Monday, August 28, 2006

9/11 conspiracies are a crying shame

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

The fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, is two weeks away, but the screeching from the conspiracy monkey house already is upon us.

The "9-11 truth squads" are planning a three-day gala in New York City to inform the world that Sept. 11 was a "catalyst" designed to set in motion a "global domination project" by overthrowing the American government, says NY911Truth.org. Which would be true, if you were talking about a plot by Islamic fascists. But they say it was by President Bush himself, "as a pretext for the current Middle East aggression."

The organizers of the conspiracy jamboree urge "all movements for transformational progress" to converge on Gotham thusly: "If we want to put an end to war, use our treasury for productive purposes domestically, restore our Constitution, have a law-abiding government, create cooperative rather than antagonistic relationships with the rest of the world, heal our environment and be the creators of our own destiny, understanding 9/11 is required," say these "truth" activists.

The blogosphere is buzzing with the things they want us to understand.

Start at 911research.wtc7.net and follow the links into paranoia hell.

Among other things, airliners didn't crash into the Pentagon (it was an American missile) or the World Trade Center, and even if they did, they didn't cause the towers to collapse--it was the result of "controlled demolition charges" placed by Bush agents in the buildings before they were struck. That the named hijackers were not the hijackers, if, that is, the planes actually were hijacked or even existed.

Most incredibly, this intricate plot was pulled off by the world's most stupid head of state, George W. Bush.

Such theories require extensive fabrications to back them up, such as the assertion that the towers collapsed at free-fall speed (false), and that one floor falling on top of another couldn't possibly "pancake" the buildings (actually it was scores of floors collapsing on each floor).

The conspiracy nimrods, of course, won't be there alone. Mainstream media nimrods also will attend in great numbers. TV anchors will solemnly speak of "disturbing new questions" about Sept. 11 and break to interviews with charla-tans, incompetents, nut cases and the gullible, all united as fools.

And they'll all be playing to the many Americans who take it seriously. More than a third suspect that federal officials either took part in or knowingly took no action to stop the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll. The poll also found that 16 percent of Americans believe the bit about how secretly planted explosives collapsed the twin towers.

Conspiracy documents are a hot read on college campuses and in Europe.

Loonies come in all shapes, from the conservative Paul Craig Roberts (Ronald Reagan's supply-side guy) to, well, so many on the left. That's because the conspiracy theory resonates with their psychotic hatred of Bush, whom they can easily believe would engineer a deadly attack on Americans.

Of course, by this theory, W. also engineered the attacks on the Marine barracks in Lebanon, the U.S. Embassies in Africa and the Navy warship, the USS Cole. All while he was a slobbering drunk.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair also is alleged to be a part of the plot against America, just as he, the U.S., Israel and Rupert Murdoch's media empire have now supposedly cooked up the plot to blow up American-bound airliners.

The self-described "9-11 truth community" will try to appear reasonable by calling for an "independent" investigation"--which means that the committees still sniffing out the conspirators in the JFK assassination will have to clear out of the hearing room for the next four decades.

No expert investigation, such as one by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, will be "independent" enough to suit them. Not that the professional engineering groups shouldn't be more forceful in rebuttal. I suppose they fear that speaking out would give the wackos credibility.

But it is silence that gives them credibility.

Failing a unified debunking by professionals, Popular Mechanics magazine took up the challenge. Popular Mechanics doesn't have the proper cache, so the theorists will ridicule or ignore its work, even though it's the most extensive rebuttal I've yet seen. Judge for yourself at popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html.

Unless you believe that the magazine, too, is in cahoots with Bush.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

102 comments:

Anonymous said...

I see the blog monitor has to approve this, so I'm sure it won't be posted, but here goes.

You can always tell when something has struck a nerve with the corporate elite. Their lackeys, like Dennis B., come out screaming about "loonies," "nut cases," and whackos.

We are not to critically examine the evidence---just accept that it is preposterous that a swell guy like George Bush could be in on a plot that kills Americans. I mean, how could a guy who doesn't hesitate to kill tens of thousands of Iraqis, who posed no threat to the USA, even think of killing Americans? Why, it's almost as preposterous as election fraud and the President lying to go to war.

Anonymous said...

It seems the marching orders from Karl Rove are the usual: attack and ridicule. Don't deal with the facts.

Anonymous said...

I agree. Bush is too stupid to have come up with this scheme.

Anonymous said...

conspiracy theorists are radically afraid of the truth in matters dealing with situations and events that they see as potentially harmful to them and over which they feel they have no control.

Now we were all frightened by 9/11 and understandably so, but their fear is far greater than that felt by normal persons. Their fear is so great in fact that they go to extremes to create a false view of reality - their ‘truth’. That fabricated reality is psychologically far less threatening than reality. It is simply easier to live with a ridiculous concoction than to deal with reality.

They are mentally incapable of dealing with the reality of a matter like 9/11 - so they don’t. They create a reality within which they feel safe. Deep inside they know that George Bush is not really going to hurt them so they are ’safe’ as long as he is responsible for 9/11. There are no radical Islamist’s trying to kill Americans, Bin Laden is a CIA plot, Americans are putting the IEDs in place in Iraq that is killing other Americans since Zarqawi is/was another CIA puppet. It is all so clear to them - because it has to be. They can’t deal with it any other way.

Walker said...

Mr. Byrne,

There is a serious problem with your appraisal of the 9/11 Truth movement, and it isn't the name calling, the distortions of certain facts, or the cynical, school-yard bully tone of your commentary. It is that you have singled out, as the "most incredible" aspect of what you claim to be the beliefs of 9/11 truth seekers, that "this intricate plot was pulled off by the world's most stupid head of state, George W. Bush."

In doing so you have set up an interesting straw-man argument, which, in case you are not familiar with the concept (you musn't be to have perpetrated this kind of intellectual dishonesty to begin with), is when an arguer sets forth a claim that he attributes to the other side of the argument and then attacks and destroys it, thereby projecting to observers of the argument that the side of the argument that had a claim attributed to it is wrong, since they have just witnessed a dismantling of what they thought was a concept held by the side being attacked.

I have not seen or heard of any of the actually respectable researchers in the 9/11 Truth movement claim that Bush "pulled it off." While we're on this, what do you mean by "Bush pulled it off?" Are you saying that he thought it up and put the people in place to carry it out? That maybe he let it happen and did what he had to do in order to allow for it to happen? Considering the context of that statement and the rest of your commentary, you seem to be saying that, bottom line, all of the 9/11 truth people are putting the blame solely on Bush. That, sir, is an O'Reilly-esque lie.

You then go on to say that, by the 9/11 "conspiracy nimrods'" own theory, that Bush was also responsible for the Marine barracks bombing, the embassy bombings in Africa and the U.S.S. Cole, and that since it is impossible that Bush could have done anything with regard to those attacks (because he was a stinking drunk at the time), it is also just as unlikely he had anything to do with 9/11. That is the definition of a straw-man argument, and it is logically fallacious and completely dishonest as well as irresponsible.

There is another aspect of your commentary that reeks of intellectual hackery, and that is that you discredit claims about specific pieces of "evidence" that the 9/11 truth movement has used as a basis for its desire of a new independent investigation but do not provide any justification for it. You claim that the 9/11 truth people are saying the buildings came down at "free-fall speed." This is patently incorrect. Anyone in the truth movement that is credible is claiming that the buildings came down at "near free fall speed." Not that they fell as though dropped from a cliff, but that they fell almost that fast. Another example of a straw-man argument. The point is that the buildings fell much too fast for a pancake collapse to have been impossible because each floor would provide at least a split second of resistance before giving way to the weight from above, not to mention that each floor below the initial collapse floor would have to have been symmetrically weakened in order for a cascading collapse to have happened as we saw. You take care of that idea with your next statement, the snyde and parenthetical "actually it was scores of floors collapsing on each floor."

"Scores of floors collapsing on each floor?" Please explain what on Earth that means. Scores of floors... so dozens and dozens of floors collapsing on EACH floor, conveniently causing the building to retract into the ground as though it were an extended slinky while still standing? Both of them? Generating enough force to aerosolize thousands of tons of concrete and somehow create smoldering hot-spots of molten metal that stayed hot for weeks afterwards? Because of fires that, even though they did not burn hot enough to melt steel and were burning assymetrically, somehow caused a symmetical collapse of BOTH TOWERS? Even though the cause of the collapse, you believe, was fires alone, despite the fact that no steel frame skyscraper has ever collapsed due to fire in history? And that the qudaruple simultaneous hijacking of aircraft by 19 Arabs with box cutters and hardly any flight training were able to somehow direct their transcontinental airliners from 32,000 feet directly to the WTC, the Pentagon, and ostensibly, towards the White House? That is the real conspiracy theory here.

There is some hard evidence about 9/11 that calls into serious question the "conclusions" of our government. The 9/11 Commission Report was supposed to be a panel that used empirical data to solve the mystery of how and why it happened, but it was doomed from the get-go in accomplishing this task, because the mandate given to it by the administration, which tried its hardest to prevent an investigation at all, was to bolster the official story about the 19 hijackers and Osama bin Laden as the "evil-doers" that caused this. We went to war in Afghanistan because Osama was there and he "masterminded" the attacks. Yet our own FBI says flat out they have no evidence linking Osama bin Laden to 9/11. His claim is that he actually had nothing to do with it, that it was carried out by "individuals with their own motivations." The FBI agrees with him it seems, because nowhere on his "most wanted" poster on the FBI's website does it say anything about the U.S. wanting him in connection with 9/11. You can look for yourself. If we invaded another country because it was harboring the perpetrator of 9/11, shouldn't we be able to prove, or at least be able to make a case that would hold up in court, that he was in fact the mastermind?

Your commentary is truly ignorant as well as dangerous. If you were a responsible journalist, you would have conducted more thorough research into what the actual claims of the 9/11 truth movement are. Yes, there are some wildly speculative notions floating around out there, but there are also a lot of Republicans who think that the Bible is the literal word of God, and we don't paint all Republicans with that brush, do we? What you are doing in connecting ALL of the 9/11 truth movement to some fringe claims is just as irresponsible as well as irrational, and worse, you're doing it under the guise of journalistic credibility.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Dennis, it's a relief to see someone finally address this topic in a major newspaper. It's utterly depressing how many people buy into these absurd theories. The real difficult part is that you cant reason with these people - they've made up their minds already. The bottom line is this: they simply believe what they want to believe. If they read on someone's blog that a CIA team was posing as a maintenance crew in the WTC on 9/10, then by golly, they'll accept that as fact. The list of other examples like this is endless. They ignore all contrary evidence and basic common sense and accept that series of events, each with a .00001% chance of happening, must be the truth. It's pathetic.

Anonymous said...

Even if the Bush administration isn't responcible for 9.11...they have exploted that tragic event in such a fashion as to be worthy of being an excessory to the crime. This administration used 9.11 as a pretext to start two wars, waste billions of dollars and to strip away constitutional rights. But if you ask him right now this is what he says...http://www.shoutwire.com/comments/25723/Bush_Confirms_That_He_Is_A_Liar

The downing street documents show that a year before the Iraq war started it was already planned as a forelorn conclusion. They manipulated emotions over 9.11 to force their agenda and have killed hundreds of thousands of people in the process.(and tortured more than a few before killing them).

If the Bush administration is not guilty of planning 9.11 this is what they are guilty of...they are guilty of mass murder, torture and an attack on american freedoms that al qaeda could never equal.

Anonymous said...

While I would never claim to put total stock in the 9/11 conspiracies, I find it a little laughable that (some of) the American public thinks our government completely incapable of such an act. 9/11 was a horrific day that directly and indirectly touched scores of people. But, at the end of the day, it was less than 3,000 people dead (out of how many millions of people in NYC, the state of NY, the entire US). Forgive the lack of faith in our elected officials, but I could see a small circle of power players seeing that as acceptable "collateral damage" for what they perceive to be the greater good.

Anonymous said...

Thank you to the second anonymous poster for articulating it perfectly. Theorists cant deal with the truth. They're like these scared little kids that will convince themselves of anything in order to reassure themselves that either a) Bush is evil, b) the government always lies, c) believing in conspiracies makes life much more interesting.

It's already evident in the few posters who've attacked Dennis' commentary. The first poster, Mac Mcdonald, cannot contain his hatred for Bush. He uses irrelevant things like the Iraq war and election fraud (a conspiracy theory in itself; a double-whammy!) to convince himself of the 9/11 conspiracy. I bet if you told him that Bush was behind the Kentucky plane crash yesterday he'd buy it. When it comes to rabid Bush-haters, the hurdle to convince them Bush perpetrated an unlikely crime is unreasonably low.

Then Walker, in his long post, does his best to ignore whatever counters his claims (the list is too long to get into, but it's truly frightening how much he chooses to disregard). He appears to just like buying into conspiracies - no amount of evidence is going to convince him otherwise.

