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!

'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.'

All of the nearly 4000 of them.

On quite outdated equipment.

Over a landmass the size of the Atlantic ocean.

Well, yes, the control radar will interrogate IFF. But once launched the average anti-aircraft missile is largely autonomous these days. You don't want to have to keep your ground radar unit active and transmitting course-correction signals to your missile while said missile is in flight towards aircraft that could be armed with anti-radar munitions. I believe the Viet Cong learned that one the hard way.

But as you say, the airspace around Washington is busy so you need to be sure of what you're shooting at to avoid missing and hitting an innocent 747 just taking off. Or your shiny and expensive F-15s that have arrived on-site to intercept what you're shooting at...

As for the UL chap's concerns, I thought it intriguing. I know that modelling involves a lot of fiddling with variables and model types to get an accurate simulation. The company I used to work for did a lot of structural finite element analysis as well as computational fluid dynamics (not least for modelling fire and smoke propogation in one of the proposed replacements for WTC. I understand we did bid for the WTC collapse structural analysis but the Americans insisted the job went to a US entity). We burned a lot of CPU time.

On the one hand, the UL chap could be talking out of his hat about something trivial he only had a tangential contact with and/or was outside his area of expertise so he didn't understand what they were doing. On the other, he might be a serious FEA geek and really did see something dodgy going on in NIST's analysis and/or corners being cut. There's not enough evidence either way.

Nevertheless, I don't regard that claim on its own as evidence that the towers didn't collapse the way NIST says they did. More likely it's just sloppy modelling done under serious time pressure, as always. Compared to the rest of the supposition, wild claims and flat-out bullshit in "Zero" that was the only claim I hadn't heard before.

Hello all, I have been reading all your posts and find most of them interesting and thought provoking. I'm sorry I haven't commented much but I have to admit to feeling slightly like I've opened a can of worms and the worms turned out to be bigger and more wriggly than I anticipated! I just wanted to let you know that I am following this thread with interest but feel slightly too uneducated about some of the topics to comment in a constructive manner. I have modified by views slightly and think I may have been too quick to believe what google/youtube told me without properly investigating the other side which I will do when time permits. My current opinion is still 'mmm something not quite right here' but as some have suggested this may be more due to a covering of arses after monumental cock-up!

MrsU, it was a good thread to start I think. It's never been discussed properly on here afaik - not in depth.

In fact I think I started a similar thread a few years ago and asked for it to be pulled after about 20 posts because people seemed so vehemently opposed to discussing it.

People need to have debate, and have things explained - otherwise everyone stays put in their own little bubble of doubt or belief.

So it was probably worth doing.

Snorbs - thanks for your explanations.

and if everyone had the same views of 9/11 the it would only be 20 posts long.

Snorbs, have you watched 'Blueprint for Truth'? Didn't think so. Try debunking that one.

Trailer:

Blueprint for Truth Part 1:

claig - was actually thinking more along the lines of Private Eye, who are always printing things like that - 'surely it's not a good idea to be recycling these crappy bonds round all the banks?', but not in a way that anyone's actually going to heed.

Kurkum, does that one have any real whistleblowers - ie, first-hand reports from people who were actually involved in the conspiracy - or is it just more conjecture from third-parties based on poor understanding of physics, wild conjecture and bullshit?

Or, to put it another way, what's in it that makes it worth wasting my time watching it? Can you give a summary of what is so special about it?

It presents a scientific investigation into why Building 7 disintegrated into clouds of dust (pointing out that NIST merely examined the 'initiation of collapse', conveniently ignoring the collapse itself).

Unless you reject Newton's Laws in their entirety, you'll have a jolly hard time debunking it, Snorb.

It's a presentation by Richard Gage, who is the representative of (apparently) hundreds of professionals who subscribe to 'Architects and Engineers for 9-11 truth'.

I have watched all 13 bits of it some time ago but looked at the bit about building 7 again this afternoon. I have to say that the way it fell looks highly symmetrical to not have been at least assisted by some kind of device.

Then of course Larry whatsit saying on film they took the decision to 'pull it' doesn't really help.

Blueprint for Truth is yet another tedious "controlled demolition" rant, complete with the usual "freefall" claims (which are a strawman), the belief that thermite is an explosive, the belief that you can distinguish molten steel from molten aluminium by looking at television, etc, etc.

You can see grown-ups debunking it in this paper from The Journal of Engineering Mechanics.

