Many people are commenting on Morgan Reynolds's comments that the WTC collapse was controlled demolition and not the planes flying into the towers. Let's take a look at some facts...
Almost every engineering school in the country has either been looking into the collapse or using it as a case study. No college (not even Texas A&M who released this statement) has gone on record saying anything different about the collapse. This means either they are correct or the next generation of engineers who will be building our buildings aren't qualified to put up woodsheds. I find it unlikely that we've universally trained a generations of idiots incapable of understanding gravity, at least not at the college level. K-12... well... let's not go there.
Dr. Reynolds has a degree in economics. It's simply not accurate to call him a liberal as he writes in support of concealed carry, privatization and other conservative or at least pro-capitalist issues for the Heartland Institute. He was or is also a member of the National Center for Policy Analysis, which isn't exactly a Soros-Approved 527. In fact, he apparently once wrote an article for the National Review.
In order to have a controlled demolishing of a building, it requires a large effort that would be very hard to keep secret and certainly take very long to set up if it were to be kept secret. For instance, there would be no way to set it up in 8 months if it were Bush or someone who came to office with him. I know, however, if I saw people carrying boxes of dynamite in the building back when I was working in the Sears Tower, I would have started working from home.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave
The guy's last name is pretty appropriate for the type of hat he should be wearing.
2 - C. H. Boatright
Morgan Reynold is not saying our government blew up these buildings. He is saying that this kind of explosive charge could only have been placed by a government.
He is saying that 9-11 may not have just been Al Qaeda. Maybe we are back to Al Qaeda and Iraq.
When he writes of an "inside job" he means that someone with access to the building placed the explosives.
I think the story is not written clearly.
3 - John Bambenek
That isn't the implication I got when I read his comments and the article that the report is based on, I got the impression that he means the US government.
4 - tj
Anyone with a basic understanding of the laws of physics can see that the 3 WTC buildings were demolished using explosives if they take the time to look. Despite the idiotic claims contained in the "expert reports" it is clear that jet fuel and/or office furnishings do not burn hot enough to melt steel. If you believe that the fires werehot enough to weaken the steel columns at the point of impact, how would you explain the absence of steel columns protruding from the rubble?
What is the explanation for WTC7 coming down in free fall. No planes hit it, the fires were minimal at worst and the owner admitted to giving the order to "pull it".
Here is a news flash: Sometimes people lie either out of fear, greed or because they believe the end justifies the means.
When you say "Almost every engineering school in the country" has been looking into it, what exactly is the basis for that statement and where can I read their analysis and conclusions?
What the hell does his degree in economics and whether or nothe is a liberal have to do with skyscrapers being demolished?
Since Neil Bush was on the board of the company in charge of the security for WTC (and Dulles) perhaps they had a more sophisticated method for palceing explosives in the building than "walking down the street with boxes of dynamite".
What "gag order" do you refer to? You sound like a conspiracy theorist...
Quit apologizing for mass murderers and open your eyes.
5 - aj
A few months after 9/11 I ask a fire chief what he thought of the explanation of how the towers came down. He isn't an expert, but he said he would rather be in a large wooden beamed building then a steel one during a fire. His reason was that steel was less predictable, it would suddenly bend and twist, and pull away from it's supports, and then fall. This fits perfectly with what happened, as far as I can tell. If you look at how this building was made, you would have to be blind or stupid to think it couldn't have happened like we were told. Once one floor pulled away and fell, the heat and weight of that floor would be to much for the next. Like a house of cards, down the whole thing came.
6 - Brooke Lee
And just like the Nazi sympathizers who believe there never really were any death camps; in about 40 years I imagine a group of folks will believe there never were any World Trade Towers.
Yay!