I'd try to reason with these people directly, but there's no point. It's like trying to teach calculus to an 8-year-old - they're not interested, nor do they have the fundamental ability to understand it in the first place.

Anonymous said...

I just hope the conspiracy theorists burn their voter cards in protest. I wonder how mwny of them voted for "W" once or twice!

Anonymous said...

Yes, Mr Byrne, Popular Mechanics is in cohoots with the the Bush Admin. The article you mention lists its "senior researcher" as Benjamin Chertoff. Does the last name sound familar? It should, unless you have been sleeping under a rock for the last 6 years. Like most Americans, I suspect you have been.

Anonymous said...

Welcome to the mind of a conspiracy theorist. A researcher on a Popluar Mechanics article is the cousin of DHS director = Popular Mechanics is conspiring with the Bush admin to cover up their involvement/perpetration of 9/11. The illogical web keeps getting bigger.

Walker said...

why did you not post my last comment? it couldn't have been because of name calling, because your original commentary was full of it, and I at least provide reason as to why, if at all, I used any terms that could be construed as "offensive" to the thin skinned and irrational.

Anonymous said...

I love seeing how many straw man arguments and distractions get thrown around by the supporters of the 'official' 9/11 story. What is perhaps most insulting though are those that say the conspiracy theorists just can't handle the 'truth' and are so scared, so they come up with these 'theories' so their poor little minds can feel better.

It seems to me that those who embrace this line of thinking are themselves too scared to actually do any research into the issue. That's right, you all are YELLOW! You will do whatever or say whatever in order to make yourself believe the status quo is still ok, that nothing is really wrong; that the only evil people out there are the 'islamofascists', and that our government is a bunch of angels. I would suggest you all shut up and just sit home and watch some talk shows dealing with the latest gossip out of Hollywood, because you are wasting everyone's time when you speak up.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Walker said...

In response to the "anonymous" poster who gave us a definition as to why people believe conspiracies, you, like Mr. Byrne, have made an egregious omission/distortion of reason in order for you to make your claim.

You say that the 9/11 conspiracy people have invented this alternate reality for the purpose of comfort, because they can't face reality.

Here is a simple proof as to why that is wrong in the case of 9/11 truth seekers. Your claim stipulates that the alternate reality was created for comfort, yet the world in which 9/11 was executed via government complicity is a far more frightening one than the one you live in. If my own comfort were my goal, I would believe that the government's story is true, that 19 hijackers acting alone did it, masterminded by known terrorist Osama bin Laden, that the war in Iraq is just and that Bush is the new Reagan and he's saving us from the evils of the world, of which the U.S. is entirely innocent.

Now, by your definition, who is more comforted by their beliefs? 9/11 truth seekers or those who believe the Bush administration?

Anonymous said...

For those of us who believe that the government was in no way responsible for 9/11, this article is a pathetic and shameful example of how not to address an issue and instead use countless attacks, insults, and false arguments to attempt to discredit (and not disprove) your opponent.
I have read information on both sides of the debate, and often when I read opinions against the "9-11 truth squads" the more I see that side as willing to distort the facts and mislead their readers. People who praise this type of argument should be ashamed. These people should instead be crying for someone to actually write a coherent argument which isn't filled with so much garbage namecalling, straw man arguments, and general dismissal of the opponent.

Anonymous said...

"Welcome to the mind of a conspiracy theorist. A researcher on a Popluar Mechanics article is the cousin of DHS director = Popular Mechanics is conspiring with the Bush admin to cover up their involvement/perpetration of 9/11. The illogical web keeps getting bigger." How is that Illogical? It makes perfect sense-get someone on the inside to attempt to debunk all 9/11 conspiracies. Your chant of "ignore the facts, ignore the facts" is no longer being heard.

Anonymous said...

Kerosene (jet fuel) fires burn at 2000-3000 degrees F. This is far above the 1000 degrees F temperature at which steel begins to rapidly lose tensile strength. As the tensile strength drops, the steel girders will begin to break from the weight they are supporting; they do not have to melt in order to deform.

Bush's record confirms his inability to carry out such a plan. Every action has resulted in failure. Before he was president, he ran his own oil company into the ground and traded Sammy Sosa as head of the Texas Rangers. Iraq, of course, is the worst debacle of his presidency. However, he attempted to privatize Social Security even as pension plans around the country were failing. He also signed the Terri Schiavo bill, even though 85% of the people said they do not want the government involved in their end-of-life decisions. Hurricane Katrina turned into a disaster because Bush appointed a hack to head FEMA. And now it turns out that warrantless wiretapping is a felony.

You can be right half the time simply by flipping a coin. Need I say more?

Anonymous said...

Release the 84 surveillance videos that the FBI has of the Pentagon attack - show us what hit the Pentagon and - if it was an airplane, we will go away. Otherwise, we will remain 'doubting Thomas'.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Byrne,

I'm glad to see you read the comments here. I was ready to comment, but a few posters (particularly "walker") have already made all the points I intended to raise, specifically the name-calling and the attack of only weak and/or ridiculous straw-man arguments in order to discredit the legitimate 911 truth movement.

If you have not read Walker's comment in its entirety, I urge you to do so. It reflects the core arguments of the scores of legitimate people who seek the truth about what happened on 9/11.

It is easy to discredit and ridicule those who claim to believe that no planes hit the WTC buildings. But consider that if there really is a conspiracy here, intentionally creating fanatical groups to make such ridiculous claims allows the media and writers to attack and easily discredit any group who may raise legitimate questions about the truth behind 9/11. The important questions remain ignored and mainstream public attention is once again diverted.

The only way to prevent this from happening is for writers like yourself to ask the important questions and do your best to investigate and find real answers instead of picking and choosing straw man arguments and ultimately resorting to name calling that somehow helps to prove your point.

Walker said...

"Kerosene (jet fuel) fires burn at 2000-3000 degrees F. This is far above the 1000 degrees F temperature at which steel begins to rapidly lose tensile strength. As the tensile strength drops, the steel girders will begin to break from the weight they are supporting; they do not have to melt in order to deform."

Actually,

jet fuel, max burn temp in optimal condidtions: 1796 F

under normal conditions: 500-600F

Your information is faulty, schade.

Further, the steel in WTC was certifed up to 2000 F for SIX HOURS. The buildings fell in less than one hour, perfectly straight down, which your point about the "weakening" of the steel does not account for, considering the symmetric nature of the collapses of BOTH towers, even if it were possible for the fires to have weakened the steel in the amount of time they were burning, the buildings would not have fallen straight down, pancake style, because of the way the towers were built. 47 central steel columns provided the actual load-bearing force of the tower's weight, not the steel girders that made up the exterior.

Question Authority said...

You, Mr. Byrne, are no journalist.

Journalists question authority. You seem to specialize in name-calling and self-righteous indignation.

As a member of the media with a degree in broadcast journalism, I am ashamed to be in the same field.

Please take the time to read David Ray Griffin's books before writing your next blind, amateurish hit piece on a topic of which you clearly know very little.

Thank you and have a good day.

Anonymous said...

For those who believe the 'official account' I don't blame you, it's hard to imgaine our own government could be so incredibly awful. But you must make an informed opinion based on research of all sides of the argument. And yes, that even means being suspicious of research presented by Chertoff's counsin. I will get you started, here is some research that you can look up and begin to decide for yourself based on facts.

- The 9/11 commission report never mentions how it is that WTC 7 collapsed.

- Larry Silverstein bought WTC 7 two months before the attacks and, Quoting the British Financial Times of September 14, 2001, the American Reporter wrote that ‘ the lease has an all-important escape clause: If the buildings are struck by “an act of terrorism”, the new owners' obligations under the lease are void. As a result, the new owners are not required to make any payments under their lease, but they will be able to collect on the loss of the buildings that collapsed or were otherwise destroyed and damaged in the attacks.

- On a PBS documentary "America Rebuilds" Larry Silverstein admitted: "...the fire dept. commander telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire and I said, 'We've had such a terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it' And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building fall."
(Of course this ignores the fact that they had no time to actually put explosives in the building during that day in order to bring it down - so the explosives must have already been in place.)

- The BBC news has reported on multiple occasions of some of the hijackers to actually be alive and well living in the Middle East: BBC NEWS
Saturday, 22 September, 2001, 20:41 GMT 21:41 UK
Hijack 'suspect' alive in Morocco By David Bamford in Rabat

- Marvin Bush was head of security for the World Trade Center

- $100,000 was wired to Mohamed Atta in Florida from Pakistan by Ahmud Umar Shiek who was ordered by the chief of Pakistan's ISI General Mahmood Alhmad. At the time of the attacks, General Mahmood was meeting with Sen Bob Graham, Porter Goss and Senator John Kyl during a week long visit to Washington. ABC News, Times of India, Agence France Presse.

-John Ashcroft placed a gag order on FBI Whistle blower Sibel Edmonds who translated documents that demonstarted foreknowledge of the attacks.

- According to a written statement to the commission report hearings, On September 10th Brigadier General Montague Winfield, who was Deputy Director for Operations for the National Military Command Center (NMCC)asked a ROOKIE Navy Captain Charles J. Leidig, Jr. to take over his post for him and he did take over beginning at 8:30AM on September 11th.

- The pilot of flight 77 which supposedly hit the Pentagon, was an ex-navy F4 pilot who, less than one year prior, participated in a "MASCAL" exercise in the Pentagon, in which it gets attacked by a commercial airliner. The project is documented by the government.

1) In October 2000, Government Simulates Exercises MASCAL of a Boeing 757 hitting the Pentagon.
2) Charles Birlingame, Navy F4 pilot participates in this exercise.
3) After the exercise, C. Birlingame retires and gets a job flying commercial jet-liners.
4) Less than 12 months later, HE IS THE PILOT OF FLIGHT 77 that allegedly hit the pentagon.

- There were several military exercises taking place on 9/11 including one that had military aircraft imaginging how they would respond if a plane crashed into a building.

- The PNAC document from 2000 "Rebuilding America's Defenses" is a very clear argument made by the Neo-cons as to why and how they intend on spreading American military power throughout the world in the coming years. It also admits that it will have difficulty making these things happen unless there is a "new pearl harbor" to help sway public opinion.

- the Bush family and Bin Laaden families have been doing major business for decades. You can find evedence of this in any major media source. The you must decide if Osama is a black sheep of this family or not?

Let's be clear - Bush is too stupid to come up with this plan, that is true! But he's not too stupid to go along with a plan cooked up by other's. Can anyone explain why the Secret Service did not wisk Bush away once the first plane hit? He stayed at the school for 25 more minutes! Isn't the President always considered a potential target in an attack? Wasn't he putting all those kids lives at risk?

Please research and read before you decide! For the good of this country and world.

Question Authority said...

(http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004/08/coincidence-theorists-guide-to-911.html)

Read this, and then tell me who the real suckers are...

"Coincidence Theorists' Guide to 9/11"

That intelligence agencies, politicians and terrorists have conducted criminal business together is well established, but BCCI and Iran/Contra were a long time ago, so there’s no need to rehash all that.

That Jonathan Bush’s Riggs Bank has been found guilty of laundering terrorist funds and fined a record setting $25 million is embarrassing, surely, but to draw sinister conclusions is foolish.

That Marvin Bush sat on the board of the Kuwaiti-owned company which provided electronic security to the World Trade Centre, Dulles Airport and United Airlines means nothing.

That George Bush found success as a businessman only after the investment of Osama’s brother Salem and Osama’s brother-in-law and al Qaeda financier Khalid bin Mahfouz is just a one-in-a-million fluke.

That Osama bin Laden is known to have been an asset of US foreign policy in no way implies he still is. That al Qaeda was active in Kosovo on the same side as NATO merely demonstrates that nothing is black and white.

The claims of Michael Springman, State Department veteran of the Jeddah visa bureau, that the CIA ran the office and issued visas to al Qaeda members to receive training in the United States, are merely sour grapes because he was fired for making such wild accusations.

That so many in the Bush White House had expressed the need for a "new Pearl Harbor" before their militarist ambitions could be fulfilled means nothing more than being in the right place at the right time.

That in May of 2001, Dick Cheney took upon himself the job of co-ordinating a response to domestic terror attacks even as he was crafting the administration’s energy policy, circumventing the established infrastructure and ignoring the recommendations of the Hart-Rudman report, merely shows the VP to be a “can do” sort of guy.

That the standing order for shooting down hijacked aircraft was altered on June 1, 2001, taking discretion away from field commanders and placing it solely in the hands of the Secretary of Defense, is simply poor planning and unfortunate timing. Fortunately the error has been corrected, since the order was reversed shortly after 9/11.

