WTC Collapse

[DHodges]

I'm starting to get a little obsessed with the whole World Trade Center collapse on 9/11/01 (and the other events of that day).

I don't know much about building demolition, but the whole thing just doesn't seem to tie together that well with the official story.

Please take a look at:
<a href="http://enwhore.com/viewmovie.php?mid=79 ... mid=797</a>

And what was up with Bush's comments about that day?
<a href="http://www.davidicke.com/icke/articles3 ... es.html</a>

I realize that these are next exactly credible sources (David Icke being quite nutty)... but it seems like there aren't any credible sources.

[Dave Toast]

Hehe,

Red pill or blue?

[MKFaizi]

I looked. I simply could not trust those sources, for one thing. The little flashpoints that are supposed to be bombs were unconvincing.

Took way too long for them to make the point -- that the WTC attack was a Bush conspiracy. I do not think that Bush is smart enough to conspire. I think 9/11 was just a lucky break for him politically.

The man is very stupid and very delusional.

I would have to see the Bush quotes from Icke from other sources. Even if he did think that he saw the first attack on live TV before he read to the kids, I think it is possible that he had his timeline mixed up. Again, he is pretty stupid and speaking to a group of Bushies, he may have let his hair down and not watched what he was saying.

I am not defending him. I just think that conspiracy offers too simplistic explanations. The WTC attacks provided him reason to go into Iraq.

Most Americans now have forgotten completely about weapons of mass destruction. They think we are there to defend us against Al Qaeda. They think we are there to prevent them from coming here.

Such jackasses. I mean, you don't HAVE to conspire to pull the wool over the eyes of Americans. You can just do whatever you want right out in the open and they won't catch on.

DUH

Faizi

[1TheMaster]

I looked at many of those "conspiracy" theories a while ago, and some of it seemed reasonable, even feasible. The controlled demolition of the towers seemed fairly convincing. It does look suspicious, once the idea is put into your mind.

But, conspiracy often arises out of imagination, and restless minds who want to find explanations that conform to their already paranoid viewpoint.

I don't think the WTC falling was a conspiracy of the fbi or Bush, but it was a conspiracy, of sorts. Something about it rings untrue, though I don't think that information has been unveiled, in an accessible way.

[jimhaz]

What I hate is that these things are always convenient to the ruling bodies. Most probably it is simply natural reactions caused by the event, but they always manage to work it to their advantage. Expectations from G8 of some actual hard decisions were picking up steam quite strongly, due to the flow on from things like Live Aid, and global warming concerns, before Londons blasts. 911 gave Bush a free reign. Blair and Howard didn't lose as many votes as they would have due to the war and their stances against terrorism.

While terrorism is real, the money and means they get to do what they do, is not necessarily from the same side. I often think they are simply being used for the personal power games of a few.

I just don't trust any power, because of the corruptive inlfuence of power. Still without all the required knowledge, it is irrational to assume ANY conspiracy theory is correct, simply just that they are possible, as say Vietnam as an example seems to show.

[Dave Toast]

It's irrational to assume that anything is correct Jim.

It's not irrational to make a judgement based on substantive, well sourced evidence.

Therein lies the problem as it is a life's work to seriously inquire into such subjects in a world of information, misinformation and disinformation overload.

However, people like Chomsky and his network do much of the spadework and provide extensive footnotes for you to check the veracity of their arguments and conclusions.

[Leyla Shen]

Noam is an excellent man.

[DHodges]

Yes, I am still thinking about this, dammit.

If there were, in fact, explosives in the WTC that caused the collapse - rather than the collapses being caused by the planes hitting the buildings - that does not in itself point toward our governement or terrorists.

Terrorists could have planted the bombs, just as they took over the buildings.

An alternate idea is that there was something in the building that acted like a bomb: gas lines, electrical generators... I don't know. Something that might have been triggered by the shaking of the building.

This is the best page I have found so far on the topic:
http://www.rense.com/general17/eyewitne ... ersist.htm

From what I've read, towers tend to fall over, not collapse neatly onto themselves, and it's kind of tricky to get them to collapse that way.

Meanwhile, this page suggests that the buildings were not built properly (not up to NYC building code), with insufficient insulation on the beams:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3354

That still doesn't explain to me why they fell straight down instead of toppling, however. I'd think one side would collapse before the other. It just seems unlikely that it would be so symmetrical, especially in the case of the building that was hit in a corner (not dead-on).


Yet another theory (deliberate demolition by the owners of the building, who stood to collect up to $7 B for a building they had bought just a few months earler):
http://www.serendipity.li/wtc6.htm
also
http://www.serendipity.li/wot/pop_mech/ ... hanics.htm

[Matt Gregory]

I saw a TV show about this and, IIRC, they said the towers are built to collapse downwards instead of toppling over. They are built over a cylindrical structure that collapses like a squeezebox.

[DHodges]

I saw a TV show about this and, IIRC, they said the towers are built to collapse downwards instead of toppling over. They are built over a cylindrical structure that collapses like a squeezebox.

I haven't seen anything that mentions that on the Web. What I've read is that it was built around a steel core, comprised of 47 steel columns (in a rectangle), covered in insulation.

The current theory seems to be that the insulation around the steel was inadequate, or was dislodged by the collisions with the planes.