7 - gonzo marx
having some past experience with explosive demolition, i can make no firm Opinion since i have not studied the available information...
one thing to note is that a building does not usually fall straight down without help, the taller it is , the more propensity it has to tip to a side and fall...expert demolition people plan very carefully when dropping tall buildings so that they do fall into the desired "footprint"
where i can see it being 9in the realm of possibility for one building to drop straight, anything can happen at random....it does defy imagination that both 100 plus storey structures would fall perfectly straight down
i don't pretend to Know any Answers here, and i doubt we, the public, ever will...
as i said, i have no good Theory or even Hypothesis about the event...
as for Sensenbrenner, it is still typical behaviour of the current Regime to stifle everything they can....
Excelsior!
8 - Bennett
Yeah, who knows? Not me, but I do know that once a single floor "pancakes" the "mass in motion will tend to stay in motion" in the same direction unless something exerts enough force to alter the direction of movement.
And we're talking about a HUGE amount of mass above where the planes hit.
Just having the single floor where the plane hit each tower "pancake" would set off this irreversable downward momentum.
But hey, my mileage varies, and it's just a thought.
9 - gonzo marx
Bennet, i understand what yer saying, it's just the thought that ALL structural supports "melted" at the exact same time to make the upper areas fall straight down?
the timing for that trick is one of the most difficult in demolition, precise timed detonations are required...not an easy thing , and for each area collapsing you increase the possibilities of angular momentum for a topple to a side
that's my only point here...no "theory" just an Observation based on personal knowledge of how these things work
that being said, with a structure that big, all bets are off
Excelsior!
10 - John Galt
I think www.911research.com gives the best analysis of what really happened.
Please see here to see how a steel building should and normally behaves in a fire. It's difficult to get a fire hot enough to weaken steel. The fact it happened three times in one day in New York is absurd. It's not an engineering problem, it's not a political problem, it's not a social problem, IT IS A PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEM! How do you get Americans to confront the truth when it's so awful?
11 - Bennett
Gonzo - Since this is the first I've heard of this (thanks John) I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it.
The quote from the article John links to suggests that this is an "inside job" and that it would then be an "attack on the USA by a government". He doen't specify which government.
The falling of the second tower, I saw that live, shouldn't the slo-mo footage of the collapse show some evidence of charges going off?
You and I have both seen large demolition jobs, and the charges going off (and the smoke/flash) show up pretty clearly.
This is disturbing to the max.
12 - Eric Olsen
very sensible John, thanks. Any event this large, disastrous and with political ramifications is going to draw conspiracy theorists, it's just inevitable.
It happened the way we think it happened and Oswald shot Kennedy.
13 - JR
Given that the Twin Towers stood amongst many other heavily populated structures, it would have been a far greater disaster for them to topple over into other buildings. That being the case, I wonder if the buildings might not have been designed to collapse in a certain way. The "scandal" there would be that some of the supports might have been built to fail, increasing the likelihood of a disaster to avoid the possibility of a worse one.
14 - John Galt
JR--I forgive your trying to reach for an acceptably palatable explanation but the truth probably resembles something you're currently incapable of confronting. Your government conspired with others to premeditatively murder nearly 3000 Americans and others to justify illegal and preemptive war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The seditiously silent media has kept quiet because they are controlled, cowed and manipulated. The President and his administration probably take directions from people whose identities we know nothing about. Hard to believe but the United States was overthrown and you didn't even know about it. Justice might see Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Powell and others standing against a brick wall for their Fort Leavenworth military firing squad executions. They will do everything in their power to deny the revelation of truth. They will do everything in their power to strengthen and reinforce your inability to confront. 911 was an inside job.
15 - Bennett
I kinda gotta go with Eric. Unless there is more to this than "It's unlikely that the buildings fell that way on their own" I can't buy the conspiracy.
It would have been better if they toppled, from a terrorist standpoint. No need for precise demolition techniques. Why bother with that?
"Oh, and let's get the buildings to come straight down, just to confuse everybody..."
John Galt - Sorry, no habla espanol. Have you a link to a site I can actually read?
