Were Shape Charges Use In The World Trade Center Collapes?

[ashurbanipal]

Ah yes...the shadow government...hiding behind the shadows. Do tell...who heads this government?

What exactly do you mean by the shadow government? I don't think any shadow government carried out 911. I think it was a temporarily alligned cabal of people with a common interest.

Rove? Cheney? I don't even like them but I'm willing to admit they just don't have the smarts to pull something like the WTC off.

You really think that neither Rove nor Cheney are smart enough to have done something like this? I guess you and I simply differ in our assessments, then.

You obviously don't realize that the U.S. government can't keep a wiretapping operation secret without the NYTimes finding out. This just doesn't click in your head. Say hypothetically the U.S. government had been behind the WTC attacks. It would have been out on print with every single detail the next week.

In the sense I think you mean this remark, this commits the fallacy of division. Look: suppose you see a cockroach scuttling along your kitchen floor. Is the correct inference that, since you've seen this one cockroach, you will eventually see all the cockroaches in your house? Obviously not--the correct inference is that there are probably hundreds or thousands of others that you will never see.

In the abstract--just because we group all of some objects into a set on the basis of their sharing some characteristic, doesn't mean that they share all characteristics.

So for conspiracies: some conspiracies do come to light. This is no reason to believe that they all must.

Nothing in this country is priceless. Everybody has a price and chances are they're willing to spill their guts for a juicy one like the one you're trying to push through.

This seems to work more for my case than yours. On the one hand, if everyone has a price, then the necessary help to perpetrate 911 could be purchase. But once 3,000 people have been murdered, why on earth would those who were in on it ever talk? You think the first person to jump up and say "We did it, and here's how" would escape severe punishment?

Conspiracy theorists are people who in most cases did not see the event happen.

That can be easily turned around. Do you think that the Kean Commissioners all saw 911 happen up close and personal? I doubt it. Did the Warren Commissioners see what went down in Dealey Plaza with their own eyes? No, they did not. So if (as you seem to imply) one had to be there to form a theory, why do any of those people get to form theories?

Do you doubt the moon landing?

No. I believe the moon landings happened as described by Nasa. There is no reason to believe otherwise.

Was there a second gunman on the grassy knoll?

I believe there was a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy, and that more than one gunman was involved. However, I think it unlikely there was a gunman on the knoll. There exists currently a pretty sharp cleft in what the evidence shows IMO, so I think one of two possibilities is correct. On the one hand, William Kemp Clark, chief of neurosurgery at Parkland, examined Kennedy's head wound for a couple minutes in order to advise Dr. Perry of the advisability of proceeding with ressucitation. You'd expect a brain surgeon examining a head wound to be able to accurately characterize it. He described a softball size wound in the right rear portion of the head, with damage to the right parietal and occipital lobes as well as a near complete destruction of the cerebellum. He believed that this was a tangential wound--the bullet entering from the right behind Kennedy's right ear and exiting the rear of the skull, taking everything with it an obliteraing entry and exit points.

If this is the correct description of the head wound, then it is likely that a grassy knoll shooter existed.

The autopsy results showed a much larger wound where the entire right cranium and much of the top of the head was blasted away. Dr. Boswell found a clear entry wound near the hairline (NOT in the cowlick region of the head--the famous photo of the rear of the head, when seen in color, show very clearly that the spot normally taken to be the entry wound was just a spot of blood. The entry itself was lower), and has always maintained that's where the point of entry occurred.

If this is the case, then the most likely spot for the fatal shot to have originated was the second floor of the Dal-Tex building since the bullet would have been following a low, flat trajectory as it traversed Kennedy's skull.

All that said, unless someone invents time travel or we dig up Kennedy's body and re-examine the skull, I think it's going to be impossible to establish conclusively the nature of the wounds. And since that is the case, it's impossible to say for certain where the shots came from. I do know that on no version of the medical evidence consistent with the autopsy pictures could the shots have originated from the sixth floor of the Depository. The model that shows the "snipers nest" in the trajectory cone is based on an obviously flawed interpretation of the evidence. Anyone can look at the photos and x-rays and compare to the model and see it's completely contrived to arrange for shots to have come from the sixth floor of the TSBD.

Does Bigfoot really exist?

I don't know, and I'm not interested enough in the case to really examine the evidence. I think it's possible, but if Sasquatch does exist, there will be a good explanation for it.

 

[dixon76710]

Re: Bass Ackwards

"Bass Ackwards"
The thread was introduced with source reference in the form of an inquiry, not as a proponent declaration.

Like I said, "begin your scientific inquiry". Your declaration of both shaped charges and the government allowing 9/11 came later in the thread. Did you have a point? Or merely a need to respond?

 

[Kandahar]

All photographs mean something; these a bit more than average. You said there was absolutely zero evidence; I said (or implied) that there are photos that, at the very least, ought to be suggestive. See my reply to dixon for clarification.

The picture proves nothing. It's a picture of some rubble.

I'm not sure. I'm also not sure why it matters. The only things that ought to matter are the facts and reasoning. If someone utterly insane is stating a fact and reasoning correctly from it, the fact that they're otherwise loopy is irrelevant to whether they're telling the truth in that case.

Yes, but if what they're stating is reasonable, then surely there must be reasonable people stating the same things. And if that's the case, why would you cite the insane person instead of one of those credible people?

Shouldn't be necessary. 2+2 is obviously 4. And the various theories about 911 ought to be considered on their merits, not the (de)merits of those presenting them.

Umm if someone has a history of bizarre conspiracy theories / anti-semitism / paranormal events, it certainly makes me less likely to take their 9/11 conspiracy theory seriously. If it was credible, the crazies could convince a few credible people to talk about it, who would in turn convince a few more, until it was the mainstream theory about what happened.

Even given the circumstances of that day, it seems like a pretty big coincidence. That said, I would have to admit that this is at least possible. I just don't know that it's the most likely explanation.

Of course it is the most likely explanation. The BBC is not omnipotent.

Neither. I think the most likely explanation is that the conspirators knew that they were bringing buildings down, and decided it would be nice if they had somebody feeding information to the Associated Press or Reuters (probably both). This would be greatly advantageous so as to create, in the minds of the people stunned by what they are watching, the scenario they wanted us to have. You can actually go back through the newsfeeds from that day and see instances of people saying things that no one could possibly have known that early.

And this is a perfect example of the total lack of logic used by the tinfoil crowd. If the conspirators knew that the towers were coming down, and wanted the BBC to report it, which of these would be a better plan?

A) Personally alert the BBC ahead of time, and risk blowing their cover, so that they could get 10 extra minutes of people thinking that the tower came down...all for no particular reason.

B) Just wait for them to collapse, and let the BBC discover it on their own.

