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!

claig, I have watched Loose Change (version 1 and version 2) and read a fairly large number of 9/11 conspiracy websites and screeds over the years.

I have yet to see anything in them more substantial than either:
a) a non-expert looking at a blurry video without any real understanding of the artifacts caused by the recording mechanisms and extrapolating untenable conclusions,

b) testimony from non-expert witnesses being taken out of all context (a few people reported to hear explosions in the WTC. And they could tell they were explosions and not just enormous impacts caused by falling debris or failing girders, how exactly?) or

c) flat-out wild conjecture on a par with the "The moon landings were faked!!?!??!" whack-jobs. Eg, the loons who claim that at least one of the planes hitting the towers was a hologram

What I have yet to see in any of it is an explanation of why, if this was some vast conspiracy carried out by the CIA / US Military / Whatever, why it was done in such a ridiculous way. Wire up the WTC buildings with tons of dangerous explosives and fly planes into them? Why do something that chancy and so liable to mistakes?

Maybe it's not racism that causes these people to find it so impossible to believe that a small bunch of Saudis perpetrated these attacks. Maybe they saw the floundering of their Government in the minutes, hours and days after the attacks and thought "Hey, no-one could really be that ineffectual and reactionary. There must be something else going on." I think Occam's Razor works pretty well in this situation.

That video is merely part 1. The film Zero is not about Paul Craig Roberts; it was made by an Italian MEP and features people such as Gore Vidal, and Noble Prize winner Dario Fo, intelligence experts and FBI and US military whistleblowers.

So, your answer is that anyone who says the Emperor is naked must be wearing a tinfoil hat by definition. Not an intelligent argument, you must concede.

Kurkum, I have yet to see "Zero", although when I get the chance I will. Are you saying that it has actual whistleblowers who were involved in planning and/or carrying out the 9/11 attacks? Or are these just "whistleblowers" who insist that those attacks couldn't have happened the way the investigations say they happened?

As far as I was aware, the only real whistleblowers about 9/11 so far are the people who were in the State Department etc who saw the intelligence suggesting the attacks were about to take place but couldn't get anyone to take it seriously.

"The film Zero is not about Paul Craig Roberts; it was made by an Italian MEP and features people such as Gore Vidal, and Noble Prize winner Dario Fo, intelligence experts and FBI and US military whistleblowers."

Sorry, is "Italian MEP" a qualification these days? Nigel Farrage and Nick Griffin are MEPs: would you regard their status as MEPs as making them any less loony? Gore Vidal said in 2007

"I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I'm a conspiracy analyst. Everything the Bushites touch is screwed up. They could never have pulled off 9/11, even if they wanted to. Even if they longed to. They could step aside, though, or just go out to lunch while these terrible things were happening to the nation. I believe that of them."

which doesn't sound like he's a ringing supporter of the troofers. Dario Fo is a playright: he has a Nobel prize, but there's no more reason to listen to him on what happened outside his field of knowledge than, say, Harold Pinter.

What whistle are the whistle blowers blowing? Are they saying 'I planted some bombs' or what?

Banana87 - it's two days later now, I think we're past that. I don't think the OP is even here any more.

I'm just watching the zero film now......Snorbs, what is your opinion about the Pentagon crash and the claims that there wasn't evidence of a plane crash / the pilot would not have been able to fly a 757 that low, etc? I don't mean to put you on the spot but I would actually like to believe the official version.

Electra - what do the whistleblowers say?

I'm just watching it now - I am not familiar with these people so not sure who the whistle blowers actually are......

One person is saying that it would have been very difficult for an aircraft that was not a military aircraft to get into the air space of the Pentagon.

"Maybe they saw the floundering of their Government in the minutes, hours and days after the attacks and thought "Hey, no-one could really be that ineffectual and reactionary. There must be something else going on"

or maybe they don't believe the story, and started looking at the evidence. Most of these conspiracy theorists have years of experience with all sorts of political events. They were the ones that talked of the Bilderberg group while all the participants denied that it existed. Now everyone knows about the Bilderberg Group, the CFR, and the Trilateral Commission. They called them whack-jobs in those days, but now these institutions are well known by the public. They know far more about politics than any of us. They predicted the financial crash which Gordon Brown says he had no idea would occur. They explained why it would happen. They have correctly predicted many other events. They have a pretty good track record for whack-jobs.

There's no point trying to convince you. If you think they are all whack-jobs and that butter wouldn't melt in Bush and Cheney's mouth, that's fine, that is your understanding and viewpoint.

electra - my googlemaps says that the pentagon is less than 1k from Ronald Reagan National airport. So not sure how far the Pentagon's 'airspace' extends?!

It's not to do with distance, but apparently the security measures taken around the airspace of the pentagon. They also say the 'pilot' could not have performed the necessary movements to crash into the Pentagon at such a low height in a 757....

claig, if you can direct me to an article/blog written by a conspiracy theorist, that predates and correctly predicts the financial crisis, I would be much obliged.

google for it, some of them also predicted 911. You can google for that too. Some of it is on youtube. There are radios shows and videos on youtube where they state what will happen. They say it was planned and done for a reason.

electra - Just went to try and find the stall speed for a 757, first link up is a discussion of just this, oddly enough.

