What Really Happened on 9/11?

[shuize]

I just ran across this thread a few days after an exchange with a couple of 9/11 CTers on a different site (mainly involving the Pentagon attack). I am by no means an expert, but I was pretty happy to see most of the arguments I came up with after a few minutes are the same used by those much more versed in the subject to debunk CT believers.

My post from that site:

-- Since I've been accused of avoiding the argument, let me see if I can summarize the idiocy of various 9/11 conspiracy theories. This is only a partial list but something I came up with in about half an hour. I'm sure someone willing to devote more time could easily come up with more:

The Pentagon flight (AA 77) never existed. Family members that say they saw relatives get on the plane are lying.

The same family members that say they received telephone calls from family members describing the flight are lying.

Recorded 911 calls from passengers on the planes were all faked.

Cockpit voice recordings of aircrew being murdered and the later struggle with passengers attempting to retake UA flight 93 were all faked.

Family members and officials who listened to these recordings and say otherwise are lying.

A government conspiracy of this scale would work fine.

Alternatively, if AA flight 77 (Pentagon flight) did exist the passengers were all killed upon landing somewhere else. This includes former federal prosecutor and wife of the Solicitor General, Barbra Olson.

This was apparently done for the purpose of obtaining their DNA to plant at the "crash" site later.

It is rational to think this.

The impact of the planes and resulting fires, along with thousands and thousands of gallons of burning jet fuel could never weaken the support structure of the World Trade Center Towers despite repeated statements by various experts to the contrary.

Therefore, someone, probably the CIA, planted explosives at various points through both buildings to explode after both planes hit the towers.

Nobody would notice anyone planting explosives large enough to bring down either building.

Explosives would work perfectly and not detonate in either building until after the buildings were ablaze long enough for smoke to obscure the actual explosions.

Explosives were also planted outside the Pentagon to make it look like a plane hit it.

This is logical because it makes sense to _fake_ a plane crash into the Pentagon on the same day two other planes hit the WTC towers.

The government would be willing to run the risk of discovery to fake the strike on the Pentagon in order to sell the public on the need for the War on Terror.

Two planes striking the WTC and the murder of thousands of civilians would not be enough to sell the public on the need for a War on Terror.

Eyewitness accounts of a plane crashing into the Pentagon are false. People who make such claims are lying.

Nobody would notice anyone planting a bomb at the Pentagon.

Previous Al Queda suicide attacks such as those on the U.S.S. Cole, the Kohbar Towers, U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are irrelevant.

Statements by Al Queda taking credit for the 9/11 attacks are false.

Alternatively, Al Queda claims may be real, but it was really CIA handlers that recruited them to do carry out those attacks.

Al Queda and the CIA work perfectly together.

Again, it is rational to think this.

-- I repeat my statement posted above, you really have to be retarded to believe this crap.

By the way, as noted above, one of the CT believers on this site also referenced a site which claimed the WTC Towers were taken down by small nukes. To think that people really buy this -- it boggles the mind.

 

[Belz...]

Well, 9/11 has reached a status similar to the JFK assassination, hasn't it ?

If you can't deal with it, make it up!

 

[valis]

Well, 9/11 has reached a status similar to the JFK assassination, hasn't it ?

If you can't deal with it, make it up!

The wonderful thing though is the addition of the 'net. Back at the time of the JFK coverup the conspiracy watchers would mimeograph newsletters in the basement and mail them to the faithful. If a skeptic wanted to investigate the claims if would require a huge effort to track down the CTs alledged sources. Few people had the time or energy or resources to engage in questioning such nonsense.

Today their sources, 'facts' and theories can be eaisly checked in almost real time via the 'net. Anyone who hears this stuff can easily find enough info and debate to make an informed decison as to the accuracy of the CTs.

I think that is why we see such frustration when some of the knowledgable members of this board start questioning their claims. CT folks are not used to the level of scrutiny the 'net enables. The even better news being that when a REAL evil conspiracy comes along it should get exposed and verified pretty quickly.

 

[Gravy]

Yup, Snowing in NYC.... Come spring come....


I spoke with a co-worker who heard from a structural engineer who said that the towers were built to withstand the impact of a jet plane. It did just that extremely well. He went on to say that they completely overlooked the effect of the hell hot fire due to the jet fuel and since the jets had just taken off from Newark with enough fuel to reach the west coast, the fire was tremendously hot. They admit they neglected to look beyond the impact alone.

