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!

Thanks for the link - I haven't read the entire report, no.

The Coalition - I don't now what I think.

I have some reading to do, at least, now.

"I saw a documentary where condaleeza rice admitted that they had agreed to shoot down flight 93 and that when it came down she believed that they had done so. "

And it has to be said that doing so would have been the right decision. They didn't know where it was heading, and the current score was a thousand lives per plane. The people on board were dead anyway, in that whatever the outcome was going to be, it wasn't going to be a safe landing, so over the fields of PA would have been preferable to downtown Washington (or wherever: we still don't know where the plane was headed).

The reason United 93 wasn't shot down was lack of available assets, not lack of political will. I have seen transcripts of the release of tactical control to the fighter pilots who were scrambled in the following hours, and it's pretty scary stuff: the rules of engagement were looser than a loose thing.

For those that didn't see the programme, it's here.

Flight Attendent Betty Ong defied the hi-jackers on American 11 and called the ground, giving the first warning. You can hear her call in the programme (I knew the name, but I'd not heard the recording). In a sane world, she'd get the local equivalent of a George Cross. Instead, we'll have any number of people, doubting her bravery. Tell us, FlightAttendent, do you believe her?

annec555, WTC7 wasn't hit by a plane. We are told that the Twin Towers came down due to them being hit by the planes. The towers collapsed in seconds into their own fottprint, similar to what happens in a controlled demolition.

WTC7 collapsed in exactly the same way, within seconds into its own footprint, and yet it wasn't hit by a plane. I think that the conspiracy theorists doubt that the damage done to WTC7 could have resulted in such a collapse. Have the engineers explained why WTC7 collapsed in such a fashion?

Claig - in what circumstances would the buildings have fallen over sideways? Do we know if this is a more or less likely way for skyscrapers to collapse? What do we know about how skyscrapers collapse?

"We are told that the Twin Towers came down due to them being hit by the planes."

No, we aren't. WTC1 was hit by flight 1 at 8:46:40 EDT (EDT is UTC-4, five hours behind UK time). It collapsed at 10:28:25. WTC2 was hit by flight 175 at 9:03:04. It collapsed at 9:59:02. The towers took between at hour and and hour and three quarters to collapse. They were brought down by fire more than by structural damage. The hi-jackers probably knew this, because they chose flights that were bound for the west coast, and therefore full of fuel. If the hijackers had used a hypothetical giant helicopter to douse the upper floors with 300 tonnes of JP4 and ignited it, they'd have falled just the same: the kinetic energy of the aircraft is pretty much irrelevant (as the walls of WTC1 and 2 weren't structural).

"WTC7 collapsed in exactly the same way, within seconds into its own footprint"

How else would you expect a tower to collapse? Can you suggest any mechanism by which a tower wouldn't collapse into its own footprint? All the mass is over the footprint. How would you get enough kinetic energy into the upper floors to do anything other than collapse straight down?

Think about it. Imagine a tall tower of jenga blocks. Knock out any block. Where do the blocks from above go? Why?

I just youtubed for a building collapse and here is one example.

If buildings just collapsed into their own footprint, then we wouldn't need demolition experts who know how to wire buildings to make them collapse into their own footprint, so that the collapsing building doesn't end up damaging the surrounding area.

What caused WTC7 to collapse into its own fottprint? There was no jet fuel in the case of WTC7.

that tells us nothing about how likely each scenario is.

Note from the comentary, and the title, that this is a case of a building where the foundations failed. Which is an entirely different scenario. That's a case of a building which was stronger than its foundations, so it fell like a tree trunk. Now fish out pictures of a building whose structure failed but didn't drop into its footprint. It's

"If buildings just collapsed into their own footprint, then we wouldn't need demolition experts who know how to wire buildings to make them collapse into their own footprint,"

Why not? Explosives are quite dangerous, and it's as well to have people who know how to use them safely. Demolition people don't have exotic finite element analysis chops: they just put charges on the main members of the building. They just need to make sure the building ends up weaker than its foundations (see above).

You can read the NIST report on Building 7 here. NIST, you will recall, are the organisation whose release of the design of Fiestel networks for the DES encryption standard, against the express desires of the NSA, kick-started the modern world of open encryption, because it was the first time the open community had seen how encryption was being done by the agencies. It's hard to see them as lackys of the security services, given how much grief placing effective encryption into the hands of civilians (all pre-DES open community encryption is worthless) has caused the spooks.

I think it's about the probability of events happening. It's about the balance of probabilities and whether a case fits the beyond reasonable doubt test. To the conspiracy theorists the government's explanation of the collapse of WTC7 doesn't pass the beyond reasonable doubt test.

"To the conspiracy theorists the government's explanation of the collapse of WTC7 doesn't pass the beyond reasonable doubt test."

But for it to be necessary to blow up WTC7, that implies at the whole thing is part of a grand conspiracy, yes?