1) How many? No more than 70--probably more like 60 in total.

Even if a mere 60-70 people could carry out a conspiracy and coverup of this magnitude, that is still a huge number of people who knew about it and who could talk to the press. The White House senior staff of 10 people can't even keep a secret.

2) If you were involved in murdering 3,000 people for the purpose of starting a war that cost billions of dollars and many lives, would you be leaking that fact to anyone?

Possibly, especially if there was money/fame/immunity to be had. Certainly SOMEONE would, which would in turn encourage others to do the same.

3) Their motives were:

a) To provide a pretext for stationing as many troops and military assets in the Middle East as possible in advance of the peaking of global oil production.

Afghanistan isn't in the Middle East and has little oil.

b) To destroy records of financial mis-and-mal-feasance by major American corporations.

Oh, so the corporations were in on this sinister plot too! How fun! :lol:

You know what might be a better way to destroy records, as opposed to a massive conspiracy to bring down two skyscrapers with airplanes and bombs, and kill 3,000 people? Burning or shredding the records.

c) To provide a pretext for engineering greater social control in advance of peak oil.

Too vague. Explain.

After reading the Warren Commission report (something few have done), it began to occur to a number of people that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't kill Kennedy. When asked about how the Warren Commissioners expected to get away with such a contradictory report by an interviewer, John Foster Dulles responded that "The American People don't read."

Lee Harvey Oswald almost certainly acted alone. But let's not change the subject.

It turns out that Norman Minetta gave testimony before the Kean Commission that seems to indicate a stand-down order was issued. No one pays any attention (it wasn't included in the final report; you have to read the transcripts).

What exactly did he say?

However, additionally, they just made sure that several wargames exercises were scheduled for that day, thereby confusing our response.

Are wargames a rarity? If not, what is your point?

First, I do not ignore simple human error as a possibility. I just believe that the evidence ought to disincline us to that conclusion. People are fallible, and in groups are especially capable of serious error. But as much error as would be necessary to explain 911 stretches the imagination IMO.

And as much perfection as would be necessary to explain the 9/11 conspiracy theories stretches the imagination to the breaking point.

1) CONVAR found evidence of some very serious and very large insider trading occurring on machines in the WTC just minutes prior to the attacks. Could AQ have done this? Maybe, but it would take a lot of sophistication. If they were capable of hijacking those machines, why not just hack as many large banks computers as possible and bring down our entire economy? Anyone with a minimal amount of training in economics would understand how to do that provided the hacking issue could be sorted out.

So let me get this straight...it would take "a lot of sophistication" for al-Qaeda to call a broker and buy some stocks, but "anyone with a minimal amount of training in economics" is able to hack into computers and destroy our economy? :rofl

2) The Kean commission had the power to subpoena the brokerages that executed the other trades in question, but did not. Why, if the trades originated with Al Qaeda, wouldn't they want to do that? It seems to me they'd jump at the chance to uncover a potential source of Al Qaeda funding. Instead, they put a totally inadequate explanation in a footnote.

A lot of the trading came from a single (American) investor who just happened to buy the stocks at that time. Maybe some came from al-Qaeda. There is NO evidence that an unusual amount of trading came from US politicians or their families.

3) You're mischaracterizing the nature of the warnings. If Alex Jones knew in June of 2001 that the towers were going to be coming down, just why didn't the FBI know? Regardless of what you think of Jones (I think he's a little wacko myself), I think it has to be admitted that that's a little odd.

Umm no. If a bunch of tinfoil hats are on the radio with insane rantings about future events every day, the law of large numbers suggests one of them will get one right sooner or later. How many attacks that Alex Jones or other nuts have predicted have NOT occurred?

The list of warnings given to us prior to 911 is extensive. There were some crystal clear warnings that had actionable intelligence.



That is exactly my point--surely you see it. If we had been monitoring them for years (indeed, had even frozen significant financial assets and launched cruise missiles at their training camps, had people infiltrating their organization, etc.), why did we utterly miss the biggest operation they had ever carried out?

No one ever accused our government of being intelligent. That is not the same thing as a massive conspiracy.

I've posted an answer to this question about a dozen times on these boards, and I imagine this won't be the last:

Suppose the conspirators are the same people who would have some responsibility for preventing terrorist attacks. Now, put yourself in their shoes. There's already been a bombing at the WTC. How do you explain a much larger repeat performance?

Umm the same way that they explained the airplanes: Incompetence.

For this reason, it's very unlikely we're going to see planes flown into buildings any more. If the conspirators need another attack, and they allow that sort of thing to happen again, what do you think will happen to them? How could they possibly explain another 911? Will human error and intelligence failures satisfy everyone again?

Another airplane attack is unlikely because the method of attack is obsolete. The same is not true of bombings. And in the unlikely event that another attack DID occur with airplanes, yes, it would most likely still be explicable by human error and intelligence failures.

 

[dixon76710]

If you'll look at all the photos hosted at the site, you'll see that there are several that do not show any slag. If we're to believe that a cutting torch produced the slag in the more well-known photo, how do you explain those others?

I said that they should collapse at 1.5 times free-fall speed. The buildings collapsed in about 12-14 seconds. Free fall speed was about 9.5 seconds. 9.5 seconds x 1.5=14.25 seconds. So yes, some material is falling faster than the core. I am not claiming otherwise. Anyone with their faculties intact enough to read and do simple math should have known that.

??? we have seen two photos of metal cut by shaped charges. NONE of them had slag. I didnt see any other photos that were even close enough to see if their was slag or not.
And "free fall speed" is a measure of SPEED einstein, not time. And since they fell in the time that they "should collapse", whats your point?.... or just a need to respond?

 

[dixon76710]

It turns out that Norman Minetta gave testimony before the Kean Commission that seems to indicate a stand-down order was issued. No one pays any attention (it wasn't included in the final report; you have to read the transcripts).

Actually, he confirmed precisely the opposite.

"When I overheard something about 'the orders still stand' and so, what I thought of was that they had already made the decision to shoot something down."
YouTube - Norman Mineta Confirms Dick Cheney Stand Down Orders on 911

 

[Monk-Eye]

Brain Washed

"Brain Washed"

Like I said, "begin your scientific inquiry". Your declaration of both shaped charges and the government allowing 9/11 came later in the thread. Did you have a point? Or merely a need to respond?

The 9/11 Coincidences Series is a pretty good start - (Part Nine) -
[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHJHAp49Lh8[/YOUTUBE]

 

[dixon76710]

Re: Brain Washed

"Brain Washed"


The 9/11 Coincidences Series is a pretty good start - (Part Nine) -
[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHJHAp49Lh8[/YOUTUBE]

Yeah, thats an appropriate depth for another of your inquiries.

