repost

Fence dealt this one a death blow in another thread, which I repost here for ease of reference. I'd love to see a sensible comeback, but ain't holding my breath:



"But I believe the [thermite] hypothesis worthy of consideration."

Yes. And I have considered it at length. The hypothesis goes like this.

There are rumors of melted steel in the rubble. There are reports of sulfur and/or the effects of sulfidation. What's one possible explanation for this? Well, there's one formulation of thermite that uses sulfur, and we know that thermite can melt steel and is often used for it. So what about the idea that thermite was used to melt the steel?

Lots wrong with it. First, in commercial thermite sulfur is never used as a binder. The most common binder is a polyurethane compound. It's a lot easier to work with in a large-scale production process, and it doesn't stink. The recipe for diasite (sulfur-bound thermite) comes from The Anarchist's Cookbook. It's meant to be mixed in small amounts by clever malcontents in their basements, where heating sulfur is easier than obtaining and mixing urethane resins. And the sulfur dioxide by-product during combustion is meant to annoy firefighters and, frankly, stink like crazy. In other words, to announce itself.

Even better, you can sinter thermite. Sintering is where you take a powdered material and compress it while heating it to a plastic state -- not molten, just gushy. And when you compress it and let it cool, you get a brick of material. And in thermite's case, you get a brick of properly mixed reactants in solid form with no binder.

Why is that important? Because, according to the conspiracy theory, thermite was a "foreign" substance placed intentionally in order to wreak some sort of havoc with the WTC structure. That role creates the motive to keep the thermite and its effects undetectable. So if we rank the available thermite formulations in order of detectability, at the top you have diasite, part of whose purpose is to stink to high heaven. At any rate it will leave sulfur compounds in the air and on nearby materials. In the middle you have the commercial thermite. Polyurethane binder residue is harder to detect. And at the bottom of the list you have sintered thermite which would leave absolutely no foreign residue. It is composed of iron oxides and aluminum, both of which materials -- if discovered in the WTC debris -- would not be considered out of place.

So the first question is why the alleged conspirators used the most detectable form of thermite?

Second, thermite is not an explosive. It is an incendiary. It doesn't "blow up" stuff, it just burns or melts it. And it takes its time doing it too. Yes, thermite is completely capable of melting the steel used in the WTC structure, but it cannot "cut" it or displace it such as is usually desired in a controlled demolition.

Further, the estimates by conspiracy theorists of how much thermite would be required to, say, compromise the core columns are woefully naive. They ignore much of the gritty details of thermodynamics and heat transfer and come up with estimates that are off by orders of magnitude from those derived with proper methods. This is what happens when self-proclaimed "experts" try to meddle in sciences they don't really understand.

If you want to make a steel column fail, thermite is just not a very good way of doing it. And the massive steel construction of the base of the WTC core would require enormous amounts of thermite to melt it simultaneously to the point of failure.

And melted steel is, frankly, anomalous. If the alleged conspirators planned to fail the columns by melting them instead of buckling or fracturing them -- as would be expected in a strictly mechanical collapse -- why would they think that uninvolved forensic engineers coming later would simply overlook the "anomalously" melted steel?

The second question therefore is why the conspirators chose this particular substance and what effect it was intended to create that would be harmonious with the later official explanation?

Third, the thermite is alleged to have been placed in the basement, where the melted steel was supposed to have been seen. But the structure was not observed to fail in the basement, nor would any activity in the basement have led to the observed failure modes at the point of impact and subsequently below.

So the third question is why the allegations are inconsistent with the observations?

When you start adding stuff up like this, it becomes very unlikely that thermite had anything to do with the failure of WTC 1 or 2. The properties of thermite are incompatible with its claimed role, and the alleged scenario is incompatible with the observed sequence of events.

There is a methodological mistake being made as well. The conspiracy theorists presume a commonality between the sulfur and the melted steel. That is, they presume that a single explanation must account for both observations. In real investigations you never presume that two observations are connected. You consider the possibility that they are, but you don't follow only that possibility. You consider that the sulfur and the melting are not connected, and that possibly two independent chains of cause and effect are more probable than the one combined chain.

Now it would seem that the thermite theory is the most parsimonious theory because it explains the most observations. But that is not how parsimony works in real-world investigations. Simplicity of the theory is not measured by how many cause-effect chains you need, but rather whether the combination of chains is globally more or less plausible than another. And this must consider all the new questions that your hypothesis raises: the things that must be true (or testable) in order for your hypothesis to hold (or be tested).

If you have one theory that explains two observations, but it raises three or four new problematic questions (e.g., why did the conspirators choose the stupidest way of making thermite?), then it isn't necessarily more parsimonious than two theories -- one for each observation -- that don't raise any new questions. The "simplest" theory is often mischaracterized by people who don't have a lot of hands-on experience conducting investigations.

Now it turns out that this particular commonality is not thoroughly implausible, but the thermite explanation to account for both is clearly unparsimonious because it raises too many additional questions. There is another possible explanation involving the formation of eutectic mixtures of sulfur and steel. Sulfidation of steel occurs in urban environments, and where it occurs it would allow the melting of steel at lower temperatures, precluding the need for high-temperature incendiary.

The natural sulfidation theory is, of course, not perfect either. But it is more parsimonious in that it requires only materials and processes known or reasonably postulated to exist at the time: sulfur, steel, and temperatures on the order of 1,000 C. Those were known to exist. We don't have to postulate about how thermite got there. The problems with the theory include the exact method of sulfidation, which hasn't been substantiated. But it's a less egregious unknown than all those associated with thermite.

Remember, you don't choose the perfect theory; just the best.

If you want to look at theories that don't presume a commonality, then you can examine a hypothesis that the amount of melted steel was quite small and confined, and that it was simply melted by local hot spots. That theory has supposedly been rejected by conspiracists on the grounds that normal fires simply cannot generate enough heat to melt steel in any amount. But that's based solely on stoichiometrics -- the study of how concentrations of reactants affect reaction rates.

It is argued that because the fires underground would have been deprived of oxygen, they would not have been able to release heat at a rate compatible with the melting of steel. However, oxygen deprivation is only one factor that affects heating models. The form factors of the surrounding materials have just as great an effect. That is, if heat is not allowed to escape via convection, conduction, or radiation, then it is possible for an oxygen-starved fire actually to generate higher temperatures in an enclosed space than a stoichiometrically ideal combustion in a context where heat rejection is more vigorous.

Thus melted steel may not be the "anomaly" that has been claimed.

Why did it come down? FEMA could only come up with an unlikely hypothesis, by their own admission; NIST postpones and postpones...

That is the nature of investigation. By all accounts, WTC 7's collapse cause-effect chain was not straightforward. If NIST needs additional time to get the job done correctly, let them. On the one hand you seem to fault NIST for being too cursory when dealing with WTC 1 and 2, and now you seem to fault NIST for being too thorough on WTC 7. Why do I get the feeling that you're intent on villifying NIST no matter what they do?

I remember late last year being tasked with root-causing a particular failure. I gave an estimate of 0.25 man-months. It ended up 4 man-months. Why? Because I had to go through about 4 different hypotheses before I discovered the complex interaction between three different components (that worked fine individually and with other kinds of components) that led to failure.

Earlier you opined that we shouldn't leave a "shred of doubt". Doesn't that mean that the robustness of the final result is more important than finishing by some a deadline that's likely to have been a total guess? Or are you just setting up the argument that NIST is having trouble coming up with a plausible cover story? The delay is just as easily (and more parsimoniously) explained by the notion that NIST is having trouble with an investigation we in the profession suspected would be problematic.
__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams"


_________
_________

That rubbishes the thermite hypothesis. Do you have the expertise to refute that?

Why would anyone put together a website to counter utter tripe??? I mean nutters put up sites full of tripe. Sane people just usually have better things to do- or at least have no agenda on such matters. However, I suspect the obvious reason is that serious academics only peer review serious theses.

Anything else that never got addressed in that thread RE: Jones?
Fence



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It doesn't matter how many times you post this, it's still rubbish.

Oh my, what are we to do with this continueing nonsense?

Why is it so hard for some people to accept that a huge jetliner carrying tens or thousands of gallons of fuel and flying at 500 miles into a building could perhaps be the reason for collapse of that same building a short while later?

Why is it that although there are thousands of eyewitnesses, hours of live TV coverages, videos, and photos, some people insist that that has to be something more.

The collapse of the WTC buildings is NOT unpresidented althought certainly having circumstances are.

