[appletango]

What a load of bull.

I am so tired of everyone thinking that explosions had something to do with the collapse. Well, explosions of planted charges at least.

So many people want to have someone living to take more direct blame and responsibility for the act. I do not think that anyone in the admin or US government had any direct hand in this (I may be wrong). I see ti as a case of change of regime and the Bush team just plain ignoring almost everything that the Clinton team left until it was pretty much too late to do anything about it.

I also see Clinton trying to do something, but getting such negative feedback at his responses to an enemy that, at the time, we just did not see as solidly as we did after 9-11. (He received flak over the missile attack, etc). SO Clinton, in his party's own interest and in the interest of all PR, backed off.


So whatever. Nothing direct on this, all circumstantial negligence and inattentiveness.

[c-cialis]

What always happens in these monumental events is that there are government cover-ups of mistakes, ignoring of warnings, etc. Was there prior knowledge that Atta was in the country, and that an attack was imminent?

Politicians never want to say they screwed up, so these attempts at cover-up fuel speculation of conspiracy. But it is a huge leap of logic to accept these errors as true, and conclude that the government planned the entire scenario.

Considering the steady stream of leaks we get from unnamed government sources, and how well inside information is kept, does anyone think that a plot to fire a missile at the Pentagon and explain it as a hijacked commercial liner would not be exposed by now.

Bush was flown in the opposite direction as far from DC as possible Where would you have expected him to be taken - on a aerial tour of DC?

Miami guy: Why do you think an airplane would have damaged more of the building? Dp you know how big the Pentagon is?

Here's an experiment for you: Get an overhead graphic of the Pentagon, and then get one of an airplane at the same scale. Put the plane next to the building and see how "big" the plane looks.

[Liskaspexia]

Richard Clark, a former Secretary of Defense, has said that he finds the Bin Laden tape "dubious." Bascially, that its authenticity should be doubted.

[amotoustict]

Weak Mossad Theory... Strong Mossad Theory...Super-Strong Israeli Theory :P

It's completely pointless to argue logically with a conspiracy-theorist.

Right after the David Koresh compound in Waco TX burned, a "survivalist malitia" leader from the upper midwest was a guest via satellite on one of the morning news programs. He had a photo that proved that the government deliberately burned down the building. The photo was of an army tank a few feet from the building with flames shooting out of the cannon muzzle. The photo was actually a vidcap, and another guest had the complete video clip, which showed the tank ramming the building. As the tank moved forward, sunlight glistened off the gun barrel. The video was frozen at the spot where the "photo" was taken. They were identical.

Unfazed, the malitiaman continued his accusations.

[margoaroyo]

Bush knew - or at least his Neo Con administration did. It fulfilled the PNAC vision for the world.

The Pentagon gets hit by something - an airplane? a missile? We can all speculate. However, it was the Pentagon. That building has security cameras at every turn. The roads in DC have cameras everywhere as do other buildings. Yet, we never saw a single video from any of those cameras.

Oh right, they were ALL out of service that day due to a network problem.

The attacks occurred. Bush was flown in the opposite direction as far from DC as possible to give him plausible deniability. It has been documented by the 9/11 Commission that George Bush Sr and Dick Cheney were at the White House when the attack occured.

[AliceFromHouston]

No, you see Osama didn't mention a thing about the Pentagon. Don't you think he would be really proud of hitting the central defense headquarters of the most mighty nation? Isn't that something to brag about?!

This is how the thinking goes now. :? :wink: :roll:

[BenWired306]

INTERESTING READING...............

Posting to Headlines Wire of Scoop
Opinion: www.UnansweredQuestions.org
Date: Wednesday, 3 November 2004
Time: 10:55 am NZT



UQ Wire: 9/11 Truth and the 2004 Election

Distribution via the Unanswered Questions Wire
http://www.unansweredquestions.org/ .

9/11 Truth and the 2004 Election
An editorial by Michael Kane and Nicholas Levis
Sent out at Midnight, Election Day, Nov. 2, 2004.

(NOTE: This message is intended for a limited audience activists
for justice, seekers of truth, and 9/11 researchers. We are assuming
that our readers are well-versed in the skeptical view of 9/11.
If the thought never occurred to you that 9/11 was likely an
inside job, and that the dream of peace and freedom will die
if the 9/11 cover-up is allowed to stand, then the following
may not make much sense. Those looking for clarification on the
"unanswered questions of 9/11" are ill served here; go check
out sites like 911Truth.org, cooperativeresearch.org, Justicefor911.org,
ny911truth.org and wtc7.net.)

