Well, something obviously did, so what’s your theory and what evidence would tend to support it?
You mean like these?
http://italy.indymedia.org/uploads/2005/04/impact-area.jpg
Let me guess, you’ve only seen ones like the first, with the fires cropped out.
What about the black smoke from this furniture store fire?
http://www.cdc.gov/NIOSH/FIRE/images/200718App5a.jpg
http://media.charleston.net/img/photos/2007/06/18/sofa_store_fire-1_t600.jpg
The Charleston fire department dispatched equipment from 10 different stations, including two battalions, and called in off-duty firefighters; three stations from a neighboring community also responded. The one-story 42,000 square foot steel frame collapsed and killed nine firefighters.
It’s like tag-team CTers.
I’m thinking more along the line of weeds…
-XT
It isn’t a wasted effort, I’ll grant you that. As you say, AQ has a more difficult road to hoe because of all this.
But it is insanely inefficient. As you say, a higher priority would have yielded better results. On top of that, a smarter priority. Maybe one focused more on terrorists and less on Afghan civilians. I’m still waiting for maps of the locations of the terrorist camps, and a description of the first year of military action in Afghanistan. May I suggest that a massive invasion of the area of the camps might have caught OBL, or at least put an end to the talk of fugitive terrorists?
I really do wish there was a magic pipeline at the end of all this… it would make it seem a little more worthwhile.
As Lute Skywatcher’s links show, there’s a lot more stuff in a building that can burn and produce tons of black smoke than jet fuel - furniture, paper, cubicles, etc. I don’t think that the “maximum temperature” that jet fuel can burn at really enters into the question since structural steel doesn’t have to get as hot as people think to lose substantial strength - around 500F or 600F will do it and that’s not much hotter than burning paper.
Regarding WTC7, NIST concluded that fires caused the collapse of that building but it didn’t burn up in the way that a wooden house might, rather thermal expansion combined with the use of relatively long structural members led to collapse. Here’s a quote from their report:
[QUOTE=NIST]
Determining the probable collapse sequence for WTC 7, NIST found that the impact of debris from the collapse of WTC 1 ignited fires on at least 10 floors of WTC 7, and the fires burned out of control on six lower floors. The heat from these uncontrolled fires caused thermal expansion of the steel beams on the lower floors of the east side of WTC 7, damaging the floor framing on multiple floors. Eventually, a girder on Floor 13 lost its connection to a critical interior column that provided support for the long floor spans on the east side of the building. The displaced girder and other local fire-induced damage caused Floor 13 to collapse, beginning a cascade of floor failures down to the fifth floor. Many of these floors had already been at least partially weakened by the fires in the vicinity of the critical column. This collapse of floors left the critical column unsupported over nine stories.
“When this critical column buckled due to lack of floor supports, it was the first domino in the chain,” Sunder explained. “What followed in rapid succession was a progression of structural failures. Failure first occurred all the way to the roof line—involving all three interior columns on the most eastern side of the building. Then, progressing from east to west across WTC 7, all of the columns in the core of the building failed. Finally, the entire façade collapsed.”
[/QUOTE]
Here’s a link to the summary and you can go through the whole thing in detail if you like:
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/wtc082108.html
I agree that the exact cause of the collapse of WTC7 was not obvious - given that it took several years work by a whole bunch of people who specialize in the related fields (structural engineering, materials science and so forth) to figure out the precise mechanism. That doesn’t mean that NIST (or the engineering community as a whole) is trying to deceive anyone.
What we didn’t have is GWB’s opinion on our side.
[QUOTE=Try2B Comprehensive]
But it is insanely inefficient.
[/QUOTE]
I’m unsure what you mean exactly. What is insanely inefficient?
Personally I think we should have focused solely on Afghanistan, using special forces and air strikes (all things we did, but we should have stayed with it). Once the Taliban were in retreat and the AQ bases flattened we could have moved in ground forces and then focused our efforts on stabilizing Afghanistan and making it a viable nation. Our initial plan and execution were actually quite good IMHO…we just lost focus after the initial successes and then wandered off to Iraq. THAT was the big mistake, again IMHO.