Sounds just like what happened .............funny thing

See Wildcat's post for a good explanation http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1551023&postcount=364

The planes didn't take off from Newark...that's just a 2-minute flight from the WTC.

 

[Rolfe]

They did take off from Boston though, which is still comparatively close.

When I was watching the TV coverage, the maps I saw initially were fairly large-scale, showing just the actual flight paths of the planes. It looked like quite a long way. It was only when I later saw maps of the intended flight plan that I realised what a very small percentage of their scheduled journey had in fact been completed. There much have been an enormous amount of fuel on board.

Someone earlier described the planes as "Molotov cocktails launched from Boston" - sounds about right.

Rolfe.

 

[Shaun from Scotland]

Thanks Shaun. Somehow I was thinking it had been a C4 broadcast, but I think you're right, that's the programme. Broadcast 7th March 2002. Everything sussed out to the point where they were able to make a glossy documentary about it within six months of the actual event. It's a pity the transcript doesn't include the fancy schematics and graphics, but you can't have everything.

[ETA: Quoted by Chipmunk Stew above:Oops, maybe these guys should just have tuned into BBC2....]

So, has anyone asked the CTers what it is about that lot they find so impossible to believe?

Oooooh Nooooo..... They actually admit it....!!!So, the Horizon programme proves the case for the conspiracy!!!!

Or maybe not....It's all in the context.

Oh, but just because we can't quite follow that really fairly simple explanation, and we know nothing at all about structural engineering, and we sort of would have expected the buildings to behave differently if they had suffered nothing but the unprecedented airliner hits, and we note the superficial similarity to buildings brought down by controlled explosions - gosh, it must have BEEN controlled explosions.

No matter how improbable.

Oh, get a life.

Rolfe.

Notice Rolfe that this show does not claim what is one of the main points the CT'ers think they have. The steel DID NOT melt.

"NARRATOR: . The intense fire that followed had then concentrated around the core. Two things would then have happened. Floor trusses, softened by the fire, would have fallen away from the core. Without the trusses to hold it firm, the core would have lost crucial support. At the same time, the core's exposed steel girders, also long softened by the heat, would have begun to buckle under the weight of the tower. The result: another progressive collapse."

No melting required.

Its one of these points that just floats around and no-one seems to want to answer from the CT side.

"CT'er - The steel couldn't have melted

JREF'er - It didn't need to

CT'er - Erm....watch the video"


Its kinda scary that there are peole who think like this actually....

 

[Rolfe]

Given that the transcript is freely available on the Internet, why do we see no reference to this programme by the CTers? Coming into this cold, as it were, it was my memory of seeing this programme that was the source for my existing opinions on the matter, and the main thing I would require to see refuted by anyone seriously putting forward a conspiracy theory.

No, of course the steel didn't melt. It softened enough to deform. That's what you could see in the tons and tons of the stuff lying around at the salvage depot. What is so hard about that for these people to understand?

So come on, Conspiracy Believer, give us your take on the explanation provided by Horizon.

Rolfe.

 

[Pardalis]

Here's an article linked by our corporal.

Eyewitness Reports Persist Of
Bombs At WTC Collapse
By Christopher Bollyn
Exclusive to American Free Press
12-2-1

Despite reports from numerous eyewitnesses and experts, including news reporters on the scene, who heard or saw explosions immediately before the collapse of the World Trade Center, there has been virtual silence in the mainstream media.

Yeah, that’s because it’s bogus, no intelligent media oragnisation with integrity
will post it without any evidence.

Television viewers watching the horrific events of Sept. 11 saw evidence of explosions before the towers collapsed. Televised images show what appears to be a huge explosion occurring near ground level, in the vicinity of the 47-story Salomon Brothers Building, known as WTC 7, prior to the collapse of the first tower.

Van Romero, an explosives expert and former director of the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center at New Mexico Tech, said on Sept. 11, "My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse."

Video tapes should not be admissable as the only evidence to make such a claim.

The collapse of the structures resembled the controlled implosions used to demolish old structures and was "too methodical to be a chance result of airplanes colliding with the structures," Romero told The Albuquerque Journal hours after the attack.

Implosions are violent collapses inwards, which are used to demolish buildings in areas of high density, to prevent damage to surrounding buildings. Precision-timed explosives are placed on strategic load-bearing columns and beams to cause the controlled collapse.