Contary to conspiracy theory websites claims, steel framed buildings have collapsed before (without needing a plane to crash into them or the secret help of the CIA/FBI/MOSSAD etc)

Examples include the McCormick Center in Chicago and the Sight and Sound Theater in Pennsylvania. Other steel-framed buildings partially collapsed due fires one after only 20 minutes.

 http://www.wconline.com/CDA/Archive/24ae78779d768010VgnVCM100000f932a

 http://www.chipublib.org/004chicago/disasters/mccormick_fire.html

Conspiracy sites claim that the buildings collapsed perfectly into their own footprint like a controlled demolition but this is not backed up by the facts. WTC7 was hit by debris from the collapsing towers, not just a few lumps of flying concret but enough to take out over 10 floors to a depth of 25% of the building. Photo and video evidence (some of it even displayed on conspiracy sites) clearly show non symatrical colapse of the buildings, tilting etc. Even the WTC7 building, which has recently become the favorite topic of conversation among those wishing to find something beyond the offcial 911 stiry, can be seen to have collapsed into the zone of structual damage to some degree rather than straight down as suggested by those who prefer to imagine it had been rigged for demolition over the previous months along with the two towers.

Some people suggest that the official story can't be true because aviation fuel fires can't get hot enough to melt steel. But the fact is that they don't need to melt in order to collapse. Temperatures of 1000° F can cause buckling and temperatures of 1500° F can cause steel to lose significant strength and collapse. The impact of the plane taking out steel supports, damaging the fire protection and ingniting a huge office fire is completely sufficient for experts in structual engineering to feel certain that the colapse was cause by what everybody saw, planes flying into buildings!

This stuff about thermite has no place on indymedia, it is simply old claims repackaged and reposted on thousands of websites as if to make it true.

I think IMC should bill PrisonPlanet for the free advertising they find themselves inadvertently providing, personally.

This is NOT about what did or did not cause the towers to collapse. It's about silly misinformation spread and accepted as if it were gospel "becuase I saw it posted on the web".

A jet fuel fire is plenty hot enough to anneal steel. Hell, if a truck carrying a lot of diesel fuel burns under an overpass they have to replace the beams overhead becuase they will now fail to carry their designed load.

But DON'T take our word for this. Use common sense. You have seen in some museum a sword from the middle ages? A suite of chain mail. How hot a fire do you think a middle ages smith was able to make with charcoal? Obviously hot enough to make the steel "workable" so he could beat it into shape for a sword with a hammer or draw it out into wire for the mail rings. And with just human muscle power.

Next time there is a blacksmithing demo in your area go and see with your own eyes what size fire is perfectly adequate to destroy the structural strength of steel or other iron alloys.

I’m not an architect or a structural engineer but they do talk rubbish about the WTC towers (OK, a bit of an exaggeration). But, I have to give it to Architects’ whose account does seem to blow a hole in the thermite theory.

But why do I say that architects and engineers talk rubbish? Because they ridicule conspiracy theories as if they have the there-is-no-question-about-it-‘cos-FEMA/NIST-got-it-right explanation for why the towers collapsed. Yet, none of these architects or engineers opened their mouths to warn the firemen and others in and around the towers that they might collapse. No one insisted people immediately left the general area of the towers so that they would not have needed to run like the blazes to get away from dust. No one warned people who lived and worked in the area that they may die of the asbestos they used to put in buildings that old. And they didn’t because the we-know-it-all experts were generally clueless. But after they did collapse, they suddenly knew it all and knew exactly what happened and why (except the asbestos). And it happened just as FEMA said it did. No more cluelessness. They know it all and conspiracy theorist are nuts.

This was despite the fact that there was no thorough investigation of the collapse. No scientific examination of the wreckage. No tests that would demonstrate the weakened steel theory, which, of course, they first argued that the steel melted until those nutty conspiracy nuts pointed out that burning jet fuel wasn’t hot enough to melt steel and then they suddenly said they meant to say weaken not melt. And, of course, they said absolutely zip when the local authorities quickly arranged for the wreckage to disappear before anyone could examine it. Because even though they were clueless, they didn’t need a scientific examination to overcome their cluelessness.

And what do they have to say about WTC7. No plane. No jet fuel. Well, once again, those sharp, scientific minds agree with FEMA who claim that it fell down on its own accord and in sympathy with WTC 1 and 2. OK, FEMA developed a theory on the back of an envelope and say debris and internal heating fuel that caught fire. Except none of that happened to buildings that were closer to the collapsed towers than WTC7. But, heh, they’re architects and structural engineers, they don’t need no scientific investigation to know what they’re talking about.

And as for that strange plumb of smoke, seen on CNN during an interview with Tom Clancy, that reached halfway up the towers when the towers were on fire but hadn’t collapsed? Our scientifically minded structural architects couldn’t care less. And as for that thousands of gallons of jet fuel – it kinda evaporated when it splashed onto the Pentagon or had a lot of problem burning a book found at the crash site, on top of a wooden stool and below a computer terminal. And, as I said, I'm not an architect, but I really didn't know chain mail and swords were used to give tall buildings structural integrity.

And of course they can bend the truth a little to damn what those nutty conspiracy nuts say about no steel-framed building collapsing due to fire. They can say buildings, one or two, have, and just ignore that none collapsed within their own footprint, in under ten seconds like a controlled demolition like WTC 1, 2 and 7. And ignore that structural engineers do say that no steel-framed building collapsed because they can’t call them conspiracy nuts, can they?

But, of course, Osama Bin Laden wasn’t as clueless as the architects and structural engineers. He and Khalid Mohammed worked out that 747s would bring down the towers in an hour and a half because, clearly, they knew about pancake theory (even if structural engineers didn’t), they knew about jet fuel burning to a particular temperature that would weaken the steel and bring the towers down like a controlled explosion (even if structural engineers didn’t). Except, they didn’t need years of study and practice that were obviously useless for those clueless architects and engineers.

But OK, Architect, on thermite, you may have a point.

I think I read somewhere that Bin Laden hadn't expected to achieve more than gutting four floors on both buildings.

Just because the buildings came down doesn't mean to say that was what was intended/expected.

Let's get realistic, there really is no shred of evidence to support the "inside job" conspiracy theory, because if there was there would be an almighty shitstorm.

There hasn't been a shitstorm because no-one has been able to put anyhing forward that will stand up to professional scrutiny.

'He and Khalid Mohammed worked out that 747s would bring down the towers in an hour and a half because, clearly, they knew about pancake theory (even if structural engineers didn’t), they knew about jet fuel burning to a particular temperature that would weaken the steel and bring the towers down like a controlled explosion'

Why do you assume that the hijackers deliberately planned for the WTC buildings to actually collapse? They may have wanted a 'spectacular' strike against the US, but that was achieved simply by hijacking the planes and smashing them into a number of iconic US buildings. The subsequent collapse of the WTC buildings may have been an 'added bonus' as far as the terrorists were concerned, but I do not think it was intentional, so their knowledge, or otherwise, of structural engineering and the the properties of steel is surely not really relevant.

... information is leeking faster than the ability of the conspirators to block it ...

I see however, that there is still a dedicated band of 'posters' ready willing and able to pour scorn upon the heads (first option), the associates of [heads] (second option), the associates of asscoiates of [heads] (third option) of those daring enough to pin their colours to the mast ...

... the very last option seems to be attempt to engage with the evidence (even then only as a means of misrepresenting or dismissing with cursery attention).

Shoot the messenger.

The usual suspects and their usual dreary 'conspiraloons' tact.

The vermance of this tactic rises in relation to the importance of the information needing sidetracking.

You all have search engines yes?

Try puting in a few choice terms and then sifting and discriminating through the available evidence yourselves ...

'Thermite' & 'wtc'
'skyhawk' & 'pentagon'
'unicol' & 'afghanistan' & 'pipeline'
'pentagon comptroller' & 'missing trillions' & '$' &'special control systems'

... should keep you busy for a while.

Shoot the messenger.

It seems to me, that at this point in time, there are a number of factors governing the release of selected information regarding the complicity of pnac types:

disgust. There are plenty of patriots left across the pond who feel disgust at the actions of the criminals in the whitehouse and intend to leverage their position and privalage [to info] to ensure that impeachments begin as the least of their problems.

timing. The old order changes, ring in the new. The whitehouse, the beltway political machnations all get a little crazy about this time, one eye towards the possibily of 'legacies' the other on ensuring COG (continuation of governmnet). Save yourself by ratting on them.

fear. There aren't many who beleieve that nuclear conflageration is an exciting possibily, nor who want to actively work towards it. Sabotage in the work place produces intresting actions - especially when the work place is the hub of international monopoly capitalism and the military industrial complex that run it.

The stakes are high and almost all bets are on the table. Are you going to fold under pressure?

Shoot the messenger.

Or, do the research and present the evidence.

Thermite and fascism brought down the towers, the hard evidence is pilling up ... from the misrepresentation of building schematics ... to the strange providence of drills and lax security ... from mega insurance claims ... to massive put options ... from pnac wish lists and new pearl habours ... to the war on terra ...