That Dave Frasca of the FBI’s Radical Fundamentalist Unit received a promotion after quashing multiple, urgent requests for investigations into al Qaeda assets training at flight schools in the summer of 2001 does appear odd, but I’m sure there must have been a good reason for it.

That over the summer of 2001 Washington received many urgent, senior-level warnings from foreign intelligence agencies of impending terror attacks using hijacked aircraft and did nothing, demonstrates the pressing need for a new Intelligence Czar.

That former lead counsel for the House David Schippers says he’d taken to John Ashcroft’s office specific warnings he’d learned from FBI agents in New York of an impending attack – even naming the proposed dates, names of the hijackers and the targets – and that the investigations had been stymied and the agents threatened, proves nothing but David Schipper’s need for attention.

That George Bush had plans to invade Afghanistan on his desk before 9/11 demonstrates only the value of being prepared.

The suggestion that securing a pipeline across Afghanistan figured into the White House’s calculations is as ludicrous as the assertion that oil played a part in determining war in Iraq.

That Afghanistan is once again the world’s principal heroin producer is an unfortunate reality, but to claim the CIA is still actively involved in the narcotics trade is to presume bad faith on the part of the agency.

Mahmood Ahmed, chief of Pakistan’s ISI, must not have authorized an al Qaeda payment of $100,000 to Mohammed Atta days before the attacks, and was not meeting with senior Washington officials over the week of 9/11, because I didn’t read anything about it in the official report.

George HW Bush and Dick Cheney spent the evening of September 10 in the Oval Office, it’s true, but they were just old colleagues catching up.

That FEMA arrived in New York on Sept 10 to prepare for a scheduled biowarfare drill is a lucky twist of fate.

Newsweek’s report that senior Pentagon officials cancelled flights on Sept 10 for the following day on account of security concerns is only newsworthy because of what happened the following morning.

That Mohamed Atta attended the International Officer's School at Maxwell Air Force Base, that Abdulaziz Alomari attended Brooks Air Force Base Aerospace Medical School, that Saeed Alghamdi attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey merely shows it’s a small world, after all.

That Mohammed Atta dressed like a Mafioso, had a stripper girlfriend, smuggled drugs, was already a licensed pilot when he entered the US, enjoyed pork chops, drank to excess and did cocaine, was closer to Europeans than Arabs in Florida, and included the names of defence contractors on his email list, proves how dangerous the radical fundamentalist Muslim can be.

That 43 lbs of heroin was found on board the Lear Jet owned by Wally Hilliard, the owner of Atta’s flight school, just three weeks after Atta enrolled – the biggest seizure ever in Central Florida – was just one of those things.

That Hilliard’s plane had made 30-round trips to Venezuela with the same passengers who always paid cash, that the plane had been supplied by a pair of drug smugglers who had also outfitted CIA drug runner Barry Seal, and that 9/11 commissioner Richard ben-Veniste had been Seal’s attorney before Seal’s murder, shows nothing but the lengths to which conspiracists will go to draw sinister conclusions.

Reports of insider trading on 9/11 are false, because the SEC investigated and found only respectable investors who will remain nameless involved, and no terrorists, so any profit-taking was merely coincidental.

That Hani Hanjour, the pilot of Flight 77, was so incompetent he could not fly a Cessna in August, but in September managed to fly a 767 at excessive speed into a spiraling, 270-degree descent and a level impact of the first floor of the Pentagon, on the only side that was virtually empty and had been hardened to withstand a terrorist attack, merely demonstrates that people can do almost anything once they set their minds to it.

That Mohammed Atta left a uniform, a will, his driver's license and a video "how to fly planes" in his rental car at the airport means he had other things on his mind.

The very mention of Israelis with links to military-intelligence having been arrested on Sept 11 videotaping and celebrating the attacks, and of a warning of impending attacks delivered to the Israeli company Odigo two hours before the first plane hit, is the vilest kind of anti-Semitism and should not be dignified with a response. That the stories were also reported in the Israeli media is a sad display of self-hatred among certain elements of the Jewish Left.

That multiple military wargames and simulations were underway the morning of 9/11 – one simulating the crash of a plane into a building; another, a life-fly simulation of multiple hijackings – and took many interceptors away from the eastern seaboard and confused field commanders as to which was a real hijacked aircraft and which was a hoax, was a tragic coincidence, but no less a coincidence.

That the National Military Command Center ops director asked a newly-qualified substitute to stand his watch at 8:30 am on Sept. 11 is nothing more than bad timing.

That the black boxes were either never found or were unrecoverable was a first for these particular boxes, but there's a first time for everything.

That a recording made Sept 11 of air traffic controllers’ detailing the events of the day, was destroyed by an FAA official who crushed it in his hand, cut the tape into little pieces and dropped them in different trash cans around the building, is just one of those things.

That the FBI knew precisely which Florida flight schools to descend upon hours after the attacks should make every American safer to know their federal agents are on the ball.

To insinuate evil motive from the mercy flights of bin Laden family members and Saudi royals after 9/11 shows the sickness of the conspiratorial mindset.

Le Figaro’s report in October 2001, known to have originated with French intelligence, that two CIA agents met Osama bin Laden in a Dubai hospital in July 2001, proves again the perfidy of the French.

That the tape in which bin Laden claims responsibility for the attacks was released by the State Department after having been found providentially by US forces in Afghanistan, and depicts a fattened Osama with a broader face and a flatter nose, proves Osama masterminded 9/11.

That the White House went on Cipro September 11 shows the foresightedness of America’s emergency response.

That the anthrax was mailed to perceived liberal media and the Democratic leadership demonstrates only the perversity of the terrorist psyche.

That the anthrax attacks appeared to silence opponents of the Patriot Act only shows that appearances can be deceiving.

That the Ames-strain anthrax was found to have originated at Fort Detrick, and was beyond the capability of all but a few labs to refine, underscores the importance of allowing the investigation to continue without the distraction of absurd conspiracy theories.

Sibel Edmonds is an attention-seeking nutcase. And since John Ashcroft has gagged her and classified her public testimony, we should speak no more of her.

But most of all, remember: there are no secrets, governments would never accept civilian casualties for geostrategic gain, and conspiracies are for the weak-minded and gullible.

Anonymous said...

I practically loathe George Bush, and would discredit him where I honestly could. But we saw video of airplanes crashing into the buildings and huge fireballs bursting forth. We have panicky cell phone calls from passengers on the planes. We saw that the planes struck the buildings several floors below the top.

When the damaged areas gave way, a dozen or more floors from above that level fell onto the next floor below.

I'll go along with the claim that the administration has had their heyday with this, and it suits their purposes as well as if they had ordered it up themselves. The key phrase here being 'as if they had'.

I know a couple of people who were fascinated with video footage purporting to show that missiles or demolitions were used, but they are absurd. While it does seem that our dear leaders have used a bloody nose as justification to start swinging clubs, some of my fellow Bush-detractors apparently use their animosity to justify some pretty outlandish claims.

Some probably are on break from their UFO and crop circle watches.

Also, I thought we had presumed that Ayman Zawahiri and Saihk Mohammed were the '9/11 masterminds'.

JamesB said...

GWB did not DO it - what has he done really ?

All I want, all I think most folks want, is truth - near as we can get to it, since the evidence is all gone.

Did you ask yourself what was the rush to get rid of the evidence ... ?

Anonymous said...

Dennis Byrne's editorial attacks the "nut cases" who believe in 9/11 conspiracies. Yet, it seems quite reasonable to doubt the official story, if only because of the peculiar behavior of President Bush. Footage of Bush on 9/11 shows that after hearing of the World Trade Center attack, he displayed no surprise, curiosity, or alarm, but continued cracking jokes and posing for photos. Neither Bush nor the Secret Service showed interest in protecting him from the terrorists. Compare the complacency of the Secret Service on 9/11 with the swarm of agents protecting President Reagan after he was shot.

Just a few months after boasting he would get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive," Bush said he didn't know or care where bin Laden was. Bush fought the formation of the 9/11 Commission, then stonewalled their investigation. He only agreed to testify if he wasn’t under oath, his testimony wasn’t recorded, and Vice President Cheney was at his side. Further, even before 9/11, the Bush Administration’s obsession with secrecy far surpassed even the paranoid Nixon Administration. Reasonable people might wonder why.

Anonymous said...

First off, PM's Benjamin Chertoff is no relation to Michael Chertoff. This is just one of the many lies propagated by the ironically named "truth" movement.

But a far better source for debunking the lies of the "truth" movement can be found at:
http://www.911myths.com/index.html

Don't fall victim to the lies of the "truth" movement.

Anonymous said...

Dennis B. has twisted and manipulated
so many aspects of what 911 truthers are saying that is it hard to know where to start in order to refute him.
No 911 theorist has claimed Bush to be the mastermind behind anything. This country has a massive black ops budget
whose very function is to carry out clandestine and morally corrosive actions against other nations and have been caught doing so against US civilians many, many times. Any reader who has a genuine interest in
learning what the Truthers message REALLY is, including Dennis B., should google "TerrorStorm Alex Jones" and watch the video which outlays what the theories really question, before coming to any conclusion after reading a distorted article such as the one printed in the Tribune today.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Byrne:

Rather than bore you right now, with the hundreds of Conspiracy theories wrt 9/11, and how they in many cases outright contradict each other, I would just suggest you do your own research, and then based on what SOLID EVIDENCE you find, reach your own conclusions.

Just ignore the "connect the dots" suggestions you'll hear from the superstitious posters. Use the common sense given to all of us, and then with that, use critical analysis to WEIGHT the evidence such as EXPERT OPINION, FACTS, and Multiple EYE WITNESS TESTIMONY.

Don't be mislead by those who would take a quote out of context, or those who do nothing more than speculate.

Trust your gut. If you have to compare articles on the collapse of the towers, look for who wrote them. Was it written by a single physicist, or by a panel of MIT Structural Engineers. Which would you trust more? Which idicates perhaps more EXPERTISE in the matter.

Remember, lots of things besides Explosives and bombs can make noises that sound like "explosions".

Remember that a skyscraper is not a tree, and keebler elves don't live in either.

Sulfur residue on Steel Beams does not equal "THERMITE".

I could go on, but if you search for the REAL evidence, and those who believe in it...you will find it.

Anonymous said...

I am going to debate a peculiar pro official story from a anonymous:

(Note that Penn & Teller represent comedic magicians who know how to deceive an audience for entertainment and they know how to spot con-artists who dishonestly deceive the public.)

-Yeah and Penn & Teller really made a point by speaking profanities throughout the whole 911 segment, giving no arguments against theories other than emotional comments, charged by the word Fuck.
(Not only did these emails agree with the conspiracy theories but some of them felt angered by my refusal to see their side (I did see their side, I just didn't agree with it). This amazed me because I have yet to see a single 9/11 conspiracy theory that makes any sense (what have I missed?) Moreover, most of the inventors of these theories do not even agree with each other (always a red flag) and most of their claims do not even meet the requirement of common sense. How in the world could anyone not see the holes in their argument, I thought.)

-So we should just feel nothing after our government let 9-11 happen, and we have people trying to defend the official story with explanations that dont make sense at all. What really makes no sense is the official story. That suggest that 3 buildings fell because of fire and structural damage, 2 of them being 110 stories hight, falling at a speed of 10 floors per second in about 10 seconds, close to free fall speed of 8.2 making it only 1-2 second resistance that all 110 floors gave away, making it almost freefall speed, making it appear as if steel had no strength at all, and to top it all off the top of one building broke to the side, reducing downward presure, yet the building fell evenly to its footprints, defying all logic.

(On second thought, I knew that beliefs can have such an overpowering affect on an individual that it can conceal important things like evidence, facts, and even reality. But these emails came from my people. Not necessarily nonbelievers, mind you, but liberals, freethinkers, and skeptics. Even the best of them can fall prey for scams, cons, illusions, frauds, and swindles.)

-This comment totally applies to the original story, where they conceal important evidence, like gettin rid of all the steel of the twin towers, and the government doing nothing to preserve the evidence, why they never reveal the inside trading in the stock market the days before 9-11, why the hid the tapes of the cameras sorrounding the pentagon, why they confiscated the firemen tapes, why they only show 5 frames from the pentagon explosion, when the cameras are at least 30 frames per second, and they are able to capture at least 10 frames from a object traveling at least 550 miles per hour, enought to capture a boing on video. Talk about the original story not making any sense. Look at the big picture and not throught tunnel vision please. I bought a 20 dollar webcam that takes video at 30fps, and your going to tell me that the most secured building in the USA had video cameras than could only capture 5 frames, at 1 frame per second as Popular Mechanics states it.

