Could years of exhaustive experimentation and testing and the overwhelming documentary evidence be wrong?
Many technical analyses cast doubt on the official explanation of the collapse of three World Trade Center buildings, including those presented by an impressive new group: Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. More difficult than discovering the truth, however, is convincing most of the public to accept the bitter truth.…
Article comments
— go to most recent comments26 - Nancy
Thank you, Medicis. My take is, if there is no conspiracy, then why should anyone balk at a real, unbiased investigation by non-partisan, non-administration-appointed experts with no political or financial axes to grind? Furthermore, if there were no conspiracy, then why did Bush & Cheney refuse to be interviewed, except together, and not under oath - if they didn't have to coordinate stories & didn't intend to lie thru their teeth? There's a whole book of unanswered questions & iffy conditions that basically rendered the "official" 9/11 investigation report suspect & invalid to say the least. If, as they claim, there is nothing awry with 9/11 as reported, then do those who don't believe there's a problem with the original report kick up such a fuss? Wouldn't a second, more thorough & independent investigation - enforced by subpoenas, lawsuits, impeachment, or jail time if necessary against certain administration holdouts - wouldn't that just prove them right, & silence the conspiracy nuts once & for all? That alone, I should think, would be worth it.
27 - Dave Nalle
Stephen Colbert was a rerun last night where he had on the editor of The Skeptic who in about 30 seconds managed to lay out the essence of why these conspiracy freaks are so nutty and he did it quite effectively. In particular he pointed to one consistent lie they base a lot of their arguments on, which somneone on here mentioned earlier, the idea that it was a controlled demolition because the towers fell from the top down, but of course if you go and look at films of controlled demolitions they look nothing like the WTC collapse and they all fall from the bottom up, not the top down.
Dave
28 - Pat Curley
Isn't there some sort of "full disclosure" required at Blog Critics? You know, some sort of "By the way, I belong to this crackpot group which I am praising so profusely."
AE911Truth
I'd love to see your response to NIST, Joel, but you seem to have decided that you'd rather talk about cognitive dissonance and how hard it is to get other folks to join the nutter parade. No surprise there, though; nobody in the 9-11 Denial Movement ever ends up dealing in their specialty.
Ask Richard Gage for me if he requires that the steel in the buildings he designs be fireproofed, and if he does, ask him why? After all, we all know fire can't bring down a structural steel building (never mind that Kader Toy Factory or the Enigma Business Park). So why would he require fireproofing?
The truth hurts, indeed.
29 - Nancy
The point is, this administration more than other other in the past 100 years has lied, cheated, & otherwise misled so consistently about so much so often, that even if they ARE completely innocent, at least half the population can't or won't believe anything they say. 33% believe the administration did it. Over 50% think the administration may not have done it themselves, but did know about it beforehand & failed or refused to do anything to prevent it. Their only defenders are the usual hard-core tiny minority of right-wing BushCo apologists. Even people like my neighbor - a staunch GOP conservative - think there's something rotten in DC/Denmark & that the 9/11 Commission report is not telling the truth. If HE is doubtful, then the entire thing is doubtful, since he's usually one of the Faithful.
As I said, I should think the detractors would support such a re-investigation if only for once & for all to shut up those who think BushCo did it.
And...why would it have been difficult to plant explosives as needed? No one but those involved would have known it was being done. They had all the time in the world to get it done without anyone being the wiser. When you see maintenance teams working in a large building, do you stop & analyze what they're doing & why? Or do you just go on your way, assuming they're there for valid reasons? Or do you even notice them to begin with? For most, such people simply fade into the walls, as not being a detail worth noticing. Again, some of the more recent accelerants can & do produce those kinds of extreme reactions, and are remarkably compact. No one need be seen trundling huge kegs of chemicals around - and again, if they are, who's going to stop & wonder at it, if a maintenance worker is seen wheeling a 55-gal. drum of some unknown substance down a corridor? Do you? I don't, & I doubt I ever would. My point being, you don't need an army to have set up the situation, nor would there have been any need for secrecy, for that matter. In fact, the more openly it was done, the better. Where else can you better hide a leaf than in a forest?
In any event, I think a second, more thorough & independent investigation couldn't hurt, & might be inestimably valuable as much for what it didn't find as for what it might.
30 - Colin Ricketts
I've been amazed that someone is that bothered by the conspiracy theories that they've been spraypainting the web adress of 911thetruth all over Cardiff! (Capital of Wales in the United Kingdom)... Which was enough to make me take a squint at it and the linked Loose Change film... All the evidence I saw seemed pretty circumstantial and, to be honest, so far beyond my knowledge of building collapse, aviation etc as to be SOMETHING I AM NOT QUALIFIED TO JUDGE. Is a reinvestigation a campaign issue in the US? Perhaps it should be if Nancy's figures are correct.
