To be specific (from #98 in the 9/11 thread):
Dammit! Cut-and-paste went sideways. The second rule is right, the first a little mangled. Rather than repost (and screw it up again), see here.
Are you seriously trying to argue that without the Pentagon attack, the American reaction to 9/11 would have been something along the lines of, “Well, New York’s been attacked by terrorists and a couple thousand people are dead, but at least we’re not at war”?
Nevermind that the Pentagon was likely not even a primary target!
Sadly, he’s probably seriously arguing that very thing. I guess it’s a very good thing that the Pentagon not only didn’t exist on December 7, 1941, but also that it wasn’t located at Pearl Harbor. Otherwise, some people might’ve gotten the idea that we were involved in some kind of war.
BTW, kunilou, here’s a citation for my prior assertion about “Follow the Money.”
Just to be clear, you’re saying that the physical aircraft cannot be found. Right?
Registration information can be found here. (Interestingly, N344AA was assigned to a 1992 Gulfstream G-IV on 10/21/2002. N612UA and N591UA was reserved by United Airlines on 10/11/2005. N644AA is deregistered.)
Sent, I was working on a reply to your response when you retired from the field. At first, I abandoned the effort. On second thought, it occurs to me that we may have a few lurkers with us still, so I’ve changed my mind. No expectation that you will sur-reply, so I won’t include any questions or challenges. I won’t use quote fields; instead I’ll just use indents.
Top 15 Reasons Why the 9/11 Conspiracy is Absurd
[INDENT]1. No one would have dared to float such a plan even for discussion purposes. You get fired for stuff like that. Look what happened to the Northwoods guys, and those were going to be feigned attacks.
Depends on where you float it. It is absurd to cite Northwoods as a refutation of existence of state-sponsored terror when it is exactly the opposite.[/INDENT]
You miss the point. Conspiracies don’t spontaneously come into being fully-formed. An idea starts somewhere. One person, or maybe a small group in a brainstorming session. It then gets passed around, up and down. Discussed, critiqued, planned and, finally, approved. No one would have started this ball rolling, since they would have had no way of knowing whether it would be approved. As Northwoods, in fact, was not.
[INDENT]2. Think what you will of Bush/Cheney, and I don’t like them one little bit, to suggest they ordered the murder of thousands of civilians for something as trivial as an oil pipeline is ludicrous and outrageous. And becomes no less so by infinite repetition. Whereas the terrorists’ motives are perfectly clear.
The motives of those involved are perfectly clear to me. You don’t understand because well…you just haven’t looked behind the whitewash enough yet.[/INDENT]
Not the point. Of course I understand the alleged motive: the famous pipeline (which still has yet even to be started). The point is that, though I may think many ill things of this administration, I don’t think they’re cold-blooded killers of innocent American civilians.
[INDENT]3. There’s no way the military and/or CIA could have pulled off an operation of this complexity. Name any similarly-sized undertaking in the last thirty years that worked. Doesn’t have to be a secret one.
I agree this is the biggest operation of its kind in history that I’m aware of, but they certainly could have pulled it off. They did. It’s only a matter of discovering what was deception and what wasn’t, who was involved and who wasn’t.[/INDENT]
Cop-out, pure and simple. Unless you can name a similarly-sized operation that worked, your assertion that “they certainly could have pulled it off” is pure assertion. And not credible.
[INDENT]4. There’s no way an undercover operation of this scope hasn’t been blown.
There are multiple prominent individuals publicly speaking out about it, but the masses will not hear them. No individuals directly involved have said anything because well…would you if you had any sense? You would be lynched by mobs.[/INDENT]
Someone here doesn’t know how the world works. It ain’t us. Ever hear of anonymous sources? Every hear of the Pentagon Papers? Abu Grihab? Watergate? Iran-Contra? The little blue dress?
[INDENT]5. If such a plan had been developed, it would have been directed at Saddam, not bin Laden.
This does not make any sense. This plan was used to invade Iraq, and Bin Laden was retained as an asset for future purposes, if he is still alive.[/INDENT]
This is VERY telling. Yes, on the neocon agenda (as reflected for example, in the PNAC), Saddam as against Afghanistan loomed like a redwood next to a daffodil. Framing Saddam would have enabled a declaration of war. (You can’t, in a legal sense, declare war on terrorists.) The declaration of war would have required NATO to come in on our side. Instead, we have a military and diplomatic disaster. As I said to bigpoppadiaz, if you can’t understand this point, I really can’t help you.
[INDENT]6. The alleged plan is stupid. What if the Taliban had turned bin Laden over? Or arranged for asylum in some other country? The whole thing would have been for nothing.
It’s only stupid to you because you don’t think big enough. Read the article in my last post if you want to learn about the Taliban. This decision to go into Afghanistan was made before 9/11, it wouldn’t have mattered what the Taliban said. They offered to turn him over to some other country.[/INDENT]
Again, you miss the point. What ultimately happened isn’t controlling. The point is that, when the plot is being put together, they were taking a huge risk that it would be for nothing. That they had tactical plans for an invasion doesn’t mean the world community would have let us do it, had OBL been handed over. And, if he were innocent, he’d have negotiated a disiniterested site, as happened with the Locherbie trial. End of crisis. Three thousand Americans dead for zip.