Why wait? Google it up…it’s not classified or anything.
Suggest away…but I would look at a map of the area first, before I suggested such a thing. I’d also look up the military terms ‘staging’ and ‘logistics’, but that’s just me. 
Well, I wish we had gotten a stable Afghanistan out of the deal, personally. That’s neither here nor there though…we fucked up and I’m unsure if we can or will fix it at this point. However, this is sort of wandering off topic. We went into Afghanistan for well founded reasons…the fact that we fucked it up afterward has nothing to do with WHY we went in. It simply shows what an idiot Bush et al were, and how badly they screwed the pooch. But no conspiracy is necessary…there was no deep, dark, nefarious reasons for the invasion. We went in because that’s where AQ was…and they were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Nothing more to see behind the curtain, not on this score anyway.
Now, if you want to talk about Iraq…
-XT
Nah, it’s pretty obvious. If the firefighters said they could put the fires out “in fifteen minutes”, then why weren’t the fires out in fifteen minutes?
This is what the buildings looked like at 10:00am. What’s causing the smoke if not fire?
And is well within the temperature range of burning furniture. Fire investigators in Charleston say temperatures inside the store were in excess of 1000°.
…please take it to another thread so I can ignore it in peace. 
It was really a rhetorical question…I have no desire to rehash Iraq either.
-XT
Oh sure, like you can trust those so-called “experts”. And why, years later, do we still not know the precise distribution of Ottomans versus Barcaloungers?
Do we HAVE to rehash this ANOTHER TIME?!?!? This is the last time I’m explaining it: the Barcaloungers were in the Rec Room and the Ottomans were in Turkey.
I mean, DUH!
I’m still hung up on the idea that invading Afghanistan wasn’t necessary. We just dropped 10,000 marines by helicopter into Hemland- doing something like that with air support against the terrorist camps as the first move would have been a convincing attack on terrorism. Occupying the entire territory indefinitely? Not so much.
I still question the ‘harboring’ bit. While the pipeline wasn’t realized, looking at the splash it made was instructive in portraying what big business with the Taliban looks like. AFAIK there hasn’t been any real transaction between AQ and the Taliban cited. If I missed it, sorry. Merely living in Afghanistan- considering a guy who is part of the reason the place didn’t become a Soviet territory- doesn’t equate in my mind with being a ‘harbored terrorist’ as it was presented as cause for war. I am still suspicious that the Bush doctrine parses to: “We will make no distinction between shit and shinola.” The Taliban just didn’t equate to one big international terrorist organization. If the invasion of Afghanistan wasn’t already decided, why the heck not give them the evidence that Bin Laden was responsible? What in fact was the evidence, pre invasion, that Bin Laden was responsible? Would turning it over reveal some kind of secret, maybe something hidden in the omitted portions of the 911 Commission Report dealing with Saudi funding of OBL? I suspect the ‘harboring’ part is actually Saudi funding, putting OBL at the business end of a hose of cash which gives him the ability to make camp in half-failed countries. If the Taliban were doing materially more than (maybe) turning a blind eye, what was it? If your answer is ‘they should have prevented the attacks’, check this out:
% of solved crimes in US
Nobody disputes that Afghanistan was more lawless than average, or that Bin Laden’s camps might have been beyond the control of conventional law enforcement. Considering America’s results, how can the Taliban’s failure to prevent some CIA-trained super-secret international terrorist from achieving his nefarious deeds make them culpable for those deeds? Especially considering the terrorists, including OBL, were mostly Saudi, the money was probably Saudi, and the 911 terrorists were not working out of Afghanistan but instead all over Europe and the US.
Nobody disputes that the Taliban sucked, either. But weighed against the cost of invasion, if the Taliban isn’t our problem, lumping their Afghanistan in with OBL’s operation is a wasteful mistake.
I’d be much happier with your scenario than the real outcome. Obviously I think we should have focused only on AQ.