(Of course we should allow anyone to ask any questions and speculate but these conspiracy theorists do not do this honestly. They leave out evidence that contradicts their theories, present out-of-context eyewitness reports, twist their words, and many times make things up. This makes them scam-artists and not worthy of respect. They use inductive reasoning (you cannot prove anything by inductive reasoning alone) and unsubstantiated deductive premises to explain them. Like all con-artists, they throw in their theories amongst actual facts to make them look as if they agree with the facts (they don't).)

-Of course we are asking question to the nonsense of the official explanations. Talk about leaving out evidence from the official explanations and the commission report. Talk about how the bush administration twist words by publicly saying: "We had no idea they could used hijack planes to attack us", when they where running simulations the same day about the same thing that happened on 9-11, not counting that inteligence had been telling the bush administration for months before that terrorist would used hijack planes to attack us, and to come in TV and claim they did not had any idea that would happen, is trying to hard to steer guilt away from them. How would you bush supporters responds to this discrepancies and lies known to be public. Talk about twisting facts, by invading iraq by making it seem there where ties of iraq to 9-11, when bush came on TV saying iraq had nothing to do with 9-11, when his letter to congress which you can find at whitehouse.gov justifying permission to go into iraq says that iraq was connected to the axis of evil that made 9-11 happen. Isn't that a boldface lie to us. That makes the official theory a conspiracy and far outlandish explanation to what happened on 9-11.

(For example, how could one not question the demolition theory of the WTC buildings? Think of all the people that would have to install explosives in every story of the buildings, lay miles of electrical detonation wires. It usually takes months for professional detonation crews to set up a large building for destruction and they also spend lots of time weakening structural columns with saws and torches.)

For example they where doing many 12 hour shift on secret, the where taking dog sneefing dogs for weeks before 9-11, plus bush brother was chief of security on those buildings. There is something call wireless technology nowadays people. and also you can easily deceive people by telling them building improvements being done, without telling them what materials they are using, or you could tell them its at complete rewire of certain systems in the building, that is without counting that most people that worked there died there. exept for some people that managed to survived but their stories have never been taken into account by the goverment and the media.

We have another anonymous trying to ridicule the obvious lie that is the official story, when in a recent interview with PM magazine representative, said that the 9 arabs alive is a fake story, and said that they had collected DNA from the twin towers that confirm the identitiy of the hijackers and when asked about where they get the DNA to match it, they did not had a response, because there is no DNA to match it. How come they want to come and boldly lie in audio about something that is not truth cause if they had the DNA the comission report would not have omitted, but now they are desperate to cover the truth by hiring profesionals to pretend the 911 official story is correct.
They also say that they have a photo showing the hole in building 7 that made it collapse, and confirm they had seen it, but the PM book dont show such a photo, and they stated that they dont show it cause it's part of a larger criminal investigation, but give me a break, its been 5 years and they dont want to officialy show such a photo, cause i've seen that photo in sites claiming to debunk 911 myths, but we all know those photos are photoshoped, so they don't officially show it cause it can be quickly dissmissed as faked and such can't prove the hole in building 7.

See those protecting the official story and the Bush administration, twist and bend more information. Such statements do not apply to us who are using the Scientific approach to investigate and analyze what happened on 911.

I will update this post as needed.



I could keep on debunking this argument but i think its enought to prove my point, if more debunking is needed i would be more than happy to go argument by argument with those protecting the official story.

Anonymous said...

Hey Wildcat, when was the last time you googled Benjamin Chertoff?

Anonymous said...

Dear Mr. Byrne,

I thought journalists were supposed to contribute to our knowledge--or at least offer a new or interesting perspective. Your editorial is the kind of trash that one can find on any mindless hack's blog. It amazes me that the Tribune insults our intelligence with this stuff.

Anonymous said...

This is the first article i've found that even mentions the 9/11 conspiracy theories thats been published in the major newspapers, it could be that the writer purposely had to give it a fascist slant to sneak it past the government controlled censors. I say, "Bravo" to you sir. I can see by the comments posted here that many intelligent people are realizing that we have not been told the truth about what really happened on that fateful day. The real news story here is that thousands of citizen's demanding to know the truth about 9/11 including respected structural engineers and scientists will be assembling at ground zero on 9/11/06. The plan is that the media will not be able to ignore their legitimate questions and data any longer. The memorial service will include thousands of New Yorkers including first responders, and, oh yes, a sizable military presence. Need i say more?

Anonymous said...

Ya know, I've alway found it funny how the socalled "truth movement" clamours about their rights to free speech but fail to acknowledge that same right in others when faced with oppersition. They also seems to not know words like "evidence" or "eyewitness" or even "proper research".

Anonymous said...

anonymous said:
"Hey Wildcat, when was the last time you googled Benjamin Chertoff?"

A lie repeated endlessly by 9/11 conspiracy sites does not make it true. You can ask him yourself - as some real researchers have - and his reply:
"No, I'm not related to Michael Chertoff. In fact, the first time I'd ever heard of him was when he was nominated as head of homeland security -- at least a week after we'd gone to press with the story (magazines are "long
lead," meaning we close an issue months before its publish date)."

If you think he is lieing exposing it would be a simple thing to do, right? Find the relation, or admit this is one of the myriad lies propagated by the "truth" movement.

If you really want to debate whatever 9/11 conspiracy theory you have (thermite, "stand down", pods, missiles, "Silverstein said pull it", plane/no plane, CGI, squibs, WTC7, etc etc) come on over to:

http://forums.randi.org/forumindex.php

We'll be happy to pick apart all of your nonsense - and believe me we've heard it all. But you'd better come armed w/ facts and evidence - this isn't a giant disinformation backslapping orgy like you find on the 9/11 denial sites.

Anonymous said...

Oh no a google bomb, it must be true, and it is from Alex Jones and Rence. Also he was not even the lead editor on that debunking.

"Truthers" are really Deniers and are making excuses for the real perpetrators. Stop being a terrorist shill

Pat said...

I see the nutbars are out in force here. Good article, Dennis. We have been battling the 9-11 Deniers and specifically the mockumentary Loose Change at a blog called Screw Loose Change (easily Googled).

Anonymous said...

Bush's minions are also incapable of pulling off such a scheme. Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, and Cheney are just as incompetent. This administration has a history of always making the wrong decision.

It is only necessary to heat steel above 1000 F, not to the melting point, in order to weaken it. All the steel in the building would be affected.

Iron oxide in the steel reacts with aluminum (from the airplane and building interior). Because this reaction is strongly exothermic, temperatures can reach 4532 F. The reaction supplies its own oxygen; outside air is not required. If molten aluminum went down an elevator shaft, it would make quick work of the building in symmetric fashion. Investigators may have withheld this information to avoid scaring people or giving information to the terrorists.

Anonymous said...

Please explain to me why the FBI says there is not enough evidence to put 9-11 on Osama Bin Laden's wanted poster. Many people have called them, including myself.

If we are not sure that Osama was responsible for 9-11, why did we invade afghanistan???

Also, popular science does not explain how the three buildings fell at near free fall speed into their own footprint. By sheer physics alone, the NIST and FEMA reports are wrong.

Please research what you write in its entirety. Using 1 or two sources to make general statements is irresponsible journalism.

Anonymous said...

General Mohmoud Ahmed of the Pakistani ISI was found by the FBI to be responsible for the funding of the "hijackers" or patsys. He immediately left his position.(CIA appointed) So, why then, was he having breakfast in DC that morning? The commission decided that the money trail wasn't important. "Debunkers" like to spin a couple of issues, or call names, but the entire load of coincidences, distortions, omissions, and physical evidence crushes them every time. Don't take it from a manaical columnist. Research for yourself.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they get angry, then you win"-Ghandi

Pepik said...

I wonder, why do the conspiracy theorists think their lies are justified? Reading through these angry posts with their "evidence" of conspiracy, you have to wonder is it really possible these people have just never managed to come up with the answers to their questions? It seems much more likely that they a) chose to deliberately avoid any debunking websites, or b) simply ignore all evidence to the contrary.

Just to name a few:

"The buildings fell in less than one hour, perfectly straight down,"

Perfectly straight down? Then how did they rip a multi story gash in the side of WTC 7? Obviously, you say straight down because some conspiracy website told you that, and you don't care enough to figure it out for yourself.

"despite the fact that no steel frame skyscraper has ever collapsed due to fire in history? "

So you are saying that being impacted by a jet weighing hundreds of thousands of pounds, travelling at a few hundred miles and hour, was not a relevant factor?

"And that the qudaruple simultaneous hijacking of aircraft by 19 Arabs with box cutters and hardly any flight training were able"

Again, this is an example of someone repeating what you were told by conspiracy websites. Isn't the fact that the hijackers claimed to have bombs relevant? How did they have commercial pilots licenses if they had 'hardly any flight training'?

" The BBC news has reported on multiple occasions of some of the hijackers to actually be alive and well living in the Middle East: BBC NEWS".

These were people with the same names living in the middle east. This was debunked years ago. You could verify this yourself in about 5 minutes if you were genuinely interested in the truth.

"Marvin Bush was head of security for the World Trade Center"

Being on the board of a security company (at the wrong time) does not in any sense make him 'head of security for the WTC'.

This is just a sampling of garbage so far posted. It is ridiculous. I don't see any reason why Byrne should treat garbage as anything other than garbage.

Anonymous said...

It's amusing that a number of the older and more specious conspiracy theories are being repeated here. The Chertoff thing and the towers “falling into their own footprint” are two among many. Don’t you conspiracy guys ever bother to update or jettison those theories that no long hold water, or are you just content to endlessly cut and paste obsolete info?

Anonymous said...

About fifteen years ago I entered a contest sponsored, run and judged by Popular Mechanics magazine. The name of the contest was: “In search of the Must Know Man.”

The contest required the contestants to research various bits of information and facts and then answer about ten or so questions that were heavily fact based.

I, have been accused of being anal-retentive regarding accuracy and truth. Few people have beat me playing Trivial Pursuit, I have properly responded to every answer on TV’s Jeopardy and get the proper response to final Jeopardy over 90 percent of the time. I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering from a major university and am a total stickler for facts.

With that said, I researched the questions to Popular Mechanic’s contest and came up with the proper answers to them all. I was surprised to read what Popular Mechanics thought were the proper answers.

Three of the answers that PM said were correct were absolutely wrong! One that sticks in my mind dealt with the speed at which a GIF circuit protector stops current. The lowdown was that PM thought that 1/40th of a second was a shorter period of time than 1/50th of a second. Perhaps because the number “40” is smaller than the number “50” PM became confused.

PM also got it wrong in their question about the size of laser video disks vs. CDs. I got my information from ANSI, ISO and Matsushita Electronics. God only knows where PM got its information.

The upshot is that I stopped reading Popular Mechanics for it is a totally unreliable source of information.

May I suggest that you ask PM to provide photos of building 7 and its alleged damage? May I suggest you ask PM to provide to you the two video tapes the federal government confiscated that shows what happened to the Pentagon?

Citing Popular Mechanics magazine as a reliable source of facts or research cannot help your credibility.

Anonymous said...

There were eyewitnesses on 9/11 itself on all the networks who told of hearing and feeling bombs going off inside the towers. Everybody watched the towers come down as in a controlled demoliton as several news anchors (i.e. Dan Rather for one) said that day live. People with short memories and lazy brains will forget what they saw and remember the repeated lies they hear. People were ridiculed and killed for saying the earth wasnt flat. But the truth came out and it will in this case as well.

Anonymous said...

NEWS FLASH! Popular Mechanics is TOTALLY UNRELIABLE because they allegedly messed up three answers in a contest FIFTEEN years ago! The editors of the 9/11 article and book plus the experts they consulted must have also been involved in that contest. A "smart" person would never make the connection between the two if that were not true.

Anonymous said...

Actually, the magazine IS in cahoots with Bush, now that you mention it.

Perhaps you'd like to explain why the senior staff of Popular Mechanics was purged the month before this article appeared, and that Benjamin Chertoff, the 25-year-old senior researcher who authored the 9/11 article, is related to Michael Chertoff, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

It takes demolition experts two weeks of careful planning and exact math to pull off that trick, making a building fall into its own footprint. I challenge you to come up with how ramming a jetliner into a building that was designed to withstand multiple jetliners ramming into it could possibly cause all of its floors to collapse neatly and at the same time at free-falling speeds.

Popular Mechanics also did not mention scientific proof of thermite at the 9/11 site, the testimony of firefighters who heard and saw explosions on the lower and was censored from the 9/11 commission, the 27 wargames simulating attacks on our skyscapers on that day, the NORAD standown, and the impossibility of the pancacke theory when the individual levels were at FREEFALL, indicating a complete disentegration of multiple load bearing supports at the same time.

You're right, unsupported conspiracy theories are dangerous. Unfortunately, the one everyone believes is (brace yourself, I know you hate this)"the government version."