[INDENT]7. If there were a plot, the President wouldn’t have been caught flat-footed in a Florida classroom.
Apparently in their minds, it was a good idea to potray him as a fearless, innocent leader by scheduling the classroom session for the time of attack[/INDENT]
I have more respect for the cleverness of W’s handlers. If there were a plot, they’d have done a hundred times better.
[INDENT]8. Barbara Olson, wife of Bush’s Solicitor General (who argued the election case to the Supreme Court), was on United Flight #77.
Can you prove it? I don’t know if Bush’s Solicitor general even knew about the plot anyway, it wasn’t even necessary that Bush know the details. Plausible deniability.[/INDENT]
Interesting. Sounds like this was news to you. (Widely reported and uncontested, AFAIK.) You do know that reviewing passenger lists to make sure nobody important was on the flights would have been just about the easiest and least insecure thing they could have done? Anyhoo, the point isn’t that the SG would have known of the plot. Of course not. But the plotters wouldn’t have let the wife of the man who put W in the Oval Office get killed.
[INDENT]9. How did we manage to lure so many al Qaeda operatives onto just four flights, all on the same morning?
Al Qaeda is a CIA creation and asset.[/INDENT]
Pure bullshit.
[INDENT]10. Why bother with WTC 7 at all? (In which, remember, the CIA, etc. had offices.)
Not sure, maybe an easy way to get rid of evidence, leaseholder was in on the plot…many possibilites.[/INDENT]
More bullshit. What evidence? You’re just making stuff up.
[INDENT]11, Why four planes and why hit anything? Recruit one cell of Iraqis; have them hijack one jet; fly around for a while, implicating Saddam with demands; next, threaten to fly into the WTC. Prez reluctantly authorizes taking it down. Then angrily demands a declaration of war, which he receives in hours.
This would not have rivalled the psychological job done on America on 9/11 and the ensuing anthrax attacks.[/INDENT]
I’ll agree this is a judgment call. I think the scenario I described is safer (less prone to error), more secure (requires many few people be indoctrinated to the conspiracy) and, if anything, more effective (they made us kill our own people!). I leave it to lurkers to draw their own conclusion.
[INDENT]12. Why waste a plane on the Pentagon? To al Qaeda, it’s an important symbol of their principal point of contact with the U.S. (the military). Not nearly so compelling, from a domestic propaganda standpoint, as dozens of other targets which could be named.
Nothing would have produced the feeling that we were at WAR than hitting the Pentagon itself. I don’t know about you but when I heard the Pentagon was under attack, it really added that special something to the events of the day. Henceforth, it was a “war on terror” or “long war” that someone else has started, not us…the war PNAC was hoping for. It was a self-inflicted wound with a purpose.[/INDENT]
Lute answered this already. Your position is absurd.
[INDENT]13. Taking down the towers with both planes and explosives would have been stupid. Greatly increased risk of failure and/or breach of security for very little additional propaganda value.
Oh no, the psychological value was very great, it was well worth it. I could not have thought of a better plan. First, draw the viewers to their screens by having the planes it. Now, the whole world is watching LIVE. Next, have the buildings fall down one at a time. I remember seeing it live. The live international audience reached and the psycholgical impact was greater than seeing footage of something that had happened in the past.[/INDENT]I didn’t say no additional value, just very little. In any event, as others have overwhelmingly demonstrated in the debate above, the security risks of installing controlled demolition charges would have exceeded the value.
[INDENT]14. Where did all the thousands of pieces of evidence implicating al Qaeda come from? How was it successfully planted in so many locations? Over what period of time? How many people are in on this?
The evidence is at your fingertips, except for the physical evidence which has been melted down. You’ll have to ask an explosives expert on the exact rigging of the building. There was opporunity as well, since bomb-sniffing dogs had been removed and there were unusual powerdowns in at least one tower including workers in overalls who came in to “replace cabling”.[/INDENT]
Your ability to miss the point begins to amaze me. No, no, no. I don’t mean the evidence at the crash sites. I meant all the evidence everywhere else, including such diverse places as Germany and Egypt. The documentary, pre-crash stuff. Had you understood the point, your response presumably would have been the same as to #9. Same reply.
[INDENT]15. Al Qaeda admits it orchestrated the attacks, permitted itself to be turned into an outlaw organization and precipitated the invasion of two Arab nations. All to facilitate the Neocon agenda?
Read the article in my last post, it explains the basics where these apparent contradictions become seamless.[/INDENT]
Speak for yourself. For me it does nothing of the kind. I leave lurkers to draw their own conclusions.
Bottom line: You have adopted a theory based, as I said above, on three slim reeds. All of these have been shown to be illusory. Meanwhile, you have failed to confront, much less satisfy kunilao’s very sensible second rule of conspiracies, that the pieces must fit together. That your faith in your vastly superior intelligence renders you immune to challenge is apparent to all. That there is no merit to the position is similarly apparent.