If you have a pointer to something that mentions this squeezebox design, I'd appreciate it.

[Matt Gregory]

No, I don't, and it was so long ago I don't remember what channel it was on or anything.

[DHodges]

Getting away of the details of what did or did not happen in the WTC collapse, yesterday the thought occurred to me: so what?

What if it could be proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the U.S. government was involved - either caused or deliberately allowed the events of 9/11 to happen?

I don't think it would make any difference to public opinion in the U.S.

9/11 was like a modern day Pearl Harbor - it was a galvanizing event that gave the U.S. moral justification (in its own eyes) for going to war. The U.S. going to war in WWII is now seen as a good thing - and so even if the U.S. did know Pearl Harbor was going to happen and allowed it, most Americans (I think) would say that it was justified, and in the end the right thing to do.

I think similar reasoning would apply here. Even if you could prove that the US government was involved (or allowed it), many people would justify that in their own mind - that it was necessary to get the U.S. involved in this War on Terrorism. (Which is a good thing, as it is supposed to stop things like 9/11 from happening...)

Americans (it seems to me, on the whole) think that whatever the U.S. does is okay, by definition. To think otherwise is unpatriotic.

An example of the same kind of thinking: outlawing burning the US flag. This is important because burning a flag would show you are against important US values, such as freedom of speech.

In the end, the mentality is: you are either with us or against us, and that's all there is to it. You must root for the home team. "Good" is when the home team wins.

[DHodges]

I saw a TV show about this and, IIRC, they said the towers are built to collapse downwards instead of toppling over.

I'm not a mechanical engineer, but intuitively, it seems that like it would be designed to not collapse, rather than be designed to collapse in a certain way.

[DHodges]

I do not think that Bush is smart enough to conspire. I think 9/11 was just a lucky break for him politically.

I mostly agree. But if he knew of such a plan, and would benefit him politically (like help him get re-elected), would he try to stop it?

I think it is possible that he had his timeline mixed up.

At first I thought he had simply mis-spoke. I thought he meant, perhaps, that he had seen a headline go across the bottom of the screen on a news channel, rather than he had seen the collision.

But then he repeated his story a month later, and the wording was more clear:

Anyway, I was sitting there, and my Chief of Staff -- well, first of all, when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this
plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on. And you know, I thought it was pilot error and I was amazed that anybody could make such a terrible mistake. And something was wrong with the plane, or -- anyway, I'm sitting there, listening to the briefing, and Andy Card came and said, "America is under attack."

Being the Commander in Chief of a country under attack, he then leaps into action, and makes the bold decision to continue reading a story about goats to some children.

Anyway, I would have thought, if he had mis-spoke, that someone might have brought it to his attention.

The WTC attacks provided him reason to go into Iraq. Most Americans now have forgotten completely about weapons of mass destruction. They think we are there to defend us against Al Qaeda. They think we are there to prevent them from coming here.

All true. But Bush is not the only party that benefits here.

Israel benefits.

The owner of the buildings moay also benefit greatly, as well. The buildings had an extensive asbestos problem, and would have been very expensive to fix or demolish. Now he has a clean place to build, and, I don't know what the final figure is, I think he got $3.55B from the insurance (which I think excluded the $861 M he got for Building 7).

[Matt Gregory]

I saw a TV show about this and, IIRC, they said the towers are built to collapse downwards instead of toppling over.

I'm not a mechanical engineer, but intuitively, it seems that like it would be designed to not collapse, rather than be designed to collapse in a certain way.

Well, you know. There is only so much resources that you can devote to a project. At some point it's going to become a question of trade-offs.

[avidaloca]

Although I don't support Bush, I don't see what else he could have done in that situation [when told of the attacks while reading with a group of schoolchildren]. If he breaks it off on camera, everyone knows something major is happening. That very act would create panic. It appears more stable and controlled when the circumstance is continued rather than abruptly cancelled.

[Matt Gregory]

I wonder what the kids were thinking hearing Bush in front of them telling goat stories while the news reporter in the background was saying "America is under attack!"

[DHodges]

[quote="Dave Toast"]Red pill or blue? [quote]

Indeed.


This certainly seems like some classic paranoia at first read:

http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/ar ... /30199.htm

I mean, it has a lot of the classic elements - persecution by the government, an evil plot, hypnosis, and so on.

Hell, this reads the same way:
http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/ar ... /30450.htm


But there are some interesting bits in those two stories like "confirmed by the FBI" and "verified by another NASA scientist."


But compare those to this story:
An hour after being hit by planes, the twin towers suddenly turned into dust before hitting the ground, dropping at near free-fall. No steel-frame large building outside of the WTC complex has ever collapsed in this manner.

The flights were taken over by around nineteen hijackers armed with boxcutters and a very limited ability to fly planes. A large number of coincidences somehow prohibited the normal, routine intercept flights that would have been launched in a suspected hijacking.

However, the government has shown no interest in investigating these events, even though the involvement of nineteen men would suggest that
there were others involved; even though at least five of the nineteen men turned up alive after 9/11, a little angry of having been accused of this.

Although this was a terrorist action by Al Queda, Al Queda has denied that it was involved.


Which story is more outlandish and unbelievable? Which has more holes in it?


