to believe some if not all of the 9/11 conspiracy theories

[mrsunreasonable]

NOTE: This is not meant to be offensive and if you suffered as a result of 9/11 you have my deepest sympathies it was a terrible event however it was caused.

Having watched a few documentaries on the conspiracy theories I am partially if not completely convinced all was not as it seemed. The fact that many witnesses that saw/heard things that didn't tie in with the official version have since died in suspicious circumstances doesn't help!

FA- but what reflects badly on you is that you take what you read on the internet as credible, despite failing to research the credentials of those who are quoting it/ writing it. Then you tell me tht your version of events, as supporting by this fiction is as legitimate as the official version. By so doing, you are basically accusing a load of innocent people of mass murder- which is somewhat worse than calling someone "pathetic" IMO

What electra said.

Too may people go along with what they are told and the evidence they are presented. Many of these people are 'educated' and thus have had an education that tells them to question everything. Odd really.

My personal view is that sept 11 was indeed a terrorist attack, that Princess Diana died in a tragic accident.

Not entirely sure about the MOD scientist who was found dead.

There are people who like to question what they are given and I think that's very good. I think the problem is that you are either presented with official 'facts' or 'facts' from people who are professional consipracy theorists.

Bin Laden - he's not so much a terrorist but rather a one man grant giving organisation who funds terror. You are part of a group that wants to inflict terror - you run your ideas past his group and he either funds you or not. The 'officials' seem to have ignored him of late.

Er, conspiracy theorists; Osama bin laden admitted his involvement in 9/11 attacks....just a minor point you may wish to consider.....

Bagged - AQ ARE working very hard on their PR - just not with the west. Why would they? They don't need our support - but they are instead working very well in areas where they can get more support. Ie the awful floods in Pakistan - the govt in chaos about starting up their relief programme - well Al Queda's lot were there from day one providing very well organised relief to the people. Nice alternative to the government.

B&T - I'm believing something I read, you are believing something you've heard or read elsewhere.

NEITHER of us is an expert I take it?

So how does your argument not work both ways?

You've as much right to believe what the government says as I have to believe, at least until it's debunked satisfactorily, what I read on the internet.

One source is not necessarily more reliable than the other.

I've accepted what Tokyo points out subject to her saying she knows what she is talking about. But that's not OK according to you. Because that's what I was doing with this random article I quoted from, too.

Get over yourself. You wrote: "This explains it better than I did". It doesn't. It's total bollocks. If you can't assess it, then citing it as an explanation is at your risk, and given you're the one producing rubbish in order to piss over the graves of 3000 innocent victims, pathetic is the least of the adjectives that are needed.

9/11 troofers are mostly idiots, who having decided that they are incredibly clever and able to see the troof that others can't, then proceed to write utter nonsense under the cover that everyone who disagrees with them is part of the conspiracy. Because your basic theory is nonsense, you have to believe in other nonsense in order to support the original nonsense. Which is pathetic.

Large buildings are unstable when damaged. Ones where it had long been known that the fire protection on the main structural members was inadequate doubly so. No modern building can sustain the failure of the top 10% without the whole building coming down, and the WTC probably wasn't even that strong. The hi-jackers probably didn't know how effective their attack would be, but once the kerosene was alight the buildings were doomed.

The conspiracies are nutters because their conspiracy is insane. Because of that, the only people they can find to provide "evidence" are themselves insane, and have an excessive belief in their own knowledge. Let's look at some of the favourites:

1. Pre-wiring the buildings for demolition. That would involve how many people? All of whom would remain silent, both before and after?

1. Packages on aircraft, cruise missiles, etc. A 757 full of kerosene will destroy a large building: why not just use a remote control one?

1. The basic idea. Watergate and Iran/Contra involved a few dozen people, and leaked like a sieve. My Lai and the Pentagon Papers leaked like a sieve. The claim is that the US government can run a massive conspiracy which, unlike any of those, involves the mass murder of thousand of US civilians, many of them in uniform, and no-one ever leaks? Seriously?

FA, a lot (although by no means all - an awful lot of twisted and bent beams were left in the wreckage) of the steel columns shattered because they were being hit by thousands of tons of falling building.

A steel beam in compression loading (as the core columns were) gets a lot of its strength from the surrounding structure helping it to resist buckling and bending.

Take a new toilet roll and stand it on end. The core of the toilet roll can resist quite large loads. You could probably stand on it. Now take off all the paper so you're just left with the central cardboard tube. The tube on its own can resist a lot smaller loads before it buckles and collapses. The paper helps to prevent the tube from buckling and so the new roll is stronger than just the tube on its own.

When the WTC collapsed, the vertical core columns were at least partially reliant on the surrounding structure to keep them from buckling. But that surrounding structure was being pulverised so they lost a lot of their rigidity while also being hit incredibly hard from above by the falling mass.

What would you expect steel to do in that situation? Structural steel's strong, sure, but it's not magic. It has a limit to its strength and when that limit is reached then it breaks.

Well thanks to your latest post I believe your view of events now less than I did five minutes ago. You are rude, very rude and very condescending and you provide no backup to your claim that you know the article I quoted from is shite.

I was prepared to believe you were right before this last post.

Now I think you know as little as any of us.

I was trying to remain quite civil on this thread but you seem unable to, so I'm going to leave it now - still uninformed, still confused and still no wiser, thanks to you (and Expat's really edifying posts, too)

You haven't solved anything. You've just upped the bad feeling with someone who was not intending to offend. Pissing on graves? Really? You really let rip didn't you. Marvellous, well done.