 

[Monk-Eye]

Dream Team

"Dream Team"

Yeah, thats an appropriate depth for another of your inquiries.

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) (link) is an American neoconservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., co-founded as "a non-profit educational organization" by William Kristol and Robert Kagan in early 1997. The PNAC's stated goal is "to promote American global leadership."[1] Fundamental to the PNAC are the view that "American leadership is both good for America and good for the world" and support for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity."[2] It has exerted strong influence on high-level U.S. government officials in the administration of U.S President George W. Bush and strongly affected the Bush administration's development of military and foreign policies, especially involving national security.

 

[dixon76710]

Re: Dream Team

"Dream Team"

Yeah, thats an appropriate depth for another of your inquiries. The Wikipedia page on the pnac. Ive subscribed to the weekly standard as long as theyve existed, national review for 20 years. Read everything at
Welcome to the Project for the New American Century
as it was added starting with their letter to Clinton on Iraq in 1998.
PNAC doesnt really engage in any activities. The PNAC is defined by the words they write. I dont need the wikipedia, condensed version to tell me anything.

 

[Trajan Octavian Titus]

Correct. And I am therefore not a useful idiot of the "The Jews Did It" gang. Because, as I will state categorically, the Jews, as a group, did not perpetrate 911. Nor did any group of Jews as far as I can tell.

I would say that when one begins finding ideological parrallels with ones world perspective and that of Nazi conspiratorial rhetoric, that it is time for some serious reappraissal.

No, that's not the idea at all. They can pull some strings and get a few people to dance like puppets (I guess, if you want to put it that way). Look, there's absolutely nothing mysterious or ridiculous about this. If your boss tells you to do something, generally, you do it and don't ask exactly why you're given the order. So your boss can pull your strings and get you to dance like a puppet. If the conspirators had people working for them, why could they not stand in precisely the same relationship?

Yes the thousands of people who contributed to the NIST report are complicit in covering up an inside job, and you mightier truther are here to set the record straight for us mindless sheep to stupid to connect your imaginary dots.

You seem to have this idea that because you type some words in response to something, the argument is over. That's rather arrogant, at best. Frankly, your response would have been laughed out of class where I come from. Though if you're finished posting responses to that thread, I'm itching to go back and continue the debate there. Are you?

Whatever's clever I still got a couple more posts to respond to there. But feel free.

I don't know where you're going to school, but if they're telling you that hypothetical situations aren't useful in the course of reasoning through a problem, you're getting a bad education. Crack any book of philosophy, science (any branch of science), or history, and you'll find extensive use of hypotheticals. We use hypotheticals to acquire rules or conditions with regard to analogous situations.

Your hypotheticals are pulled out of thin air to prove to your own satisfaction you pre-concluded hypothesis.

if A and B stand in a relationship such that if A is possible, B is possible, why would this be invalid?

It's possible that unicorns exist and by using your standards of unfalsifiable evidence we should conclude that unicorns do infact exist. Your claims do not specify when, where, or who, thus it is impossible to disprove them while at the same time it is entirely possible for you to prove them yet you can not.

You mean, you're about out of wiggle room...

You're the one who comes up with unfalsifiable statements to prove your claims so it would appear that you are the one who is looking for the wiggle room.

Prove it--and yes, you should be able to prove fallacies, inasmuch as they concern matters of syntax. Can you even demonstrate a single fallacy in any of my posts? Can you give the fallacy name, formalize the argument (i.e. probably with modal logic), and show why it's an instance of the fallacy? I would be willing to concede the entire debate if you can do that; I'm betting you don't even know how.

Let's start with your affirming the consequent non-sequitor logical fallacy: you assert that the sound of explosions (A) occurs in controlled demolitions, (B) therefore the sounds of explosions (A) prove the controlled demolition (B). If (A) then (B) (B) therefore (A). You completely ignore that there could be other reasons for the sounds of explosions; such as, transformers and diesel generators exploding or steel beams snapping under high strain, or bolts popping at high tension etc. Then when confronted with these other possible sources for the sounds of explosions you jump into an appeal to authority logical fallacy by claiming that an expert has come to the conclusion that these sounds do not match any of the sources for the sounds of explosions outside of explosive charges, you offer no comparative audio analysis to demonstrate that this assertion is true, and most laughably of all the authority you appeal to is none other than yourself.




One of your most frustrating arguments is when you insist on separating the factors that led to the WTC collapse you have even asserted that the NIST concluded that fire alone caused the collapse which is a total lie:

1) If the towers were destroyed by fire alone, then we ought to find other similar examples of buildings destroyed by fire.

Therefore, it is fire that caused the collapses. The damage caused by the impacts was irrelevant.

Based on this comprehensive investigation, NIST concluded that the WTC towers collapsed because: (1) the impact of the planes severed and damaged support columns, dislodged fireproofing insulation coating the steel floor trusses and steel columns, and widely dispersed jet fuel over multiple floors; and (2) the subsequent unusually large jet-fuel ignited multi-floor fires (which reached temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius) significantly weakened the floors and columns with dislodged fireproofing to the point where floors sagged and pulled inward on the perimeter columns. This led to the inward bowing of the perimeter columns and failure of the south face of WTC 1 and the east face of WTC 2, initiating the collapse of each of the towers. Both photographic and video evidence—as well as accounts from the New York Police Department aviation unit during a half-hour period prior to collapse—support this sequence for each tower.

NIST's Investigation of the Sept. 11 World Trade Center Disaster - Frequently Asked Questions

You insist on separating the fire factor from the rest of the factors, which would be like trying to explain a car crash without considering the conditions of the road.

 

[dixon76710]

...and are you trying to imply that the pnac was behind the shaped charges at the wtc? Or have we gone through another of your "progressions"?

 

[ashurbanipal]

The picture proves nothing. It's a picture of some rubble.

The pictures show a number of WTC beams that appear to have been cut at an angle, in keeping with the practice of using explosives to cut steel columns. At least some of them do not appear to have been cut with a torch, implying that they were cut with charges.

Yes, but if what they're stating is reasonable, then surely there must be reasonable people stating the same things. And if that's the case, why would you cite the insane person instead of one of those credible people?

Not necessarily so--there was a time when the only people who were against slavery would have been thought completely insane.

Anyway, just where is the anti-semitism in the site linked?

And this is a perfect example of the total lack of logic used by the tinfoil crowd. If the conspirators knew that the towers were coming down, and wanted the BBC to report it, which of these would be a better plan?

A) Personally alert the BBC ahead of time, and risk blowing their cover, so that they could get 10 extra minutes of people thinking that the tower came down...all for no particular reason.

