9/11 truth tells us, if nothing else, that the government we were raised to believe exists is a - myth -. We have so easily been led... usually by the Judas goats right into der schlachthaus. But led we have been. 9/11 awareness should lead alternatively, if one has not retreated into the safety of the "consensus trance", to the growing awareness that our democratic republic has been lost for many many years. The shell, institutions and illusions linger on. But the core, the shadow government, has become pure evil. We have to decide if we are truly willing to pay the price that confronting evil entails. Because if 9/11 truth ever gets to where it actually threatens the 'powers that be'....(the plutocrats)... you can expect more draconian measures of control to be implemented. The camps have been built and/or upgraded. Impeaching Bush and Cheney - while it will be gratifying and they do need to be impeached and then tried at the Hague for war crimes - will simply be an act of removing the current middle management team. It will only happen if it is 'allowed' to happen. dr rw

by richard (0 articles, 5 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 1359 comments [399 recommended, 8 rejected]) on Saturday, Feb 17, 2007 at 11:33:54 AM

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I am not convinced of the existence of a higher being. I am not convinced either of 9/11 being plotted by Bush/Cheney. For the same reason--not enough evidence. Not that I think Bush/Cheney are above doing such an evil thing; I know that they are horrible people with not a shred of ethics. I am sure the elections were rigged; so was the intelligence leading to the bloody war in Iraq. And I know people in the Us and elsewhere are illegally spied on, abducted and tortured by decision of this aadministration. However, that's no proof. Aknowledging that those guys could have done it does not equate with doing it. The ''demolition crew'' theory? How can they be so sure that a plane with full tanks blowing up like a bomb cannot wreck tall buildings? Are there known precedents? If it was not a plane that hit the Pentagon, how come this plane never landed? I am willing to accept the notion that the Bush administration knew that something was cooking and let it happen-Pearl Harbor all over again. However, just look at Bush's face when he was reading ''The Pet Goat'' and an aide whispers in his ear; the guy has the unmistakable expression of a deer caught in the headlights.

by francine (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 385 comments) on Saturday, Feb 17, 2007 at 1:26:32 PM

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70 facts+ of US government complicity in the 9/11 attacks: No George Monbiot, These Are The Facts of September 11th 2001 click here You cannot read that article in its entirety and remain ignorant.

by johndoraemi (17 articles, 12 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 166 comments [3 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Feb 17, 2007 at 8:33:59 PM

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This article is the first time I have read anyone expressing the thing that first bothered me about the official theory about the 9/11 hijackers. That is that this complex story appeared so quickly, with such a short investigation and without any proof that doubters could examine.

The look on Bush's face when he first heard about the towers has also bothered me, but another interpretation has always seemed quite plausible to me. It seems to me that his expression was quite like the boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Even if elements of the administration were involved in facilitating or planning 9/11 that does not mean that Bush was informed about it. When the towers were hit, he could well have recalled being warned about the potential for an attack and he may have feared repercussions for failing to take any steps to prevent it.

This is all by way of saying that I agree with the contention that we need a very serious, in-depth investigation of what happened. At this time we have many theories and tantalizing evidence, but that is not proof and that is not a serious formal investigation on which to base momentous decisions.

by PrMaine (13 articles, 13 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 510 comments [22 recommended, 1 rejected]) on Monday, Feb 19, 2007 at 8:39:57 AM

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1. The amount of evidence implicating elements of our government in the orchestration of 9/11 is simply overwhelming. Take WTC 7 as just one of hundreds of facts/events pointing to government complicity that day. There is substantial evidence for molten steel below WTC 7 and the twin towers. See www.journalof911studies.org/and www.911research.com. All of these issues have been resolved long ago. Also note in particular the article by Kevin Ryan completely debunking NIST on the issue of WTC 7 - (also debunks, Pop Mech, Garcia et. al. in the process). Steel and iron cannot melt from hydrocarbon fires alone (that includes kerosine, jet fuel, gasoline, furniture, your hair, my pet goat... all hydrocarbons, etc.). The highest a hydrocarbon fire can reach is about 1700 F (unless oxygen is forcefully added to the fire as in a blast furnace). Steel and iron melt at about 2700 F. WTC 7 fires would not even be hot enough to significantly and sufficiently weaken the steel for a collapse. Even then, it would not be a symmetrical heating of all 27 core columns which is required for symmetrical collapse. NIST itself gives collapse due to fire as having "a very low probability". There were no huge fires at WTC 7. And in any case, much of the heat from any fires that did exist would have been wicked away by the steel itself... (ever soldered? ever welded? or brazed? - you would understand). And the damage to the structure itself was not seen by observers to be of sufficient magnitude to bring the structure down. And EVEN if it had been - which is was not - , it was asymmetrical damage and WTC 7 would not have fallen into its own footprint. The building was brought down by controlled demolition. It meets all of the criteria for controlled demolition: Characteristics of Demolition: 1. Sudden Onset 2. Straight down 3. Nearly Free Fall Speed 4. Total Collapse 5. Sliced Steel 6. Pulverization of concrete 7. Dust Clouds 8. Horizontal ejections (squibs) 9. Demolition rings 10. Sounds of explosions 11. Pools of molten steel (all supported by photographic evidence and eyewitness testimonies) How many impossibilities, plus improbabilities does it take to see that any hypothesis other than CD is simply ludicrous. It is suggested that those who have trouble with this revisit 10th grade physics, intro to logic 101, and review philosophy of science, scientific theory building and the role of empirical data. Or, failing, that, simply watch the damn thing (WTC 7) collapse. And remember that the terrorists are in Washington DC. 2. Regarding lihop/mihop.... there is no real distinction.... To 'Let it happen on purpose' requires actively 'not' acting when action is in fact the standard protocol (e.g., launching jets when transponders are turned off). A Lihop argument becomes a 'Made it happen on purpose' by definition. There were 15 separate war games/operations underway on 9/11. All uniquely occurring on that single day. What are the odds against that happening by chance. 99.99 to .01?..... So many anomolies. So many 'coincidences'.... So many lies. Simply go to www.911research.com or www.911truth.org and review them for yourself. There is no reason not to become knowledgable except for psychological denial resulting from cogntive dissonance. It may be hard for the novice researcher of these issues to imagine elements of our government could be complicit. But governments (including that of the U.S.) have a long history of committing 'false flag' operations to galvanize their citizenry to support war. 9/11 was simply the most spectacular. All set to justify a 'war on terra' that will 'never end'.

by richard (0 articles, 5 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 1359 comments [399 recommended, 8 rejected]) on Saturday, Feb 17, 2007 at 2:46:02 PM

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This is the kind of material 911 Truth Deniers need to read, much like the submission the other day. There is no time to waste explaining to people with an agenda of obfuscation. Send them on their way to watch 911 Mysteries, 911 Press for Truth, Terror Storm, Why We Fight, Loose Change, and 911 Revisited...or to the many blogs that discuss and analyze all the possibilities for how the horrible events of that day were orchestrated by the power elite. Don't take the bait of the shills like Francine, who ask the most elementary of questions, primarily to delay and dumb down discussion of this critical matter. Thank you!! Styve

by Styve (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 38 comments [8 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Feb 17, 2007 at 2:51:50 PM

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Fact is as long as 9/11 truth stays on the Internet and fringe radio talk shows it will never gain momentum or legitimacy. It's got to get on prime time TV. Uncensored, uncut. It's got to have high profile voices Masses will be comfortable with hearing and so receive this version of events. Why hasn't this been on 60 minutes or dateline already? Anyone know?

by "Hoss" David P. (51 articles, 5 quicklinks, 14 diaries, 338 comments [4 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Feb 17, 2007 at 2:56:52 PM

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Revealed in Senator Church's hearings a couple of decades past. The CIA had for many years infiltrated the media, many tentacles, many, many journalists. Would anybody with a lick of sense think they stopped doing it at that point? They are just probably a hell of a lot better at it now. Bernays-ian techniques of propaganda and the science of psychological manipulation have progressed a great deal in the thirty years since I studied social psych as a grad student. Don't ever expect the main stream media to be truthful either. Five (5)! corporations own about 90% of all electronic and paper media. Guess where their sympathies lie. It don't take no weatherman to know which way the wind blows...

by richard (0 articles, 5 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 1359 comments [399 recommended, 8 rejected]) on Saturday, Feb 17, 2007 at 4:55:49 PM

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There are many facts that tell us that the story we are told just doesn't add up. I think the most convincing is the free fall of the Towers in 10 seconds. The only possible explaination is with the use of explosives. Otherwise I believe the calculations come in at around 96 seconds if each floor falls into the floor below it on down. I think it was definately a false flag operation,but even lacking proof there has definately been a cover up. Why? Something to hide? This is the beginning of the last episode of this problem with terrorists. The Marine Barracks in 1983 that has been mentioned so much in the debate this last week is also shady. Hezbollah had no RDX Rag Bombs unless someone sold them to the Iranian interrests that supply Hezbollah. Its another instance where our intelligence community knows more then they will ever tell us. Why after 23 years do they not pursue telling the Truth as to who's Rag Bombs they were?

by Sleeper (1 articles, 1 quicklinks, 14 diaries, 312 comments [6 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Feb 17, 2007 at 3:45:15 PM

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We conspiracy theorists who dare to suggest that all is not as it appears are repeatedly asked to produce evidence of conspiracy. Yet conspiracy is the way of mankind from the death of Able when God asked Cane says "Gee no, God I haven't seen him anywhere" Cane conspired to mislead God about what actually happened. The famous death of Julius Caesar, "Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look, He thinks too much; such men are dangerous." This conspiracy was famous because as soon as the first blade entered into Caesar's body a line was drawn. Were you with the conspiracy? Or were you against of the conspiracy and perhaps it's next victim. It wasn't the active participation that joined you to the conspirators circle but merely the quiet acceptance. The concept hasn't changed much over the centuries from the conspiracy to murder Christ to the introduction of the royal food tasters. Funny isn't it how those who might be that might be the victim of a conspiracy never doubt their existence. So many Roman Emperors were murdered in the later days of the empire that the job was unwanted by many of those eligible. Two royal princes in medieval England were placed under the protection of their uncle and soon disappeared. Their bodies were found buried in the walls of the tower of London hundreds of years later. Many suspected foul play at the time but who would dare approach the new King and make such a charge, for then as now they had a low opinion of conspiracy theorists. But that was ancient history! We have become so much more civilized than the ancients were, right? One of my favorite cartoons of all time is of the evolutionary chart showing the accent of man from the small ape to the upright modern human. Underneath the evolutionary chart was another chart entitled "Ethics" and it paralleled the evolutionary chart except it is the same little ape in every frame. Funny because it is all too true, so let's look at some modern conspiracies that are either outright lies or the manipulation of actual events for political advantage but conspiracies nonetheless. Remember the Maine, The Maine, a battleship of the second rank explodes and sinks in Havana Harbor and despite the Captains descriptions of the explosion coming from the area of the engine room and heroic efforts of Spanish sailors to rescue the Americans. And even though the Captains diary described how the new Spanish Governor in Cuba had matters well under control. The American press claimed it was a Spanish plot and fans the flames of war. Congress appropriates 50 million dollars for war and when the smoke clears the United States has its first colonies and a lease on Guantanamo in Cuba. What do you suppose they would have said at the time if you had suggested it was only mechanical malfunction? The first woman President, on the morning of October 2, 1919 Mrs. Woodrow Wilson found her husband unconscious on the bathroom floor of their White House quarters. President Wilson had suffered a stroke - a massive attack that left his left side paralyzed and impaired his vision. She immediately summoned Dr. Grayson. Then the conspiracy began in earnest. The two of them formed a bulwark between the invalid President and the rest of the country, simultaneously shielding Wilson from intrusion as well as hiding his condition from outsiders. For the next seventeen months the President lay bed ridden unable to write more than his own name. This fabrication was carried on not just to the general public but to the Washington insiders as well. Mrs. Wilson would take requests from visitors to the President and then return from his sickroom with an answer or his signature scrawled on paper she was for all intents and purposes the first woman President a secret that stayed hidden from the people for fifty years. The Gulf of Tonkin attack, on August 2, 1964 according to the defense department the US destroyer Maddox was just peacefully cruising along minding it's own business on a routine patrol when it was deliberately attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats and then followed up by another attack two days later. President Johnson informs the nation of this vile attack and announces US bombing of North Vietnam in retaliation. In fact the USS Maddox was actually engaged in aggressive intelligence-gathering maneuvers - in sync with coordinated attacks on North Vietnam by the South Vietnamese navy and the Laotian air force. The first attack was questionable while the second attack was a total fabrication. Captain James Stockdale a navy pilot over flying the area said "And our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets - there were no PT boats there.... There was nothing there but black water and American fire power." Even Lyndon Johnson later in 1965 said, "For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there." Yet this dog was sold to the American public as an aggressive escalation by the communists. Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf resolution giving Johnson carte blanche in Vietnam and fifty thousand American lives later this is history. A total fabrication a lie sold to the American public as Gods honest truth set in stone an irrefutable fact. The Pentagon Papers, a study initiated in 1967 a 7,000-page, top-secret history of the political and military involvement in the Vietnam War with a focus on the internal planning and policy decisions within the U.S. Government. Most, but not all of the Pentagon Papers were leaked to The New York Times in early 1971 by a former State Department official Daniel Ellsberg, The New York Times began publishing excerpts as a series of articles the papers revealed, among other things, that the US government had deliberately expanded its role in the war by conducting air strikes over Laos, raids along the coast of North Vietnam, and offensive actions taken by U.S. Marines well before the American public was told about the actions, all while President Lyndon Johnson had been promising not to expand the war. The First Iraq war, US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie goes to interview Saddam Hussein and in this case I think it best to let the participant's speak for themselves, July 25, 1990- Presidential Palace- Baghdad U.S. Ambassador Glaspie – "I have direct instructions from President Bush (one) to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait. (pause) As you know, I lived here for years and admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. We know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. (pause) We can see that you have deployed massive numbers of troops in the south. Normally that would be none of our business, but when this happens in the context of your threat s against Kuwait, then it would be reasonable for us to be concerned. For this reason, I have received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship - not confrontation - regarding your intentions: Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait's borders?" Saddam Hussein – "As you know, for years now I have made every effort to reach a settlement on our dispute with Kuwait. There is to be a meeting in two days; I am prepared to give negotiations only this one more brief chance. (pause) When we (the Iraqis) meet (with the Kuwaitis) and we see there is hope, then nothing will happen. But if we are unable to find a solution, then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death." U.S. Ambassador Glaspie – "What solutions would be acceptable?" Saddam Hussein – "If we could keep the whole of the Shatt al Arab - our strategic goal in our war with Iran - we will make concessions (to the Kuwaitis). But, if we are forced to choose between keeping half of the Shatt and the whole of Iraq (i.e., in Saddam s view, including Kuwait ) then we will give up all of the Shatt to defend our claims on Kuwait to keep the whole of Iraq in the shape we wish it to be. (pause) What is the United States' opinion on this?" U.S. Ambassador Glaspie – "We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America." (Saddam smiles) On August 2, 1990, Saddam's massed troops invade and occupy Kuwait. One month later, British journalists obtain the above tape and transcript of the Saddam - Glaspie meeting of July 29, 1990. Astounded, they confront Ms. Glaspie as she leaves the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Journalist 1 – "Are the transcripts (holding them up) correct, Madam Ambassador?"(Ambassador Glaspie does not respond) Journalist 2 – "You knew Saddam was going to invade (Kuwait ) but you didn't warn him not to. You didn't tell him America would defend Kuwait. You told him the opposite - that America was not associated with Kuwait." Journalist 1 – "You encouraged this aggression - his invasion. What were you thinking?" U.S. Ambassador Glaspie "Obviously, I didn't think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait." Journalist 1 – "You thought he was just going to take some of it? But, how could you? Saddam told you that, if negotiations failed, he would give up his Iran (Shatt al Arab waterway) goal for the Whole of Iraq, in the shape we wish it to be. You know that includes Kuwait, which the Iraqis have always viewed as an historic part of their country!" Journalist 1 – "American green-lighted the invasion. At a minimum, you admit signaling Saddam that some aggression was okay - that the U.S. would not oppose a grab of the al-Rumeilah oil field, the disputed border strip and the Gulf Islands (including Bubiyan) - the territories claimed by Iraq?" (Ambassador Glaspie says nothing as a limousine door closed behind her and the car drives off.) Into redacted history And yet the first President Bush tells the American public the exact polar opposite of these statements. CIA Plots against Cuba, Many pretexts were suggested for attacking Cuba, one was to fake hijackings of American airliners. This complicated scheme recommended putting a group of college students on a charter airliner, having this plane rendezvous with an unmanned drone off the coast of Florida, landing the passenger-carrying plane at an auxiliary field and then shooting down the drone with U.S. warplanes pretending to be Cuban MiGs. Some how I get the feeling they marked this page Not now maybe later! Another plan was to selectively clog radio frequencies causing Cuban airlines to crash. Of course not all the plots involved James Bond scenarios Anti Castro terrorists with American backing planted a bomb on an Air Cubana airliner leading to the destruction of all on board and the American sponsored terrorists are out walking the streets of Miami. The Downing Street Memo's, Titled, Iraq: Prime Ministers Meeting, 23 July 2002, "C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy." The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran 29 In the judgement of the JIC there is no recent evidence of Iraq complicity with international terrorism. There is therefore no justification for action against Iraq based on action in self-defence (Article 51) to combat imminent threats of terrorism as in Afghanistan. However, Article 51 would come into play if Iraq were about to attack a neighbour. And to the reams this tasty tid bit, Mr. Bush told Tony Blair of the extraordinary plan during a meeting in the White House on January 31, 2003, six weeks before the war started, according to an updated version of Lawless World by Philippe Sands, a human rights lawyer. He says the President made it clear that he had already decided to go to war, despite still pressing for a UN resolution. "The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach," the book reports Mr. Bush telling Mr. Blair at the meeting. Conspiracies? Same as it ever was, that little ethic's ape is still running loose in the world all while those who decry conspiracies huddle in their star chambers trying to defend their flat earth beliefs and trying to deny humanities common heritage. The shoe should be on the other foot the burden of proof should be on those who deny conspiracies to deflate them by demanding open and accountable investigations by independent third parties instead of partisan dog and pony shows. The next time some one shakes their head at you scoffing saying there is no conspiracy just ask them, what about The Gulf of Tonkin, and the Pentagon papers and the Downing Street memo's? Conspiracy is a fact non-belief in conspiracies is the fiction.

