This is some disturbing shit.

[asarnat]

This is a 9/11 Conspiracy Theory but it raises some valid questions.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8260059923762628848&q=loose+change&pl=true

Originally posted by PruvyThen have a look at this

Comments

[meatsnack]

I call bullshit. complete bullshit on all of it.

Firstly, strictly from a technical stand point, his analysis of the rate of collapse is rudimentary at best, and completely without basis at worst.

The aircraft by themselves had more then enough potential to bring down the buildings, using pre-planted explosives would have been unnecessary. If they had used explosives in the buildings, there’s plenty of ways they could have orchestrated the destruction that would have been believable and surer of succeeding.

In demolition buildings are nearly always brought down from the bottom up. This creates a cleaner footprint for the implosion and the weight of the building works as an advantage. The WTC buildings went from the top down, consistent with where the planes had hit.

As for the director dude saying “pull it”, I’m going to guess that he meant get the rescue crews out of there because that shit’s coming down. And he was right. If he was actually part of some huge conspiracy to destroy his own tower, why the fuck would he openly chat about it in an interview?

People describing the collapse as if it was a demolition? What else are they going to compare it to? No buildings of this size have ever come down any other way. Of course people are going to compare it to a demolition.

The explosions in the building before collapse? It was an office building. You could find compressed gas bottles, flammable and explosive cleaners, printing supplies, and who knows what else. Burning jet fuel came down air and supply shafts. The buildings where a wreck. It’s no surprise. The ‘blow-outs’ that would occur several stories below the falling wave of rubble I would imagine where created by the high pressure generated inside the building as floor upon floor collapsed on themselves.

[asarnat]

I can't discount anything you said. I took that video with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, I'm still not satisfied. 9/11 was just not what it appeared to be. There's a lot more behind it, I'm sure of it.

Maybe the government didn't do it themselves, but there's just so much bullshit surrounding this thing. And I just don't trust a god damned thing that the Bush administration or the media says. Can't say I really trust internet-produced conspiracy theory documentaries either.

I feel so helpless.

[pruvy]

1. Concerning the blowouts below the collapse wave in the towers, I think your notion of air pressure buildup might be possible, however such pressures would only blowout windows, NOT steel-reinforced concrete as was clearly displayed by the color of the blowouts' dust clouds.

[I admit that point is not rock solid (haha...fuck), as color is subjective and may possibly have been produced by something else, though I don't know by what. My next point, however, is much harder to counter.]

2. Concerning 7 World Trade, the collapse was from the base and furthermore was even across the entire building, plainly evident from numerous videos from varying angles. Are you saying that debris from the towers falling *on top of* that building, and the debris field spreading out along the ground and possibly hitting the side facing the towers, would cause sufficient damage to *all* the basement support columns in that building, such that they all failed, and simultaneously at that? Come on, don't be foolish. That's impossible. Tower debris would have caused tower-side damage only, the other columns being protected by the tower-side and interior columns. At worst it would have caused a partial collapse reminiscent of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing. The only conclusion that *can* be drawn is that the basement columns were detonated. Refute it, if you can. Before you "call bullshit on all of it", find a *real* argument to refute my logic as well as offering an explanation that stands stronger on its own than what I have just outlined and that is consistent with all available evidence. Believe me, I would very much welcome an alternative technical explanation.

[Note that that point is completely independent of the web guy's timing analysis. Consider it tacit agreement with you that his demonstration could be flawed. I mean, shit, he *was* talking about a difference of 0.2 seconds.]

3. [Another weaker point.] Apparently you did not see the clip of the career janitor (20+ years in such buildings) saying that office building codes prevented there being materials that could cause such explosions, particularly in the numbers cited by the many eye-witnesses.

4. [A point concerning something you didn't mention, but I will raise because it's an important detail.] What about the seismic data? And the camera footage pinpointing the earthquake times to just seconds prior to the towers' collapse? Even if my third point is wrong and small potentially explosive devices like air canisters and whatnot were found throughout the buildings, what could be present to create an explosion large enough to cause *two* magnitude 2+ earthquakes, one for each tower? And if they weren't caused by explosions, then by what?

