I, too, investigated 9/11 issue when I discovered that questions were raised. For me, it started with the one asking "
How did the towers collapse? Jet fuel cannot burn hot enough to melt steel". But, when I heard that, as well as other 9/11 questions like it, I took the time to look at more than just the claim itself; I investigated the context as well. And in doing so, I discovered that context is just as important as factual accuracy when evaluating conspiratorial claims. You see, much about conspiracy peddling involves casting correct facts in incorrect context, and then from there going on to cast more facts even further separated from the situation's context. On top of that, you begin to see factually inaccurate claims, too. Those claims increase in contextual separation and factual inaccuracy until an entirely false picture is built from what on the surface appear to be strings of eminently sensible objections. After the narrative is built, many who have followed the line end up being too intellectually invested and have trouble honestly analyzing the actual truth of the event. Truly honest folks are able to eventually identify the traps and realize the level of deception, but others who are not quite there yet remain mired in the conspiratorial narrative until the dissonace becomes too great to ignore. Either that, or they simply work at staying in the "questions" phase, thus avoiding such conflict. At any rate, there's a problem with the conspiracy narrative, and just about all of us here have seen the same deceptions and distortions used to build that narrative. I understand that the questions seem honestly compelling. They really are. It's just that the
answers to those are out there as well, and once you discover
those, you'll see how much of the conspiratorial claims are built on shakey foundations, misrepresentations, or outright distortions.
Consider the first claim I brought up, the one about jet fuel and steel melting. Why did the towers fall when the fires weren't hot enough to melt the steel? Well, the simple answer is that the towers' steel did not
have to melt for that to happen. It's actually a simple issue, yet the phrasing of the "question" leads people in the wrong direction. They'll trust that the representation of the issue is correct. And that's where the deceptions begin. The statement about jet fuel and steel is a total canard, a fact that happens to be independently correct (light a container of jet fuel on fire, then stick a steel rod into it. Unless the environment is somehow insulated, the steel won't melt), but in regards to 9/11, is irrelevant.
Context. You have to also critically analyze the questions posed in opposition of the "Official Story", and judge the question's merits. Is the question based on real understanding? Is the objection cast in the proper context? Too many times, I see wonderful levels of inquiry and skepticism aimed at the NIST, FEMA, 9/11 Commision, and other "official sources" narratives utterly wasted because they're based on blithe acceptance of flawed conspiratorial points. Misapprehensions are built from such careless acceptance.
Take another look at an example, one of your own claims: "Small pockets of fire", "two hand lines". That one appears to provide the base of a rather big misapprehension regarding the magnitude of the fires on 9/11. First of all, at some point you were presented with a mistaken quote, and apparently it never was corrected before you brought it here; again, the statement was not "small pockets", it was "isolated". Chief Palmer certainly did not consider those fires small, not if he was dedicating two 2-1/2 inch lines to fight them, and right there is the second place where you fail to catch onto the distortion: Two hand lines like that actually amounts to a good amount of capacity. 250 gallons per minute per line is hardly small. Furthermore, you characterize the entire conflageration, including the rubble pile fires, with a statement made by one person discussing one isolated area on one floor of one tower. As serious study of the events reveal, the 78th floor of the South Tower was one of the
lightest fires known to be in the towers; NCSTAR 1-5 characterizes it that way, yet on it's own merits,
2 hand lines is no small capacity. The point lesson here is that it is a mistake to characterize any of the fires in the towers as small, even the isolated pockets on the 78th floor that Chief Palmer saw. But the bigger lesson is that when you don't question the conspiracy narrative that presented that issue to you, you end up with a very wrong grasp of that small part of the truth the claim is discussing. (For context on Chief Palmer's quote, I recommend you read some other sources, such as this thread here (
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=96116) where some firefighters joined in and explained how much capacity two lines truly represented.).
Now, you mention other questions. You stated that you "
... left the official line when questions raised about the response (victim's family members raised alot of those initial concerns), questions raised about the large spread of debris in Pennslyvania, and lack of it at the Pentagon, and questions about surprising destruction of the towers". You also stated that you found the answers unsatisfactory. Did you really find the answers, or just the conspiracy peddler's misrepresentations of those answers? Again, I point at the example of the towers falling without the steel melting as one where the truth is poisoned by the mere dishonest framing of the question. After seeing you try to paint common and expected particles as significant, after seeing you compare large but otherwise common structure fires to the largest structure and, post collapse, largest debris pile fire since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after seeing you misstate the mistruth about fire sizes and actually error out on Chief Palmer's quote, and after seeing you so blithly buy into the fantasy of "nanocomposites", I wonder if the sources you depend on for the information you've given so far are being honest about the portrayal of the Shanksville crash or the Pentagon impact. Let's deal with Shanksville momentarily: What was wrong with the "large spread of debris in Pennsylvania"? Much of the heavy debris was not spread out so far; the lighter objects, like paper and fabrics, were indeed found futher away, some as far as 1-1/2 miles away near Indian Lake. I don't know if you were heading in this direction, but other people who've brought up the size of the Shanksville debris field generally are trying to work towards an argument that Flight 93 was shot down. That's usually the core claim that these questions build towards, and that issue is where efforts are best spent. In sum,
the flight data recorder information shows that the jet was in fact functioning normally all the way into the ground (
more info). So, does your objection to the size of the Shanksville debris field indicate a disbelief in the narrative that Flight 93 crashed? Because there's a huge burden of proof that must be met to overcome the
current body of proof indicating that
Flight 93 did indeed crash there, and did in fact do so because of the hijackers actions.
I can write a similar paragraph touching upon the Pentagon, and the plethora of proof that Flight 77 did indeed crash there, but this post is already too long, and I'm only assembling info found in and through this forum anyway. You can search for that as easily as I can.
At any rate, I don't really see any worthy objections so far. I see incredulity over the physics of the collapse, and presentation of other points that are either devoid of accuracy (the size of the fires, the color of the smoke), devoid of context (the statements about what's expected from mundane structure fires), or with entirely invented context (the molybdenum spherules, aluminosilicates). But I don't see a willingness to truly study the issues, only a willingness to push the conspiratorial narrative. It's fine to defend a thesis, but it's necessary to accept when data negates such. Can you accept that your current points regarding the fire sizes are wrong? And that you're mistaken regarding the significance of the smoke's color? Because those two points of your argument are wrong, and while they themselves don't undo the whole conspiracy thesis, they are erroneous data points that must be discared. Just like our own years-past points of diesel fuel from the emergency lines in WTC 7, and pancaking collapse initiation; those poins are now considered incorrect too, and we readily accept that. Can you discard your own errors in the interest of improving the accuracy for your own argument?
In the end, it's not enough to note that questions are being raised. Those questions and the context behind then have to be evaluated every bit as skeptically as the NIST, FEMA, 9/11 Commision, and other "official" claims. If they're not, then simply going from belief in the "Official Story" to belief in the alternate narrative isn't really an indication of enlightenment. It's merely a sign of bending with the wind.