Normally, I am very susupicious of conspiracy theories. But the official government story is a conspiracy theory. If there were (at least) 19 people involved, it was clearly a conspiracy. The question of who else was involved remains open - and uninvestigated.

The lack of the usual care that would be taken at a crime scene to preserve and examine the forensic evidence is disturbing. The lack of the usual followup to see who else was involved is disturbing. The quotes from the firemen, working at the scene, saying there were secondary explosions, is disturbing. The very clean, convenient way the buildings fell is disturbing. The EPA's lack of concern about the large amount of asbestos released into the air is disturbing.

The misleading statements made about how the WTC towers were constructed, apparently designed to explain an extremely unusual collapse, are disturbing.

The complete lack of interest - other than as an excuse to go to war - is disturbing.

One way or another, the story just doesn't hang together. Something is missing.

[Dave Toast]

In the end, there's just no way for either of us, or anyone like us, to verify such things.

There's plenty that's verifiable though, big obvious stuff. The details are really just a matter of morbid curiosity.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Dhodges, even while I'm familiar with most theories on this subject, I think some counter arguments are needed here for the sake of discussion.

But compare those to this story:
An hour after being hit by planes, the twin towers suddenly turned into dust before hitting the ground, dropping at near free-fall. No steel-frame large building outside of the WTC complex has ever collapsed in this manner.

The WTC had an unusual collapse perhaps because they were unusualy built tall and large buildings?

The twin towers were unusual in that the outer cladding of the building actually carried the load for the structure. Each floor was suspended from the external walls, rather than the other way around, which is common in most skyscrapers where internal pillars provide the strength, and the walls merely keep the wind out. - From architecture of the WTC

The ultimate conspiracy would then be that the towers had been built with the thought of total collapse in mind. Often the seeds of destruction are parts of creation.

The flights were taken over by around nineteen hijackers armed with boxcutters and a very limited ability to fly planes.

They had enough advanced courses and flight hours in multiengine planes as stated in the news. Perhaps they did flight simulators as well? Is it really so hard to plunge a plane into a building? Maybe flying a large plane is overrated, as opposed to landing it or taking off.

A large number of coincidences somehow prohibited the normal, routine intercept flights that would have been launched in a suspected hijacking.

This is really one anomaly I see too. Maybe there was just an illusion of being prepared for such thing to happen in real life? So much of our implied safety is assumption only.

However, the government has shown no interest in investigating these events, even though the involvement of nineteen men would suggest that there were others involved;

Nobody claimed there were no others involved, actually a whole network was implied worldwide what IMO was not accurate. The practical ties were very losely.

even though at least five of the nineteen men turned up alive after 9/11, a little angry of having been accused of this.

Maybe they used false passports but I think all thesethings would be resolved by now? But I don't think there was time to examine the cases more carefully while the leads were still warm.

Although this was a terrorist action by Al Queda, Al Queda has denied that it was involved.

That might be because there does not exist any Al Queda in the sense as reported by many media and government. It's an ideological network mostly perhaps a bit like 'Fundamentalist Christianity'. It's more a mindset but that's hard to believe for Westerners who think mainly in oiled corporations.

The question of who else was involved remains open - and uninvestigated.

I didn't get this impression. You mean perhaps inside agencies and governments? Of course on a certain level we are all involved creating the circumstances. When our bodies are ill, diseases do happen and death starts knocking on the door.

The lack of the usual care that would be taken at a crime scene to preserve and examine the forensic evidence is disturbing.

This assumes that two planes couldn't bring the towers down, otherwise there's no reason to look for evidence. Digging for survivors would be more important anyways.

The quotes from the firemen, working at the scene, saying there were secondary explosions, is disturbing.

Were they in the position to determine the precise locations and causes of those explosions? I don't think so. It might have been related to the fact that the building was hit by two large airplanes and the stress or other breakdowns went as a rimple effect through the building?

The EPA's lack of concern about the large amount of asbestos released into the air is disturbing.

But what has that to do with the main conspiracy?

The misleading statements made about how the WTC towers were constructed, apparently designed to explain an extremely unusual collapse, are disturbing.

What made you believe they are misleading? If the WTC was built in an unusual manner than it's hard to predict how they fall, isn't it?

The complete lack of interest - other than as an excuse to go to war - is disturbing.

Yes, but this lack of interest extends to many areas in US politics. There might be a deep lying desire for war and destruction underneath many current 'rational' actions. Are we conspiring against ourselves?

One way or another, the story just doesn't hang together. Something is missing.

I can agree with that. I think many aspects of this story are still taboo for the common mindset. The monsters that our way of living of last century has created. And how they in turn created us.

[DHodges]

The WTC had an unusual collapse perhaps because they were unusualy built tall and large buildings?

The twin towers were unusual in that the outer cladding of the building actually carried the load for the structure. Each floor was suspended from the external walls, rather than the other way around, which is common in most skyscrapers where internal pillars provide the strength, and the walls merely keep the wind out. - From architecture of the WTC

That is misleading. The towers were built around a central steel core, which was load-bearing. The external structure was designed to deal with the wind loads.

Maybe flying a large plane is overrated, as opposed to landing it or taking off.

