occurred in the sub basement of the north tower around the time the first plane hit and what if not an explosion in the basement may have caused them.
We could attempt to establish exactly what parts of flight 77 were recovered from the Pentagon impact zone and how those parts were linked conclusively to the plane.
There is so much to debate and yet I see in this thread alone so much that is irrelevant–a warning to WIllie Brown? Who cares? Whetehr he was warned not to fly or not has nothing to do with what happened on 9/11. That is an example of an issue that fake truthers make a big deal out of, in part because it supports the argument that the hijackings were genuine, which is something that fake truthers seem to believe at a much higher rate than real truthers. Let me recap for those who are confused. There are people who call themselves truthers who are not really interested in getting the truth about 9/11–what they want is the opposite. They are those who claim that the truth is something like Bush let the terrorists attack (with the help of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) in order to have a reason to start his war for oil. The planes were really hijacked, al Qaeda is real, the towers fell because of the planes, and AA77 really was what hit the Pentagon. Real truthers on the other hand, like myself and David Ray Griffin, say that it is unlikely that the planes were hijacked by arab muslims, that the twin towers and building 7 were demolished with explosives after being struck by planes, and that AA77 could not have been what hit the Pentagon.
Would-be debunkers need to distinguish between which type of truther they are addressing. Oh, and the people who claim to believe that no planes hit the towers are most definitely fake truthers but they are extreme and over the top so as to give the other more sane fake truthers an aura of legitimacy.
Re: the ‘pull it’ red herrring, one of the comments above asks about the identity of the FDNY officer who ordered the evacuation of WTC7 prior to its collapse. He was Chief Daniel Nigro, and he gives his account here (22:10-23:34):
Daniel Nigro has also said that he was not the person that Silverstein described as the “Fire Department Commanderâ€. Debunkers make this mistake a lot. While Nigro does not endorse 9/11 truth he has made clear that it was not him that Silverstein spoke with. Now, is someone going to be keeping score?
Thank you, RealTruther, for linking us to evidence which buries the ‘Silverstein - pull it’ myth once and for all.
So my question stands, and this shouldn’t be so hard for you folks to answer. WHO did Silverstein speak with on the phone? His words: “I remember getting a call from the uhh fire department commander saying they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire and I said you know we’ve had such terrible loss of life maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it. And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse.â€
Simple question, should be easy to answer–with whom did this conversation take place?
More questions to add….
16) If the point of 9/11 was to outrage USA into invading the ME, why let WTC1, WTC2, and WTC7 smoulder for 1, 2, and 9 hours before “pulling them� Why give people that much time to evacuate? Why didn’t Bush just set all off hidden explosives instanteously and kill 50,000 instead of 3,000, increasing the outrage by factors of 100?
17) Anthrax attacks that followed days later contained letters saying “Allah is greatâ€, “death to Israel, USAâ€, etc. Yet no Muslims were blamed for them, unlike 9/11. Even Saddam, who had WMD given him by the West, wasn’t blamed….why not? Why didn’t 9/11 gov’t conspirators use the anthrax attacks as the perfect “ha-see-it’s-all-about-WMD-stupid pretext for launching wars against Iraq and Afg, instead of blaming/chasing after white American scientists?
18) If Bush could pull off 9/11 without being discovered, why didn’t he just plant thousands of anthrax vials around Baghdad and Tikrit after ousting Saddam to “prove†his claims about Iraq having WMD and even DNA-link them to the 2001 anthrax attacks? Instead, he had to eventually admit that WMD wasn’t there. If truthers don’t believe Bush about 9/11, why believe his admission that Iraq had no WMD? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/18/a-little-late-bush-admit_n_77372.html
Left-leaning Matt Taibbi made similar comments as this article re: 9/11 truth movement….
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11818067/the_low_post_the_hopeless_stupidity_of_911_conspiracies
Real Truther
†Controlled demolition starts at the BOTTOM and works upt.
That is not always so, actually. â€
I’m afraid it is true that controlled demolition works from the bottom up. There is no known incident of it working otherwise.
If you have an example let me know.
That is why of all the demolition experts in the world who have seen the demolition on worldwide news, none believe it could not have been a controlled demolition.
It is that simple. Come on Real Truther all this garbage has been debunked along time ago. You would have to be a complete retard to really believe it……or really stupid.
I think the comment section here has bolstered at least part of my hypothesis about the vigor of those who back the U.S. government’s unsubstantiated 9/11 conspiracy theory. Some portion of the commenters here are clearly right-wingers who are upset that the Bush administration might be blamed for all of this.
The “counterknowledge†site itself links to a series of right wing sites, such as “Protein Wisdom,†“Moore Watch,†“Media Watch Watch,†along with others that are polemical in nature, like “Screw Loose Change.†This site isn’t promoting inquiry, it’s just one more home for a group of ax grinders.
WOA you people must not of read Jim Marrs book… It’s actually pathetic that you people refuse to believe it was an inside job. It was clearly a demolition……. All the answers to these questions are in that book, if you missed em then read it again cause you obviously need to!
There is so much to debate and yet I see in this thread alone so much that is irrelevant–a warning to WIllie Brown? Who cares? Whetehr he was warned not to fly or not has nothing to do with what happened on 9/11. That is an example of an issue that fake truthers make a big deal out of, in part because it supports the argument that the hijackings were genuine, which is something that fake truthers seem to believe at a much higher rate than real truthers. Let me recap for those who are confused. There are people who call themselves truthers who are not really interested in getting the truth about 9/11–what they want is the opposite. They are those who claim that the truth is something like Bush let the terrorists attack (with the help of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) in order to have a reason to start his war for oil. The planes were really hijacked, al Qaeda is real, the towers fell because of the planes, and AA77 really was what hit the Pentagon. Real truthers on the other hand, like myself and David Ray Griffin, say that it is unlikely that the planes were hijacked by arab muslims, that the twin towers and building 7 were demolished with explosives after being struck by planes, and that AA77 could not have been what hit the Pentagon.
I don’t know what a “fake truther†is or a “real truther†is, but I do suspect that various whack jobs have been planted among those who are skeptical of the government’s conspiracy theory. Also, I’m sure there are some nutcases who were planted by no one, unless we include the parents who raised them wrong.
In my own case, I an unorganized skeptic. I don’t know what happened other than the basic events, i.e., planes crashed into buildings and people died. I think a sense of prudent caution would say that active government involvement in the events, i.e., fake planes, demolitions, and so on, would require a far, far more intricate conspiracy than passive government inaction in the face of reliable knowledge that an attack was coming.
I’m genuinely willing to entertain all possibilities, but I do think active involvement is a much more remote possibility, due to the dynamics of the sort of conspiracy that would be required. If that makes me a “fake truther,†well I guess I’ve been called worse in my life. But if you want affix an accurate label to me, it would be “universal skeptic.â€
I’m not attached to any theories, nor am I ruling them out. It’s entirely possible, in my view, that the government’s conspiracy theory is correct. But I don’t think the government has come even remotely close to making the case. Nor have the so-called “truthers†made the case for an alternative.
So, for now, and I think likely forever, it’ll be just like the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation: a mystery. And, I might add, if it remains a mystery then the government has achieved its purpose.
No Magic
Thanks for that enlightening stuff. I take it you still cannot come up with any credible holes in the “official story�
Have to admit I’m getting a little bored now with no facts or evidence to investigate. Feeling a little cheated as you said there were many holes.