Shoot the messenger.

Don't expect anyone or thing to bring you the whole picture on a plate - this ain't an easily digested meal pal, it's a dry rotten last supper for a desparate band of global terrorists who have plundered, murdered and raped their way through the planet for too long.

Their rapatious need drives all before it ... until now, where the steaks are high ... I'm going all in w/ my aces high.

Shoot the messenger.

There are a few final crucial pieces of evidence that are on the verge of emerging into the glare of publicity soon ... watch out and be ready to act, this will not be a spectator sport.

Next he'll be saying the Lockerbie bombers intended to strike Lockerbie... and not doubt that the Jews & PNAC are behind it... and it was remote controlled and there's no way that it could anything othre than intentional since the chances of a bombed jetliner hitting a populated are in that region are astronomical. Remember the US seizing the opportunity to bomb Libya? Blah blah blah...

The mind boggles.

Actually, things are not really hotting up. Since 9/11 things have been gradually cooling down as they often do with such events. There is no significant public outry as a whole. Even the media's interest in 9/11 is at best tepid slow newsday stuff these days. A few stories about how nutty 9/11 Truth is and that's about it. 3rd division relegation for the trial. Hell even 7/7 is pretty much dead as a story now. After decades of the IRA the UK is pretty quick to move on from these things (hence the "false flag" thesis being totally daft).

In the UK, there was a far greater outcry regarding the Iraq war and the lies surrounding it. I fear sadly public & media (chicken & egg?) interest is also dissipating on this issue despie the fact we have already established with HARD facts that Blair & Campbell lied to us.

Unfortunately, I can reasonably forsee that the apathy borne of HM Govt's refusal to listen to public opinion on Iraq will ensure that any outcry to action against Iran will be muted.

Seen it all before.

As for what you espouse to be unfolding, all I can see it the washing powder marketing tectic: New and improved! Even better! 10% extra free!

Same old shit with a different tag.

Go bring us some evidence or stop reiterating the same old garbage!

So, Bin Laden, the greatest threat to civilisation, didn’t mean to kill thousands on 911. He isn’t going to dirty nuke us, or fling suitcase nukes at us, or kill us all off with anthrax. He’s not that bad really and only means to scare us a little bit. So why is media telling us the opposite? And why are Bush and Blair spending billions in Iraq and Afghanistan, overturning international law and ripping up our civil rights? Or are they paranoid? And are you honestly telling us that 19 people killed themselves because they wanted to mess up an iconic building a little bit?

Except, we were told that Al Qaida was behind the 1993 attempt on the WTC and Associated Press reported that one of the perpetrators left a message saying: “Next time, it will be very precise.”

Let’s get realistic and look at evidence. Admittedly, evidence of a 911 conspiracy remains circumstantial. Although, Khalid Mohammed has told FBI that he and Al Qaida did it, Indian intelligence regard him as an Pakistan intelligence asset (ISI). When he was arrested in Pakistan, he was living found in a suburb full of ISI agents. Indian intelligence also reveal that ISI transferred $100,000 to chief hijacker Mohammed Atta a month before the attacks. The FBI forced the resignation of the ISI chief because of their substantial report. ISI works hand in glove with the CIA. And where was the ISI chief on the day of the attacks? Meeting up with Porter Goss, the new head of CIA. You heard the shitstorm about that, didn’t you? Not!

But what on earth has evidence got to do with finding 911 perpetrators? There’s no evidence that Bin Laden did it but that didn’t stop anyone blaming him. Bin Laden denied any 911 responsibility the day after it happened. And one year after 911, the FBI found no paper trails leading to Bin Laden. Only one man has been found guilty in a court of responsibility for 911 and he was in jail when it happened. And is also capable of saying any crap because he’s clearly off his head.

Evidence against Bin Laden remains circumstantial. But there’s more circumstantial evidence of an inside job than of an Al Qaida attack but, of course, you’ve got to open your eyes to see. Most of you conspiracy-theorists-are-nuts people don’t know what you’re talking about and believe any inconsistent, nonsensical hogwash that turns up in the official conspiracy theory.

(Like, no doubt, you believe Muslim suicide bombers believe in the ‘Umma’: the global community of Muslims, whose suffering must be avenged. And then accept it when you’re told that Sunni Muslims want to kill Shia Muslims and Kurdish Muslims hate them both. And that the Muslim-loving Bin Laden wants Muslims to kill one another in Iraq and have a civil war. Obvious crap, but you, we’re-so-sensible lot are too blind to see it.)

insidejob



 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline
Complete 911 Timeline
February 26, 1993: WTC Is Bombed but Does Not Collapse, as Bombers Had Hoped Bomb damage in underground levels of the WTC in 1993. [Source: Najlah Feanny/ Corbis]
An attempt to topple the WTC fails, but six people are killed and over 1000 are injured in the misfired blast. An FBI explosives expert later states that, “If they had found the exact architectural Achilles’ heel or if the bomb had been a little bit bigger, not much more, 500 pounds more, I think it would have brought her down.” Ramzi Yousef, who has close ties to bin Laden, organizes the attempt. [Village Voice, 4/30/1993; US Congress, 3/24/1998] The New York Times later reports on Emad Salem, an undercover agent who will be the key government witness in the trial against Yousef. Salem testifies that the FBI knew about the attack beforehand and told him they would thwart it by substituting a harmless powder for the explosives. However, an FBI supervisor called off this plan, and the bombing was not stopped. [New York Times, 11/28/1993] Other suspects were ineptly investigated before the bombing as early as 1990. Several of the bombers were trained by the CIA to fight in the Afghan war, and the CIA later concludes, in internal documents, that it was “partly culpable” for this bombing. [Independent, 12/1/1998] US officials later state that the overall mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, is a close relative, probably an uncle, of Yousef. [Los Angeles Times, 10/1/2002; Independent, 7/6/2002] One of the attackers even leaves a message which will later be found by investigators, stating, “Next time, it will be very precise.” [Associated Press, 10/30/2001]


 http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/conspiracy_theory/fullstory.asp?id=305
WHO PROVIDED THE PROTECTIVE COVERAGE FOR THE 9-11 OPERATION?

…On December 20, 2001, the German TV show Monitor (the "60 Minutes of Germany") found the translation of the "confession" video to be not only "inaccurate", but even "manipulative". 117 Dr. Abdel El M. Husseini and Professor Gernot Rotter made an independent translation and accused the White House translators of "writing a lot of things that they wanted to hear but cannot be heard on the tape no matter how many times you listen to it."

Even more compelling than the revelations of the European press are the actual images of the "confession video". Every photo previously taken of Osama Bin laden shows gaunt facial features and a long thin nose. The Pentagon video of Bin Laden clearly shows a man with full facial features and a wide nose. Examine the pictures side-by-side for yourself if you don't believe it. The differences in facial features will jump right out at you….

…In April of 2002, FBI director Robert Mueller - the same Robert Mueller who admitted that several hijacker identities were in doubt due to identity thefts- made this stunning announcement:

"In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper - either here or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere - that mentioned any aspect of the September 11 plot."…


 http://www.wanttoknow.info/050407hijackersmilitarytraining911
ALLEGED HIJACKERS MAY HAVE TRAINED AT U.S. BASES
The Pentagon has turned over military records on five men to the FBI

By George Wehrfritz, Catharine Skipp and John Barry
Sept. 15 — U.S. military sources have given the FBI information that suggests five of the alleged hijackers of the planes that were used in Tuesday’s terror attacks received training at secure U.S. military installations in the 1990s.

...for that out and out loon who pops up whenever there is a 9/11 thread to (re)post his epic 'no planes' article. How he has the nerve to mention 'no-planes' and 'occams razor' in the same article is beyond me. You can almost sense some of the other conspiracy theorists coughing with embarrassment whenever he/she shows up - to the extent that one explanation is that said loon is in fact 'a spook' or a 'plant' (have a guess who said that). Well, it was to be expected I suppose - when faced with such an out and out loon, rather than just admit your 'hobby' attracts more than its fair share of paranoid and delusional 'researchers' - simply make said loon part of the conspiracy, fiendishly planted by the all powerful state to ruin their creditibility.

On a slightly more serious note, Jackslucid, you have said that no one here has made any effort to address the 'evidence'. Yet, this thread contains a section taken from another thread on the relative properties of thermite, which I genuinely believe addresses a number of the key claims of Steve Jones. Personally, I would take it back a stage further. Steve Jones seems to have arrived at his thermite conclusion, in response to 'evidence' relating to 'large pools of molten steel'. Yet, for a scientist, he shows reamrkably little interest in critical thinking, as he largely takes the 'evidence' for these alleged pools of molten steel at face value (9/11 cover-up theorists seem to share a trait with holocaust deniers in that they only ever seem to quote each other, rather than refer to external evidence. Statements made by one conspiracy theorist are simply accepted as fact by another, with little effort made to check the veracity of the original statement).