From what I've heard, landing and taking off are the hard parts, yes. The pentagon crash seemed more suspicious from that point of view - seems like a harder target, coming in at ground level, rather than 60 stories up.

A large number of coincidences somehow prohibited the normal, routine intercept flights that would have been launched in a suspected hijacking.

This is really one anomaly I see too. Maybe there was just an illusion of being prepared for such thing to happen in real life? So much of our implied safety is assumption only.

Incidents happen fairly regularly where a plane violates certain restricted air spaces. There are air bases around the country, which generally have jets ready to fly or in the air at all times.

The major coincidence I see is there was a war game, a simulation, going on that day, and it's possible that the hijackings were assumed to be part of that simulation.

It's possible that our defenses are actually much weaker than they should be. That's not much comfort, especially considering the current move to shut down a large number of bases.

For more on the air defense angle, take a look at:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.net/time ... fense.html

However, the government has shown no interest in investigating these events, even though the involvement of nineteen men would suggest that there were others involved;

Nobody claimed there were no others involved, actually a whole network was implied worldwide what IMO was not accurate. The practical ties were very losely.

Still, others would have been involved in organising, planning, financing, and so on. There would be a paper trail (other than a Koran found in a rental car).

even though at least five of the nineteen men turned up alive after 9/11, a little angry of having been accused of this.

Maybe they used false passports but I think all thesethings would be resolved by now? But I don't think there was time to examine the cases more carefully while the leads were still warm.

That's what's strange about it. They seemed to know that it was definitely these nineteen men, a few days after the crash, and that was the end of that. There didn't seem to be any followup. There was never any corrected list. (As far as I know, there also was never an explanation of why the terrorists did't show up on the list of passengers, either.)

Although this was a terrorist action by Al Queda, Al Queda has denied that it was involved.

That might be because there does not exist any Al Queda in the sense as reported by many media and government.

True enough. Bin Laden denied that he was involved.

The lack of the usual care that would be taken at a crime scene to preserve and examine the forensic evidence is disturbing.

This assumes that two planes couldn't bring the towers down, otherwise there's no reason to look for evidence. Digging for survivors would be more important anyways.

Look what happened to the steel that was hauled off. You'd think there'd be extensive metalurgical analysis to see why the metal failed, and prevent such failure in future buildings.

Instead, the metal was immediately recycled. The people who were supposed to be investigating were denied access.

The quotes from the firemen, working at the scene, saying there were secondary explosions, is disturbing.

Were they in the position to determine the precise locations and causes of those explosions? I don't think so. It might have been related to the fact that the building was hit by two large airplanes and the stress or other breakdowns went as a rimple effect through the building?

take a look at:
http://www.chiefengineer.org/article.cfm?seqnum1=1029
http://www.rense.com/general17/eyewitne ... ersist.htm

The EPA's lack of concern about the large amount of asbestos released into the air is disturbing.

But what has that to do with the main conspiracy?

Yes, it is a side track - but one that affects the health of hundreds of thousands of people. Of course, cancer caused by asbestos won't show up for ten or twenty years...

The misleading statements made about how the WTC towers were constructed, apparently designed to explain an extremely unusual collapse, are disturbing.

What made you believe they are misleading? If the WTC was built in an unusual manner than it's hard to predict how they fall, isn't it?

I don't know how unusual they were. There have been fires in large steel-framed buildings that burned for many hours without causing a collapse.

TV shows showing how the buildings supposedly fell (the "pancake" theory) deliberately left out key structural elements in the buildings, in order to make the story plausible. Cross-bracing in the floors was not shown. The connections between the floor supports (trusses) and the inner and outer structures was portrayed as being weak (shown as bolted angle brackets rather than welds). The central core was shown as being composed of horizontal elements, rather than vertical ones.

The "pancake" collapse theory just doesn't explain what happened to the central core of the building.

Also, the second building hit was hit on a corner, so most of the jet fuel burned in a large fireball outside the building, rather than inside it. It seemed to have sustained less damage than the first building.

Assuming that the planes caused the buildings to collapse, how is it that the second building collapsed before the first one? Doesn't that seem pretty odd?

[DHodges]

Although I don't support Bush, I don't see what else he could have done in that situation [when told of the attacks while reading with a group of schoolchildren]. If he breaks it off on camera, everyone knows something major is happening. That very act would create panic. It appears more stable and controlled when the circumstance is continued rather than abruptly cancelled.

Yes, Bush certainly had an interesting day on Sept. 11 2001:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/time ... ngday.html

The only people that could have been panicked were the school children, and I think saying something along the lines of, "Sorry kids, something very important just came up that I need to deal with" would have covered it. The collisions were already on the news.

Personally, I find it more alarming that our president chose to stay with the goat story.

[Tomas]

Reminder to self ... self! - try not to ramble on at the mouth for too long ... keep on topic.

OK, got that out of the way.


Now as i see it, i don't. And if i could? i wouldn't want to! because i can't :-|


Yeah, the whole thing reeks of pre-planning.

The 'jet video' just happened to show up on network media within minutes of the tower hits.

Eye (ear) witnesses claiming to hear shreeking just before the thunderous booms.

Finding the ID of one of the so-called hi-jackers in a sea of office paper strewn everywhere.

How jet fuel (kerosene) could burn so hot to melt the airplanes into nothing. It's not as "hot" as gasoline burns.