B) Just wait for them to collapse, and let the BBC discover it on their own.

Actually, this is a perfect example of how skeptics don't pay attention to conspiracy arguments. I've already answered this point, but I'll answer it in more detail:

If the tower came down without some pre-scripted release, the BBC, or whoever, might have wondered just why it came down when there weren't any airplanes flown into it. Ditto for the towers--it was not obvious, prior to the towers' collapsing, that they'd be coming down. All those rescuers wouldn't have run into the buildings if it had been. When they came down, people were shocked. Not just from the magnitude of the event, but also from the fact that it would have seemed pretty unlikely for the towers--both of them, and another tower--to collapse like that. If there were bombs in the buildings, the conspirators were faced with the task of demolishing three buildings in plain sight of everyone and then figuring out how to cover it up. So the conspirators decided to embark on some myth-making, and to do so at a time when it would be most effective.

That's the crucial point here--the conspirators had to have a way to shape people's sentiments and opinion. Even before the BBC thing was discovered, I was aware that news coverage that day had certain overtones of being manufactured. They could not allow journalists to do their jobs, or there would have been too much information in the public eye that would contradict the official version.

Possibly, especially if there was money/fame/immunity to be had. Certainly SOMEONE would, which would in turn encourage others to do the same.

So you think that, if you were in a conspiracy with 60-some-odd people who didn't bat an eye at murdering 3000 people, covering it up, and starting two wars, you'd betray them? And even supposing you had those kind of cajones, look at it from your perspective as a citizen of this country. Suppose (say) Condi Rice came on Larry King Live one night and explained how she and some other folks committed 911. Would you be for granting her immunity? Do you think many prosecutors would be for it?

Afghanistan isn't in the Middle East and has little oil.

It does, however, control a pipeline that supplies India and China from Iran, and also produces the bulk of the world's poppy crop. It also borders Iran on the East and a couple FSU 'stans on the south. It was an easy target and important for geostrategic reasons.

Oh, so the corporations were in on this sinister plot too! How fun!

No, they were probably not. They were merely relieved when their records were conveniently destroyed. The conspirators were acting on their behalf for their own reasons.

You know what might be a better way to destroy records, as opposed to a massive conspiracy to bring down two skyscrapers with airplanes and bombs, and kill 3,000 people? Burning or shredding the records.

And when the SEC comes calling for your records after Enron and Worldcom have done down, you can't tell them you shredded them. On the other hand, if they perished in 911--well, the SEC won't hound you.

Too vague. Explain.

The idea is that our infrastructure, especially in how we produce and distribute necessary items like food and water, depends heavily on inputs of oil. As oil becomes scarce, so will items necessary to life. And as that happens, people will get angry. So we have to have the legal machinery to control both individual dissenters around whom popular movements might form, and massive groups of people. Patriot I, Patriot II, the Model Emergency Health Powers Act, and the Department of Homeland security lay the groundwork for that control.

What exactly did he say?

"During the time that the airplane was coming into the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President...the plane is 50 miles out...the plane is 30 miles out....and when it got down to the plane is 10 miles out, the young man also said to the vice president "do the orders still stand?" And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said "Of course the orders still stand, have you heard anything to the contrary!??"

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050724164122860

Had the order in question been a shoot down order, the young man would have said something like "We're trying to down the plane, sir, but we don't have any jets at Andrews available" or words to that effect. The only order it could have been, given this testimony, was a stand-down order. There are other peculiarities about Mineta's testimony.

Are wargames a rarity? If not, what is your point?

Not a rarity, though I'd be surprised if there had been any other days over the preceeding months with as many such exercises scheduled. Especially when you figure in exactly who was involved in the exercises and what the exercises were, it starts to look fishy.

And as much perfection as would be necessary to explain the 9/11 conspiracy theories stretches the imagination to the breaking point.

How so? Not all the planes even hit their targets...news of the insider trading leaked out. Colleen Rowley published a letter detailing obstruction in the FBI. News of other countries giving us warnings surfaced. Somebody warned Dave Schippers. A couple nutty physics professors aren't buying the NIST story about how the towers fell; apparently NIST wasn't open to completely falsifying their data. A few people have noticed that those Bin Laden tapes appear to show someone other than Bin Laden. Heck, the Prez actually had to appoint a commission to investigate 911, had to actually testify (along with Cheney, not under oath, and in secret, but still...), and had to let Condi Rice testify. Sybel Edmonds saw some stuff she wasn't supposed to see. Etc. Etc.

So let me get this straight...it would take "a lot of sophistication" for al-Qaeda to call a broker and buy some stocks, but "anyone with a minimal amount of training in economics" is able to hack into computers and destroy our economy?

No, please read carefully what I wrote. I said that once the hacking issue got sorted out, it would be an easy matter. The hacking is the hard part. Once you're in the system, what to do from there is relatively easy. Just inverting a few large banks federal reserve accounts would suck enough liquidity out of the system that it'd crash. Or just erasing a large number of records randomly, along with their backups. Even just encrypting some key account information would cause way worse than 911.

The point is we know some hacking occurred, specifically for the purpose of making illegal trades. Just who did it, we don't know--though we do know that whoever did it made some money and got away scott-free.

A lot of the trading came from a single (American) investor who just happened to buy the stocks at that time. Maybe some came from al-Qaeda. There is NO evidence that an unusual amount of trading came from US politicians or their families.

I don't believe it did, and I think I happen to know that American investor's name--though he wasn't responsible for most of the money. But that isn't the point--why didn't the Kean Commission subpoena those records? I think it has to be admitted that it's at least worthy of investigation if you're a member of a Congressional panel investigating 911. Maybe it would have come to nothing...but why not find out for sure? And why not offer a good explanation once you have?

Umm no. If a bunch of tinfoil hats are on the radio with insane rantings about future events every day, the law of large numbers suggests one of them will get one right sooner or later. How many attacks that Alex Jones or other nuts have predicted have NOT occurred?

I'm not aware of Jones having predicted any other attacks.

Another airplane attack is unlikely because the method of attack is obsolete. The same is not true of bombings. And in the unlikely event that another attack DID occur with airplanes, yes, it would most likely still be explicable by human error and intelligence failures.

Bombs were supposed to have been made obsolete at the WTC.

I'm getting this subtext in your arguments that you rely on Occam's razor in an almost religious manner--the explanation with the least number of entities is to be preferred no matter what. I've thought alot about Occam's razor (I'm an epistemologist/logician by training) and I am pretty sure it's a mistake. Maybe not always, and I'm not sure I can formulate a replacement for it.

