A friend whose intelligence and keen insight whom I deeply respect–and who made it clear they are agnostic on this question, they are merely asking questions–recently asked me what I thought of this commercial, and the movement behind it, and asked if we’d like to tackle it on Dean’s World:
Here’s my thoughts:
The group that put this commercial together is trying to raise funds to put this commercial on the air in New York. Which to me raises three questions: what do I think about the specific case of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 (the third building that collapsed on 9/11, which a lot of people don’t remember but which I remember vividly), what do I think of the 9/11 questioners in general, and what do I think of the proposal for an independent investigation and reappraisal of the official reports on what happened to all three buildings on 9/11?
Well I will open this for discussion, but let me say that the self-proclaimed “9/11 Truth movement” has all the markings of a movement that raises my bullsh** antennae. I sat through the entirety of the movie “Loose Change” and even wrote a lengthy appraisal of it–one which, I’m horrified to say, I can’t find in the Dean’s World archives, because the archives are still broken (a subject which raises despair in me every time it comes up, as this blog represents a major part of my life’s work and having broken archives deflates my spirit to no end). But in short, hardly a minute went by in that movie that I didn’t find something that was easily refuted or did not rely on insinuation or clearly out-of-context quotes rather than clinical factual observation.
And, at least in the Bush years, it was transparently obvious that a large number of the “9/11 Truthers” (as they called themselves) were politically motivated because they just didn’t like Bush, the Afghan and Iraq wars, and so on. Besides, what does it say about any movement that calls itself a “Truth movement” but which claims that anyone who questions them has something deeply wrong with them?
That said, it would not be surprising, at all, if there are holes and mysteries in the official reports of this epic-scale travesty. Nothing of this massive scale had ever happened before. Police can tell you that when they do complex murder cases, you can find inconsistencies and things you can’t quite explain. Even in the OJ Simpson case–where almost nobody who’s rationally looked at all the evidence that’s accumulated over the years can believe in his innocence–you can find SOME things that “don’t add up” because you cannot have perfect knowledge of complex events unless you are God.
Still, if these folks are not driving a poltical agenda, if they really just want independent investigators who have no axe to grind and no political or financial conflicts of interest to go back and re-examine the evidence and some of the still-open questions, with the dispassionate disinterest of 10 years of retrospection, and to listen to experts who are credible who say “well look, there are some problems here in this part of the investigation, and we’d like to know more,” then I say fine, let them. Why not? If it gives those who lost loved ones that day some greater peace, let them have it.
I am as interested in that as I am interested in the people who investigated the cause of the sinking of the Titanic and came to the conclusion, back in the 1990s, that what we had thought for 70 years had happened to the Titanic was wrong: we didn’t find out until generations later that the Titanic didn’t sink as a whole boat, but practically snapped in half before sinking, and it’s amazing how despite all the witnesses no one seemed to have noticed that at the time.
So fine, let them have their investigation. I don’t think most of the “Truthers” will get the answers they want, because a perfect explanation that answers every single question will never be possible, but if it helps some, fine. Who could object to more investigation?
When we look at the Kennedy assassination, for example: most of the conspiracy theories concentrated on a second or even third shooter, shots from the grassy knoll, the so-called “magic bullet”–and I’m afraid that extensive looks at it using lasers and recreations showed that all of that is unlikely. It is also borderline insane to think that the CIA or Lyndon Johnson had a hand. On the other hand, it is plausible (I said plausible, as in, not-insane) to believe that Oswald had friends who egged him on, or knew what he was going to do, that we never found out about.
What the Building 7 folks should be aware of, or at least acknowledge, is that building 7 demolition experts have looked at this and said they find the whole idea of a controlled demolition unlikely. Is it plausible that, somehow, there were some incendiary materials somewhere in that building 7 that some government or corporate group doesn’t want known, that might have contributed? I’d say “Ok, perhaps, I can believe that if you show me the evidence of that.” But controlled demolition? Nyet. Anything relying on the words “pull it” or witnesses saying they think they heard things that sounded like explosions are inherently unreliable in a chaotic situation like that.
This report in PDF format from Structure Magazine looks solid enough to me. I am quite certain that anyone who wanted to could find some reasons to question it, and like I said, I’m not against “independent investigations.” Anyone who looks at a wildly complex event or series of events and says “this is settled” is automatically questionable, because nothing super-complex can ever be “settled” in a definitive way. But as I say, the simplest explanation tends to be correct: OJ Simpson murdered two people, Lee Harvey Oswald killed the President all by himself with a difficult but hardly-impossible shot, and Building 7 collapsed because huge chunks of wildly flying flaming debris hit it at a critical point that caused one part of the building to collapse, resulting in a rapid cascading failures exacerbated by multiple fires that weakened (not “melted,” weakened) the building’s steel, and yes, the ultimate collapse could happen with a sudden snap in less than 10 seconds.
That’s what I think. Anyone else who wants to have their say, feel free.
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The Truthers are mostly all wet — guided (mostly) by animus towards George Bush.
But, as a purely engineering/failure analysis matter, they should be heard.
Here’s my own conceivable way they could be partly right:
1. There was a Twin Tower Car bombing in 1993. Killed 7 or so people (I think). The bad guys were hoping that the building would topple over and kill thousands more. Didn’t happen (thank God). Don’t even know if it could happen.
2. Nonetheless, during the repairs of this damage, some engineering/security guys thought that it would be necessary to install demolition charges to pancake the building, not out of neocon conspiracy, but out of safety reasons, ie, if a more sophisticated car bombing attempt was made.
3. After the 2 airplanes hit the towers, someone thought it was necessary to flip the demolition switch.
I have no idea if this is even technologically feasible — but it disconnects legitimate engineering issues with some grand conspiracy attributable to George Bush.
–HB
Whenever you have a real conspiracy, it generally can only involve a tiny handful of people; essentially, for every person you add who’s in on the conspiracy, the likelihood of it blowing apart and becoming discovered roughly doubles.
You can come up with all sorts of plausible scenarios that make the official story wrong somewhere. Although in looking at your example, Hank Barnes, there is one huge problem: produce the engineers who say they placed these charges. There would have to be several involved at minimum, plus they would somehow have had to hide this from anybody who might have known about it and might reveal it. Too many people would have to keep their mouths shut.
From a technical point of view your scenario counts as “plausible.” From a human behavior point of view, it’s not, it would require too many people to have done it and known about it to have all kept their mouths shut for ten years. Thus rendering it implausible as anything but wild speculation, “hail mary throw” kind of stuff.
On building 7, the most technically plausible theory I’ve heard is that there was some extremely incendiary material stored in there by some government or corporate group, and they don’t want that known due to liability or similar concerns. On a technical level I call that “plausible.” On a human behavior scale, however, you again have to look at how many people would have knowledge of the material’s presence, and why we can’t produce anyone who has that knowledge who’ll talk about it.
I never have been a conspiracy theorist. Moreover, I haven’t much interest in chopping up and making mincemeat out of factoids to “prove” whodunit or whonodunit. My interest is determining who are active enough enemies of this country sufficient to justify:
1) Keeping their them and people like them out of the USA.
2) Booting them and their families out of the USA if they fall into such an assumed enemy list.
3) Sending out squads of trained killers to rub out whatever gang leaders in foreign countries seem to be organizing these potential attackers and organizing training camps for them in the middle of this or that south-asian desert or goat-herding mountain range.
4) If they get too threatening, murdering members of their families important enough to the perps to frighten away anybody else who would dare try to pull off such a caper.
In other words, I admire Joe Stalin enough to want our military and secret services to follow the tactics his enforcers used to bump off people like Leon Trotsky halfway around the world. That surely was not what Americans think of as “nice”, but it got the job done and at low cost, which is all that counts.
As for the conspiracy theory crap, who the hell cares who killed Kennedy or did the US Navy shoot down the airliner off the coast of Long Island one moonlit night, or was the USA secretly planning to destroy the World Trade Center to embarrass world Islam, or any of the rest of that bullshit? The victims are all dead, and the only way they can be avenged is to make doubly certain that next time we kill the enemy before he kills us. That’s what war is all about, and nothing else really counts in that context, either.
Screw democracy. I’m only interested in national security. And if that means committing nationally sanctioned cold-blooded murder, then that’s fine by me.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Dean,
You wouldn’t be looking for this would you ?