Demolition experts say that towers are the most difficult buildings to bring down in a controlled manner. A tower tends to fall like a tree, unless the direction of its fall is controlled by directional charges. The WTC towers "smokestacked" neatly, falling within the boundaries of their foundations.

Skeptics say this could not have happened coincidentally and it must have been caused by strategically placed and precisely timed internal charges. Videotape images may reveal these internal charges precipitating the controlled demolition of the towers and WTC 7.

Again, only video, not enough evidence to make this claim valid.

However, there is other information that lends credence to Romero's controversial scenario. One eyewitness whose office is near the World Trade Center told AFP that he was standing among a crowd of people on Church Street, about two-and-a-half blocks from the South tower, when he saw "a number of brief light sources being emitted from inside the building between floors 10 and 15." He saw about six of these brief flashes, accompanied by "a crackling sound" before the tower collapsed. Each tower had six central support columns.

Wow, that eyewitness is lucky, no one else seems to have witnessed it (we're talking of thousand of people present).

One of the first firefighters in the stricken second tower, Louie Cacchioli, 51, told People Weekly on Sept. 24: "I was taking firefighters up in the elevator to the 24th floor to get in position to evacuate workers. On the last trip up a bomb went off. We think there were bombs set in the building."

Kim White, 32, an employee on the 80th floor, also reported hearing an explosion. "All of a sudden the building shook, then it started to sway. We didn't know what was going on," she told People. "We got all our people on the floor into the stairwell . . . at that time we all thought it was a fire . . .We got down as far as the 74th floor . . . then there was another explosion."

Accept this: firfighters at that moment had no idea what had really happenned. On the spot speculations go wild when events like that occur, especially when you run into a stressful extreme situation.

The contractor who is reported to have been the first on the WTC collapse scene to cart away the rubble that remains is a company that specializes in the scientific demolition of large buildings, Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI) of Baltimore, headed by Mark Loizeaux.

CDI is the same contractor that demolished and hauled away the shell of the bombed Oklahoma City Murrah building, actions that prevented independent investigators from pursuing evidence on leads suggesting that there were bombs set off inside the building.

So what common purpose have the the bombings of Oklahoma City and the 9-11 attacks?

In february 2000, a federal grand jury indicted Mark Loizeaux, Douglas Loizeaux and Controlled Demolition, Inc. on charges of falsely reporting campaign contributions by asking family members and CDI employees to donate to the campaign of Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.).

This almost looks like diffamation.

The Baltimore Sun reported that the illegal contributions allegedly occurred between 1996 and 1998. The Loizeaux brothers and CDI were acquitted in Sept ember 2000. Cleaning up the estimated 1.2 million tons of rubble will reportedly cost $7 billion and take up to a year.

A year... That’s a long time to leave evidence in plane site.

Removing the debris has also been controversial. The police said that some scrap metal has been diverted to mob-controlled businesses rather than the dump where investigators are examining rubble for clues and human remains.

So let me get this straight. demolition workers had the time and expertise to sort throught the rubble to choose witch debris to send to the investigators, and witch they should eliminate. Unlikely.

The second plane nearly missed the South Tower, cutting through a corner. Most of its fuel burned in an outside explosion. However, this building collapsed first, long before the North Tower, into which a similar plane entered completely.

The two planes didn't collide with the towers the same way.

 

[Shaun from Scotland]

Hey come on. It all makes perfect sense. I can see the plotters now....

"Lets crash 2 planes into the towers, attracting every reporter in NE America to the scene with thousands of cameras, tv news crews etc and then deliberately blow it up with explosives in full view of all those cameras and a watching world - Don't worry they wont see it......."

 

[ntech]

See Wildcat's post for a good explanation http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1551023&postcount=364

The planes didn't take off from Newark...that's just a 2-minute flight from the WTC.

You are kidding right?
It doesn't mean that the plane had not travelled on it's way for some time before turning around. One of the two flights was the exact flight that I would take every few months to go to SF.
Are you ignoring all the family of the people who died on those flights?
Really Gravy, you ignore the good facts only to accept the Bullsh*t. Not very smart.

 

[asthmatic camel]

Why? Why? Why do people feel it necessary to make a drama out of a crisis?

