Flight 77 maneuver

[LSSBB]

so what are ya doing about it, sport?

I surmise that i have issued more 911 related FOIA requests than you have.

I issued 1.

How you doing on completing the story?

You say you wouldn't tolerate it, so what are you doing about it?

The smart money says nothing or trolling on the internet?

Hah! I'm tied with you, at one.

I wonder who has the most FOIA requests around here. BCR maybe?

 

[JayUtah]

Yes, I'm sorry that you assume that every post I make is a standalone statement not intended to have another statement as the conversation naturally progresses...

Are you also sorry for not explaining that you're now revising your position based on the helpful suggestions of your critics, and that you've abandoned your irrationally absolutist approach?

You're the one who sarcastically berated people for not sharing your view. A number of people rose to the challenge and explained their approach to historical study and general knowledge. You snuck back into the debate with a softened position. How do we know you're not just saying whatever you need to from moment to moment?

And I'm sorry that my often repeated views on history have been forgotten by you.

Are you also sorry for failing to reconcile your various arguments from time to time? You're the one who can't keep his story straight, not me. Given your demonstrated willingness to entrap your critics for nothing more than "gotcha!" value, and your demonstrated pattern of keeping your arguments ambiguous enough not to pin you down, I think my request for a reconciliation among your claims is hardly out of line.

Lastly, I'm sorry that you're comfortable with what information we have presently accessible to us and for your lack curiosity, which has perhaps been born out of apathy.

Are you also sorry for frantically trying to cram these words in my mouth, and for blatantly insulting me?

Have you given up?

Are you also sorry for continuing to sarcastically berate people who aren't like you?

 

[Mark F]

Are you also sorry for not explaining that you're now revising your position based on the helpful suggestions of your critics, and that you've abandoned your irrationally absolutist approach?

You're the one who sarcastically berated people for not sharing your view. A number of people rose to the challenge and explained their approach to historical study and general knowledge. You snuck back into the debate with a softened position. How do we know you're not just saying whatever you need to from moment to moment?



Are you also sorry for failing to reconcile your various arguments from time to time? You're the one who can't keep his story straight, not me. Given your demonstrated willingness to entrap your critics for nothing more than "gotcha!" value, and your demonstrated pattern of keeping your arguments ambiguous enough not to pin you down, I think my request for a reconciliation among your claims is hardly out of line.

Are you also sorry for frantically trying to cram these words in my mouth, and for blatantly insulting me?


Are you also sorry for continuing to sarcastically berate people who aren't like you?

Bravo!

 

[JayUtah]

You're right, however, why shouldn't we strive to have as much of the record as possible? Should we, in regards to 9/11, be happy with what we've got now?

Now let's try this again.

Let's go back to your analogy to the novel. You said having only a certain percentage of the available record is like having a book with the final three chapters missing. The insinuation is that you'd have the beginning and the middle of the story, but not the end. But as others pointed out, that's not the only way you can chop three chapters' worth of material out of a book.

In fact, we routinely do it the other way when we write books or make movies. After the story is told, an editor comes in and pares away that which is not necessary. If you remove the equivalent three or four paragraphs from each chapter, you end up with a shorter book than you once had, but not one that fails to tell the story.

Now obviously such a conscious and deliberate editorial process is not the main reason we don't often have all the information for some historical occurrence. Happenstance events don't leave tidy evidence trails. And of course the elephant in the room is the protection of privileged information. Since there are legitimate reasons for redactions, assuming it's done to alter the story is the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

No one, including me, has said we shouldn't strive to have as much of the record as possible for any historical even in which we are interested. That isn't the issue. The issue is whether it's reasonable to expect ever to have all of it. Since it isn't, the curiosity that drives the search for more information has to be tempered. If it isn't, the resulting anxiety drives unproductive speculation to fill the gap with ... whatever. LIHOP, nanothermite, missiles.

When skeptics (or at least I) say they're comfortable in this way, it doesn't mean they lack curiosity. It means they're content to wait until that curiosity can be satisfied properly, without anxiety or wanton speculation. And they've reconciled with the likelihood that some curiosity will never be satisfied. Our capacity to generate questions pertinent to a happenstance event will always far outstrip our ability to collect information to answer them. And conspiracism has become adept at generating unanswerable questions that seem very important without actually being so.