Loose Change
Dean Esmay
A friend of mine who I like and respect recently saw a documentary called “Loose Change,” which alleges basically that there are numerous inconsistencies in the official 9/11 story. Parts 1-3 are on YouTube. I started to explain what I found wrong with it, but I thought I might be easier to discuss it here.
Here’s Part 1 of the film, via YouTube. I’m not sure I’ll watch, or post, the other two parts.
A friend of mine who I like and respect recently saw a documentary called “Loose Change,” which alleges basically that there are numerous inconsistencies in the official 9/11 story. Parts 1-3 are on YouTube. I started to explain what I found wrong with it, but I thought I might be easier to discuss it here.
Here’s Part 1 of the film, via YouTube. I’m not sure I’ll watch, or post, the other two parts.
Time was when this film would have made me angry. I would have refused to link it just because I didn’t want to encourage these people. But enough time has gone on since 9/11, and I’ve run across enough people who think there are “inconsistencies in the official story,” that it seems maybe a constructive analysis of something like this would be useful.
I am only being honest when I say that I see all the hallmarks of a Conspiracy Theory here in this film. It’s not that I don’t like contrarian views, or radical thoughts. I have my own opinions which often run counter to the established wisdom. So let me explain what are, to me, the hallmarks of Conspiracy Theories:
—
1) Conspiracy Theorists rely on evidence that they themselves have carefully put together, even though none of them are experts in the subject. They then ask you to draw your own conclusions, even though you’re not an expert either.
2) In events with huge numbers of eyewitnesses, it is entirely normal for there be people who are confused, misremember things, contradict themselves, or contradict each other. You see it every day: people don’t even agree with each other on what they just saw on the news last night, let alone some big scary event where things are blowing up and people are screaming and running for their lives. But such normal contradictions are used by Conspiracy Theorists as evidence that something is very deeply wrong.
3) Conspiracy Theorists require that very large numbers of people–hundreds, even thousands–are involved in carefully plotted and carefully timed events, and then all (or mostly all) keep their mouths shut, and continue to hide the “real truth.”
4) Conspiracy Theorists tend to have an explanation for everything. Or, they expect you to. In real life there are often ambiguities and things people don’t quite understand. This is normal, but the Conspiracy Theorist uses it as evidence that something is very deeply wrong.
5) Conspiracy Theorists have an overpowering narrative to explain the whole thing which involves something very sinister, such as world domination, spreading an Empire, swinging an election, exterminating Jews, blacks, white Christians, or whatever.
—
Now to be clear, none of these things PROVES a theory wrong. But any one of them is a red flag for me. The more of them I see, the more troubled I become. And I gotta be blunt, I see ALL of them in this film.
Furthermore, some of the items these guys bring up are just plain goofy. They want us to believe there was extra gear on the bottom of one of the planes, and none of the ground crew ever saw that? And the plane could still fly? And shoot missiles? Can we find an expert on civil aircraft who would support that theory?
They show us a photo of the plane hitting and a bit of a white flash before the orange explosion–so they want us to think a missile got shot out of this extra hidden gear at the bottom of the plane? How’s this for an alternate explanation, from non-expert me? The plane nose hits, and a bunch of white concrete rubble flies out just before the belly of the plane with all the fuel hits.
Just a guess, but who do you think’s closer to the truth? Me? Or these guys who want to tell us a freaking missile from special add-on equipment was shot from the belly of the plane, a fraction of a second before impact?
I could go on and on like this, but I don’t think I have the energy. I mean, what really gets me is this:
There actually was a conspiracy here: a group of Islamic radicals, who years ago declared war on the United States and the Western World, decided to kill a bunch of Americans by flying airplanes into buildings. That’s not enough of a conspiracy for you? You need something involving the U.S. military, the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the White House, The Pentagon, and even people placed inside the World Trade Center to carry this all off?
I’m hoping it generates some worthwhile discussion that doesn’t degenerate into name-calling. Please try to discusses the merits of the film rationally, without name-calling or any of that. Tell me what else you see wrong here–or of you think I’m wrong about something, please tell me what you think I’m missing that’s important.
Or maybe this;
Loose Change Part Two
Dean Esmay
In watching the beginning of this film, I immediately notice footage that contradicts what the film makers said earlier. The photos they gave us led us to believe there was basically a roundish hole where the “missile or whatever” hit. Yet clearly, from the helicopter photos, we see an enormous trough has been cut clean through from roof five floors down to the floor, cutting almost to the center of the building–not at all consistent with a pinpoint missile strike to my (utterly untrained and non-expert) eye.
I notice once again we’re also relying on a small handfull of eyewitness accounts, who are either carefully quoted without context and not interviewed in-depth to ask them for any clarifications. Also, much is made of one lady who claims that while she was in the hospital she was visited by anonymous men in black who urged her to take the insurance money and keep her mouth shut about what she saw. Now, correct me if I’m wrong but there were hundreds of people hospitalized from the Pentagon strikes. Is there any possibility even one of them was a little goofy in the head? Or even dazed and woozy from a head injury? Where’s the followup on this woman who claims the Men In Black visited her?
The filmmakers make much of the fact that there were extra explosions after the intial impact at the Pentagon and at the twin towers. Why would that be surprising? Secondary explosions would be expected after a massive impact and fuel spillage, wouldn’t they be? I’m not a firefighter, so tell me if I’m wrong about that. Also, is it plausible that there were parts of the Pentagon which had some items in it that might explode under the right circumstances?
They make much of the fact that in the 1940s an airplane hit the Empire State Building, and it didn’t collapse. They erroneously tell us it was a B-52. No it wasn’t, it was a B-25, a much smaller plane. Indeed, I checked numerous sources: a B-25 is a 10 ton airplane, propeller driven. The 757 is about a 65 ton jet airplane. The B-52 would likely have been going a couple of hundred miles an hour or so, probably less as it was flying through fog in an area where the pilot felt lost and trapped amid buildings. The 757s that hit the WTC were going at their top speed of around 500 miles per hour. It’s an unbelievably large disparity, even leaving aside questions of whether the WTC towers were build in such a way to make them more likely to collapse.
I notice they’re doing a whole lot of quoting from news sources, very selectively, without much context. I also notice that we’re more than halfway through this film before they even give us our first interview with anyone who was present at the World Trade Center disaster–and he’s a janitor who worked there.
Nothing wrong with being a janitor. At all. He’s a ligitimate eyewitness. But the only reason he seems to be there is to help establish that there were multiple explosions after the airplanes hit. I just have to ask: I’m no fire expert, but when you have a major building on fire, are secondary explosions not kind of, well… common? Or what?
Why are they not interviewing any of these experts on building construction, fires, military, etc.? This movie’s almost 2/3rds done, and we have no real interviews except a flight school instructor, and a janitor from the WTC? All these people you’re carefully quoting, and you’ve talked to none of them?
And finally in this segment, as we are 2/3rds done with the film, we have some very short clips of interviews with some FDNY guys, taken from another documentary, with just a few seconds from each of these guys chosen to make their point.
I haven’t seen the final third yet. So I’m just being honest about what I’m seeing as I see it. Maybe that’s not fair, maybe I should be watching the whole thing before saying anything, but… from the very moments this film started I’ve seen problems with their entire approach and an awful lot of flimsy reasoning.
Tomorrow I’ll post the last segment and my final thoughts. I invite readers to tell me what I’ve gotten wrong, or if they think there’s something important I’m missing.
I don’t attribute anything malicious to MOST of these conspiracy theorists.
I think it’s mostly a coping mechanism for folks who can’t come to grips with how vulnerable and fragile we all really are.
But I have no doubt there are “eggers on” who encourage this stuff for reasons both political and $$$….
Because this is the age of complete obfuscation and confusion, we are caught between competing fogging machines. We are all in the dark, so instead we take a position on whether it is right or wrong to THINK about a thing. I have associates who think 9/11 truthers “deserve contempt.”
I don’t feel any contempt. I just wish they would be much stricter about unassailable and significant facts vs. all these things they ask us to find mysterious. How did everybody become engineers, explosive experts, collapsing sky-scraper experts…all of a sudden?
On the other side, is it accurate that they are driven by Bush hatred, or to call them all ‘wet?’
Maybe.
But what about the pilots, who have now organized their own wing of the 9/11 truth movement. Are they all like…lefty pilots? ARE there lefty pilots? I hope not, because lefties can’t think straight and I don’t like that quality in a pilot.