I would guess that there is a science behind demolition. That's why experts are called in when needed. Knowing about explosives is not enough. That's why they are called upon rather than those with experience of fireworks.

Um, I know WTC7 wasn't hit by a plane. I have not been living in a cave for the last 9 years. I was simply discussing the issue of what "pulled" seems to mean to me, seeing as it has been analysed.
Some analysis has been done of the actual collapse - I am not qualified to comment on that beyond what I have already said. Some analysis has been done of what people involved have and haven't said - that I am qualified to comment on, or as qualified as anyone else here.
That's what I mean by considering things in isolation. The fact that there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the use of the word "pulled" , for me at least, means that it shouldn't be used as corroborating evidence for another aspect of a conspiracy theory. The fact that someone said something that COULD just about be interpreted as meaning something other than the obvious, does not, for me, make it more likely that the theory about the building's collapse more credible.

As far as I understand it, the conspiracy theorists think that WTC7 was brought down in a controlled demolition. They think it was pulled into its own footprint in seconds. They believe that it was pre-wired, that the government case is not plausible and that therefore there is a conspiracy, which is why they are called conspiracy theorists.

But why would said demolition experts demolish WTC7 in such a way as to make it really obvious to the astute observer that it was actually a demolition and not a collapse? Why not make it look like a 'normal' collapse?

because if it wasn't a controlled demolition, then it would end up damaging the surrounding real estate.

To be fair, I think the surrounding real estate took a reasonable battering that day, what with one thing and another...

'Think about it. Imagine a tall tower of jenga blocks. Knock out any block. Where do the blocks from above go? Why?'

In my (limited) experience, all the ones above it fall to one side and make a right mess.

They don';t fall into the footprint because the rest of the tower is still in the way.

I'm watching some top-down building collapses right now and they are rebar, not steel framed.

"They don't fall into the footprint because the rest of the tower is still in the way."

good point FlightAttendant. I don't know how it's done, by I presume a controlled demolition would have to make sure the bottom collapsed first so that the top would collapse on top of it, otherwise it could possibly make a right mess.

"because if it wasn't a controlled demolition, then it would end up damaging the surrounding real estate."

They've just demolished three major buildings, killing three thousand people, and they're now suddenly worrying about damage to other buildings around? How considerate of your conspiracists.

"In my (limited) experience, all the ones above it fall to one side and make a right mess."

They don't. What you're doing there is pushing the whole tower, which gets the energy for the sideways movement in, and your collapse is the repeated sliding of blocks on the blocks below them. This is O Level physics again. Objects will drop vertically unless given a source of energy (a force) to cause them to move in any other direction. Where do you think the energy would come from to cause anything to move horizontally in the collapse of a building?

"They don't fall into the footprint because the rest of the tower is still in the way"

Huh? Buildings are mostly fresh air. What's in the way? Ceilings? Floors?

"I presume a controlled demolition would have to make sure the bottom collapsed first "

You've got the video of the collapse. Slow it down. Does it collapse from the bottom up?

I don't know, but I remember the conspiracy theorists having footage of witnesses who heard explosions at the lower floor levels before the collapse started. There were also theories that that the Port Authority had privatised the buildings 6 months before to get them off their hands as they had lots of asbestos and would need renovating, which would be very costly. A demolition would allow a rebuild. One theory is that that is why they were brought down into their footprint, with the aim of mimimising any extra damage. Of course, these are all just theories. We have no way of knowing. The conspiracy theorists are asking questions. They may be wrong, but there may be elements of truth in what they say.

What is interesting is that all of the questions that hey have been asked have been uncovered by them alone, and newspapers such as the Guardian have done hardly any questioning at all. They question Bush on global warming etc. but on this issue, they do very little questioning.

My God! It's Obvious! The Guardian are a tool of the US Government!

well, Tokyo in answer to that, a tower of jenga blocks is not mostly made from air.

So it was your own poor analogy that got you there.

I was only saying what I had observed playing Jenga, as you asked us to.

I would suggest though that the impetus for the top bunch of blocks to fall sideways comes from the fact only one side of the building has had a bit taken out of it. So the top section kind of slides off one side.

This btw has nothing to do with the WTC, I'm just saying. This is a wooden tower.

the conspiracy theorists use the term left gatekeepers.
911review.com/denial/gatekeepers.html

It is very suprising that all of the major figures on the left do not ask questions of the government on this issue. Chomsky et al., who so often criticise the powerful, do not criticise on this. It is nearly always people like David Aaronovitch, George Galloway, the ex-Trotskyist Christopher Hitchens etc. who call the conspiracy theorists whack-jobs. It is amazing that the Leninologists, the Marxists and communists don't ask any questions of the government.

Maybe it is their love of big government or maybe because most of the neo-conservatives are 'neo' because they come from a Trotskyist background?