I think? the planes were 767s - capable of being flown robotically from the ground and/or satellite-guided.

Ditto for the one shot down by the 'Happy Hooligans' based out of Fargo, North Dakota. (warthog)

People near the Pittsburgh one that recalled (and saw) the telltale signature of shreeking sound and the white underings of military craft.

Same for the shreeking sound at the Pentagon.

I would recognize the shreek sound when or if i heard it again - i may be getting older but it's a sound i'll never forget. I wasn't in VietNam that long but i saw and heard plenty of missiles whizzing about the skies and witnessing them coming back to terra firma.

I mean, you know? the Pentagon (powers that be) have never released the surveillance videos that surround the Pentagon. Give me a break already - if it was a plane that hit the Pentagon - the spooks would have released the footage.
Nuff said.

And then George Bush is hangin' with the kiddies reading 'My Pet Goat'. Talk about paradox.

Not from a religious sense - but GOATS are about as demonic as these scull and bonesmen can get. Hitler was a member (initiate) of the Thule Society.

Trading With The Enemy Act (ww2) was specifically to stop Prescott Bush (W's grand-daddy) to stop trading with the Third Reich. His Union Bank was the money pie setting it all up. W's maternal great-grand-daddy George Walker, got Hitler started all the way back in 1922.

Conspiracy aside, all that is a matter of public record.

Thre are some creepy people out there pulling the strings.

It's like FDR said (paraphrase) 'Nothing happens in politics by chance.'

Poli-tics = many blood-sucking creatures

We're all on the same life raft - every now and then (as the food and water runs out) somebody has gotta be pushed over. Like in Iraq, it's usually the women with children that are dumped first. The ghouls with the fistful of silver/gold ride it out for another night. It's the same on the world stage - Bush goes on "vacation" (oblivious to the working stiff travails) - but the wars grind on because we the little people are continually pushed over the side with another b.s. story concocted by the powers that be.

Give us this day our daily bread...


Note: it may be a couple days before i get back here to the Forum


PS to Dan - this is much better than Topica listserve


Tomas (the tank)
VietNam veteran - 1971

[Diebert van Rhijn]

quoting: "The twin towers were unusual in that the outer cladding of the building actually carried the load for the structure"

That is misleading. The towers were built around a central steel core, which was load-bearing. The external structure was designed to deal with the wind loads.

Okay, I see what you mean now with misleading. All the engineering resources I checked do confirm though that the use of a steel structure located only in the core with additional load bearing near the external structure made the building more vulnerable when a plane would get to the core (too many eggs in one basket). A more spread-out support structure like was used in similar skyscrapers would have probably saved the building.

The major coincidence I see is there was a war game, a simulation, going on that day, and it's possible that the hijackings were assumed to be part of that simulation.

That was one freaky thing indeed. The same with the London bombings though, there was a small scale textbook simulation going that same day using many of the same locations and times. In both cases it's not clear to me what impact these simulations had on air defences, probably none. It might illustrate more how clearly aware many were about not only the probability of an attack but also about the possible methods. That makes it even more weird in case of 9/11 that preparedness was so lousy.

Nobody claimed there were no others involved, actually a whole network was implied worldwide what IMO was not accurate. The practical ties were very losely.

Still, others would have been involved in organising, planning, financing, and so on. There would be a paper trail (other than a Koran found in a rental car).

I was under the impression a complex trail had been found, leading back to Hamburg, flightschools and so on. Not sure why others would have been involved directly, this would make such network very vulnerable.

Look what happened to the steel that was hauled off. You'd think there'd be extensive metalurgical analysis to see why the metal failed, and prevent such failure in future buildings.

The analysis that came out this year talked about the temperature of the fire causing local weakening and disrupting of the metal structure. Lack of fire proofing had also to do with it. It doesn't seem a question of why the metal failed, more about why the fire could develop as it did. The analysis is not undisputed though.

The "pancake" collapse theory just doesn't explain what happened to the central core of the building.

The core seems to have collapsed even first, as can be deduced from the video (central antenna going first). Makes one wonder if the core would have been cut off at the root to 'assist' the collapse. Other explanations are possible as well of course.

Assuming that the planes caused the buildings to collapse, how is it that the second building collapsed before the first one? Doesn't that seem pretty odd?

The mainstream claims the heat inside the second building was higher because of several reasons.

[Dan Rowden]

Found this recently. It's a tad tongue in cheek and I have no idea if the claims are really verifiable. I know that at least a couple are wrong but it makes interesting reading even though it's pretty much full-on conspiracy theorism.

This is the actual site: http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/
2004/08/coincidence-theorists-guide-to-911.html

(I broke the url up into 2 lines to stop the post going off-page)

The actual article contains mutilple links for those who like to follow the bounding research ball.

The Coincidence Theorist's Guide to 9/11
I posted an earlier version of this last week at Democratic Underground. I've added a number of more entries, and links for all.

Happy coincidenting!

That governments have permitted terrorist acts against their own people, and have even themselves been perpetrators in order to find strategic advantage is quite likely true, but this is the United States we're talking about.