The idea that a guy in a cave called up 19 of his Saudi friends, none of whom appeared on the flight manifests, who have never flown a commercial jetliner (a cessna is a far cry), bypassed all of our defenses, crashed into the WTC, and brought it down with precision into its own footprint. Build a scale model and try that trick at home. Good luck with that. Sounds like a nutty conspiracy theory to me.

Anonymous said...

Yeah Bush is stupid but I think he's a puppet anyway. Of course calling names and not using facts to get your point across does not help your case. I could say more but I am certain it has already been said.

Anonymous said...

http://mindprod.com/politics/bush911insidejob.html#INSIDEJOB

Look at the evidence before you pass judgement on "conspiracy nuts". If you are able to read this entire article without believing a single word of it, then more power to you. Visit: truthorlies.org for more useful information.

Anonymous said...

Faith is unmeasurable, common sense is strong, science is irrefutable and ignorance is hard to hide. Throughout all the sea of confusion, the truth is bound to rise to the shore.

You are full of it. Popular mechanics should be ashamed of itself for printing the fictional and unmerrited scientific impossibilities in this article.

The conspiracy is real. The Project for the New American Century states this country needed a Pearl Harbor like incident to mover the advancement of the New World Order movement. 9/11 was that incident.

Deal with it. Government is too big and corruption has run rampant.

No plane hit the Pentagon and jet fuel cannot melt I beams. Come on. Uses some common sense.

OWN-the-NWO said...

this article was benign, your tactics of slander straw men and other disinfo are too little to late to keep the truth about 9/11 from getting out, keep trying you're hilarious. Just don't commit any liable like moseley did over at worldnetdaily

Anonymous said...

You may be brainwashed if you...

... believe the 5 corporations who own almost all of the media in the U.S. are liberal.

... believe $300 billion of U.S. tax money, allocated for the war and reconstruction in Iraq is actually going to Iraq .

... are unaware Iraq had 650 million barrels of oil in reserve just before the war in Iraq .

... are unaware at least $8.8 billion is known to be missing in Iraqi oil revenue from the period the U.S. was in control of Iraq .

... are unaware 198 million in Iraqi dollars is missing from the Iraq treasury from the period the U.S. was in control of Iraq .

... are unaware that war is exceptionally profitable for a small number of investors.

... believe Halliburton's no-bid contracts have nothing to do with former CEO, now Vice President Dick Cheney.

... are unaware that the Iraq war is the biggest case of war profiteering in human history.

... believe Saddam Hussein or Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden.

... are unaware the U.S. has killed more than 10,000 innocent women and children in Iraq with cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions.

... believe depleted uranium weapons are not radioactive or deadly weapons of mass destruction (they are 12% less radioactive than nuclear weapons grade uranium and very deadly).

... believe wealthy, warmongers can also be true Christians.

... are unaware stem cell research threatens the pharmaceutical industry by curing and preventing diseases which drug companies profit from by treating with drugs.

... are unaware the pharmaceutical industry is based entirely on treatment and is threatened by cures and prevention.

... are unaware the Food and Drug Administration does NO testing of food or drugs. They only set guidelines and review the testing corporations do of their own products.

Anonymous said...

I am really enjoying all of the ad hominem attacks from "anonymous" commenters. As usual, rather than dealing with facts, they simply choose to attack and engage in juvenile namecalling. You folks are rational and reasonable, indeed! We could all only aspire to such elevated levels of intellect!

In an interesting stroke of irony, these are the same folks who buy absurd "conspiracy theories" themselves, as they truly believe that 19 Muslim men hijacked jets with sporks and box cutters at the command of their leader who hides out in caves with his dialysis machine.

If you want to engage in a meaningful dialogue, you'll have to leave the namecalling and empty rhetorical intimidation tactics behind.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...

conspiracy theorists are radically afraid of the truth in matters dealing with situations and events that they see as potentially harmful to them and over which they feel they have no control.

no, that's just pure psychobabble. old psychobabble at that. people who have questions about this are knowledgeable, intelligent and realistic and not cowards. you're the one who's afraid. afraid of the boogeymen terrorists...an irrational fear with little basis at best...and afraid to think your own government would screw you. that would shake your safe little world, wouldn't it?

bush is nothing but a convenient psyop pawn for the straussians who rule or try to rule this country and via it the world. he's weak where reagan and bush-41 and clinton had some backbone and some balls. he didn't "do" this, but unless he's a total brainless idiot, he sure knows who did. and why. if he listened that is or has any reasoning capacity at all.

rove isn't even original.

and to the OP...you know what's a real crying shame? weaklings like you who through their fear and whining make our whole country look bad as YOU sit back and allow them to steal it right out from under us.

anyone who doesn't see the writing on the wall, the patterns, and the players by now is just clinically insane.

Anonymous said...

what do you care? you're 1.) in chicago and 2.) clearly don't have a clue.

Anonymous said...

I would suggest that those who as yet refuse to research the issue on their own do just that. The tide has turned and the masses are awakening to tyrants in our most sacred offices. They are awakening to what it is that has gnawed at their guts for 5 long years. They are seeing our leaders saying that Islam hates our freedom as our leaders continue to strip us of it.

It is too late for them. Their plan has failed and freedom and self determination begins to march on these shores once again.

My advise to those who still yet hold onto the shattered, shamed, and desperate remains of the central Neocon cabal... The ship is sinking, better start swimming to shore. Start swimming and the people will help you. Refuse to abndon ship and you will drown with the rest.

Anonymous said...

Just what kind of a moonbat are you? I guess anyone can "blog" these days. Pity you have the credential there...makes our press look even worse than everyone already knows it is.

So, even if the top floors "collapsed" the lower ones should and would have held them up...just as they had been doing for over 25 years. and those 47 beams per building would have stood...conveniently ignored by both you and the 9/11 Commission.

Those hot fires where the planes went in? sure...that's why people were standing in the holes waiting to be rescued. they didn't burn...do you think steel did?

The buildings DID fall at close to freefall speed. Do YOU even know what that is?

And there are clearly squibs and explosions, and EVERYONE who watched those towers fall that day knew instinctively that it was demolition. Clearly the fear your government and the media instilled in you has taken root.

In addition:
Top 40 Reasons to Doubt the Officially Sanctioned Version of What Happened on September 11, 2001


The Day Itself: Evidence of Complicity

1. The AWOL Chain of Command

It is well documented that the officials topping the chain of command for response to a domestic attack - George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Myers, Montague Winfield - all found reason to do something else during the actual attacks, other than assuming their duties as decision-makers.

Who was actually in charge? Dick Cheney, Richard Clarke, Norman Mineta and the 9/11 Commission directly conflict in their accounts of top-level response to the unfolding events, such that several (or all) of them must be lying.

2. Air Defense Failures and Timelines

The US air defense system failed to follow standard procedures for responding to diverted passenger flights.

The various responsible agencies - NORAD, FAA, Pentagon, USAF, as well as the 9/11 Commission - gave radically different explanations for the failure (in some cases upheld for years), such that several officials must have lied; but none were held accountable.

Was there an air defense stand down?

3. Pentagon Strike

How was it possible the Pentagon was hit one hour and 20 minutes after the attacks began?

Why was there no response from Andrews Air Force Base, just 10 miles away and home to Air National Guard units charged with defending the skies above the nation's capital?

How did Hani Hanjour, a man who failed as a Cessna pilot on his first flight in a Boeing, execute a difficult aerobatic maneuver to strike the Pentagon?

Why did the attack strike the just-renovated side, which was largely empty and opposite from the high command?

4. War Games

US military and other authorities planned or actually rehearsed defensive response to all elements of the 9/11 scenario during the year prior to the attack - including multiple hijackings, suicide crash bombings, and a strike on the Pentagon.

The multiple military war games planned long in advance and held on the morning of September 11th included scenarios of a domestic air crisis, a plane crashing into a government building, and a large-scale emergency in New York. If this was only an incredible series of coincidences, why did the official investigations avoid the issue? There is evidence that the war games created confusion as to whether the unfolding events were "real world or exercise." Did war games serve as the cover for air defense sabotage, the execution of an "inside job,” or both?

5. Flight 93

Did the Shanksville crash occur at 10:06 (according to a seismic report) or 10:03 (according to the 9/11 Commission)?

Does the Commission wish to hide what happened in the last three minutes of the flight, and if so, why?

Was Flight 93 shot down, as indicated by the scattering of debris over a trail of several miles?

6. Possible Smoking Guns

Did cell phones work at 30,000 feet in 2001?

How many hijackings were attempted?

How many flights were diverted?

7. Demolition Hypothesis

What caused the collapse of a third skyscraper, WTC 7, which was not hit by a plane?

Were the Twin Towers and WTC 7 brought down by explosives? (See "The Case for Demolitions," the websites wtc7.net and 911research.wtc7.net, and the influential article by physicist Steven Jones. See also items no. 16 and 24, below.)

Foreknowledge and the Alleged Hijackers

8. What did officials know?

How did they know it?

When did they know?

Multiple allied foreign agencies informed the US government of a coming attack in detail, including the manner and likely targets of the attack, the name of the operation (the "Big Wedding"), and the names of certain men later identified as being among the perpetrators.

Various individuals came into possession of specific advance knowledge, and some of them tried to warn the US prior to September 11th.

Certain prominent persons received warnings not to fly on the week or on the day of September 11th.

9. Able Danger, Surveillance of Alleged Hijackers

The men identified as the 9/11 ringleaders were under surveillance for years beforehand, on the suspicion they were terrorists, by a variety of US and allied authorities, including the CIA, the US military's Able Danger program, the German authorities, Israeli intelligence, and others.

Two of the alleged ringleaders who were known to be under surveillance by the CIA also lived with an FBI asset in San Diego, but this is supposed to be yet another a coincidence.

10. Obstruction of FBI Investigations Prior to 9/11

A group of FBI officials in New York systematically suppressed field investigations of potential terrorists that might have uncovered the alleged hijackers, as the Moussaoui case once again showed.

The stories of Sibel Edmonds, Robert Wright, Coleen Rowley and Harry Samit, the "Phoenix Memo," David Schippers, the 199i orders restricting investigations, the Bush administration's order to back off the Bin Ladin family, the reaction to the "Bojinka" plot, and John O'Neil do not, when considered in sum, indicate mere incompetence, but high-level corruption and protection of criminal networks, including the network of the alleged 9/11 conspirators.

Nearly all of these examples were omitted from or relegated to fleeting footnotes in The 9/11 Commission Report.

11. Insider Trading

Unknown speculators allegedly used foreknowledge of the Sept. 11th events to profiteer on many markets internationally, including but not limited to put options placed to short-sell the two airlines, WTC tenants, and WTC re-insurance companies in Chicago and London.

In addition, suspicious monetary transactions worth hundreds of millions were conducted through offices at the Twin Towers during the actual attacks.

Initial reports on these trades were suppressed and forgotten, and only years later did the 9/11 Commission and SEC provide a partial, but untenable explanation for only a small number of transactions (covering only the airline put options through the Chicago Board of Exchange).

12. Who Were the Perpetrators?

Much of the evidence establishing who did the crime is dubious and miraculous: bags full of incriminating material that happened to miss the flight or were left in a van; the "magic passport" of an alleged hijacker found at Ground Zero; documents found at motels where the alleged perpetrators had stayed days and weeks before 9/11.

The identities of the alleged hijackers remain unresolved, there are contradictions in official accounts of their actions and travels, and there is evidence several of them had "doubles," all of which is omitted from official investigations.

What happened to initial claims by the government that 50 people involved in the attacks had been identified, including the 19 alleged hijackers, with 10 still at large (suggesting that 20 had been apprehended)?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-worldtrade-50suspects,0,1825231.story

The 9/11 Cover-Up, 2001-2006

13. Who Is Osama Bin Ladin?

Who judges which of the many conflicting and dubious statements and videos attributed to Osama Bin Ladin are genuine, and which are fake? The most important Osama Bin Ladin video (Nov. 2001), in which he supposedly confesses to masterminding 9/11, appears to be a fake. In any event, the State Department's translation of it is fraudulent.

Did Osama Bin Ladin visit Dubai and meet a CIA agent in July 2001 (Le Figaro)? Was he receiving dialyses in a Pakistani military hospital on the night of September 10, 2001 (CBS)?

Whether by Bush or Clinton: Why is Osama always allowed to escape?

The terror network associated with Osama, known as the "data base" (al-Qaeda), originated in the CIA-sponsored 1980s anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan.

When did this network stop serving as an asset to covert operations by US intelligence and allied agencies?

What were its operatives doing in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Chechnya in the years prior to 9/11?

14. All the Signs of a Systematic Cover-Up

Airplane black boxes were found at Ground Zero, according to two first responders and an unnamed NTSB official, but they were "disappeared" and their existence is denied in The 9/11 Commission Report.