Dear Friends and Readers,

As writers and activists, we have been involved in 9/11 research
and the truth movement since day one. Today we are urging New
Yorkers to vote for Green Party presidential candidate David
Cobb - and we are asking our allies in the rest of the country
to suspend their gag reflex long enough to vote for John Kerry.


We know that this is going to require some explanation, so
here goes...

Should 9/11 truth activists be voting at all?

Surely no other group is more aware of what a farce elections
are. We probably don't need to review the following for you:


(1) The big decisions about the course of our nation, and
thus to a large degree the fate of the world itself, are made
by hidden hierarchies of wealth and ownership, who are immune
to elections.

(2) Covert operators and remote elites stage-manage events
like 9/11 to their own ends, making irrelevant the public decision-making
of voters, and even of the Congress. For example, we all know
the entire Bush agenda, including the invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq, was planned long in advance of 2001. But the program
was not launched openly after the (s)election of George W. Bush
in Dec. 2000. It was rolled out after the shock of September
11, using 9/11 as the pretext.

(3) Elected representatives are dependent for their campaign
financing on support from corporations and the wealthy. This
conditions what even the most honest politician can do.

(4) The major news media, with all their reach to mass audiences
and access to sources, are under the tight control of a cartel
of corporations, with long-established practices that amount
to self-censorship. With very few exceptions, this restricts
the information they provide to the narrow bounds of allowable
debate: Democrat vs. Republican, "liberal" vs. "conservative,"
"qualified experts" vs. "conspiracy theorists." Knowledge that
would change how people vote is withheld from the public, or
drowned out in the circus of stories about Kobe and Laci and
The Dean Scream. (Only the Internet, where everyone has a chance
to project their own voice, has begun to alter this.)

(5) The last presidential election was decided by vote fraud
and brought to power the loser of the popular tally. Since the
people responsible for that crime were rewarded, there is no
reason to think they won't try it again, both by making use of
the ever-more widespread electronic voting machines, and by more
traditional means of manipulating the vote. (The difference this
time is that so many people are on the look-out for fraud and
manipulation; but the "reforms" implemented after the 2000 debacle
actually made things worse, as they favored more e-voting.)

(6) Even assuming a fair count, the only two "viable" candidates
were decided for us, as always, by the internal mechanics and
fundraisers of the major parties. Nearly everyone is forced to
make a choice they almost invariably view as the lesser of the
two evils, rather than getting to choose what they really want.

(7) Beyond that, the Electoral College and the winner-take-all
system of representation leaves about half of the voters disenfranchised
by the Constitution itself.

In a nutshell, democracy is impossible when elites can control
the reactions of the majority by keeping them in ignorance and
fear. The real problems we face cannot be addressed within our
present political system, which is little more than an increasingly
transparent and corrupt cover for the dictatorship of corporate
capital.

Our economic system lives from war, imperialism, plunder from
the Third World, and an insane drug war. It relies on destructive
forms of energy, unsustainable debt loads in a Monopoly currency
(for which the whole world still has to work to pay off the interest),
and a reckless devastation of the natural basis for human civilization.
Our society is in the stranglehold of corporate interests, covert
power and organized crime.

If and how you vote today cannot change any of that. What
we need is a peaceful revolution, one in which the vast majority
of hearts and minds awaken to reality, turn away from the abyss,
and use the democratic sparks of the present society to fire
up a different world.(1)

Our first answer for "what is to be done" will therefore always
be the same: Organize. Reach out to your friends, make allies
and work in every way available to change the circumstances under
which we labor - to expose hidden truths, to open the media,
to show political force in lobbying and on the streets, to win
over the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens.

More than this, find ways to free yourselves from the money
system, from the media system, from the energy system, from reliance
on the government and the big corporations. Put your money and
your time to work in your communities - to build a sustainable
opposition that can actually replace the remote-control cannibalism
we currently live in.

If all you are planning to do is to vote and then forget about
it, thinking you have done your civic duty - then yes, you may
as well stay home. It's pointless.