Pilots are like the clearest thinking people in the world. But who has time to listen to what these people are all saying? And to what end?
How on EARTH would an “inside job” scenario find Westerners willing to fly planes into buildings for love of God and country? Inconceivable, just that.
What’s so stunning is that people don’t agree on ANYTHING. There are people who claim no commercial jets disappeared that day! Madness. What do they MEAN for the love of Christ? I know somebody whose brother in law was on one of the planes. Do they think they arranged for all those people to go to an island and pretend to be dead?
Help me.
Even that which is categorically undeniably indisputably true gets foggy, somehow. That’s the era we live in. You will be clear about NOTHING.
Here’s the mental defect: People can’t tolerate not knowing, so they enter states of knowing, then start badgering everybody around them. It’s a nation of VERY CERTAIN pickles. Nobody (forgive me but this really is a male trait) wants to say I DON’T KNOW. I DO NOT KNOW. KNOWING TAKES TIME, ALOT OF TIME. GIVE ME TIME.
Pause. Gather. Glean. Wait. Glean more, wait more. Keep mind open, in case something drops in. Only open minds receive the good stuff.
We should never say/write anything except that which we know for sure, but what we do is, we say, I have a few hard facts, and I’m gonna fill in the rest. I’m gonna SPECULATE.
I can hear Serge Lang’s chalk smashing against the blackboard.
Lang DETESTED ALL speculation, especially about motives.
We should only go as far on any bridge as that which is solid. The rest is useless. Shards of hard fact, no filler, walking very slowly, never ahead of ourselves, and in all other situations, rely on the magic three words: I don’t know.
Period.
Period.
I do think that the accusation, notion, that our own President, and government, (composed of real people) executed this massacre is incredibly serious. It’s a terrible, terrible, terrible thing to say. And NOBODY has proof of any kind.
What I think/feel instinctively is that THAT is totally impossible and unfathomable.
Maybe it is offensive. Or just dark and far out and boring and wrong.
But I don’t think it’s offensive to say that building 7, for example, is a problem.
You know what? We will never know. That much I know.
You don’t need forgiveness, Celia, you may be right that inability to say “I don’t know” is a “male trait,” it’s certainly common in members of my gender. So is steeltrap “these are the facts, deal with them” logic. Although I’ve known at least a few females who can’t ever seem to be wrong about anything.
I really don’t know on this, I do know what seems plausible, and implausible. Like Lang, I usually find speculation on motives–which I will hit you back with as a very female trait, good lord the lot of you seem to always be reading hidden motives into everything, like every damned thing is laden with hidden code or something–to be annoying on complex questions. Usually. On most questions, that would seem like a secondary issue at best. Indeed, I think as I’ve mentioned, the quickest way to piss me off in a discussion is usually to start going on about my motives for saying something, rather than addressing the factual arguments I made. I think there is probably no faster way to get me to furiously exit a discussion.
Once facts are clear, motives are usually easily ascertained. But to me? On building 7, it will always be impossible to answer every question. This is why William of Occam’s thesis is so useful: all things being equal, that which requires the least assumptions tends to be most likely correct.
By the way, McKiernan: yes, those are the posts I was looking for! Do you have URLs to them??
More to Celia:
I agree with much of what you say, although I do not despair that finding truth is always impossible. And I think the only “9/11 Truthers” who are deserving of contempt are the ones who are clearly making a profit off of peddling their theories, abd repeating things they already know to be untrue. But you can find scam artists in any large endeavor.
I share with you the notion that our own government would have, let alone could have, done something like this intentionally all but unthinkable, not only because of its pure wickedness but because TOO MANY people would have been required. Find for me the conspiracy that requires only a handful of conspirators, then I can believe.
I would also apply the razor as follows: if they’re so bloody powerful, and so unspeakably evil, why are the people asking these questions even alive for us to be able to have this discussion?
That said, I am curious about the pilots, do you have a link to whatever it is they’re complaining about?
Oh by the way:
“I hope not, because lefties can’t think straight and I don’t like that quality in a pilot.”
OMFGLOL!
I just remembered that I was for a time a ghost writer on a book about 9/11, by John Miller, who once co-anchored 20/20 and interviewed Bin Laden. John was a very charming funny guy. The book did not advance anything particularly. But I learned alot about all those pilot schools, etc. And I interviewed a powerful Orthodox Jewish man, whose name I have forgotten, who for many years shook Bill Clinton’s lapel practically to wake him up to the truth about impending attacks on a grand scale from Al Qaeuda. Information from Mossad. And Clinton was consumed with the Lewinsky matter and was distracted. Didn’t listen.
We WERE warned, repeatedly, specifically. By the best intelligence agency in the world.
Dean,
I just decided it’s pernicious to say “women” or “men.”
In the Lang sense. What woman? In what situation? What man? In what situation?
I started it, by saying something generalizing about “men.” Then you said something about “women.”
The more we stay really really exact and precise, the more God loves us, I believe. So I will stop if you will. No more broad brushes.
Your archives are findable through your frontpage archive box, but it takes some tweaking
http://deanesmay.com/2006/04/26/
Celia, you are both perceptive and correct, as usual.
I don’t really know or care if God loves us, or me in particular, or just ignores all of us irrespective of our heavenly pretensions.
But I certainly know that I respect exactitude and precision. And the more I do that, the more old man Harris loves himself. Which is important as you age.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
“…we didn’t find out until generations later that the Titanic didn’t sink as a whole boat.”
Actually, if you study the history of the immediate investigation, they pretty much knew that right off the bat. What established the “whole boat” thing was the very popular movie “A Night to Remember”.
It’s amazing the number of “common facts” that we get from movies that are wrong.
“Lee Harvey Oswald killed the President all by himself with a difficult but hardly-impossible shot…”
I would say that it’s not even all that difficult, at least not for anyone who has had even a minimum amount of training as a rifleman, which Lee Harvey Oswald, as an ex Marine, most certainly had.
I used to be sympathetic to some of the conspiracy theories surrounding the JFK assassination until I actually visited the site in Dallas. I’ve stood, both on the grassy knoll and in the sixth floor window. (Well, the one next to it anyway.) And as an avid target shooter myself, I am here to tell you that, though neither shot is impossible, the shot from the sixth floor, at a head sized target, is much easier than a shot from the so called grassy knoll. Why? Simple target motion analysis. From the grassy knoll, the target is moving across the line of sight. From the sixth floor, the target is moving within the line of sight.
——————
Off topic: I am so glad this site is back with comments. Dean, I love your site. It’s one of my go-to-every-day places. But part of the draw for me is the give and take in the comments. I know, it’s free ice cream and there is a lot of work that goes into a site like this. And you, as the site owner, have 100% complete control. So even if you shut it down completely, I would have no right to complain.
However, I would be sad.
Celia: I will think on it. But I have come to think that the most corrosive force to basic social coherence/cohesion came in the wake of the cultural imperative (common when we were young) to deny fundamental mind and spirit differences between the sexes. We thus found ourselves “correcting” ourselves from thoughts we aren’t “supposed” to have, and often angry with each other senselessly when it comes to male-female relationships.
I think the better habit is to realize you’re making a generalization and make allowances for it, that every individual is ultimately unique. But that doesn’t change the urgency of realizing how big a mistake you can make by ignoring what is generally true. Most fire engines are red; this does not mean you can ignore yellow fire engines.
I’ve grown to believe in my middle age that it’s best to think of women and men as very nearly different species; that rather than being the same species, they are symbiotes, complementing each other, and that we grow most confused when we refuse to recognize that.
I have found that if I treat the females in my life the same way I treat the males in my life, I get frustration and grief for it–misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and more. So I’ve just stopped. I immediately assume upon encountering one of your species that I must completely regear my thinking and realize I’m talking to someone with substantially different brain wiring who speaks a similar but different language. When I do so, the results are usually good; when I do not do so, the results are unpredictable and frustrating.
If you find men in your life frustrating and maddening, you might try regearing your thinking the same way. Don’t look down at them, don’t look up at them, don’t patronize them, don’t suck up to them, just think, “Oh. Their brains work different and are attuned to a different wavelength. Of course. I need to readjust.”
Well, it works for me.
Your archives are findable through your frontpage archive box, but it takes some tweaking
http://deanesmay.com/2006/04/26/
If you follow the formula starting with year/ month/day you can get there. You will also find the posts have incorrect author attribution.