What I would like to know is, what exactly is the evidence for this alleged abundance of molten steel - I am genuinely interested? How do people know for a fact that it was molten steel, rather than say, melted aluminium? Is it based on eye-witness testimony or is there more substantial evidence than this?

And are you honestly telling us that 19 people killed themselves because they wanted to mess up an iconic building a little bit?

No, I did not say that at all, and I am at a loss to explain how you came to that conclusion from what I had written. You seemed to be implying in your earlier post that the terroristts flew their planes into the WTC with the explicit intention of subsequently making those buildings collapse. I said, why do you assume that this was their aim? Simply by flying several planes into the WTC they had achieved their aim of providing a very public strike on the US which by itself would probably have killed several thousand people.

No, I do not beleive Al Qaeda is some evil cult, no matter what the press say, but it probably is a loose affiliation of Muslim ideologues, who for a whole host of reasons dating back decades, if not centuries, have grievances against the UK and US. They did not have to be specatcularly organised to pull off the 9/11 incident, seeing as pre flight security on those days was shockingly lax. Nor does anyone have to prove the direct involvement of Osama Bin Laden to make the claim that it was an attack carried out by Muslim extremists.

I have never said I agree with the subsequent actions of Bush and Blair, and I do not. 9/11 is not a justification for the subsequent horrors carried out by us in Afghanistand and the Middle East. But there is still a vast difference between recognising that, and swallowing a frankly delusional tale built on rumour and hearsay, that the US government actually engineed the whole situation, just to go to war in the first place.

"Go bring us some evidence or stop reiterating the same old garbage!"

Why?

You have the means to search, assess and intigrate any and all evidence yourself.

Why do you need me to do this for you?

What effect will this have if I do?

Will you suddenly fall from your donkey and believe just because I say so?

Truth and justice require that you take an active roll in seeking them.

... and as for the inference that the 911 truth movement is 'not hotting up' ...

The list of state legislators calling for their federal overlords to be impeached - based on this (911) and other abuses of power - grows daily.

The list of ex-governement employees - from intelligence specialists to military top brass - stating clearly that they feel sick, worried and appalled by the lack of leadership and direction of current 'investigations, grows daily.

If you are waiting for fox news, trevor mcdonald, richard littlejohn, clear channel et al, to bring you revalations, then you need to examine your own apathy and gullability ... or, to repeat again my fav. graffittii ever, BE YOUR OWN LEADER YOU FEEBLE BURKE!

Want to 'take somebodies word for it' ... try a top employee of the company that manufactured the steel for the wtc complex, who states that no way could that steel be melted, weakened or annealed by kerosene fires buring for an hour or so.

Or try the jet engine community who think they have corectly indentified the type of engine that landed in the street a few blocks away from the second impact (hint: it does not match the engine type of the official conspiracy)

There are actual video pieces available NOW on the net that show you the burning thermite in the towers and that show the molten metal complex dripping from the buildings before collapse, pictures that show the molton metal being recovered form the basements weeks after the collapse, pictures that show the burnt irregular scars on the angled cuts of the steel beams of the wtc BEFOR they were shipped out and forever lost to forensic examination - cuts that the engineering community and those specialising in steel claim CAN NOT be caused by kerosene fires, acetolene tources or any other known method of cutting steel.

PNAC had its plans ready and in the public domain.

Unicol had its plans ready and in the public domain.

The patriot act legislators had their plans ready - but not in the public eye until they were egarly NOT read on the day they were unanomously voted on by a tetchy and scared congress, recently re-allowed back into their anthrax clear building.

Like I suggested before DON'T take my word for it ...

The available resources are available for YOU NOW.

Use them.

Search engine;

'wtc' 'steel' 'certification'

'thermite residue' 'wtc' 'steel'

etc etc.

Don't be shy.

Shoot the messenger.

Any reply I make will have to wait until I am sitting at a neutral computer again (for some reason my computer is totally unable to post on indymedia - alone - an unusual state of affairs expicable, according to my techie chums and evil genius commrades, only by dint of some kind of block based on internal computer indentification info ... I am trying to have doubts about this!)

Shoot the messenger, especially loony ones like me who sleep with their dog regularly.

So the burgeoning civil war in Iraq is one big "FALSE FLAG!!!" based on... supposition (see 'fantasy') again bugger all evidence to support this. There is no reason for the Sunnis and Shias to hate each other (like Protestants & catholics) and the minor incedent with Baathist Sunnis has all been swept under the rug... the Kurds have no grudges either. And of course Iran has no reason to be engaged in clandestine ops in Iraq either...

Yup it's all a big smokescreen.

Talk about twisting words, saying that the bombers never intended/expected to collapse the towers is not to say they were nice guys. Just "lucky".

You are right, there is little if at all any evidence against Bin Laden's role in 9/11 (though much in the way of his role in Afghanistan). Even the alleged confessional material has come under doubt of authenticity. The question of why the guy is still at lage is also interesting. Though these things in themselves prove absolutely nothing to a rational person.

For the 9/11 "evidence" to be "circumstantial" it would have to be at least accurate in its representation of events. Thus far I have seen very little that fits the bill. All I have seen is wild speculation, half truths and downright falsehood. Total drivel.

To suggest thatby not believing 9/11 Truth you must therefore belive "official gobbeldeygook" just illustrates how fundamentally dullwitted conspiracy theorists are. If you don't believe them they tell you what you do believe. Childish nonsense.

Just because 9/11 Truth consistently fails to present credible evidence let aone a credible case doesn't mean that everyone who laughs at you believes Bush & Blair. We simply only believe you lot are crackpots.

Is this the evidence of 'molten steel' dripping from the building highlighted by Steve Jones:

 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2991254740145858863&q=cameraplanet%2B9/11

I am happy to accept that steel glows yellow when molten whereas aluminium is more likely to be silver in colour, but watching that video, there is no conclusive proof that the said substance is actually a 'liquid' of any kind. It could equally be just falling fire debris, ie yellow hot pieces of wood, plaster or whatever. The whole molten steel issue in this particular case rests on an assumption made about a bit of video footage - this is far from conclusive as far as I can see.

I can't find anyevidence. All I can find is dross. Fantasy based on supposition. No forensic, documentary evidence no witnesses, no nothing. Just a bit porridge of conspiracies citing conspiracies citing conspiracies. No evidence of who did what when and why. There really is n serious case being presented.

I smell shite: give me a complate list of all the legislators who believe that 9/11 was an insidejob false flag carried out by the CIA & Mossad!

Ex-intelligence employees who now have to sell books & guest speak for a living. Who present nothing other than hearsay. No documents, no forensics, no names etc= drivel.

Show me forensic evidence that the steel wasn't annealed. Show me clear shots that the engines are different with evidence that the plane that took off could nothave possibly had the engines found.

Every argument I have seen presented has been based on information in the public domain and has been rubbished by relevant professionals.

You are just talking out your backsides with nothing but more loons to cite as evidence.

Rumour and speculation is not evidence. Forensic data, documents, corroborated confessions, names of perpetrators and witnesses to their deeds. That is evidence.

The lack of such evidence is convenietly squared away with the idea that everyone involved was in on it (literally many thouasands of people) and no-one involved has broken rank. Not one single person has put their hand up and said "I have to confess it was all an inside job!"

Total and utter tripe. If there was an inside job here its footprint was tiny and way beyond the scope of trawling the internet for clues. If it was an inside job the really did flyhijacked planes into the WTC and didn't use something as obvious as thermite. Any other way of approaching this as an inside job is just crackers because it would have been sniffed out immediately by investigators. And I suppose you are going to tell me all the investigators were corrupt and willing accessories to mass murder and treason.

Get real. I've known people who have left the police force and army for less.

You are scared of the big bad world and just want a scapegoat to pin it on and feel safe. The bad news is, the world isn't that simple and it'll never go away.

Bacofoil, when you were talking about hearsay and rumour, for a minute there, I thought you were talking about the official conspiracy theory. Most of the anti-conspiracy theorists on this thread haven’t come up with any evidence that Bin Laden did it. They’ve only come up with hearsay and rumour. (We only have their word on what Khalid Mohammed said because he hasn’t even been put on public trial.)

There is a ‘They let it happen on purpose’ position in the 911 Truth Movement. This is: the Bush neo-con gang had intelligence that some Muslims gang would strike the US but since they wanted a New World Order, they let it happen. Afterall, Bin Laden had been begun to be regarded as a hero by many ordinary people in the Middle East angry about the US invasion of Iraq. There, indeed, were a lot of reasons that Arabs and other people around the world to strike back at the West.