Anyhoo, plane is doing 300+ mph so 500+ kmph. Say its flight plan is to Dulles (was it?), around 50km from the Pentagon. It would travel the distance between them in around 5 minutes. Not enough time to muster any sort of response, especially given that this crashing civilian aircraft thing was a whole new tactic.

claig - I'm about to go to bed. I'm not going to spend the next 3 weeks reading through what will come up if I put "9/11 conspiracy theory" or "prediction of financial crash" into google, much less watch hours of ranting on Youtube .

You wanna help me out here?

"One person is saying that it would have been very difficult for an aircraft that was not a military aircraft to get into the air space of the Pentagon."

So how does that work? You're the desperate, suicidal pilot of an aircraft you are planning to use to commit mass murder. Do you contact air traffic control, request clearance and then, when refused, cry "Damn! My plan to commit mass murder is foiled by air traffic control regulations that, if breached, will result in a complex discussion with the FAA about my license"? Or do you just push and regardless, given you've got about sixty seconds to live and, what will all the virgins and all, you won't have time to worry about the disciplinary hearing?

"It's not to do with distance, but apparently the security measures taken around the airspace of the pentagon."

Bollocks. As tHoS points out, the Pentagon is about a kilometre from DCA, Ronald Reagan airport. The airspace over central Washington is restricted, but an aircraft entering the restricted area would be less than ten miles from the Pentagon, or just over a minute's flying time. Are you seriously suggesting that the US operates an air defence system capable of responding to the transgression of controlled airspace and shooting down an aircraft over a major city - including, note, the White House? I don't dispute the technical capability (although area defence weapons capable of it wouldn't be easy to conceal) but from a command and control perspective, do you have any idea how dangerous that would be? Any aircraft being de-conflicted out of DCA, any aircraft veering off the localiser, and you have the US government shooting down a US airliner (DCA is mostly internal) over the capitol.

I suppose you might put a point defence system, like Goalkeeper, on the Pentagon. That wouldn't stop a 757 from impacting the building, though.

Arguments about the competence of the pilot are moot. He's dead. We don't know.

Laser cage.

If you are seriously interested and not taking the piss (as you occasionally do ) then I will have to google for it myself. Many different ones have said that. I used to listen to radio shows where they and knowledgeable guests said it. I won't be able to go back to the radio shows. So I will have to see if it was in any articles. It will take me time to google for it.

I know that you are interested in this, because Vince Cable was a person who mentioned the possibility before it happened. But believe me, these people predicted it way before Vince and they have an entirely different explanation as to why it occurred and what its purpose was.

"I know that you are interested in this, because Vince Cable was a person who mentioned the possibility before it happened."

Vince Cable is such a fantastic economic forecaster, he predicted six of the last two recessions.

"Laser cage."

Invisible laser cage, too.

I've just watched the first four chunks of "Zero". Crikey, there's three quarters of an hour of my life I won't get back...

Dario Fo may be an excellent playwright but he's a complete twat of a structural engineer or fire investigator. Comparing the colour of the flames between the Windsor Tower fire and the WTC and drawing conclusions from it, while neglecting that the Windsor Tower fire was filmed at night whereas the WTC fire was on a bright sunny morning? Idiot.

The sulphate claims don't add up. They say that it points to thermite/thermate, but then go on to say there were reports of explosions (thermite doesn't explode, it burns) and that it must have been a controlled demolition because it dropped so fast while ignoring the fact that thermite burns too slowly to be able to do that. Pillocks. Oh, and they forgot that gypsum, a major component of plasterboard, contains a lot of sulphur.

As for the 757 into the Pentagon... It was undoubtedly a remarkable bit of flying, although the ground effect would have helped quite a lot. As Tokynambu so entertainly describes, the protected airspace is largely an administrative thing. It's not a wall in the sky. Nor do they routinely shoot down aircraft that stray into the protected airspace. If they did, there'd be dozens of such shoot-downs every year.

At the time that the aircraft was spotted heading in the Pentagon's direction the entire US air traffic control system was going batshit insane as a result of what was happening in New York. No-one knew what the hell was going on and the controllers were desperately trying to contact all their aircraft to find out if anyone else had been hijacked. At that time there wasn't enough evidence of a threat to the Pentagon to justify randomly shooting off missiles at anything that strayed near (and anti-aircraft missiles don't interrogate IFF).

The only thing I saw that made me think "Hmm, I'd like to know a bit more about that claim" was the guy who worked for UL labs and said that NIST fiddled some of the parameters in their computer models. But I'm nowhere near believing that that curious factoid is evidence of some Va$t Kon$piRA$eEe.

"and anti-aircraft missiles don't interrogate IFF"

The control systems might. But that's irrelevant, because civilian aircraft don't carry IFF anyway (and can you imagine the key distribution problem if they did?) The USS Vincennes shoot-down was triggered by that.

"NIST fiddled some of the parameters in their computer models."

Yes, that's how modelling works, amongst engineers anyway. You build a numerical model of your problem, which will almost always be wrong, and then you tweak it with the benefit of empirical evidence until the model agrees with reality. You can then perturb the model with some slight confidence that it reflects the same perturbations of reality, although often it doesn't. As there's not a hell of a lot of test cases for large steel-framed buildings burning from above with several hundred tonnes of JP4, that iteration is going to happen on the model using the stuff being modelled: what else could they do? The idea that you can build a finite element analysis model of a complex system and have it relate remotely to reality first go is fanciful. The idea that the model and the reality disagreeing points to a fault in reality is bizarre. "Computer Models" are mostly shit, and if they diverge from reality, that's the proof.