Let's stop this conspiracy theory before it starts

Factual Questions
21

What is going on here???

I am not particularly fond of conspiracy theories, and I abhor and utterly detest any terrorist act. I feel sorry for all the victims of the Sep-11 attack and their families.

But there is something bothering me here. I checked the web page “Hunt the Boeing”, and the supposed debunking of it on “Snopes” and the Paul Boutin websites, and to be true, they debunk nothing!

Actually, in my mind, they raise more questions than bring answers. You’ll see, I’m an airline pilot (some people here might remember me), and some of these “debunking” theories make no sense at all to me.

Let me be clear about something: I am neither for or against the ideas presented in the “Hunt the Boeing” site, as long as I do not collect enough information. Actually, I find some of the questions totally absurd. My quarrel is with the apparent skepticism shown in the process of answering the questions posed there, which IMHO is mere doubtfulness disguised as critical thinking.

I do not care if the people behind the debunking have many titles hanging off their walls, all I care is that they carry a proper analyisis of the questions posed. And, by the way, the “Hunt The Boeing” site is not offering any theory, they are just asking questions, whether they sound stupid or not.

So, I myself have a few questions to ask:

  1. How do they know the airplane was flying at 250 MPH? SNOPES first mentions a speed of 350 MPH, and later 250 MPH. Which one is correct?

  2. Was the airplane sliding just before hitting the building, with its wings leveled horizontally, or was it “tilted” (sic) at a 45° angle as they claim some witnesses saw?

  3. Dont you find the claim of SNOPES that “…the outer portions of the wing likely snapped during the initial impact, then were pushed inward towards the fuselage and carried into the building’s interior” a little ridiculous? First, they would have to define “outer” and “inner”. Second, the wing’s root (most inner portion), is located closer to the front of the aircraft than the rest of the wing. Should’nt the wing roots have striken the building BEFORE the “outer portions” and larger debris remained outside the building?

  4. Assuming that the airplane disintegrated almost totally after the impact, and that is the reason why no large portions of aircraft debris remained, still, why are there no signs of any kind of an impact from the wings, OR THE TAIL of the aircraft, on the walls of the building on the sides of the collapsed portion of it? I know there are signs of fire, but no visible scratch.

  5. The airplane supposedly “…hit the ground” before striking the building. Some even say that it clipped portions of a tree and a light pole. Any pictures of marks on the ground or the damaged trees and poles? Also, if it hit the ground, and the wings were not tilted, the engines should have hit first. If it was tilted, it would be reasonable that the wing tip hit first, then. In both cases, since the ground in question is soft ground (compared to concrete or pavement), it is also reasonable to presume that the aircraft would have stumbled and started coming into pieces way before striking the building.

  6. What happened to the engines? According to Paul Boutin, one of the “debunkers” mentioned in this thread, “…(e)yewitnesses and news reporters have talked about the twelve-foot hole punched through the inside wall of the second ring by one of the plane’s engines.” And later on, his partner, Patrick Di Justo, an astrophycisist, says that “…the engines probably did not penetrate the building.” What was it then? Engines in, or engines out?

I am NOT saying that the Pentagon wasn’t hit by something, but every time I see pictures of the site I found it hard to believe it was a B757.

I do not want to be disrespectful to the victims and their relatives. I just want to get some answers. Maybe someone here could help me.

And just to add a little note, from the Yahoo newspage from Ringo’s post,

22

So, where are the passengers then?

23

Well, they’re in heaven, son.
Peace,
mangeorge

24

They’re living on a tropical island along with the Challenger astronauts, Elvis, Jim Morrison and Adolf Hitler! (And possibly the Apollo One astronauts, but I haven’t seen any conclusive evidence yet. :wink: )

25

There’s always the fact that the stills from a security camera show that no truck/car/whatever was parked up alongside the Pentagon - and if you look closely you can see the plane approaching from the right hand side of the first picture.

Click here.

The plane is hard to spot in the stills (it was clearer on larger pics I saw on telly), but look just above the right hand post thing (compare it to the other pics).

26

To be perfectly honest, these conspiracy theorist drive me nuts. Why does everything have to have a hidden agenda?

I was reading about one theory that says the planes were all being controlled from the ground by the US government (or something), and that there wasn’t any hi-jackers. Please, can’t these people show a little respect?:frowning:

27

Perhaps only some of them are in heaven as I’m applying “passenger” to everyone who was on that plane.