But then how do you explain a 747 being vapourised by burning jet fuel in the Pentagon when photographs of the impact scene clearly shows a book on top of a wooden stool? How do you explain four suicide planes managing to avoid a billion-dollar air defence system?

Now thanks to Onion Fence, there is a new position: GHOSTS DID IT. His wealth of evidence seems to consist in nothing more than: 'Conspiracy-nuts-talk-rubbish'. In fact, he doesn't even present any clear anomolies or contradictions in conspiracy evidence to support his position only insults. And then he accuses me for creating a smokescreen. OK I admit it, Onion Fence, you're far better at creating smokescreens than me.

The trouble with the Conspiracy-nuts-talk-rubbish-and-the-Government-are-liars people is that no one has articulated a credible third position let alone come up with any evidence to support it. Yes, that's right, the third position is hearsay and rumour.

So, for instance, Bacofoil attacks the lack of evidence on the 911 conspiracy then invents a totally new Muslim extremists terror group for 911 and then presents no evidence whatsoever fot it. I repeat there is no hard evidence pointing to Al Qaida only as the 911 perpetrators. There is no hard evidence pointing to another terror group. There exists only circumstantial evidence. But unless people are arguing that a ghost did it, there is more circumstantial evidence pointing to an inside job.

The most like Muslim, anti-Western group who could did father Al Qaida and could father another group is the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet, it is public knowledge that the Muslim Brotherhood was used by the CIA and Pakistan intelligence to get the Soviets out of Afghanistan. It is public knowledge that the CIA used the Brotherhood in attempt to remove Nasser from power in Egypt. When Nasser cracked down on the Brotherhood, the CIA arranged for them to go to Saudi Arabia. Saudia Arabia is still funding The Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood has on and off been a tool of Western intelligence. Two of the US’ biggest allies in the Muslim world, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are supporters of extremist terrorism.

Do you see a pattern here? Follow the leading characters in Al Qaida and you end up with the CIA-sponsored Pakistan intelligence. The evidence is out there:
 http://www.cooperativeresearch.org
 http://www.redmoonrising.com/Ikhwan/MB.htm


John Loftus is a reknown former US federal prosecutor. He believe the blowback theory: the CIA supported a monster that has come back to bite them. The reality is that the British created the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920s as a means of maintaining control of Middle Eastern oil.

 http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15344
THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, NAZIS AND AL-QAEDA
By John Loftus (former US federal prosecutor)
JEWISH COMMUNITY NEWS | OCTOBER 4, 2004

…At the end of World War II, the Muslim Brotherhood was wanted for war crimes. [They worked with the Nazis.] Their German intelligence handlers were captured in Cairo. The whole net was rolled up by the British Secret Service. Then a horrible thing happened.

Instead of prosecuting the Nazis -- the Muslim Brotherhood -- the British government hired them. They brought all the fugitive Nazi war criminals of Arab and Muslim descent into Egypt, and for three years they were trained on a special mission. The British Secret Service wanted to use the fascists of the Muslim Brotherhood to strike down the infant state of Israel in 1948. Only a few people in the Mossad know this, but many of the members of the Arab Armies and terrorist groups that tried to strangle the infant State of Israel were the Arab Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood…

…What the British did then, they sold the Arab Nazis to the predecessor of what became the CIA. It may sound stupid; it may sound evil, but it did happen. The idea was that we were going to use the Arab Nazis in the Middle East as a counterweight to the Arab communists. Just as the Soviet Union was funding Arab communists, we would fund the Arab Nazis to fight against. And lots of secret classes took place. We kept the Muslim Brotherhood on our payroll.

But the Egyptians became nervous. Nasser ordered all of the Muslim Brotherhood out of Egypt or be imprisoned, and we would execute them all. During the 1950's, the CIA evacuated the Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia. Now when they arrived in Saudi Arabia, some of the leading lights of the Muslim Brotherhood like Azzam, became the teachers in the Madrasas, the religious schools. And there they combined the doctrines of Nazism with this weird Islamic cult, Wahhabiism….

Well actually, I'm not trying to promote any theory on 9/11. Mainly due to the fact I have no evidence.

Which probably explains why no 3rd option has been forwarded.

I will say that the idea that Bush & Co let it happen is far more a realistic scenario than bloody drones or thermite or Mossad.

I could even see Saudi cullusion as plausible. It surely wouldn't be too hard to even manipulate an al qaeda cell (throughh ISI) into attacking the US without realising they are being handled. But that's pretty much total fantasy. Motive & opportunity alone don't make a case. I could off now and look for any old shite to back that theory up, but it wouldn't stop it from being just fantasy.

Apart from Bush & Co ignoring the intell warnings we still have no evidence. Even that alone isn't really clear cut foreknowledge.

If there was a conspiracy it must have been tiny to keep it this well contained. The idea of a sprawling conspiracy is absurd and given the lack of any real evidence as such is plainly ridiculous. Any serius organised criminals know the imperative of keeping operations as small and secretive as possible. The proffered "evidence" if remotely true would indicate the work of Glasgow District Council on the day after their X-mas night out.

(/11 Truth is just a big lony magnet that is a distraction from the real issues. Rest assured if any credible evidence did come to light I'd seize it and run with it.

Well actually, I'm not trying to promote any theory on 9/11. Mainly due to the fact I have no evidence.

Which probably explains why no 3rd option has been forwarded.

I will say that the idea that Bush & Co let it happen is far more a realistic scenario than bloody drones or thermite or Mossad.

I could even see Saudi cullusion as plausible. It surely wouldn't be too hard to even manipulate an al qaeda cell (throughh ISI) into attacking the US without realising they are being handled. But that's pretty much total fantasy. Motive & opportunity alone don't make a case. I could off now and look for any old shite to back that theory up, but it wouldn't stop it from being just fantasy.

Apart from Bush & Co ignoring the intell warnings we still have no evidence. Even that alone isn't really clear cut foreknowledge.

If there was a conspiracy it must have been tiny to keep it this well contained. The idea of a sprawling conspiracy is absurd and given the lack of any real evidence as such is plainly ridiculous. Any serius organised criminals know the imperative of keeping operations as small and secretive as possible. The proffered "evidence" if remotely true would indicate the work of Glasgow District Council on the day after their X-mas night out.

(/11 Truth is just a big lony magnet that is a distraction from the real issues. Rest assured if any credible evidence did come to light I'd seize it and run with it.

"There are actual video pieces available NOW on the net that show you the burning thermite in the towers and that show the molten metal complex dripping from the buildings before collapse, pictures that show the molton metal being recovered form the basements weeks after the collapse, pictures that show the burnt irregular scars on the angled cuts of the steel beams of the wtc BEFOR they were shipped out and forever lost to forensic examination - cuts that the engineering community and those specialising in steel claim CAN NOT be caused by kerosene fires, acetolene tources or any other known method of cutting steel. "


Easy. You give us the links and a convincing explanation for each. And we'll tell you if there's any flaws in your argument.

....inside job, once again you have clearly mispresesented what I said, which was this:

No, I do not beleive Al Qaeda is some evil cult, no matter what the press say, but it probably is a loose affiliation of Muslim ideologues

So, how do you deduce from this that I am creating a new, as yet unamed, Muslim terrorist group???? Lets walk through what I actually said here - 'Al Qaeda' is, without question, not the highly co-ordinated, coherent group that is often portrayed in the media, does this mean therefore that Muslim extremists (whatever they may call themselves) do not actually exist at all. I do not think so. Extremists exist in all other religions, I do not see why Muslims should be the exception. Are there those that are willing to die for their beliefs? I would say so. Do they have legitimate grievances against the west? Undoubtedly. What you want to call them is largely irrelevant. Call me a 'sheeple' if you want, but I am willing to accept that there are disparate groups of Muslims across the world who identify with the notion of jihad against the West. For them, Bin Laden, is a spiritual leader. They may never have even met him, but they may well be willing to carry out acts of terrorism in the name of their cause. To me, to say that because no one has yet to come up with a solid piece of evidence which directly links Osama Bin Laden to September 11, therefore it could not possibly have been Muslim extremists who carried out the attacks seems to me to be an absurd position to take. That is like saying that because there is not one readily available document stating 'Dear Heinrich, please kill all the jews, love Adolf' that the Nazi's played no part in the Holocaust. It is you who seems to believe that Al Qaeda HAS to be tightly organised, as you believe the figurehead has to be involved in every single action taken.

If you are going to couch your opposition to the official version solely in terms of what western secret services knew about the attacks, then you will get little argument from me. It is there that questions need to be asked.

But, lets turn this around, what do you think happened? Do you believe the planes were hi-jacked, if so, by whom? If you accept that passenger planes hit the WTC but this was undertaken by happily suicidal CIA/Mossad agents in disguise, then please explain why the secret services subsequently decided to then blow up the buildings? Surely, the initial strike, seen by millions across the world, and killing several thousand people in the process, would have been enough to secure support for a war against the middle east. Why then did they then blow up the buildings. Did somebody say '2000 dead, not really enough to justify a war, better kill a few thousand more, blow the buildings'. It just does not stack up.