But if, in addition to organizing for a peaceful revolution,
you can also imagine taking the hour to cast a vote, then we
say: Good for you. It's easy. And how you vote today can improve
the conditions for a peaceful revolution. The outcome of this
election will affect the circumstances under which the dissident
forces in our society operate.

We have heard many people argue that if only enough people
refused to vote, the whole rotten process would lose its legitimation
and fall apart. But this is a false hope, passive and helpless.
Majorities have already stayed home. Two-thirds of the people
don't bother to vote in years without a presidential election
- and the media, the establishment, the parties and the voting
minority are still able to present election results as legitimate
outcomes.

You may say that once you vote, you surrender the power to
interpret the meaning of your vote to the media and politicians,
who will spin the results however they like. You're right.

Unfortunately, that is just as true if you do not vote. There
is no means by which you can effectively protest by not voting.
No matter how you intend your act of not voting, it will simply
(if wrongly) be interpreted by the powers-that-be as apathy,
or stupidity, or tacit acceptance of how things are.

So much as we abhor the present system, we cannot pretend
that we do not engage in it, whether we vote or not. We see no
conflict in believing that elections are a scam, and yet still
saying it is best to make use of your right to vote, if you are
also working to change the system by other, more significant
means.

In the case of New York, the "safest" state in the Union,
where no level of believable vote fraud will elect George W.
Bush, our choice as 9/11 truth activists is an easy one. Quite
apart from the Green Party's progressive positions on many issues,
David Cobb was the first candidate of any party on the ballot
to endorse the cause of 9/11 truth and call for a new investigation
of September 11. (See http://www.911truth.org/article.php?...40909122555691).


Cobb's lead has since been followed by Ralph Nader and the
Libertarian Party's Michael Badnarik, both of whom joined him
in signing the recent 9/11 Truth Statement (see http://www.911truth.org/article.php?...41026093059633).
Nevertheless, Cobb's position on 9/11 truth is the earliest,
strongest and most reliable, and to us he also seems to be the
most serious of these three candidates on the other issues.

Furthermore, the Green Party and its activists have been the
fastest and most daring among all parties in comprehending the
significance of 9/11 truth, and in forging an alliance with the
emergent truth movement. This will be of significance after the
election, regardless of who wins.

So if you live in New York State, vote for David Cobb for
President!

And what if you live in one of the 49 less-than "safe" states?

We harbor no illusions about John Kerry.

Kerry voted for the Iraq War Resolution and has a pretty lousy
excuse for claiming he didn't know the basis for the illegal
invasion was actually a lie. If WE were aware of what the actual
U.N. weapons inspectors had determined about Iraqi weapons of
mass destruction already back in 1998, then certainly HE was.
If we knew the "Saddam connection to 9/11" was the most outrageous
"conspiracy theory" of all, then of course Kerry did.

Kerry also voted for the Afghanistan war resolution, the USA
PATRIOT Act and the Homeland Security Act, all of which are outright
demolitions of constitutional government in our country. He has
claimed that he will fight a better "War on Terrorism," which
is a pretty frightening thought given what that war has really
been about: the pretext for seizing territory around the world
and for intervening in the affairs of every country on earth.


In the dark days of autumn 2001, when the anthrax mailings
were sent out to intimidate the loyal opposition, when the Shadow
Government was activated, Kerry watched and did nothing, along
with almost everyone else in Congress. He also did nothing as
the 9/11 cover-up proceeded, as the investigations were stonewalled,
and as the bogus results of the delayed investigations were finally
released.

There is little reason to believe Kerry will want to reverse
any of the Bush crimes. There is no reason, in fact, to think
he will try to do anything other than continue, perhaps more
slowly, along the same general course as Bush - unless all of
the Movement people are ready to keep up and to triple the fight
they have already begun against the Bush agenda.

Fifty million people across this country have taken to the
streets and mobilized in other ways to oppose the Bush agenda
of preventive and eternal war and domestic repression, and its
steady barrage of accompanying lies. If Bush loses and this movement
fails to stay the course and keep growing, then we have no right
to expect that a Kerry Administration will change anything much
for the better.