by David Glenn Cox (72 articles, 0 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 14 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Feb 17, 2007 at 5:05:02 PM

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''Don't take the bait of the shills like Francine, who ask the most elementary of questions, primarily to delay and dumb down discussion of this critical matter.'' If you think you are going to advance your cause by getting in a huff and insulting anybody who is not convinced by your arguments, you are dead wrong. Anybody who gets instantly angry when contradicted gives a negative impression of the cause he defends. I do not think that all people who believe in the wrecking crew theory are conspiracy nuts but some of them undoubtedly are. And simple questions are often the most difficult to answer. I have read contradictory arguments on what a kerosene fire can or cannot melt, how a building should or should not collapse , etc. I am wary of self appointed experts who try to shut up doubters by deluging them with unverified technicalities.

by francine (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 385 comments) on Saturday, Feb 17, 2007 at 5:31:30 PM

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With all due respect to you Francine and all others who still challenge the 911 truth assertions put forth by this author. When I was a young lad I studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music, as part of our ear training we would listen to a series of notes, or notes played together, and define the interval of those notes, or establish which note in a chord was dissonant. With 9-11, I don't purport to know all the machinations and possible skulduggery that actually did take place preparatory to the event - BUT, the presence of molten metal on all 3 sites tells me something very directly. Namely, it takes a great deal of explosive energy to evaporate and melt steel, especially in the time alloted - you can look at pictures of ground zero - cranes lifting the dripping, molten metal beams, you can look at satellite thermographic imagery taken weeks after the event that still show these hot spots over 1000 degrees - then you can explain to me how these things exist in any way without the presence of explosives (or, as in the case of WTC 7 - a plane full of jet fuel). Now, are you or anyone else going to explain this ugly F sharp sticking out against the C major chord and try to tell me you can't determine which of these things does not go together? Peter Zaza

by CasaZaza (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 202 comments [15 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 8:22:31 PM

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I am of the belief that 9/11 was known in advance by someone/some group in the government. I am by no means sure. I am sure that planes hit the trade center and it was the result of the impact and the fuel fire that the buildings collapsed, I've seen the engineering proofs on that. I have also seen the proof of the reason why some of the other buildings in the WTC complex collapsed. I am less sure about what happened to the pentagon, other than that awful Barbara Olson is apparently nowhere to be found. Slim proof, I'll admit. If there are government forces that have culpability, my money is that they knew in advance and allowed it to happen, but that is the extent. I do not believe in controlled demolitions or anything of the sort. In the middle of one of the most densely populated cities in the western hemisphere, populated by anti-Bush people, no less, orchestration of an operation to bring down multiple enormous buildings with absolutely no leaks or eyewitnesses coming forward considering the magnitude of what happened is much too much for me to believe. I also live in NYC as of 2003 and have spoken first hand with scores of eyewitnesses. I grew up in the area and made multiple visits to the WTC throughout my life. That being said, there are strange things that do not add up that do point to advanced knowledge and less than genuine concern during supposed post 9/11 threat warning periods. When there was an alert that someone might bomb the citigroup building in manhattan, I decided to do a little test. I put on jeans and a shirt, filled a sizeable leather carrying bag with clothes and books, went to the building, and walked right up to the building and touched it. I am fairly swarthy looking. None of the hundreds of police or military that surrounded the building in a supposed higher security period attempted to talk to me or stop me. As someone who is former military and familiar with alerts and high security bases and such, this was completely impossible to reconcile.

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Saturday, Feb 17, 2007 at 6:31:21 PM

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Since all I've seen from the U.S. government so far is just plain bullshit. The most obvious case is WTC7; as the government has yet to set forth even a semi-plausible theory as to its collapse. All I've seen so far is a crude cover-up. See the following link for a fairly comprehensive review: http://wtc7.net/frontpage.html And the "official" explanation for WTC1 & 2 isn't much better. As I understand it, the buildings' designers were quite confident that the structures could withstand the impact from a Boeing 707; and a 767 is not much bigger. Moreover, as the "back-of-the-envelope" calculations in the following link show, it's extremely unlikely that the fires meaningfully weakened the steel. click here In any case, let's face it, at this point it wouldn't matter if you had a video tape showing Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, etc., personally placing explosives, thermite, or whatever inside the buildings, who's going to do anything about it? The Congess? The Justice Dept. or the Courts? The U.S. military? In fact it wouldn't matter if tomorrow Bush started throwing babies from Air Force One; the Bush dictatorship will be propped up at all costs, at least until the bloodthirsty puppet completes the Zionist PNAC agenda.

by jpsmith123 (3 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 286 comments [27 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Feb 17, 2007 at 8:12:35 PM

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When Steven and I are on the same page can the apocolypse be far behind? The Towers were built on Port Authority land, and thus could be exempted from NYC building codes, which they were. The design lacked the reinforcements common to every other structure of its size and, in fact, lent itself to the "pancake effect" that ultimately doomed them. I understand that conspiracy theorists do not seek dry and scholarly refutations of their oh so thrilling theories and righteous indignations but facts is facts folks. The real issues here are, as Mr. Leser so incitefully noted, who knew and when did they know? Our Attorney General, John 'lost to a dead man' Ashcroft, stopped flying commercially weeks prior to 9/11, why? Despite the intense briefings of the outgoing administration about the potential threats of AlQaeda and bin Laden nothing was done with that information. Cheney, charged with working with the intelligence committee on terrorism didnt even schedule a meeting until days prior to the attacks. There is ample room to see complicity and incompetence without taking a position that even the most tolerant of supporters find embarrassing and possibly delusional....even, sadly, if they are true.

by ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2377 comments) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 10:30:40 AM

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Apparently you didn't even look at the links I provided? Sad but typical. The government and the media (or do I repeat myself) have been lying about Iraq, and now lying about Iran; telling vicious, crude, in fact outrageously transparent, incessant lies, but the event that basically started it all, 9/11, well they would neeeeevvvvveeeeer lie about that, right? The collapse of WTC7 is apparently one of the greatest engineering mysteries of all time, and, despite the potentially broad implications for structural engineering as it relates to building safety, there's no real investigation? The whole thing is outrageous! And you sit there and criticize people who are pointing out what's painfully obvious?

by jpsmith123 (3 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 286 comments [27 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 11:50:56 AM

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you will find, as you grow and mature, that your opinions are simply that, yours alone. They are written, not in stone or gold leaf but as are all opinions everywhere. I can find, on this varied and wonderous Internet of ours, theories and opinions galore, so-called experts who will expound at great length their theories as to why the earth is flat, or any other belief under the sun. Your conspiracy theory is just that, and there are experts galore who showed the specific engineering flaws that led to the pancaking of those buildings. Get used to scepticism if you wish to remain in political debates. Frankly I dont care to get involved in such as it is fruitless and a waste of time. Many here are trying to effect changes, to change the minds of the electorate and achieve righteous goals. Steven Leser noted some concrete questions that one might enquire into without being perceived as a nutjob and I echoed those concepts. You will not convince people by acting like Dr. Crackbrain, nor will you win friends by displaying sophomoric rage at contradiction. Grow the heck up or talk to the hand.

by ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2377 comments) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 6:11:24 PM

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"you will find, as you grow and mature" Too bad you apparently can't speak from experience, chumpy. "that your opinions are simply that, yours alone." Actually, if you'll take the trouble look around, or at least, try to open your "mind", you'll find that many people share my opinions. "They are written, not in stone or gold leaf but as are all opinions everywhere. I can find, on this varied and wonderous Internet of ours, theories and opinions galore, so-called experts who will expound at great length their theories as to why the earth is flat, or any other belief under the sun." My, that's profound. Now, tell me, do you have an opinion too, or is it just me? "Your conspiracy theory is just that" Well of course it's a "conspiracy theory". How could it not be? And, for that matter, the government's "conspiracy theory" of the events of 9/11 is also a "conspiracy theory". Unfortunately however, although you may personally find them amusing, your simple-minded tautologies don't add anything of value to the discussion. "and there are experts galore who showed the specific engineering flaws that led to the pancaking of those buildings. Get used to scepticism if you wish to remain in political debates." ROTFL! Look who's talkin'! The anomalous collapse of WTC7, for example, is perhaps the biggest engineering mystery in a hundred years...and the government carts the debris away before it can be properly investigated, and you, self-proclaimed "skeptic", have nothing to say about it? I gotta tell ya, chump, what you lack critical thinking skills, you more than make up for in entertainment value. "Frankly I dont care to get involved in such as it is fruitless and a waste of time. Many here are trying to effect changes, to change the minds of the electorate and achieve righteous goals. Steven Leser noted some concrete questions that one might enquire into without being perceived as a nutjob and I echoed those concepts. You will not convince people by acting like Dr. Crackbrain, nor will you win friends by displaying sophomoric rage at contradiction." It's not my fault that your abject technical illiteracy prevents you from seeing the merits of the things I've posted. And please point out an example of my "sophomoric rage".

by jpsmith123 (3 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 286 comments [27 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Feb 19, 2007 at 5:26:29 PM

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that by descending into sophomoric and utterly ridiculous insult you advance you case? I am , as it happens many years your senior, and many light years more advanced in political discourse and debate. Those who , as do you, get uppity and insulting because others do not fall into lock step zombie eyed agreement with your theories, probably have little to offer anyway. My opinion is that , as I have noted before and will say again, as to a child in need of a time out or nap, Steve Lesers point is a valid one and most folks have great difficulty with such conspiracy theories in the first place. If one is intent upon winning the hearts and minds of the electorate, in achieving valid goals one simply must pick ones battles far better than do you, and one must wage those battles with a modicum at least of maturity. Perhaps you should return here after puberty and try again.

by ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2377 comments) on Monday, Feb 19, 2007 at 6:00:47 PM

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"Do you really believe that by descending into sophomoric and utterly ridiculous insult you advance you case?" Well, apparently *you do*, otherwise you wouldn't have started with the ad hominem *first*, I presume. And if that's what you prefer, I'll accomodate you. "I am , as it happens many years your senior," You're quite a presumptuous fellow, aren't you? "and many light years more advanced in political discourse and debate." ROTFL! Or so you would like to believe, but reality obviously isn't your strong suit. "Those who , as do you, get uppity and insulting because others do not fall into lock step zombie eyed agreement with your theories, probably have little to offer anyway." Maybe you should re-read the relevant posts or, perhaps better yet, find a sympathetic adult in your neighborhood to read them and explain to you that you insulted me first. "My opinion is that , as I have noted before and will say again, as to a child in need of a time out or nap, Steve Lesers point is a valid one and most folks have great difficulty with such conspiracy theories in the first place. If one is intent upon winning the hearts and minds of the electorate, in achieving valid goals one simply must pick ones battles far better than do you, and one must wage those battles with a modicum at least of maturity." Too bad you can't lead by example. "Perhaps you should return here after puberty and try again." Coming from a consummate moron like you, I'll take that as a compliment. Thanks.

by jpsmith123 (3 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 286 comments [27 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Feb 19, 2007 at 7:06:24 PM

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and thus will be ignored.. run along little fellow and learn manners.

by ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2377 comments) on Tuesday, Feb 20, 2007 at 6:45:48 PM

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Apparently you didn't even look at the links I provided? Sad but typical. The government and the media (or do I repeat myself) have been lying about Iraq, and now lying about Iran; telling vicious, crude, in fact outrageously transparent, incessant lies, but the event that basically started it all, 9/11, well they would neeeeevvvvveeeeer lie about that, right? The collapse of WTC7 is apparently one of the greatest engineering mysteries of all time, and, despite the potentially broad implications for structural engineering as it relates to building safety, there's no real investigation? The whole thing is outrageous! And you sit there and criticize people who are pointing out what's painfully obvious?

by jpsmith123 (3 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 286 comments [27 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 11:53:42 AM

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you're just not Swarthy enough. You didn't pass the Swarthiness test. You don't look that swarthy to me.

by Rob Kall (952 articles, 4177 quicklinks, 374 diaries, 2087 comments [45 recommended, 3 rejected]) on Tuesday, Feb 20, 2007 at 1:04:54 PM

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You should have seen it from my perspective, approaching this building that was supposedly in imminent threat,surrounded by hundreds of police and military who had assault rifles at the ready, and me just walking up and literally putting my hand on the building. I dont get it.