The sad thing is the more that these loons parade arond under the banner 9/11 Truth the more likely any serious attempts to ascertain an accurate picture of the extent intelligence foreknowledge and presidential inaction will be drowned out and written off as "loony" as they Jews/lizards/Elvis brigade shout louder.

How pretty ironic that we should be the ones being branded as "spooks" and "plants".

If I were as paranoid I would accusse them of being the same and employing tactics of hiding in plain sight.

OK, Bacofoil, I shouldn’t ridicule a perfectly acceptable hypothesis: that Muslims unconnected with Bin Laden would be motivated to carry out a 911-type act. (Although, I would rule out any Muslims based in the West. )

But I think the media propaganda mixes up two distinct motivations: religious ideology and political reaction. The mass support achieved by Bin Laden in the Middle East was based on his championing anti-US policies and actions after the Iraq invasion. The basis is political opposition to US-led actions in the Middle East (ME). What Western political and media elites, though, focus on is religious ideology: i.e. Wabbahism or Islamic fundamentalism.

The third position could be then that 911 was carried out by Muslims who were politically opposed to the US rather than religious nutcases. Political elites do not want their populations and the world focusing on Western foreign policy in the ME and therefore play up Muslim nutters angle. Bin Laden, after the Iraq invasion, then says to himself: “Thanks, Western politicians and media, I’ll take credit for 911.” Bush and other political elites also don’t want attention placed on the extent to which they f**ked up the defence of the US and are happy to put out propaganda. Bush also uses 911 to change foreign policy and bring out the Patriot Act, was written years before 911. (Apparently, the terrorist profile of ‘Carlos, the Jackal’ was build up by Western intelligence and he was never as effective as we were told.)

Your description of Al Qaida fits descriptions put forward by Western politicians and security forces. To me, it sounds as if people don’t know what they’re talking about. They first told us that there were 60,000 Al Qaida people around the world including sleeper agents in the West. Now, they’re telling us Al Qaida doesn’t really exist. Do our intelligence experts know what they’re on about? I accept the late MP Robin Cook’s explanation, which he articulated in Parliament before he (mysteriously) died. He stated that Al Qaida means ‘database’, i.e. a database of Mujahadeen Afghan fighters compiled by the CIA. That is, Al Qaida doesn’t exist.

Zbignew Brezezinski (not my favourite person) makes various comments about 911 in ‘The Choice’. He says: Bin Laden probably didn’t expect the towers to collapse; 911 wasn’t in itself militarily significant or of geopolitical importance but has had a major ‘psychological impact’ and US foreign policy shouldn’t be turned upside down because of 911. The producer of BBC series ‘The Power of Nightmares’ provides some evidence for this position but the series does say Bin Laden and religious nutters were behind 911.

I am not aware of anyone, or any group, putting forward this analysis of 911. It’s not a position being adopted by the FBI or MI5 (although, there’s a growing body of FBI agents who not only dissent from the mainstream position but want to take Bush to court because of 911). This is not a position argued to any significant extent by anti-conspiracy theorists (although, of course, it does suggest a conspiracy among political and security service elites).

It also doesn’t explain all the anomalies and inconsistencies around the official explanation of what happened on 911. Unless, the ‘they Let it happen on purpose’ position is adopted. And there appears to be a growing public belief in the ‘Let it happen on purpose’ position: according to a Zogby poll in 2004 half of New Yorkers believed Bush knew 911 would happen; while, 63% of Canadians and 30% of Germans believe the Government knew about it or was in someway involved.

A major piece of evidence against the Let it happen on purpose position is The Pentagon:
- impact hole in Pentagon too small;
- other inconsistencies in the damage of The Pentagon façade with a 747 strike;
- virtual disappearance of the 747, as reported by journalists on the spot;
- impossibility of amateurs flying a 747;
- inconsistencies in the fire damage at The Pentagon;
- the peculiar flight path of the 747 which flew past the bit Rumsfeld was in to smash into the less populated bit opposite him;
- lack of CCTV showing a 747 strike;
- inconsistencies in witness statements about the 747 strike;
- curious absence of any witness saying how loud the 747 should have been if it passed 20 to 60 feet above them, etc.

All this adds up to no 747 at The Pentagon and something else substituted by US criminal cabal who did it.

As for your point about why collapse the buildings, Brzezinski gives an indication of why this had to happen when he says the impact of 911 was psychological. Would US citizens and others around the world allow Bush to get away with invading Iraq without the trauma of thousands dead and collapsed buildings? Would they have allowed him to get away with losing lives and spending billions on war? Without the psychological trauma, he would have been impeached by now. As the Project for the New American Century stated, if the US were going to go through a massive increase in defence spending and a change in foreign policy, the people would have to experience a traumatising event like Pearl Harbour.

An inside job is far more consistent with the available facts before, during and after 911 than either Bin Laden, or political terrorism.




 http://www.physics911.net/sagadevan.htm
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF FLYING HEAVY AIRCRAFT WITHOUT TRAINING
By Nila Sagadevan is an aeronautical engineer and a qualified pilot.

There are some who maintain that the mythical 9/11 hijackers, although proven to be too incompetent to fly a little Cessna 172, had acquired the impressive skills that enabled them to fly airliners by training in flight simulators.

What follows is an attempt to bury this myth once and for all, because I've heard this ludicrous explanation bandied about, ad nauseam, on the Internet and the TV networks-invariably by people who know nothing substantive about flight simulators, flying, or even airplanes.

A common misconception non-pilots have about simulators is how "easy" it is to operate them. They are indeed relatively easy to operate if the objective is to make a few lazy turns and frolic about in the "open sky". But if the intent is to execute any kind of a maneuver with even the least bit of precision, the task immediately becomes quite daunting. And if the aim is to navigate to a specific geographic location hundreds of miles away while flying at over 500 MPH, 30,000 feet above the ground the challenges become virtually impossible for an untrained pilot...

"An inside job is far more consistent with the available facts before, during and after 911 than either Bin Laden, or political terrorism."

Only if you count hearsay as "fact"- which pretty much sums up your whole stance.

P.S.- Show me case where there are no inconsistencies in witness statements and where there are no loose threads and it'll be a frame up. The real world isn't an algebra problem book.

...well, perhaps more of a parable, to show how poor the CTer's theories are.

Let's suppose that, amidst a particularly nasty divorce, an abusive husband's car jumps a crash barrier and he is killed in the ensuing conflagration. Witnesses describe him as drunk and lossing control of the vehicle; there are skid marks on the road. His wife has insured his life for a considerable amount.

Imagine that every competent and experienced accident investigator reached a consensus that he lost control of the vehicle, there was evidence of braking, that automotive engineers concurred, and that the police at the scene also had reached the same conclusion.

Now imagine after the fact that a group of self-proclaimed physicists, academics, and long-time conspiracy theorists -- none of whom had any relevant expertise in accident investigation and none of whom had ever investigated an automotive crash -- claimed that they were not satisfied that there was evidence of braking.

There is no evidence that brakes have been tampered with, however the Ct'ers claim that this is because the wife has developed a way of severing brake cables which is undetectable - and leaves no obvious trace after the explosion. They claim that experts who examined the car were either incompetent, or in the pay of the wife.

Let's say that they then invented their own untried, ad hoc methods for detecting braking and tried to impose that upon the problem. Let's say they held "seminars" and press conferences decrying the "sloppy" or "unscientific" methods of the original investigators. Let's say they demanded that qualified experts take their claims at face value, even though they are founded upon conjecture, ignorance, and fallacy; and let's say they demanded detailed refutations of all those claims.

Perhaps a little silly, but THIS is the same underlying thesis the CTers employ in nearly all their arguments. They have failed, and continue to fail, to provide compelling evidence of their case yet when we hold up the flaws to the light we are attacked for being spooks, trolls, and so on. The thermite argument above is a perfect example. Ask yourself, if the rebuttal I reposted is wrong then why have none of them managed a comeback yet?

Architect comes up with arguments that undermine the thermite theory. But this doesn't mean explosions that many people heard in and around WTC did not happen. Even reporters on the spot got corroboration from police officers on the spot about explosions. Your accident metaphor serves no useful point whatsoever. The idea that this is supposed to apply to the explanation of the WTC7 collapse is laughable.

And why do you anti-CTers keep saying that the conspiracy is hearsay? Where's the evidence that Bin Laden did it? Even the FBI said they couldn't find a paper trail to Bin Laden in Afghanistan. (Oh, sorry, there was a bag left at one of the airports the hijackers with their IDs, instructions, and homolies from Atta. Pretty standard behaviour for terrorists, don't you think.)