That intelligence agencies, financiers, terrorists and narco-criminals have a long history together is well established, but the Nugan Hand Bank, BCCI, Banco Ambrosiano, the P2 Lodge, the CIA/Mafia anti-Castro/Kennedy alliance, Iran/Contra and the rest were a long time ago, so there’s no need to rehash all that. That was then, this is now!

That Jonathan Bush’s Riggs Bank has been found guilty of laundering terrorist funds and fined a US-record $25 million must embarrass his nephew George, but it's still no justification for leaping to paranoid conclusions.

That George Bush's brother Marvin sat on the board of the Kuwaiti-owned company which provided electronic security to the World Trade Centre, Dulles Airport and United Airlines means nothing more than you must admit those Bush boys have done alright for themselves.

That George Bush found success as a businessman only after the investment of Osama’s brother Salem and reputed al Qaeda financier Khalid bin Mahfouz is just one of those things - one of those crazy things.

That Osama bin Laden is known to have been an asset of US foreign policy in no way implies he still is.

That al Qaeda was active in the Balkan conflict, fighting on the same side as the US as recently as 1999, while the US protected its cells, is merely one of history's little aberrations.

The claims of Michael Springman, State Department veteran of the Jeddah visa bureau, that the CIA ran the office and issued visas to al Qaeda members so they could receive training in the United States, sound like the sour grapes of someone who was fired for making such wild accusations.

That one of George Bush's first acts as President, in January 2001, was to end the two-year deployment of attack submarines which were positioned within striking distance of al Qaeda's Afghanistan camps, even as the group's guilt for the Cole bombing was established, proves that a transition from one administration to the next is never an easy task.

That so many influential figures in and close to the Bush White House had expressed, just a year before the attacks, the need for a "new Pearl Harbor" before their militarist ambitions could be fulfilled, demonstrates nothing more than the accidental virtue of being in the right place at the right time.

That the company PTECH, founded by a Saudi financier placed on America’s Terrorist Watch List in October 2001, had access to the FAA’s entire computer system for two years before the 9/11 attack, means he must not have been such a threat after all.

That whistleblower Indira Singh was told to keep her mouth shut and forget what she learned when she took her concerns about PTECH to her employers and federal authorities, suggests she lacked the big picture. And that the Chief Auditor for JP Morgan Chase told Singh repeatedly, as she answered questions about who supplied her with what information, that "that person should be killed," suggests he should take an anger management seminar.

That on May 8, 2001, Dick Cheney took upon himself the job of co-ordinating a response to domestic terror attacks even as he was crafting the administration’s energy policy which bore implications for America's military, circumventing the established infrastructure and ignoring the recommendations of the Hart-Rudman report, merely shows the VP to be someone who finds it hard to delegate.

That the standing order which covered the shooting down of hijacked aircraft was altered on June 1, 2001, taking discretion away from field commanders and placing it solely in the hands of the Secretary of Defense, is simply poor planning and unfortunate timing. Fortunately the error has been corrected, as the order was rescinded shortly after 9/11.

That in the weeks before 9/11, FBI agent Colleen Rowley found her investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui so perversely thwarted that her colleagues joked that bin Laden had a mole at the FBI, proves the stress-relieving virtue of humour in the workplace.

That Dave Frasca of the FBI’s Radical Fundamentalist Unit received a promotion after quashing multiple, urgent requests for investigations into al Qaeda assets training at flight schools in the summer of 2001 does appear on the surface odd, but undoubtedly there's a good reason for it, quite possibly classified.

That FBI informant Randy Glass, working an undercover sting, was told by Pakistani intelligence operatives that the World Trade Center towers were coming down, and that his repeated warnings which continued until weeks before the attacks, including the mention of planes used as weapons, were ignored by federal authorities, is simply one of the many "What Ifs" of that tragic day.

That over the summer of 2001 Washington received many urgent, senior-level warnings from foreign intelligence agencies and governments - including those of Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Afghanistan and others - of impending terror attacks using hijacked aircraft and did nothing, demonstrates the pressing need for a new Intelligence Czar.

That John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial aircraft in July 2001 on account of security considerations had nothing to do with warnings regarding September 11, because he said so to the 9/11 Commission.

That former lead counsel for the House David Schippers says he’d taken to John Ashcroft’s office specific warnings he’d learned from FBI agents in New York of an impending attack – even naming the proposed dates, names of the hijackers and the targets – and that the investigations had been stymied and the agents threatened, proves nothing but David Schipper’s pathetic need for attention.

That Garth Nicolson received two warnings from contacts in the intelligence community and one from a North African head of state, which included specific site, date and source of the attacks, and passed the information to the Defense Department and the National Security Council to evidently no effect, clearly amounts to nothing, since virtually nobody has ever heard of him.

That in the months prior to September 11, self-described US intelligence operative Delmart Vreeland sought, from a Toronto jail cell, to get US and Canadian authorities to heed his warning of his accidental discovery of impending catastrophic attacks is worthless, since Vreeland was a dubious character, notwithstanding the fact that many of his claims have since been proven true.

That FBI Special Investigator Robert Wright claims that agents assigned to intelligence operations actually protect terrorists from investigation and prosecution, that the FBI shut down his probe into terrorist training camps, and that he was removed from a money-laundering case that had a direct link to terrorism, sounds like yet more sour grapes from a disgruntled employee.