The part about author attribution I knew about and the only fix was to have contributors do that themselves. None of them ever did.
Crap.
This one is for Arnold Harris.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcnH_kF1zXc
Here is my problem with these kind of questions:
“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
We don’t know the truth, or don’t want to believe the truth. When our discussion are peppered with phrases such as ‘if this…plausible…might…if only…’ we are in the realm of fantasy, not truth. The more time we spend in fantasy, the farther from truth (and Truth) we get.
Honestly, this is what gets me so upset about politicians, lawyers and conspiracy theorists (and, in a conscious effort not to be hypocritical or cynical, I will NOT speculate on the number of people who are all three).
So take 9/11 truthers, birthers, Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, etc and leave me alone.
McK,
Today was the 65th anniversary.
As the Man said, “These precedings are closed”.
I remember that Mac told Sutherland to help the elderly crippled japanese diplomat up the ladder on the Missouri, and so Sutherland did that.
Before he left the Far East and returned to America, Mac proved he would have been a very suitable president of Japan. He always had a flair for the spectacular, both in peace and war.
Truly the american Caesar. Too bad he gave Truman cause to humble him.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Sorry, no. The bottom line problem with this “do it for my son who died on 9/11″ bullshit is that nobody – that I know of – died in WTC 7. They couldn’t give a rats ass bout WTC 7. What they are implying is that the entire event was not caused by arab terrorists flying planes into the WTC, causing them to collapse.
I’m sorry, wingnut moonbats, but that IS what happened. Deal with it. I know it is horribly sad that your friend or family member died in such a spectacular and unbelievably stupid and meaningless way. But that’s what happened and no amount of investigation is ever going to uncover a conspiracy that doesn’t exist and will not bring you closure. It will only make it worse as more and more threads or inconsistencies are found, but ultimately leading to nothing.
As far as incendiaries in WTC 7 – there was a massive ConEd substation in the middle of the building with a massive transformer filled with oil. That qualify ?
What I can’t fathom is why the feds had every face and name of the terrorists ready for the front pages of the newspapers but declined to keep them off airplanes, even when repeatedly warned there were planned hijackings of American commercial planes, and even given a fair amount of specifics and details, via competent intelligence sources.
It’s so devastating to think that even installing locks on the cockpit doors would have been enough to thwart this massacre.
To say that we had out “pants down” doesn’t begin to characterize the systemic, vast failure of our government to protect its citizenry.
But these are futile emotions.
It happened, as it happened. Unfathomable at EVERY level, that it could happen, that we could be so spectacularly fast asleep at the wheel.
It seems to me that Bill Clinton has alot to answer for.
Then again, nobody in power answers for anything, except a few scapegoats now and then, ritually sacrificed.
i’m utterly flummoxed as to how someone goes from here
What I can’t fathom is why the feds had every face and name of the terrorists ready for the front pages of the newspapers but declined to keep them off airplanes, even when repeatedly warned there were planned hijackings of American commercial planes, and even given a fair amount of specifics and details, via competent intelligence sources.
(presumably a reference to this as well)
to here:
It seems to me that Bill Clinton has alot to answer for.
but ok. Bill Clinto was at fault for 9/11. Got it.
Aziz,
Did you read comment 10 ?
“Bill Clinton has alot to answer for” does not mean “Bill Clinto was at fault for 9/11″, Aziz.
Yours,
Wince
I watched the second plane hit, and was not surprised.
Sure, people are free to ask questions.
I’m free to ask questions about their motivation.
I’m not sure I believe their assurances that they’re just looking for the truth.
I have questions about whether or not they believe this country is really that evil.
Have they embraced the darkness so deeply?
Do they wish to see me dead?
I don’t know. I’m just asking questions.
well, I find Celia to be a charming and courageous person so I am not really inclined to quibble too much further on this point.
I will note that if Monica was a distraction for Clinton, it was one foisted upon him by certain others, who might also then “have a lot to answer for”. And certainly McK and Tom, bastions of moderate reasonableness and fair-minded non-partisan inquiry, might wonder who else has “a lot to answer for” now that we’ve lowered the bar.
I’ve had my say; I’m not interested in disagreeing with Celia more stridently than this.
Well, let’s be clear, if Clinton has much to answer for in this scenario, so does Bush; Bush had been in office just about exactly 9 months when 9/11 happened, and the same Federal authorities had the same information when he was in charge.
In truth I’ve always found it futile to blame either President–and broken or not, if someone denies it I will go through a post at a time and show how I, repeatedly during the Bush years, indicated I was as much against trying to blame Clinton as trying to blame Bush. If you want to affix -more- blame than another, then fine, it is true that there was one point in the Clinton administration where they had a chance to kill bin Laden, one time, and took a pass as they found it too risky. But that’s not fair either; that’s looking at things in retrospect.
What I would say to Celia’s point is that what this all really needs to be looked at is not from the perspective of the White House, but from the perspective of everyday people in CIA, DIA, NSA, and at various airport security agencies. The fact that you have names and faces of dangerous people doesn’t prove anything; prior to 9/11, we did not have the manpower to screen everyone’s face and information, and truth to tell we still don’t.
Prior to 9/11, while I’m sure you can find someone somewhere in the vast array of intelligence analysts who could say “see, I told you this was coming!” the truth is no one truly “foresaw” a day when terrorists were so insane they would hijack airliners and fly them straight into buildings. For all the lefties who screamed at Bush administration officials for makings such remarks (and found some obscure analysts somewhere who’d said something like this was plausible) the real truth is that there was back then and still today is endless chatter of terrorist attacks and threats every single day around the world. You have to be able to sift through all that and decide, based on a wide variety of factors including, frankly, gut instinct, and decide what’s credible and what’s not.
Credibility of certain threats got ratcheted up on 9/11 because the conspirators did something that most people would not have thought very likely at all before they actually did it.
Yet now of course we have this much greater airport security, and guess what? People complain that it’s oppressive, and that we’re moving toward a society of everybody being monitored by the government. And complain that the United States is now embarked on a policy of killing people it believes to be terrorists when it can’t capture them, and holding people it thinks are terrorists without being able to prove it.
In short, it’s a no-win situation for those in charge–which is something I’ve always maintained by the way. During the Bush years I got accused of being a Bush apologist on this, but whatever. It’s just common sense. You can’t have a 100% secure system. In a world of 7 billion people, you can’t know everything, you can’t predict everything.
You’re at airport security. You’ve got millions of people running through airports every day. There are a couple of hundred faces of suspected terrorists. How can you screen them all? You can’t. We can do it better now than we could before 9/11, but we still can’t screen them all. We can’t.
So my short answer is, I don’t find it as unfathomable as Celia.
Do I think we might have done a better job prior to 9/11 if Clinton hadn’t been distracted by the Lewinsky matter? Perhaps. Perhaps not. The truth is the President isn’t the one running around chasing terrorists himself anyway, it’s people like my brother (an ICE special agent–although his job is mostly to go after human traficking and drug traficking, another sordid business, not terrorism, still, his department’s concerned about that). They’re the ones who have to find and hunt down these people who don’t want to be found. It’s hard work, and whatever the President’s up to doesn’t have much to do with that; all the President really does is set policy, whether he’s busy fighting other political battles or playing golf or doing other things.
I just find fingerpointing in this case mostly useless. Figuring out what to do is what really matters.
(personal attack-laden comment deleted)
And I agree completely with Dean, fingerpointing is completely useless. You can “blame” the policies under Bill Clinton, but nobody honestly was designing their policies around preventing the kind of thing that happened on 9/11. The general liberal / democratic worldview to this day views terrorism from a criminal prosecution standpoint in this country. (though they have no problem whatsoever killing suspected terrorists at the drop of a hat elsewhere – as long as it is from afar via bombs or drones).
And there is absolutely no way you can ignore the entire 8 years of Bill Clinton and then turn around and lay the blame at the feet of a guy in office for just 9 months. I’m not even sure I’ve ever seen a rational “what if” analysis of what COULD have been done in the space of one month after the vague August 2001 intelligence report that everyone wants to point to in blaming Bush.
As in what COULD have been done and would it actually have had any impact whatsoever ? I highly doubt it would have changed a thing if Bush had mobilized every government agency in August 2001.