The terrorists flew two 747's into the twin towers and also planted bombs to coincide with the impacts to make sure the buildings collapsed?

Yeah, sure. Next thing we know, Carlos will be back with his magical flying hat of doom ©.

Sheesh.

 

[Pardalis]

Why? Why? Why do people feel it necessary to make a drama out of a crisis?

intellectual masturbation

 

[ntech]

intellectual masturbation

or the tin-foil cap is too tight.....

 

[rwguinn]

Given that the transcript is freely available on the Internet, why do we see no reference to this programme by the CTers? Coming into this cold, as it were, it was my memory of seeing this programme that was the source for my existing opinions on the matter, and the main thing I would require to see refuted by anyone seriously putting forward a conspiracy theory.

No, of course the steel didn't melt. It softened enough to deform. That's what you could see in the tons and tons of the stuff lying around at the salvage depot. What is so hard about that for these people to understand?

So come on, Conspiracy Believer, give us your take on the explanation provided by Horizon.

Rolfe.

Hold it, hold it, hold it!
Let's get this straight.
The steel did not get soft enough to deform, or even become pliable, as most people think of it.It did get weaker. A fine distinction, I know, but let's be as accurate as possible
Take a generic steel. It has a yield stress of 36000psi (2.48x10^8 Pa) at 70 degrees F. Heat it to 500 degrees F, and that value is at 3/4 the original. At 800 degrees F, it is about 1/2.
Stress is Force/area in compression. You also have to add in M*C/I for bending, where C and I are geometry-based values--the shape is important, here.. Ideally, the collumns are in pure axial load--that's the way they are designed.
So now we have 1/2 the strength, plus!!!! steel gets longer as it gets hotter!!!! Amazing physical property, known to everyone except CT'er's. If the heating is symetrical, it all gets longer at the same rate. If not, as was likely the case, things get complex.
The floor trusses got longer (and weaker), trying to push the support collumns. This puts them (the collumns) in bending--they were designed for axial loading. Additionally, the collumns themselves are trying to get longer, while at the same time, getting weaker-both by heating.
It does not take long to fail a beam by restraining the ends (loading them), and heating the beam. You can find the values for Coefficient of thermal expansion (units are in/in/degree F), and calculate the strain (elongation per unit length (in/in)) at any temperature. Look that strain up on a force/displacement curve for your material, and figure the stress. Amazing how fast it goes to failure...

 

[Mongrel]

Then show me just one example of a plane crash, ANY plane crash, that any part of the fuselage was vaporized.

Wow, this thread got big quickly... Anyway I've finally found the links to a couple of clips that I had knocking around that show an F-4 at a test site being run into a reinforced concrete wall at 320MPH. I'd imagine that a military aircraft is built on much more robust lines than a commercial airliner


http://www.sandia.gov/media/mov_mpg/f_4crashtest_slow.mov
http://www.sandia.gov/media/mov_mpg/f_4crashtest.mov

and again in a smaller format so they may load faster
http://www.sandia.gov/media/mov_mpg/f_4crash_test_slow.mpg
http://www.sandia.gov/media/mov_mpg/f_4crashtest.mpg

 

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

Note to self: Phantom vs. wall = wall wins.

 

[Bronze Dog]

Good ol' wall. Nothing beats wall.

o/~ I fought the wall... and the wall won. o/~

Okay, I'm done.

 

[Pardalis]

http://www.sandia.gov/media/mov_mpg/f_4crashtest_slow.mov
http://www.sandia.gov/media/mov_mpg/f_4crashtest.mov

These are actually fun to watch when you know nobody got hurt. I'm getting sick of watching those 9-11 tapes...

 

[Gravy]

You are kidding right?
It doesn't mean that the plane had not travelled on it's way for some time before turning around. One of the two flights was the exact flight that I would take every few months to go to SF.
Are you ignoring all the family of the people who died on those flights?
Really Gravy, you ignore the good facts only to accept the Bullsh*t. Not very smart.

Uh, I just made a simple correction to someone's misstatement, my friend. You don't seem to have read my other posts here. Perhaps start with this one on the previous page http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1551518&postcount=388

 

[Mongrel]

These are actually fun to watch when you know nobody got hurt.

Yeah, a friend who works in an aviation firm sent them to me with the normal "Cool! - destroying planes" type message. Been having to scour through a knackered hard drive to recover the URLs ever since this bit of nonsense started.