ILee, maybe you can work on figuring out who the “fire department commander†Silverstein claims to have spoken to is. Since Daniel Nigro says it wasn’t him, who was it? Anyway, here are my answers to the questions you all posed:
(1) On 9th September 2001 Ahmed Shah Massoud, the most effective military commander of the anti-Taliban coalition (the Northern Alliance, or NA) was killed by two Arab suicide bombers posing as journalists. The assassination of Massoud had taken months to plan, and the latter had received the bogus request for an ‘interview’ in May 2001 (See Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, pp.574-576; Jason Burke, Al Qaeda, p.197; Daniel Byman, Deadly Connections, p.210. Two days before 9/11, Al Qaeda killed the Taliban’s main enemy, who had also played a pivotal role in keeping the NA factions together, and who would have been the obvious figure to liase with if the Americans had decided to effect regime change in Afghanistan. If Al Qaeda were not responsible for 9/11, then why was Ahmed Shah Massoud’s assassination so well co-ordinated with the attacks on New York and Washington?
You have no proof of who was actually behind the assassination of Massoud. It stands to reason that the assassination was coordinated with 9/11 if the same people were responsible for both, whether it was al Qaeda or someone else. Bottom line is you don’t have any credible evidence for al Qaeda (whatever that really is) being responsible for either.
(2) Conversely, prior to 9/11, the US government had minimal contacts with Massoud and other Northern Alliance figures, much to the latter’s frustration (See Coll, passim). If 9/11 was a “false flag†operation intended to justify a pre-determined plan to invade Afghanistan, then why didn’t the CIA and other US government agencies do more to facilitate ties with the NA?
I do not agree with the supposition that that was the reason behind orchestrating 9/11 so the question is pointless.
(3) Just before 9/11, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other key Al Qaeda personnel left their quarters in Kandahar to hide in Tora Bora (Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, pp.356-358). Why did bin Laden and al-Zawahiri suddenly leave their known locations and go to ground, if they were not anticipating imminent military action by the USA?
This claim is supported by what evidence exactly? Even if true, how do you make the leap to assume their actions were connected to 9/11?
(4) In the days following 9/11, the Bush administration asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a plan to invade Afghanistan. The JCS had to admit that they had no contingency plan for such an invasion, and in the weeks preceding Operation Enduring Freedom the CIA and the Department of Defense were obliged to improvise a plan of attack against the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies (Benjamin Lambeth, Air Power Against Terror; Bob Woodward, Bush At War). If 9/11 had been an inside job, and if there was a long-standing intention by Bush and his advisors to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban, then why did they have to scrabble around for a workable plan? Why was one not prepared beforehand?
Assuming this is a true account, I refer back to the point that the invasion of Afghanistan was not likely the reason for orchestrating 9/11, and would add that it is far from clear that Bush, the CIA, or the Defense Department were involved in its planning.
(5) We are being asked by the truthers to believe that the 19 hijackers were “patsiesâ€, or non-existent. If that was the case, and if the intention of the real plotters in the US government was to justify military interventions to overthrow hostile regimes in the Middle East, why were 15 out of the 19 ‘bogus’ Al Qaeda terrorists given Saudi nationality? The other four hijackers consisted of an Egyptian, a Lebanese and two citizens of the UAE. We are being asked to believe that the conspirators behind 9/11 decided that they would make the hijackers citizens of allies of the USA, not enemies. Why were they not given Iraqi, Iranian or Syrian identity? Why were they not given forged links with terrorist groups (such as the Abu Nidal Organisation, the PLFP-GC or Hizbollah) with closer links to Tehran, Damascus and above all Baghdad? If we are supposed to believe that the Israelis had a hand in 9/11, then why were none of the patsies Palestinians linked to Fatah or Hamas? What kind of conspirator sets up a plot to frame an innocent party without forging the evidence to implicate the latter?
It is easy to get people to accept military action against poeple they already consider enemies. By pretending that planes were hijacked by US allies those allies are more easily pressured into doing exactly what they are told to do since it puts their alliance in doubt.
(6) Following on from this point, if the identities and the nationalities of the hijackers were faked, then why did the Saudi, Egyptian, Lebanese and UAE governments accept that citizens from their own countries were involved? What incentive did Saudi Arabia have for accepting that 15 of its own people had committed mass murder on US soil? Why would the Saudis co-operate in a plot which would blacken their country’s name, benefit Israeli interests in the Middle East, provide the pretext for the overthrow of one fundamentalist Sunni regime in Afghanistan, and contribute to the destruction of a Sunni Arab dictatorship in Iraq long seen by the Saudi royal family as a bulwark against Iran?
For the simple reason that calling out your ally and benefactor on a lie (whether they told it or are simply agreeing to play along with it) is not advisable when you depend on them for so much.
(7) Afghanistan is a landlocked country (truthers may need to be reminded of this fact), and any invasion is logistically impossible without the support of its neighbours. Prior to 9/11, Pakistan was a staunch ally of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan (see Ahmed Rashid, Taliban, passim). The former Soviet Central Asian states of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan backed the NA, but were also wary of antagonising their former imperial master, Russia. Pre-September 2001 these states would not have contemplated admitting any US or Western military presence on their soil. Although Russian President Vladimir Putin backed the USA’s invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, it took the Americans considerable effort to persuade him to permit the US and NATO forces to use bases on Uzbek and Tajik territory as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. It also took time and considerable pressure to force General Pervez Musharraf to abandon the Taliban - despite resistance from the military and ISI. Given the geo-political realities of Central Asia in mid-2001, there were no guarantees of any host nation support for any attack on Afghanistan. Assuming againt that 9/11 was an inside job, how could the US government realistically presume that the Russians and Pakistanis would actually permit the USA to effect regime change against the Taliban?
Pakistan never really had a choice to oppose the US depending as it does on the US for support. Russia may have seen Afghanistan as a way to weaken the US much as they themselves were weakened and likely traded on it to ensure America’s non-objection (aside from lip service) to actions in Chechnya and elsewhere.
(8) Assuming that claims of Mossad complicity in 9/11 (â€dancing Israelisâ€, etc.) are correct, can the truthers suggest a feasible motive for the Israeli government conniving in an act of mass murder on US soil? Since 1967, the mainstay of Israel’s security and survival has been its alignment with the USA, and the military assistance it has received as a result. This relationship is based on a bipartisan political consensus (both the Republican and Democratic parties are predominantly pro-Israeli) and considerable public support in the USA. Why engage in a “false flag†attack against the civilian population of an ally, when you have so little to gain and so much to lose if your responsibility is ever disclosed?
One can easily imagine radical elements from both the US and Israel deciding that the risk would be worth it. The payoff would be huge–a “new world order†where Israel’s enemies were the entire world’s enemies and so Israel would be cut much more slack in its treatment (ethnic cleansing) of the Palestinians, and the risk small–as evidence by the success thus far of the cover-up.
(9) Following on from this, assuming that the “five dancing Israelis†story isn’t a complete fabrication, what kind of secret service recruits undercover agents who compromise themselves by acting so ostentatiously in public? And if the five arrested Israelis were part of a conspiracy organised with the US government, then why did the FBI hold them in custody for over two months, instead of releasing them on the quiet a matter of hours and days after their apprehension?
The fact that you think it could possibly be a fabrication reveals that you don’t know your facts–their actions are not denied by anyone, just the interpretation of those actions. Three of the men involved were interviewed on Israeli television and admitted to the facts of the case denying only involvement in perpetrating the attacks and being Mossad agents. It is a fact that they worked for a company believed by the FBI to be a Mossad front. If they were innocent of any crime why were they deported?
(10) If the WTC towers in New York City were destroyed by controlled demolitions rigged by US government agencies, then why were the fake terrorist attacks used to cover up these controlled demolitions so insanely convoluted? Why concoct a scenario involving the hijacking of planes which are then crashed into tower blocks (involving complicated planning involving remote controlled flights timed with explosives detonated in the towers, which allow plenty of opportunities for gliches and technical errors)? Why not use a more simple means, such as a truck bomb?
