Give me your 9/11 conspiracy theories! And/or their debunking

[ivan_astikov]

@GIGObuster

Last time I requested that you post just one of the items the writer claimed were important. By checking a few of his points one can indeed make an educated judgment of the worthiness of the book.

To save me a bit of typing, here’s someone else’s points for you to refute.

This is a timely, excellent response to the ‘debunkers’ of the 9/11 Truth Movement.

The ‘debunkers,’ of course, are the ones who are on the 9/11 research scene to say: “Everything the 9/11 Truth Movement says about government complicity is wrong. The official story is indeed correct, so please get back to whatever you were doing in your life before you ever heard of these absurd theories.”

This is Griffin’s thickest technical volume on 9/11. There are four lengthy chapters, totaling 322 pages of text, after which there are 62 pages of endnotes. The fourth chapter, about 100 pages in length, deals exclusively with rebutting the Popular Mechanics book “Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the Facts.” The first three chapters deal with other publications that emerged in 2006, as the 9/11 Truth Movement was gaining ground. These publications include Michael Broenner’s Vanity Fair article “9/11 Live: The Norad Tapes,” Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton’s “Without Precedent,” and finally the NIST report and its attempt to debunk the controlled demolition hypothesis.

I’ve been toying for awhile about what kind of review to write. If I give an in-depth review of the content for each chapter of this book, the review will be so long people won’t want to read it! Several other in-depth reviews have focused on the problems with the NORAD tapes. So I will focus primarily on the Popular Mechanics chapter, since PM is most often cited as the knockout punch which refutes all the movement’s claims.

Here, it is important to remember the psychological effect of a book like the Popular Mechanics volume. The publishers of that book know that people do judge books by their covers. Many people will walk past the book at the Barnes & Noble, and will say to themselves: “Ah-ha. Good to know. Conspiracy theories of deliberate US government involvement debunked. Next time someone brings up 9/11 conspiracy theories at work, I’ll mention to them that I saw this book.”

Fortunately thanks to David Ray Griffin (and others), Popular Mechanics’ 9/11 propaganda has not been allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged. Let me just show a few ways in which the PM staff reveal themselves to be deceivers and liars. I’ll focus on the Pentagon:

Popular Mechanics claims that “hundreds of witnesses saw a Boeing 757 hit the building.” They do not seem to have been to interested in analyzing the believability of some of these statements, as Griffin has done. PM quotes structural engineer Allyn Kilsheimer, who says: “It was absolutely a plane… I picked up parts of the plane with the airline markings on them… I held in my hand the tail section of the plane, and I stood on a pile of debris that we later discovered contained the black box… I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?”

We almost don’t need Griffin’s help in realizing the absurdity of this statement: “But this is hardly ‘okay.’ Besides the fact that few people, aside from pathologists, would pick up body parts, the tail section of a Boeing 757 is over 20 feet long and quite heavy.” Also, I might add, if he held the tail section in his hand, why didn’t we see a tail section in the photographs immediately following the event?

A more disturbing aspect of this eyewitness’ account, however, concerns the editing of his words between PM’s March 2005 magazine article and the book which appeared in the summer of 2006. In March 2005, Kilsheimer reportedly said “and I found the black box.” Researchers, however, noted that the two black boxes were found, according to the official story, by two firefighters three days later. As Griffin says: “At what school of journalistic ethics did the PM authors learn that, if part of a statement you have quoted from one of your star witnesses turns out to be false (‘I found the black box’), you may simply change that part of the statement (to ‘I stood on a pile of debris that we later discovered contained the black box’)?”

Griffin goes on to say: “This modification is especially interesting in light of PM’s James Meigs’ complaint that few of the documents put out by alternative conspiracy theorists ‘handle factual material with enough care to pass muster at a high-school newspaper.’ Once again, the official conspiracy theorists are found to illustrate the very sins of which they accuse their opponents.”

Although the Truth Movement is internally divided as to what happened at the Pentagon (yay-or-nay-757-on-scene), just about everyone is united in realizing the absurdity of the official story’s composite claim: that the Pentagon was struck by AA 77 under the control of Hani Hanjour. Many people, including experienced pilots have rejected this story, by which Hanjour, by all accounts a terrible pilot, executed a 270-degree downward spiral drop in a few minutes, then circled around the Pentagon in a 330-degree turn in order to hit the unoccupied section at ground level, traveling only a few yards above I-395.