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Wednesday, Feb 21, 2007 at 8:02:51 AM

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If you see one film on 9/11, watch: 9/11 Press For Truth If you read one article, read: DISTURBING FACTS ABOUT THE 9/11 ATTACKS

by johndoraemi (17 articles, 12 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 166 comments [3 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Feb 17, 2007 at 8:42:02 PM

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sleser, you make a lot of sense. The first time I heard about a 9/11 conspiracy was in Morocco a few months after the event. Most taxi drivers, shopkeepers, waiters I talked to there were convinced that 9/11 was a Zionist conspiracy; according to them, none of the Jewish people working in the towers came to work that day. In their eyes, there were no Jewish victims among the dead and this was a well established fact. BTW, these same people were also convinced that Princess Diana was killed by British intelligence because she was pregnant by Dodi Al Fayed and was to marry him soon. It was clearly pointless to oppose their views, their convictions were beyond reasoning and no amount of factual evidence to the contrary could bring them to change their mind. Logic and hard evidence are no match for political/religious beliefs, fantasies and collective paranoia. Unless you support the theory that the images of the planes crashing in the WTC were fabricated, why would it be necessary to use planes + explosive devices to strike fear in American masses? Two planes hitting the towers were not spectacular enough? What about the 4th plane, the one that crashed in Pennsylvania--the fragments found there are fake too? If it did not strike the Pentagon, what happened to flight 77? Did it vanish into thin air with its passengers? Dozens of witnesses saw it coming over the freeway , saw the passengers' faces, saw the planes fragments falling all over. Are these people all accomplices to the Bush administration too? And if you want to be taken seriously by cautious, rational people, and improve the fiability of your claims, may I suggest that you - stop calling dumb all the questions you cannot answer, - do not equate doubting your theories with being a shill and a Repug, - do not explain such doubts by a refusal to aknowledge that the POTUS might be a stupid, criminal psychopath wrecking havoc with the US and bent on starting WWIII. One does not have to support your theories to be thoroughly convinced of this.

by francine (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 385 comments) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 7:22:26 AM

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Francine stated: Conspiracy nuts versus wingnuts? sleser, you make a lot of sense.?The first time I heard about a 9/11 conspiracy was in Morocco a few months after the event.?Most taxi drivers, shopkeepers, waiters I talked to there were convinced that 9/11 was a Zionist conspiracy; according to them, none of the Jewish people working in the towers came to work that day. In their eyes, there were no Jewish victims among the dead and this was a well established fact. ?BTW, these same people were also convinced that Princess Diana was killed by British intelligence because she was pregnant by Dodi Al Fayed and was to marry him soon.?It was clearly pointless to oppose their views, their convictions were beyond reasoning and no amount of factual evidence to the contrary could bring them to change their mind. Logic and hard evidence are no match for political/religious beliefs, fantasies and collective paranoia. " [This is a common disinfo tactic: attempt to associate 911 truth with anti-semitism and if that isn't enough, attempt to associate them with extremists regarding some other event; i.e., in this case, beliefs about Princess Diana.]?? Francine stated: "Unless you support the theory that the images of the planes crashing in the WTC were fabricated, why would it be necessary to use planes + explosive devices to strike fear in American masses? Two planes hitting the towers were not spectacular enough?" [Another disinfo tactic: first, Francine inserts the hackneyed comment about "no plane theories - (the presentation of this theory by a few so-called 'truthers' was an attempt to discredit skepticism of the government fable by well-known disinfo sites); then she tries to give credence to the notion that the 'planes would have sufficiently spectacular by themselves...' thus ignoring the 1) shock and awe value of their collapse: "The September 11, 2001 attack has all of the hallmarks of a psychological operation (psy-op). It appears to have been engineered to produce shock and fear in the populace while limiting the number of immediate casualties to several thousand people. The perpetrators counted on psychological numbing to insert the Osama bin Laden attack legend. The attack itself is so unbelievable that it induces a suspension of disbelief, which causes the victim (of the psy-op) to overlook huge gaps in the official story. (Hoffmann, 2007)" and 2) the fact that the city of New York was requiring the complete removal of asbestos from the WTC 1 & 2 which would have cost Silverstein billions of dollars which he conveniently saved by the demolishing. He also made billions of dollars profit from the insurance premium he had taken out a month or so before 9/11 specifically protecting against terrorist attacks.... and 3) and the fact that the implosion of WTC 7 was also enabled via the "attack". And just what did WTC 7 have in it? "The other government agencies with offices in the building were the IRS, the EEOC, the US Secret Service, the SEC, and the CIA. The private tenants were Salomon Smith Barney, American Express Bank International, Standard Chartered Bank, Provident Financial Management, ITT Hartford Insurance Group, First State Management Group, Inc., Federal Home Loan Bank, and NAIC Securities. Large numbers of case files for ongoing investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) were reportedly destroyed in the collapse. The Los Angeles Times reported that "substantial files were destroyed" for 3000 to 4000 of the SEC's cases. The EEOC reported that documents for 45 active cases were destroyed. 3   Before the attack, SEC investigations of corporate fraud by companies such as Enron and Worldcom were the subject of many news reports -- reports that virtually vanished in the wake of the attack. (Hoffman 2007) Then Francine goes on to assert: "What about the 4th plane, the one that crashed in Pennsylvania--the fragments found there are fake too??If it did not strike the Pentagon, what happened to flight 77? Did it vanish into thin air with its passengers? Dozens of witnesses saw it coming over the freeway , saw the passengers' faces, saw the planes fragments falling all over. Are these people all accomplices to the Bush administration too?" [This is the 'classic' - strawman - argument. Commonly used by disinfo folks. Francine takes the 'no plane hit the pentagon' argument - long discredited by most 9/11 truth researchers, and she then attempts, by "debunking" it to discredit by association the mountains of verifiable evidence identifying government complicity in the events of 9/11. Shame on you Francine. You should at least try to be original.] Finally, Francine states, "And if you want to be taken seriously by cautious, rational people, and improve the fiability of your claims, may I suggest that you?- stop calling dumb all the questions you cannot answer,?- do not equate doubting your theories with being a shill and a Repug, ?- do not explain such doubts by a refusal to aknowledge that the POTUS might be a stupid, criminal psychopath wrecking havoc with the US and bent on starting WWIII. One does not have to support your theories to be thoroughly convinced of this." [First, beginning with the last paragraph first. This is simply a "limited hangout" (look it up). You admit to a little bit of the truth but attempt to prevent the further, more damning indictment of Bush and elements of the government; i.e., that our government was, indeed, complicit in 9/11. This is also a well-recognized disinfo tactic.] Francine also attempts to forestall the criticism that she is, in fact expressing disinfo with the admonishment: "-do not equate doubting your theories with being a shill and a Repug." Dear Francine, if you to argued scientifically and logically I might give you more credence. When you simply parrot the justifiably ridiculed, well-worn and false argumentation of various journalistic hit pieces (see Pop Mech, Counterpunch, Monbiot, Garcia, Cockburn ad nauseum) it is very hard to take you seriously. And as far as disinfo goes, it is like the old duck thing... you know, if it waddles, quacks and has wings.... golly, it's a duck....... Oh, and by the way, 9/11 Truth seekers include many Republicans (see, for example, Steven Jones, Ph.D., Morgan Reynolds, Ph.D., Paul Craig Roberts (Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.) as well as Democrats and others. Francine misleads by attempting to portray the 9/11 truth movement as 'political'.... It is not. ] ---------------- Oh, and Francine, one of your earlier posts: "And simple questions are often the most difficult to answer.?I have read contradictory arguments on what a kerosene fire can or cannot melt, how a building should or should not collapse , etc.?I am wary of self appointed experts who try to shut up doubters by deluging them with unverified technicalities. " [Gee, Francine, all I can say is, do a little research. Then, perhaps, you may understand the "technicalities". Oh, and you may wish to learn or re-learn 10th grade physics. It is not too difficult. Or are the laws of physics simply "unverified technicalities"?. And just to help clear up your quandary regarding the the heat of hydrocarbon fires and the melting points of iron/steel please note the following - minor technicalities - from Hoffman's review:   1535ºC (2795ºF) - melting point of iron ~1510ºC (2750ºF) - melting point of typical structural steel ~825ºC (1517ºF) - maximum temperature of hydrocarbon fires burning in the atmosphere without pressurization or pre-heating (premixed fuel and air - blue flame) Diffuse flames burn far cooler. ?Oxygen-starved diffuse flames are cooler yet. The fires in the towers were diffuse -- well below 800ºC. ?Their dark smoke showed they were oxygen-starved -- particularly in the South Tower. The fires were not hot enough to cause column failures. Fires never covered an entire floor of the South Tower. None of the features of 700+ºC fires were observed: Steel glowing red-hot Extensive window breakage Big bright emergent flames Light smoke (not seen after first few minutes) Fires have never caused column failure in tall steel buildings. Steel structures stay far below flame temperatures, because of steel's thermal conductivity. Corus Construction performed extensive tests subjecting uninsulated steel-frame carparks to prolonged hydrocarbon-fueled fires.?The highest recorded steel temperatures were 360ºC. All 287 columns would have to have weakened to the point of collapse in an instant to cause the telescoping seen in North Tower.?Asymmetric damage cannot produce such a symmetric result. Even if simultaneous column failure caused the building to start crushing itself straight down, it would either stop, or be deflected to the side and topple. Of collapse causes other than controlled demolition, only earthquakes can cause the simultaneous damage needed to cause total collapse --------------------- Dearest Francine, Why don't you go to http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/wtc/slides.html - and learn the science. But for some reason I doubt that you will. Ducks, after all, will be ducks.

by richard (0 articles, 5 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 1359 comments [399 recommended, 8 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 11:58:27 AM

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Great presentation of the known facts and the thorough exposure of Francine as the disinfo operative s/he is!! Thanks, Styve

by Styve (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 38 comments [8 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 3:43:17 PM

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Until 9/11 truth gets on "trusted", "established" "Legitimate" Main Stream Media sources, The "believers" will never take seriously alternate storys besides those of the the Government 9/11 commission. After all, They're the government. The ultimte source and authority for most Americans. And the MSM are the ,at the end of the day, the "reliable" source of the information "believers" actually live by.

by "Hoss" David P. (51 articles, 5 quicklinks, 14 diaries, 338 comments [4 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 7:55:03 AM

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Hi, Good article. Just left a Baptist affiliated church. Their blind obedience to Bush is tragic. If they really new the words of Jesus they could see what a fraud Bush is. They use "the submission to government" scripture to justify the war. Their lack of sophistication is to their detriment.The majority really are just dumb sheep. Yes, Jesus submitted to the authorities in the way of his flesh (ie body was crucified), but in spirit he was directly opposed to them.He blasted the religious leaders of the day. The same conditions exist today as did 2000 years ago. Most preachers just follow the "party line". Weak, complient and blind leaders of the flock. The blind leading the blind. The bible class teacher said he could kill 50 people and not lose his salvation. No wonder there is no remorse over the tens of thousands killed in Iraq (they all must be terrorists). Sarcasm. Truthseeker, Bob

by Bob Gormley (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 1094 comments [65 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 10:24:48 AM

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We all need to turn off the tube - it's obvious propaganda wall-to-wall. That will help to clear the path to reason for many - and is a first step to get us all on the same page. Then hopefully, we can gain some concensus on what must be done. Here is a poem I wrote recently - probably my best comment on the subject. I hope it speaks to you: THE RELIGION OF TELEVISION Carefully coifed, pampered, powdered and plucked, Barbie Bobblehead spews the news like sexy juice into the ecstatic, hypnotized face of the quivering mass. Illuminati lies from luscious lips, blood lust drivel from embedded whores, the lactating boob tube suckles the religious cult of low expectation, in high definition. Oh, come all ye faithful, ye circumcised souls, lay thou burnt offerings, at the sacrificial altar. For I AM thy LORD GOD Almighty, the truth and the light. Turn on, tune in, believe. What's on now, Momma? Disney's cartoon war machine, Nazi talking godheads, 5-Star General baby killers, inbred blueblood CEOs, drug-running CIA psychopaths, Vatican sex criminals, and piles of skulls and bones. What's on now, Daddy? Billionaire boot lickers, Presidential suck buddies, apocalyptic slave masters, blood thirsty money changers and mind-controlled robot assassins from the Ministry of Truth. Now I understand. Mohammed's infidel angels on fiery wings of thunder destroyed the twin pillars, and struck at the heart of the sacred pentagram. Solomon's temple of Zion must now rise from the ashes. Oh, thou God of mass destruction, hallowed be thy name, Lucifer, Moloch, Nimrod, with radiant beams from thy holy face, flickering pixels of death in cinematic communion. It is all Pagan theater. Now I understand. The Father, the Son and the Holy Plasma, I shall drink your blood, I shall eat your flesh. "And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood." Amen.

by JacksonHolly (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 14 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 1:06:00 PM

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You can start with the audio slideshow here for starters. Let me know if this isnt good enough for anyone click here

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 1:10:15 PM

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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/ and http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/sunder.html