Then skeptics (or at least I) can go on to say they're comfortable that the level of information now in our possession supports a conclusion. That's not giving up. That's not apathy. That's not a lack of curiosity. It's simply a subjective opinion that the outstanding information is unlikely to change any of the prevailing story's broad strokes. Stated simply, the skeptic is willing at a certain point to make the inductive leap. In the 9/11 case, it's a tentative vote that after more than a decade of study, what remains undiscovered isn't likely to materially alter the prevailing timeline, assign new guilt, or exonerate the nominal terrorists.

No one, including me, has advocated that drawing a conclusion is akin digging a trench and staying in it forever, as critics of skeptics are wont to claim. The inductive leap is taken only until more information becomes available for evaluation, on the basis that objectively a lot is already known. Comfort with the information in hand is not necessarily the same as satisfaction that it answers the question conclusively, without any possibility of amendment. It's simply a willingness not to freak out until new information becomes available. Conspiracists think that speculation and handwaving ought to be enough to invalidate an inductive leap. Much of the skeptic's objection to that is what gets misinterpreted as entrenchment.

There's some precedent for making that leap. There was a 25-year moratorium on publishing the Kennedy autopsy photos. When the world finally got to see the head wound up close, they discovered it was largely as the witnesses had described. The Apollo astronaut debriefings were classified for 25 years, leading to speculation they recorded discussions of aliens or fakery. When they were finally published, none of the books on Apollo needed to be rewritten. There are separate threads here for debating those points; I cite them here only as examples.

Even when it was subsequently revealed that USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian airliner from within Iran's territorial waters (not international waters, as the Navy initially claimed), the resulting hand-wringing didn't last long or add all that much to the pile of condemnation already heaped upon the Navy, nor the liability the U.S. already accepted for the incident. In other words, it didn't materially change the existing story. I mention that because I think it's an excellent example of the kind of information guilty parties would try to hide if they could, the kind of information you generally allude to when you speak of trying to uncover it and hold people responsible, and the kind of information that periodically comes to light in our study of history. The skeptic's rejoinder is that this is what it takes to turn a conspiracy theory into an actual conspiracy.

You're the one who insisted that 100% revelation was the acceptable level of comfort. You're the one who once said government should not be allowed to keep any secrets whatsoever. I need to impress upon you that these are the irrational positions, not ours. If you want to retreat from them, fine. But then say that's what you're doing, and give your critics their due.

I believe a more rational approach is that 20-odd pages of redacted documents, amid the entire body of 9/11 evidence, is not going to materially alter or add to the prevailing understanding of what happened. Since others have seen it and pronounce it unremarkable, I'm comfortable in that conclusion.

As I've said many times, your arguments on practically any subject in this forum always boil down to the same flawed proposition: that if any information is unavailable, you are justified in believing the story would be substantially different were it revealed. The response you keep getting is a concerted judgment that the inductive gap is simply not big enough in all these cases to fit all the conceivable anxieties and speculations that are being crammed into it.

You're not the first or only conspiracy theorist to use this argument. It's fairly common. You're not even the first to try the "FOIA requests get us nowhere," argument. "We don't have 100% of the information, and you should all be ashamed of yourselves for drawing a conclusion without it," is pretty much a yawner, for the reasons we've given you abundantly.

 

[Hellbound]

I love you, JayUtah. If I were a woman, I'd have your babies.



(excellent post, in case you missed what I was trying to say there )

 

[Allen773]

I'm no pilot, but I reckon that when your one goal is to crash a hijacked-in-flight 757 into one of the five sides of the Pentagon, it's a tad easier to fly that 757 than, say, if you were landing in rainy weather at a small airstrip.

If anything, Hanjour's turn/maneuver is evidence that he wasn't a good pilot. He initially overshot his target (assuming that it was always the Pentagon, which IIRC, the 9/11 Commission reported that it was). And it was sunny and clear weather on the East Coast on that day, so that wasn't an issue.

