Quote from: WarthurIf you've read Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer he goes into a lot of detail on this.

Michael Shermer has less than zero respect from me.  Let's not side-track into Shermer if we can avoid it -- I don't like myself when I start getting impolite.

Regarding my "desperate conjecture," Al-CIA-da:

Quote from: WarthurWhy would they carry out an operation ...


According to your link Spitzer is an attorney general, not a policeman. ...

etc.

I don't distinguish between attorney generals and other law enforcers such as policemen.  Such distinctions and all the rest of your objections to the "desperate conjecture" are much less important than the facts of the matter, because the "desperate conjecture" is just that.  I said at the beginning of this thread that I don't know enough political science to figure out who MIHOP.  

But the 1500-degree Ground Zero scene, (as described by the firefighters), the sulfur evidence that suggests thermate, the free-fall collapse -- those things are subject to factual verification.

My "desperate conjecture" is just an attempt to meet my critics half-way.  If I had to guess, that's what I would guess.  Don't let that guess distract you from the massive body of facts.

Quote from: WarthurI don't understand what you mean by this - can you go into detail?

On the morning of 9-11, there was a big simulation of an attack that kept much of the Air Force quite confused and busy when they should have been shooting down the airliners headed off their flight paths.

I doubt that confusion was something cooked up in cave in Afghanistan.  I suspect it was an inside job.

Quote from: WarthurHow come not a single one of these spies have blown the whistle, ever? If it has such a massive number of employees, how come none of them have ever had ethical jitters?

First Morrow was abusing logical quantifiers, now he's taught you the bad habit.

To know that a statement like, "Not a single spy has ever blown the whistle" were true, you would have to have universal knowledge of all spies.

Even pros in the spy business don't have universal knowledge, and I'm guessing you have less knowledge than the pros.
 
Ex-CIA folks are supposed to stay quiet.  But seven of them are claiming a cover-up.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070922_seven_cia_veterans_c.htm

And if I'm counting correctly, those whistle-blowers don't include the famous Ms. Sibel Edmonds, who tried to blow the whistle and was stopped.

And, hey, what about the non-insider whistle-blowers who wind up conveniently dead?
http://covertoperations.blogspot.com/2006/03/extremely-sad-news.html

Zebuhr was a loud voice -- he got silenced quite oddly.  

So if you want cast doubt due to a supposed absence of whistle-blowers, perhaps all the whistleblowers at

http://patriotsquestion911.com/

would inspire you with some names of folks who do have "ethical jitters."

Gen. Clark.  Norman Mineta.  Kwiatkowski.  All of those look like insiders with "ethical jitters" who are not willing to keep secrets to me.  Maybe you can make your definitions more explicit and exclude those folks, but until you do, your statements are extremely vague.

Quote from: riprockWhy don't you ask this guy.  Either he's faked a live broadcast predicting these events on 25 July 2001, or else he has a lot of witnesses who made him make that live broadcast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGtOFudmHG8

It shouldn't be too hard to prove that he faked that broadcast, right?
No one ever checks that guy's claims...

Operation Northwoods was well-documented before 9/11 happened, especially in conspiracy circles. (The one thing people never point out about that one was that the plan was considered and then rejected because it was both monstrously evil and completely retarded.) And Bin Laden was well-known before then because of the Cole bombing and the African embassy attacks. Most of the references Jones is making there seem to be to the first, failed attempt on the WTC.

It does not require special inside knowledge to predict that Islamic terrorists might have another stab at the WTC. Furthermore, the speculation - and that's all I'm seeing in that video, Jones doesn't exactly provide citations - of one commentator isn't even slightly the same as a confession of one, single member of that "effectively unlimited" army of spies and explosives smugglers you seem to believe in.

Alex Jones' biggest journalistic achievement was sneaking into Bohemian Grove and watching a bunch of grown men burn a doll in front of an owl statue. It proved precisely nothing except that frat boys never quite grow up, and old, powerful men can still behave like total retards when they're having a drinking party in the woods.

Quote from: WarthurWho do you think was behind Oklahoma City?

If you're genuinely interested, you could ask at:

http://www.okctruth.com/

Quote from: riprockDon't get too wrapped up in the paper tube analogy -- it's completely inapplicable.  The WTC towers had big steel beams that mysteriously vanished from Ground Zero.  The WTC towers can't be compared to non-reinforced paper tubes.