Both Bill Clinton and George Bush and Aziz and Dean, and, until recently I, have been ignoring and underplaying the Nazi-level anti-Jewish bigotry coming out of the Palestinians, to a lesser extent the Arabs, and, to a further lesser extent, Muslims and leftists. It has been well identified, named, blamed and shamed when it appears among skin-heads, neo-Nazis, various nativists and on the right. If the haters are blue-collar types we go after them vigorously, but university professors whose support of the Palestinians has drifted into Jew hatred are curiously exempt.
That naming, blaming and shaming needs to be loud, vigorous and nearly continuous against the Palestinians until the people of the planet think of the Palestinians to be as shameful as the German Nazis just before they opened the death camps.
We need to start with a new American plan for peace. Let’s call it land for statehood. The Palestinians must be punished for their Jew hatred the way the Germans were – by loss of territory. Palestinians must lose and be relocated from Jerusalem, Gaza and one third of the West Bank into the remaining two-thirds of the West Bank. All Palestinian refugee camps must be shut down and the refugees moved to the new Palestinian state. The U.N. Commission responsible for them must be shut down.
I realize this is collective punishment. As nearly as I can tell, that is the only thing that works. Never again. We need to stop this before there is another attempt at a Final Solution and we need to stop it before we have to go to war against a billion Muslims. I don’t want to have a world war where tens of millions die because we were unwilling to face our problems squarely.
Yours,
Wince
It is interesting how this discussion strays far afield from the question posed. It does show that the wounds from 9/11 are still somewhat raw (which is understandable).
Primary thought: The proximate cause of the death and destruction we all observed on 9/11 was the planning and execution of 2 high speed planes, flown by militant Jihadists, slamming into 2 buildings.
Most other observations are distant second.
Secondary thought: Is it possible that the Bush Administration conspired to assist in this attack to establish a predicate (causus belli) for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? I highly, highly, highly doubt it.
Third thought: As an engineering matter, why did the buildings collapse in pancake fashion as if by controlled demolition?
I don’t mind asking the third question or investigating it, as long as thoughts 1 & 2 are acknowledged.
So, Do I know how building 7 collapsed without being hit by a plane? Nope. I just assumed the 2 high impact collisions caused all sorts of direct and collateral damage, and I’m very comfortable in this position of ignorance. But, I am open to taking a look at it, if some folks feel it is necessary.
–HB
Dean,
Looks like the name calling/ad homeneim problem is back.
I’m not even going to read this thread because as soon as I looked at it, I saw thunderous accusations of people being first class idiots, etc.
There seems to be no way of changing the vibe.
deadrody,
> You come up with some the most ridiculous nonsense I read anywhere on the internet. Congratulations for being a first class lunatic.
Celia is right. You stepped over the line, sir. Aziz is obviously not blaming the sexual distraction caused by Monica Lewinsky on others. He is blaming the legal distraction on others. In this I think he is for the most part correct. It was caused by the overreaction of the Democrats following Watergate, when they established special prosecutors to constantly harass and bedevil Presidents.
That said, Clinton and his people abused the power of the office in a particularly disgusting way to intimidate vulnerable women who had been abused. Clinton and his people were corrupt thugs. Sure, it’s a common type of corrupt thuggery, but corrupt thuggery it was.
Yours,
Wince
……….meanwhile back at the ranch.
What Happened to Building 7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEuJimaumW4
Make It Go Away.
Key quote:
We can wish in one hand and spit in the other. Which one will come true? These attitudes are not going away fast enough because we keep talking. We need strong action, so as to be the strong horse. Permanently seizing Palestinian land and turning it over to Israel is the way to go. If needed, Israel may also need to permanently add the Hezbollah lands in Lebanon to Israel. That Israel and America are the strong horses and that those who advocate for the destruction of Israel are the weak horses must be made completely obvious in language that Israel’s foes understand – permanent land transfers. You will notice that many Muslims talk about Al-Andalus. But no one takes them seriously and their governments make no military moves. Why? Spain and it’s alliances are too strong. Israel is only fought against because the Palestinians and their allies have successfully mobilized Jew hatred to isolate Israel. This must end. Anti-Zionism is Jew hatred, with a few exceptions among Jews who have theological reasons to disagree with it.
Yours,
Wince
Wince,
The on-the-ground actualities of population dynamics in Judea and Samaria (that’s what the “West Bank” has been called for about 3300 years) are more or less as follows:
1) The jewish population of Judea and Samaria itself is now up to about 350,000, and the jewish population of the eastern part of Jerusalem, annexed by Israel in 1968, is now beyond 200,000. Both these populations are growing at about 5% per year, about three times the growth rate of the overall jewish israeli population.
2) arab population of these same areas is rather far less then the 2,500,000 claimed by the UNO. because the local Arabs keep on their population roles persons who have died or emigrated (in order to keep their UN-provided refugee support funds) and double-counts jerusalem Arabs who have israeli citizenship. In addition, Arab birth rates are now lower than the high birth rates maintained by the orthodox Jews who make up a major component of the jewish population of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem.
3) Using that high jewish rate of population growth, and following the growth rule of 72 (72 divided by the annual population growth rate), the Jewish population of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem will double to about 1,100,000 in about 14 years, and, depending on available local water resources, could double again to more than 2 million in another 14-15 years.
4) The factors driving israeli settlement of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem are a combination of Zionism and urban sprawl that characterizes most western civilization cultures, not necessarily in that order. This is hardly surprising. The cities and villages that have sprung up in Judea and Samaria not only are picture-pretty, but they provide better housing at lesser expense than in the increasingly crowded urban centers of Jerusalem as a whole and especially the Tel Aviv conurbation. Israel with Golan, eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria all wrapped together is only about the size of New Jersey plus a few medium size counties from the neighboring states. That makes it relatively easy to get around, and the daily commute from one of these new urban places is easier than counterpart commuting around almost all metropolitan areas in the USA. There is also a local attractant of good jobs in these communties, ranging from industrial manufacturing to software design and development.
5) The politically-loaded descriptive term “settlement” has not at all fit the new Jewish cities and villages of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem for 40 years. Some of them are already major urban centers. All city and regional planning in Israel is carefully done by the state and its leading universities. I should know, because I completed one graduate study year at the Department of City and Regional Planning of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the 1973-1974 study year, under an american fellowship grant. So I got to see many of these places that now have blossomed into full scale cities.
6) So where does all of the above leave the latest proposals for so-called “peace” as envisioned by Obama, Clinton, Mitchell and an assortment of european and UNO-based international busybodies? The almost certain answer is no further now than in the past 110 years. The Arabs who live in the area mostly dream of the day that they or all Islam will destroy Israel and create for them what they think is the Greater Palestine they deserve. No matter what words are coaxed out of their mouths before the western news media at photo opportunities in the White House rose garden, they will never make peace with any jewish-controlled state anywhere in the Middle East. Nor will the Jews give up any part of the Zion they are actually construcitng with their own hands, hearts, money, sons and daughters.
7) What I think is likely to occur is a further splintering of the old Fatah gang that took over arab political life in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem and which in fact is nothing more than their own counterpart to Hamas, which took control of the Gaza strip when Israel removed its small handful of mostly beachside communities in that area under Ariel Sharon’s prime ministerium. Abbas is now a frail old man with no viable successor. When the latest western diplomatic push comes to shove, Abbas shall be seen by the local franctioneers to have outlived his political usefulness. After that, it will be far easier for Israel to deal with each of the local leaderships of each of the main Arab communities: Jericho, Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, Kalkaliya. These deals will be simple and straightforward: keep the peace, and you will be left alone with whatever degree of autonomy we can trust you to handle. Start terrorist trouble again, we will bring the military occupation back in real force, accompanied by new Israeli encampments and Jewish civilian centers sprouting up on even more of your land.
8) Will they all learn to get along with the Jews who run the entire country? More or less, but these people are slow to learn. So I don’t see much progress coming on that score much before the end of this century.
9) Can the Jews get away with all this? You bet they can. They have begun to learn that they don’t need the support of American liberals or even the predominantly liberal american jewish communities. Instead, Israel, Judaism and Zionism have newfound friends among the Evangelical Christians, who number some 70 million in the USA and about 650 million around the world. It was through them that I found Pastor John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel, with which I am now affiliated. You have power like that behind you, and you can tell all the Barack Hussein Obamas in the world to kiss your ass.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Abbas: We will not recognize Israel as a Jewish state
Jerusalem Post
9/07/2010 11:30 (September 7, 2010)
“Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told interviewers that he would not recognize Israel as a Jewish state, Israel Radio reported on Tuesday.