 

[Allen773]

Then, logically, you should be much more demanding towards the Truthers, who have about 1% of "the story", and an irrelevant 1% at that.

I'm a little uneasy about certain aspects of many scientific theories, for example wave-particle duality^WP. But I wouldn't use this nagging doubt as a blunt instrument with which to beat the whole world of quantum physics.

Creationists use this shoddy technique all the time, finding something apparently inexplicable by evolutionary theory and claiming "Therefore, creation!"

"Explain Building 7."

"Jet fuel can't melt steel beams."

"Hani Hanjour was a crap pilot."

Checkmate, NWO Shills!

 

[Pinch]

I must have missed the post where I said that's why I am here. Could you locate it and confirm your claim about me?

"Asking questions" Its all you do. You offer very little, if any cogent discussion on the events of the day back in Sept of 2001. All you do is raise doubts that reside in your mind. Even this latest issue about the hijackers supposedly training at US military bases. Then there's the incredibly moronic question about what day do "smart" questions begin. The very latest is that you seem to think there will be 100% closure to any story, every anomaly/question/query answered.

Where does this mind set come from?

 

[GlennB]

I love you, JayUtah. If I were a woman, I'd have your babies.

Nah, I wouldn't go that far. But I'd cook him a very nice dinner.

 

[tsig]

You're right, however, why shouldn't we strive to have as much of the record as possible? Should we, in regards to 9/11, be happy with what we've got now?

No, I demand to know which rivet popped first on both aircraft.

 

[Jango]

"Asking questions" Its all you do. You offer very little, if any cogent discussion on the events of the day back in Sept of 2001. All you do is raise doubts that reside in your mind. Even this latest issue about the hijackers supposedly training at US military bases. Then there's the incredibly moronic question about what day do "smart" questions begin. The very latest is that you seem to think there will be 100% closure to any story, every anomaly/question/query answered.
Where does this mind set come from?

Hyperbole and assumptions. And here you are complaining about me...

 

[Jango]

You're the one who insisted that 100% revelation was the acceptable level of comfort.

I said 'I Like Complete Stories'.

You're the one who once said government should not be allowed to keep any secrets whatsoever.

Link please.

 

[Jango]

This is pretty funny though. I made the 'legitimate questions' thread and the overwhelming majority of people said 'No, there is no legitimate reason to question the official 9/11 narrative,' yet, in this thread, the obvious fact that we do not have the entire record on the event is openly admitted. Add those two together = While we know that we do not know everything about 9/11, there still is no good reason to question anything about it.

 

[JayUtah]

This is pretty funny though. I made the 'legitimate questions' thread...

Keep trying to dig yourself out of that hole. You thoroughly ignored the reasons people gave for their various answers, just as you thoroughly ignore the actual arguments in this thread. When you can elevate your argument to something beyond the rhetorical "gotcha!" then maybe you'll be taken a bit more seriously.

 

[Jango]

Keep trying to dig yourself out of that hole. You thoroughly ignored the reasons people gave for their various answers, just as you thoroughly ignore the actual arguments in this thread. When you can elevate your argument to something beyond the rhetorical "gotcha!" then maybe you'll be taken a bit more seriously.

I don't care if you take me seriously or not. I am not here to impress you, no matter what your self-inflated ego whispers to you.

And it is beyond the rhetorical "gotcha!" which is why it is funny: you do not see it even though the contorting logical gymnastics routine is clear to see.

You're just angry that I choreographed the routine, and over a hundred of your peers performed flawlessly for all to see.

 

[beachnut]

This is pretty funny though. I made the 'legitimate questions' thread and the overwhelming majority of people said 'No, there is no legitimate reason to question the official 9/11 narrative,' yet, in this thread, the obvious fact that we do not have the entire record on the event is openly admitted. Add those two together = While we know that we do not know everything about 9/11, there still is no good reason to question anything about it.

You have failed to post a legitimate reason in your JAQ thread; you posted the smoked moved, and did not know it was due to the 175's impact. That was your reason for questioning an "official narrative" which you can't define.
How is the smoke moving part of the "official narrative"?

Hyperbole and assumptions. And here you are complaining about me...

Like this assumption.