The attacks were not insanely convoluted, they were just complex, which one would expect. One goal was to completely remove the WTC and a truck bomb would not have accomplished that. The question of why did they do this or that instead of the other thing is not for us to know, it is enough to point out the evidence that explosives were employed to require that a real investigation take place that might get you answers to those questions.
(11) Assuming that Niaz Naik’s account of his alleged meeting with retired US officials in July 2001 is true, then where were the 17,000 Russian troops who were supposedly ready to invade Afghanistan when it came to the commencement of military operations in October 2001? And if the main motive behind the invasion was to build a natural gas pipe-line which would be under US control, then why was no attempt ever made to build one once the Taliban were overthrown?
I do not assume these were true nor that the reason for the invasion was the UNOCAL pipeline. The pipeline issue is mainly promoted by those like oilempire.us and Michael Ruppert who claim the US let 9/11 happen and that al Qaeda is a genuine terrorist group. Truthers increasingly dismiss both those sources as totally discredited, as should you.
(12) We are being asked by the conspiracy theorists to assume that NORAD was stood down on the morning of 11th September 2001 so as to enable the success of the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. NORAD is a combined command, not a purely American one - it has a binational staff drawn from the US military and the Canadian Forces (CF). We are either supposed to believe that the CF personnel assigned to NORAD were too stupid to notice anything amiss in their headquarters - and query it - or that the Canadian government and the CF were complicit in 9/11. Which of these scenarios is true?
Actually NEADS is probably what you should be referring to, and the failure to intercept the two planes that hit the towers need not have been the result of a stand down order, it could have been a genuine failure resulting from a complex set of circumstances that day including pre-existing drills involving simulated hijackings. The other two planes are themselves questionable so the failure to intercept could have been due to the simple fact that it would not have been possible to intercept something that did not exist.
(13) If Al Qaeda were set-up for the 11th September attacks, then why have its leaders and spokesmen repeatedly affirmed their responsibility for - and pride in - these attacks (see here, here, here and here for examples)? Why are we supposed to believe that repeated video pronouncements by bin Laden and Zawahiri are fake, while just one written statement allegedly from bin Laden denying responsibility - which was handed by courier to al-Jazeera without any confirmation of its origins - was genuine?
You have no idea where and by whom those videos are being produced and cannot confirm their origin any more than we can confirm the origin of bin Laden’s denial. You also assume incorrectly that al Qaeda is a genuine terrorist network as opposed to a network fully infiltrated and managed by someone other than sincere Jihadists. A Palestinian group was the first to claim responsibility for 9/11 but this claim was dismissed as false. Who made it and why? Why should we believe something that is impossible just because some unidentifiable person claims to take resposnibility on behalf of a group?
(14) If the hijacking and crashing of four passenger planes was engineered by the US government, then why did UA93 crash into an empty field in Pennsylvania? Why not crash it into a target which would add to the death toll on 9/11, and further inflame US public attitudes and popular demands for revenge against the supposed perpetrators?
There is no evidence that what caused the hole in the ground in Pennsylvannia was UA93 so your question is meaningless.
(15) Finally, if the US government is institutionally ruthless enough to organise the massacre of thousands of its own citizens in a series of “false flag†attacks, then why is it too squeamish to arrange for the deaths of the supposed “truth-seekers†(David Griffin, Kevin Barrett, Steven Jones, Richard Gage, the Loose Change team, Alex Jones, etc.) who have exposed their complicity in one of the most heinous crimes a government can commit against its own people? Why are these people still alive and well, and in a position to publicise their “theories†on radio, television, in print and online?
Not all those you list are genuine truthers–some are employed in an attempt to control the truth movement. Others, like David Griffin, attract less attention if they are *not* killed. The murder of a prominent truther would draw a lot more attention to their work than simply letting them do what they do. But again, no one credible is suggesting that the US government as an institution was behind 9/11, so again you begin your question with a false premise.
No Magic still hasn’t demonstrated even one of the glaring ‘holes’ in “the governments conspiracy theoryâ€. He seems to be of a mind the the Govt. let it happen when all he has to go on are the observable facts, which don’t suggest that the Govt. had any involvement. It appears that he is in fact the one with a political axe to grind.
“WHO BENEFITED from the event. Once you determine who benefited, then you have your most likely culprit. †- random troofer
By this logic we must conclude that Mikey Moore brought down the WTC. Moore is probably the single highest profiter following from 911.
Thanks for that enlightening stuff. I take it you still cannot come up with any credible holes in the “official story� Have to admit I’m getting a little bored now with no facts or evidence to investigate. Feeling a little cheated as you said there were many holes
Lee, I’ve named a few of them, but I’m not going to be drawn into the swamp with you. It’s obvious that you have an ax to grind, along with just about everyone else here. But take heart: There won’t be any thorough and independent investigation, so it’s unlikely that the government’s conspiracy theory will ever really be dislodged. Don’t worry. Be happy.
no magic, I don’t think that your position in and of itself pegs you as a fake truther–it just happens that fake truthers want people not to go farther than that position–that the Bush admin simply allowed the attacks to occur so as to take advantage of them. This usually goes hand in hand with denying that there were explosives in the towers since it would be inconceivable that whoever planted the explosives would trust that both suicide pilots would successfully complete their mission–i.e. not lose their nerve or miss the target. As the evidence of demolition has become stronger, fake truthers have struggled to keep everyone on board with the idea that the hijackings happened “as advertised†(I’m not saying that flights were definitely not hijacked–they could have been commandeered via remote–this is simply not science fiction) in order to preserve the myth of Islamofascism being the menace it is advertised to be.
Logistics and the size of the conspiracy that is being covered up are not as problematic as you may think. I like to use Enron as an example. Not only were insiders looting the company for years, but the company itself was engaged in market manipulation. We know that one thing Enron did was call power plants to ask them to go offline in order to create artificial shortages that would enbale them to charge everyone more. that’s just one example of the kind of things that were going on–all the while no one blew the whistle, the business news media touted Enron as amodel company with a brilliant business model, and accounting anomalies were ignored. Was “everyone in on it� I don’t know how many people were in on it but I know that the game was only up when the company could not secure any more credit–after they went bankrupt we learned of all the dirty dealings that had been going on.
With respect to the feasibility of rigging the twin towers for demolition, I hear many people object on the grounds that such an operation would be huge, would require “tons of explosivesâ€, and that people would have noticed. One need not bother with the irrelevant fact that Marvin Bush was on the board of one of the companies providing security–that is yet another red herring. The twin towers were indeed huge, and one can imagine that it was not out of the ordinary to see people dressed in workman clothes busy moving boxes and such around. Who in their right mind would witness someone looking busy and think to themselves “I wonder if this man is rigging the building for demolitionâ€? No one would. They would think “worker†and not give it a second thought. Moreover, the most important work to be done would have been in the core where nobody would have been privy to what was going on.
With regard to the “massive amopunt of explosives required, this is one of my favorite of the “debunkers’†fallacies. The very same people who say that planes alone could have resulted in the damge observed turn around and claim that by introducing explosives in addition to the planes, then planes alone would *not* suffice and you would need “tons of explosivesâ€.
It is *we* who say that planes would not suffice and that you would need *some* explosives and/or incendiaries such as those for which evidence has been found in videos of the collapses and in the rubble piles and dust. An incendiary like thermite to quietly thin the thickest columns and explosives to then break them apart. By thinning the thicker columns with thermite you would need far less explosive material meaning you would be able to better conceal what was actually happening. There are videos, nonetheless, where you can see flashes from internal explosions (this explains the flashes that early fake truthers attributed to missiles being fired from the planes–nonsense, they were flashes from explosions timed to go off simultaneously with the planes’ impacts–again to distract from what was going on.) There is also one video at least where you can see the puff of a large internal explosion in the north tower just as the south tower is struck by plane–more misdirection to conceal the explosions.