But if you are ready to keep fighting, then we believe that
the fight will be easier under a first term for Kerry, than under
a second term for Bush. There are several reasons for this, but
the most important ones should be obvious:

Once ousted from power, the Bush regime's officials will lose
the immunity from investigation and prosecution they now enjoy.
Until they are removed, there is no chance of a real 9/11 investigation
with the necessary subpeona power. There is thus no chance for
the wake-up call that a real investigation will produce.

Yes, Kerry's behavior under the Bush regime amounts to complicity
after the fact in that regime's crimes. He may attempt to equal
those crimes, when his turn comes at the helm. But the great
crimes of the last years are still those of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld,
Wolfowitz and their whole sick crew.

And it is they in their blind hubris who have left so many
loose ends for us to pull at.

Remove their immunity, and if we stay strong and keep growing,
we still might see them carried off in shackles and orange jumpsuits.
Whereas a victory would reward them, and encourage them: they
will understand it as a reward for their crimes, as an incentive
for more of the same.

More important, of course, is that exposing the Bush regime's
role in 9/11 can serve as a positive shock experience for our
fellow Americans. It can open up the possibility of exposing,
and changing, the entire system that spawned the Bush regime
as its logical culmination.

It won't be easy, it may be a long shot, but we believe this
is our best chance. 9/11 was exploited as the pretext for atrocity;
9/11 truth can still become the way in which we put an end to
the policies of atrocity.

Do we have anything good to say about Kerry? Yes. There is
little doubt he is different on several very important material
issues: judicial appointments; the rights of women; protection
for minorities and gays from at least some of the excesses of
racism and homophobia.

Kerry is a smart guy who can speak English, and who hasn't
always played for the machine. He committed at least one indisputable
act of courage during the U.S. invasion of Vietnam - which was
to fight against it when he returned home.

In the 1980s, he was among the politicians who held hearings
on the Bush-related mafia who took over the government at the
time. He ran investigations into CIA-drugs, the Iran-Contra dealings,
and the October Surprise of 1980. These released important information,
even though the introductions and statements he slapped on the
findings tended to limit the damage for those incriminated in
the actual reports.

Of course, Kerry has yet to use his vast knowledge of the
Bush mob in the present campaign; he has apparently kept it in
store as his own personal insurance policy, and otherwise acted
like a good Bonesman who always keeps the Secrets of the Tomb.


Do we expect a President Kerry to suddenly drop the wishy-washy
facade, and expose the Bush mob's crimes once he is safely in
the White House? Do we expect him to prove that crime does not
pay, to expose the hidden hierarchies, to reverse the system
of covert power that actually governs?

Never. Not unless we force all that by showing numbers and
an organization that no government can ignore.

But we have few illusions that our chances of doing so, however
slim, are better than if the Bush mob gets back in with carte
blanche to do whatever they feel like, no longer fearing the
possibility of an election loss.

Beyond the major exceptions cited above, the material differences
between Kerry and Bush may be slight indeed. But the symbolic
differences are great, and we should recall that symbolism is
real when people believe in it.

Kerry and Bush are both corporate tools. But in the minds
of Americans, they stand for different things. They are also
forced to pay attention to different clienteles. A Bush victory
will signal approval of the Bush agenda. The regime will turn
into the modern equivalent of an absolute monarchy, with no further
need of catering to anything other than its own fascist fantasies.


Kerry may try to pursue the same agenda as Bush, but his regime
will be conditional. In the minds of Americans, his victory will
stand as a rejection of the Bush program. Kerry will have to
pay some kind of lip service to the people who elect him.(2)


Whereas a Bush victory will be a signal to this country's
minority of true fascists and ultra-Apocalyptists that their
time has come. It will mobilize all the true believers, the obedient
foot-soldiers whose first question on November 3 will doubtless
be, "When do we clean up with the liberals?"

And their definition of "liberal" will extend far beyond the
likes of us; it will be flexible enough to include Alex Jones.

To the rest of the world, a Bush victory signifies the American
peoples' approval of what Bush stands for. The doors will shut
on any chance of peaceful and cooperative solutions. We're not
saying Kerry is a peacemaker, but he will actually have a chance
to be one, should he take the opportunity.

All that being said, do we really believe that there is any
chance the Bush mob won't try to steal today's election, just
as they did in 2000?

Not really, even if many among the global elites seem to have
chosen Kerry as a necessary tranquilizer for all of the rage
that Bush has inspired around the world.