Abbas reportedly said that his position is no different from those Arafat present (ed) in previous negotiations, and that his staff is the same as Arafat’s.
He also hinted that the PA may fall apart if there is no hope for a solution in the near future. He then repeated that the PA will not recognize Israel as a Jewish state.”
http://www.jpost.com/home/article.aspx?id=187402
There’s no way of knowing what’s true-true-true anymore, but Aziz, it has been said/reported that Clinton turned a blind eye to Al Qaeda, weakened the CIA, and did away with the special operations that relied on foreign language skills…etc but I can see what all this may seem like “efterklokt” which is Swedish for “after smart.”
It has been said that Clinton emasculated the CIA and made it harder for them to do their jobs. I don’t KNOW the facts intimately. I do know that on 9/11, 2001, what happened is suggestive either of a catatonic CIA or a weakened CIA.
Or perhaps we “can’t say that” either.
What, pray tell, IS the POINT of the CIA, if not to thwart something like this? Is that accusatory? And I would never use a word like “lapses,” either because these weren’t “lapses,” they were comprehensive, system-wide failures.
I diagnose sheer lack of imagination and alertness. Everybody doing their jobs with their heads down, like in a corporation, not wanting to ruffle any feathers, or seem overly emotional, or be the town crier. Better, always, to do nothing.
Dean,
How do I get your software to never, ever put a smileyface on any of my comments? I hate those damned things. Where I had typed “8)” to numericize the eight paragraphs of my most recent comment, someone or something substituted the smileyface for 8).
McK,
I don’t give a damn whether or not Abbas or any other aging Fatah leader ever agrees to recognize Israel as a jewish state. The fact is, the more recalcitrant about real peace those bastards are, the more land my friends can justify taking from them over time and make into a proper part of the Land of Israel. Which is the only thing in the Middle East in which I have much interest in any case. I want all of the Land of Israel as the permanent and inalienable inheritance of the Jewish nation.
Will they have to fight for it? Sure. But that will make them all the tougher. But the only real Jews I ever came across are the tough armed men and women who mount guard over Eretz Yisrael. And the only Jews in whom I have any interest at all are those who purposely do something to augment Israel’s national power.
That, in my judgement, should be their most important of their “mitzvot” (commandments).
For centuries they adopted the stance of national weakness, hoping it would enable them to evade the wrath of the “goyim” (nations) among whom they dragged out their lives. All that got them in the end were a mass one-way trips to Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibor, Belzec, Kulm. In order for Jews to survive as a nation in this world as we have made it is for them to learn to be the most efficient, cold-blooded, merciless and ruthless killers in history. National weakness brings only more pressure against them.
I don’t know what Pastor Hagee and CUFI think of this, good-hearted christian souls that they are. But I have seen and lived in the Middle East. What I saw, heard and experienced will never leave my consciousness.
George Orwell in one of his bitter political novels had a leading antagonist say that nobody seizes power in order to make a revolution. Just the opposite. They make a revolution in order to seize power. That to me represents the clearest of all possible thinking.
And I really truly want the Jews of Israel to do the same thing to those Arabs as our American national forefathers did to the Indians who inhabited the lands they intended to build the United States of America on, from sea to shining sea. And no, I don’t feel even one drop of guilt over that, either.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Just trying to get you up to date, Arnold. You and I know the Pallys don’t get along well with the Izzys.
Anyhow, in the best of scenarios, maybe the Izzys will let the Pallys open up gambling casinos to help them get through their next budgets crisis.
;-)
Celia,
> I diagnose sheer lack of imagination and alertness. Everybody doing their jobs with their heads down, like in a corporation, not wanting to ruffle any feathers, or seem overly emotional, or be the town crier. Better, always, to do nothing.
What you are seeing is more aftereffects of the Carter Administration and the post-Watergate / post-Vietnam Congress. There were ex-CIA guys involved in the Watergate break in, and the CIA had been used rather aggressively by all the Presidents leading up to Nixon, with plenty of so-called dirty tricks in it’s foreign operations, including Vietnam, and probably a few in it’s counter intelligence work here. The Democrats didn’t mind this when Kennedy and Johnson did it, but when Nixon did it that was too much.
The CIA was deliberately put to sleep, and now the same political pressures are Putting The CIA Back To Sleep. The left does not want an effective CIA. They insist on a Hopalong Cassidy CIA which can shoot the guns out of the bad guys hands – and can always tell who the bad guys are at a glance. Since Hopalong Cassidy was a fictional character, the CIA ends up with fictional effectiveness whenever the left is in control.
Yours,
Wince
Wince,
(personal snark deleted)
“We need to start with a new American plan for peace. Let’s call it land for statehood. The Palestinians must be punished for their Jew hatred the way the Germans were – by loss of territory. Palestinians must lose and be relocated from Jerusalem, Gaza and one third of the West Bank into the remaining two-thirds of the West Bank. All Palestinian refugee camps must be shut down and the refugees moved to the new Palestinian state. The U.N. Commission responsible for them must be shut down.”
To paraphrase, Rudyard Kipling:
… Asia ( middle east) is not going to be civilised after the methods of the West. She will never attend Sunday-school or learn to vote save with swords for tickets.
> She will never attend Sunday-school or learn to vote save with swords for tickets.
Well, I wasn’t thinking either the Palestinians would stop fighting, or the Israelis stop fighting back. Were you?
Yours,
Wince
What I can’t fathom is why the feds had every face and name of the terrorists ready for the front pages of the newspapers but declined to keep them off airplanes, even when repeatedly warned there were planned hijackings of American commercial planes, and even given a fair amount of specifics and details, via competent intelligence sources.
Well, we failed to keep the underwear Jihadist off a plane even though we had good intel on him, same with the Times Square Jihadist and the Shoe-bombing Jihadist, and with the Fort Hood Jihadist. In a perfect world we’d have kept all these people off planes or away from dangerous materials since they were dinging the Intel services “jihadist” bell. But, what we’ve learned from 9/11 is that Federal Agencies are slow, they’re territorial, and sometimes just plain dumb (Napalitano believing her agency did “everything right” shows that).
Combine that with the fact the “Flying Imams” shows that certain groups will engage in legal terrorism and you can see how a Federal Agency’s investigation/protection services can and are inhibited by fear, bureaucratic sloth etc.
BTW, I don’t think Clinton has anything to answer for just like I don’t think Bush does. Sometimes a committed enemy can slip in the defenses of even the largest and best military just through daring.
Celia: I can, and am, going to begin more aggressively policing. Some people have left, which is a start. I’m going to just start editing comments and removing them entirely or removing portions I find inflammatory. I’ve had enough of the snottiness around here.
> BTW, I don’t think Clinton has anything to answer for just like I don’t think Bush does. Sometimes a committed enemy can slip in the defenses of even the largest and best military just through daring.
MikeLyons wins the thread. Sure, this is obvious, but we keep acting, writing and talking as if it is not.
Yours,
Wince
What you say Tom, about the post-Nixon CIA, resonates. Hopalong Cassidy….shooting the guns out of the bad guys’ hands.
That IS the fantasy.
We know nothing. Everything is fantasy, Santa Claus, Mommy, Daddy, The Tooth Fairy, women not aging, death as error, and Mick Jagger never gets old.
Dean, here is a link to the architects you asked for:
http://www.ae911truth.org/en/news/41-articles/343-1000-architects-a-engineers-challenge-official-report-of-wtc-destruction.html
Note: I just work here. Don’t blame me.
So the question IS, Why did Building 7 spontaneously self-demolish at 5:30 PM NYT with no one in it when the Towers went down eight hours before in the morning.
Anyone watched THIS yet ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEuJimaumW4
McK: Well I did give a link (in the starting thread) that attempted to answer it. But, in looking at the group Celia mentioned, they appear at first glance to be reasonable people who eschew conspiracy theories and simply think something is very wrong with the official reports from a technical perspective. I just don’t have a problem with that. I’m not so worked up about it that I’m willing to take up the cudgels in their defense, but if they’re qualified and reasonable and they want to reexamine some things, more power to ‘em.
I suspect this is going to be like the Kennedy assassination thing: there were reasonable, rational people who had reasonable, rational things they wanted to question. And a lot of crackpots and loons driving their own political agendas. You can have both simultaneously.
> Anyone watched THIS yet ?