The World Trade Center was a tube within a tube.  There were no big steel beams going from the inside to the outside.  There were lightweight trusses.

From http://www.nyc-architecture.com/GON/GON001E.htm



"The World Trade Center's tube-style construction, with steel columns found only along the exterior wall and within a central core, freed up nearly an acre of space on each floor for offices."

   "A tube of a tower"

"That 75 percent was also made possible by another innovation. Previous high-rises had relied for their structural integrity on a forest of supporting columns on each floor. Typically, architects spaced these 30 feet apart throughout the interior. The exterior walls of such buildings were merely curtain walls, which let light in and kept weather out but provided little support."

"Such was not the case in the World Trade Center. Consulting engineers Leslie Robertson and John Skilling invented an entirely new method of construction. The forest of interior columns vanished; such columns only appeared in and around the central core of elevator shafts, stairwells, and bathrooms. Then it was nothing but open space -- 60 feet of it on two sides, 35 on the other two sides -- before one reached the outside walls. These were not curtain walls but cages of steel columns spaced just over a yard apart, with 22 inches of glass in between. (Minoru Yamasaki, the building's architect, designed it this way in part because he was insecure with heights and felt more comfortable with such narrow windows.)"

"The shafts of steel in the exterior walls shouldered not only gravity loads pressing down from above but also lateral loads caused by gusty winds nudging the building from the side. Such tube-style architecture relied on high-strength steel, which was only then becoming available. It resulted in up to an acre of rentable space on each floor, and it became the pioneering style of frame for a whole new generation of buildings."

Quote from: riprockThat's why Bill Manning, the Editor-in-Chief of Fire Engineering, called the official investigation a "half-baked farce."

Does he believe the buildings were brought down by explosions?

Quote from: riprockBut because that evidence was destroyed, it got a lot easier to sell the "pancake collapse" theory.

How long were they supposed to keep the wreckage?  Until everyone with doubts was satisfied?

Quote from: riprockMichael Shermer has less than zero respect from me.  Let's not side-track into Shermer if we can avoid it -- I don't like myself when I start getting impolite.

Which of his views in particular do you object to?

QuoteRegarding my "desperate conjecture," Al-CIA-da:

I don't distinguish between attorney generals and other law enforcers such as policemen.

I would make a habit of doing so; failing to understand the distinction undermines your argument, because it creates the impression that you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

QuoteBut the 1500-degree Ground Zero scene, (as described by the firefighters), the sulfur evidence that suggests thermate, the free-fall collapse -- those things are subject to factual verification.

And when you take those things, and all the other facts we have about 9/11, the MIHOP theory is still shakier than the mainstream theory.

QuoteOn the morning of 9-11, there was a big simulation of an attack that kept much of the Air Force quite confused and busy when they should have been shooting down the airliners headed off their flight paths.

You mean the scheduled exercise? I don't see how that would be "confusing".

QuoteFirst Morrow was abusing logical quantifiers, now he's taught you the bad habit.

To know that a statement like, "Not a single spy has ever blown the whistle" were true, you would have to have universal knowledge of all spies.

But the fact that you cannot produce a single person who's willing to say "I helped sneak the explosives into the WTC" would seem to speak against the idea that there was an army of spies smuggling bombs in.

When we're studying the world outside of our heads, we need to make decisions about what to believe based on the balance of probabilities. I say that if the really was an "effectively unlimited" number of spies involved in smuggling the explosives into the towers, at least one person involved in one part of the operation would have come forward by now.

QuoteEx-CIA folks are supposed to stay quiet.  But seven of them are claiming a cover-up.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070922_seven_cia_veterans_c.htm

And if I'm counting correctly, those whistle-blowers don't include the famous Ms. Sibel Edmonds, who tried to blow the whistle and was stopped.

None of the whistle-blowers cited have said "I was personally involved in the operation to hide explosives in the WTC".

QuoteAnd, hey, what about the non-insider whistle-blowers who wind up conveniently dead?
http://covertoperations.blogspot.com/2006/03/extremely-sad-news.html

Zebuhr was a loud voice -- he got silenced quite oddly.

Do you have any evidence that the people who shot him weren't actually just muggers with jittery trigger fingers? Because that's what the article appears to be saying.

He also didn't claim that he was one of the people involved in the explosives-smuggling, as far as I can tell.

