I was recently sent this URL that shows several photographs devoid of any plane wreckage. Can anyone specifically respond to the claim that no plane was involved?
<http://www.asile.org/citoyens/numero13/pentagone/erreurs_en.htm>
(I admit I haven’t looked into it except for this message.):dubious:
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/pentagon.htm
Snopes.com is your friend…
Welcome to the boards!
And then, of course, there’s the fact that 4 planes full of dead people and, suprisingly enough, 3 buildings hit and 1 crashed plane in a field.
So if no plane hit the pentagon, what happened to that 4th plane?
I saw it.
How’s that? Fvcktard.
The conspiracy claim is that a truck (a la Khobar Towers) actually delivered a bomb. The big problems with this theory are that (a) who benefits from using a truck and claiming it was a plane? No smoking gun here. (b) The Pentagon has five sides, four of which have pavement and truck accessibility right up to the outer wall. The explosion took place on the one side that had no such accessibility.
Snopes.com addresses all the other specific points, including close-up photographs of airplane fuselage near the wreckage.
A good conspiracy theory points to some sinister party that clearly benefits from the deception. That’s missing from this particular one.
Thanks everyone. You were very gentle to a first timer. When I sent the message off I had a sense that I may have to have a thick skin if and when a scathing reply came in.
I should have thought of and consulted my list of urban legend and rumor sites, thanks for the reminder. I hope my next post is a better question, or an answer!
Skeptical but impulsive this time
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board, smeyer, glad to have you with us. And hop right in, don’t be afraid. Yes, we have some folks who are fairly rough verbally, but it’s just postings, after all, it’s not like real life confrontation. Fear not!
I’m amazed at the number of conspiracy theories that arise out of nothing. And when one is thoroughly disproved, another variant arises.
The problem is that most of them are hard to disprove. John Ashcroft had sex with Bill Clinton – they thought they were alone, in a hotel room but they were actually in a window display at a Sears store and watched by all the passers-by. I mean, how do you DISPROVE that? And of course, most of these rumors are vicious, usually blaming Jews/blacks/Catholics/whatever for some great evils.
I think part of the confusion or should I say the floating of the conspiracy theory is because there isn’t the same type of footage, video or still photographs, that exists for the crash into the twin towers. I think that people also are thinking that the plane should have flown into the pentagon the same way the planes flew into the towers. This assumption can’t be made because the construction of the buildings were different.
As Krokodil noted, the Pentagon got hit on the one side with no good approach – the side with the helipad, which faces Rt. 110 and some WWII-era “temporary” government housing. This would also be the side where a civilian is least likely to be standing around with a camera, largely because there’s nowhere to stand.
As for the lack of plane wreckage – If a wide-body plane with at least half full fuel tanks rams a bunker-grade building at full throttle (IAS of at least 500 knots), the impact energy and subsequent conflagration would be reasonably capable of pulverizing any non-hardened wreckage, particularly the plane itself, into smithereens.
(I think that takes care of my big word quota for the day.)
Local TV news in D.C. was filled with 1st hand stories of folks who hear/saw the plane fly over at treetop level – including one of my best friends who would not lie for the US govt.
Local D.C. News also carried stories of the rescue workers who worked the site, seeing horribly burned bodies of crash victims still strapped in their airplane seats in the wreck inside the building. It was an evocative image that has always stayed with me.
Here is the a clip from a surveillance camera outside the Pentagon-- advertised by some as showing the plane hitting the Pentagon. It is not very conclusive to someone purposely trying not belive tho.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,47420,00.html
The Washington Post Archives are available on-line and contain (literally) scores of 1st hand accounts of average folks who saw it fly low and hit… Accessing the archives will cost less than the book and put you closer to the truth of what happened.
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bibliophage
moderator GQ