But if we universalize Occam's razor, it seems to be saying that we live in the universe most devoid of entities--leaving only just enough to explain our observations. Do we have a reason for assuming that's the case? I don't think so; I don't think we have any reason to believe that a priori. Quine posed a defense of intellectual parsimony (including both Occam's razor and Hamilton's law) on pragmatic grounds, but I don't think that defense is widely held to have worked. In short, I don't think Occam's razor is necessarily defensible as a rule of thought.

Now to the point of the digression: I would agree that, taken individually, each of the items mentioned by me, or mentioned by conspiracists in general, can be explained by other means. But taken in sum, it appears to me to incline towards conspiracy. There's no error committed in this kind of synthetic thinking.

Anyway, I'll pose to you the same question I posed dixon: I've posted what it would take to make me change my mind. What would it take to make you change yours?

 

[ashurbanipal]

??? we have seen two photos of metal cut by shaped charges. NONE of them had slag. I didnt see any other photos that were even close enough to see if their was slag or not.

Then you didn't look. They're right there on the page cited in the OP.

And "free fall speed" is a measure of SPEED einstein, not time.

Speed is just distance/time. "Free fall speed" refers to an average speed calculated from the Newtonian gravitational constant of 9.18m/s/s, or 32f/s/s. If the distance remains a constant (as it does in this case--the buildings were a certain unvariable height the entire time they were standing after completion), then time is the only variable to be considered. So I'm not sure what your point is. We know how long it would take for an object to fall freely through that height. Finding time when distance and force are known, and vice-versa, is a problem that was solved in the late 1600's, and is generally taught to anyone who makes it to the 8th grade.

And since they fell in the time that they "should collapse", whats your point?

Well, the original point was that an historical analog of a progressive collapse scenario should have the building falling at about 1.5 times freefall speed. Or, the time taken for the top of that analog to hit the ground should be no more than 1.5 times as long as if an object were dropped from the same distance from the ground and fell through nothing but air to hit the ground.

TOT posted an article in the other thread referenced which gave an impact-transfer model based on Newtonian mechanics. I posted a fairly easy-to-understand critique. It turns out that, if the author's model is correct (I think it more or less is), it should have taken the North Tower 196 seconds to collapse, and the South Tower 188 seconds to collapse. Actually, probably longer as the first model he proposes, which I used, considered only static friction. The author then goes on to try to derive E--a measure of the resistance each column should have had to crushing, but his methods for doing so are (he admits) speculative. Assuming that E is not negative (how could it be?), it should proportionately increase the times given above.

Which means, since you seem to make a point of it, that the speed with which the towers collapsed should have been slower than what it was.

Actually, he confirmed precisely the opposite.

"When I overheard something about 'the orders still stand' and so, what I thought of was that they had already made the decision to shoot something down."
YouTube - Norman Mineta Confirms Dick Cheney Stand Down Orders on 911

Later in his testimony before commissioner Roehme, though, he admits that he does not know what the order was. Again, logically, it couldn't have been a shoot down order. See the link in my post to Kandahar.

 

[ashurbanipal]

I would say that when one begins finding ideological parrallels with ones world perspective and that of Nazi conspiratorial rhetoric, that it is time for some serious reappraissal.

The conspiracy most Nazis believed in was that the Jews and the Bolsheviks were trying to destroy the German people. I don't believe anything remotely like that. I believe that conspiracies do happen, and there are usually several going on at once. They can be perpetrated by anybody, and they are not habitually perpetrated by either Jews or Bolsheviks or anyone else (well, maybe politicians as a group participate in their fair share).

Yes the thousands of people who contributed to the NIST report are complicit in covering up an inside job, and you mightier truther are here to set the record straight for us mindless sheep to stupid to connect your imaginary dots.

1) I don't think I said anything condescending.

2) We've been over this before. I do not believe NIST is complicit. I think they, like most people, are simply incapable of believing a conspiracy, so they ignore the obvious and find for something else. Again, their own models didn't work, and they spell all this out in their report. Yet they nevertheless proceed as if they did. If that's not selective reasoning, I don't know what is.

Whatever's clever I still got a couple more posts to respond to there. But feel free.

I will wait until you are done. It'll be easier to follow that way.

Your hypotheticals are pulled out of thin air to prove to your own satisfaction you pre-concluded hypothesis.

Hypotheticals are typically pulled out of thin air. However, show me anywhere that I used a hypothetical, alone, to prove something.

It's possible that unicorns exist and by using your standards of unfalsifiable evidence we should conclude that unicorns do infact exist.

Show me anywhere I said that because it's possible something exists, we should therefore conclude it must exist. Also, if you're going to bring up falsifiability again, you've got some points to answer for it.

Your claims do not specify when, where, or who, thus it is impossible to disprove them while at the same time it is entirely possible for you to prove them yet you can not.

No, I could never prove them. Nor could you ever disprove them. Nor could you prove your claims, and I could never disprove them. What we can do is give evidence for a given POV and determine how to make it all fit.

You're the one who comes up with unfalsifiable statements to prove your claims

1) I don't claim to be proving much of anything except that the official story cannot be correct. I claim to offer some reasonable speculation about what really happened.

2) Here we go with falsifiability again. Please respond to my points against falsifiability as a criterion.

Let's start with your affirming the consequent non-sequitor logical fallacy: you assert that the sound of explosions (A) occurs in controlled demolitions, (B) therefore the sounds of explosions (A) prove the controlled demolition (B). If (A) then (B) (B) therefore (A). You completely ignore that there could be other reasons for the sounds of explosions; such as, transformers and diesel generators exploding or steel beams snapping under high strain, or bolts popping at high tension etc. Then when confronted with these other possible sources for the sounds of explosions you jump into an appeal to authority logical fallacy by claiming that an expert has come to the conclusion that these sounds do not match any of the sources for the sounds of explosions outside of explosive charges, you offer no comparative audio analysis to demonstrate that this assertion is true, and most laughably of all the authority you appeal to is none other than yourself.

I'm not sure whether you misunderstand my argument, or the fallacy of affirming the consequent, so bear with me a moment:

Affirming the consequent has the form:

A ==> B
B
Therefore A

My argument regarding the explosion has the form

Iff A, B
B
Therefore A

The second is valid, the first is not. The Iff operator is all-important, because line 1 is logically equivalent to:

(A ==> B) * (B ==> A)

So therefore, by having B, we can get A--something we can't do when A and B are involved by a simple conditional.

My assertion is that the explosion heard in the clip has to be a bomb since we know that nothing else should have been exploding then. Again, we recovered diesel fuel from all the tanks at WTC 7. FEMA and NIST have both concluded that the only explosions on that day were supposed to have been when the planes impacted. Therefore, if there was an explosion, it could only have been something not explained in the official version--i.e. a bomb.