QuoteSo if you want cast doubt due to a supposed absence of whistle-blowers, perhaps all the whistleblowers at

http://patriotsquestion911.com/

would inspire you with some names of folks who do have "ethical jitters."

All of these people are simply saying "Wow, there's something odd about that." Which is evidence of little except their own doubt. None of them claim to have been involved in the actual planning of 9/11, and so in that regard you can't really call them "insiders". What I am looking for is someone who's willing to say "Yes, 9/11 was a conspiracy - and, God help me, I was part of it."

Michael Shermer!!?


Oy Vey!!

Quote from: John MorrowDid you watch this movie of an F-4 hitting a concrete wall at 500 mph on one of the sites that I referenced?

What happened to the two planes that entered the two World Trade Center towers?  Why do we have pictures of them going in and so few solid parts coming out the other side?  Isn't turning into a slurry what happened to those planes?  You do believe that planes hit the WTC towers, right?

This video?  (no windows media here)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTJ62BXAXOg

I see a plane hit a wall and a big cloud of cement dust and smoke.  I imagine the plane is half-embedded in the wall and flattened like a crushed pop can.  There's probably all sorts of plane bits scattered about the impact site.

Can't see all that much from the video -- too bad they cut it before you get to see the after effects...

What I don't imagine I'm seeing is a lot of dust from the plane turning into powder.  That doesn't match my sense of how the world works.  If it's true, I'd need to see a more clear example, and I'd still be incredibly surprised.

I think the planes that hit the WTC became wreckage inside the floors where they hit.  I have no reason to believe they liquified on impact.  That doesn't make any sense to me.

Quote from: StuartI see a plane hit a wall and a big cloud of cement dust and smoke.  I imagine the plane is half-embedded in the wall and flattened like a crushed pop can.  There's probably all sorts of plane bits scattered about the impact site.

Spend more time looking at high-speed impacts with the ground, like the 737 that crashed in Pittsburgh a few years ago.  The forces involved are so large that you often just get really tiny pieces and a few really sturdy bits like wheel rims and engine parts.  Planes are built to be light and are really pretty fragile, like birds.  That's why, when a bomb goes off in flight, they do a pretty good job of disintegrating.  Also remember that aluminum burns.

Quote from: StuartWhat I don't imagine I'm seeing is a lot of dust from the plane turning into powder.  That doesn't match my sense of how the world works.  If it's true, I'd need to see a more clear example, and I'd still be incredibly surprised.

Not powder, per se, but lots of tiny parts, some often hard to recognize as part of an aircraft.  Here are pages that offers some pictures of the debris from other crashes:

http://911research.wtc7.net/pentagon/analysis/compare/jetcrashdebris.html
http://911research.wtc7.net/pentagon/analysis/compare/c130crash.html

Quote from: StuartI think the planes that hit the WTC became wreckage inside the floors where they hit.  I have no reason to believe they liquified on impact.  That doesn't make any sense to me.

Bear in mind that "liquified" can be a bit figurative and can mean a lot of very small pieces traveling together rather than a single solid mass.  

Why doesn't it make sense to you?

PBS Nova - Building on Ground Zero - See the links IMPACT TO COLLAPSE and 9/11 CONSPIRACY THEORIES:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/

A 1983 documentary on the construction of the WTC and lets you see how it was put together:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4334991174539603857

A BBC Horizon Documentary about the WTC collapse.  This one explains the reason why each tower fell and the evidence for it (though the truss explanation for the South Tower has been modified from trusses snapping off to trusses pulling the external columns inward based on the evidence).  What's important is that the close up images of collapse of the South Tower, rather than showing a "freefall collapse" of the whole thing, show that the core remained standing for a bit after the outer shell fell apart around it for the South Tower, and it shows that the North Tower, the inner core fell first and there was also a lot of debris thrown off at an angle:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8889504087061157393

Quote from: riprockBut the 1500-degree Ground Zero scene, (as described by the firefighters), the sulfur evidence that suggests thermate, the free-fall collapse -- those things are subject to factual verification.

Here is a detailed treatment of the thermite theory that includes explanations of the sulphur

The same site also has pages dealing with other issues, including the freefall argument,

Thanks for posting all these links John.

Quote from: StuartThanks for posting all these links John.

No problem.  Some of those documentaries are excellent overviews of the official story and some of the other material helped me double-check the quality of the conspiracy theory claims.  If you still aren't sure after all of that, at least you'll be more informed.