US officials consistently suppressed and destroyed evidence (like the tapes recorded by air traffic controllers who handled the New York flights).

Whistleblowers (like Sibel Edmonds and Anthony Shaffer) were intimidated, gagged and sanctioned, sending a clear signal to others who might be thinking about speaking out, yet officials who "failed" (like Myers and Eberhard, as well as Frasca, Maltbie and Bowman of the FBI) were given promotions.

15. Poisoning New York

The White House deliberately pressured the EPA into giving false public assurances that the toxic air at Ground Zero was safe to breathe.

This knowingly contributed to an as-yet unknown number of health cases and fatalities, and demonstrates that the administration does consider the lives of American citizens to be expendable on behalf of certain interests.

16. Disposing of the Crime Scene

The rapid and illegal scrapping of the WTC ruins at Ground Zero disposed of almost all of the structural steel indispensable to any investigation of the collapse mechanics. (See also item number 23.)

17. Anthrax

Mailings of weapons-grade anthrax, which caused a practical suspension of the 9/11 investigations, were traced back to US military stock.

Soon after the attacks began in October 2001, the FBI approved the destruction of the original samples of the Ames strain, disposing of perhaps the most important evidence in identifying the source of the pathogens used in the mailings.

Were the anthrax attacks timed to coincide with the Afghanistan invasion?

Why were letters sent only to media figures and leaders of the opposition in the Senate who had just raised objections to the USA Patriot Act?

18. The Stonewall

Colin Powell promised a "white paper" from the State Department to establish the authorship of the attacks by al-Qaeda. This was never forthcoming, and was instead replaced by a paper from Tony Blair, which presented only circumstantial evidence, with very few points actually relating to September 11th.

Bush and Cheney pressured the (freshly anthraxed) leadership of the Congressional opposition into delaying the 9/11 investigation for months.

The administration fought against the creation of an independent investigation for more than a year.

The White House thereupon attempted to appoint Henry Kissinger as the chief investigator, and acted to under fund and obstruct The 9/11 Commission.

19. A Record of Official Lies

"No one could have imagined planes into buildings." A transparent falsehood upheld repeatedly by Rice, Rumsfeld and Bush.

"Iraq was connected to 9/11." The most "outrageous conspiracy theory" of all, with the most disastrous impact.

20. Pakistani Connection. Congressional Connection

The Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI, creator of the Taliban and close ally to both the CIA and al-Qaeda, allegedly wired $100,000 to Mohamed Atta just prior to September 11th, reportedly through the ISI asset Omar Saeed Sheikh (later arrested for the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was investigating ISI connections to al-Qaeda.)

This was ignored by the congressional 9/11 investigation, although the senator and congressman who ran the probe (Bob Graham and Porter Goss) were meeting with the ISI chief, Mahmud Ahmed, on Capitol Hill on the morning of September 11th.

About 25% of the report of the Congressional Joint Inquiry was redacted, including long passages regarding how the attack (or the network allegedly behind it) was financed.

Graham later said foreign allies were involved in financing the alleged terror network, but that this would only come out in 30 years.

21. Unanswered Questions and the “Final Fraud" of the 9/11 Commission

The September 11th families who fought for and gained an independent investigation (The 9/11 Commission) posed 400-plus questions, which The 9/11 Commission adopted as its roadmap. The vast majority of these questions were completely ignored in the Commission hearings and the final report.

The membership and staff of The 9/11 Commission displayed awesome conflicts of interest. The families called for the resignation of Executive Director Philip Zelikow, a Bush administration member and close associate of "star witness" Condoleezza Rice, and were snubbed. Commission member Max Cleland resigned, condemning the entire exercise as a "scam" and "whitewash."

The 9/11 Commission Report is notable mainly for its obvious omissions, distortions and outright falsehoods - ignoring anything incompatible with the official story, banishing the issues to footnotes, and even dismissing the still-unresolved question of who financed 9/11 as being "of little practical significance."

22. Crown Witnesses Held at Undisclosed Locations

The alleged masterminds of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohamed (KSM) and Ramzi Binalshibh, are reported to have been captured in 2002 and 2003, although one Pakistani newspaper said KSM was killed in an attempted capture.

They have been held at undisclosed locations and their supposed testimonies, as provided in transcript form by the government, form much of the basis for The 9/11 Commission Report (although the commission's request to see them in person was denied).

After holding them for years, why doesn't the government produce these men and put them to trial?

23. Spitzer Redux

Eliot Spitzer, attorney general of New York State, snubbed pleas by New York citizens to open 9/11 as a criminal case (Justicefor911.org).

Spitzer also refused to allow his employee, former 9/11 Commission staff member Dietrich Snell, to testify to the Congress about his (Snell's) role in keeping Able Danger entirely out of The 9/11 Commission Report.

24. NIST Omissions

After the destruction of the WTC structural steel, the official Twin Towers collapse investigation was left with almost no forensic evidence, and thus could only provide dubious computer models of ultimately unprovable hypotheses.

It failed to even test for the possibility of explosives. Why not clear this up?

25. Radio Silence

The 9/11 Commission and NIST both allowed the continuing cover-up of how Motorola's faulty radios, purchased by the Giuliani administration, caused firefighter deaths at the WTC - once again showing the expendability, even of the first responders.

26. The Legal Catch-22

Hush Money - Accepting victims' compensation barred September 11th families from pursuing discovery through litigation.

Judge Hallerstein - Those who refused compensation to pursue litigation and discovery had their cases consolidated under the same judge (and as a rule dismissed).

27. Saudi Connections

The 9/11 investigations made light of the "Bin Ladin Airlift" during the no-fly period, and ignored the long-standing Bush family business ties to the Bin Ladin family fortune. (A company in which both families held interests, the Carlyle Group, was holding its annual meeting on September 11th, with George Bush Sr., James Baker, and two brothers of Osama Bin Ladin in attendance.)

The issue of Ptech.

28. Media Blackout of Prominent Doubters

The official story has been questioned and many of the above points raised by members of the US Congress, retired high-ranking officers of the US military, the three leading third-party candidates for President in the 2004 election, a member of The 9/11 Commission who resigned in protest, a former high-ranking adviser to the George W. Bush administration, former ministers to the German, British and Canadian governments, the commander-in-chief of the Russian air force, 100 luminaries who signed the "9/11 Truth Statement," and the presidents of Iran and Venezuela. Not all of these people agree fully with each other, but all would normally be considered newsworthy. Why has the corporate-owned US mass media remained silent about these statements, granting due coverage only to the comments of actor Charlie Sheen?

Geopolitics, Timing, and Possible Motives

29. "The Great Game"

The Afghanistan invasion was ready for Bush's go-ahead on September 9, 2001, with US and UK force deployments to the region already in place or underway.

This followed the failure earlier that year of backdoor diplomacy with the Taliban (including payments of $125 million in US government aid to Afghanistan), in an attempt to secure a unity government for that country as a prerequisite to a Central Asian pipeline deal.

30. The Need for a "New Pearl Harbor"

Principals in US foreign policy under the current Bush administration (including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle and others) have been instrumental in developing long-running plans for worldwide military hegemony, including an invasion of the Middle East, dating back to the Ford, Reagan, and Bush-41 administrations.

They reiterated these plans in the late 1990s as members of the "Project for a New American Century," and stated a clear intent to invade Iraq for the purpose of "regime change." After 9/11, they lost no time in their attempt to tie Iraq to the attacks.

31. Perpetual "War on Terror"

September 11th is supposed to provide carte-blanche for an open-ended, global and perpetual "War on Terror," against any enemy, foreign or domestic, that the executive branch chooses to designate, and regardless of whether evidence exists to actually connect these enemies to 9/11.

32. Attacking the Constitution

The USA PATRIOT Act was written and the Department of Homeland Security and "Shadow Government" were developed long before September 11th , and plans for rounding up dissidents as a means for suppressing civil disturbance have been in the works for decades.

September 11th was used as the pretext to create a new, extra-constitutional executive authority to declare anyone an "enemy combatant" (including American citizens), to detain persons indefinitely without habeas corpus, and to "render" such persons to secret prisons where torture is practiced.

33. Legal Trillions

September 11th triggers a predictable shift of public spending to war, and boosts public and private spending in the "new" New Economy of "Homeland Security," biometrics, universal surveillance, prisons, civil defense, secured enclaves, security, and so forth.

34. Plundered Trillions?

On September 10, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld announced a "war on waste" after an internal audit found that the Pentagon was "missing" 2.3 trillion dollars in unaccounted assets. On September 11th, this was as good as forgotten.

35. Did 9/11 prevent a stock market crash?

Did anyone benefit from the destruction of the Securities and Exchange Commission offices at WTC 7, and the resultant crippling of hundreds of fraud investigations?

36. Global Resource Wars

What was discussed in the Energy Task Force meetings under Dick Cheney in 2001? Why is the documentation of these meetings still being suppressed? Is Peak Oil a motive for September 11th as inside job?

37. The "Little Game"

Why was the WTC privatized just before its destruction?

38. "Al-CIA-da?"

The longstanding relationship between US intelligence networks and radical Islamists, including the network surrounding Osama Bin Ladin. (See also point 13.4.)

39. Historical Precedents for "Synthetic Terror"

In the past many states, including the US government, have sponsored attacks on their own people, fabricated the "cause for war," created (and armed) their own enemies of convenience, and sacrificed their own citizens for "reasons of state."

Was September 11th an update of the Pentagon-approved "Project Northwoods" plan for conducting self-inflicted, false-flag terror attacks in the United States, and blaming them on a foreign enemy?

40. Secret Government

The record of criminality and sponsorship of coups around the world by the covert networks based within the US intelligence complex.

The evidence of crime by Bush administration principals and their associates, from “October Surprise” to Iran-Contra to the S&L plunder to PNAC, Enron, Halliburton and beyond

Reason Number 41

Related Movements and Parallel Issues

Ground Zero Aftermath Movements

Justice for the air-poisoning cover-up (wtceo.org)

Radio Silence (radiosilencefdny.com)

Skyscraper Safety (www.skyscrapersafety.org).

Election Fraud and Black Box Voting, 2000 to 2004 (nov9truth.org)

Lies Regarding the Invasion of Iraq (afterdowningstreet.org)

Use of depleted uranium and its multi-generational consequences on human health and the environment.

Longstanding development of contingency plans for civil disturbance and military rule in the USA (see "The War at Home").

Oklahoma City Truth movement (okctruth.org)

Whether you call it "Globalization" or "The New World Order," it‘s an unsustainable system of permanent growth ultimately requires warfare, fraud, and mass manipulation.


Going Forward...

"But an inside job would involve thousands of people!

How could they keep a secret?"

Counter-arguments, red herrings, speculations and false information.

Selected essays, books and websites that make the case for 9/11 as inside job. (See “Resources.”)

Demanding a real investigation of the September crimes: Not just a patriotic duty, but a matter of survival…your survival and your childrens’.

Please research for yourself.

Clearly that's what your SUPPOSEDLY paid to do.

Anonymous said...

Annon touched on something that we conspiracy idiots see exactly in you people that dont believe 9-11 was an inside job, and that is how you wont even consider the evidence we show you.
You wont listen to our side of the story with an open mind before you try and stab us all with your rehtoric, names, and confessionals of how YOUR opinion is better than the Millions of people that believe 9-11 was an inside job.

What makes you better than the scholars and doctors, and metal experts that contradict everything you say?

Proof is in each piece of material from the crime scene that was never seen by investigators and guarded by FBI agents to make sure no one grabbed anything.
Or was it the fact that the dump trucks that hauled the steel away were fitted with GPS at $1,000 each to make sure that all material and evidence was taken to the drop point? Or the fact that a dump truck driver was a few minutes late from lunch and was fired over it? God forbid the evidence get any forensic testing done. Kinda fishy don't you think? And wonder why we are skeptical. Duh, it all points to foul play from inside the entire system we all trust.

Anonymous said...

Ah yes, attack the person who asks the questions. Slander them, villify them, brand them as insane or unpatriotic or both. But don't ever address their question(s). I find that quite curious.

Anonymous said...

ONE FACT alone automatically clinches the idea to me that the US Gov is behind 9/11. The Owner of the WTC Complex, in a direct contradiction with the official story, said on PBS that they went ahead and made the decision to PULL WTC #7. Now any naive person can go ahead and say, "oh, it would have caught on fire." If so, why didn't they pull buildings #5 and #6 down??? They caught on fire!!! Yet #7 was furthest away from the towers, and they pulled that one.

Bottom line: He contradicts the official story, thus proving THAT THE OFFICIAL STORY IS A LIE. BECAUSE THE OFFICIAL STORY IS THAT BUILDING #7 DID CATCH ON FIRE AND WAS NOT PULLED.