As to a comparative audio analysis--what exactly is it that you want? There wouldn't be any kind of distinct signature that any explosion has with regard to frequency or waveform or something like that--at least not at this resolution. It'll show up on an oscilloscope as noise, and environmental factors would affect the frequency and amplitude. The only way to compare the sound of demolition to the sound of a diesel tank exploding would be in analyzing the envelope, and most specifically the attack phase. And this makes perfect sense if you understand anything I just said: demolitions will expend their force at once because that's what they're designed to do. A diesel tank is designed not to explode, so when it does, it does so irregularly. The attack isn't as sharp.

You've also mentioned bolts snapping at high tension. I guess I would just leave it to anyone watching the clip to determine if the sound recorded could plausibly be a bolt snapping. I think it categorically cannot be.

One of your most frustrating arguments is when you insist on separating the factors that led to the WTC collapse you have even asserted that the NIST concluded that fire alone caused the collapse which is a total lie

I think I explained this somewhere. But in case I didn't, here's what I mean:

The sense of "cause" we're looking for is the empirical sense--what could be present and always cause collapse, and what could be absent and always prevent collapse. The answer is fire (well, and missing fireproofing--see below).

To see what I mean, just answer these two questions:

1) Had the planes impacted the towers in the way they did, severing all the columns exactly as happened on 911, but there were no fires, would the towers have collapsed?

2) Had there been no impacts but someone had taken down the fireproofing and started fires with the appropriate amount of fuel, would the buildings have collapsed?

NIST, I believe, is committed to answering no to 1 and yes to 2. They are therefore committed to saying that fire caused the collapses.

Now, obviously, had the planes not impacted the towers, there would have been no fires and hence no collapse (according to NIST), so in that different sense of "cause", then yes, both the impacts and the fires caused the collapse.

Another way to see that this is a perfectly legitimate way to argue is to suppose that there had been many examples of steel hi-rise buildings collapsing due to fire. In that case, it'd be obviously ridiculous of me to say that something's fishy because no steel hi-rise structure had ever collapsed from the combination of impacts plus fires.

You insist on separating the fire factor from the rest of the factors, which would be like trying to explain a car crash without considering the conditions of the road.

Yes, I acknowledge that NIST includes the impacts in their list of causes. In the same sense of the word, so do I. But I'm pointing towards a different sense of cause that is just as legitimate to consider, and is pertinent in trying to find historical analogs.

 

[dixon76710]

Speed is just distance/time. "Free fall speed" refers to an average speed calculated from the Newtonian gravitational constant of 9.18m/s/s, or 32f/s/s. .....

Oh geez, im surrounded by idiots.

Later in his testimony before commissioner Roehme, though, he admits that he does not know what the order was. Again, logically, it couldn't have been a shoot down order. See the link in my post to Kandahar.

Actually, precisely the opposite. Both he and cheney wondered if we had shot down flight 93. You should probably avoid exercises in logic.

 

[ashurbanipal]

Oh geez, im surrounded by idiots.

If that's the case, then explain why. It appears to me you made the dumb remark, and I explained why it was dumb. But if you disagree, why don't you just say why?

Actually, precisely the opposite. Both he and cheney wondered if we had shot down flight 93.

1) Doesn't necessarily imply that such an order had been issued by Cheney--he wasn't the only person who could have issued it. Indeed, if they both wondered about it, it seems at least somewhat likely that Cheney wouldn't have (insofar as he ought to be able to trust, as acting head of the most powerful air force in the world, that if he ordered a commercial airliner shot down, it would be shot down).

2) Roemer: "Would your inference be that they scrambled the jets to shoot down the commercial airliner, it failed, and the commercial airliner then crashed into the Pentagon?"

Mineta: "I'm not sure that the aircraft that were scrambled to come up to the D.C. area...were under orders to shoot the airplane down..."

 

[Trajan Octavian Titus]

1) I don't think I said anything condescending.

2) We've been over this before. I do not believe NIST is complicit. I think they, like most people, are simply incapable of believing a conspiracy, so they ignore the obvious and find for something else. Again, their own models didn't work, and they spell all this out in their report. Yet they nevertheless proceed as if they did. If that's not selective reasoning, I don't know what is.

Sorry but if they simply ignored evidence pointing to an inside job based on their own prejudices then yes they are complicit in the crime, that is precisely what you are arguing.

Hypotheticals are typically pulled out of thin air. However, show me anywhere that I used a hypothetical, alone, to prove something.

Your hypothetical regarding people located in the chain of command at the CIA, FBI, etc who were able to block the investigation into an inside job; such as, the one about faking the OBL tape.

Show me anywhere I said that because it's possible something exists, we should therefore conclude it must exist. Also, if you're going to bring up falsifiability again, you've got some points to answer for it.

Sure thing:

Originally Posted by TOT
Then why do you think Ashcroft is involved do you have any evidence to that effect?

1) It would be almost impossible not to include him. It's in my interest to exclude as many people as possible; I include him because of his position.

So your assertion is that because he had to be in on it he was in on it.

2) He nevertheless actively opposed the 9/11 commission, and prior to 9/11 actually reprimanded people trying to bring warnings to him. That's enough to cast suspicion on him assuming that there are other reasons to believe there was a conspiracy.

You fail to provide evidence for either assertion and if and when you do I can safely assume that you will ignore the actual reasons for his actions and substitute your own.

No, I could never prove them. Nor could you ever disprove them. Nor could you prove your claims, and I could never disprove them. What we can do is give evidence for a given POV and determine how to make it all fit.

A good investigator does not does not tell people to connect the dots he connects the dots for us. Here's the deal rather than having your shifting argument in which confronted by facts you simply change your position to sound more palatable and instead lay out your theory with a verifiable fact backing each one of your claims then we can have a serious fact based conversation rather than what we have going on in the other thread where the argument has devolved into nothing more than pure supposition.

1) I don't claim to be proving much of anything except that the official story cannot be correct. I claim to offer some reasonable speculation about what really happened.

You have not given any real evidence that the "official" story is not correct nothing you offer is tangible it is all loosely nitted together factoids the vast majoirty of which are either outright falsehoods, distortions, or half truths.

2) Here we go with falsifiability again. Please respond to my points against falsifiability as a criterion.

Ofcourse you're opposed to falsifiable evidence that is because you are a conspiracist, if you had to provide falsifiable evidence to support your theory then you would have to admit that you are wrong.

I'm not sure whether you misunderstand my argument, or the fallacy of affirming the consequent, so bear with me a moment:

Affirming the consequent has the form:

A ==> B
B
Therefore A

My argument regarding the explosion has the form

Iff A, B
B
Therefore A

The second is valid, the first is not. The Iff operator is all-important, because line 1 is logically equivalent to:

(A ==> B) * (B ==> A)

So therefore, by having B, we can get A--something we can't do when A and B are involved by a simple conditional.