I honestly tried. I couldn’t find a map of locations of AQ camps in Afghanistan, nor could I find maps of US military actions in Afghanistan. I saw some teasers, but they didn’t pay off… I’ve admitted my google-fu sucks. I’ll keep trying.
Thanks for the tip
We fucked it up: fact.
We went in for well-founded reasons: well, better than for Iraq at least.
The fact that we fucked it up has nothing to do with WHY we went in: this falls under the ‘Bush is stupid’ category. If their bullshit looks stupid to the uninformed casual observer, they’re ok with that. Question if there is more bullshit than meets the eye and you’re in for a ton of shit.
No conspiracy is necessary: Conspiracy is probably the wrong word. I don’t think Bush et al planned the 911 attacks, so this whole affair wasn’t pre-conceived. I do still harbor the sneaking suspicion that much if not most of the response was a big exploit.
Well… there seems to be a lot more accessible material on that topic for one to research oneself, no?
What more evidence do you want than ObL releasing statements saying AQ were responsible? (See numerous references upthread.) Surely you can see that, post 9/11, even if all they were doing was “turning a blind eye” there was no way any US administration - Bush, Clinton, or even Carter - could let the situation continue.
On your idea that:
Just how would the US do that? As xtisme says “look up the military terms 'staging’and ‘logistics’”. The operation in Helmand launched yesterday was only possible thanks to the massive infrastucture the NATO forces have built up over the last eight years.
For what it’s worth my take on the Afgan saga is that the original war to oust the Taliban and disrupt/destroy/capture OBL and AQ was not only justified but politically inevitable. The opening campaign was actually pretty successful, the mistake was to both try and make Afganistan a sort of liberal democracy and then to divert forces to an even larger war in Iraq. Without full American committment the remaning NATO forces had nothing like enough force to stabalize the country and finish off the Taliban - particularly as they were able to retreat to the safe haven of the tribal areas in Pakistan.
If you want a depressing view of the present situation read Matthew Parris’s columnin today’s Times. (For information Parris is an intelligent and thoughtful columnist who used to be a Conservative MP in the Thatcher years.)
Nothing matters if you can BELIEVE things on the basis of no data. Fortunately that is not how physics works.
So how did they do a conservation of momentum analysis without the distribution of mass data?
If they have the data why haven’t they told us?
The NIST admits the south tower moved 12 inches 130 feet below the impact point. Therefore it had to move at least 12 inches 130 feet above the impact point. So since the perimeter wall panels were 36 feet tall and there were 76 all of the way around the tower there had to be about 550 that moved 1 foot in less than 2 seconds because of the impact. That does not even count the 20 floor slabs and 260 feet of core. Every analysis that does not get the distribution of steel and concrete correct has to be wrong. The NIST does not even tell us the number and weights of the 12 types of wall panels though they admit those panels supported 50% of the buildings weight. But we are supposed to pay attention to this rubbish about heat conducting down a 1360 foot column and pretend it makes sense to ignore the beams that had to be attached.
psik
As has been mentioned many times in this thread, this data is freely available in New York City - all you have to do is go to the correct department that approves buildings and makes sure they’re up to code, request the building plans, and add to your hearts content. It’s not a case of them not telling us, it’s a simple case of **you **not wanting to do the work necessary to get the data you want.
Posting the word “beleive” in all caps is not a valid argument. It is nothing but sniping dressed up to make you feel superior. Knock it off.
Really? I did not find this claim in any of your links. Are you introducing one more invented factoid from some CT site?
Given that this site is repeating the bullshit about “molten steel” and even lying about the sources for the false rumor, I am not sure why you want us to “believe” that it is a reliable site. (I note that they, too, go to great lengths to ignore the fact that the insulation of the trusses was blown off in the crash. The (bad) assumption by the original engineers did not take into account there being no effective insulation at the fire location. That hardly turns the destruction into an unsolvable mystery.)
Not true. Just because an analysis does not have every piece of information doesn’t necessarily mean the outcome is incorrect. The pieces of data could be insignificant, or other wrong assumptions could balance out the missing data. Also, why do you automatically assume they don’t have the data? Just because you don’t have the data doesn’t mean they don’t.