# What really hit the Pentagon on 9/11/01? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 1, 2013, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729 "2013-09-01T14:56:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/101 "2013-09-02T07:57:43Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > The name is _not_ Wiley Coyote. > It is Wile E. Coyote. And here is one of the most important links you will ever bookmark: > [a list of all the Acme products he used, from 1949 till the present time.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wile_E._Coyote_and_The_Road_Runner) Is there any case in which the name “Wile E. Coyote” is used in any of the cartoons with the Road Runner? He certainly introduces himself that way in the cartoons in which he interacts with Bugs Bunny, but I’m not sure if it’s ever used with the Road Runner. Of course, he’s mute in those cartoons, but his name might appear on a mailbox, package, or invoice from the Acme company. Barring any such evidence, I maintain the possibility that Wile E. Coyote (talks, attempts to capture Bugs Bunny) and the Coyote (doesn’t talk, attempts to capture the Road Runner) are two different characters. I jokingly say that they are played by the same actor, who, with a bit of makeup on his nose, was also Ralph Wolf (whose nemesis was Sam Sheepdog). ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/102 "2013-09-02T08:03:10Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > Please, give it a try. Show your work. 🙂 And don’t forget to soak it in fuel. ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/103 "2013-09-02T08:04:06Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > Barring any such evidence, I maintain the possibility that Wile E. Coyote and the Coyote are two different characters. So which one of them was on the grassy knoll? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/104 "2013-09-02T08:22:50Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > Please read the list carefully. Note that in addition to the Acme anvil, the Acme rocket-powered roller skates, and the Acme invisible paint, there is another weapon, clearly and openly used: > The Acme **Do-it-Yourself Kit Remote Control Missile-Bombs**!!! > > So now we know how the 9\11 attacks were carried out. > That is all. > Mods, please close the thread. > > 🙂 So do I take it that the Pentagon was behind the attack? Because the one unfailing feature of all Acme products is that they blow up/squash/maim the person who uses them. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/105 "2013-09-02T10:10:29Z")
> [@openminder](#): > > by MSM and the commission that is. No, the other guys. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/106 "2013-09-02T12:17:29Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > The name is _not_ Wiley Coyote. > It is Wile E. Coyote. Never mind planes, Pentagons, passengers, or pilots. That is the most important correction in this thread. I hope Mr. Coyote isn’t offended by my mistake, as I have some fine Acme products I’d like to sell him. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/107 "2013-09-02T13:12:25Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > Those guys carrying those plane pieces weren’t taking them away, they were carrying them _into_ the scene, to make it look like a plane hit. Plus how do we know when those pictures were really taken or where? They’re all actors. Obviously. > > 1/ It didn’t exist and anyone who says it did is in on the conspiracy. Or it has been sekritly flown to Omigodistan and broken up and melted down. > > 2/ They don’t exist. I’ve never met them. Anyone who says they have is an actor and in on the conspiracy. Or they were all sekritly killed and their bodies dumped somewhere. Or they were all in on the conspiracy and are now living under assumed names in Ferogsakistan > > 3/ They are all in on the conspiracy. > > Really, this stuff is too easy. You can’t convince anyone of anything as soon as they believe that basically anything can be achieved in complete secrecy by the Guv’mint. Not much point trying. Mockery achieves as much and is more fun. I don’t yet know how the OP and **Openminder** account for these things; that’s why I was asking. So, guys, are you going to address these questions or not? Could you at least acknowledge you are unwilling to address them? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/108 "2013-09-02T15:17:18Z")
> [@split\_p\_j](#): > > I’ll admit that I don’t believe a word of the official 9/11 story, but even I will agree that airplanes hit the buildings. So you do believe some words of the official story. > [@](#): > > However, seeing as how it looks like the US is going to be taking some kind of action in Syria very soon, I see the timing of the OP as more of a disinformation campaign. Their goal is to link anyone that doubts the official story to people that believe aliens or pod people did it. Or that they switched planes and on and on. Oh, so it’s a conspiracy inside a conspiracy. A more sane examination of the evidence suggests that in fact 9/11 happened pretty much as it rather obviously did and as the “official story” says, and that the USA’s subsequent military adventures have been rather conveniently tagged onto 9/11 but, frankly, **would probably have happened anyway.** The invasion of Iraq was a classic example of something we’ve seen throughout history; a powerful nation decided to take over a weak one, and they trumped up a reason to pretend it was justified. It’s been done a thousand times before. The USA’s done it before, and they’re not even in the same league with real veterans of the trump-up-a-reason game like the British. Why the United States needed to conduct some sort of bizarre, physics-defying conspiracy to blow up the World Trade Center to invade Iraq is simply not a logically explainable thing; they could have invaded Iraq anyway, as plainly evidenced by that fact that it was already being planned before 9/11 and 9/11 wasn’t the primary (or even secondary) excuse for doing it. The reason the USA presented for invading Iraq was Weapons of Mass Destruction; everything else was a tiny side issue. Go back and read the articles, the editorials, the commentary, the news. Read the threads from this board from just before the invasion, which are full of SDMB posters blabbering now-embarrassing nonsense about WMDs. That fiasco might have been accelerated a little by 9/11, but the Bush administration was going to find a sequence of excuses to take over Iraq one way or another. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/109 "2013-09-02T16:23:05Z")