That was to Tokyo - apologies Snorbs, I will read what you wrote now - thanks.

daftpunk - some people don't believe B-L exists, but that he's just a 'figure head' for terrorism. I'm not saying I believe that but the whole thing is an issue I'm too unsure of to know what the truth definitely is.

Snorbs, thanks for trying to explain it better than Tokyo could!

I would have thought the steel would bend, though - not just snap into little pieces? Or is that generally how it would be expected to behave?

"PLEASE explain to me how the lower parts of the steel broke into bits."

Steel is strong in tension and, provided it's kept properly aligned, it's strong in compression. But once it's misaligned, it'll break.

So if you take a girder and try to pull the ends apart, it'll resist. If you try to push the ends together it'll resist, but if it bends at all it will then snap quite quickly (imagine pressing a matchstick between your fingers: it's strong, but if you push it to one side in the middle it'll instantly snap).

Steel (and other rigid structures) are strong in the direction they're expected to be loaded, and if they're competently designed they're not much stronger than they need to be. A steel framework which is twisted and then subjected to forces orders of magnitude more than expected then they'll fracture. Like other troofers, you appear to think that large steel girders are infinitely strong. They aren't.

"I would have thought the steel would bend, though - not just snap into little pieces? "

You would think wrong. Do you understand any of the stuff you're posting?

daft

What has 'Er, conspiracy theorists; Osama bin laden admitted his involvement in 9/11 attacks....just a minor point you may wish to consider....' got to do with it.

If someone admits something - do you believe it all the time? Really, do you?

As I said, I don't think these events are part of some big US government plot - but your post doesn't cut it with me.

Just because someone admits to doing something doesn't mean they did it. C'mon love - the big case with Iranian woman under threat of stoning in her country - she's 'admitted' to being an adulteress and involved in her husband's killing (she's been tortured). In the UK - a man who admitted to a horrible crime - let out of prison (he is now dead) admitted to a crime he had no knowledge of as he thought that's what was wanted from him. Those who admit to things as they've agreed to be the fall guy etc.

Daft - do you really believe everything you are told if they are from offical sources?

Tokyo. Your explanation sounds OK but the steel was subject to forces from above, not the side.

It may have been initiall, when the buildings were struck but why then did it not break 'instantly' and instead waited for an hour or so before snapping?

This is the whole basis of why I don't get it iyswim

and please stop calling me a 'troofer' as some derogatory term. I haven't insulted anyone yet, and have no plans to - each believs what they consider the most viable explanation, no disrespect. I am just interested in it.

FA; this is mumsnet, nothing surrounding 9/11 conspiracy theories are going to be solved on here.

Daft - aren't you the BNP member who thinks she's protecting her kids from 'harm' (ie non catholic 'propaganda') and who is studying for a degree.

Are you really studying for a degree? Which uni tells you to take all facts face on?

Yes I may be wrong which is why i am ASKING.

I don't understand any of it. It's not your job to set me straight but I would appreciate it rather than just being mocked.

Osama bin laden isn't real?

Say it ain't so

Daftpunk you're probably right, there's nowhere it will ever be solved.

Erm I thought the steel columns buckled because the planes caused incredible heat which found oxygen inside the column space and therefore it was hot like a furnace.

Who is he then?

Posie this is where the confusion lies for a lot of people.

Columns, shafts, buckling and breaking

it's none of it terribl;y clear for your average Joe to understand. I'm willing to believe what Tokyo says if it sounds reasonable. I just want to be educated

The engineers and experts seem unable to agree though so how can we.

I am going swimming...thanks in advance for any more helpful responses.

Have you ever seen the conspiracy theorists claiming that at least one of the planes shot off a missile into the building just before the plane itself hit? This based on a frame or two of blurry video.

Whenever I read those claims I always thought "What's the point?" If you've got a presumably remote-controlled airliner on a collision course with a building, why fire a missile as well? What would you hope to achieve that simply sticking the same amount of explosive inside the aircraft wouldn't?

I think a lot of the conspiracy theories are like that. They take a tiny factoid, spin it into some vaguely plausible it's-just-possible scenario, but never really explain why presumably competent and highly-trained CIA operatives would do it that way. If they wanted to knock down the WTC buildings, controlled demolition plus two aircraft were a ridiculous way to do it. And thermite? Thermite takes seconds to burn. It doesn't explode.

If you had a building like WTC7 full of staff in the middle of a densely-populated city, you wouldn't wire it up with a "self-destruct" system. Anything sensitive enough that would require a self-destruct system would be put in one of the thousands of US Govt buildings out in the middle of bloody nowhere. If you wanted to stage an attack against the Pentagon, firing a missile at it and hoping everyone who saw it mistook it for an airliner is absurd. Plus you'd then have to go in and spread around the loads of bits of smashed 757 that were pictured on-site. It simply doesn't make plausible sense.

"Tokyo. Your explanation sounds OK but the steel was subject to forces from above, not the side."

You mean you believe that when a building falls, each girder is subjected to loads precisely in line with its axis, and none others? That's pretty impressive, wouldn't you say, to design a building which, when hit by an aircraft and with its upper floors burnt down, collapses exactly vertically and with each part of each floor failing precisely at the same time so that the girders experience no sheer?

As sorbs points out, the girders were embedded in other material, and that had failed out as well.