Several pilots, like veteran Ralph Omholt, have gone on the record to say that this series of events, especially performed by a terrible amateur, are “too ridiculous to consider.” Pilot Russ Wittenberg has also gone on the record with similar remarks, saying that “For a guy to just jump into the cockpit and fly like an ace is impossible.”

As Griffin shows us, the PM book does not even attempt to debunk this aspect of the story: “The PM authors like to claim that their case is supported by experts. But for their entire section on the ‘hijackers’ flying skills,’ they quote only one flight instructor, and he speaks only to the issue of whether the hijackers could have pointed their planes towad their targets, not to the issue of whether Hanjour could have flown the trajectory allegedly taken by AA 77 in its final few minutes.” They omit testimony like that of Wittenberg and Omholt.

Knowing they can’t defend this part of the story, Griffin notes that PM uses straw-man tactics to fill up space: Discussing Thierry Meyssan’s missile hypothesis and his misrepresentation of Mike Walters’ “cruise missile with wings” statement.

When attempting to explain the physics as to why there doesn’t visually appear to be a 757 on the scene, Popular Mechanics appeals to the authority of “senior research scientist” Paul Mlakar, who says that the plane hitting the Pentagon was like “taking a Coke can and smashing it against the wall. The back and front become one.” As Griffin retorts: “As a scientist, Mlakar would know that smashing a Coke can does not reduce its weight. So why has no one reported finding a 100,000-pound piece of steel and aluminum in the wreckage?”

I shall address one issue in which the PM authors’ desperate lying is exposed by the laser-sharp mind of Griffin. In an attempt to address the charge of a stand-down order by the US military to not intercept the planes, and bolster the ‘incompetence’ theory, Popular Mechanics says this: “One of the first steps the hijackers took after seizing control of the four aircraft was to turn off the jets’ transponders. At the time of the hijackings, there were 4,500 planes in the skies over the continental US. Without transponder data…, controllers were forced to search for the missing aircraft among all the identical radar blips.” As Griffin notes, this is a major lie because it paints a picture of 4,500 radar blips being on each ATC’s screen. (Indeed the original magazine article explicitly said this.) But in reality, the radar scopes only cover a limited, local region; it is absurd to think that any single controller would be responsible for monitoring a screen with thousands of blips. Also, the four planes that had been hijacked would NOT have looked identical to the other blips, because only the hijacked jets would have been void of transponder data (a 4-digit code number and the plane’s altitude). So they would have stuck out like a sore thumb. Finally, as Griffin asks rhetorically, “Was the US military’s defense of the homeland during the Cold War based on the assumption that Soviet pilots would have the courtesy to leave their transponders on?”

These are just a few of the NUMEROUS examples of deception Griffin exposes in the Popular Mechanics publication. Anyone genuinely interested in knowing the truth about 9/11 will look at all available material, on all sides, and see the “debunkers” for who they are: people desperately grasping at straws to uphold a myth.

[Bryan_Ekers]

Whoever wrote that is rather clueless.

[Cisco]

I was going to mention at some point awhile back that most truthers are eventually backed into the corner of saying the FDNY was in on it, but that is an extraordinary claim, so I figured I’d be challenged on it and didn’t want to go looking for a cite. Thanks for doing my work for me, ivan.

[GIGObuster]

@ivan_astikov

To save me a bit of typing, here’s someone else’s points for you to refute.

Because the quoted portion (what a pathetic reply, that it is not from the book…) deals with the pentagon, I have to remind you that that issue was dealt with already in the same thread where I asked you to mention some of the book contents.

It was demonstrated that it is lunacy itself to even imply that what hit the pentagon was not a Boeing 757.

You were not paying any attention when we already posted about the Pentagon just a few months ago?

[Cisco]

@GIGObuster

You were not paying any attention when we already posted about the Pentagon just a few months ago?

Of course he was. He’s just hoping other people weren’t, or forgot. Around and around in circles.

Of the truthers who’ve already had all their claims proven wrong and backed out of this thread, how many do you think will be along to spout the exact same nonsense the next time they get a chance? I’d say all of them. I’d put money on it, in fact.

[Mr.Miskatonic]

That was insanity. It starts off with nitpickery (much of it inaccurate) and goes downhill to old, debunked myths. What a waste of brain cells.

[XT]

@ivan astikov

To save me a bit of typing, here’s someone else’s points for you to refute.