As unbelievable as it seems to those just beginning to delve into the subject, I have seen no reason to disbelieve that such a conspiracy was not only possible but actually what happened.
†the single highest profiter following from 911.â€
sorry, that would not be michael moore. it would be Lawrence Silverstein who owned wtc7 and leased the towers (mind you he did not pay their full value, just the down payment on a 99 year lease) six weeks before the events that enabled him to collect the full value of the towers–and he is now trying to sue the airlines for even more. Some would ask why the insurance companies would go along with this charade–well, insurance rates around the world went up after 9/11 though the real risk of terror had not really changed. As an industry therefore the insurance biz would probably take the crown. Michael Moore not so much…
There is a reason why every demolition expert rejects the moonshine promoted by conspiracy liars. Nobody found a shred of evidence (there’s that word again) for the use of explosives in the Twin Towers: no detonator caps, no bits of wiring, no chemical signatures of shaped charges–nothing!
Conspiracy liars are still ignoring inconvenient facts, such as the obvious collapses of the Towers FROM THE IMPACT FLOORS! Repeat ten times: the building collapses began on the floors hit by the planes.
There were no–zero!–explosives anywhere in the WTC complex. The logistics of prepping two huge skyscrapers, far bigger than any buildings ever brought down by controlled demolition, would have constituted a monumental task requiring teams of specialists working for months.
“Real Truther†is an astonishingly ignorant liar. The evidence for demolition, far from “growing stronger,†remains nonexistent. This agenda-driven fool, having seen all of his fantasies demolished, continues to recycle ancient nonsense. Steven Jones has tweaked a contaminated dust sample for years without finding anything of consequence. Surely by now even his followers, the most uncritical dolts alive, must be getting restless.
“Real Truther†pretends that there were explosives going off as the planes hit the Towers. Does the dishonest ignoramus understand that NO demolition could possibly be carried out in this manner? Imagine the absurdity of setting off charges an hour before the building actually falls! How clueless can a person, even such an agenda-driven fraud, be?
In a real demolition, a series of charges set at the base of the building go off simulataneously. Then gravity does the rest of the work. A random explosion here and there does not suggest demolition: things blow up in fires.
How stupid can these people be?
the responses to this article prove that a new real investigation of what happened on 9/11 is absolutely needed. given the abundance of incorrect and questionable information being peddled here it is obvious that these things need to be cleared up once and for all.
I would imagine that it is harmful to the long term success of our country to have people running around with diametrically opposed views about such an important event and its implications.
So the comments to this article show how reasonable it is to want a new investigation. which was the opposite of its intention.
one thing is obvious it is not necessary or reasonable to expect someone to lay out the whole scenario. all thats necessary is to show how the “official†story cannot be true.
I wonder why so many cannot understand that and are offended by a desire to find out what really happened.
Real Truther, a couple of things. First off, while my instincts tell me that active government involvement is a real stretch, I’ve consistently stated here that I think everything should be examined, preferably by a new 9/11 Commission.
There’d be people who would never trust such a body, but I retain enough faith that, if the decision makers in the U.S. wanted or felt compelled to allow a real investigation, one could be arranged. Not everyone would be satisfied, but I think the truth could be established for all of the sane to see.
Part of such a commission’s work ought to be to thoroughly examine even the “crackpot†ideas, if for no other reason than to demonstrated that all roads were followed. Personally, I don’t think the buildings were demolished, but that’s mainly because I think such a conspiracy would be unmanageable.
People always talk. I agree that the buildings could’ve been wired up right underneath everyone’s noses, in plain sight. But wouldn’t you think that, after all those people had died, someone(s) would’ve come forward? I do. As for Bush’s brother being on the board of one of those companies, as someone who actually has served on a board of directors, I am here to tell you that the board isn’t nearly as plugged into operations as some people would imagine.
Beyond that, if the buildings were wired, then other activities would logically have happened. Some so-called “truthers†talk about the substitution of airplanes, for example, which of course would imply that a whole lot of people were taken somewhere and killed. And on and on and on.
My instincts tell me that, if the government’s conspiracy theory is wrong, a far likelier prospect is that a coterie of people in the government knew this was coming and took passive steps to insure that it would. I think that sort of thing could’ve been managed by a handful of people, with a small number of actions, each compartmentalized from the other.
The subsequent lack of a real investigation, which I think mirrors what happened after the sinking of the Lusitania, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, JFK’s death, and the downing of TWA Flight 800, is something the U.S. government has long experience at managing.
If I were named emperor of the so-called “truthers,†I’d spend 60% of my time on the passive idea, and 40% of it on the active idea, with as much as possible of the 40% being applicable to the 60%.
I’d divide my investigation into two phases. The first phase would concentrate entirely on testing the critical elements of the U.S. government’s conspiracy theory. Only if the theory could be conclusively demolished (pardon the pun) would I move toward constructing an alternative hypothesis.
I realize that investigations are never as orderly as what I’ve just laid out, but I think this is what the outline ought look like. One area that could be much more disciplined is the presentation of the case. There, I would have one document, i.e., a book and its supporting evidence devoted to nothing but examining the government’s conspiracy theory. Another document would examine alternative hypotheses, and would be published only if the first investigation invalidated the government’s theory.
Unlike the sophist who wrote the article that prompted this discussion thead, it’s absolutely NOT necessary to construct an alternative theory B to discredit consensus theory A. It is perfectly acceptable, and in fact is the customary practice in the scientific world, to discredit a theory without offering an alternative.
Often, a substitute theory arises as a consensus is discredited, but by no means always. Therefore, this website’s demand that non-believers offer a fully-formed substitute is a dishonest dodge, and is prima facie evidence that “Counterknowledge†is not operating in good faith, but instead is grinding an ax.
One more thing to say. Of all the non-investigations that I mentioned, I am the least critical of the one following TWA Flight 800. It seems to have been thorough, yet I have difficulty believing the fuel tank explosion explanation when so many people said they saw something that looked like a missile streaking toward the plane.
Ah, one more thing: As part of a second investigation, I think all of the primary evidence should be authenticated, released, and made available to the general public. Stick it on the Internet, and you’ll have millions of eyes going over it. Sure, there’ll be some chaos, but primary evidence is what it is and maybe someone(s) else would notice things that have escaped (or been suppressed by) official investigators.
for those of you who are interested in facts that disprove the government’s conspiracy theory i’ll give you two simple ones:
1) Osama bin Laden has not been charged in the attacks because there is no evidence to link him to the attacks
2) seven of the alleged hijackers are still alive but the FBI has not changed its version
bonus fact: at the trial of Zaccarius Moussoui (spelling?) the supposed cock pit recording was played that had the voices of passengers plotting to use a drink cart to break into the cock pit but cock pit recordings do not record the voices of passengers in the cabin.
bonus fact #2: it is impossible to fly a commercial airliner at high speed as close to the ground as would be necessary to run into the side of the pentagon
a new 9/11 commission must have at least scientists, engineers and victims family members. the budget for a new commission should excede the cost of the Clinton investigation which the first commission did not even come close to.
no magic, you are entitled to your opinions and they reflect thoughtfulness on your part. they do however indicate to me that you haven’t read David Griffin’s books, especially his latest The New Pearl Harbor Revisited. I think you would find that most of your concerns would be addressed.
That said, the evolution of this issue never ceases to fascinate me. I’ve been a “trutherâ€, meaning that I work to raise awareness of the falsity of the official account, since about 2004. In that time I have seen the movement evolve, and ideas once on the ascendant lose favor as more information comes out. There is simply no question that David Ray Griffin is the gold standard of 9/11 skepticism. I say this without reservation having read every major 9/11 skeptic book and a few obscure ones as well. Prof. Griffin has his critics inside and outside the truth movement, that is true. Given the complexity and difficulty inherent in the subject however this is to be expected and Prof. Griffin has always done a remarkable job of clarifying what is known and not known and revising his work when warranted.