28

E1skeptic, just what kind of evidence do you want? We know the following facts:
[ul][li]A large Boeing airliner stopped normal communication with the ground[/li][li]That aircraft did not subsequently land at any airport[/li][li]On the same day, three other airliners were hijacked for purposes of being crashed into targets[/li][li]On board the missing airliner were several men known to be associated with the other hijackers[/li][li]Shortly after normal contact was lost with the vehicle in question, numerous eyewitnesses saw an airplane approach the Pentagon and crash into it[/li][li]After the event observed by said eyewitnesses, the Pentagon was observed to have serious damage on the side where the plane was reported to have crashed[/li][li]No person who checked onto that flight has since been seen alive[/li]Forensic investigators who were called to the scene came to the expert conclusion that the damage and debris at the site were consistent with an airplane crash[/ul]Now, I can think of exactly one theory which can account for all of these observations. If you have another theory you’d care to share which also explains all these observations, let us know, and we can compare the plausibility of the two theories.

29

What kind of evidence do I want? Simple, just answer my previous questions.

Do I have any theory? No, I have none.

I am NOT trying to come up with a conspiracy theory. I am just trying to find out why is it that the pictures that I have seen, including the video from the Pentagon’s security camera, are not consistent (in my view) with a B757 crashing into the building. If my tone made you think otherwise, I apologize.

So far, I am pretty sure it was a flying object which caused the damage to the Pentagon. It most probably was an airplane. Maybe it was a B757. But it just doesn’t LOOK like it.

Has anyone here thought that maybe I’m just gathering information, and asking for help in order to REALLY debunk a possible conspiracy theory? I am not the bad guy here :wink: .

sirjamesp : There WAS a car parked almost in front of the impact area. There are pictures of it, it was badly damaged. The fact that you didn’t see it in the video, doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, right? Think about it.

In my previous post I was basically criticizing what I consider an unproper “debunking” process. If you are to reply to an apparent crazy theory, you have to be consistent. And so far, even the official version is not very consistent.

Chronos’ list of facts is well known to me. Although I could come up with a rebuttal for each of them, that is not my intention. I just want answers to my previous set of questions.

If you guys could help me, I’d appreciate it. If you can’t, or won’t, I thank you anyway.

Saludos.

30

The car was “badly damaged”? I would imagine that a bomb powerful enough to destroy much of the Pentagon would do more than “badly damage” the car containing it.

31

Sirjamesp : Just WHEN did I suggest that there was a bomb in the car I mentioned?

I was merely pointing out the fact that you are relying on the images from the security camera in order to affirm that “…no truck/car/whatever was parked up alongside the Pentagon”, when in fact there was a car parked just outside.

What I am implying here is that we do not have the complete picture of what happened. Information is incomplete and that is something that conspirators use in their favor. We have to be objective if we want to debunk their claims.

Please, read my WHOLE previous post.

32

Then what they was a badly damaged car doing sitting by the Pentagon, as you claim? Anyway, using zoom with my picture editor, you can see quite blurrily (I know that’s not a word) that in the first surveillance frame there is a very large commercial airliner skidding across the ground.

33

This strikes me as akin to some of the more poisonous breeds of crypto-fascist reasoning: arguing that Holocaust deniers “might” have a point and that we can’t really be sure that 6 million Jews died without more investigation. Or that we can’t really be sure that all the Jews working at the World Trade Center weren’t warned not to come to the office on September 11. Or that that “I am not aware of any evidence showing that President Bush or members of his administration have personally profited from the attacks of 9-11. A complete investigation might reveal that to be the case.” Look at the company you’re keeping here, “E1skeptic”.

In a catastrophic attack like this, it’s hardly surprising that conflicting evidence and eyewitness accounts emerge. A lot of details probably never will be known with complete certainty. None of it changes the fact that terrorists did indeed comandeer a civilian jetliner and deliberately crashed it into the Pentagon, thereby murdering hundreds of people.

So at the very least, you’re jerking yourself off over extremely petty details that have no bearing on this basic fact. If you’re not getting satisfactory responses to your inquiry here, it’s probably because most of us simply don’t give a shit–and neither would anyone else that doesn’t have a (hidden?) agenda.

At worst, however, you are–knowingly or unknowingly–contributing to harmful propaganda that will be seized on by the very real enemies that are arrayed against our country. People have been murdered by these scum and, unfortunately, even more people stand to lose their lives at the terrorists’ hands if we provide them with the opportunity. By contributing to the body of fantasy hate/conspiracy literature that feeds our enemies’ propaganda mills, you (in your own small way) enable them to further delude their people and line up more “martyrs” for their cause.

Fighting ignorance, indeed. Please, go back to your “Nitpicker’s Guide to Star Trek” and leave the real world to people who can handle it.