What are you blathering about your argument was the quintessential example of an affirming the consequent fallacy of logic:


If P, then Q.
Q.
Therefore, P.

P = Sound of Explosions Q = Controlled Demolition.

My assertion is that the explosion heard in the clip has to be a bomb since we know that nothing else should have been exploding then.

No sir we do not it could have been transformers exploding, bolts sheering off under high tension, or steal beams being split in half under high stress.

Again, we recovered diesel fuel from all the tanks at WTC 7. FEMA and NIST have both concluded that the only explosions on that day were supposed to have been when the planes impacted. Therefore, if there was an explosion, it could only have been something not explained in the official version--i.e. a bomb.

A) Show me where the NIST says that no transformers exploded.

B) Even if your assertions is true that still leaves the possibility for other variables, IE bolts being sheered off and steel beams cracking in half.

As to a comparative audio analysis--what exactly is it that you want?

The sound of steal beams being split in half under high stress and bolts snapping off under high tension and transformers exploding and diesel generators exploding compared by an audio analyst to the sound of shape charges exploding.

There wouldn't be any kind of distinct signature that any explosion has with regard to frequency or waveform or something like that--at least not at this resolution. It'll show up on an oscilloscope as noise, and environmental factors would affect the frequency and amplitude. The only way to compare the sound of demolition to the sound of a diesel tank exploding would be in analyzing the envelope, and most specifically the attack phase. And this makes perfect sense if you understand anything I just said: demolitions will expend their force at once because that's what they're designed to do. A diesel tank is designed not to explode, so when it does, it does so irregularly. The attack isn't as sharp.

So basically your assertion is that you can not come up with documentation to prove your assertion that the sound we hear is a shape charge going off, just as I thought.

You've also mentioned bolts snapping at high tension. I guess I would just leave it to anyone watching the clip to determine if the sound recorded could plausibly be a bolt snapping. I think it categorically cannot be.

Prove it.

I think I explained this somewhere. But in case I didn't, here's what I mean:

The sense of "cause" we're looking for is the empirical sense--what could be present and always cause collapse, and what could be absent and always prevent collapse. The answer is fire (well, and missing fireproofing--see below).

To see what I mean, just answer these two questions:

1) Had the planes impacted the towers in the way they did, severing all the columns exactly as happened on 911, but there were no fires, would the towers have collapsed?

2) Had there been no impacts but someone had taken down the fireproofing and started fires with the appropriate amount of fuel, would the buildings have collapsed?

NIST, I believe, is committed to answering no to 1 and yes to 2. They are therefore committed to saying that fire caused the collapses.

No they are committed to saying that it was the combination of factors listed that caused the collapse not just one independent of the other.

Now, obviously, had the planes not impacted the towers, there would have been no fires and hence no collapse (according to NIST), so in that different sense of "cause", then yes, both the impacts and the fires caused the collapse.

Both the impacts and the fires did cause the collapse, one can not be separated from the other.

Another way to see that this is a perfectly legitimate way to argue is to suppose that there had been many examples of steel hi-rise buildings collapsing due to fire. In that case, it'd be obviously ridiculous of me to say that something's fishy because no steel hi-rise structure had ever collapsed from the combination of impacts plus fires.



Yes, I acknowledge that NIST includes the impacts in their list of causes. In the same sense of the word, so do I. But I'm pointing towards a different sense of cause that is just as legitimate to consider, and is pertinent in trying to find historical analogs.

No it is not legitimate to consider the factors for the collapse indepently as no single factor listed alone caused the collapse.

 

[dixon76710]

If that's the case, then explain why. It appears to me you made the dumb remark, and I explained why it was dumb. But if you disagree, why don't you just say why?

What dont you understand? Here is a quiz. I overslept this morning, big hurry to get here for a scheduled meeting. Drove about 76mph to get here. Noooow, was I traveling 7 times the speed of sound? or was it 1/7th the speed of sound.

 

[dixon76710]

I posted a fairly easy-to-understand critique. It turns out that, if the author's model is correct (I think it more or less is), it should have taken the North Tower 196 seconds to collapse, and the South Tower 188 seconds to collapse. Actually, probably longer as the first model he proposes, which I used, considered only static friction.

I know little about physics, which is enough to know that you know nothing. Once a collapse begins from the top, it is going to increase in speed, not decrease. Show us ANY published source that backs up this utterly pointless and long winded speculation of yours that it would take more than 20 seconds, let alone 196.

 

[dixon76710]

Later in his testimony before commissioner Roehme, though, he admits that he does not know what the order was. Again, logically, it couldn't have been a shoot down order. See the link in my post to Kandahar.

Good god man! dig deep for some sembalance of charachter if any is to be had.

MR. HAMILTON: But there very clearly was an order to shoot commercial aircraft down.

MR. MINETA: Subsequently I found that out.

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

And you dont need 9/11truth.org to translate Mineta's testimony, he speaks english. You can go to the source, and learn that they are filling your head full of shiite.

 

[Thorgasm]

"Were Shape Charges Used In The World Trade Center Collapes?"

Shaped Charges and the World Trade Center Collapses (link)

Yes, they were shaped like airplanes.

 

[Monk-Eye]

Frame

"Frames"

Yes, they were shaped like airplanes.

Dildos with wings, perhaps that is why it slides so easily into the mind.

 

[ashurbanipal]

Sorry but if they simply ignored evidence pointing to an inside job based on their own prejudices then yes they are complicit in the crime, that is precisely what you are arguing.

I think that's exactly what they did, but that doesn't mean they were in on the conspiracy. Questions of their guilt or innocence are separate.

Your hypothetical regarding people located in the chain of command at the CIA, FBI, etc who were able to block the investigation into an inside job; such as, the one about faking the OBL tape.

And how did I use that hypothetical, alone, to prove something?

So your assertion is that because he had to be in on it he was in on it.

If there was a conspiracy, it would be very hard to not include him.

You fail to provide evidence for either assertion and if and when you do I can safely assume that you will ignore the actual reasons for his actions and substitute your own.

Dave Schippers has told us that he got reprimanded for approaching John Ashcroft with a warning pre-911. The entire Bush administration opposed a 911 commission if you recall.

A good investigator does not does not tell people to connect the dots he connects the dots for us. Here's the deal rather than having your shifting argument in which confronted by facts you simply change your position to sound more palatable

Aside from the Payne Stewart bit, where did I change my position?

and instead lay out your theory with a verifiable fact backing each one of your claims then we can have a serious fact based conversation

OK, so let's start with the NIST report. I've cited page numbers where they say the steel in the WTC didn't reach temperatures hot enough to cause collapse. That's fact number one--let's discuss it.