31 - Nancy
It's an issue only among those who find the Commission report upsetting enough to want to know the truth, as the author says. Most people don't seem to want to know, but would rather go on suspecting the worst but unable to definitively prove it, which to my mind is inconsistant as well as illogical. As for the politicians, they don't want to talk about anything that isn't about themselves and/or aggrandizing themselves or their respective parties, while the administration would prefer to deep-6 the entire issue, & then some, for obvious reasons.
I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between the two camps, & that a more thorough & impartial investigation will never happen, because too many rich & powerful people would be implicated or at least exposed as being incompetent if not criminally complicit. But at least, as I say, it might put paid to the rampant sublevel rumormongering among the majority. As it is, it's already assumed urban myth proportions that, unlike most urban myths, does have a serious & adverse effect on citizens views of government & its trustworthiness as well as ability to protect them.
32 - Christopher Rose
If anyone has ever seen a demolition on TV, the explosives strapped onto or drilled into the buildings support columns are pretty hard to miss. To say nothing of the miles of cabling. C'mon folks, let's try and use a little common sense here...
33 - Colin Ricketts
And how do you sleep at night Dave, Polly and Christopher? Believing your Government is well-capable of dreaming of a massive attack on its own civilians but too dim to organise it! ;O)
Has it reached Kennedy proportions yet? And, it would be interesting to know how many Americans believe what about that granddaddy of conspiracy theories... The CIA in the billiards room with the mafia's lead pipe?
Princess Diana's death remains a magnet for conspiracy theorists too - killed by MI5 or 6 at the behest (or at least a "Who will rid me of this turbulent Princess" type outburst from someone) of the royal family to stop her marrying a Muslim is one popular one.
34 - Nancy
Actually, I could well believe that some newspaper set it up (Diana's demise, that is, not 9/11 ... well, on second thought, maybe that too) in order to have something to make journalistic/sensationalistic hay out of for a long, long, loooooong time. There's some people I wouldn't put ANYTHING past.
35 - Christopher Rose
Oi, Ricketts, no! Ain't my bleeding government.
36 - Colin Ricketts
Sorry Christopher but I do not consider Red Scum fans to be citizens of the United Kingdom, I am sure you understand ;o) (We've got minus three!)
British newspaper The Daily Express, over which Dodi Al Fayed's father Mohamedd seems to have some sway runs a Diana front page what seems like every day - usually concerning some new revelation... Still, we are due to get an inquest soonish - although the fact that two judges have already stood down from that onerous duty will no doubt fuel even more craziness...
37 - Kurzberg
The towers were demolished from the top down. The outer core columns were blown near the welds by rc, accessed from the elevator shafts under cover of the ACE elevator renovation project.
Mossad was the contractor, not CIA. Urban Moving Systems handled the explosives. The George Washington Bridge was not a target. The UMS van was relocating RDX when it was stopped. Dan Rather reported this.
38 - Doug Plumb
I hope that 9 11 wakes more people up to the eminent peril we face. 9 11 is only the tip of a huge iceberg of crimes and acts that could only be considered as "beyond the pale".
When you learn about DU, the UN sex slave operation, fluorinated water, the secretive North American Union (fascism), Agenda 21 (human sacrafices for entertainment), banks breaking 3rd world countries, war crimes the drug dealing & money laundering, the 911 criminal act pales in comparison.
All of these weeds have one common root. Private banks print our money then lend it to governments at face value. Their profits from this fund the think tanks & focus groups that direct government and create culture.
Monetary reform is the true cause we must all embrace. We can have things much better and much easier than times before this neoliberal agenda became obvious.
Watch "The Money Masters" free on google video.
39 - Clavos
"As I said, I should think the detractors would support such a re-investigation if only for once & for all to shut up those who think BushCo did it."
You're kidding, right Nancy??
Have the Kennedy conspiracists shut up yet???
40 - moonraven
As the 6th anniversary of the US Reichstag Fire bears down on folks in the US, questioning that official version is simply IN THE AIR (pax, Phil Collins).
There are a number of reasons, but the primary one is that most folks are now finally waking up to how they have been suckered out of their basic rights by a criminal regime.
I would like to hope that the Long Weekend of the Deliberately Brain-dead Mall Rats in over. But, as a character in the latest Paul Auster novel, The Brooklyn Follies, said: "I will see it when I believe it".