34

You all might be right about my stupidity. You see, I am not an american citizen, and therefore anything I say is probably wrong.

I didn’t realize that my inquiry could be so harmful to your country.

I even thought that I was trying to help. But I now clearly see that I was not. I’m sorry. I apologize for being so stubborn.

I also recall now why I stopped posting in this forum long ago.

I will shut up now. I will go back to my whatever-guide-to-Star-Trek and leave you guys alone. Maybe now no one will get hurt.

35

There are a couple of ways of determining speed. One is simply by radar tracking. With a functioning transponder this is easily tracked by ATC radar. With the hijacked planes of Sept 11, the transponders were shut off (this is an easy thing to do, if you know your way around a cockpit) which means the speed tracking wasn’t quite so automatic. However, it has long been a standard procedure to keep records of ATC radar returns. Information from these returns can be analysed to give good information on speed and heading of a radar “blip”, even without accompanying transponder. One downside is that civilian aviation radar does not extend down to the ground, and can be blocked by tall buildings, mountains, and other obstructions.

Other means of determining speed include, of course, the black boxes (if they survive - they don’t always), calculations based on the force required to cause particular damage with a certain weight of object, and other, less direct methods, all of which have been used in prior crashes and accidents.

The plane was turning prior to hitting the building. Whether it was still turning at time of impact is possibly still not certain. It is quite possible for an eyewitness to report a “45 degree angle” a second or two prior to impact and yet still have impact occur with wings level or nearly so - it all depends on the roll rate of the jet in question, which in turns depends not only the physical capabilities of the airplane but also what the pilot is willing to do in terms of abrupt manuvers.

Remember that the Snopes people aren’t pilots (as far as I know) or aero-engineers. Yes, the wing roots hit first - that still does not eliminate the possibility of the outer part of the wings breaking off. Impact forces may well have led to those portions of the wings breaking off towards the fuselage rather than being sheared off or flying off elsewhere to land as large chunks of debris. Remember, all debris will tend to keep moving forward at high velocity - if it can go forward into the building at all, it will.

The parts of the building showing the impact damage collapsed during the fire. Hence, the bricks with the evidence are not those standing but those in a heap on the ground.

The plane did NOT “hit the ground” prior to impact - where did you get that? I haven’t heard it before your post. It DID clip a lightpole or two just prior to impact. You make it sound like it was cutting a swath through a national forest and mowing down 400 lightpoles. It wasn’t. This “hit the ground” thing sounds like a rumor-generated exaggeration of statements that the plane was very low, and eyewitnesses might have thought it was about to hit the ground but it didn’t actually do so.

Excuse me, do you ask your dentist about how to treat the bunion on your foot? I don’t think so. Why would you assume an astrophysicist (a guy who studies stars) is somehow qualified to analyse the scene of an airplane crash? Two totally different fields.

Let’s also keep in mind the difference between eyewitnesses - in other words, people on the scene - reporting on damage caused by the engine(s) entering the building and this so-called “debunker”, who is presumably sitting across an ocean from the scene saying the engines “probably” did not penetrate the building. On what does this guy base his “probably”? It seems the facts may get in the way of his theory.

36

Thanks,

That is all we asked for. :wally

37

E1Skeptic Said:

Okay, so what is an airliner hitting a steel-reinforced concrete building supposed to look like? Do you have any examples to compare it to?

I haven’t seen anything remotely implausible about the description of the crash site. As I said before, large airliners are heavy, but they aren’t particularly solid. The density of the Pentagon is probably hundreds of times greater. Not only that, but aircraft get their strength from the way the structure is built, and not from the materials themselves (you could flex an airliner’s skin on your hands if it wasn’t riveted to the internal structure). Wheras the structure of the Pentagon will stay heavy and strong even if deformed.

Given all that, the likely result of an airliner hitting something like the Pentagon is going to be somewhat similar to an airliner hitting the ground from a spin, with the exception that the tail structure probably carried through to the interior of the building and was consumed by fire.

Speaking of fire - a jetliner fire raging inside a building like that would have very quickly destroyed most of the structure that was left of that airplane. To see the effects of fire, have a look at this photo of the Tenerife crash of two 747’s: http://planecrashinfo.com/w770327.htm

Notice that even though the aircraft hit each other glancing blows, there is NOTHING left of the Pan-Am plane other than a wing. The fuselage is completely gone.