As for those who defend the official narrative, we have plenty of examples here that are quite representative of the type. They leave absolutely no room for any skepticism whatsoever and invariably resort to insults more often than facts. They ignore points they can’t answer, like the identity of Silverstein’s “fire department commander†and pose unanswerable questions like “where did AA77 go if not into the Pentagon?†I would very much like to know the answer to that myself since no one has been able to provide the kind of evidence that should be easiest to provide–such as videos of it striking and a collection of the plane parts that were recovered–if that is actually what happened to AA77.
“Debunkers†as they like to call themselves most often refer to their own websites or to the article (made into a book) by Popular Mechanics titled Debunking 9/11 Myths. Since books are generally understood to be more thorough than websites, I always suggest to people that they make an effort to read (good) books if they are interested in learning more than what they can from internet debates.
Since I know Mr. Wieck has been an avid “debunker†for at least two years, I would ask him the following question. I have recommended David Griffin’s New Pearl Harbor Revisited as the best source for those interested in learning the case that can be made for doubting the official 9/11 narrative. If a person with an open mind wanted to weigh the merits of both our side and yours, what would you recommend they read to get your side of the story?
Simple question. Will we get a simple answer from Mr. Wieck?
elmwood says, “a new 9/11 commission must have at least scientists, engineers and victims family members.†(emphasis added)
Any facade of scientific objectivity that you may have had is destroyed by the inclusion of this last group. What more evidence would any casual observer need that this is an emotion-driven battle?
“Simple question. Will we get a simple answer from Mr. Wieck?â€
Mr. Wieck has already answered this question right here in this thread. I’d like to direct your attention to the red text in this comment section. The red text is called a hyper link. It will direct those who click it to other online content.
It’s abundantly clear that you don’t know this, because you keep asking people things like “This claim is supported by what evidence exactly?†When there’s a link to support the claim right there next to the thing you quote.
Mr. Wieck links a 313 page report by Mr. Ryan Mackey that you either didn’t read, or simply didn’t understand. Mr. Mackey responds to each of your “gold standard†claims.
“â€There is simply no question that David Ray Griffin is the gold standard of 9/11 skepticism. “â€
thats why no serious researcher takes truthers seriously.
Your “gold standard†is a theologian with ZERO experience and training in any of the relevant disciplines.
I mean honestly, if it was REALLY so obviously an inside job, wouldnt the gold standard be the millions of structural, civil, and Arch-engineers worldwide.
Surely, you cant pretend all the engineers in the world are paid off.
David Ray Griffin is a shameless charlatan. He claimed that airphones on American Airlines domestic flights had been removed prior to the jihadist attacks of September 11, 2001. The claim turned out be false. John Hotard of AA explained that the decision to remove airphones was made in 2001, but not implemented until 2002. Griffin hid under his rock for a short interval and then reemerged to promote the same falsehood,
What does it matter which fire commander on the ground made the coutesy call to Silverstein? Seriously. A collapse zone had been established early on, the lack of water made fighting the fires impossible, and the FDNY decided to suspend operations. SIlverstein was not consulted; he was merely informed. Complicating a simple narrative indicates dishonesty.
Are there really conspiracy liars still peddling nonsense about hijackers being alive? It’s 2008: Give it up! If your imaginary conspiracy were real, it most certainly would have killed anyone identified as a hijacker. Duh!
You could, of course, read the comprehensive discussion of this canard on 911myths.com. Such a strong dose of reality might prove hard to digest.
Here’s the link for burying the myth about the living hijackers:
http://911myths.com/html/still_alive.html
David Griffin researches and reports. If you want experts’ opinions you can consult the webiste of over 500 architects and engineers for 9/11 truth at ae911truth.org
I see that expecting a simple answer from you all to a simple question is an exercise in futility. Oh well, should I take it from your non simple answer that you believe Ryan Mackey’s pdf is the best available rebuttal to DRG’s The New Pearl Harbor Revisited?
What does it matter which fire commander on the ground made the coutesy call to Silverstein?
What does it matter? Well first of all one of you self-ordained debunkers bunked up and said with all confidence it was Daniel Nigro. It took me, the “dishonest ignoramusâ€, to show you that Nigro denies having consulted with Silverstein. So here I am teaching you things you didn’t know. And you guys expect to be treated as authorities? Silverstein said he spoke to “the fire department commanderâ€. But he did not speak to Fire Chief Nigro. The position “fire department commander†does not exist. So who was he talking to? Why should this be such a difficult question for you to answer? Maybe because Silverstein is being dishonest?
The fraud David Ray Griffin does no research. He parrots nonsense fabricated by other fantasists and ignores the refutations of his pseudo-science published by genuine researchers.
Gage’s list is bogus. Whenever I contact someone whose name appears on it, invariably that person tells me either that he was unaware he was listed, or he isn’t really an engineer, or he needs to study the subject more closely before committing to a debate…and so on. Gage is a ridiculous fraud (see his disastrous debate with Mark Roberts on ‘Hardfire’).
Ryan Mackey’s work is a thorough and devastating refutation of Griffin’s lies.
Here are the links for the ‘Hardfire’ debate between Richard Gage and Mark Roberts:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3685846057748316809
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-459844559898426929
Of all the airplane alternatives, the easiest for me to accept is the idea that the military shot down Flt 93. There are enough anomalies in that story to make the official account suspicious. From there, it gets a lot harder, because the rest of the alternatives require active government involvement in the events, and a wide-ranging conspiracy whose likelihood I have discussed at length.
Among those “far fetched†alternatives, the easiest for to accept would be that the Pentagon was hit by a missile and not a plane. Several aspects of that crash stick out to me as odd. One is that there wasn’t a skid mark on the lawn. Another is that to hit this rather low-slung building directly in the sweet spot — not too high, not too low — you’d have to be a damn good pilot.
Most damning of all is the government’s refusal to release the various surveillance tapes that it confiscated that morning. I can’t conceive of any valid reason not to have released that evidence a long time ago.
On the other hand, however, if it was a missile and not a plane, there is the question of what happened to the people allegedly on board the plane that allegedly struck the Pentagon, but did not. Where’d they all go?
Then there are the claims that the planes that hit the WTC towers weren’t the ones we thought they were, and/or were remote controlled rather than hijacked. Frankly, I’ve never been able to make any sense out of those speculations — which would also face the issue of where the people went.
Or maybe they were remote controlled with the people and crews still in them. This strikes me as far fetched. On the other hand, it is curious that a lot of the air traffic control tapes from that morning seem to have gone missing. Where to, and why?
What does it matter? Well first of all one of you self-ordained debunkers bunked up and said with all confidence it was Daniel Nigro. It took me, the “dishonest ignoramusâ€, to show you that Nigro denies having consulted with Silverstein. So here I am teaching you things you didn’t know. And you guys expect to be treated as authorities? Silverstein said he spoke to “the fire department commanderâ€. But he did not speak to Fire Chief Nigro. The position “fire department commander†does not exist. So who was he talking to? Why should this be such a difficult question for you to answer? Maybe because Silverstein is being dishonest?
They’ll come up with another story. Just wait. I suspect that some component of support for the government’s conspiracy theory comes from people are who are deathly afraid of any fingers being pointed at Israel or American neo-conservatives, all of whom are Jewish. That would help explain the pell-mell, knee-jerk rush here to act as Larry Silverstein’s press agent, no matter what.