When you anti-CTers such as Onion and Architect start thinking straight then perhaps some CTers could take you seriously. It is quite clear that you don't know these 'facts and hearsay' as reported by the same media outlets that reports the official conspiracy theory:  http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/project.jsp?project=911_project

If it was the case that 911 was a neo-Con hoax then the public should be able to hear the arguments without people like you shouting at them and telling them that it's all a load of conspiracy nonsense. They should know that the chief prosecutor on the Clinton impeachment, David Schippers, believes that the neo-cons might try another and bigger 911. He says his sources are in the FBI. He is representing FBI agents angry about how Bush stopped them investigating terror attacks.

Your attacks on CTers is designed to stop people from looking at what they are saying. To dismiss them as nutcases. To laugh at them. It is not designed to to encourage people to look critically at what they are saying and at what the official explanation is saying. I'd say this attitude is positively dangerous.

Now, lets hear you say that I am lying about Schippers or that Schippers is lying and/or mad or that there are FBI agents who are mad and lying about Bush complicity in 911.

Or perhaps, you should come out and state that either there was no Indian intelligene report on the $100,000 transferred to Atta a month before the hijacking either or I'm lying about it.

Much of what seems "strange" about the events of 9/11 and thus leading people off the deep end of conspiracy theories is the inability to look at problems from the point of view of those making decisions. Thus people ask questions like "how was a multi-billion air defense system unable to prevent the attack?" and then draw wrong conclusions because the cannot look at the problem from the points of view of both the attackers and the defenders -- do not understand the difference between "strategy" and "tactics". The realities are:

1) Once the plans have been successfully hijacked it is too late. At least one of them must be allowed to hit a building (I'll explain). Those who want to look for failures of US air defense need to ask why plane #3 got through (#2 was too close behind #1 to have been intercepted). It is likely #4 WAS taken down.

2) From the point of view of the attackers, they have won EITHER a strategic or a tactical victory if the hijackings succeed. Either one or more of the planes gets to take out a building (tactical victory) OR the planes are shot down and they win a strategic victory (the US will play no role in foreign affairs for about 5 years -- the US is off their back).

Do you not understand? Because hijacked airliners had never previously been used as missiles it would have been impossible to PROVE that was the intention. So had the planes been immediately taken out (before ANY had struck) , all of you folks and many more would have been shouting that this was unconscionable. The administration would have been completely handcuffed in the second guessing and political maneuvering to take advantage of their "insane" decision to shoot down the planes. You really imagine that a country whose government can cease to handle normal business for six months because it is embroiled over where a president dips his wick could get over something like the airforce NEEDLESSLY shooting down US airliners and killing Americans?

I am saying that the defenders in this "game" get only to choose whether they will suffer a tactical or a strategic defeat.

Those who want to argue that these buildings were prepared for demolition are leaving something out.

It is arguable how much work would have been involved (how many tons of thermite to carry into position) put let's not worry about that because with only a few buildings maybe that would be possible.

IT'S NOT JUST A FEW BUILDINGS!

Don't you understand? A plan to prepare tall buildings for demolition to so that when struck by a hijacked airliner the results could have been more spectacular (for the political gains acruing) would have required preparing hundreds if not thousands of buildings because the plans could not be based upon knowing exactly which tall builings would be hit. Even knowing which buildings the attackers INTENDED to target would not suffice > Any such plan would have to take into account that no matter which tall buildings the planes were supposed to hit, when the time came, they might actually hit another. Just imagine, a plane hits tower 1 and tower 2 goes down instead -- or a plane diverted completely to another target like the Empre State Building -- which though now no longer a tallest building, might be thought to have more symbolic value as a target -- or even the Staue of Liberty. So if this were a "plan", makes no sense unless every potential target were prepared.

...let's look at your post by way of example:

1. "there was a bag left at one of the airports the hijackers with their IDs, instructions, and homolies from Atta. Pretty standard behaviour for terrorists, don't you think."

I don't know. I'm not an expert on psychology. I've not examined the modus operandii of terrorists and the evidence they leave behind. I DO know that some have a habit of leaving videos, obviously.

Do you know the answers to these? Are you in a position to authoritively and meaningfully interpret the bag find? Can you explain the circumstances of the bag being found? And so on.....

2. "David Schippers, believes that the neo-cons might try another and bigger 911"

Really? Where does he say this then? Give us a link and we'll have a look at it, I can assure you.


3. "Indian intelligene report on the $100,000 transferred to Atta"

Likewise, give us a link. I love the idea that Government agencies plotting the attack and deaths of thousands of Americans would be so stupid as to transfer the money in such a well recorded fashion, and want to know why they did it.


See Inside at the end of the day you, and the other CTers, have a number of major problems:

- Whilst some of the vidence is ambiguous, the vast weight supports the official account

- The CTers have been wholly unable to produce any compelling evidence of their own

- The engineering, architectural, fire fighting, and airline communities (who, let';s face it, are rather better placed to comment on technical issues) accept the official account with no meaningful dissent.

- Many of the arguments, like the thermite one, can be shown to be founded on ignorance and half-truths.

- You can't show any evidence of a conspiracy that would have been years in the planning and involved hundres of people. Amazing, given the US government's previous luck at Watergate or Iran-Contra, eh?

Your mission is not about discovering the "truth", whatever that may be, it is about working backwards from the proposition that it is an inside job.

Check the links. I would be then grateful if you could tell us all whether a Chief Council for the House Judiciary Committee, and two newspapers are merely propagating nutty conspiracy theories and are lying and/or mad.


 http://www.geocities.com/vonchloride/#3
FBI Agents Coming Foward Revealing U.S. Government's Prior Knowledge and Complicity in the 9/11 Attacks

David Schippers, Chief Council for the House Judiciary Committee and head prosecutor responsible conducting the impeachment against former President Clinton, has now gone public revealing that months ago many FBI agents had come to him informing him about the attacks which have now come to pass. These agents knew the names of the hijackers, the targets of their attacks, the proposed dates, and the sources of the terrorists' funding, etc., many months in advance of the 9/11 attacks. The FBI command pulled them off of their investigations into these terrorists and threatened them with the National Security Act that if they talked about any of the information pertaining to their investigations that they would be prosecuted. So many of them sought the council of Mr. Schippers wanting to get somebody in the U.S. government to take action against these terrorists before their plan could be implemented. Mr. Schippers talked to many Congressmen and Senators, and tried to get a hold of Att. Gen. John Ashcroft, all only to get the run-around. Mr. Schippers is now legally representing at least ten (!) of these FBI agents in a suit against the U.S. government in an attempt to subpoena their testimony (where they can then legally tell what they know and legally get it on record). To hear Mr. Schippers talk about this bombshell, please listen to part 7 and 9 of the October 10th a.m. edition of The Alex Jones Show below:

 http://arc2.m2ktalk.com/alexam/101001.ram

and also see:

 http://infowars.com/transcript_schippers.html

All totaled Mr. Schippers is on for less than an hour, and I urge you to hear what he has to say.

Since Mr. Schippers has appeared on the above show revealing this bombshell Alex Jones has been contacted directly by many Congressmen and Major Media personnel.

See also:

"David Schippers tells Metcalf feds 'ignored' warnings of WTC attacks":

 http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25008

Also, be sure and listen to David Schippers' latest interview with Alex Jones, parts 5 through 8 on the November 12th p.m. show below:

 http://arc2.m2ktalk.com/alexpm/111201.ram

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


 http://www1.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?art_id=1454238160

INDIA HELPED FBI TRACE ISI-TERRORIST LINKS

MANOJ JOSHI

[ Tuesday, October 09, 2001 11:08:55 pmTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

new delhi: while the pakistani inter services public relations claimed that former isi director-general lt-gen mahmud ahmad sought retirement after being superseded on monday, the truth is more shocking.

top sources confirmed here on tuesday, that the general lost his job because of the "evidence" india produced to show his links to one of the suicide bombers that wrecked the world trade centre.

the us authorities sought his removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 were wired to wtc hijacker mohammed atta from pakistan by ahmad umar sheikh at the instance of gen mahumd.

senior government sources have confirmed that india contributed significantly to establishing the link between the money transfer and the role played by the dismissed isi chief.

while they did not provide details, they said that indian inputs, including sheikh's mobile phone number, helped the fbi in tracing and establishing the link.

a direct link between the isi and the wtc attack could have enormous repercussions.

the us cannot but suspect whether or not there were other senior pakistani army commanders who were in the know of things.

evidence of a larger conspiracy could shake us confidence in pakistan's ability to participate in the anti-terrorism coalition.

indian officials say they are vitally interested in the unravelling of the case since it could link the isi directly to the hijacking of the indian airlines kathmandu-delhi flight to kandahar last december.

ahmad umar sayeed sheikh is a british national and a london school of economics graduate who was arrested by the police in delhi following a bungled 1994 kidnapping of four westerners, including an american citizen.


 http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=8901%20/%20compstory
World
Indian Express, Wednesday, December 21, 2005

INDIAN INTELLIGENCE WIRETAP IDENTIFIED 9/11 HIJACKERS

Press Trust of India

Posted online: Wednesday, April 03, 2002 at 1243 hours IST

Updated: Monday, September 02, 2002 at 1504 hours IST

Washington, April 3: Indian intelligence agencies helped the US to identify the hijackers who carried out the deadly September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, a media report said here on Wednesday.