Man, leave a seemingly dead thread for a couple of days and look what happens. :eek:
Well it looks like Sent went home, but there are a couple of things I wanted to comment on.
50-Ton Press The 50-ton press linked to earlier in this thread only weighs 612 lbs. referring to it as a 50-ton press would make many a person think it weighs 100,000 lbs.
Your link in post #204 (http://physics911.net/sagadevan.htm) I am not a pilot, and I don’t play on on television, but what unbelieveable bullshit.
Landing are the hardest part of flying. Ask one of the pilots on this board. Landing are not easy, they are damn hard. As the pilot joke goes there are three rules for making a perfect landing, unfortnately no knows what they are.
Jesus H. Christ. Loses virtually all external visual reference cues? On a clear day? At the mercey of an array of complex flight and nav instruments? What’s wrong with looking out the big window infront of the pilots seat? The ground would be in clear view even at 39,000 feet. I know this because I have flown over 600,000 miles on United Airlines. If it isn’t night, or bad weather you can almost always see the damn ground. There may be haze or some overcast, but to say virtually all external visual cues are gone is BS.
First off they weren’t flying in IFR conditions, which makes all of this and the next couple of paragraphs pure bullshit.
It was a clear day, you look out the fucking window. I have done that many a time on airliners and been able to tell exactly where the plane was.
He could have done many things from high tech to low tech. high tech Program the nav computer on the plane to the the lat long of Washington DC. Fly visual from there. Low tech Read the current position off nav computer, look at map, plot course, when you get close look out the window. Really low tech IFR (I follow roads!) Use a road map, follow the interstate east.
Look as I said before flying a plane isn’t that hard. Look here for $59 bucks you will get to take the controls of a plane in flight. Yes it is a Cessna, not a 757/767 but the physics are the same. If you can steer a Pinto, you could steer a Greyhound bus. I might not want you to try and park the bus next to my Volvo, but steering it down the road is exactly the same.
Sent I have to give you credit. The count was 0–174 but you kept swinging. You missed every single time, but you went down swinging.
If you can ever pull your head out of your ass, come on back. You might make a good doper with a little bit of knowledge and life experience.
My mistake. I had checked the register for N644AA, and assumed the other numbers had been retired as well. I’m a bit surprised that United would want those numbers again, given the notoriety of their last usage, but whatever. The numbers, which were assigned to the aircraft in question, are no longer so assigned.
Also, for the dense among us, like me, what’s interesting about the current assignment of N344AA?
I was about to make this same point, and clearly those who claim in disbelief that “anyone is crazy who could think an elevator shaft fireball could sweep away a 50-ton press,” these people are trying to deceive.
Should we also point out that the hijackers not only had their pilot’s licenses, but also had their instrument ratings, plus their commercial pilots licenses? It would have been trivially easy for them to get these planes below the cloud cover in NYC from wherever they were, then crashed the buildings visually.
Right. As you correctly pointed out, those aircraft no longer exist. It surprised me at first too, that would re-use the numbers. But there are – what? 700,000 pilots in the U.S., give or take? Not a large percentage of the population. I doubt anyone will notice the N-number. And since N-numbers are finite it makes sense to re-use them on new aircraft. The only way there would be a problem is if some random person is offended and raises a stink about it.
I’m a weird guy. I find the strangest things interesting. 
Actually, I meant ‘interesting’ in the sense of ‘Huh. Someone requested that number. I wonder why?’
Agreed. I’ve found a couple of cites that say it was a made up piece of dialog for the movie.
But in any case, it’s a damn fine rule for a conspiracy, and I’m leaving it in.
Oh, didn’t mean to disagree with that. It’s a fine rule.
With the absurd drivel being spun by the CTs, compare this straight forward AP news report on yesterday’s proceedings in the Moussaoui trial. Wish I were as smart as Sent, so I could figure out how to fit that data into the conspiracy.
This thread needs to be renamed. A third loon, UselesssGit, has taken up the CT fight. At least UG’s user name reflects the accuracy and intelligence of his or her posts. Sadly, unlike Sent, who will disappear in early May (at the latest), UG is a member and will be around to shit through his or her fingers onto the keyboard.
No need. 1 + 1 - 1 +1 is still two. 
Only if you blindly accept the so-called commutative principle that mathmeticians have been trying to foist on us since the days when Pythagoras had Archimedes whacked, just before he was about to spill the beans. Invasion of Syracuse, hah!. Open your eyes, man!
Maybe the thread should be modified to be ‘To the THREE Loons’. Its hard to believe but yet another CT has waded into the thread that spawned (and I use that term exactly) this one…and after 10 pages there has STILL been not a single fucking shred of objective proof given. The new guy (who is actually a regular on the board) is basically saying exactly what the other two have been saying since page one. :smack:
UselessGit (apt username, at least as far as the thread in question is concerned) is even less open to being asked to provide hard evidence…if thats possible considering the other two paragons of debating skill which this thread is dedicated too.
-XT