Real Truther, you are a silly and uninformed liar. Everybody knows that Nigro has stated that he was not the FDNY rep who called Silverstein. There were several commanders on the ground. Again, it is of no impoertance whatever which one of them made the courtesy call. There is nothing for Silverstein to lie about. The FDNY is not in the business of demolishing buildings.
http://www.jod911.com/Roberts_WTC7_Lies.doc
elmwood says, “a new 9/11 commission must have at least scientists, engineers and victims family members.†(emphasis added)
Any facade of scientific objectivity that you may have had is destroyed by the inclusion of this last group. What more evidence would any casual observer need that this is an emotion-driven battle?
I absolutely agree with you about that. In this thread, we’ve had all manner of appeals to emotion by believers in the U.S. government’s conspiracy theory. There are blunt ad hominem attacks, accusations of anti-semiticism and various ways to label doubters as “the other.â€
I don’t think emotions belong in an honest inquiry. Unfortunately, the “counterknowledge†site has nothing to do with honest inquiry and everything to do with emotion.
they do however indicate to me that you haven’t read David Griffin’s books, especially his latest The New Pearl Harbor Revisited. I think you would find that most of your concerns would be addressed
I haven’t read that book. One of these days I’ll read one of those books, but I’m still waiting to figure out which one to read. It’ll happen, but not very soon.
This is a good article but it wont convince the truthers. They wouldnt be in that crazy group if they were sane enough to understand these questions.
by the way, I would add question number 16: why did Bush look so foolish on the day his brilliant plan was being executed.
17: what great benefit did the US govt gain in the years following this brilliant plan?
The truthers are the biggest bunch of idiots on this benighted planet. This is way above their IQ level.
I see from a Google search that Ronald Wieck is a far right-winger. Another ax-grinder.
Sorry, no magic, you’ve been caught lying again. I’m no “far right winger.†I’m merely a conservative with libertarian leanings on social issues. It isn’t necessary to excuse Bush’s mishandling of the occupation of Iraq to reject the absurd fantasies invented by America-hating cranks. Nobody has yet explained why even a rightwinger would want mass murderers to get away with a monstrous crime.
Your conspiracy exists only in the fevered imaginations of willfully ignorant loons. A mountain of evidence shows that determined, well-trained jihadists perpetrated the attacks of 9/11/01.
I’m no “far right winger.†I’m merely a conservative with libertarian leanings on social issues.
Ah, I see.
It isn’t necessary to excuse Bush’s mishandling of the occupation of Iraq to reject the absurd fantasies invented by America-hating cranks.
There you go again. Anyone who doesn’t believe the U.S. government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory is rendered as “the other,†in this case a terrorist sympathizer, or in your words, an “America-hating crank.â€
Nobody has yet explained why even a rightwinger would want mass murderers to get away with a monstrous crime.
For the same reason FDR’s allies wanted to gloss over the government’s foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attacks: They believed in the ensuing war, and were willing to overlook the truth because they approved of the result. Plus they wanted to avoid embarrassment for their political allies.
Your conspiracy exists only in the fevered imaginations of willfully ignorant loons.
I haven’t endorsed any conspiracy theories. You have, though. You believe in the U.S. government’s conspiracy theory.
A mountain of evidence shows that determined, well-trained jihadists perpetrated the attacks of 9/11/01
That’s what you believe, but a substantial percentage of Americans — more than 40%, according to the surveys I’ve seen — isn’t buying the government’s improbable tale. Why are you so insistent that anyone who has their doubts is a “loon?â€
Is it solely because of your right-wing views? Are you perhaps Jewish and worry that some of the so-called “truthers†want to pin this on Israel and American Jews? Right-wingers, Jewish and otherwise, seem to be the rowdiest when it comes to the bullying of non-believers.
Ronald, you spend an awful lot of time on 9/11. What’s your story, and who’s paying you?
Let’s see, some more about Ronald Wieck:
- Accused Al Franken of gaining votes “in defiance of mathematical laws.â€
- Posted his pro-government 9/11 views on the website of Daniel Pipes, a noted neoconservative.
- Has a blog on the far-right wing site, “Front Pageâ€
- Routinely calls people who doubt the government conspiracy theory “jihadists,†“America haters†and “mindless Jew haters.â€
- Is a writer for the far-right-wing “American Thinker†website
- Has spent a fair amount of time agitating for the Republicans in the 2000 and 2004 election controversies
… and so on. Mr. Wieck is a polemicist, just like most of the commenters on “Counterknowledge,†and like “Counterknowledge†itself.
*yawn*
According to ‘no woo’ anyone who doesnt ascribe to his ignorant and educated ramblings must therefore be a part of it.
pathetic.
No magic
I can understand how you don’t want to get drawn into the “swamp†of facts, as you don’t have any. Your best fact was a man who does not say what you said that he said. I am prepared to be convinced if you could just come up with one thing.
But at the moment it is just an awfull lot of words from a man/boy with nothing to say.
There you go again. Anyone who doesn’t believe the U.S. government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory is rendered as “the other,†in this case a terrorist sympathizer, or in your words, an “America-hating crank.â€
Has spent a fair amount of time agitating for the Republicans in the 2000 and 2004 election controversies
Hypocrite much?
<i?That’s what you believe, but a substantial percentage of Americans — more than 40%, according to the surveys I’ve seen — isn’t buying the government’s improbable tale. Why are you so insistent that anyone who has their doubts is a “loon?â€
When asked directly if they believe that the gov’t was directly involved a mere 4.6% answered that they did.
4.6%….
more people believe in witches and ufos… then believe in the twoof.
No magic / brains or sense
I am trying to cut through all your waffle to try and get to what you believe.You said:
“I suspect that some component of support for the government’s conspiracy theory comes from people are who are deathly afraid of any fingers being pointed at Israel or American neo-conservatives, all of whom are Jewishâ€
Am I misunderstanding you, or are you saying it was the jews who comitted 911?
Am I misunderstanding you, or are you saying it was the jews who comitted 911?
Lee, a measure of your determination to grind your ax, along with this site’s owner(s), is your complete misrepresentation of what I’ve written here. The most adamant conspiracy theorists are the owners of this site, and their followers, who are determined to promote the government’s version and slur anyone who doesn’t buy it.
This is a little like what you right-wingers did with the justifications for the Iraq War: kept repeating the lies about WMD and Saddam Hussein’s non-existent links to al-Qaeda, etc., even after they were long exposed as lies. Same deal with the government’s 9/11 tale. You’ll never let go.
“Pull it†DOES mean bring a building down!
Ron Wieck says he’s contacted over 20 demolition companies and they all say “pull it†is not slang for demolition.
Well, too bad he never contacted Controlled Demolition Inc., like this 9/11 truther did:
http://www.pumpitout.com/phone_calls/controlled_demolitions.mp3
While buildings are USUALLY imploded from the bottom up (as was WTC7), it doesn’t necessarily HAVE to be done that way. As Mark Loizeaux has said:
“…by differentially controlling the velocity of failure
in different parts of the structure, you can make it walk, you can
make it spin, you can make it dance. We’ll have structures facing north and end up going to the north-west.â€
And here is an example of a top-down demolition:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ1E2NPl-s8
No Magic
I have to admit you have written so much that is nonsensical I cannot follow your argument. What is the conspiracy you are talking about that this site supports?
kameelyun
Very good, at least you have made an attempt. Though I think that 3 story building that collapses “top down†is about to fall over anyway. Top down demoloitions are possible but much more difficult.
The possibility of a top down demolition was considered by these demolition experts:
http://www.implosionworld.com/Article-WTC%20STUDY%208-06%20w%20clarif%20as%20of%209-8-06%20.pdf
The conclusion was:
1. This would require a large number of charges.
2.They would have to have been planted on the correct floor.
3. The explosives would have to have withstood the impact of the crash and the subsequent fire- no explosives can do this.