5. [And another point concerning something you didn't mention, again because it's important.] How do you explain the distinct *lack* of damage to the Pentagon's facade where the two 757 engines would have hit? Again, that was plain from numerous videos. I have yet to hear any believable explanation of any kind from any source to explain how that fact is consistent with the impact of a 757, so if you could enlighten me, please do. And also why the two jet engines were not found anywhere at the site. A jet fuel fire *cannot* vaporize or even melt a titanium-alloy jet engine; it's just not hot enough.

[pruvy]

Actually on Point 2 I was hasty, so I clarify. I believe my claim that all the basement columns failed simultaneously is true as is evidenced by the many videos, however my lack of detailed skyscraper construction knowledge allows a second possible cause for that simultaneity to come to mind (though I think it is unlikely). Either 1) the columns were detonated, or 2) the columns were coupled so strongly to each other that failure of some critical number of them induced failure of all. It's conceivable to me that some coupling would be desirable so that many intact columns could support the failure of a few of their neighbors...but like I said, I think that coupling sufficiently strong to support the entire building for hours then instantly cause building-wide failure is unlikely, particularly with the damage being concentrated on only one side of the building.

[pruvy]

And on Point 1, it's more the size and density of the dust clouds that discounts explanation by blown windows than the color. Broken windows alone would just create wispy shimmers when viewed from such distances, not thick dense clouds as shown.

[meatsnack]

Eyewitness accounts of people actually seeing an actual plane fly into the actual building.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/911_pentagon_eyewitnesses.html

[pruvy]

Yeah personal statements are difficult to use as evidence because of the nature of human observation during a crisis. Like in violent crimes, for example how a rape victim will mis-identify their attacker and swear with deepest conviction that they are correct, only to be overturned by DNA evidence.

Also people tend to embellish their stories a bit...like this:

''I thought, 'This isn't really happening. That is a big plane.' Then I saw the faces of some of the passengers on board,'' Cissell said.

from the website you sent me concerning the plane that hit the Pentagon. [I don't doubt that it was a plane, I only find the type of plane in question, given the evidence.] If a passenger jet flies over the interstate at roughly 500 miles per hour, low enough to hit streetlights, I think anyone being able to discern faces within the plane is probably exaggerating to an unreasonable degree, even though they probably think they really saw what they say they did. Compare it to a racecar on a track going at 200-250 mph, and think about how hard it is to pick out anything at all when they're zooming past, then double that speed.

All this goes for all witness statements, whether supporting the established official version or the "well the government must have been complicit" version. Witness statements are weak, no matter which side they're arguing.

[meatsnack]

Obviously no one made out faces on the plane, but I could see how someone with a sympathetic and imaginative mind could have “seen” people.

But it’s pretty well established that people died in connection with that flight. Even if the government did want to stage it, why would they have taken the loaded aircraft elsewhere to make it ‘disappear’, then flown something else into the Pentagon? Real 757’s with real passengers where flown into the WTC buildings, so why would they have staged the Pentagon strike? If for some reason they wanted to minimize damage, there are plenty of things they could have done. They could have crashed the plain short or slowed it down, they could have hijacked a 737 instead, or chosen an aircraft with lower fuel levels, or dumped fuel before hitting.

It’s just not adding up. I’m not saying it all has to make perfect sense, but anyone who’s come upon the scene of a really bad car accident can see that the cause and effects aren’t always obvious. Some third hand reports, misquotes, grainy video, and amateur speculation just aren’t enough to make me believe, even for a second, that these conspiracy theories hold even an ounce of probability.

[meatsnack]

I love a conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but I think putting a single bit of energy into this one is a waste. Even a faked moon landing seems more plausible from a motive and execution standpoint. I think the fact that most of the highjackers where Saudi but instead we bombed Iraq, or that Bin Ladin is still a free man… now THOSE are some conspiracies worth investigating.

But anyway,

The twin towers clearly started buckling and imploding at the level the aircraft hit. Look at the videos (especially the south tower), the buckling and subsequent collapse wouldn’t have needed any additional explosives to help in the process, it started precisely where the fires had been burning out of control. I can’t rule out that some mysterious demolition crew didn’t rig the place up before hand. But it’s obvious their work was for nothing. There where many floors of rubble accelerating downwards at nearly 32 feet a second, explosives wouldn’t have changed a thing. I mean, WTF would have happened, the falling rubble would have just stopped at the 30th floor or something?