That George Bush had plans to invade Afghanistan on his desk before 9/11 demonstrates only the value of being prepared.

The suggestion that securing a pipeline across Afghanistan figured into the White House’s calculations is as ludicrous as the assertion that oil played a part in determining war in Iraq.

That Afghanistan is once again the world’s principal heroin producer is an unfortunate reality, but to claim the CIA is still actively involved in the narcotics trade is to presume bad faith on the part of the agency.

Mahmood Ahmed, chief of Pakistan’s ISI, must not have authorized an al Qaeda payment of $100,000 to Mohammed Atta days before the attacks, and was not meeting with senior Washington officials over the week of 9/11, because I didn’t read anything about him in the official report.

That Porter Goss met with Ahmed the morning of September 11 in his capacity as Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has no bearing whatsoever upon his recent selection by the White House to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

That Goss's congressional seat encompasses the 9/11 hijackers' Florida base of operation, including their flight schools, is precisely the kind of meaningless factoid a conspiracy theorist would bring up.

It's true that George HW Bush and Dick Cheney spent the evening of September 10 alone in the Oval Office, but what's wrong with old colleagues catching up? And it's true that George HW Bush and Shafig bin Laden, Osama's brother, spent the morning of September 11 together at a board meeting of the Carlyle Group, but the bin Ladens are a big family.

That FEMA arrived in New York on Sept 10 to prepare for a scheduled biowarfare drill, and had a triage centre ready to go that was larger and better equipped than the one that was lost in the collapse of WTC 7, was a lucky twist of fate.

Newsweek’s report that senior Pentagon officials cancelled flights on Sept 10 for the following day on account of security concerns is only newsworthy because of what happened the following morning.

That George Bush's telephone logs for September 11 do not exist should surprise no one, given the confusion of the day.

That Mohamed Atta attended the International Officer's School at Maxwell Air Force Base, that Abdulaziz Alomari attended Brooks Air Force Base Aerospace Medical School, that Saeed Alghamdi attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey merely shows it is a small world, after all.

That Lt Col Steve Butler, Vice Chancellor for student affairs of the Defense Language Institute during Alghamdi's terms, was disciplined, removed from his post and threatened with court martial when he wrote "Bush knew of the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism. What is...contemptible is the President of the United States not telling the American people what he knows for political gain," is the least that should have happened for such disrespect shown his Commander in Chief.

That Mohammed Atta dressed like a Mafioso, had a stripper girlfriend, smuggled drugs, was already a licensed pilot when he entered the US, enjoyed pork chops, drank to excess and did cocaine, was closer to Europeans than Arabs in Florida, and included the names of defence contractors on his email list, proves how dangerous the radical fundamentalist Muslim can be.

That 43 lbs of heroin was found on board the Lear Jet owned by Wally Hilliard, the owner of Atta’s flight school, just three weeks after Atta enrolled – the biggest seizure ever in Central Florida – was just bad luck. That Hilliard was not charged shows how specious the claims for conspiracy truly are.

That Hilliard’s plane had made 30-round trips to Venezuela with the same passengers who always paid cash, that the plane had been supplied by a pair of drug smugglers who had also outfitted CIA drug runner Barry Seal, and that 9/11 commissioner Richard ben-Veniste had been Seal’s attorney before Seal’s murder, shows nothing but the lengths to which conspiracists will go to draw sinister conclusions.

Reports of insider trading on 9/11 are false, because the SEC investigated and found only respectable investors who will remain nameless involved, and no terrorists, so the windfall profit-taking was merely, as ever, coincidental.

That heightened security for the World Trade Centre was lifted immediately prior to the attacks illustrates that it always happens when you least expect it.

That Hani Hanjour, the pilot of Flight 77, was so incompetent he could not fly a Cessna in August, but in September managed to fly a 767 at excessive speed into a spiraling, 270-degree descent and a level impact of the first floor of the Pentagon, on the only side that was virtually empty and had been hardened to withstand a terrorist attack, merely demonstrates that people can do almost anything once they set their minds to it.

That none of the flight data recorders were said to be recoverable even though they were located in the tail sections, and that until 9/11, no solid-state recorder in a catastrophic crash had been unrecoverable, shows how there's a first time for everything.

That Mohammed Atta left a uniform, a will, a Koran, his driver's license and a "how to fly planes" video in his rental car at the airport means he had other things on his mind.

The mention of Israelis with links to military-intelligence having been arrested on Sept 11 videotaping and celebrating the attacks, of an Israeli espionage ring surveiling DEA and defense installations and trailing the hijackers, and of a warning of impending attacks delivered to the Israeli company Odigo two hours before the first plane hit, does not deserve a response. That the stories also appeared in publications such as Ha'aretz and Forward is a sad display of self-hatred among certain elements of the Israeli media.

That multiple military wargames and simulations were underway the morning of 9/11 – one simulating the crash of a plane into a building; another, a live-fly simulation of multiple hijackings – and took many interceptors away from the eastern seaboard and confused field commanders as to which was a real hijacked aircraft and which was a hoax, was a bizarre coincidence, but no less a coincidence.

That the National Military Command Center ops director asked a rookie substitute to stand his watch at 8:30 am on Sept. 11 is nothing more than bad timing.