Moreover:
1. Protec have seismic readers in New York- no explosions were detected
2. Demoloition experts were part of the response teams. They did not hear explosions as the buildings collapsed
3. They did not witness any explosive flashes- from your video you can see them quite clearly, especially if the explosions are top down- i.e one for every floor rather than top down which just needs the low levels to be exploded.
Therefore the conclusion is that it is not scientifically possible for the towers to have been brought down by controlled demolition.
“And here is an example of a top-down demolition:â€
As long as we’re just asking questions here: I have a few questions about your top down demolition. What building was that? When was it demolished? How much explosive was used? How long did it take to wire? Was the construction similar to the construction of the WTC? Do you notice that all exterior and partition walls have been removed? How fast did it fall? Did it violate the law of conservation of momentum in the same way that real truther says that the WTC did?
Real Truther:
“â€There is simply no question that David Ray Griffin is the gold standard of 9/11 skepticism. “â€
Your “Gold standard†is a THEOLOGY professor. Think about that, Real Truther. Imagine if the NIST report was written by a religious studies professor or a poet. Would you take it seriously? If not, why the hell should anyone take your theology prof seriously? Griffin makes NO effort to contact the people involved in his supposed conspiracy, preferring instead to throw mud from a distance. That’s not research.
As for AE911, take a look at their members! It includes Landscape architects and software engineers - people with NO relevant expertise, yet they’re counted as “experts†anyway. Why? Because Gage wants to pad his numbers.
AE911 currently has about a dozen STRUCTURAL engineers, none of who have written any papers on the WTC, none who have sought peer-review and one (Pegalow) who thinks the WTC was destroyed by a nuclear weapon.
The guy who vets AE911 applicants is an electrical engineer from Toronto named Doug Plumb - he’s a fan of Judy Wood, the crazy lady who thinks the WTC was destroyed by a beam weapon from outter space.
Would any truther like to defend this pathetic collection of “experts?â€
no magic :
You keep calling for a new investigation yet you won’t answer my simple questions:
Who should fund this investigation?
Who should testify?
Who should pass final judgment?
No Magic
Since you claim you have already pointed out the biggest “holes†in the governemnt theory in your previous posts, It was painfull, but I have trawled through the drivel to try and find what you think are talking about. Funny how it has taken you so many words to come up with so little, but here goes nothing.
1. “the collapse of WTC-7″- *yawn*. http://www.debunking911.com/WTC7.htm This was the subject of the final NIST report.
2. “the crash of United Flight 93….I suspect the military shot it down.†Possibly it would be logical. But this does not prove a goverment conspiracy so I am not sure why you include it in your list.
3. “the unexplained and undocumented (due to destroyed evidence) behavior of the air traffic controllers, NORAD, and the Air Forceâ€. This is a bit vague and you would have to be more specific, i.e come up with some facts.
4. Willie Browns receipt of a call warning him not to travel. Except Willie Brown says he did not receive a call telling him not to travel. He was on his way to the airport when the planes struck.
I think thats it, which I am sure will agree is not much. Let me know if you have any other non - existent holes. I hope you can now see the reason for the invective against truthers. It is becasue they are losers and idiots who waste my time.
This will be my last comment before the Christmas break. Thanks to all of you (even the ‘truthers’) for reading and responding to this work (and thanks again to the Counterknowledge team for taking me on as a writer).
I observed earlier someone (I forget who) describing the USS Liberty incident as a ‘false flag’ attack. Can we be precise in our definitions here? A false flag operation is one where a belligerent’s armed and/or security forces disguise themselves as a third party in order that their actions can be blamed on said party, and (if desired) retribution can be taken against them.
The IAF jets and Israeli navy Patrol Boats which attacked the Liberty did so under their own colours, rather than (say) Egyptian, Syrian or Soviet. And while I am aware of James Bamford’s peddling of the conspiracy theory in ‘Body of Secrets’ (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Body-Secrets-Americas-Britains-Eavesdrop/dp/0099...) his findings are comprehensively refuted by Michael Oren’s ‘Six Days of War’ (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Body-Secrets-Americas-Britains-Eavesdrop/dp/0099...); Oren was able to get the relevant IDF documents declassified. Ahron Bregman also provides a clear account of what was a case of mistaken identity (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Israels-Wars-Palestine-Al-Aqsa-Intifada/dp/04152...). Parenthetically, I should note here that if anyone here wants to direct an ad hominem attack against either, Bregman’s politics are way to the left of Oren’s.
I also find it striking that the Liberty attack attracts the almost obsessive attention of conspiracy theorists compared to several well-documented cases where a state’s armed forces have attacked a neutral or friendly target in what Carl von Clausewitz justly termed the ‘fog of war’. There is, after all, one other case of a USN vessel being attacked by a Middle Eastern country (at war with its neighbour), which the latter later described as a mistake. However, the USS Stark incident has attracted little attention from conspiracy buffs - but then perhaps it’s because Israelis/Jews can’t be blamed for it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Stark
Turning now to RealTruther’s responses:
(1) Contrary to what you claim, the link between Massoud’s killers and Al Qaeda has been established, and it is indeed worth noting that the widow of one of the bombers - Malika El Aroud - is herself a fevent jihadi who supports OBL’s cause, and his proud of her husband’s role in murdering Massoud (her spouse was Dahmane Abd al-Sattar, who conducted the attack along with Bouraoui el-Ouaer):
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/27/europe/terror.php
http://www.levif.be/actualite/belgique/72-56-17674/la-belge-malika-el-aroud–l-une-des-plus-influentes-djihadistes-sur-internet.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/12/11/belgium.terror.arrests/index.html
(2) Would you care to explain (with the appropriate sources to back up your case) what you think the ‘reason’ behind the 9/11 plot was?
(3) Lawrence Wright - the author of ‘The Looming Tower’ - interviewed US intelligence officials as well as jihadis captured in Afghanistan in 2001-2002 for his comments about the AQ leadership’s dispersal in the days leading to 9/11. Bin Laden and his peers had also gone to ground after the 7th August 1998 bombings in Nairobi and Dar e-Salaam. That should tell you something quite significant (and, contrary to what Jolinar claims, there is nothing to confirm the scare story about Bin Laden being warned while he was treated in a UAE hospital in July 2001).
(4) This is waffle.
(5) Again, this is waffle, and yet again you lack sources to back up your speculative comments. And if Al Qaeda was the artificial bogey-man that the neo-cons (or whoever the real plotters were), might they have wanted to link their patsies more closely with the USA’s Middle Eastern enemies?
(6) If you honestly think that the Saudis - who are not only the principal foreign suppliers of oil to the USA, but who have also been traditionally in denial about the growth of Salafi Islamism on their own soil - could be terrified into allowing 15 of their citizens into taking the blame for such a shocking atrocity, then I can only say that that puts you in the same category of logic as the Arabs who mutter that ‘4,000 Jews didn’t turn up to work at the WTC’. That is not a good place to be.
(7) More unsourced, speculative waffle, concealing the shorter response - ‘I can’t answer this question’.
(8) The key words here are your opening ones - ‘one can easily imagine’. Imagination is not the same as verifiable truth. You have again failed to answer my question.
(9) Firstly, the Israelis were ID’d by just one witness, who saw them set up a camera after WTC crashes and (apparently) celebrate. Secondly, they were not the only ones who filmed the aftermath of the attacks. Thirdly, the five men were deported for overstaying their visas. Fourthly, you still can’t explain why - if they were part of a conspiracy involving powerful forces within the US government - they were arrested and held for over two months:
http://www.911myths.com/html/dancing_israelis.html
(10) More waffle. I think that Matt Taibbi exposes the fallacies behind this thinking very elloquently (if crudely):
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11818067/the_low_post_the_hopeless_stupidity_of_911_conspiracies/print
My links above also make it clear that the ‘controlled demolition’ theory is scientifically absurd.
(11) This is your first sensible response.