You aren’t seriously offering this up as some kind of evidence…are you? Why should anyone bother refuting a bunch of old, stale, previously debunked drivel? And it’s not even the silly, ranting BS from the author…it’s ranting BS done as a review of the authors book. :rolleyes:

-XT

[Try2B_Comprehensive]

Thanks for the links to the Bin Laden ‘confession’ video and transcript, Marley23.

I don’t have any reason to question the veracity of the Bin Laden video- is it him? Is it staged? People float these doubts, but even the most skeptical skeptic has to do better than that.
The one nit I have to pick with the transcript is this:

The brothers, who conducted the operation, all they knew was that they have a martyrdom operation and we asked each of them to go to America but they didn’t know anything about the operation, not even one letter. But they were trained and we did not reveal the operation to them until they are there and just before they boarded the planes.

Is that entirely plausible? Could a flight student, flying a real jetliner for the first time in his life, pull this off after hearing about it for the first time only that morning?

I’m just asking- squash that and that’s about it for talk of the Bin Laden video. I gotta take it at face value- big revelation huh?

On the topic of Bin Laden, a story floating around was that his relatives were flown out of the country, without being questioned by the FBI, while other flights were grounded. It is a weird event that exaggerates the atmosphere of a lack of credible evidence. But is that stroy true? If it is, is the policy defensible anyway? We might have spared a lot of waterboarding had we just sat down for a few minutes with some of these guys.
In response to other points on this thread… I want to point out that, as in Iraq, the motive to subvert Afghanistan preceeded 911- by decades. Here is another major root of my suspicions regarding the Afghanistan invasion. Check out this interview with Carter’s national security adviser:

“According to this 1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the CIA’s intervention in Afghanistan preceded the 1979 Soviet invasion. This decision of the Carter Administration in 1979 to intervene and destabilise Afghanistan is the root cause of Afghanistan’s destruction as a nation.”

"Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war? "

[Cisco]

@Try2B_Comprehensive

Thanks for the links to the Bin Laden ‘confession’ video and transcript, Marley23.

I don’t have any reason to question the veracity of the Bin Laden video- is it him? Is it staged? People float these doubts, but even the most skeptical skeptic has to do better than that.
The one nit I have to pick with the transcript is this:
Is that entirely plausible? Could a flight student, flying a real jetliner for the first time in his life, pull this off after hearing about it for the first time only that morning?

I’m just asking- squash that and that’s about it for talk of the Bin Laden video. I gotta take it at face value- big revelation huh?

If you don’t have a problem with it, why do you put ‘confession’ in quotes? And is it plausible? Well, yeah, see . . . it happened. Granted, I’ve never flown a jumbo jet (though I’ve actually taxied one) but I grew up around pilots, and they all said after the fact that it would’ve been pretty easy to hit those targets. I’ve flown official commercial and military simulators and most operations are relatively simple and obvious (save landing, damnit, but they didn’t have to worry about that.)

@Try2B_Comprehensive

On the topic of Bin Laden, a story floating around was that his relatives were flown out of the country, without being questioned by the FBI, while other flights were grounded. It is a weird event that exaggerates the atmosphere of a lack of credible evidence. But is that stroy true? If it is, is the policy defensible anyway? We might have spared a lot of waterboarding had we just sat down for a few minutes with some of these guys.

How much did you bother reading about this before posting your “suspicions” here? It’s not a big secret. bin Laden’s family is positively huge, and he’s been estranged from most of them for decades.

[Try2B_Comprehensive]

@Cisco

If you don’t have a problem with it, why do you put ‘confession’ in quotes?

Because that is a label I myself put on it, and not ‘the official story’.

And is it plausible? Well, yeah, see . . . it happened. Granted, I’ve never flown a jumbo jet (though I’ve actually taxied one) but I grew up around pilots, and they all said after the fact that it would’ve been pretty easy to hit those targets. I’ve flown official commercial and military simulators and most operations are relatively simple and obvious (save landing, damnit, but they didn’t have to worry about that.)

How much did you bother reading about this before posting your “suspicions” here? It’s not a big secret. bin Laden’s family is positively huge, and he’s been estranged from most of them for decades.

What’s your opinion on the Brzezinsky interview?

[Cisco]

@Try2B_Comprehensive

What’s your opinion on the Brzezinsky interview?

It’s literally old news, like most of the things you’ve been bringing up in this thread.

[Try2B_Comprehensive]

Hmmm… the CIA ‘destabilizes’ Afghanistan in 1979, provoking the Soviet invasion… under the circumstances, that can be dismissed as ‘old news’? :rolleyes:

[XT]

@Try2B Comprehensive

I don’t have any reason to question the veracity of the Bin Laden video- is it him? Is it staged?