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 2:34:55 PM

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click here

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 1:19:54 PM

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You linked to the original article (?) and you linked to a site that states, in relevant part: "Heat from the Fires The sprinkler system was damaged by the impact of the planes. But even if the sprinklers had been working, they could not have maintained enough pressure to stop the fire. Fed by the remaining jet fuel, the heat became intense. Most fires don't get hotter than 900 to 1,100 degrees F. The World Trade Center fire may have reached 1,300 or 1,400 degrees F. Structural steel does not easily melt, but it will lose about half its strength at 1,200 degrees F. The steel structure of the Twin Towers was weakened by the extreme heat. The steel also became distorted because the heat was not a uniform temperature." That's not "proof", that's just an unsubstantiated claim; wild speculation. The temperature of the structural steel obviously got nowhere near these kinds of temperatures. If you'll look at the second link I posted, you'll see rough calculations based on the amount of fuel assumed to be present and the heat capacity of the materials present, that shows the temperatures could have been no more than a few hundred degrees C. Moreover, the calculations assume ideal conditions which most certainly did not exist. And even if the calculations are off by a factor of two or three, the temperatures are still not high enough to compromise the steel. I don't think you even looked at the links I posted.

by jpsmith123 (3 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 286 comments [27 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 2:25:23 PM

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Engineer. S. Shyam Sunder served as the lead investigator. He has multiple degrees in engineering. Here is his Bio: Shyam Sunder Position - Deputy Director Building and Fire Research Laboratory Task Lead Technical Investigator Education Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, B. Tech., (Honors), Civil Engineering, 1977 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, S.M., Civil Engineering, 1979 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sc.D., Structural Engineering, 1981 Dr. S. Shyam Sunder is Deputy Director of the Building and Fire Research Laboratory (BFRL) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). BFRL's mission is to meet the measurements and standards needs of the building and fire safety communities by serving as a critical source of metrics, models, and knowledge used to enhance economic security and public safety by promoting U.S. innovation, industrial competitiveness, and improved codes, standards, and practices. New construction and renovation amount to about 1.3 trillion dollars annually – about 12 percent of U.S. GDP – and unwanted fires cost the economy over $100 billion annually. Public safety and quality of life, and the productivity of all industries, depend on the quality of constructed facilities. BFRL has an annual operating budget of about $40 million and its staff includes about 180 federal employees and 100 research associates and guest researchers from industry, universities, and foreign laboratories. Dr. Sunder also: serves as the lead investigator for the federal building and fire safety investigation into the World Trade Center disaster; oversees NIST activities as lead agency for the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP); and chairs the Interagency Committee on Seismic Safety in Construction (ICSSC) – a group that recommends policies and practices to its 32 member-agencies on improving the seismic safety of federal buildings nationwide. Dr. Sunder was chief of the Structures Division from January 1998 until June 2002 and chief of the Materials and Construction Research Division from June 2002-when the Building Materials Division was merged with the Structures Division and renamed-until March 2004. From June 1996 to December 1997, Dr. Sunder was on assignment to the Program Office, the principal staff office of the NIST Director, first as a Program Analyst and later as the Senior Program Analyst for NIST. In 1994, Dr. Sunder joined NIST's Building Materials Division as Manager of BFRL's newly created High-Performance Construction Materials and Systems Program and served in that position until June 1996. Prior to joining NIST, Dr. Sunder held a succession of positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) beginning in 1980: instructor, assistant professor, associate professor, principal research scientist, and senior research scientist. Dr. Sunder's awards include the Gilbert W. Winslow Career Development Chair (1985-87) and the Doherty Professorship in Ocean Utilization (1987-89) from MIT, the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize (1991) from the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Equal Employment Opportunity Award (1997) from NIST, and the Gold Medal Award (2005) for his distinguished leadership of the federal building and fire safety investigation of the World Trade Center disaster from the U.S. Department of Commerce. The links posted by those advocating controlled demolition - http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/wtc/slides.html - http://911review.com/articles/ryan/lies_about_wtc.html - and click here do not have licensed civil engineers behind them, let alone C.E.'s with the background and reputation of Sunder. Indeed, the last link regarding Kevin Ryan is total nonsense as can be seen in this link: click here

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 2:47:36 PM

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First, Dr. Sunder works for the government. Thus the first thing you have to ask yourself is this: If he had concluded that the impact of the planes should not have been enough to cause a collapse, would the government have endorsed his views? Most likely not. Being that he is *not* an independent party, his credentials mean almost nothing, IMO. Second, Dr. Sunder's *theory* rests on the assumption that the steel got hot enough to become significantly weakened. And that really is the crux of the issue. I have yet to see anything I would call *proof* that the fires started by the airplane impact got anywhere near these kind of temperatures. Moreover, as I understand it, there is no historical precedent for it. The calculations I linked to show that this is unlikely. These calculations are based on simple high school level physics. Anyone with a high school education should understand the physics of heat capacity as discussed in the link I posted. It is basically a matter of simple arithmetic: given a fixed mass of fuel with a known potential energy density, and, given a fixed mass of surrounding material of known heat capacity, calculate the temperature rise of the surrounding material based on the simplifying assumptions that the combustion was perfectly efficient, and no heat escaped from the system. You could make the argument that there was significant additional combustible material present in the buildings, but then you get into a situation where you need ridiculous amounts of air, implying very fast moving air. Put simply, you would almost need blast furnace conditions, which was not the case. You can look at the pictures of the burning towers and see thick black smoke, indicating an oxygen starved fire.

by jpsmith123 (3 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 286 comments [27 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 4:39:56 PM

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and suddenly a NIST scientist who has been an MIT professor in engineering and 2 plus decades of experience who can write his own ticket anywhere is the subject of vague accusations that he has engaged in some sort of treasonous coverup. And please, if you say Dr. Sunder provides a theory not a proof, how would you characterize the sources you have provided? Compared to Sunder's work, they are a complete joke. What you dont get is, I am open to new data. I am willing to read it. But there simply is no analysis of the 9/11 attacks by people who have the background to be credible that supports controlled demolition. If I am proven wrong I will say so. So, by all means, show me the links.

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 5:04:04 PM

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"Where are the citations for what you say?" I should hope I don't need "citations" for simple high school level physics. "and suddenly a NIST scientist who has been an MIT professor in engineering and 2 plus decades of experience who can write his own ticket anywhere is the subject of vague accusations that he has engaged in some sort of treasonous coverup." Go buy an old house somewhere and insure it for a significant amount of money. Then burn it down and haul the debris away before anyone can do a proper investigation. Then demand the insurance money. See how far you go with it. Get back to us with the results. "And please, if you say Dr. Sunder provides a theory not a proof, how would you characterize the sources you have provided? Compared to Sunder's work, they are a complete joke." Dr. Sunder's collapse theory critically depends upon the temperature to which the steel was raised by the fire. That is the crux of the issue. To successfully challenge Dr. Sunder's theory, all I have to do is show that the steel likely did not reach extremely high temperature. In that regard I point to historical precedent and simple physics. "What you dont get is, I am open to new data. I am willing to read it. But there simply is no analysis of the 9/11 attacks by people who have the background to be credible that supports controlled demolition. If I am proven wrong I will say so. So, by all means, show me the links." Start with WTC7, obviously the most bizarre case. I'll bet you didn't even examine the content of the site I linked to.

by jpsmith123 (3 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 286 comments [27 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 6:01:43 PM

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college physics. There is nothing self evident from those classes that readily applies to figuring out what happened in 9/11. I am not a civil engineer and apparently neither are you. The best expertise to evaluate what happened is that of the profession of civil engineering. If you do not have a respected civil engineer in your corner, what does that suggest to you?

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 10:43:24 PM

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"I actually took both High school and several semesters of college physics. There is nothing self evident from those classes that readily applies to figuring out what happened in 9/11." Please leave the strawmen out of it. Please consult any freshman physics textbook, or even a Schaum's outline of physics. Look up "heat capacity". It's a simple concept. In most cases, it involves nothing but simple algebra. Here's a little quiz for you: You have one pound of water. You add one BTU of heat energy. How much does the temperature of the water increase? Go find a civil engineer and get back to me. LOL! "I am not a civil engineer and apparently neither are you." I am an electrical engineer. "The best expertise to evaluate what happened is that of the profession of civil engineering." I do not need a civil engineer to estimate the temperature rise caused in a given mass of material by the combustion of a given mass of fuel *ASSUMING IDEAL CONDITIONS*. Maybe simple algebra and simple physics is over your head, but don't assume everyone else to be similarly handicapped. "If you do not have a respected civil engineer in your corner, what does that suggest to you?" It suggests that you know very little of science or math. If the ball park calculations assuming ideal calculations show very high temperature rises are possible, then you would be forced to do some very intense numerical modeling using sophisticated CFD codes, etc. For that you would need someone experienced with codes such as Ansys.

by jpsmith123 (3 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 286 comments [27 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Feb 19, 2007 at 5:28:12 AM

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I am not interested in an electrical engineers' analysis of complex civil engineering topics anymore than I would be interested in a dentists help with liver cancer. If you are not interested in strawman arguments, stick to electrical engineering or find a civil engineer who supports your arguments regarding controlled demolition.

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Monday, Feb 19, 2007 at 9:34:55 AM

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"YOU should stick to your field" Sorry but you know nothing about that of which you speak. Take a look at your computer, for example. It's bristling with fans and heat sinks. Thermal engineering is an essential part of electrical engineering. EEs need to make sure that power dissipating components stay within specified temperature rise limits under worst case conditions. This is true whether we're talking about the microprocessor in your computer or the insulation on the magnet wire in your washing machine motor. We routinely size heat sinks and determine airflow needed for convective cooling. Generally speaking, it matters not whether the energy comes from burning fuel or I^2*R*t; the physics is the same. "I am not interested in an electrical engineers' analysis of complex civil engineering topics anymore than I would be interested in a dentists help with liver cancer." Neither am I. Luckily however, your strawman notwithstanding, we don't need to solve a "complex civil engineering [problem]" to get a ballpark idea as to whether the jet fuel-fed fire in question could have caused a temperature rise high enough to weaken the steel. Instead, we make simplifying assumptions that correspond to a worst case. This gives us a simple model and an upper bound temperature rise that we know will be greater than the actual temperature rise. That's what's done in the link I provided. "If you are not interested in strawman arguments, stick to electrical engineering or find a civil engineer who supports your arguments regarding controlled demolition." Obviously, you're the one trying to confuse the issue with strawman arguments, not me.

by jpsmith123 (3 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 286 comments [27 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Feb 19, 2007 at 4:51:07 PM

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One can go to: click here as proposed by sleser001 and read a weak effort replete with made-up data and 'facts' to explain the demolition of WTC 1, 2 (and it does not even address Building WTC 7 - which was not hit by airplanes, had relatively small fires and yet fell into its own footprint on 9/11 in a manner identical to buildings felled by controlled demolition) or you can go read Kevin Ryan's well-researched and footnoted article 'Propping Up the War on Terror: Lies about the WTC by NIST and Underwriters Laboratories', http://911review.com/articles/ryan/lies_about_wtc.html that actually examines the data, that doesn't misrepresent the structure of the world trade center towers and understands the science. Choice: A bit of false fluff (the About/Architecture bit) or a scientifically-based article (Ryan's). You can also go to click here and read his peer-reviewed article: What is 9/11 Truth? – The First Steps By Kevin Ryan Former Site Manager for Environmental Health Laboratories, a division of Underwriters Laboratories As a neuroscientist and neuropsychologist, I know which articles I value. Which I give credence to. And I know the difference between false fluff propaganda that perpetuates misinformation versus actual well-documented and argued research articles that rely upon scientific analysis and empirical evidence.

by richard (0 articles, 5 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 1359 comments [399 recommended, 8 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 2:19:04 PM

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- Does steel lose half its strength at 1200 degrees or not? - Did the impacts knock out or weaken a significant number of the center/core columns or not?

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 2:25:04 PM

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see the comment I posted about Sunder. Who are the people who conducted the research to which you link and what are their credentials?