The Bush mobsters are well aware of their exposure to criminal
prosecution for what they have done. Though there little doubt
remains that they will lose a fair election,* they won't want
to make it easy. This is why they have issued so many telling
warnings about the likelihood of an Election Day attack; we pray
they won't dare, we pray they have already over-exposed themselves
too far to try it; but come Wednesday, you had all best be ready
to fight for your freedom and what's left of the democratic dream.(4)

*************

Michael Kane is chairperson of NY 9/11 Truth and fronts the
band Clarity. See his blog at http://gnn.tv/users/user.php?id=46.
Nicholas Levis is a staff member of 911Truth.org and a co-founder
of American Voices Abroad. See his site at http://summeroftruth.org.
Both are speaking for themselves. Levis wrote the above, with
Kane's approval.

*************

Notes

(1) As for the pipe-dream of revolution by means of a vanguard
seizing power: Good luck! The reason this has never worked to
change things, even when it was possible, is simple. When force
determines the outcome, the winner will always be the side that
achieves military superiority. The outcome will have nothing
to do with peace or justice. To win by violence, the opposition
will have to adopt the same means and mentality as the present
rulers.

(2) Of course, we cannot rule out the chances that Kerry will
be given "the freedom" to pursue an even more fascist course,
in the same fashion that Bush received it: in the form of a "New
9/11." We have no idea if he will react any differently, but
we can't cover all the possibilities in advance. Kerry would,
unfortunately, be just the right candidate for extending the
"War on Terrorism" to cover Saudi Arabia. This will be something
to guard against, and prepare for mentally as best we can. Yes,
it is sickening that the choice we face may be between the war
on Iran and Syria already intended by the Bush regime, as opposed
to the possible war on Saudi Arabia that a Kerry presidency would
enable. It doesn't change our main point that, all other things
being equal, a second Bush term presents the worse alternative
for pursuing and succeeding with opposition politics in the United
States itself, and therefore changing American policy worldwide.


(3) Go back and study the polls in advance of every election
since 1988; you will find that the Republican vote has always
been exaggerated through the technique of presenting results
among "likely voters." Dukakis was said to be down by 15 points,
he lost by six; in the next three elections, Clinton and Gore
also beat their opinion-poll numbers. Bush was called a lock
in the 2000 election; he lost. When you are told that Kerry and
Bush are in a dead heat, recall that this does not include the
huge number of new-voter registrations, which has mainly been
mobilized against Bush. Especially under-counted are the Black
and youth votes, which will be decisive.

(4) And come "Thursday," if the Bush regime has met with its
demise, it will be time to start the fight in earnest for the
abolition of the Electoral College, public campaign finance,
free media time for all candidates, and the establishment of
proportional forms of representation in this country, so that
no party can ever again wield a monopoly of power; just as the
wisest among the Founders intended.

**************

STANDARD DISCLAIMER FROM UQ.ORG: UnansweredQuestions.org does
not necessarily endorse the views expressed in the above article.
We present this in the interests of research -for the relevant
information we believe it contains. We hope that the reader finds
in it inspiration to work with us further, in helping to build
bridges between our various investigative communities, towards
a greater, common understanding of the unanswered questions which
now lie before us.



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

The Scoop website is at http://www.scoop.co.nz/
This Story is at http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00044.htm





For more information: http://www.unansweredquestions.net/
Post message: UQ-Wire@yahoogroups.com

[royarnekara]

Moderators, we have an 'Anything goes' here!

Patrick

[Blaxastij]

Keeping to the topic of 911 conspiracy: Osama bin Laden's video message to America the weekend before the election must have disheartened many a conspiracy theorist when Osama not only took full credit for the strategy of 911but also mentioned some of the hijackers by name. Unfortunately, I sense that this will be merely a "bump in the road" as the theorists continue to obsess with their self-addicting notions.

[Bromymbollile]

Does anyone buy this?

During the past few months, I've had an extensive exchange of correspondence with a young, well-educated Polish man who's making his first visit to NYC (and the US) later this year. I was startled when he asked me what role I thought the "Bush Family" had played in causing 9/11. Not just the invasion of Iraq, but 9/11 itself. It turns out that he had accepted as facts any number of things, including the "explosions" visible as One and Two collapsed and the "controlled demolition" of Seven. Even how Silverstein had spent weeks wiring Seven with explosive charges.