Yes, but apparently I’m not interested in saying anything about it or thinking about it much. I did respect you enough to watch it, though.
Yours,
Wince
P.S. And Dean’s link does answer the physical questions in that video. Hmmm. Guess I got a little interested, didn’t I?
I am watching a program on History Channel about 9/11 conspiracy theories. Last 20 mins, (as I tuned in) they covered the Pentagon crash.
I was left (after this section, in any event) with the impression, rather categorically, that the official theory is entirely plausible and the conspiracy theories not supportable.
But, we’re talking the BUILDING 7 CRASH, not the Pentagon.
Good thing you’re not rigid, sir. I elected to post a comment about my present understanding of 9/11 conspiracy theorem (that it is not valid) in a thread that began on the subject if building 7, and later mushroomed.
Might you check your compulsion to stick pins in people at every turn?
Still smarting from the Judy debacle, perhaps?
Dean, where’s that video?
I’m not sticking pins in anyone.
Who’s Judy ?
I am learning things.
WTC 7 burned, for 8 hours. It had diesel fuel tanks powering generators, that caught fire. It fell because the foundation finally (after 8 hours of fires burning from within) caved in, and the rest is inevitable. The weight of the building and the force of gravity.
Now that this has been explained, I honestly see no mystery. It seems entirely predictable, that it would collapse. Why didn’t I ever know it had burned for 8 solid hours, from the center!?
Did y’all know that?
Many questions put to rest, in my view, after this two hour special on History Channel. I can’t sit on the fence forever. I think the conspiracy theories are wrong.
What was “her” name? Wasn’t it Judy?
Maybe McK, you didn’t intend to stick pins, but certainly what you wrote was disharmonious and seemed intent upon finding faint fault where there was none. I was consistent with the theme of the thread.
You just don’t like me.
Celia,
True,
I may be disharmonious.
But I do like you.
I’ll critique more on the morrow.
Really? That’s a nice development. I’m sure we can learn to get along.
We shall see.
Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. That’s like someone complaining about their legal problems after committing a crime. IT ALL stems from Bill Clinton’s actions. As I said, I don’t agree with the eventual fallout, but the fact remains, ONE PERSON was to blame for the entire episode, regardless of how over-zealous people were after the fact. That one person is Bill Clinton. To say anything that undercuts that sole responsibility is excusing what he did.
Furthermore, to suggest that this episode “distracted” Clinton, thus preventing him from adequately addressing looming terrorist plots or threats is completely ridiculous and typical liberal excuse making.
The funny thing about the list of issues at the ae911truth.org site is as follows:
“No precedent for high rise towers collapsing due to fire”
Indeed. How about if you add coincident catastrophic damage and gaping holes in the structure caused to impact of commercial jets flying 500 mph ? And perhaps they could detail the previous instances where fires were brought on by the instantaneous vaporization of thousands of gallons of jet fuel coincident with massive elimination of fire retardant coatings on the structure.
Then I might be convinced.
Worst of all, I clicked through probably a dozen pages looking for why the official explanation is wrong. DOES.NOT.EXIST. That would be step one. And yet it is skipped. Sorry, you fail.
Celia,
There’s no way of knowing what’s true-true-true anymore,
I disagree entirely.
but Aziz, it has been said/reported that Clinton turned a blind eye to Al Qaeda, weakened the CIA, and did away with the special operations that relied on foreign language skills…etc but I can see what all this may seem like “efterklokt” which is Swedish for “after smart.”
It has been said that Clinton emasculated the CIA and made it harder for them to do their jobs. I don’t KNOW the facts intimately.
It has indeed “been said”, but not by sources I consider to have objective national interest in mind, only by actors with specific political agendas. You’re arguing from external authority, I will respond by arguing from my personal authority – I spent probably more time than the average fellow reading on intelligence failures leading to 9/11, and i actually *do* know the facts intimately, and I am forced to conclude that Al Q was actually pretty durned lucky. And they got in a good solid shot. But now, I tend to agree with Frum.
I do know that on 9/11, 2001, what happened is suggestive either of a catatonic CIA or a weakened CIA. … What, pray tell, IS the POINT of the CIA, if not to thwart something like this?
No, what happened is suggestive of a series of improbable coincidences and unlucky breaks. The CIA was actually very much aware of the threat, and even had knowledge of some of the main players. They were aware of persons of suspicion attending certain flight schools, they were aware that a major operation was being scheduled for September, they were aware of the identities of people in a certain cell of Al Qaeda in Germany.
What happened was that the bad guys got lucky, because they were the first. What they did can never be replicated.
What should concern you now, is that the CIA is far from weak – in fact, quite the opposite. The far greater threat than foreign terrorism to American civil liberty and freedom is now, those selfsame intelligence agencies.
Points accepted, deadrody, Aziz.
I just can’t understand, all of the above being so, (Aziz) why the CIA/FAA didn’t take any steps to safeguard planes from hijacking. Locks on cockpit doors, if nothing else. But this is a totally useless discussion, why they didn’t. They didn’t, period. I can’t ask YOU to explain it to me. And it doesn’t matter now.
As for Bin Laden, let us recall that three networks were invited INTO his cave to interview him, in the late 90s, including somebody I used to know, John Miller. The whole thing is incomprehensible. Everything is wrong with it.
I watched several 9/11 programs, last few days, including one last night on History Channel that wove together footage from several eyewitness camcorders. So MANY people are heard saying, for example, that they saw the second plane hit and that it was a United passenger plane. How CAN those people continue to claim that it was drone planes? That the phone calls weren’t real? That the Pentagon was hit by a missile.
I think the appropriate term would be 9/11 Denialism.
DENYING that terrorist networks bent on Holy War with the West even exist. Denying the entire documented history of their very explicit plans, and re-arranging all act of terrorism as the work of the US, or the CIA. Denying that which hundreds of eye witnesses saw. Ear witnesses who received phone calls. Air traffic controllers, pilots in the area, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, responders…This is real denialism. It’s on par with Western denialism about Stalin, brilliantly documented in “Koba The Dread,” by Martin Amis. Denialism about Nelson Mandela, who admires and is openly friendly with brutal dictators, from Castro to Quadaffi, is another manifestation of this lunacy.
I tried to be tolerant and open minded but I simply can’t follow the logic. A government attacks itself, maims itself, creates drone planes to slam into its most iconic stuctures, decimates its economy…WHILE a known terrorist syndicate repeatedly tries, fails, then succeeds in a “spectacular” attack, but it turns out WE did it all, to create the ILLUSION that we have formidable enemies, so we can get oil, go to war, and do away with civil rights. How the US managed to get pilots to sacrifice their lives can’t be explained so we come up with drone planes. Even though thousands of people saw the actual planes hit their targets, including at the Pentagon.
Why are we so gluttonous that we only accord evil intent to OUR government? Is this a form of narcissism?
Those who use the word “truth,” in its slogans are not interested in truth. They want to shove their truth down your throat, and you’re not allowed to ask any questions.
I wonder is the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will have any sobering effect on the truths about 9/11 so many cling to.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/miller.html
I was curious what Bin Laden himself has said so Googled that, and this came up. No idea what it is, whether it’s authentic, but here he says Israel did it. I wonder why he doesn’t say the US did it, like our truthers.
http://www.public-action.com/911/oblintrv.html
Lastly, THIS is genius:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/construction-complete-on-911-truther-memorial,18034/
I just can’t understand, all of the above being so, (Aziz) why the CIA/FAA didn’t take any steps to safeguard planes from hijacking. Locks on cockpit doors, if nothing else. But this is a totally useless discussion, why they didn’t. They didn’t, period.
in hindsight, there should have been locks on cockpit doors. But had there been, the terrorists would have held hostages and forced the pilots to open the doors. No one imagined that the consequences of gaining that access would be so horrific. Today, cockpit doors are barred and the pilots know what can happen – by exxample – if they cracck and open the doors, even if there is carnage in the passenger cabin.
And today, no terrorist is going to make it to the cabin door alive, anyway. Because in raising the stakes, they raised the stakes.
dont judge from hindsight, Celia.
As for Bin Laden, let us recall that three networks were invited INTO his cave to interview him, in the late 90s, including somebody I used to know, John Miller.
Yes, of course. And in each case, the single reporter who finally made it to the interview was so heavily vetted, searched, and blindfolded and led, that it was impossible to really achieve any kind of penetration. At that point in time, also remember, OBL was not a success in terms of having actually achieved anything major against us.