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 2:44:21 PM

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Sleser001 in his posts made numerous assertions but, interestingly, provided no sources for his assertions. Since he complained strenuously about others not citing sources, I thought I would help him by identifying not only where sources are needed but other small errors in his argumentation..... ----------------------- A compilation of Sleser001 posts: 1) Need a lot more links and facts. I am of the belief that 9/11 was known in advance by someone/some group in the government. ?? Source ?? I am by no means sure.?I am sure that planes hit the trade center and it was the result of the impact and the fuel fire that the buildings collapsed, I've seen the engineering proofs on that. I have also seen the proof of the reason why some of the other buildings in the WTC complex collapsed. ?? Source ?? ?I am less sure about what happened to the pentagon, other than that awful Barbara Olson is apparently nowhere to be found. Slim proof, I'll admit. ?? Source ?? If there are government forces that have culpability, my money is that they knew in advance and allowed it to happen, but that is the extent. ?? Source ?? I do not believe in controlled demolitions or anything of the sort. In the middle of one of the most densely populated cities in the western hemisphere, populated by anti-Bush people, no less, orchestration of an operation to bring down multiple enormous buildings with absolutely no leaks or eyewitnesses coming forward considering the magnitude of what happened is much too much for me to believe. ?? Source ?? ?I also live in NYC as of 2003 and have spoken first hand with scores of eyewitnesses. I grew up in the area and made multiple visits to the WTC throughout my life. **proof of asserted personal history??? That being said, there are strange things that do not add up that do point to advanced knowledge and less than genuine concern during supposed post 9/11 threat warning periods. ?? Source ?? ?When there was an alert that someone might bomb the citigroup building in manhattan, I decided to do a little test. I put on jeans and a shirt, filled a sizeable leather carrying bag with clothes and books, went to the building, and walked right up to the building and touched it. I am fairly swarthy looking. None of the hundreds of police or military that surrounded the building in a supposed higher security period attempted to talk to me or stop me. **proof, witnesses, testimony to your behavior?? ?As someone who is former military and familiar with alerts and high security bases and such, this was completely impossible to reconcile. **proof?? by sleser001 (99 articles, 277 comments) on Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 4:31:21 PM 2) Sorry, the intended link was... http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/??and ??http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/sunder.html by sleser001 (99 articles, 277 comments) on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 12:34:55 PM **pablum** 3) click here by sleser001 (99 articles, 277 comments) on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 11:19:54 AM **not convincing** 4) Both links I reference the engineering work of an NIST Civil Engineer. S. Shyam Sunder served as the lead investigator. He has multiple degrees in engineering. Here is his Bio: .........[not reprinted] ** ad nauseum** ++++++++ comment: essentially an argumentum ad verecundiam or appeal to authority in which you haul out Dr. Shyam Sunder and attempt to make the case that because of his stature he has got to be right. Not right. Scientific truth does not rely upon the individual name, position, stature, color, sex... but upon the arguments, evidence and reasoning. You have not met that criterion. Indeed, Sunder has said some fairly stupid things...? E.g., ?It is gratifying that NIST finally admits their findings do not support the "Pancake Theory" of collapse. Note that this is in direct contradiction to Shyam Sunder's comments reported by Popular Mechanics Magazine in March 2005, four months after NIST's final draft came out (but six months before their final, final draft appeared). and Their hypothesis is that the towers collapsed ultimately due to the fires they suffered: As the fires burned, the buildings' steel core columns buckled and shortened. This shifted more load to the buildings' perimeter columns, which were already affected by the heat of the fires, and caused them to give way under the increased stress. Investigators have conducted a test with a reconstructed section of the WTC floor, and found that the original fireproofing was sufficient to meet the New York City building code. They say that had a typical office fire occurred in the towers, without the structural damage and the loss of some fireproofing caused by the plane impacts, it is likely the buildings would have remained standing. Lead investigator Dr. Shyam Sunder says, "The buildings performed as they should have in the airplane impact and extreme fires to which they were subjected. There is nothing there that stands out as abnormal." NIST's theories of why the WTC buildings collapsed conflict with an earlier investigation by FEMA, which claimed the collapse of the north tower had begun in its core, rather than its perimeter columns (see May 1, 2002). [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 10/19/2004; New York Times, 10/20/2004]--- --(extreme fires??) 'chuckle'?++++++++++?? The links posted by those advocating controlled demolition??- http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/wtc/slides.html ??- click here and click here not have licensed civil engineers behind them, let alone C.E.'s with the background and reputation of Sunder. **again bogus appeals to ad hominem and argumentum ad verecundiam ?Indeed, the last link regarding Kevin Ryan is total nonsense as can be seen in this link: click here **this time simply an ad hominem attack** [And there was nothing particularly damning of Ryan in that article particularly as there are cogent rebuttals regarding UL and NIST's behaviors (which have not been too stellar) you look it up.] by sleser001 (99 articles, 277 comments) on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 12:47:36 PM 5) Made up data? - Does steel lose half its strength at 1200 degrees or not? ??source?? [you provide none and in any case there is contention regarding this issue: "These deflections are caused entirely by the increased length of the beam through thermal expansion and are not a sign of loss of 'strength' or 'stiffness' in the beam until much later. In fact approximately 90% of the defelection at 500°C and 75% at 600°C is explained by thermal expansion alone. Most of the rest is explained by increased strains due to reduced modulus of elasticity. However the behaviour remains stable until about 700°C when the first signs of runaway begin to appear." Source: click here ?- Did the impacts knock out or weaken a significant number of the center/core columns or not? ??source?? [and actually, I seem to recall that NIST itself said not. I will source this for later.] by sleser001 (99 articles, 277 comments) on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 12:25:04 PM 6) The reports I cited both reference a licensed civil engineer see the comment I posted about Sunder. Who are the people who conducted the research to which you link and what are their credentials? ** now a mixture of argumentum ad verecundiam and ad hominem by sleser001 (99 articles, 277 comments) on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 12:44:21 PM 7) Where are the citations for what you say? and where is a civil engineer who is willing to refute specific parts of the NIST study? ** the following is an exercise in arrogant posting (what role did you have in the military?..... MP?)? You need to list your contentions individually in bullet points and list links to your sources for each bullet. So far, what I have researched on the controlled demolition theory has turned out to be nonsense. Its like the right wingers who attempted to refute the study published in the Lancet on estimated deaths in Iraq. ??source?? They did not have the credentials or background to refute the study. ??source?? I can have an opinion on how a brain surgery should go, and I can use exquisite logic to do so, but what would it mean? I've never been to medical school. **thank god** by sleser001 (99 articles, 277 comments) on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 2:14:03 PM -------------------------------------------------- the other post: I was struck by the increasing arrogance of Sleser001. He in fact was the person who placed the 'demands' identified with the word "source" in the post entered by jpsmith123. Therefore, I thought I might help out a bit at the end and cite some of the available sources for the assertions that jpsmith123 made. That section follows: "AFAIK, there is no historical precedent for a high rise fire to cause a collapse of a steel frame bldg."?? Says who? What is your source for this? [NIST GCR 04-872 Fire Protection of Structural Steel in High-Rise Buildings] "During the past 75 years, these prescriptive approaches have been successful. In the NIST report, six occurrences of collapse in steel framed structures were cited. Four of these six were at the World Trade Center site. It would appear this performance has resulted from a balance of redundancy in structural design and the conservatism in the assessment of fire test data. Specialized structures have been constructed in addition to the standardized testing equipment. Two examples include one at NIST and one at the Cardington facility of the British Research Establishment. Both were steel structures with the focus being to obtain information on the redistribution of loads within the frame during a fire exposure. Unlike the standardized equipment, these facilities have had a short life in terms of being used for a relatively few fire exposures" ?"Thus the most damning thing, in my view, is not the lack of evidence demonstrating that the fires reached blast furnace temperatures, but the fact that the government prevented a proper investigation of the forensic evidence."?? According to whom? Where is your source for this?? [www.house.gov/science/hot/wtc/wtc-report/WTC_ch5.pdf] and [www.china.org.cn/english/2002/Jan/25776.htm] ?"Let's face it, if your house burnt down in an unusual manner, and you hauled the wreckage away before the fire marshall could properly inspect it, you know and I know that someone would be knocking on your door."?? Where is your source that this happened?? [see above and "GPS on the Job in Massive World Trade Center Clean-Up," Access Control & Security Systems 1 July 2002.] ?"The government's handling of the aftermath of the collapse of the WTC buildings was suspicious in the extreme. And no amount of sophistry can change that fact."?? Source? The above citations and [9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, Olive Branch Press, 2007] as well as others...

by richard (0 articles, 5 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 1359 comments [399 recommended, 8 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 11:48:28 PM

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source who has expertise in this field who supports your assertions. I do.

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Monday, Feb 19, 2007 at 9:36:58 AM

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there's so much focus on one particular subject- the melting point of the steel beams. To me, the fact that the buildings came down in 10 seconds, into their own footprint, is proof that there were timed charges set. A pancaking building that tall would take a couple of minutes, The result would be multiple stories pancaked, not a pile of dust and a volcanic-like explosion. But more telling than the physics of steel buildings and jet fuel, is the behavior of the key players. BUSH WAS NOT SURPRISED. THERE WAS NO ATTEMPT TO PROTECT HIM. RUMSFELD HAD CONTROL OF ALL FIGHTERS INTERCEPTING HIJACKERS TRANSFERRED TO HIMSELF, AND THEN REFUSED TO SCRAMBLE THE PLANES. CHENEY WAS RUNNING MULTIPLE "SIMULATIONS" THAT MORNING. THESE PEOPLE WERE NOT ACTING LIKE THE LEADERS OF A NATION UNDER ATTACK- JUST THE OPPOSITE. Peace, Carol Wolman

by Carol Wolman (230 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 113 comments [17 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 3:23:16 PM

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and where is a civil engineer who is willing to refute specific parts of the NIST study? You need to list your contentions individually in bullet points and list links to your sources for each bullet. So far, what I have researched on the controlled demolition theory has turned out to be nonsense. Its like the right wingers who attempted to refute the study published in the Lancet on estimated deaths in Iraq. They did not have the credentials or background to refute the study. I can have an opinion on how a brain surgery should go, and I can use exquisite logic to do so, but what would it mean? I've never been to medical school.

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 4:14:03 PM

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AFAIK, there is no historical precedent for a high rise fire to cause a collapse of a steel frame bldg. Thus the claim that it happened not once, but three times in one day is really beyond extraordinary, and, as they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. That extraordinary proof has not been forthcoming; and how could it when they prevented a proper investigation? Thus the most damning thing, in my view, is not the lack of evidence demonstrating that the fires reached blast furnace temperatures, but the fact that the government prevented a proper investigation of the forensic evidence. Let's face it, if your house burnt down in an unusual manner, and you hauled the wreckage away before the fire marshall could properly inspect it, you know and I know that someone would be knocking on your door. Would they let *you* collect insurance on it after destroying the evidence? Of course not. Let's say your brother-in-law was a licensed civil engineer, would the courts accept your relative's testimony that everything was above board? Of course not. The government's handling of the aftermath of the collapse of the WTC buildings was suspicious in the extreme. And no amount of sophistry can change that fact.

by jpsmith123 (3 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 286 comments [27 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 5:05:33 PM

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"AFAIK, there is no historical precedent for a high rise fire to cause a collapse of a steel frame bldg." Says who? What is your source for this "Thus the most damning thing, in my view, is not the lack of evidence demonstrating that the fires reached blast furnace temperatures, but the fact that the government prevented a proper investigation of the forensic evidence." According to whom? Where is your source for this? "Let's face it, if your house burnt down in an unusual manner, and you hauled the wreckage away before the fire marshall could properly inspect it, you know and I know that someone would be knocking on your door." Where is your source that this happened? "The government's handling of the aftermath of the collapse of the WTC buildings was suspicious in the extreme. And no amount of sophistry can change that fact." Source?

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 5:13:04 PM

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http://wtc.nist.gov/NISTNCSTAR1-3.pdf

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 5:43:27 PM

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Perhaps I missed it. Maybe you can point out where in that document lies the evidence that a significant amount of steel was exposed to high temperatures? If anything, it seems the Executive Summary supports my view.

by jpsmith123 (3 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 286 comments [27 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 7:12:25 PM

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"The microstructures show no evidence of exposure to temperatures above 600 C for any significant time for the recovered pieces." -NIST REPORT CHAPTER 9.4.5 Can you say "Ba-BAM!?" Can we now talk about starting real independent CRIMINAL investigations into September 11th? I just wrote about 70 hard core facts that lead to government complicity in 9-11, and only one of them mentions the collapses themselves. I see a lot of ignorant pinheads, like yourself, who have swallowed lies. They repeat the lies. They believe the lies. The people who told them these lies are known, world renowned liars -- not in dispute -- yet they would rather believe that 135,000,000 Americans are "crazy" for suspecting a criminal administration of wrongdoing on 9/11, such that they won't listen to any of the evidence. They know better. They know the lies. Pretty pathetic, five years after the fact, you still don't get it. We have evidence, and a lot of it.

by johndoraemi (17 articles, 12 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 166 comments [3 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Feb 19, 2007 at 3:37:18 AM