[Ygxejxox]

No one has posted here for a while. Is the conspiracy theory still going? Now, I'm no conspiracy theorist, but I personally have perused some websites that talk about the collapse of 7 WTC - specifically, how characteristic it was of a "controlled demolition." Then I saw links to other pages that argued the same thing happened to WTC 1 & 2. Has anyone else seen any of these pages? (They all basically argue the same thing, almost word for word.) Does anyone buy this?

[kasandrasikl]

Age of Damaged Info Provides Bush-Hating Complicity Theory

by Ron Rosenbaum

1) The Post-Millennial Grassy Knoll

The four things that have made me laugh the most this summer were parodies of conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists. Just a coincidence? I don’t think so. I think it indicates two things. First, conspiracy theory—apparently embedded in the collective unconscious of the culture like a smoldering information virus—has flared up again. The hot new development is 9/11 conspiracy theory, specifically Complicity Theory—the belief the Bush White House was in league with or behind the 9/11 attackers.

Complete article:
http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=9466

[Britiobby]

interesting conspiracy website-


http://www.unansweredquestions.org/

I personally don't buy into it. But it makes interesting reading!

some WTC images, etc.
http://www.nyc-architecture.com/GON/GON001.htm

lest we forget

[Kliopeion]

whoa thats interesting never heard of that conspiracy of the wtc being wired.


but i am one of those who believes that the pentagon wasn't hit by an airplane,do you know how hard it would be to fly a plane into or close to the pentagon and then only damage such a small area.a bomb maybe ,airplane no

[extessarere]

I could be mistaken, but I remember seeing a video of the plane crashing into the Pentagon on September 11th. I only saw it once though. Maybe it wasn't supposed to be released, but I don't know. I didn't crash directly into the building. It was flying towards the Pentagon at a low angle, crashed into the ground, and the momentum kept it going into the Pentagon. So it technically wasn't a direct hit. [/quote]

[Goseciwx]

There are a bunch of interesting theories saying that it was impossible for a Boeing to have hit the Pentagon. This is outlined well on the website
http://www.asile.org/citoyens/numero...erreurs_en.htm



Here are some good refutations by Paul Boutin----

"Hunt the Boeing" Answers
Thursday, March 14, 2002

by Paul Boutin and Patrick Di Justo

[UPDATE: Agence France-Presse story is here. Patrick and I were also on Toronto's International Connection radio show earlier.]

Paul Boutin is a freelance technology writer and former engineer in San Francisco. Patrick Di Justo is an astrophysics educator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City who writes for Wired magazine and Wired News.



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

To be clear: We believe that American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon on 9/11/2001 because we know far too many friends and colleagues in Washington who saw the plane come in over the freeway - some right over their heads - and felt the earth shake as it disappeared into the Pentagon. And we think people who believe they can uncover the truth about anything by surfing the Web are deceiving themselves in a dangerous way.

But we couldn't help taking up the challenge anyway.

As lifelong propellerheads who firmly believe in asking questions, we found Hunt the Boeing an engaging puzzle, despite its tragic subject matter, but one full of obvious errors and misleading questions. Since many of our friends continue to ask us if we've seen the site, we decided to document our answers to it, which we wrote separately. As might be expected, Patrick focused on the math and science (you may remember his widely circulated napkin math on the WTC attack), while Paul picked apart the wording of the questions.

See the original site for photos that accompany the questions.


Question No 1
The first satellite image shows the section of the building that was hit by the Boeing. In the image below, the second ring of the building is also visible. It is clear that the aircraft only hit the first ring. The four interior rings remain intact. They were only fire-damaged after the initial explosion. Can you explain how a Boeing 757-200, weighing nearly 100 tons and travelling at a minimum speed of 250 miles an hour* only damaged the outside of the Pentagon?

Paul: The question and photos are misleading: Parts of the plane penetrated the ground floors of the second and third rings of the building. These photos show only their intact roofs. Eyewitnesses and news reporters have talked about the twelve-foot hole punched through the inside wall of the second ring by one of the plane’s engines.