Think it through then. If reason and facts won’t work, how about logic? Bin Laden is a free agent. He has access to media that not connected in any way to the US or our puppet’s. He has, over the course of the last nearly 8 years(!!), put out numerous statements to those outlets. Do you have any evidence that he has denied his and AQ’s part in 9/11? Anything? Any indications that his interview was ‘staged’? Like, I don’t know, say a counter statement from ObL himself indicating it was ‘staged’?? Anything?

Is that entirely plausible? Could a flight student, flying a real jetliner for the first time in his life, pull this off after hearing about it for the first time only that morning?

Easily. The hardest thing would probably be finding the target…which was why they ended up hitting things like the WTC (kind of easy to see on the NY skyline) and the Pentagon (another building easy to locate from the air, considering the flight plan). Any one even passingly familiar with flying (and these guys had gotten fairly intense training, even if they had never actually flown a real aircraft) could have done the deed. The hard thing about flying is LANDING the plane…not turning it.

On the topic of Bin Laden, a story floating around was that his relatives were flown out of the country, without being questioned by the FBI, while other flights were grounded.

Debunked.

-XT

[Cisco]

@xtisme

Debunked.

-XT

Huh. Thought that one was true.

[XT]

@Cisco

Huh. Thought that one was true.

Nope. It’s been addressed a few times in old threads on this subject…but I figured maybe the Snopes citation would get through, since all of the other cites I’ve linked too in this thread have pretty much been ignored.

@Try2B Comprehensive

Hmmm… the CIA ‘destabilizes’ Afghanistan in 1979, provoking the Soviet invasion… under the circumstances, that can be dismissed as ‘old news’?

You know what? Let’s see a cite from you to back this bullshit up. Because it’s news to me. It seems rather counter-intuitive that the CIA would put the PDPA in power…especially since they turned around and ‘invited’ the Soviets to step in shortly after the coup…

-XT

[Cisco]

@xtisme

Nope. It’s been addressed a few times in old threads on this subject…but I figured maybe the Snopes citation would get through, since all of the other cites I’ve linked too in this thread have pretty much been ignored.

It just goes to show the level of saturation some of this bullshit can reach. I could’ve swore I remembered hearing that from a legitimate source.

@xtisme

You know what? Let’s see a cite from you to back this bullshit up. Because it’s news to me. It seems rather counter-intuitive that the CIA would put the PDPA in power…especially since they turned around and ‘invited’ the Soviets to step in shortly after the coup…

-XT

I read his quote wrong. I thought it was talking about helping Afghanistan against the Soviets. Then I went to the website he got it off of . . . whew . . .

[XT]

@Cisco

It just goes to show the level of saturation some of this bullshit can reach. I could’ve swore I remembered hearing that from a legitimate source.

You probably did. I’ve seen several, especially from early on, that were repeating this little bit of fiction. You are right…it shows how mis-information can be propagated even through main stream media outlets. This one has been debunked for quite a while now. If you are ever board you can probably find it in at least 1 old 9/11 CT thread here in GD.

I read his quote wrong. I thought it was talking about helping Afghanistan against the Soviets. Then I went to the website he got it off of . . . whew . . .

Yeah…this one is beyond nutty. Why the hell would the CIA have staged a coup against Mohammed Daoud Khan to put the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan in power?? A MARXIST group?? In order to encourage the Soviets to be invited into Afghanistan in the hope that the religious fanatics would take umbrage and stage a successful revolt nearly a decade down the road?? Ok…I realize the CIA is evil and all…but let’s get real here.

-XT

[PBear42]

Who would of thunk this thread would still be going strong eleven days and seven pages later?

Try2B, you seem like a sensible person. You’ve shown an admirable ability to read posts and draw reasonable inferences. At this point, could you please restate the question. If the question is whether the Bush administration exploited 9/11 to justify the invasion of Iraq, I think most of us on the SDMB would agree. If the question is whether the Bush adminstration orchestrated the attacks, I think most of us on the SDMB would say that’s hogwash.

As far as you’re concerned, what’s the issue on the table?

[Try2B_Comprehensive]

@xtisme

You know what? Let’s see a cite from you to back this bullshit up. Because it’s news to me. It seems rather counter-intuitive that the CIA would put the PDPA in power…especially since they turned around and ‘invited’ the Soviets to step in shortly after the coup…

-XT

Here’s a quote from the article I already cited:

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

B: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Remember, B is Jimmy Carter’s National Security adviser, not some crank on a message board somewhere.