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You mined the .pdf for one sentence that seems to support your point and you ignored all of the rest. That does not get it done. For people who do not want to search through multiple hundred page documents, here is a summary that should help: http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (NIST NCSTAR throughout this document refers to one of the 43 volumes that comprise NIST's final report on the WTC Towers issued in October 2005. All sections of the report listed in this document are available at http://wtc.nist.gov.) 1. If the World Trade Center (WTC) towers were designed to withstand multiple impacts by Boeing 707 aircraft, why did the impact of individual 767s cause so much damage? As stated in Section 5.3.2 of NIST NCSTAR 1, a document from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) indicated that the impact of a [single, not multiple] Boeing 707 aircraft was analyzed during the design stage of the WTC towers. However, NIST investigators were unable to locate any documentation of the criteria and method used in the impact analysis and, therefore, were unable to verify the assertion that "... such collision would result in only local damage which could not cause collapse or substantial damage to the building...." The capability to conduct rigorous simulations of the aircraft impact, the growth and spread of the ensuing fires, and the effects of fires on the structure is a recent development. Since the approach to structural modeling was developed for the NIST WTC investigation, the technical capability available to the PANYNJ and its consultants and contactors to perform such analyses in the 1960s would have been quite limited in comparison to the capabilities brought to bear in the NIST investigation. The damage from the impact of a Boeing 767 aircraft (which is about 20 percent bigger than a Boeing 707) into each tower is well documented in NCSTAR 1-2. The massive damage was caused by the large mass of the aircraft, their high speed and momentum, which severed the relatively light steel of the exterior columns on the impact floors. The results of the NIST impact analyses matched well with observations (from photos and videos and analysis of recovered WTC steel) of exterior damage and of the amount and location of debris exiting from the buildings. This agreement supports the premise that the structural damage to the towers was due to the aircraft impact and not to any alternative forces. 2. Why did NIST not consider a "controlled demolition" hypothesis with matching computer modeling and explanation as it did for the "pancake theory" hypothesis? A key critique of NIST's work lies in the complete lack of analysis supporting a "progressive collapse" after the point of collapse initiation and the lack of consideration given to a controlled demolition hypothesis. NIST conducted an extremely thorough three-year investigation into what caused the WTC towers to collapse, as explained in NIST's dedicated Web site, http://wtc.nist.gov. This included consideration of a number of hypotheses for the collapses of the towers. Some 200 technical experts-including about 85 career NIST experts and 125 leading experts from the private sector and academia-reviewed tens of thousands of documents, interviewed more than 1,000 people, reviewed 7,000 segments of video footage and 7,000 photographs, analyzed 236 pieces of steel from the wreckage, performed laboratory tests and sophisticated computer simulations of the sequence of events that occurred from the moment the aircraft struck the towers until they began to collapse. Based on this comprehensive investigation, NIST concluded that the WTC towers collapsed because: (1) the impact of the planes severed and damaged support columns, dislodged fireproofing insulation coating the steel floor trusses and steel columns, and widely dispersed jet fuel over multiple floors; and (2) the subsequent unusually large jet-fuel ignited multi-floor fires (which reached temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius) significantly weakened the floors and columns with dislodged fireproofing to the point where floors sagged and pulled inward on the perimeter columns. This led to the inward bowing of the perimeter columns and failure of the south face of WTC 1 and the east face of WTC 2, initiating the collapse of each of the towers. Both photographic and video evidence-as well as accounts from the New York Police Department aviation unit during a half-hour period prior to collapse-support this sequence for each tower. NIST's findings do not support the "pancake theory" of collapse, which is premised on a progressive failure of the floor systems in the WTC towers (the composite floor system-that connected the core columns and the perimeter columns-consisted of a grid of steel "trusses" integrated with a concrete slab; see diagram below). Instead, the NIST investigation showed conclusively that the failure of the inwardly bowed perimeter columns initiated collapse and that the occurrence of this inward bowing required the sagging floors to remain connected to the columns and pull the columns inwards. Thus, the floors did not fail progressively to cause a pancaking phenomenon. Diagram of Composite WTC Floor System NIST's findings also do not support the "controlled demolition" theory since there is conclusive evidence that: the collapse was initiated in the impact and fire floors of the WTC towers and nowhere else, and; the time it took for the collapse to initiate (56 minutes for WTC 2 and 102 minutes for WTC 1) was dictated by (1) the extent of damage caused by the aircraft impact, and (2) the time it took for the fires to reach critical locations and weaken the structure to the point that the towers could not resist the tremendous energy released by the downward movement of the massive top section of the building at and above the fire and impact floors. Video evidence also showed unambiguously that the collapse progressed from the top to the bottom, and there was no evidence (collected by NIST, or by the New York Police Department, the Port Authority Police Department or the Fire Department of New York) of any blast or explosions in the region below the impact and fire floors as the top building sections (including and above the 98th floor in WTC 1 and the 82nd floor in WTC 2) began their downward movement upon collapse initiation. In summary, NIST found no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to Sept. 11, 2001. NIST also did not find any evidence that missiles were fired at or hit the towers. Instead, photographs and videos from several angles clearly show that the collapse initiated at the fire and impact floors and that the collapse progressed from the initiating floors downward until the dust clouds obscured the view. 3. How could the WTC towers have collapsed without a controlled demolition since no steel-frame, high-rise buildings have ever before or since been brought down due to fires? Temperatures due to fire don't get hot enough for buildings to collapse. The collapse of the WTC towers was not caused either by a conventional building fire or even solely by the concurrent multi-floor fires that day. Instead, NIST concluded that the WTC towers collapsed because: (1) the impact of the planes severed and damaged support columns, dislodged fireproofing insulation coating the steel floor trusses and steel columns, and widely dispersed jet fuel over multiple floors; and (2) the subsequent unusually large, jet-fuel ignited multi-floor fires weakened the now susceptible structural steel. No building in the United States has ever been subjected to the massive structural damage and concurrent multi-floor fires that the towers experienced on Sept. 11, 2001. 4. Weren't the puffs of smoke that were seen, as the collapse of each WTC tower starts, evidence of controlled demolition explosions? No. As stated in Section 6.14.4 of NIST NCSTAR 1, the falling mass of the building compressed the air ahead of it-much like the action of a piston-forcing smoke and debris out the windows as the stories below failed sequentially. These puffs were observed at many locations as the towers collapsed. In all cases, they had the appearance of jets of gas being pushed from the building through windows or between columns on the mechanical floors. Such jets are expected since the air inside the building is compressed as the tower falls and must flow somewhere as the pressure builds. It is significant that similar "puffs" were observed numerous times on the fire floors in both towers prior to their collapses, perhaps due to falling walls or portions of a floor. Puffs from WTC 1 were even observed when WTC 2 was struck by the aircraft. These observations confirm that even minor overpressures were transmitted through the towers and forced smoke and debris from the building. 5. Why were two distinct spikes-one for each tower-seen in seismic records before the towers collapsed? Isn't this indicative of an explosion occurring in each tower? The seismic spikes for the collapse of the WTC Towers are the result of debris from the collapsing towers impacting the ground. The spikes began approximately 10 seconds after the times for the start of each building's collapse and continued for approximately 15 seconds. There were no seismic signals that occurred prior to the initiation of the collapse of either tower. The seismic record contains no evidence that would indicate explosions occurring prior to the collapse of the towers. 6. How could the WTC towers collapse in only 11 seconds (WTC 1) and 9 seconds (WTC 2)-speeds that approximate that of a ball dropped from similar height in a vacuum (with no air resistance)? NIST estimated the elapsed times for the first exterior panels to strike the ground after the collapse initiated in each of the towers to be approximately 11 seconds for WTC 1 and approximately 9 seconds for WTC 2. These elapsed times were based on: (1) precise timing of the initiation of collapse from video evidence, and (2) ground motion (seismic) signals recorded at Palisades, N.Y., that also were precisely time-calibrated for wave transmission times from lower Manhattan (see NCSTAR 1-5A). As documented in Section 6.14.4 of NIST NCSTAR 1, these collapse times show that: "... the structure below the level of collapse initiation offered minimal resistance to the falling building mass at and above the impact zone. The potential energy released by the downward movement of the large building mass far exceeded the capacity of the intact structure below to absorb that energy through energy of deformation. Since the stories below the level of collapse initiation provided little resistance to the tremendous energy released by the falling building mass, the building section above came down essentially in free fall, as seen in videos. As the stories below sequentially failed, the falling mass increased, further increasing the demand on the floors below, which were unable to arrest the moving mass." In other words, the momentum (which equals mass times velocity) of the 12 to 28 stories (WTC 1 and WTC 2, respectively) falling on the supporting structure below (which was designed to support only the static weight of the floors above and not any dynamic effects due to the downward momentum) so greatly exceeded the strength capacity of the structure below that it (the structure below) was unable to stop or even to slow the falling mass. The downward momentum felt by each successive lower floor was even larger due to the increasing mass. From video evidence, significant portions of the cores of both buildings (roughly 60 stories of WTC 1 and 40 stories of WTC 2) are known to have stood 15 to 25 seconds after collapse initiation before they, too, began to collapse. Neither the duration of the seismic records nor video evidence (due to obstruction of view caused by debris clouds) are reliable indicators of the total time it took for each building to collapse completely. 7a. How could the steel have melted if the fires in the WTC towers weren't hot enough to do so? OR 7b. Since the melting point of steel is about 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature of jet fuel fires does not exceed 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit and Underwriters Laboratories (UL) certified the steel in the WTC towers to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for six hours, how could fires have impacted the steel enough to bring down the WTC towers? In no instance did NIST report that steel in the WTC towers melted due to the fires. The melting point of steel is about 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,800 degrees Fahrenheit). Normal building fires and hydrocarbon (e.g., jet fuel) fires generate temperatures up to about 1,100 degrees Celsius (2,000 degrees Fahrenheit). NIST reported maximum upper layer air temperatures of about 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,800 degrees Fahrenheit) in the WTC towers (for example, see NCSTAR 1, Figure 6-36). However, when bare steel reaches temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius, it softens and its strength reduces to roughly 10 percent of its room temperature value. Steel that is unprotected (e.g., if the fireproofing is dislodged) can reach the air temperature within the time period that the fires burned within the towers. Thus, yielding and buckling of the steel members (floor trusses, beams, and both core and exterior columns) with missing fireproofing were expected under the fire intensity and duration determined by NIST for the WTC towers. UL did not certify any steel as suggested. In fact, in U.S. practice, steel is not certified at all; rather structural assemblies are tested for their fire resistance rating in accordance with a standard procedure such as ASTM E 119 (see NCSTAR 1-6B). That the steel was "certified ... to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit for six hours" is simply not true. 8. We know that the sprinkler systems were activated because survivors reported water in the stairwells. If the sprinklers were working, how could there be a 'raging inferno' in the WTC towers? Both the NIST calculations and interviews with survivors and firefighters indicated that the aircraft impacts severed the water pipes that carried the water to the sprinkler systems. The sprinklers were not operating on the principal fire floors. However, there were ample sources of the water in the stairwells. The water pipes ran vertically within the stairwells. Moreover, there would have been copious water from the broken restroom supply lines and from the water tanks that supplied the initial water for the sprinklers. Thus, it is not surprising that evacuating occupants encountered a lot of water. Even if the automatic sprinklers had been operational, the sprinkler systems-which were installed in accordance with the prevailing fire safety code-were designed to suppress a fire that covered as much as 1,500 square feet on a given floor. This amount of coverage is capable of controlling almost all fires that are likely to occur in an office building. On Sept. 11, 2001, the jet-fuel ignited fires quickly spread over most of the 40,000 square feet on several floors in each tower. This created infernos that could not have been suppressed even by an undamaged sprinkler system, much less one that had been appreciably degraded. 9. If thick black smoke is characteristic of an oxygen-starved, lower temperature, less intense fire, why was thick black smoke exiting the WTC towers when the fires inside were supposed to be extremely hot? Nearly all indoor large fires, including those of the principal combustibles in the WTC towers, produce large quantities of optically thick, dark smoke. This is because, at the locations where the actual burning is taking place, the oxygen is severely depleted and the combustibles are not completely oxidized to colorless carbon dioxide and water. The visible part of fire smoke consists of small soot particles whose formation is favored by the incomplete combustion associated with oxygen-depleted burning. Once formed, the soot from the tower fires was rapidly pushed away from the fires into less hot regions of the building or directly to broken windows and breaks in the building exterior. At these lower temperatures, the soot could no longer burn away. Thus, people saw the thick dark smoke characteristic of burning under oxygen-depleted conditions. 10. Why were people seen in the gaps left by the plane impacts if the heat from the fires behind them was so excessive? NIST believes that the persons seen were away from any strong heat source and most likely in an area that at the time was a point where the air for combustion was being drawn into the building to support the fires. Note that people were observed only in the openings in WTC 1. According to the International Standard ISO/TS 13571, people will be in severe pain within seconds if they are near the radiant heat level generated by a large fire. Thus, it is not surprising that none of the photographs show a person standing in those gaps where there also was a sizable fire. The fire behavior following the aircraft impacts is described in NIST NCSTAR 1-5A. In general, there was little sustained fire near the area where the aircraft hit the towers. Immediately upon impact of the aircraft, large fireballs from the atomized jet fuel consumed all the local oxygen. (This in itself would have made those locations rapidly unlivable.) The fireballs receded quickly and were followed by fires that grew inside the tower where there was a combination of combustible material, air and an ignition source. Little combustible material remained near the aircraft entry gashes since the aircraft "bulldozed" much of it toward the interior of the building. Also, some of the contents fell through the breaks in the floor to the stories below. Therefore, the people observed in these openings must have survived the aircraft impact and moved-once the fireballs had dissipated-to the openings where the temperatures were cooler and the air was clearer than in the building interior. 11. Why do some photographs show a yellow stream of molten metal pouring down the side of WTC2 that NIST claims was aluminum from the crashed plane although aluminum burns with a white glow? NIST reported (NCSTAR 1-5A) that just before 9:52 a.m., a bright spot appeared at the top of a window on the 80th floor of WTC 2, four windows removed from the east edge on the north face, followed by the flow of a glowing liquid. This flow lasted approximately four seconds before subsiding. Many such liquid flows were observed from near this location in the seven minutes leading up to the collapse of this tower. There is no evidence of similar molten liquid pouring out from another location in WTC 2 or from anywhere within WTC 1. Photographs, and NIST simulations of the aircraft impact, show large piles of debris in the 80th and 81st floors of WTC 2 near the site where the glowing liquid eventually appeared. Much of this debris came from the aircraft itself and from the office furnishings that the aircraft pushed forward as it tunneled to this far end of the building. Large fires developed on these piles shortly after the aircraft impact and continued to burn in the area until the tower collapsed. NIST concluded that the source of the molten material was aluminum alloys from the aircraft, since these are known to melt between 475 degrees Celsius and 640 degrees Celsius (depending on the particular alloy), well below the expected temperatures (about 1,000 degrees Celsius) in the vicinity of the fires. Aluminum is not expected to ignite at normal fire temperatures and there is no visual indication that the material flowing from the tower was burning. Pure liquid aluminum would be expected to appear silvery. However, the molten metal was very likely mixed with large amounts of hot, partially burned, solid organic materials (e.g., furniture, carpets, partitions and computers) which can display an orange glow, much like logs burning in a fireplace. The apparent color also would have been affected by slag formation on the surface. 12. Did the NIST investigation look for evidence of the WTC towers being brought down by controlled demolition? Was the steel tested for explosives or thermite residues? The combination of thermite and sulfur (called thermate) "slices through steel like a hot knife through butter." NIST did not test for the residue of these compounds in the steel. The responses to questions number 2, 4, 5 and 11 demonstrate why NIST concluded that there were no explosives or controlled demolition involved in the collapses of the WTC towers. Furthermore, a very large quantity of thermite (a mixture of powdered or granular aluminum metal and powdered iron oxide that burns at extremely high temperatures when ignited) or another incendiary compound would have had to be placed on at least the number of columns damaged by the aircraft impact and weakened by the subsequent fires to bring down a tower. Thermite burns slowly relative to explosive materials and can require several minutes in contact with a massive steel section to heat it to a temperature that would result in substantial weakening. Separate from the WTC towers investigation, NIST researchers estimated that at least 0.13 pounds of thermite would be required to heat each pound of a steel section to approximately 700 degrees Celsius (the temperature at which steel weakens substantially). Therefore, while a thermite reaction can cut through large steel columns, many thousands of pounds of thermite would need to have been placed inconspicuously ahead of time, remotely ignited, and somehow held in direct contact with the surface of hundreds of massive structural components to weaken the building. This makes it an unlikely substance for achieving a controlled demolition. Analysis of the WTC steel for the elements in thermite/thermate would not necessarily have been conclusive. The metal compounds also would have been present in the construction materials making up the WTC towers, and sulfur is present in the gypsum wallboard that was prevalent in the interior partitions. 13. Why did the NIST investigation not consider reports of molten steel in the wreckage from the WTC towers? NIST investigators and experts from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEONY)-who inspected the WTC steel at the WTC site and the salvage yards-found no evidence that would support the melting of steel in a jet-fuel ignited fire in the towers prior to collapse. The condition of the steel in the wreckage of the WTC towers (i.e., whether it was in a molten state or not) was irrelevant to the investigation of the collapse since it does not provide any conclusive information on the condition of the steel when the WTC towers were standing. NIST considered the damage to the steel structure and its fireproofing caused by the aircraft impact and the subsequent fires when the buildings were still standing since that damage was responsible for initiating the collapse of the WTC towers. Under certain circumstances it is conceivable for some of the steel in the wreckage to have melted after the buildings collapsed. Any molten steel in the wreckage was more likely due to the high temperature resulting from long exposure to combustion within the pile than to short exposure to fires or explosions while the buildings were standing. 14. Why is the NIST investigation of the collapse of WTC 7 (the 47-story office building that collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, hours after the towers) taking so long to complete? Is a controlled demolition hypothesis being considered to explain the collapse? When NIST initiated the WTC investigation, it made a decision not to hire new staff to support the investigation. After the June 2004 progress report on the WTC investigation was issued, the NIST investigation team stopped working on WTC 7 and was assigned full-time through the fall of 2005 to complete the investigation of the WTC towers. With the release and dissemination of the report on the WTC towers in October 2005, the investigation of the WTC 7 collapse resumed. Considerable progress has been made since that time, including the review of nearly 80 boxes of new documents related to WTC 7, the development of detailed technical approaches for modeling and analyzing various collapse hypotheses, and the selection of a contractor to assist NIST staff in carrying out the analyses. It is anticipated that a draft report will be released by early 2007. The current NIST working collapse hypothesis for WTC 7 is described in the June 2004 Progress Report on the Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster (Volume 1, page 17, as well as Appendix L), as follows: An initial local failure occurred at the lower floors (below floor 13) of the building due to fire and/or debris-induced structural damage of a critical column (the initiating event) which supported a large-span floor bay with an area of about 2,000 square feet; Vertical progression of the initial local failure occurred up to the east penthouse, and as the large floor bays became unable to redistribute the loads, it brought down the interior structure below the east penthouse; and Triggered by damage due to the vertical failure, horizontal progression of the failure across the lower floors (in the region of floors 5 and 7 that were much thicker and more heavily reinforced than the rest of the floors) resulted in a disproportionate collapse of the entire structure. This hypothesis may be supported or modified, or new hypotheses may be developed, through the course of the continuing investigation. NIST also is considering whether hypothetical blast events could have played a role in initiating the collapse. While NIST has found no evidence of a blast or controlled demolition event, NIST would like to determine the magnitude of hypothetical blast scenarios that could have led to the structural failure of one or more critical elements.