... the hijackers, some of whom that lived openly, trained on U.S. military bases ...

aka, a lie.
Or this assumption

... But working under the assumption that Hani was a part of the Bojinka plot, why keep that information secret? What implications does that reality create?

did you make this up, or find it on the Internet.

I said 'I Like Complete Stories'. ....

You mean completely false fabricated stories.

... the hijackers, some of whom that lived openly, trained on U.S. military bases ...

... and assumptions. And here you are complaining about me...

... But working under the assumption that Hani was a part of the Bojinka plot, why keep that information secret? What implications does that reality create?

 

[HotRodDeluxe]

I don't care if you take me seriously or not. I am not here to impress you, no matter what your self-inflated ego whispers to you.

And it is beyond the rhetorical "gotcha!" which is why it is funny: you do not see it even though the contorting logical gymnastics routine is clear to see.

You're just angry that I choreographed the routine, and over a hundred of your peers performed flawlessly for all to see.

Does it make you feel clever that you entrapped people with a poorly worded poll?

As pointed out repeatedly, you did not set the parameters of the question so it was open to interpretation. If I read it to mean the collapse of the buildings was owing to the hijackers as was the Pentagon and Shanksville incidents, then no, as they have been answered adequately. That is how I originally read it, but I thought further about the failure of the agencies to co-operate, but even then, that has been addressed to the satisfaction of many with the formation of the Dept. of Homeland Security. The only reason I voted 'yes' is because of some unresolved CYA issues that MAY exist and that was it.

 

[JayUtah]

I said 'I Like Complete Stories'.

And then went on to say a whole lot more.

I like Completed Stories. Not 37.5% complete, not 50%, not 90%. I like 100% Why don't you? Why are you so comfortable with less than 100% told stories? You wouldn't tolerate that kind of thing if you bought a book off the shelf and discovered that the last three chapters are not included in your copy of the book (I mean, who checks books for completeness before purchasing them?). You would rightfully demand a refund for the lack of completeness. Yet, in matters of real importance such as this, you are perfectly fine with not having 100% completeness. I wonder why.

It's the "whole lot more" that makes your position untenable. You state your position and then insinuate that any other position is irrational.

Link please.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=10583923#post10583923

But as is usual with all your knee-jerk absolutist positions, you were compelled to backpedal away from it later in the thread, just like you tried to back away just now. The problem there, as here, is that you don't own up to your prior absurdities -- except for one time whereafter I praised you for doing it. That you eventually can be led by your critics to a reasonable point of view is a point in your favor. But you lose that point when you continue to berate your critics for having shown the flaws in your thinking that you acknowledge by correcting them.

 

[abaddon]

I don't care if you take me seriously or not.

That's cool. I don't take you seriously.

I am not here to impress you,

That's cool, you do not impress.

no matter what your self-inflated ego whispers to you.

Mr. Pot, may I introduce you to Mr. Kettle?

And it is beyond the rhetorical "gotcha!" which is why it is funny: you do not see it even though the contorting logical gymnastics routine is clear to see.

Yet all you seem to be able to provide is rhetorical "gotchas". Why is that?

You're just angry that I choreographed the routine, and over a hundred of your peers performed flawlessly for all to see.

Wow. You are flat out stating that all of this is you thinking you choreographed some victory. Guess again.

 

[JayUtah]

I am not here to impress you, no matter what your self-inflated ego whispers to you.

Keep up with the insults. They're really working. I spoke only about being taken seriously, which you do seem to want. You spoke about "impressing" me. I didn't say a word about that.

...even though the contorting logical gymnastics routine is clear to see.

Clear to whom? By whose judgment? Repeatedly declaring victory in one form or another is not an argument.

You're just angry that I choreographed the routine, and over a hundred of your peers performed flawlessly for all to see.

What makes you think I'm angry? You're the one hurling invective at an increasingly reportable rate. On the contrary, I revealed your rhetorical trap pages before you sprang it, and predicted your behavior almost exactly. How do you think I was able to do that? Consider that it might be because you're not the brilliant political analyst and commentator you make yourself out to be, but are instead using the same old tricks every fringe theorist uses -- stuff we've all seen a hundred times before.