Bazˇant Z, Le J, Greening F, Benson D. What Did and Did Not Cause Collapse of World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York?. Journal of Engineering Mechanics [serial online]. October 2008;134(10):892-906. Available from: Academic Search Complete, Ipswich, MA. Accessed September 14, 2010.

Warning: requires an education to read.

Cheers for the gracious linking, Tokyo. I will watch that.

By the way your patronising asides are really bloody revolting. How do you presume what amount of education people have on here...my IQ is 140+ and I have a physics O level and three A levels. I'm not however an engineer.

It really makes me want to tell you to get stuffed tbh. But I won't, because I'm not that rude.

"I will watch that."

It's a paper. Proper academic discourse doesn't happen on video.

Oh for God's sake. Is that the best you can do? I'm not going to take anything out of this discussion apart from a deep loathing for your awful sense of superiority.

Seriously, where DO you get off?

You're one of the nastiest posters I've ever seen on here, and that's saying something.

And, by the way, my comment about education is entirely reasonable. The problem with the whole 9/11 troof movement is that, when confronted by things people don't understand, they assume the things they do understand must be correct. So, a complex article in a journal with a reasonable impact factor written by a team at a top-flight university is hard: for someone working in the direct field a day's work, for people in related fields a bit more, for those of us for whom partial differentials are tricky we need to assume the reviewers did their work and we assume the derivations are correct.

Or, you can have 90 minutes on You Tube. With pictures!

The accusations of idiocy arise because (a) troofers assume the former is wrong, because they can't understand it, while the latter is a lucid exposition of deep underlying truths, because they just have to watch it from their sofa and (b) because you can guarantee that the next move will be a lengthy attempt to claim that Northwestern University is in the pocket of The Conspiracy.

FA: that's the real analysis of the collapse of the Twin Towers. If you think it's wrong, tell us where. You're accusing proper structural engineers of not knowing what they're doing: show us their errors.

'FA: that's the real analysis of the collapse of the Twin Towers. If you think it's wrong, tell us where. You're accusing proper structural engineers of not knowing what they're doing: show us their errors.'

Eh? I don't think I accused anyone of anything! Where did I do that? That's just bonkers.

And your comment WOULD have been entirely reasonable if every single other post you had made on this thread were not an exercise in out and out condescension.

It was not unreasonable of me to take it in the same spirit as almost everything else you have written.

"I don't think I accused anyone of anything!"

Apart from blowing up large buildings in urban areas, and then engaging in a massive cover up. Nothing major.

"I have to say that the way it fell looks highly symmetrical to not have been at least assisted by some kind of device."

That's not an accusation...it's an OBSERVATION.

Dear me.

Oh, it's another "a building had a skyscraper land on it and then caught fire and, OMG, it later collapsed! And the debris was still hot some time later! And we found some chemical traces that must have come from thermite, because nothing else in the world has sulphur in it! OMG! Again! And it fell so fast they must have been explosives! And not thermite! (Um, actually, no, ignore that bit.) And we'll also ignore the fact that no-one's found the slightest trace or chemical residue of explosives, or detonation cord, or blasting caps, or evidence that backs up our wild imagining that an entire fucking building was wired to explode and nobody ever noticed! OMG!"

Sigh.

I'll get round to watching it when I get a chance. I may have to wash my dog first.

Does this one include lots and lots of replays of the various clips of the planes hitting the buildings with ominous music in the background? And lots of sirens and shots of running people and dust clouds? Because no-one else who's ever done one of these things has ever done that before so it would make a pleasant change.

No, Snorbs, it doesn't. It's a lecture given and filmed.

I had thought you were less scathing and dismissive than Tokyo but you seem to be getting moreso. Which is sad as I really enjoyed your earlier posts.

What I don't understand about the nutters who claim that WTC7 was wired for demolition is why. Wasn't a conspiracy to demolish two of the largest buildings in the world in the centre of the most iconic skyline in the world surrounded by some of the most valuable real estate this side of Ginza-Chrome enough? Why did they need to risk being discovered also wiring a minor building over the road, that no-one had heard of? Why would you do that?

I expect that the anti-troofers believed Blair's 'dodgy dossier' and the 45 minute claims, because they were a 'lucid exposition of deep underlying truths' by 'proper' politicians, a PhD and a spin doctor. You don't need a degree to smell the bullshit, just a smattering of common sense and an understanding of politics.