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Monday, Feb 19, 2007 at 9:54:07 AM

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Below is a critique of number 12 of the list provided above. It gets into the wording and mis information in number 12. There are a rather large group of scholars associated with the individual who provides this critique. click here

by Sleeper (1 articles, 1 quicklinks, 14 diaries, 312 comments [6 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Feb 19, 2007 at 8:17:24 PM

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It would take a bowling ball approx. 10 seconds to fall from a similar height. The free fall was totally unimpeded not weakened steal bending and top floors impacting the floors below them. Any resistance would increase the time of the fall of the Towers. Weakened steal would have caused the structure to list toward the areas that were weakest not freefall into their own footprint. I read the 96 seconds calculation was completed by a former professor of engineering from Clemson University, but I will grant you that I do not know his name and cannot refer you to his work. For me its just belief in some common sense. Today everything seems to be for sale. If it pays enough someone will come up with a weak theory especially if they have a few credentials to sell the payoff will be bigger. In America everything is for sale.

by Sleeper (1 articles, 1 quicklinks, 14 diaries, 312 comments [6 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 6:08:13 PM

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The NIST report strikes me as a deliberate piece of obfuscation. It reminds me of the investigation of the space shuttle Challenger disaster, where NASA engineers were spewing all sorts of minutia while Richard Feynman, probably the greatest living theoretical physicist at the time, said "look, if you put an o-ring in ice water it gets stiff". There are a couple of basics facts the official analyses never addressed to my satisfaction: the nearly freefall acceleration, and the symmetrical collapse. Neither of these is consistent with steel being reduced to some fraction of its normal tensile strength at some temperature. Did the entire structure attain that temperature at exactly the same time? Even if it did, how likely is it that the entire structure would suddenly segment such that all its pieces were in freefall? Sunder's explanation of the freefall collapse makes zero sense. The Clemsen former engineering professor who did the calculation of how long the "pancake" collapse would take under generous assumptions was Judy Wood. Unfortunately, she also started embracing moonbat hypotheses about science fiction-like weapons and (I think) suggestions that planes never hit the towers. Believe me I was skeptical of the skeptics myself, until I started looking at what some of them were saying, particularly those with scientific training. Medicis, your list of characteristics of controlled demolition was excellent. That alone should be a good case for re-investigation. Now that we don't have monolithic one-party rule would be a good time. I don't pretend to know what actually happened on 9/11, but I have a hypothesis I haven't seen advanced by anyone else: the policy of the Bush administration, confronted with multiple intelligence that the specific act was going to happen on that day, was to ignore it. This could be, and indeed is, plausibly denied. It's very difficult to prove what someone knew, and to suggest deliberate neglect could be considered an act of sedition. Meanwhile, others in the government, aware of this policy--perhaps it was members of the Project for a New American Century--said "we can do better!", and caused the explosives to be planted, to be used after the plane impacts, or perhaps made use of already planted ones. The above is just speculation. I know little about criminal investigations. What I do know is what makes physical sense, and the official explanation of the WTC collapse doesn't.

by Maxwell (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 409 comments [85 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 9:18:09 PM

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That is to what it comes down. What makes sense to either of us is not important when it comes to things like engineering or the practice of law or medicine. These are disciplines that require 5-8 years of specific university study, examinations to determine ones fitness and then several years of actual work besides to master. If we both had accredited civil engineers behind us, that would be one thing, but that is not the case. What seems logical to either of us is simply not as important as an expert opinion in the field.

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 11:02:47 PM

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Steven, I don't have a professional engineering license or experience as a civil engineer, but I do have master's degrees in physics and electrical engineering. There are some basic principles that you don't need training in advanced mathematical analysis (which I do have) or structural details of large buildings (which I don't) to understand. For a tall narrow structure to fall straight down at freefall acceleration, as opposed to toppling over, you need many pieces of it to become detached from one another suddenly. It's as simple as that. The accepted model for the collapse does not accomplish that. There's a famous quote from Sherlock Holmes that goes "You must first rule out the impossible. Having done that, what remains, however improbable, must be true". Contrary to popular believe, in modern science the boundary between impossible and improbable is a blur. In the nineteenth century Ludwig Boltzmann, James Clerk Maxwell and J. Willard Gibbs, the pioneers of "statistical mechanics", showed that the second law of thermodynamics is not an immutable law of nature but a law of probabilities. Despite this, the probability of an object at room temperature spontaneously absorbing heat and becoming red hot is so incredibly small that it may be regarded as impossible for all practical purposes. While the probability of symmetrical freefall collapse of a building due to heat fatigue is larger than that of macroscopic violations of the second law of thermodynamics, it is still incredibly small. I think Stephen Jones made an estimate somewhere, but I don't have a reference off the top of my head. Since the feat was repeated an hour or so later, the joint probability, assuming statistical indepencence, is the square of the individual probability. Independence is a bad assumption under the circumstances, but something much smaller. So small that I would have to regard it as impossible. Having ruled out the impossible, what's left? Controlled demolition seems like a viable hypothesis. This would require a fairly massive conspiracy, and the probability of it being revealed would appear large. I am not a physically courageous individual: the thought of throwing myself under a train to save another human life is way beyond my imagination. But I like to think that if I had inside knowledge of such a diabolical plot I would come forward, even under threat of death. There's also the question of why anyone whose purpose was to strike terror would do a controlled demolition, killing 2500 people, as opposed to one where toppling occurred, killing perhaps hundreds of thousands. One intriguing hypothesis I read involves explosives that were pre-planted so the buildings could be "pulled" in the event of trouble. The thought of not even one person who had knowledge of this coming forward is astounding. But, I keep coming back to the Sherlock Holmes observation. You want a source or rigorous proof of the statement "no steel-framed building had ever failed due to fire prior to 9/11". I have several references, but none you or I would regard as a primary source. However I tend to accept it as true for the following reason: while proof of such a statement is difficult, its converse is easy. All you need is one counter-example. No one has provided one, to my knowledge. If you do, I'll shut up about it. I don't put much stock in what "engineering societies" have to say. There is a tendency for such groups to engage in "group think" and stand by their own, especially in politically sensitive situations. The space shuttle example I gave is one. Your claim that an electrical engineer is not competent to talk about mechanics is unfair and inaccurate. Scientific insites are often provided by people not trained in a specific niche. An example is the physician who discovered bacteria-induced stomach ulcers while the gastroenterology communitiy had ruled out such a thing. I submit that an electrical engineer or neuroscientist is as competent to comment on building mechanics as an orthopedic surgeon (I think that's what he was) is to comment on stomach ulcers. I also submit based on my engineering experience with electronic circuit design that a building, where human life literally hangs on balance, that was designed so that it would fail if the steel was reduced to half its normal strength, would not be considered to have been designed competently. I don't have a particular horse in this debate, I only know what I regard as impossible. Maybe it was PNAC, maybe it was Saudi Arabia, maybe it was Pakistan. Stephen Jones has done experiments to test theories that molten aluminum could cause spontaneous thermite-like reactions with iron oxide in the steel buildings, or could be observed to glow red when it contained impurities. This is what scientists do. I have not seen any scientific criticism of these experiments, only political ones. So, don't impeach or indict, but definitely reinvestigate.

by Maxwell (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 409 comments [85 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Feb 20, 2007 at 9:44:30 AM

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My two cents while I rush on to other projects: I used to be a shipfitter and burner in a shipyard, so I have a healthy respect for steel, especially after banging into it several times. Steel is not paper machee. It takes considerable, sustained heat to cut it, even more to properly bend it, even more to completely melt it. We have to put large sections of steel in a furnace for a good while to get it hot enough to shape, and to shape it requires considerable force, often hydraulic tools. Yet the massive steel in the WTC towers was not only melted and distorted, but largely eviscerated. If you told me that Martians with ray guns zapped the towers, I would believe that before I swallowed the theory that fuel oil and office fires caused the steel to not only collapse, but to turn into silly putty. I have been on a ship that caught on fire in drydock, working all night long with the fire department in Berkely, Virginia, cutting access holes for them. The worst that the flames did to the steel plate was to buckle or distort some of the thinner steel plates. At no time was the structural integrity of any compartment compromised by the fire. Most of the steel didn't even get hot unless it was in direct proximity to the flames, and even then I had to use an extremely high temperature oxy-acetylene torch to heat it enough to cut an access. What happened on 9/11 took extremely powerful, high temperature forces to accomplish. Now we know that thermate would fall under that category. Thermate is used in shaped charges to cut through steel like "silly-putty" by demolition experts. Now put two and two together.

by Mac McKinney (53 articles, 113 quicklinks, 240 diaries, 1413 comments [31 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 9:54:43 PM

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What the key players were doing that day is much more telling than the melting point of steel. How come the president wasn't protected? Why didn't Rumsfeld scramble fighters to intercept the planes? And yes, why did they do a coverup rather than really investigate? It's obviously an inside job! Peace, Carol Wolman

by Carol Wolman (230 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 113 comments [17 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 10:34:20 PM

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You realize that to accept controlled demolition, you have to also accept that controlled demolition charges, which require extreme precision, were placed perfectly right above or below the spot that two jumbo jets were to hit some time later and that the pilots would hit exactly the right spot. I am not sure many commercial pilots with decades of experience could achieve hitting the exact right spot on a couple of buildings. You also have to accept that the impact and resulting fires would not have damaged the explosives in place or set them off haphazardly. You can call me a nitpicker if you want, but I can accept unusually high temperature fires much easier than I can accept such a highly improbable scenario and its perfect achievement, particularly if an extremely well respected and multiple award winning civil engineer with a doctoral degree in civil engineering from MIT accepts it.

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 10:55:17 PM

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The demolition charges was placed throughout both buildings, starting with the basements. The planes simply provided a cover story. They didn't trigger anything. No plane hit building 7. Building workers reported explosions in the sub basements seconds BEFORE the planes hit, if you want to be nitpicky. But again, that's just one piece in a big picture. The behavior of the key people is the real key. Peace, Carol

by Carol Wolman (230 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 113 comments [17 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Feb 18, 2007 at 11:43:07 PM

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Steve, I have worked around a lot of Engineers over the years and I can say this, that while a lot of them are human calculators, a lot of them also don't have any common sense, no matter how many degrees they have. What looks good on paper doesn't always pan out in the real world. It's usally really about getting your facts right. Garbage in, garbage out. That said, here are some websites highlighting Dr. Stephen Jones, a well-respected (except on Fox News, etc.) physicist whose findings directly challenge your NIST types. Take the time to look at these, if you will. See: click here http://wtc7.net/articles/WhyIndeed09.pdf http://www.supportthetruth.com/jones.php You have to also be aware that most people in this world follow the leads of their governments and are frightened of losing their jobs if it comes to a confrontation with power. I have been observing all my life how people compromise their integrity routinely. Those who speak out suffer. Dr. Jones is a case in point.

by Mac McKinney (53 articles, 113 quicklinks, 240 diaries, 1413 comments [31 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Feb 19, 2007 at 12:18:52 AM

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Please go back and reread the article. I repeat, the collapse of the towers clinches the case, but the big picture is so clear... the refusal to heed warnings, the pre 9-11 insider trading, the activities of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld that day, the oh-so-flimsy cover story, the air force stand down, the demolition of the command center-Building 7, the coverup commission, and the using of 9-11 to invent the war on terror and to justify the invasion of Afganistan and Iraq- it all fits together into a big picture of conspiracy by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and probably the whole Bin Laden family, not just Osama- since 15 of the hijackers were Saudis. By focusing on the melting point of steel, you are all avoiding the horrible implications of an inside job- the kind of murderous and cynical ruthlessness that we are being subjected to. We can't deal with it unless we can face it. Peace, Carol Wolman, MD- Board Certified in Psychiatry Cochair IMPEACH BUSH-CHENEY

by Carol Wolman (230 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 113 comments [17 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Feb 19, 2007 at 9:36:16 AM

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First let me say that Brigham Young should be the object of a concerted effort to have it closed. No professor should be fired or forcibly retired because of an opinion that is not ethnocentrist and perhaps, depending on the situation, not even then. If a University does not have academic freedom, it is a piece of garbage. Steven E Jones does not say his opinion is necessarily correct. In virtually every paper he calls for more investigation, which I would support. On the other side, virtually every engineering society has condemned his findings as inaccurate.

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Monday, Feb 19, 2007 at 9:44:11 AM

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Then again, another persuasive factor in the big picture is the uniform and dogged persistence with which some so regularly bat back all and any attempts to get at the reality of what happened. Some are so persistent that one might even think that this is the mission they have been given. Eh, slesor001?

by Geraldo (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 105 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Feb 19, 2007 at 12:17:40 PM

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The obvious question right back at you is, why do you demand and insist, in the face of very difficult problems in your scenaro, that your version of reality must be true?

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Tuesday, Feb 20, 2007 at 2:00:07 PM

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So at least now we know who was appointed to be Spoiler-in-chief for this sector. We may be equally sure, as indicated by the strenuousness of his efforts, that the 9-11 atrocity was home-grown, helped by Mossad, and perpetrated by those of ours who have sold out to the Funders-in-chief, and who even now are probably being eliminated for what they know. Well, folks, we all know now, don't we. Sufficiently to take down the criminals in charge and winnow through those master-minding the scheme, before they really get going and cull the two-thirds of humanity that Kissinger for one has said they intend. Thanks for the pointers, leser001. I imagine they will decide you are redundant soon, too.

by Geraldo (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 105 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Feb 20, 2007 at 7:13:31 AM

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The best answer I can give you is, I would fight just as hard if you attempted to present evidence to the following: 1. The sun revolves around the earth. 2. The earth is flat. 3. Republicans are God's chosen party. 4. Anyone who does not support Bush is evil and/or a traitor. 5. The earth is less than 10,000 years old. Posits like this that are ridiculous on their face catch my attention and I am going to demand that people try to back them up.