16 - Eric Olsen
John Galt - you are a lunatic spouting unsuppotable monstrous hate-speech that might be dangerous to impressionable minds. Please fuck off hard.
17 - John Galt
Bennett--Why bother with that? Because the command center and homing beacon for the operation was probably in Building Seven that was later conveniently blown up after the players had departed.
Nothing about this is going to be handed to you on a silver platter. I suggest you come up to speed on the many facets of the event by reading all of www.911research.com so that you can understand the implications of the photos at the Spanish website. You shouldn't need to understand Spanish to understand what the photos mean.
Eric--an inability to confront often leads to fearful expressions of profanity. You seem to have selected the blue pill. You can't bring yourself to confront the evidence presented. The Greek philosopher Socrates drank hemlock as a penalty for his alleged crime of corrupting the youth of Athens. Truth is a hard nut to crack because those spouting it are very often sentenced to die.
18 - John Bambenek
And here you thought gnosticism was a centuries old heresy...
19 - Shark
Who is John Galt?
Sorry. I jus' hadda.
Actually, comment #14 sounds about as sane as anything around here, and I don't understand Eric's Olsen's *reaction. I could buy it. Stranger things have happened.
*Likely to get a lecture about civility from his wife.
Ironically.
20 - Karl Jackson
It wasn't Neil in charge of security, it was Marvin.
Never in history has a steel framed highrise collapsed through fire. WTC7 did, and wasn't hit by a plane. There is no evidence that it was seriously damaged by falling debris. But it collapsed as through a controlled demolition, with only small fires burning on two floors (those fires started in the afternoon. What started them?).
The CEO of Controlled Demolitions Inc (who wrote the cleanup plan for the complex) reported pools of molten steel in the basements of WTC 1, 2 and 7. It remained hot for over a month. What melted that steel?
But go ahead and make tinfoil hat wisecracks. It's easier than doing the homework.
21 - Shark
BTW: re. Bambi-neck's reference to a statement by Texas A & M University:
Everything Texas A & M says is suspect.
It's an ENGINEERING school - fer chrissakes -- and their students couldn't construct a safe *bonfire using 300 lb. tinker toys.
WE DON'T CARE WHAT THEY HAVE TO SAY ABOUT ARCHITECHTURAL STRUCTURES, 'kay??
'kay.
*12 dead, 27 injured.
Now back to your regular programming.
22 - The Duke
Smoke 'em if you got 'em, cuz you all are on drugs. Good Gawd almighty...
This dicussion invalidates any substantial gains by blog.critics in my book. Ya'll fuggers are nutz!
23 - Eric Olsen
As I mentioned, the intensity of my reaction is based upon such hateful drivel being taken seriously by the weak minded and easily deluded.
24 - gonzo marx
damn, Shark beat me to the "who is John Galt" sub-ref
on that note, to Sloop John B, WTF does gnosticism have to do with anything written in this Thread?
the character of "John Galt" comes from the Objectivist book "Atlas Shrugged" and has NOTHING to do with gonosticism, which IS alive and well, christian gnosticism was being argued against by Bishop Iraneus as early as 180 AD, Valentinius was tossed out of Rome for gnostic "heresies" around 150 AD
so i just don't get your point..
JR, there is no documentation or evidence that ANY large building (over 30 floors) is designed to fall in a certain way that i can discover, i'm not sure it's possible, but i am no engineer. the closest i have found are the earthquake "proof" buildings in Japan, which can sway quite considerably..but no study has been done about collapsing..
as for the rest..no way of knowing with the data available, but Bog forfend it was anything but what we believe it to have been
Excelsior!
25 - The Revolutionist
Hmmm, then please tell me why exactly the office building in MADRID SPAIN burned for almost a full day, fire spreading to over 20 floors. now THATS a raging inferno.......BUT YET......IT DID NOT FALL. -->
operation911
That last link, how was that woman able to survive through heat that supposedly melted 3 foot thick concrete-reinforced steel beams and girders? hmmm?