And that quote, from the novel that I haven't finished yet but which I assume will end more or less on 9/11, is the heart of the issue.
As the OP indicated, folks simply don't want to believe that THEIR government--the one THEY put in office and CONTINUE to support (although I think probably the last rats on the sinking ship of belief may well be confined to this and other rightwing redneck beer and belch sites)--would do such a heinous caper.
Then there are the folks such as the comments editor (what a laugh) whose reason for believing such absolute nonsense is that the Bush Gang simply are not capable of executing such a caper.
Wrong--on both counts.
A. It's obvious that the Bush Gang WOULD (AND DID) commit that crime against humanity:
1. How many hundreds of thousands are dead in Iraq and Afghanistan?
2. The number of US soldiers killed in both places far exceeds the number of deaths on 9/11.
3. And what about the folks that they let die without a sniff of remorse in the wake of Katrina?
4. They are threatening and itching to raise the number of dead and the number of crimes against humanity by dropping nuclear weapons on Iran.
Get real. These guys have really raked it in thanks to 9/11--and they want to keep that rake moving.
B. That the Bush Gang is so incompetent that they could not have pulled off 9/11 was the topic of a good article in this morning's La Jornada here in Mexico, "Robert Fisk y la conspiración del 9/11" (Fisk recently promoted the Incompetent Theory in a piece of his own in The Independent, indicating that the Bush Gang has made a mess out of everything else, so they couldn't have pulled off 9/11.)
Here are some of the things they have NOT messed up on:
1. The continued development of a nuclear arsenal
2. The destruction of the Geneva Conventions in regard to torture
3. The severe limitation of civil liberties in the US
4. The SUCCESSFUL MANIPULATION of US public OPINION in regard to 9/11
5. The SUPPORTED invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the control of the resources of Iraq
6. The so far successful manipulation of US public opinion in regard to the necessity to invade Iran (and control the petroleum and gas of the Persian Gulf)
7. A number of etceteras of which even the most blind among you are very well aware.
In the face of such an obvious fairy tale by the Bush Gang, it is simply astounding that there are ANY folks who still believe that a small group of forfeign fanatics bought some box cutters at WalMart, hijacked without any trouble at all several passenger jets and drove them into the walls of the WTC and the Pentagon--and that the impact and the fire caused the collapse of the buildings and the deaths of more than 3,000 people.
Absolutely amazing! If it were a made-for-tv movie you would say, "Nah, couldn't happen that way!"
Yet you believe it if someone who has NEVER in his 7 years in office told the truth even ONCE tells you it's true?
I have a number of propositions involving my Nebraska oceanfront property that I am sure you will be interested in....
41 - JustOneMan
Nancy,
By your comments its obvious that you are in the 25th percentile....
(Parker and Stone summed it up nicely on South Park by concluding that, yes, 25% of the country are retarded)
JOM
42 - Nancy
Very likely. Well - move over, then, JOM; we'll be company.
43 - Baronius
When did the supposed explosives get into the buildings? Before or after the impact?
If before, what do you think would happen if you flew a plane into a building lined with thermite? (Not a "controlled" demolition, I'd bet.) If after, how much time and personnel would it take to load up two of the world's biggest buildings with explosives? Unnoticed? During an evacuation? Without accident?
44 - moonraven
Just keep jerking yourself off about the mechanics of how it was done--exactly what you good little sheep are SUPPOSED to do.
There is not a single person on this site who is an expert on demoltion of buildings--so stop diddling yourself--and others--and start your BRAIN working.
You've been spending way too much time--6 years, in fact, down there in the Nether Regions.
45 - Matthew T. Sussman
"When did the supposed explosives get into the buildings? Before or after the impact?"
They were built into the structure in the early 70s. Nixon caused 9/11 posthumously.
46 - moonraven
The best reason for flushing the US and its people down the toilet of history is the sheer number of trivial-minded simpletons who would rather shop at WalMart than be FREE.
Therefore, you deserve to be slaves.
47 - Christopher Rose
So the birdbrain who spends half their time complaining about discrimination tars 302,791,106 people with the same brush.
48 - moonraven
birdbrain (singular)
their (plural)
You have not communicated.
Learn English.
49 - Clavos
"They were built into the structure in the early 70s. Nixon caused 9/11 posthumously."
What a pity he didn't live to see it.
50 - Christopher Rose
To judge from the squawking, I guess my comment was a painful 9/5 truth. Learn anything!