The biggest problem with the truther conspiracies is that, even assuming the US government was behind the attacks, it would have made absolutely no sense for them to do it in the way the conspiracy claims. If you’re capable of wiring the WTC with enough explosives to demolish it, why not just _do that_, instead of making the plan so much more complex by flying planes into the buildings and introducing more ways that things can go wrong? If you can fly planes into the buildings, why bother with explosives? If you want people to think a plane crashed into the Pentagon, why not just crash a plane into the Pentagon, since you clearly have the ability to crash planes into things anyway? Why bother spiriting Flight 77 away and destroying it secretly when you could destroy it by crashing it into the Pentagon? If the entire point was to justify a war in Iraq, why not blame Iraq instead of blaming al-Qaeda? And so on. ---
**Author:** ![openminder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/d2c977/32.png) [@openminder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/openminder)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/110 "2013-09-02T17:55:56Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > If you’re capable of wiring the WTC with enough explosives to demolish it, why not just _do that_, instead of making the plan so much more complex by flying planes into the buildings and introducing more ways that things can go wrong? If you can fly planes into the buildings, why bother with explosives? If the towers were to just collapsed by itself, even a child would wonder why? The planes slamming into the towers provided the shock effect, and we all believed the towers collapsed due to the collision and the fire that ensued on those 5 to 10 floors (my estimate) based on all the videos on the web. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/111 "2013-09-02T17:58:42Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Oh, so it’s a conspiracy inside a conspiracy. Inside a burrito. ---
**Author:** ![openminder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/d2c977/32.png) [@openminder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/openminder)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/112 "2013-09-02T17:59:13Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > So do I take it that the Pentagon was behind the attack? Because the one unfailing feature of all Acme products is that they blow up/squash/maim the person who uses them. Rumsfeld reported 2.3 Trillion dollars was unaccounted for on Sep 10, 2011. I just find it odd after the pentagon incident on the 11th, none of this was mentioned. 2.3 TRILLION is a lot of dough. Don’t we want to know who has taken it? ---
**Author:** ![openminder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/d2c977/32.png) [@openminder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/openminder)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/113 "2013-09-02T18:01:18Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > Never mind planes, Pentagons, passengers, or pilots. That is the most important correction in this thread. I hope Mr. Coyote isn’t offended by my mistake, as I have some fine Acme products I’d like to sell him. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/114 "2013-09-02T18:06:18Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Inside a burrito. It’s an enigma wrapped inside a riddle, smothered in secret sauce. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/115 "2013-09-02T18:11:21Z")
> [@openminder](#): > > If the towers were to just collapsed by itself, even a child would wonder why? > > The planes slamming into the towers provided the shock effect, and we all believed the towers collapsed due to the collision and the fire that ensued on those 5 to 10 floors (my estimate) based on all the videos on the web. If the black ops team was capable of setting explosives that brought the buildings down, why would they have to conceal that at all. “Oh, look, those nasty Arab terrorists blew up our building!” Positing a monstrous and complex conspiracy to use airliners solely as cover for an otherwise effective demolition effort is just too bugfuck to consider. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/116 "2013-09-02T18:12:56Z")
> [@openminder](#): > > If the towers were to just collapsed by itself, even a child would wonder why? Yeah… her point was, why sneak a bomb into the tower, and then crash an airplane into it and blame it on terrorists? Why not just detonate the bomb, and blame _that_ on terrorists? Or, here’s a better idea. If you’re staging a fake terrorist attack to stir up public support for a war, why target your biggest financial hub and military command center? If you want to provoke national outrage over a false flag attack, pick a dozen or so middle schools, and park fertilizer bombs outside each one of them while class is in session. Hundreds of dead school children give you your perfect excuse to invade just about anyone you care to pick, plus you haven’t dealt serious damage to both your economy and your military right before undertaking a massive and expensive invasion of another country. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/117 "2013-09-02T18:14:07Z")
Sure, but where’s the money shot. ---
**Author:** ![openminder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/d2c977/32.png) [@openminder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/openminder)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/118 "2013-09-02T18:15:55Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > If the black ops team was capable of setting explosives that brought the buildings down, why would they have to conceal that at all. “Oh, look, those nasty Arab terrorists blew up our building!” > > Positing a monstrous and complex conspiracy to use airliners solely as cover for an otherwise effective demolition effort is just too bugfuck to consider. in hindsight, maybe to provide the excuse to take down Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, working on Syria and next Iran. ---
**Author:** ![openminder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/d2c977/32.png) [@openminder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/openminder)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/119 "2013-09-02T18:17:11Z")
Can we all not ask questions, have an investigation and resolve all this without going into more wars? Ridiculing = ignorance ---
**Author:** ![SirGalahad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/71c47a/32.png) [@SirGalahad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SirGalahad)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2013, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729/120 "2013-09-02T18:18:16Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Inside a burrito. I think the accepted technical term is “wrapped in a flaky flour tortilla”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-hit-the-pentagon-on-9-11-01/667729.md?page=7)