(12) My responses to Jolinar above show that the two planes were not ‘questionable’. They flew, they were hijacked, they were crashed (only one into the intended target). The evidence is there for you to see with your own eyes. I’m sorry you lack the moral courage to do so.
(13) You still have to explain away repeated video statements (by bin Laden, Zawahiri, Suleiman abu Ghaith, martyrdom videos etc), and the fact that the supposedly ’sincere Jihadists’ have not sought to rebut these supposedly bogus admissions of guilt (why not?). You also have to explain why one of my links (to the ‘Dr Fadl’ article) made it clear that Zawahiri’s response was not just a justification of 9/11, but a detailed rebuttal of a series of criticisms and condemnations of Al Qaeda’s methods, notably its tendency to murder fellow Moslems in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. If you have entered into a world where all this evidence is faked and one scrap of paper supposedly from bin Laden handed over to al-Jazeera is real, then all I can say is I won’t be following you onto that planet.
I also recall that initially an obscure Palestinian group which no one had ever heard of claimed responsibility for the attacks. The words ‘red herring’ spring to mind.
(14) See my response to 12.
(15) In connection with my earlier posts, the fact that so-called ‘truthers’ are in no position to even establish a basic alternative counter-narrative to the ‘official story’ (other than repeated ‘inside job’/MIHOP invective) speaks volumes. The fact that David Ray Griffin would also only attract any attention if he passed away is also instructive. It is an admission that even after 7 years of effort your leading lights have failed to have any impact on public opinion (at least in democratic countries with a free press) whatsoever. The logical implications here are two-fold - Either David Ray Griffin has the intellectual skills of Inspector Clouseau, and he cannot find the glaringly obvious evidence that some group of conspirators other than AQ did 9/11; or he is trying to prove the existence of a conspiracy theory with no basis in fact. Please could you tell me which of these is true. Could you also clarify for me your statement that ‘no one credible is suggesting that the US government as an institution was behind 9/11′? The thrust of the conspiracy theories is that a range of Federal and state insitutions have covered up the ‘truth’. How can they do this without being complicit? Why are the FDNY first responders at WTC1, 2 and 7 not confirming accounts of a controlled demolition? Why are the first responders at the Pentagon not confirming accounts of a missile strike? Why are the CIA, FBI and NSA (not to mention their overseas counterparts) not blaming anyone other than Al Qaeda? Are they idiots? Have they been brainwashed? Are they complicit in the cover-up? Or are they actually incovenient souls whose testimony shoots massive holes in your theories?
Finally, as I noted (and you conceded), Chief Nigro was the man who - by his own testimony - took the decision independently to evacuate WTC7. Therefore, continued obsessing over Silverstein is going to get you nowhere.
Real Truther: Who is the mysterious “fire department commander†that Silverstein allegedly had this exchange with, and where has this individual ever confirmed that he had that exchange with Silverstein?
Joseph Welch: Re: the ‘pull it’ red herrring, one of the comments above asks about the identity of the FDNY officer who ordered the evacuation of WTC7 prior to its collapse. He was Chief Daniel Nigro, and he gives his account here (22:10-23:34):
Ronald Wieck: Real Truther, you are a silly and uninformed liar. Everybody knows that Nigro has stated that he was not the FDNY rep who called Silverstein.
PRICELESS! Mr. Wieck I must admit you are quite, um, something! LOL
Now I know you’re supposed to be one of the satrs of the “debunkerâ€â€™s B-team, so I’ll give you another chance to answer a VERY simple question. With whom did Larry Silverstein have his alleged phone conversation on 9/11 (the “pull it†conversation) so that the public might verify his claim? Why do you find it so difficult to answer such a simple question? Can you just say “I don’t know†for once? If you just can’t bring yourself to do that then how about you explain to us why so many “debunkers†go around claiming it was Chief Nigro? Is it maybe because Silverstein mad eup the whole exchange so as to give people an excuse that could later be denied if necessary (as it did indeed become) for why his building was demolished that day?
I’m not pulling this out of my hat, either–I’ve had people chastise me on the street for raising the question of building 7 on the grounds that, as I was supposed to know, 7 was brought down intentionally because it had been so severely damaged and was in danger of collapse. Apparently these folks had seen “America Rebuilds†and interpreted the pull it comment the way everyone else did–that there was no sense in risking lives trying to put out the fire so that the fire department with the owner’s blessing brought it down. Now we *know* that the FDNY is not in the business of bringing buildings down when they don’t think it worth trying to fight the fire, but Silverstein seems to have figured that people watching the documentary (not produced by PBS mind you, but by a local NYC production company) would find that implication reasonable–it was after all such an extraordinary day!
When he realized that enough people were learning of the building’s collapse (it was not repeated ad nauseum like the towers’) and people started asking questions, he couldn’t even bring himself to make a statement, having his spokesperson instead deliver the ridiculous claim that in his alleged conversation when he said pull it he meant pull the firefighters. This explanation, that the fire department would call the building’s owner to tell him that they doubted they could put out the fire and that he would then suggest that if that was the case they should pull their men out of his building and let it burn was so ridiculous that people wondered if he wasn’t making the whole thing up, so naturally they want to know with whom it is he claims to have spoken. The fact that no one can produce an answer to this question leads one to conclude that Silverstein can’t find anyone to lie and say it was they with whom he spoke. Now, until even more people start asking this question he likely won’t bother, and as an old guy he will probably die soon enough and never have to be called on his lie.
In the meantime it is enough that folks like Joseph Welch will spread the lie that it was Chief Nigro and in the off-chance that they are called on it by someone who actually knows what they’re talking about that folks like Ronald Wieck will say that it doesn’t matter and call the person with the right information an ignorant lying moonbat or something.
I just hope for the sake of those who are saying such things that they are doing so out of total idiocy because if not it would constitute conspiracy to obstruct justice in a murder case and damned if that doesn’t carry a pretty serious sentence!
The possibility of a top down demolition was considered by these demolition experts:
The conclusion was:
1. This would require a large number of charges.
2.They would have to have been planted on the correct floor.
3. The explosives would have to have withstood the impact of the crash and the subsequent fire- no explosives can do this.
Wow! So if explosives AND a plane are used to demolish a building a LOT of explosives have to be used, but if ONLY a plane is used, the building can be demolished with NO explosives whatsoever. And this makes sense to you. Bravo!
Moreover:
1. Protec have seismic readers in New York- no explosions were detected
2. Demoloition experts were part of the response teams. They did not hear explosions as the buildings collapsed
3. They did not witness any explosive flashes- from your video you can see them quite clearly, especially if the explosions are top down- i.e one for every floor rather than top down which just needs the low levels to be exploded.
Therefore the conclusion is that it is not scientifically possible for the towers to have been brought down by controlled demolition.
Flashes: Another common feature of controlled demolitions is that people who are properly situated may see flashes when the explosives go off. Assistant Commissioner Stephen Gregory said: “I thought . . . before . . . No. 2 came down, that I saw low-level flashes. . . . Lieutenant Evangelista . . . asked me if I saw low-level flashes in front of the building, and I agreed with him because I . . . saw a flash flash flash . . . [at] the lower level of the building. You know like when they demolish a building, how when they blow up a building, when it falls down? That’s what I thought I saw.â€36
Flashes were reported in the north tower by Captain Karin Deshore, who said: “Somewhere around the middle of the World Trade Center, there was this orange and red flash coming out. Initially it was just one flash.â€37
I guess these first responders were lying. I mean, the Protec guys said they saw no flashes, so they MUST be lying–they MUST be part of the “truther conspiracy!â€
I mean, there is also video evidence of the flashes, but that too must be faked–â€Bob and Bri†are ALSO in on the truther conspiracy with Lieutenant Evangelista!! Damn clever jihadis!!