[RogueAOV]

Disclaimer, all links below i have posted but that does not mean i agree with everything in them, but

@interface2x

Honest questions …

1. Why would they admit that something was a definitely possibility and then when it becomes a reality, deny it? That doesn’t make sense. And was it really just amazing timing that said fighter jet just happened to shoot them down within seconds of the passengers breeching the pilot’s cabin?

2. If there were bombs in the basements of the WTC, why didn’t we hear explosive charges going off (which, I imagine, would sound deafening anywhere nearby) in the documentary shot by the French brothers where one was actually IN the basement of tower 2 when it collapsed? All you hear in that movie is a slow rumble of things falling and collapsing before everything starts to go black.

To your first point, i think it does make sense for them to deny a shoot down. Assuming that the pilots tailing it did not know the passengers were retaking the plane, due to natural delay in passing of information from an air traffic controller to NORAD or whomever would have contact with the pilot/s, they wouldnt have known in time to stop it. After the fact i can easily imagine from a PR standpoint that admitting to shooting down a passenger jet…that had been retaken, would look very bad for the administration publicy. I wouldnt have blamed anyone for the mistake and i can imagine not many would attack the pilots for bringing the plane down, however the attacks that did come would be bitter,long and very political so, i can see why a cover up on that issue is possible.

Relevant link

To your second point, i believe this video is what you are talking about and as a interesting side note, this footage does refute the “freefall speed claim” so many argue over. the collapse starts about half way thru the clip and by my count you hear a rumble for about 20 seconds before it goes black. Now i do not know exactly where they are in the building but they do run up a flight of stairs as they try to escape, so i assume basement one? but it certainly is longer than 9 seconds so not freefall speed.

Also the video cuts to just before the collapse takes place so it is unclear to me, if no loud noise was heard several seconds before the tower began to fall. And i have to assume that the entire situation would be filled with very loud bangs and noises so there would be noway to know for sure if the fireman would have heard a explosion, or realised what it was. Also i do not argue the point that a explosion was what made the towers fall, I however think it weakened the structure enough to ensure collapse. Now this seismic graph seems to indicate that something happened prior to the collapse. But in truth i do not know anything about seismic readings so that chart could be nothing but, i am just showing evidence to validate the basis for my argument. Now i know i will be attacked for showing evidence i do not understand fully but that graph is a quick way to point out scientific data backing my other research which brought me to my initial conclusion.

Secondly, there was news reports about car bombs etc on the news that day in area and i have heard eye witness reports of explosions in the towers that day, i wont bother tracking down those for cites as they could be nothing more than heresay, and panic and shock could lead anyone to misread the situation. But police officers and firemen, i think warrant attention.

This is a montage i found, not all relevant but, some is.
My secondary point, is the molten steel in the basement found while clearing the wreckage.

Now my understanding is, that the fire could not have been hot enough to melt the steel, but it certainly would weaken the steel, so why was there any molten steel at all, barring some kind of explosive, or thermite etc?

Another issue is have is, denying molten steel and videos showing molten metal and this additional video

I do not claim to be a expert on this and as i have stated i am not a truther, i am a rational person and i am very thankful to be asked a “honest question” to reply to instead of simply being mocked for not believing the official theory.

The purpose of a debate is to win over the other side thru polite argument and discussion and i do not believe that any non believer or believer is going to change the base view of the tragic events of 9/11 on this message board so the pointless name calling etc is unwarranted(as my tin hat clearly protects me from any such attacks i am unaffected:p) so can we just keep this discussion civil and debate the points.

As i said previously, the endless passing back and forth of “evidence” on this subject is not really going to assist anyone, as any “truther” evidence is discredited on the basis of “its not the official theory” likewise the official theory… is the “official” and hence the “conspiracy”.
For example as a conspiracy believer(to an extent) the idea missiles were used is patently absurd. If you are flying a 200 tonne metal object filled with fuel into a metal structure filled with electrical equipment… i do not think you would need to ignite it yourself. The idea the entire news media is in on it is also clearly stupid. The smaller a conspiracy is, the less chance of it getting out, so the idea of telling thousands of journalists the story…and not expecting someone to write a exclusive…is insane.

So please do not write me off as a conspiracy nut, i clearly do not believe all the claims, i just have questions i would like answered to my satisfaction in a unbiased way.

Now if i may ask a new question, is there anything in the official theory that the conspiracy deniers have issue with, like i do?