HELLO! THERE'S LIE #1. LIE #2 MIGHT BE HIDING THE EVIDENCE, IE SHIPPING IT ALL TO CHINA AND MELTING IT.

WOW! There are 100s of more FACTS about just how many lies surround the official story, man it's not even a question anymore!

DOGONE!!

Anonymous said...

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=408

If a liberal Democrat president, FDR, can make certain the Japanese attack us in order to get America into WW2, why can't a reactionary Republican president also makesure an attack is perpetrated upon us in order to make incredible profits for his vice-president and his father's, brother's, friends'. own companies?

Anonymous said...

Stop being such a conspiracy nut Dennis B. Do you really believe a bunch of arabs in caves who "hate our freedom" puled this off without help? Whacko.... Go to These Liberties and stop parroting the discredited 9/11 Commission Report. I dont think Bush did it or masterminded it, he is far to stupid. Dont tell doubters of the official story what they think bozo, and be a real journalist.

Anonymous said...

My name is Scott M. I didn't want to register.

Ummm...Sir, are you fucking retarded?

Yes, it is possible that MAYBE the twin towers getting hit with a plane did something to the foundation to cause it to fall on it's footprint (even though this NEVER occurs in fires and earthquakes, and even missiles). BUT WTC 7 was hit by nothing more than a small amount of falling debris and 2 small office fires (small even to firefighters). How can you explain a 47 story building, which was built to perfection and OVERCONSTRUCTED and could have easily resisted fire damage for 72 hours, let alone a mere 8 hours of 2 small office fires. The foundation of WTC 7 was PRISTINE. So explain how a buildingd with intererior AND exterior steel supports just collapses straight down? It is only the 3rd time in history (WTC 1&2 were the first two of course) and why has it never happened before or since? I don't claim to know WHO did it, but I know the only thing that COULD do it (being a science major, o'course).

It is called "thermate" (or thermite with sulfer added) and it is the only available material that can cut steal on such proportions, without getting any govt. agency's approval (like maybe C-4 , RDX, things of that nature). I can guarentee that AT MINIMUM building 7 was "pulled" (as Larry Silverstein so adequately stated) and that all we need to do is follow the money. Always look for whp profits from tragedy. Larry Silverstein was the first man, all others are being hidden by the govt. THAT IS A FACT.

Anonymous said...

you have to approve your comment , how weak,...anyway...nice factless blog ...do you work at fox news? do some research ...learn for yourself.wake up sheep.

~ FluxRostrum said...

yes, Bush is too stupid... so who do you think did it? Many of our "Intelligence Community" from the Kennedy era are still in control of Washington... that's who I think did it. I think he sat in the elementary classroom thinking.. they can't shoot me infront of the kids... while figuring out what he could say upon leaving that would allow him to remain alive and in power.

Anonymous said...

"But they say it was by President Bush himself, "as a pretext for the current Middle East aggression.""

MANY 9-11 TRUTHERS AGREE THAT BUSH PLAYED A MINOR ROLE IN THE EVENTS OF THAT DAY. DON'T DIVERT ATTENTION TO THE MORE OBVIOUS PROBLEMS WITH THE OFFICIAL STORY (NO PLANE HIT WTC7 YET IT FALLS STRAIGHT DOWN AFTER 7.3 HRS OF MINOR FIRES, HARD DRIVES DISCOVERED THAT INDICATED INSIDER TRADING AND NO PROSECUTIONS, SHIPPING EVIDENCE FOR RECYCLING BEFORE IT CAN BE THOROUGHLY INVESTIGATED, LOOKED AT BY INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATORS, INSIDER TRADING, TOWERS COLLAPSED IN 10 SECONDS INSTEAD OF THE REQUIRED 30 – 100 SECONDS FOR THE PANCAKE THEORY TO BE VALID, … FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF AT THE WEBSITE BELOW)

"Start at 911research.wtc7.net and follow the links into paranoia hell."

YES THAT IS AN EXCELLENT SITE THAT PRESENTS EVIDENCE IN A CLEAR AND RATIONAL MANNER THAT SHOWS 9-11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB.

HTTP://911RESEARCH.WTC7.NET

"Among other things, airliners didn't crash into the Pentagon (it was an American missile)"

MANY PEOPLE IN THE MOVEMENT BELIEVE THAT THE TAPES CLEARLY SHOWING THE PLANE HITTING THE PENTAGON ARE WITHHELD TO DISTRACT PEOPLE FROM THE MORE OBVIOUS PROBLEMS WITH THE OFFICIAL STORY (WTC7, INSIDER TRADING, FAKE OSAMA TAPE, WILLIAM RODRIGUEZ'S TESTIMONY OF BOMBS IN THE BASEMENT THAT MELTED THE SKIN OFF OF HIS FRIEND'S ARMS, NORMAN MINETTA'S TESTIMONY THAT INFERS CHENEY ORDERED A STAND DOWN ON THE JETS THAT COULD HAVE PROTECTED THE PENTAGON, ... IT'S ALL CLEARLY SHOWN AT HTTP://911RESEARCH.WTC7.NET )

"or the World Trade Center, and even if they did, they didn't cause the towers to collapse--it was the result of "controlled demolition charges" placed by Bush agents in the buildings before they were struck. That the named hijackers were not the hijackers, if, that is, the planes actually were hijacked or even existed.
"

AGAIN, BUSH AND THE IDEA THAT HE IS INCOMPETENT IS A DIVERSION FROM THE REAL ISSUES. NONE OF THE ALLEGED HIJACKERS' NAMES APPEARED ON THE AIRLINES' PASSENGER LISTS.
AT LEAST SIX OF THE ALLEGED HIJACKERS HAVE TURNED UP ALIVE SINCE THE ATTACK.

"Such theories require extensive fabrications to back them up, such as the assertion that the towers collapsed at free-fall speed (false), and that one floor falling on top of another couldn't possibly "pancake" the buildings (actually it was scores of floors collapsing on each floor)."

THE PANCAKE THEORY TAKES A MINIMUM OF 30 SECONDS TO 100 SECONDS. THE TOWERS FELL IN 10 SECONDS!

"The poll also found that 16 percent of Americans believe the bit about how secretly planted explosives collapsed the twin towers."

WHAT IS SO HARD TO BELIEVE ABOUT EXPLOSIVES BEING PLANTED IN A BUILDING IN A MASSIVE TERROR ATTACK? EVEN IF YOU STILL THINK AL-QAEDA WAS RESPONSIBLE, WHY NOT ACKNOWLEDGE THAT BOMBS WERE GOING OFF? THERE IS VIDEO TESTIMONY OF EXPLOSIONS BY SEVERAL FIREFIGHTERS AND WORKERS (WILLIAM RODRIGUEZ HEARD EXPLOSIONS AND HIS FRIEND’S ARM SKIN WAS BURNED OFF IN THE BASEMENT). THERE IS CLEAR VIDEO EVIDENCE OF THAT DAY FOR ALL TO SEE THAT THERE WERE EXPLOSIONS (DEMOLOTION SQUIBS) DOZENS OF FLOORS AHEAD OF THE DESTRUCTION WAVE SHOOTING OUT THE SIDE OF THE BUILDING *EXACTLY* LIKE A CONTROLLED DEMOLITION. ALSO, THE CONCRETE WAS PULVERIZED BEFORE IT EVEN HAD A CHANCE TO HIT THE GROUND.

"Of course, by this theory, W. also engineered the attacks on the Marine barracks in Lebanon, the U.S. Embassies in Africa and the Navy warship, the USS Cole. All while he was a slobbering drunk."

HERE WE GO AGAIN ON BUSH. HE WAS NOT IMPORTANT TO THE EXECUTION OF 9-11. THE ACTUAL ATTACKS WERE DONE BY A COVERT GROUP OF PROFESSIONALS WHO HAD MANY YEARS OF PLANNING AND PREPARATION. THERE ARE SOME PLAYERS IN THE 9-11 OPERATION WHO ARE PUBLIC FIGURES INCLUDING DICK CHENEY.

"No expert investigation, such as one by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, will be "independent" enough to suit them. Not that the professional engineering groups shouldn't be more forceful in rebuttal. I suppose they fear that speaking out would give the wackos credibility."

NOTE THAT THE NIST HAS CONTINUALLY DELAYED RELEASING THEIR FINAL REPORT ON WHY WTC7 FELL WHEN NO PLANE HIT IT. ALSO SEARCH FOR “FEMA REPORT ON WTC7 COLLAPSE IS A TOTAL JOKE”

"Failing a unified debunking by professionals, Popular Mechanics magazine took up the challenge. Popular Mechanics doesn't have the proper cache, so the theorists will ridicule or ignore its work, even though it's the most extensive rebuttal I've yet seen. Judge for yourself at popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html."

POPULAR MECHANICS CANCELLED A RADIO DEBATE WITH A 9-11 TRUTHER 2 HOURS BEFORE THE SHOW. ALSO, ONE PM FACT CHECKER DID GET ON THE RADIO WITH NO ONE FROM THE 9-11 TRUTH MOVEMENT TO DEBATE WITH AND THE RADIO HOST WAS ABLE TO SEE THE CLEAR SIGNS OF FRAUD WITH WHAT HE WAS CLAIMING.

FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH FROM HTTP://911RESEARCH.WTC7.NET

THE ARTICLE GIVES NO HINT OF THE PUT OPTIONS ON THE TARGETED AIRLINES, WARNINGS RECEIVED BY GOVERNMENT AND CORPORATE OFFICIALS, COMPLICIT BEHAVIOR BY TOP OFFICIALS, OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE BY A MUCH LARGER GROUP, OR OBVIOUS FRAUDS IN THE OFFICIAL STORY. INSTEAD IT ATTACKS A MERE 16 CLAIMS OF ITS CHOOSING, WHICH IT ASSERTS ARE THE "MOST PREVALENT" AMONG "CONSPIRACY THEORISTS." THE CLAIMS ARE GROUPED INTO TOPICS WHICH COVER SOME OF THE SUBJECTS CENTRAL TO THE ANALYSIS OF 9-11 RESEARCH. HOWEVER, FOR EACH TOPIC, THE ARTICLE PRESENTS SPECIOUS CLAIMS TO DIVERT THE READER FROM UNDERSTANDING THE ISSUE. FOR EXAMPLE, THE THREE PAGES DEVOTED TO ATTACKING THE TWIN TOWERS' DEMOLITION PRESENT THREE RED-HERRING CLAIMS AND AVOID THE DOZENS OF POINTS I FEATURE IN MY PRESENTATIONS, SUCH AS THE TWIN TOWERS' DEMOLITION.

Anonymous said...

Look at the peer reviewed scientific paper by Dr. Steven E. Jones, Professor of Physics at Brigham Young University.

In the paper he proves that the 911 Commission report cannot possibly be true.

Namecalling is the tactic used by debaters who do not have the facts on their side.

If you really love this Country and the Constitution that is its foundation, then investigate this and make up your own mind.

Answer the questions, who had the opportunity, capability, and the motive to perpetrate this horrible crime.

Who could fly around off flight plan for as much as 3 HOURS in eastern seaboard airspace without Air National Gard et al response?

WHO!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Idiots like to see idiots in charge so they feel just as smart as the person in charge. But what if an idiot simply thinks another man is an idiot...but that other man, whom is being placed in office, is not an idiot at all. Just another board member on an elite panel of people who think the "average citizen" is unable to figure out their plan and will ultimately be their slave, working multiple jobs just to barely make ends meet. The introduction of Mexicans to lower the wages of all middle class Americans, the elimination of our inalienable rights, the sacrificing of our young people into a war created soley on lies, the propaganda about how the US and Israel are so innocent and how history never happened. These are reasons to believe in conspiracy. Hundreds of cameras shot the Pentagon...but 5 years later after the trial is said and done...only one shitty video comes out showing absolutely nothing. Where are the others? What are they hiding? Are the tapes dangerous somehow?

Another question, who is benefitting from this war? Surely not some "sand niggers" in a cave. That's fucking ridiculous. Who is benefitting? Bush family oil. Cheney's Halliburton. Go back in time and look at the reasons King Bush the First had for attacking Iraq...AFTER WE GAVE HIM ALL THE WEAPONS! "War will create jobs." So will car accidents...so everyone go crash your fucking car. What was the other one? You don't know because you don't follow or remember history.

How about this...what is the School Of Americas? Don't know? Oh well...it's probably because you aren't a dictator or militia leader in a 3rd world country. Trained in the SOA in torture, terrorism, and holocaust. Surely your beloved and unbiased corporate owned elitest news stations would have told you that right? No you say? Weird. Wonder why.

Or how about everyone reading this go Google Operation Northwoods. Or Google Iraq Sound Weapon...a weapon that is now being used on American protestors who's views are being ignored and voices being silenced by police state terrorist organizations dressed in military garb.