51 - moonraven
I am labeling every person in the US with the tag of unmitigated stupidity. So what?
52 - Christopher Rose
I would have thought stating such a thing was the epitome of discrimination and unmitigatedly stupid, that's what.
53 - moonraven
Wrong again.
Just the facts, m'am.
54 - moonraven
chris, I have an idea: find another site to post on so that you are not monopolizing this one when you are supposed to be looking at the comments of OTHERS.
55 - Matthew T. Sussman
"I am labeling every person in the US with the tag of unmitigated stupidity"
You're a Bill Engvall fan? You do love redneck humor!
56 - Christopher Rose
You don't deal in facts, moonraven, just prejudice and stupid remarks that undermine your own position.
You do your own causes a greater disservice than the majority of your opponents could manage. That you do it with such considerable energy and persistence only reinforces the conjecture that you are nothing but a trojan mule.
57 - Clavos
"...only reinforces the conjecture that you are nothing but a trojan mule."
And not a very smart one, at that.
58 - moonraven
I only need to be smarter than the rest of you dimwits.
And I clearly am.
Chris, your concern for my shooting myself in the foot is admirable--but it is unwanted--and your hysterical dedication to personal attacks against me on this site would SEEM to be against the rules.
[Gratuitous vulgarity deleted by Comments Editor.]
59 - Christopher Rose
Moonraven, there's only one place where you are always right and smarter than the rest of us and that's in the safety of your own imagination. Out in the rest of the world you just sound silly.
As to hysteria, I reckon you are generating. Mind you, you sure are good at projecting, whether it's hysteria or vomit!
If you paid closer attention, I think you'd find that I am not making personal attacks on you, I am very accurately calling your moves and you just don't like it.
Furthermore, you have long since forfeited your right to make any kind of complaint due to your determined refusal to refrain from making personal attacks yourself.
60 - Matthew T. Sussman
Chris, try to download the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode with the Mooninites. Watch it. Come back, and re-read some of Moonraven's comments. You'll be amazed.
61 - Christopher Rose
Suss, I must admit I have no fucking idea what the Aqua Teen Hunger Force is. I have felt like that when stoned though!
62 - Dr Dreadful
I would just observe that even if the Bush admin didn't plan and execute 9/11 themselves, they sure as hell extracted maximum political advantage from it afterwards. And then some.
Now - was that a conspiracy? Which seems to be a question more worth our attention, since the number of armed services personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan (Incidentally, I'm trying to steer us back on topic on some of the threads where it has changed to MR. Why should we encourage her?) now exceeds the number of those who died on 9/11.
63 - Christopher Rose
Doc, I could easily believe that the Bush administration used the events of 9/11 for their own advantage but I'd tag it as what passes for politics these days rather than a conspiracy as such.
64 - moonraven
It is ALWAYS about me, doc.
Nobody else posting here has even a clue about any of the topics, so all I have to do is post something--anything--and it becomes all about me.
Sometimes, in fact, I do not even have to post anything.
I didn't realize Playboy mags had become so expensive that you can't afford them anymore and have to masturbate to my virtual image on blogcritics.
65 - moonraven
Back, ONCE AGAIN, to the TOPIC, here's another one of the supposed messes which the Bush Gang counts as a success, and which, from their point of view, IS:
"Two years after Katrina, as Bush flew from the bayou to Baghdad, a People’s Hurricane tribunal-putting every level of government on trial-was wrapping up in New Orleans. A group was selling T-shirts there that reads: “Don’t believe the hype. Gulf Coast recovery is not ‘slow’-it is a privatization scheme that takes away our homes, schools, hospitals and human rights.” Mission accomplished?" Amy Goodman, CommonDreams, today.
66 - Dr Dreadful
True enough, Chris. My point is more that rather than obsess about how the Towers came down, we should pay more attention to what happened afterwards.
67 - Lumpy
That slogan is way too long and uncatchy to sell many t-shirts.
68 - Baronius
But Doc, don't you think it's important to take a stand against falsehoods?
69 - Dr Dreadful
Most assuredly: by calling out the most amateurish ones for the crap that they are and moving on to something more worthwhile.
The alleged 9/11 conspiracy is a minority fantasy cooked up by a few crackpots who've watched one too many episodes of The X Files. Like the JFK assassination theories, it's not worth one's time.
In contrast, there are ideas like creationism, which is equally extravagantly false but is sincerely believed by a significant number of people.