Again, dont judge from hindsight.
And I think you give too much credence to 9/11 denialism. Its the fringest of fringe. The few wackos even on the most committed leftist or wacjiest righty sites (DU, FR) get shouted down. They really are relegated to the farthest corners.
The dneialists have a corner they stand in every saturday in Madison’s Capitol Square. They are basically tolerated, but ignored totally. Thats how it should be.
I think if you spend too much time investigating the fringe, you will get a distorted view of its importance. Fringe is fringe.
Not so Aziz. If “fringe” means unpopular, it doesn’t always mean incorrect. The anti-totalitarian, anti-communist voices who opposed the Big Darling for decades were marginalized among the literati, Hollywood, etc. They were relegated to fringe, and they were correct.
Unpopular, ‘fringe” positions are sometimes vindicated. But 9/11 is not an example.
And by the way, they are huge, in numbers.
But yes, I did give them too much credence. They’re always bothering me. Now I know what to say.
I come from a family that is about to celebrate a half century in the profession of journalism. We reject snobbery–that’s our only snobbery. We don’t categorize stories SOCIALLY (“fringe is fringe”) but rather, in accordance with their factual/ historical viability. My father told me: “Penetrate the ostensible.”
What the devil do you mean “fringe is fringe.”
In Cuba, “fringe” is defined in prison. I know what you mean Aziz. Losers hold fringe positions. Winners hold mainstream positions.
On this point I will fight to the end of time. Pernicious.
Truth is tough, bloody, filthy, and hard won. Also, it takes TIME.
” If “fringe” means unpopular, it doesn’t always mean incorrect. The anti-totalitarian, anti-communist voices who opposed the Big Darling for decades were marginalized among the literati, Hollywood, etc. They were relegated to fringe, and they were correct.
Unpopular, ‘fringe” positions are sometimes vindicated. But 9/11 is not an example.
And by the way, they are huge, in numbers.
But yes, I did give them too much credence. They’re always bothering me. Now I know what to say.”
Aziz,
The ball is NOW in your court……
Im not sure what we are arguing about, Celia. I didnt say that fringe neccssarily equals incorrect, I am asserting that as far as 9-11 denialism goes, it is fringe. And incorrect.
so, we seem to be in agreement.
Dean, where’s that video?
Sorry, was intentionally being silent here on Saturday, then yesterday spent a day with my son and new friends and old friends and…
Anyway, uhm, what video?
I’m pleased with this discussion, I’m probably going to put it in the “Best Discussions” archive. I believe I have some inkling as to Celia’s concern/perspective here: there is a constant challenge to those of us who are intellectually intelligent, curious, open-minded, and willing to challenge authority. We recognize that history is littered with people who challenged conventional wisdom/the status quo and were utterly vindicated, but often not until long after their deaths. And those stories are often infuriating.
Galileo is the iconic example of this, but the world is littered with others. Never mind that there’s a good deal of mythology in the case of Galileo, that’s for another discussion, he serves as an illustrative example: the truth is often obscured by people who simply don’t want it to be true.
On the particular subject of Communism–on which Celia and I are in utter agreement–a peculiar thing happened: in certain elite circles, Hollywood and America’s universities especially, it became the standing wisdom that the “red scare” was nothing but phony malarkey. That there was no Communist threat. That worry about Communism was irrational and stupid, that Communism was only “a different economic system,” and that the only threat was Joe McCarthy and McCarthyism and anti-Communism in general.
There being a problem: it turns out that the Communists were actively engaged in attempting to subvert the US government, with sleeper cells and covert agents and all the rest, some making it all the way up to the elite circles of the White House (Alger Hiss).
And the Communists actually DID subvert other governments all over the world successfully, sometimes through overt revolution and sometimes through subversion within. When they did so they brought with them, almost always, bloodshed and oppression on a scale unimaginable prior to the 20th century. It was the single most murderous and oppressive political movement in the entirety of human history.
Yet those who said so were routinely expelled from our elite institutions, and mocked as crackpots and lunatics. They’re still treated with contempt in some circles.
It didn’t help that a number of anti-Communists–the John Birchers come to mind–were in fact crackpots. It didn’t help that Joe McCarthy was a flat-out LYING SON OF A BITCH. But the truth, the unalterable truth, is that Communists really were trying to subvert the government, the Soviets really were our enemy who chose us as their enemy and not vice-versa, it really was a secretive movement dedicated to secret subversion, and it really was the single most murderous and oppressive political movement mankind has ever known. Every bit of that was THE TRUTH.
People who used to say these things were ostracized, marginalized, treated as crackpots. Some places, still are. But they were correct.
When you’ve come to this sort of conclusion, it’s overwhelming. (All the worse in my case because I used to be a communist apologist and sympathizer, you see.) So you learn the hard lesson: never slap down an idea or treat it with contempt just because it goes against prevailing wisdom or because the implications make you uncomfortable.
So you strive to be open-minded, and all of a sudden you get barraged with people driving all sorts of OTHER agendas on which they wish you to be open-minded too. And you start to question yourself: “well, am I dismissing this just because I’m being arrogant? Or I don’t like the implications?” So you try to be open-minded, and if you keep it up, pretty soon you’re open-minded to the point of being ready to believe damn near anything, afraid to dismiss an idea just because it sounds crazy or implausible, because you don’t want to be one of THEM: one of those people who condemned and dismissed and scorned, Galileo, Semmelweis, Whittaker Chambers.
So someone approaches you with an idea that says it challenges everything people they think they know, and if they’re right, then something is drastically wrong in this world and someone should stand up and say something.
The problem is, there is no shortage of theories as to why the world isn’t what you think it is, and most of those theories are just wrong.
I’ve had 9/11 Truthers work me really hard. At first they used to infuriate me, now I take them in stride, and will once in a while ask them the most pertinent question: if the government is really both that evil and that powerful at the same time, why are you still breathing? Why haven’t your books and your movies been suppressed and burned, and your intellectual leaders jailed or simply liquidated?
I will choose being open-minded, but I try to keep in mind always that orthodoxy–orthodoxy in general, orthodoxy as a mindset, orthodoxy as a philosophy–is powerful and important because it represents stability. It is often the force that prevents things from becoming unglued. It represents accumulated wisdom. It sometimes needs to be challenged, but it doesn’t always have to be challenged, because in general, as a rule, the orthodox view is usually the correct view, or at least the most functional view.
So if someone wants to challenge an orthodox position, let them. But I do not have to adopt them as my pet cause, and I am not oppressing them if I simply say, “I’m sorry, I don’t find that convincing, but if I’m wrong then good luck to you,” and politely walk away.
And if I choose to adopt an unorthodox position–say, that Global Warming is likely bunk or at least wildly exaggerated–I am very careful to research it thoroughly before I come to that conclusion and try to defend it.
And in any case, I am but one man, and not obligated to adopt every lost cause on the planet as my own.
Aziz,
I took offense when perhaps none was intended.
It’s all very confusing. I suppose, as you might imagine, I am devastated that people might place in the same rubbish bin 9/11 conspiracy and real, vital questions about the human body/immune system, spanning AIDS, Cancer, and yes, vaccinations.
The make-people-seem-crazy-machine is one of the best pieces of gear in the whole studio. I just want don’t want to be guilty by association.
I don’t want to ever be a person who looks down upon people for their questions. I just want to find out if they’re right or wrong.
Dean,
Well said, utterly on target. My father was always an anti-communist, and always condescended to by his leftist friends, (yes, he has many many leftist friends.) He has said a few things I think worth quoting here:
On Joe McCarthy: “He was correct but he was a swine. He ruined the legitimate cause of anti-communism for a half century.”
On communist apologia: “They weren’t so much pro-communist as they were anti-anti communist.”
I see parallels in the HIV schism. The net result (failure, chemical death, social terror, error, waste of billions, confusion, madness) of the HIV code, as I call it, (it was never a “hypothesis”) is hard to love, and nobody loves it. They just don’t want to be “denialists,” because that means dealing with well funded psychopaths who will hound you, bully you, and pulverize your career and reputation.
They boast of this, openly.
Because they are “the orthodoxy” they enjoy the luxury of being right even when they are wrong, on major points, such as transmission predictions, AZT, etc.
They call it “lessons learned,” and they demand more money.
Dissidents, by contrast, are wrong even when they are right, because they are perceived as fundamentally sinful, as were anti-communists.
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