The new probe began after US officials learned that intelligence agents in India had wiretapped the telephone of a Pakistani charity funded by the Saudi government and discovered the transfer of 100,000 dollars to Mohamed Atta, one of the 19 hijackers, the paper quoting US officials said.

The information helped US officials identify all the 19 hijackers -- 15 of whom were Saudi nationals, the officials said.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/107432.cms
9/11 FUNDS CAME FROM PAKISTAN, SAYS FBI
MANOJ JOSHI
[ Friday, August 01, 2003 08:50:07 pmTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

NEW DELHI: India played a key role in providing US authorities the information that funding for the September 11 attacks came from Pakistan. A top FBI counter-terrorism official told the US Senate governmental affairs committee on Thursday that investigators have “traced the origin of the funding of 9/11 back to financial accounts in Pakistan.’’

John S Pistole, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counter-terrorism division, however, did not specify how those accounts in Pakistan were funded, or the role of Pakistani elements. The Times of India first reported on October 10, 2001 that India told the US that some $100,000 had been wired to the leader of the hijackers, Mahmud Atta, by British-born terrorist Ahmad Saeed Umar Sheikh.

Indian authorities also told the US that the trail led back from Sheikh to the then chief of ISI, Lt Gen Mahmud Ahmad who was subsequently forced to retire by Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf. The FBI had been provided with the details, including Sheikh’s mobile numbers. But Pistole’s testimony is silent on these issues. The FBI has estimated the September 11 attacks cost between $175,000 and $250,000. That money — which paid for flight training, travel and other expenses — flowed to the hijackers through associates in Germany and the United Arab Emirates.

Those associates reported to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who managed much of the planning for the attacks from Pakistan, US officials have said. The Bush Administration is being cagey about declassifying 28 secret pages in a recent report on the 9/11 incident which officials say outline connections between Saudi charities, royal family members and terrorism.

US authorities are silent about the role some Pakistanis may have played in the conspiracy. The role of Sheikh and Lt Gen Ahmad has yet to see the light of the day. Sheikh, wanted for kidnapping and terrorist conspiracy in India, has since been sentenced to death in Pakistan for the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

----------



 http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress03/whitehead121503.htm
Congressional Testimony

Testimony of Carl Whitehead, Special Agent In Charge, Tampa Division, FBI
Before the House Committee on Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Efficiency and Financial Management and Subcommittee on Technology and Information Policy and the Census
December 15, 2003
"Information Technology Enhancing Interagency Cooperation"

...The FBI conducted a detailed financial investigation/analysis of the19 hijackers and their support network, following the September 11th attacks. This investigation initially identified the Al Qa'ida funding sources of the 19 hijackers in the UAE and Germany. The financial investigation also provided the first links between Ramzi Binalshibh and the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks. A continuing investigation, in coordination with the PENTTBOMB Team, has traced the origin of the funding of September 11th back to financial accounts in Pakistan, where high-ranking and well-known Al Qa'ida operatives played a major role in moving the money forward, eventually into the hands of the hijackers located in the US. As part of the 9/11/01 financial investigation, thousands of individuals and organizations were investigated in the US and abroad to determine whether they played any part in supporting the hijackers or the operation. Although the vast majority of these individuals and organizations were cleared, this process of elimination resulted in numerous other quality terrorism investigations being initiated, as well as criminal charges against hundreds of individuals for fraud and other criminal activity....

So the Saudi's are funneling funds through ISI (big surprise- not). How is that supposed to tie into "inside job"??? You now trying to tell us that ISI is just a CIA client? Hardly. AFAIK ISI is riddled with Taleban/Al Qaeda sympathisers as is Saudi Intel by all accounts.

All that indicates is that there is a possible Saudi link. They're hardly a poor country. In fact, they are a country that is very unstable and has a lot of anti-western militants.

So, basically all we have on Shippers is that he states he tried to warn the government. This in itself is hardly a smoking gun. Does he provide a clear audit trail between the foot soldiers in 9/11 and the government. If not, then you are making an unfounded assumption.

Anything that Alex Jones has even breathed must be viewed as potential bullshit.

Prior knowledge doesn't indicate an "inside job". It only indicates it as one of many possibilities. AFAIK there is litttle evidence to support assertions that DETAILED warnings were availible. Without documentary evidence that they could have prevented the attacks even the argument "they let it happen" is weak.

My point is, CTers are just joining the dots according to their whim & prejudice. To prove a case you need evidence. In this case you need audit trails from Atta to US Govt, and you need hard evidence that specific intelligence was availible to prevent an attack. HArd evidence isn't newspaper reports and anecdotes.

To prove an inside job you need hard evidence that individuals carried out certain actions to specific ends (names, documents, witnesses, expert witnesses, physical evidence, forensics, corroborated confessions). Without such all you have is hearsay, rumour and prejudice. And no amount of suspicion can replace evidence.

I seriously wouldn't be laughing at anyone who could present a case based on such evidence- after all that is what legally constitutes having a case.

Sadly, no-one has come close to the such.

Imagine going before a judge with nothing but rumour... he'd throw you out and recommend you find another job.

I'm not dismissing 9/11 Truth out of principal, I too am highly suspicious of the Bush regime. I'm merely subjecting claims to a realistic level of scrutiny. And I'm finding a lot of holes and a lot of anti-semitism in the process.

A child can tell you: the question of how a building fell down can be resolved ONLY by engineers. Not physicists, theologians, or guys who just think they’re the smartest guy in the world. It has to be engineers.

Absolutely NO ENGINEERS back up the conspiratorial fantasy about 9/11. On the contrary, they have utterly debunked any theories:

Where can I find engineering studies concerning the World Trade Center that refute the claims that it was demolished by bombs or “controlled demolition?”
 http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_execsum.pdf
 http://wtc.nist.gov/media/Structural_Fire_Response_and_Collapse_Analysis.pdf
 http://www.firehouse.com/news/2002/4/30_APwtc.html

Where can I find engineering studies that offer evidence that structural steel from the World Trade Center was collected for analysis?
 http://wtc.nist.gov/media/gallery.htm#recover
 http://wtc.nist.gov/media/gallery2.htm
 http://wtc.nist.gov/media/Structural_Fire_Response_and_Collapse_Analysis.pdf
 http://members.fortunecity.com/911/wtc/WTC_apndxD.htm

Where can I find evidence that refutes the claim that World Trade Center Building 7 was “pulled” down intentionally by some official order?
 http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Biederman/Biederman-0112.html

Where can I find engineering studies concerning the Pentagon that refute the claims that it was hit by a guided missile?
 http://www.icivilengineer.com/News/WTC/pentagon.php
 http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/cmh/simulation/phase1/
 http://www.asce.org/responds/

More information:
 http://architecture.about.com/library/weekly/aawtc-collapse.htm
 http://www.icivilengineer.com/News/wtc.php
 http://www.icivilengineer.com/News/WTC/structure.php
 http://enr.construction.com/news/buildings/archives/021104.asp
 http://web.mit.edu/civenv/wtc/
 http://www.icivilengineer.com/News/WTC/Fire.html
 http://www.asce.org/pdf/3-6-02wtc_testimony.pdf
 http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html
 http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/latest/wtc.php#why
 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/resources.html
 http://www.house.gov/science/hot/wtc/
More links to real engineers refuting conspiracy theorists:

 http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html
 http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/latest/wtc.php
 http://space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscience/wtc_science_010919.html
 http://www.teachersdomain.org/6-8/sci/engin/systems/collapse/
 http://mcleon.tripod.com/WTC1.htm
 http://www.hera.org.nz/PDF Files/World Trade Centre.pdf

Give it up, conspiracy wonks. The experts have spoken--& they were not hired by the bad guys.

The WTC was not brought down by the most incompetent administration ever, in a tricky job that fooled everyone except a few megalomaniacal guys. International bankers did not contrive to close down Wall Street. There is not a secret takeover going on that only you can perceive.

If you “hate the government with all your heart,” you are a sick man. That’s probably why you resort to these delusional theories.

Get help. Hang around normal people once in a while. Pray for sanity.
Signature

Perry Logan
 http://perrylogan.org/