70 - Michael J. West
As proof that the OP is correct about the unwillingness of the folks in the US to face the truth: the firestorm that has occurred every time I have indicated that only Dick Cheney had motive, opportunity and means to coordinate 9/11
Yes. Motive, opportunity, and means have all been presented over and over and over again. The one thing that has not been presented is: any concrete, or in any way discernable, evidence of a government collusion or of demolition or of anything and anyone else besides a group of Islamic extremists who conspired to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Not only has no credible evidence surfaced to support the notion that "9/11 was an inside job"/"The WTC was brought down by controlled demolition"/"A missile hit the Pentagon"/"There was no crash of Flight 93," I've not even seen any incredible evidence to support that theory. Well, unless you count Loose Change as evidence - which you shouldn't - since that film is only slightly more credible than the notion of an Easter Bunny.
Plus, as Chris notes, the idea of a Bush Administration conspiracy to perpetrate the 9/11 attacks requires me to believe that the Bush Administration has some level of competence. And that is an inhuman stretch.
71 - Zlaya
Hah, all you 'debunkers' who call us 'troofer nutcases', really need to stop using www.debunking911.com as an 'end all' source of information.
That anonymous site has more holes than the Kean Hamilton report.
If you 'debunkers' are right, and buildings can collapse straight down into their footprint at near free fall speed (WTC7), from some fires and damage on one side, then the Controlled Demolition companies are charging waaaaaay to much, and are spending Wwaaaaay too much time researching how to bring some building down.
Next time we need to take down a Vegas tower, lets just create some external wall damage, and plant a few fires, and stand back and watch the tower collapse neatly into a pile, with walls caving in onto themselves.
Really, snap out of it.
Great article by the way, it's good to see some people still have their thinking cap on.
72 - Dave Nalle
Zlaya have you SEEN the photos of WTC7? I'm guessing not. Your 'some damage on one side' is one of the huge steel retaining pylons from the tower next to it slicing right through the building and totally destroying its structural integrity. It was so unsound they wouldn't even send firemen in.
And for that matter the walls of the two towers did NOT 'cave in'. Take a look at the diagrams of the damage from the walls buckling outwards sometime. Buildings for hundreds of yards were hit with parts of the walls - that's not what happens in a controlled demolition.
Oh, and they didn't fall at the speed you suggest. It took upwards of 30 minutes for each of them to fall, it just appeared to be faster because of the more dramatic and rapid final collapse.
Dave
73 - 75%
will the 75% of the sane people here say "I" if you sick of being told to "wake up" or "check the facts, 9/11 was an inside job". it seems to me the only argument CT's have left is that NORAD stood down, which is not true and can be thouroghly debunked. then theres the pentagon missile theory that fails so miserably compared to the real facts. the missile theory can get absolutely crushed. hers how it stands. over 100 saw a large airliner, 26 specifically saw an AA plane, 0 saw a missile. there was recognizable debris from an AA plane at the crash site, including peices with the AA logo on it. no missile debris. then theres is grandaddy conspiracy smasher of them all. ALL THE BODIES FROM FLIGHT 77 WERE IDENTIFIED. and the videos cant be released because they are still owned by the people at the road station, gas station, etc. then theres the flight 93 never crashed theory. all the bodies from UA 93 were identified, including the terrorists, and recognizable luggage was sent back to the families of victims. phone calls were made from passengers to family saying there were terrorists,done. about new york. there were no explosives in the buildings obviously. u have to rip off drywall to put explosives in and the port authority is patrolling those buildings 24/7 that means they would have to be in on it. along with half the world aqccording to CT's. and flight 177 175 did hit the wtc. plane victims were identified. an AA stewardess was found on a manhattan street bound and gagged. the black box recordings clearly says no allah no allah right before the plane crashed. plane parts were found. building 7 was pelted with flying debris from the two largest buildings in the world. had intense fires. was missing 30% of its southwest corner. so it collapsed. i guess the only thing conspiracy theorists can hold onto now is misqouting people and coincidences. but no real evidence.
74 - Dave Nalle
Not only did over 100 see the pentagon plane, but there is video tape of it which when slowed down and analyzed clearly shows the plane. The only missile anywhere near that large is a Polaris or a Triton and you can't launch them horizontally.
Dave
75 - Dr Dreadful
Do you have a link to that tape, Dave? From what I've seen and read, the frame rate from the one camera that actually filmed the impact was too slow to capture a Boeing 767 traveling at 500 m.p.h. So in one frame you see a peaceful September morning in Virginia; the next is the side of the Pentagon erupting in flames.
Not that I'm going over to the conspiracists' side, you understand: that plane-shaped hole in the building afterwards was pretty convincing.