Here’s another photo of what fire does to an airplane. Note that in this case, the fuel didn’t even burn - this was just a cabin fire, raging through the flammable materials inside the plane: http://planecrashinfo.com/w800819.htm

Here’s what’s typically left of a large aircraft after it hits something solid: http://planecrashinfo.com/w941031.htm

The bottom of this page shows a picture of the Pentagon crash that I hadn’t seen before. It sure looks like a lot of aircraft debris scattered on the ground to me: http://planecrashinfo.com/w010911.htm

Given all this, I’m completely baffled at this ‘controversy’. The crash into the pentagon looks to me like a completely typically large aircraft crash site.

38

Waitaminnit . . . this photo clearly shows a car in the foreground . . . this was obviously the work of a car bomb!

It should be obvious at this point that the 757 crashed into the Pentagon only as a ruse to cover up the car bomb.

Now, I’m going to sit here with my arms folded, pouting, until somebody proves to me that this was not the case.

Did I mention that I like pie?

39

One more thing: the eyewitnesses on the plane, including Barbara Olson, who made contact by telephone. They apparently corroborated the hijacker detail, and also lost contact at the moment the plane ostensibly hit the Pentagon.

But, hey, maybe they were all “in on it.”

40

E1skeptic writes:

> So, I myself have a few questions to ask:
>
> 1. How do they know the airplane was flying at 250 MPH?
> SNOPES first mentions a speed of 350 MPH, and later 250 MPH.
> Which one is correct?

A plane has to be going a certain speed or it can’t fly. In addition, it wasn’t too hard to come up with a fairly exact time schedule of the plane’s path as it flew around Washington looking for its target.

> 2. Was the airplane sliding just before hitting the building, with
> its wings leveled horizontally, or was it “tilted” (sic) at a 45°
> angle as they claim some witnesses saw?

This sounds like the sorts of differences witnesses might make in their observations just because they’re at different angles to the crash. How would the angle matter to the extent of damage?

> 3. Dont you find the claim of SNOPES that “…the outer portions
> of the wing likely snapped during the initial impact, then were
> pushed inward towards the fuselage and carried into the
> building’s interior” a little ridiculous? First, they would have to
> define “outer” and “inner”. Second, the wing’s root (most inner
> portion), is located closer to the front of the aircraft than the
> rest of the wing. Should’nt the wing roots have striken the
> building BEFORE the “outer portions” and larger debris
> remained outside the building?

Presumably what happened was that the front of the plane hit the building first, smashing open a hole in the building. The plane entered the building and the wings then hit the building. They broke off and swung back against the rest of the body. As the wings hit the body, they caused the gas tank to burst and the plane began to burn. Soon there was an enormous fire burning up the plane (which was now completely inside the building) and any adjacent portions of the building.

> 4. Assuming that the airplane disintegrated almost totally after
> the impact, and that is the reason why no large portions of
> aircraft debris remained, still, why are there no signs of any
> kind of an impact from the wings, OR THE TAIL of the aircraft, on
> the walls of the building on the sides of the collapsed portion of
> it? I know there are signs of fire, but no visible scratch.

The plane was completely inside the building after the crash. All you can see in the pictures is a big hole in the building with a lot of burnt stuff inside.

> 5. The airplane supposedly “…hit the ground” before striking
> the building. Some even say that it clipped portions of a tree
> and a light pole. Any pictures of marks on the ground or the
> damaged trees and poles? Also, if it hit the ground, and the
> wings were not tilted, the engines should have hit first. If it
> was tilted, it would be reasonable that the wing tip hit first,
> then. In both cases, since the ground in question is soft ground
> (compared to concrete or pavement), it is also reasonable to
> presume that the aircraft would have stumbled and started
> coming into pieces way before striking the building.

Have you ever seen pictures of crashes in which one of the wings hits the ground before the main body of the plane? The plane does not disintegrate, and even to the extent that it breaks into pieces, those pieces keep going forward. It might roll over, but that doesn’t seem to have happened in this case. An object with lots of momentum does not just fall to the ground if it breaks into pieces. It keeps moving forward and still has the same amount of momentum. Even if the plane hit the ground before it hit the building, that wouldn’t have significantly subtracted from its momentum. The pieces would have slammed into the building with the same amount of momentum.

> 6. What happened to the engines? According to Paul Boutin,
> one of the “debunkers” mentioned in this thread, “…
> eyewitnesses and news reporters have talked about the
> twelve-foot hole punched through the inside wall of the second
> ring by one of the plane’s engines.” And later on, his partner,
> Patrick Di Justo, an astrophycisist, says that “…the engines
> probably did not penetrate the building.” What was it then?
> Engines in, or engines out?

When were these two statements made, and how much had these people examined the crash site? These sound like two people guessing about the crash without having examined the site.