Which brings us to the random explosions reported in the towers… what the heck would their purpose have been? To scare people? Tests? Accidental? If they wanted a controlled demolition, they would have waited till the right time, pushed the button, and brought armageddon. These random explosions reported… what possible purpose could they have served, what would you suggest caused them?

A skyscraper like the WTC buildings actually has to be built rather lightly and efficiently, that lesson was learned the hard way with the Empire State Building. The Pentagon was, in comparison, a brick shithouse. Comparing the initial impact damage between the two would seem useless. I’m just not sure what this comparison suggests either, that a plain didn’t really hit the pentagon, that it was staged?

I’m not a mechanical engineer, civil engineer, materials engineer, demolition specialist, or a terrorist. I’m just going on what I saw and what makes sense. I don’t pretend to understand the complete mechanics of the impacts or collapses, but everything I’ve seen adds up. I don’t know why tower 7 came down like it did, but after everything else that happened, why should you or I pretend to know better?

I think if there was truly a conspiracy behind 9/11 from the inside, there’d be a lot more then circumstantial evidence. It would have required a heck of a lot of people to pull it off, something somewhere would have leaked eventually. The plot that these conspiracies suggest is right out of an action movie, the bad kind with improbable plots and evil mad masterminds behind them.

I think a lot of people fucked up leading to 9/11. But I can’t fathom any reasonable, comprehensive plot that would explain what happened OTHER then the terrorists and their goals.

[pruvy]

I'd like to say 'thank you' for your more well-thought out response, especially in light of the assy attack posture I took in my original comment. [It's finals week and I've been stressed as shit...but that's over now :P]

The reason I have put hours of thought into this conspiracy is that some very good points were raised, and given the potential sinister implications of the theory should it be true, I fully believe it's entirely worth the time to ponder in hopes of finding hard answers one way or the other.

Moon landing conspiracies have raised some interesting points too, but its conspiratorial purpose would have been a Cold War psychological trick to embarrass the Soviets in front of the American people, which whether true or not makes no real difference to how the world turned out and is why, beyond watching the documentaries on PBS, I thought "hmm...ok w/e" and dropped it.

On the other hand, if the 9/11 conspiracy is true, it means that our government may have been complicit in ~3000 deaths of our own citizens for the purpose of a psychological attack designed to allow two unjustified foreign wars (so far), validation of increasing the United States' military hegemony, and concentrating power around the office of the President while weakening Constitutional freedoms for US citizens under the guise of an unending "war on terrorism" that by definition can never be won. Such conditions of perpetual low-level fear were used by the Nazis to co-opt their citizenry during the early stages of the Third Reich's rise to European domination, and we all know where that led. I think the seriousness of those potential consequences warrants serious consideration of the evidence. Being the defining historical event of our time, in it may lie hints of what our government's intentions are for this country and for the world. Besides, our government *has* engaged in intentional harm of its citizens in times past for far weaker returns (like releasing toxic levels of nerve gas in city subway systems to study public reaction, which if I remember correctly occured in the 1950s and is well-documented). Is it so unbelievable then that they could concoct such a plot as 9/11, given the far greater returns it would create for those in power? I'd rather not automatically dismiss the possibility as unrealistic and ten years from now find the secret police knocking at my bedroom door, at which point all that can be done is to say, "well shit!". 1930s Germany was a democracy filled with well-meaning people, which the Nazis *legally* took control of and turned into a horrible war and genocidal machine in about a decade, and they didn't even have a head start given their WWI defeat. Could something similar happen here? Our Constitution is not infallible (Godel proved that tyranny could arise within our Constitutional framework). Human nature varies little...I have no faith in some innate "goodness" of people in this country, simply because we're Americans. Given where it could lead if such intentions do lie underneath and how 9/11 could be a clue towards that end, I believe the evidence is worth serious consideration to uphold or refute.

But given all that, I'm not an expert in anything concerning building construction or engineering either. The conspiracy video's evidence is hardly conclusive, but is that of documentaries like "how the towers fell". Unfortunately I don't have the knowledge base required to draw sound conclusions from the evidence presented. I can think of numerous holes in both sides that are consistent with the knowledge I *do* have, so I can't irrefutably conclude which side is correct, if either. I doubt I will ever know the truth :(

Anyway, es Cinco de Mayo as well as the end of finals week, so it's time for me to break off and celebrate :P