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Tuesday, Feb 20, 2007 at 2:06:51 PM

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Yes, this Leser seems to have pinched this thread, doesn't he, as his kind so often take control of the media and blanket it with the strictly limited world view of their tribe. Perhaps he has been appointed I.C. 9-11, and has decided he must have the last word. Let's see, shall we? Surprising the website lets him, unless of course, those in charge are all of a mind here. If we were to suppose that, we might find worthier ground to express our views, as clearly we'll get nowhere otherwise.

by amazin (34 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 400 comments [12 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Feb 20, 2007 at 8:54:30 AM

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Yes, he has. If I were Carol Wolman I would take it up with those in charge of the site and complain that this Leser is limiting fair comment on her article. Typical though, eh? - To the guillotine with them!

by amazin (34 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 400 comments [12 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Feb 20, 2007 at 8:59:22 AM

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I have flagged Leser's last post as follows - "This comment has been so placed that it appears to be the final entry and therefore limits further debate. Other later items are being placed before it, as if the subject has been closed. Carol Wolman should also be notified of this. Is the website trying to close the subject? Interesting if so, eh?" See what happens.

by amazin (34 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 400 comments [12 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Feb 20, 2007 at 9:06:21 AM

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Good afternoon, Carol Wolman. A person called Leser seems somehow to have limited comment on this article. His comment is placed so that further debate is shown before his last post, so that the subject seems to be closed. He has been flagged. If I were you I would take this up with OpEd. It is not exaggerating to say that the subject of your article is surely crucial to the well-being of America, and for such individuals to be able to close off enquiry or scrutiny is unacceptable and downright sinister. Kind regards, JI

by amazin (34 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 400 comments [12 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Feb 20, 2007 at 9:52:12 AM

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So, let me get this straight, now you are accusing me of manipulating the way comments to articles (and other comments) are placed? Is there any conspiracy or paranoia that you won't buy into? Because I think there is a conspiracy to keep everyone from giving me all of their money.

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Tuesday, Feb 20, 2007 at 2:12:02 PM

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So, let me get this straight, now you are accusing me of manipulating the way comments to articles (and other comments) are placed? Is there any conspiracy or paranoia that you won't buy into? Because I think there is a conspiracy to keep everyone from giving me all of their money.

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Tuesday, Feb 20, 2007 at 2:12:08 PM

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At the risk of repeating myself. Yes. Yes. But I never fall into the trap of 'accusing'. I am strongly suspecting on very good previous evidence and saying so. And the jury can make up their own minds about your implication in guilt and tar and feather you and run you out of town, and hang those who put you up to it. Why, are you accusing me of accusing you of what is so evident? Are you? And I am not only conspiring to stop everyone giving you their money, I am conspiring to abolish the whole swindling concept of money, and stop a few by this means taking everything that everyone else has, as they have been doing so religiously for the last five thousand years. O.K?

by amazin (34 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 400 comments [12 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, Feb 21, 2007 at 1:52:13 AM

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Well, I left a reply to Steven Lesser's comments on my post, but I'm assuming now this will go to the end. Mechanics can be divided into two areas: statics and dynamics. Statics deals with the interaction of forces acting on stationary objects. This is what civil engineers deal with: beam bending, how much force applied at a particular point would break it, the tension on each truss, etc. But the collapse of a building is dynamics. So by Steven Lesser's logic, a civil engineer is not competent to analyze it. Of course, this is absurd. Civil engineers get plenty of training in dynamics, chemestry, thermodynamics, electricity and magnetism, aesthetics, etc. , etc. So do plenty of other people. The theory regarding the causal chain of how the buildings collapsed only requires the refutation of one point to discredit it. You can analyze many points, like the likely temperatures attained, the things that look like explosions in the videos, lack of windows shattered from the heat. To me, the simpler the point one can refute, the better. There is no plausible way anyone has shown me that a tall skinny building can collapse straight down at freefall into rubble, unless it was already rubble when it started. This is not nitpicking, it is crucial. Everything else is circumstantial. I think W.'s reaction at the "My Pet Goat" reading, for example, was best explained in "Fahrenheit 911".

by Maxwell (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 409 comments [85 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Feb 20, 2007 at 12:35:06 PM

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Almost every comment posted on this long thread has addressed the question of whether the towers were brought down by controlled demolition. So the discussion proves my point- there is tremendous resistance to facing the fact that 9-11 was an inside job, and the implications thereof. The evidence for an inside job is overwhelming, when one looks at the big picture, as I said in the article, and in a couple of comments since. People prefer to nitpick, rather than looking at reality. I'm a psychiatrist, so I look at resistance. We don't want to face the depth of evil we are up against. If we don't, we may find ourselves in the camps pretty soon. Or crispy critters. Wake up and smell the sulfur! Peace, Carol Wolman

by Carol Wolman (230 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 113 comments [17 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Feb 20, 2007 at 12:35:32 PM

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Dear Carol, probably many more than you imagine are not nit-picking. To most of us out here, we are sure that it was an inside job with - from the Silverstein evidence - Israeli connivance and implication. And we are facing the puny 'enormity' of the consequences. We are saying Hang the lot of them and unpick the tangled political skeins that have been deliberately created over the years to enable this present criminal takeover. - These are just a bunch of pseudo-sophisticated criminals and should be treated no differently from any others. And behind it all is the money, with which secret-but-not-very-clever machinations our leaders have mostly been bought. Sure, so abolish the mirage. We can face that. Bring them all down and subject them to due process of law, if that pleases you. Otherwise just hang them. But get on with it, before they get up to more evil, because that is their intention. Who's nit-picking?

by amazin (34 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 400 comments [12 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Feb 20, 2007 at 1:21:28 PM

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I advanced my CPU clock 10 years. Hello?

by Maxwell (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 409 comments [85 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Feb 20, 2007 at 8:47:37 PM

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Nope. That wasn't it.

by Maxwell (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 409 comments [85 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Feb 20, 2007 at 8:48:48 PM

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Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury - As these accused - Bush, Cheney, Blair and the rest of the rabble advising and prompting them - are clearly not members of any legitimate armed defense force, then they must be considered as armed mercenary enemy without recourse to legal proceedings and, therefore on the same basis as the accused deem so many others, guilty until proven innocent. Therefore the burden of proof is on their defense attorneys, and on those who seek to give them aid and comfort. So, creature-apologists, the ball is in your court. In the same way that they insisted Iraq prove the non-existence of weapons of mass destruction, you and your hireling breed will have to prove the accused 'not guilty' of having done what all the evidence presently indicates - i.e. that 9-11 was contrived as a home-grown (with Mossad assistance) atrocity to bring about the attack on Afghanistan (for the Caspian Sea oil), Iraq (for theirs and for fragmentation of the country) with the rest to follow in the interest of Israel. - Please continue, with copious expert opinion, though don't expect us to listen much, as we already know how many beans make five. Jury, guilty as charged? I think so, don't you? Then hang them? - High, if only as an example of those who will try the same scam in the future.

by amazin (34 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 400 comments [12 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, Feb 21, 2007 at 9:49:03 AM

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I assume that 9-11 is an inside job- so much evidence points to it. Why the resistance? Why the refusal to consider this possibility? Peace, Carol Wolman

by Carol Wolman (230 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 113 comments [17 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, Feb 21, 2007 at 12:05:49 PM

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I have a huge amount of sympathy for those who think of 9/11 truth-seekers as tinfoil hat wearers, since I myself did until about half a year ago. In order for this to become more than a fringe movement, a few things need to happen: concentration on the things everyone can see, like buildings devastated from 45 minutes of thick black smoking (=cool burning, not blast furnace) fires and collapsing at almost g (if anyone doesn't trust the standard video frame rate of arount 30/sec, you can actually see in some of the videos rubble that clearly is in freefall falling at the same rate as the building). NOT anecdotal stories like that a piece of video was confiscated by the FBI, or the order was given *not* to shoot a plane down, or the planes didn't have windows, or an eyewitness was warned not to talk--things nobody could verify even if they wanted to. Most especially, stay away from moonbat stories like radiation beams or drone planes or passengers being whisked away to some undisclosed location. Best to concentrate on what we think *did not* happen, rather than what might have happened: namely that 19 hijackers taking 4 planes destroyed 3 huge buildings, and did major damage to the headquarters of the most powerfull military organization in the world. We need to create interest in a serious investigation, not in convicting Bush/Cheney then trying them, Wonderland-style. Most important, skeptics have to be enganged, not written off as trolls. Francine and the dreaded slesser raised legitimate questions that could have been addressed in a civil manner. They need to be educated, not flamed. If we can't convince members of a left-leaning forum, whom *can* we convince?

by Maxwell (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 409 comments [85 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, Feb 21, 2007 at 10:04:08 PM

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Thank you, Maxwell, for cutting through the guff. Handing people a DVD of 9-11 Mysteries, which can be downloaded from the Net, is an excellent way to reach people. It is utterly convincing, focusing on the demolition of the towers. Piece by piece, it builds an unshakeable case, and clinches it with the power down by Marvin Bush's security company the week before. Visuals are powerful, but I still think the MOST telling thing, which people overlook, is what Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were doing that day. Bush, the pResident, target #1, the Decider, was not surprised. So he must have had prior knowledge. He was sitting unprotected in an elementary school classroom, reading "My pet goat", and went on doing that for 30 minutes after being told "we're under attack". Evidently the Secret Service was not worried about his safety, so they knew it wasn't an enemy attack. Evidently Bush didn't feel the need to take command, get on the phone to NORAD and assess the situation, scramble fighter jets to intercept the other 3 planes, which were quickly identified as being off course... The Commander-in-Chief was either derelict in his duty or in on the plot. Either way, he should be impeached. Dick Cheney, the Vice President, was in the Situation Room of the White House, monitoring a CIA simulation of planes crashing into buildings "by a bizarre coincidence". The Pentagon was also conducting several live-fly hijacking exercises, so the sky was full of pilots playing war games. Probably Cheney was orchestrating all of these plus the four planes that were part of the 9-11 "attack". NORAD pilots and air traffic controllers were totally confused. Certainly Cheney, sitting in the Situation Room, was in a position to see the hijackers and intervene, and didn't. So he's either derelict in his duty, or the mastermind. Certainly impeachable, either way. Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, was sitting in his office in the Pentagon, on the side away from the "attack", which occurred AFTER both towers were hit. When the Pentagon was struck, he sauntered out, and claimed that he had no idea what was going on! No one called the Secretary of Defense? Especially since on June 1, 2001, just 3 months earlier, he had had the rules about scrambling fighter jets changed, in such a way that no interceptions could take place without HIS PERSONAL APPROVAL! And no one tried to reach him? Or he was unreachable? Either he was derelict or part of the plot. Either way, it's criminal. How likely is it that all three of these key people were derelict? Isn't it much more likely that they were conspiring together? Peace, Carol Wolman

by Carol Wolman (230 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 113 comments [17 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, Feb 22, 2007 at 10:53:38 AM

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amazin says that no comment goes below the leser comment.

by Rob Kall (952 articles, 4177 quicklinks, 374 diaries, 2087 comments [45 recommended, 3 rejected]) on Thursday, Feb 22, 2007 at 3:42:07 AM

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Good for you, Rob. Heartening to see you take us seriously.

by amazin (34 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 400 comments [12 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, Feb 22, 2007 at 4:08:19 AM

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The real reason behind 9-11, is that the WTC was the headquarters of a covert/shadow government. This government was and is behind an insane plot to drastically reduce the world population. They have and are using the HIV/AIDS virus as a method of population reduction. The other method being used is, deplete uranium munitions, used in the Middle East since the first Gulf War. Evidence of this plot had to be destroyed, that's why the WTC was destroyed. The Pentagon had to be attacked to destroy evidence of how US servicemen were used as carriers of the HIV/AIDS virus, and that this epidemic started in the Panama Canal area in 1971. The Pentagon also had to be attacked to destroy evidence of the $2.3 trillion in missing transactions Sec. Rumsfeld spoke of on Sept. 10, 2001. This money funded this covert/shadow government, they had to steal it from legitimate programs. Millions of people have died from AIDS, tens of millions of people have this disease, but I believe that depleted uranium has a greater potential to do harm. Once you disrupt the genetic makeup of human beings, and can no longer produce normal/healthy children, the human race goes extinct. That's why the resistance to 9-11 truth.

by Gill S. Pee (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments) on Friday, May 4, 2007 at 9:31:18 AM

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Great article. I have a suggestion - Alan Miller ( alan.miller@PatriotsQuestion911.com) has a web site where those who have gone public on 9/11 can register, along with a statement of their evidence and belief. I feel it is important that as many solid citizens as possible go on the record standing up for the truth and questioning the official line. I think it increases our impact. Thanks for your work, Shelton F. Lankford LtCol. USMC (Ret) Member, Pilotsfor911truth.org

by Maturin42 (5 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 19 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Friday, May 4, 2007 at 11:24:28 AM

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Congratulations to Carol Wolman and Op-Ed News for publishing a great article that investigates the phenomenon of lingering 911 denial among  significant  sectors of the population in the face of overwhelming evidence that the attacks of September 11, 2001 was an inside job, a conclusion I reached before the end of September 2001.

I'm writing to make one small, factual correction to your text, because I believe our credibility depends upon the highest degree of accuracy.

It was Cheney, not Rumsfeld, who "had control of scrambling planes transferred to himself, exclusively, a few months before, and then disappeared that morning, so no planes intercepted the four hijacked airliners."

Rumsfeld may have disappeared that morning, but documentation shows that Cheney was located in the bunker deep beneath the White House during the attacks, and he was directing NORAD's stand down. The "stand down" order (by inference) is made clear by Transportation Dept. Secretary Minetta's testimony before the 9/11 Commission

by jemonk (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 4 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Friday, May 11, 2007 at 1:23:25 PM

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Steve, I am glad you agree there should be another investigation and have also acknowledged that Jones is actually being scientifically cautious, not dogmatic, in his work, which work is certainly strong enough to make the case for a new investigation. The dogmatists seem to be those Engineering bodies that won't even admit that he raises legitimate issues. That doesn't fly at all. But on my own account, what convinced me that demolitions were involved were all the eyewitness accounts of cops and firemen, etc., hearing and seeing explosions and flashes, and by just watching slow motion video of the towers collapsing, especially all the horizontal squibs, which can't be explained away while trying to keep a stright face. The standard explanation I get from cynics is that it was "compressed air". Christ, we should convert the entire munitions industry over to using compressed air instead of explosives with this kind of "compressed air". It would be far cheaper. When it looks like a duck (read controlled demolition), quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it usually is a duck.

by Mac McKinney (53 articles, 113 quicklinks, 240 diaries, 1413 comments [31 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Feb 19, 2007 at 12:05:48 PM

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...non sequiturs now...must be time to go away, to fight again another day.

by Styve (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 38 comments [8 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Monday, Feb 19, 2007 at 2:24:30 PM

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... of course, what you 'told'... I have no idea

by Steven Leser (255 articles, 58 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 2147 comments [63 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Monday, Feb 19, 2007 at 4:45:10 PM