More importantly, the question focuses on the plane’s size and weight, making it sound extraordinarily heavy, but leaves out the size and weight of the Pentagon – America’s largest office building with three times the floor space of the Empire State Building - as well as the difference in relative stiffness and energy absorption between a building and an airplane. Each side of the Pentagon contains over 100,000 tons of Potomac sand mixed into the steel-reinforced concrete under its limestome facade. There are nearly 10,000 concrete piles anchoring each side of the building. And in the wake of bombings in Oklahoma City and Saudi Arabia, that portion of the Pentagon had just been reinforced with a computationally modeled lattice of steel tubes designed to prevent it from collapsing after an explosion.

By contrast, the plane is only 100 tons of custom alloys stretched thin enough to fly. It’s not like a giant bullet; more like a giant racing bike. Even so, the plane knocked down 10,000 tons of building material - 100 times its own weight - in the crash and subsequent collapse. Another 57,000 tons of the Pentagon were damaged badly enough to be torn down. The Brobdingnagian scale of the Pentagon makes the total area of damage seem small, but it would hold several Silicon Valley office buildings, or an airport terminal.

Patrick: Watch the videotapes of the planes hitting the World Trade Center. They were traveling at approximately 400 mph, and they hit an aluminum and glass building. An entire plane went in, and hardly anything came out the other side, 208 feet away.

Here we have a plane traveling at nearly 250 mph (just over 1/2 the velocity of the WTC planes, meaning just over 1/4 of their kinetic energy), hitting the ground (which would absorb much of that energy), and only then sliding at a much slower speed into a steel-and-kevlar-reinforced concrete and brick building. Obviously, it's not going to go very far. Still, parts of the plane penetrated into the C ring.


Question No 2
The two photographs in question 2 show the building just after the attack. We may observe that the aircraft only hit the ground floor. The four upper floors collapsed towards 10.10 am. The building is 26 yards high. Can you explain how a Boeing 14.9 yards high, 51.7 yards long, with a wingspan of 41.6 yards and a cockpit 3.8 yards high, could crash into just the ground floor of this building?

Paul: Again the question contains incorrect facts in its setup: As reported in the New York Times, the plane struck between the first and second floors of the building. The high-res version of the photo shows a two story high hole in side of the building. Don't look where the fire truck is directing its water, but towards the center of the photo – two floors out of four are knocked out of the outside wall.

Patrick: The plane hit the ground first, then slid into the building. If the landing wheels were not down and locked, the full height of the plane would extend upwards into the second floor of the building, which is what happened.


Question No 3
The photograph above shows the lawn in front of the damaged building. You'll remember that the aircraft only hit the ground floor of the Pentagon's first ring. Can you find debris of a Boeing 757-200 in this photograph?

Paul: : Yet another leading question ("you'll remember..."), but one looking in the wrong place anyway. At 250 mph, the plane did not stop at the outside of the building. Security camera photos and eyewitness accounts from many credible people, including AP reporter Dave Winslow, agree that the plane completely disappeared into the building. If you’ve seen photos of airline crashes after the fire is out, they often look more like landfill sites than anything recognizable as having been an airplane.

But since the question more literally asks for a photo showing airliner debris on the lawn, here's one. Here's another.

Patrick: The Pentagon burned (or at least smoldered) for several days. Was this photograph taken on September 11? Or was it taken after the wreckage was moved away?


Question No 4
The photograph in question 4 shows a truck pouring sand over the lawn of the Pentagon. Behind it a bulldozer is seen spreading gravel over the turf. Can you explain why the Defence Secretary deemed it necessary to sand over the lawn, which was otherwise undamaged after the attack?

Patrick: My father was a construction engineer. He would only put a crane onto a grass lawn in an extreme emergency, and only after getting indemnified against damages. No, the first thing he would do is to lay down a pathway of steel plates, then cover them with gravel, to prevent his equipment from getting bogged down in the soft earth. When you see in that picture is a roadway being built to bring the heavy equipment across the lawn.

Paul: You don’t have to be a construction worker to recognize a road being built over the lawn, to support the vehicles dismantling the damaged building and hauling away debris. I can’t find any news reports (or people who remember any) about Donald Rumsfeld personally ordering this work done. I suspect the statement is false, and was added to make the activity seem more suspicious.


Question No 5
The photographs in Question 5 show representations of a Boeing 757-200 superimposed on the section of the building that was hit. Can you explain what happened to the wings of the aircraft and why they caused no damage?