That a recording made Sept 11 of air traffic controllers’ describing what they had witnessed, was destroyed by an FAA official who crushed it in his hand, cut the tape into little pieces and dropped them in different trash cans around the building, is something no doubt that overzealous official wishes he could undo.

That the FBI knew precisely which Florida flight schools to descend upon hours after the attacks should make every American feel safer knowing their federal agents are on the ball.

That a former flight school executive believes the hijackers were "double agents," and says about Atta and associates, "Early on I gleaned that these guys had government protection. They were let into this country for a specific purpose," and was visited by the FBI just four hours after the attacks to intimidate him into silence, proves he's an unreliable witness, for the simple reason there is no conspiracy.

That Jeb Bush was on board an aircraft that removed flight school records to Washington in the middle of the night on Sept 12th demonstrates how seriously the governor takes the issue of national security.

To insinuate evil motive from the mercy flights of bin Laden family members and Saudi royals after 9/11 shows the sickness of the conspiratorial mindset.

Le Figaro’s report in October 2001, known to have originated with French intelligence, that the CIA met Osama bin Laden in a Dubai hospital in July 2001, proves again the perfidy of the French.

That the tape in which bin Laden claims responsibility for the attacks was released by the State Department after having been found providentially by US forces in Afghanistan, and depicts a fattened Osama with a broader face and a flatter nose, proves Osama, and Osama alone, masterminded 9/11.

That at the battle of Tora Bora, where bin Laden was surrounded on three sides, Special Forces received no order to advance and capture him and were forced to stand and watch as two Russian-made helicopters flew into the area where bin Laden was believed hiding, loaded up passengers and returned to Pakistan, demonstrates how confusing the modern battlefield can be.

That upon returning to Fort Bragg from Tora Bora, the same Special Operations troops who had been stood down from capturing bin Laden, suffered a unusual spree of murder/suicides, is nothing more than a series of senseless tragedies.

Reports that bin Laden is currently receiving periodic dialysis treatment in a Pakistani medical hospital are simply too incredible to be true.

That the White House went on Cipro September 11 shows the foresightedness of America’s emergency response.

That the anthrax was mailed to perceived liberal media and the Democratic leadership demonstrates only the perversity of the terrorist psyche.

That the anthrax attacks appeared to silence opponents of the Patriot Act shows only that appearances can be deceiving.

That the Ames-strain anthrax was found to have originated at Fort Detrick, and was beyond the capability of all but a few labs to refine, underscores the importance of allowing the investigation to continue without the distraction of absurd conspiracy theories.

That Republican guru Grover Norquist has been found to have aided financiers and supporters of Islamic terror to gain access to the Bush White House, and is a founder of the Islamic Institute, which the Treasury Department believes to be a source of funding for al Qaeda, suggests Norquist is at worst, naive, and at best, needs a wider circle of friends.

That the Department of Justice consistently chooses to see accused 9/11 plotters go free rather than permit the courtroom testimony of al Qaeda leaders in American custody looks bad, but only because we don't have all the facts.

That the White House balked at any inquiry into the events of 9/11, then starved it of funds and stonewalled it, was unfortunate, but since the commission didn't find for conspiracy it's all a non issue anyway.

That the 9/11 commission's executive director and "gatekeeper," Philip Zelikow, was so closely involved in the events under investigation that he testified before the the commission as part of the inquiry, shows only an apparent conflict of interest.

That commission chair Thomas Kean is, like George Bush, a Texas oil executive who had business dealings with reputed al Qaeda financier Khalid bin Mafouz, suggests Texas is smaller than they say it is.

That co-chair Lee Hamilton has a history as a Bush family "fixer," including clearing Bush Sr of the claims arising from the 1980 "October Surprise", is of no concern, since only conspiracists believe there was such a thing as an October Surprise.

That FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds accuses the agency of intentionally fudging specific pre-9/11 warnings and harboring a foreign espionage ring in its translation department, and claims she witnessed evidence of the semi-official infrastructure of money-laundering and narcotics trade behind the attacks, is of no account, since John Ashcroft has gagged her with the rare invocation of "State Secrets Privilege," and retroactively classified her public testimony. For the sake of national security, let us speak no more of her.

That, when commenting on Edmond's case, Daniel Ellsberg remarked that Ashcroft could go to prison for his part in a cover-up, suggests Ellsberg is giving comfort to the terrorists, and could, if he doesn't wise up, find himself declared an enemy combatant.

I could go on. And on and on. But I trust you get the point. Which is simply this: there are no secrets, an American government would never accept civilian casualties for geostrategic gain, and conspiracies are for the weak-minded and gullible.

One of the things I find interesting about Bush's behaviour that day, as well as that of his minders, is that he wasn't, being Commander in Chief, immediately whisked away to a safe location when it became known the nation was "under attack". My understanding is that this is actual formal procedure and not just stuff you see from Hollywood. He stayed at the school for over half an hour afterwards. Given that, presumably, they had no real idea of the precise nature and extent of the attack how did they know he wasn't in danger? Given that ignorance, didn't his being there place that school and those children in potential peril? Seems to me that there's only two options there - either they knew he wasn't in danger or they did act irresponsibly towards those children.

Either way it kind of beggars belief. But then, maybe I'm missing some kind of obvious point.


Dan Rowden