Quote:
1) I don't claim to be proving much of anything except that the official story cannot be correct. I claim to offer some reasonable speculation about what really happened.

Ofcourse you're opposed to falsifiable evidence that is because you are a conspiracist, if you had to provide falsifiable evidence to support your theory then you would have to admit that you are wrong.

Plenty of people, starting in the 1950's, have been against falsifiability. It's pretty clear that if falsifiability is the main criterion, we'd have a hard time knowing anything.

Falsifiability works against you as well, though you don't seem to realize it. How would you falsify the claim that Cheney didn't participate in 911? How would you falsify the claim that we didn't go to Iraq to control the Middle East?

What are you blathering about your argument was the quintessential example of an affirming the consequent fallacy of logic:

I know what I meant, and am probably in a superior position in that regard than you are. I spent a considerable amount of verbiage eliminating other possible causes of the sound. If I were affirming the consequent, I wouldn't have done that.

If P, then Q.
Q.
Therefore, P.

P = Sound of Explosions Q = Controlled Demolition.

OK, now it's pretty obvious you don't know what you're on about. Just plug in the referents for that argument:

If (there was a) sound of explosions, then (there were) controlled demolition(s).

(There was) controlled demolition.

Therefore, (there was a) sound of explosions.

It's pretty clear that if there were demolitions, there'd be a sound of explosions.

No sir we do not it could have been transformers exploding, bolts sheering off under high tension, or steal beams being split in half under high stress.

I know your volume's broken, but take my word for it--the last two explanations are non-starters.

As it happens, I have heard a transformer exploding a couple of times as well, and I would say that while they don't sound like rdx or dynamite going off, it's close enough to argue the point. So I will attempt to establish whether there were transformers on any of the impacted floors of the WTC. If there were, I will admit that this could be it. If there were not, however, I will continue to argue the point.

The sound of steal beams being split in half under high stress and bolts snapping off under high tension and transformers exploding and diesel generators exploding compared by an audio analyst to the sound of shape charges exploding.

I have worked as an audio analyst, and what I'm telling you is you're not making any damn sense. Tell me exactly what kind of analysis you want, and I'll try to produce it. I have the equipment necessary and could probably find the sound files. Alternately, if you give me something to go on, I might be willing to have some people I know who work in the mastering biz give it a whirl. But you can't just say "analyze these sounds and prove they're not the same" because they're just going to look at you and go "they're obviously not the same"--which is exactly what I've been telling you.

So, now, what exactly do you want an audio analyst to do? How, exactly do you want the sounds analyzed?

So basically your assertion is that you can not come up with documentation to prove your assertion that the sound we hear is a shape charge going off, just as I thought.

No, the sound's envelope is fairly good. Not quite a fingerprint, but fairly close provided we can speculate about what other sounds it might have been. It turns out that those other sounds wouldn't have that kind of envelope.

No they are committed to saying that it was the combination of factors listed that caused the collapse not just one independent of the other.

So you believe they would answer yes to both 1 and 2? If so, then surely it should be in their report somewhere where they state that the columns being cut were enough. I've read the NIST report and I don't recall seeing that in there. Their explanation is that the planes' impacts blew insulation off the steel beams and started fires. The fires got hot enough to cause the steel trusses to sag, pulling the exterior columns towards the core and initiating global collapse.

Once again, obviously there wouldn't have been fires without the impacts. But slightly less obvious, to anyone who reads the report, is that fire was the primary cause of collapse according to NIST.

Both the impacts and the fires did cause the collapse, one can not be separated from the other.

Why couldn't they? We separate factors of any given event all the time. That's called analysis, and it's directly opposed to synthesis (which is also important).

No it is not legitimate to consider the factors for the collapse indepently as no single factor listed alone caused the collapse.

So would you also include in the list of causes the building of the towers themselves? If we have to take everything into account, then clearly we should. How about the manufacturing of the planes? And, lest we forget, the existence of air. Well, really, the existence of the entire planet as it currently is. Or, well, the entire universe--that is, since we can't separate factors.

The point is that the planes' impacts caused the fires, which in turn caused the collapse. Any reasonable person can see that an historic analog where a steel hi-rise structure collapsed from fire would be legitimate to ask for.

At this point, if you want to continue to argue this point, I must insist that you answer the two questions I've posed a couple times now:

1) If the planes had impacted the towers but started no fires, would they have collapsed?

2) If there had been no impacts, but someone had blown off the fireproofing and started some fires with the appropriate amount of fuel, would the buildings have collapsed?

 

[ashurbanipal]

What dont you understand?

How you think you still have a case to argue.

Here is a quiz. I overslept this morning, big hurry to get here for a scheduled meeting. Drove about 76mph to get here. Noooow, was I traveling 7 times the speed of sound? or was it 1/7th the speed of sound.

Neither. 76 mph is slightly less than 1/10th the speed of sound under normal atmospheric pressure at sea level. Assuming you were above sea level, the speed of sound would have been slightly slower.

Once a collapse begins from the top, it is going to increase in speed, not decrease.

Maybe. Depends on whether the falling mass ever gains enough momentum to overbalance E+static friction. FR Greening's paper on the subject actually says that the mass should slow, not speed up. under his model, unless the floors were spaced farther apart than the Newtonian Gravitational Constant (i.e. 9.18 meters), they'd have slowed down. As it happens, the collapse did accelerate. This is one reason not to believe FR Greening's model--as I pointed out in my critique.

Show us ANY published source that backs up this utterly pointless and long winded speculation of yours that it would take more than 20 seconds, let alone 196.

See TOT's post of FR Greenings paper in the other 911 thread, along with my critique posted just a few posts later.

MR. HAMILTON: But there very clearly was an order to shoot commercial aircraft down.

MR. MINETA: Subsequently I found that out.

He found it out subsequently--he didn't know it at the time. There's no reason to believe that this refers to the same order; that's what the questioners are leading him to believe, though.

And you dont need 9/11truth.org to translate Mineta's testimony, he speaks english.

Yes, I'm aware of that. They posted video of the testimony.

 

[dixon76710]

How you think you still have a case to argue.
Neither. 76 mph is slightly less than 1/10th the speed of sound under normal atmospheric pressure at sea level. Assuming you were above sea level, the speed of sound would have been slightly slower.

Meant to use 10 times and 1/10. Regardless einstein. Its distance over time, not time over distance. 1 1/2 times free fall speed would be FASTER than free fall. You couldnt possibly understand but according to your previous logic I was traveling 10 times the speed of sound at 76mph, just as you view a tower collapse taking 1 1/2 as much time as free fall, as being 1 1/2 times the speed of free fall.