Patrick: I'm not certain the models are to scale, and they're certainly not in the correct orientation. Since the plane hit the ground and skidded into the building, enough energy was lost by the initial impact and friction with the ground that the engines probably did not penetrate the building.

Paul: If you’re going to doctor evidence, do it right: Eyewitness accounts say the plane hit from 45 degrees to the side. Adjust the silhouettes properly, and fix the parallax effect in the second photo. The plane fits the impact area pretty well: Don't look at the collapsed upper floors, but at the wider swatch knocked out of the ground floor. I would expect the wings, being weaker than the building, to collapse on the way in. But with no previous crashes of the sort to guide us, we can't possibly predict what should have happened. If there's anything we learned that day, it's that we are poor judges of what is and isn't possible.


Question No 6
The quotations in Question 6 correspond to statements made by Arlington County Fire Chief, Ed Plaugher, at a press conference held by Assistant Defence Secretary, Victoria Clarke, on 12 September 2001, at the Pentagon.

When asked by a journalist: "Is there anything left of the aircraft at all?"

"First of all, the question about the aircraft, there are some small pieces of aircraft visible from the interior during this fire-fighting operation I'm talking about, but not large sections. In other words, there's no fuselage sections and that sort of thing."

"You know, I'd rather not comment on that. We have a lot of eyewitnesses that can give you better information about what actually happened with the aircraft as it approached. So we don't know. I don't know."

When asked by a journalist: "Where is the jet fuel?"

"We have what we believe is a puddle right there that the -- what we believe is to be the nose of the aircraft. So -"

Can you explain why the County Fire Chief could not tell reporters where the aircraft was?

Paul: Quoting people verbatim to make them sound like they are dissembling is an old journalists’ trick, as any Doonesbury reader knows. I think Chief Plaugher answered the question pretty well: There’s a puddle (of melted metal, not jet fuel – he’s not directly answering the reporter’s idiotic question) that was the nose, and a few small pieces visible, but no large sections.

Patrick: Are any government officials telling any journalists anything these days?


Question No 7
The two photographs in question 7 were taken just after the attack. They show the precise spot on the outer ring where the Boeing struck. Can you find the aircraft's point of impact?

Paul: The answer is front and center in the photo, maybe to make us think it can’t be that obvious: The two-story high impact hole (also seen in the photo for Question No 2) is immediately to the right of the fireman, partly hidden by the spray of water from the fire truck. Look at the second high-res photo and you can't miss it. Are we supposed to think it’s a two-story archway of some sort? See pre-crash photos or the surviving sides for comparison.

Patrick: In enlargement #1, the impact hole fits in the rectangle formed from pixel(1232,1088) to pixel(1492, 1545).

After that, I didn’t bother to look at enlargement #2.

[lisualsethelp]

I was impressed with Osama's latest tape. He read the script prepared for him by the Bush's & Saudi's very effectively.

Now, he goes back to pretending he's hiding from us and we go back to pretend we're searching for him.

They need to revise the terror code from colors to words: Yawn, Boring, Oh Look-Nevermind, Gotcha! , and..... Wow-weee!

[errolespopume]

The conspiracy theories will go on for decades.

Standard procedure is to take an easily identifiable fact and draw the most basic conclusion, while omitting other explanations that are not apparent.

Explosions within the towers pushed debris outward: Most of the building volume is air. The collapse took 10 seconds, so the roof was falling at over 120 mph. All that air is compressed and heated and has to go somewhere.

The same thing happens to a submarine that ruptures at great depth. The water pressure causes the air inside the submarine to become superheated and explode.

[exsmoker]

LOL, BrooklynRider. Maybe Osama was hoping to be a write-in challenger?! Hard to do with a metal lever though. Ohhhhh, I shouldn't even jest about such crazy notions. The present-day reality is nearly more than I can cope with already; I don't need to imagine the unthinkable. . . Why it's happening right before my eyes! Well, I'm off to some diversionary reading and sleep. Good night (emphasis on the GOOD).

[TheReallyBest]

I am hardly a Bush supporter, far from it. Especially being from MA.

But it is simply amazing what people will believe simply because they hate Bush so much.

In a way, its a parrallel of the hundreds of crazy things the muslim world is firmly believes because of the hate they hold towards israel or the west.