9/11 was an inside job. Where did all the junk go? Juliani had it incinerated almost immediately. How did Building 7 get knocked down...it wasn't hit by a place...only the two big towers were. When interviewed...the owner of the towers said it was "Pulled." Demolished by bombs. How the hell did the bombs get in there so fast? Why is our government ignoring this and putting 9/11 truthers on terrorist watch lists? That is how you know you are on to something. When instead of listening to millions of people you just simply use the NSA to listen to millions of people. Retarded.

I feel sorry for arrogant so-called Christians and mean-spirited and racist imperialist Americans for having Smith's Syndrome. A syndrome that occurs when their reality they have formed with their enviroment is shattered and they refuse and resist logic with anti-logic. People can't even get 9/11 right how the hell do you think your right about God only blessing America?

Who's the bully? Iran who wants Nuclear power and independence from the world banks...

Or Israel who has over 400 nuclear missiles given to them by the US.

Or America who has millions of nuclear missiles...enough to eliminate the human race. Hmmm...I don't know George, who is the evil?

Anonymous said...

To quote John Anthony West (who has been termed a loonie himself): "First they'll ignore you, then they'll laugh at you, then they'll say they knew it all along."

It's been clearly demonstrated that Roosevelt had advance knowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor, yet he allowed thousands to die to justify joining in the war in Europe. Why is it so difficult to believe that modern "leaders" would accept a certain amount of civilian "collateral damage" to justify a war that they were itching to wage?

And not one person has proposed that Bush "masterminded" this scheme - it's his friends and compatriots in the military-industrial-political complex who did, with his approval.

Money = politics. Follow the money trail, identify who's making money, and you'll find out who's really in power.

Anonymous said...

Hopefully I'm not ignored just because I'm a "dissenting voice" or because of my age...I have many points I think are valid and I believe must be made... here goes...

As usual the American media has once again gone out of its way to criticize those of us who actually take the time to look at the facts.

It is great to know that the good old U.S.A. is still very full of opinionated people, but it is also very sad that anybody who disagrees with those in power are shunned, mocked, and ridiculed by those that cling to the aforementioned power out of what (since there seems to be no logical explanation) appears to be fear.

The problem you have incurred is that no matter what theories are out in cyberspace that may be so easily discredited by your blog (which I must mention you have no research sites listed that may back-up your claims that you know better).
I find it sad that you must slander "these 'truth' activists" and make us appear as "loonies" to make your views seem more viable.
Who are you to say you are above the binding logics that indefinately prove a conspiracy is present?
The other problem I see here is that you take the most extreme of conspiracy theorists claims (the ones that have absolutely nothing backing them, such as whom was behind this and why)and claim that this is EXACTLY how everyone whom acknowledges that the official story is inherently false views this subject.

The facts that members of the Bush administration profited off of 9/11 are very clear (you would know this if you researched the subject, which you seem to have done only halfway). Because it is also clear that Osama was not behind 9/11, the Afghanistan war is utterly unjustified. Those whom decided to march us to this are guilty (by concept of logic)of conspiracy to commit murder (not necessarily 9/11, though many federal agencies do seem to be involved to some degree). They have degraded our troops into simple hitmen who are paid for murder (definition of murder as: unjustified, premeditated killing of another human being).
The average person gets 20 to life for such a crime but the president gets approximately half of a million dollars a year for such crimes.

Point three I must make: You are correct in that the towers did not fall at free fall speed. The issue is that they fell at a speed exceptionally close to free fall speed, and that they fell in thier own foot-prints. If the tops of the towers were so weakened by the fires which is a proven physical impossibility, why did they not fall sideways into the so called "weak-spot created by the planes". (I don't have my research immediately available so I'll explain why this is impossible... look at the maximum open-air burning temperatures of jet feul {approx 1,000 degrees Farenhiet, and the fires at the top of the towers were emitting black smoke indicating that they were starving for oxygen and never reached full temperature} compared to the melting point of fireproofed steel {which as said by experts on multiple occasions " even unfireproofed steel must reach a temp. of approximately 2500 degrees before it begins to weaken"})

I've had enough of open honesty to a man who clearly wants nothing to do with such a sensitive subject unless it brings him a paycheck, so I won't bring up the evidence reguarding the Pentagon and/or flight 93.If I weren't so tired and so bored of explaining the facts incessantly, I would gladly have used your "scarecrow" tactics against you.

I must, though point out how terribly one track minded the people who seem to agree with you are. If you haven't noticed many of us are open and must have something proven to us without any room for doubt before we believe it. The first "anonymous" to thank you for this blog shows absolutely no hint of openmindedness himself, but is completely willing to demand openmindedness from us. It a classic example of hypocracy...almost brings someone else to mind...

I hope you come to realize things are not as we have been told, that is why this movement exists in the first place. I wish you peace despite the fact that you don't seem to want it.

Red Son "Mercury",
Conspiracy FACTualist

Anonymous said...

counters to popular mechanics article [I can't believe the blogger cited it]: http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/pm/
http://911review.com/articles/mr/pm1.html
http://www.serendipity.li/wot/pop_mech/reply_to_popular_mechanics.htm

Anonymous said...

I forgot to add this too: http://www.apfn.net/pogo/A003I060823-am-c3.MP3

Anonymous said...

was this posted in the Chicago Tribune? i am surprised.

you may know that 9 of the 19 hijackers are still alive...

including the one whose passport fell out of an exploding plane crashing into a building.

Anonymous said...

Get a real job guy....CAuse you suck at this one

Anonymous said...

Your opinion means nothing - you are just a journalist. Read the evidence presented by a number of prominent politicians, scientists, and engineers that don't care about conspiracy theories - they just want the truth exposed.

Anonymous said...

whitewashing the shadow people and their activities is a crying shame

Anonymous said...

115 ommissions and distortions of the 9/11 Commission:

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050523112738404

Anonymous said...

Walker said it best.
I personally refuse to have anyone approve anything I say.
So goodbye

The Truth is out there, I'm not afraid of it!

Anonymous said...

I have a question. If there is no cover-up and what few answers we have been given is the truth, how come there has still been no indictment of Osama bin Laden? After all, that is who our government claims is responsible. George Bush said just a couple days after 9/11 that "our main objective is to find Osama"...six months later, Bush said he "don't know where he is and don't care. that's not our main objective"
Oh really? So our main objective is to avoid getting the very person we were told was responsible for the attacks on 9/11?

2+2=5

Pepik said...

"Ah yes, attack the person who asks the questions. Slander them, villify them, brand them as insane or unpatriotic or both. But don't ever address their question(s). I find that quite curious."

Actually, I did answer questions. My answers were completely ignored and the questions were soon repeated.

Read anonymous, he posted at 7:19. TWICE he says that the towers collapsed straight down, neatly into their own footprint. This is not what the "official story" says, in fact the official story is that the towers damaged surrounding buildings in the collapse.

So I point this out, someone ignores that and repeats the now debunked claim, and finally you say that it is "curious" that people are attacked for posing conspiracy theories but nobody addresses their questions.

Well there you have it. The questions are being addressed, yet it makes no difference. The conspiracy theorists love questions, they just seem to have a severe allergic reaction to answers.

Anonymous said...

Popular mechanics couldn't explain several factors about 9/11 on an Arizona radio show recently.

One of the things he said was that they proved the identity of the hijackers through DNA recovered (miraculously) - but then what DNA did they use to check it against? Are they trying to tell us that they already had a sample of their DNA before they crashed into the twintowers? The writer fro popular mechanics said that he couldn't answer the question and would need to get back o him on that point.

He also failed to explain why only he was allowed to see classified photos of the apparent scooped out section of WTC 7. But why on earth would a magazine researcher be allowed to see the pictures (that we are TOLD exist) but other citizens aren't allowed access to them. He also fluffed on other points that he couldn't explain.

It was obvious that he was lying and that his claims couldn't be backed up at all.

9/11 was an inside job - like it or not - deal with it!

Anonymous said...

Now that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have caused almost as many American lives as did 911, it seems increasingly likely that our dear president could have condoned both measures of "collateral damage" as well as that of thousands more women and children in those war zones, especially when one considers who profits from war (Bush family cronies), increased oil prices, and how it has even been twisted to funnel money into Texas' border with Mexico. I don't think any rational person thought Bush alone could have masterminded these intricate events, only that he would be able to joke in the face of such carnage, and reassure mainstream America that he was protecting them from a repeat of 911.

Anonymous said...

No planes hit the towers? Damn, now I know my eyes are shot. I saw two towers get hit by jet liners and then fall like a controlled demolition. I don't know what everyone else saw. Dennis, you are a genius. Wow, I just read "Anonymous' at 9:29" and I had an email conversation with jonothan Moseley who said the same thing..."They create a reality within which they feel safe. Deep inside they know that George Bush is not really going to hurt them so they are ’safe’ as long as he is responsible for 9/11. There are no radical Islamist’s trying to kill Americans, Bin Laden is a CIA plot, Americans are putting the IEDs in place in Iraq that is killing other Americans since Zarqawi is/was another CIA puppet. It is all so clear to them - because it has to be. They can’t deal with it any other way". Referring to the "Stockholm Syndrome", you people are fools that are scared of a truth YOU can't face.

Anonymous said...

Was Bin Laden charged for 911? Go see for yourself at the FBI's website. Check the most wanted list, I don't think it mentions 911. But he has to have been charged, everyone in the administration said he was involved.

Anonymous said...

These long-listers, it’s sort of discouraging that there are people who are that disconnected from the real world.

Anonymous said...

Any thinking person who looks at just the surface will question the official theory...

Now, I am about the most conservative person I know (and I hang out with mostly Republican "conservatives"), a combat veteran and voted for Mr. Bush twice. So the lie that this is a liberal or anti-Bush issue is blatantly FALSE and in the open for all to see.

The "go-along with everything your government tells you" crowd always resorts to name calling, stereotyping, and ALWAYS point to extreme theories that most truth seekers also discount. So please try something new.

Areas you and others avoid every time! (and won't look at) include:

• WTC building 7 collapse
• Total stand down of air defense on 9-11 (due to multiple drills involving the same exact scenarios that were simultaneously transpiring on 9-11. This is now confirmed again by the recent release of NORAD tapes just weeks ago. Controllers could not tell the difference in fake hijackings and the real ones).
• No officials have been held accountable for the "failures" of 9-11, which is unheard of in military and government agencies. Anyone who serves any amount of time knows this.
• The amount of foreknowledge that is now public is overwhelming. That speaks for itself.
• The true abilities (lack of) of the hijackers
• The complete resistance to capture of the hijackers before 9-11 (many times)
• Resistance from the government to release any information (including thousands of admitted images and videos of the attacks)
• A growing number of whistleblowers, many of whom are gagged by court orders or the DOJ. These include the likes of FBI translator Sibel Edmonds and FBI special agent Robert Wright.
• Many eyewitnesses have given disturbing testimony that is discarded like 20 year WTC worker William Rodriquez who witnessed explosions in the sub basement of the north tower before the first plane struck and before the collapse. He was responsible for saving many lives that day, met the president because of it, testified behind closed doors for the commission (a testimony left out of the report like so many others) and now he is telling everyone his story and how it does not make sense with the official theory.
• The record of emergency workers oral histories of that day record many reports of multiple explosions in the buildings, and several firemen who said they thought explosives were planted inside the towers. These are ignored in the 9-11 commission report.

...and it goes on and on. There is an endless list of real questions once you get past the mud you people always try to ascribe to people seeking real answers. This only hurts your case.

Anonymous said...

I have been aware for a long time of the consipracy theory around 9/11 events (ie. the US government planned 9.11), but it only appeared to me as a fantasy, mainly because the advocates of this theory always failed to propose evidence based arguments.

I watched the loose change documentary a few days ago and it made quite an impression on me, because for the first time, conspiracy theory sustainers summoned up arguments based on what appeared to be well documented facts instead of speculations.

Of course, it just wasn't enough to convince me, as it is really easy to pretend something is a "fact" when it's not. So where is the truth ? As it has been said by both camps troughout the numerous posts, one as to do its own research, and not only on the various web sites sustaining or attacking the conspiracy theory. Of course such resarch takes time...

So now I have been visiting various web sites of both parties and reading (almost) every post on this blog, and I can say this : I still do not know where the truth is. Actually, both camps keep trying to debunk one another's arguments basing themselves on their own supposedly "unquestionable" information.

On the other hand, what does strike me, when I read the vast majority of the posts from the "official" side (starting with Dennis Byrne's) , is the constant name calling and attacks on the persons before the ideas and arguments themselves...
As remarkable is their unability to have hindsight on the issue and take a fresh look upon it : their conviction that the official theory is the unquestionable reality troubles their judgment.

A better approach would be for them to show open mindness, adress both theories with no emotion whatsoever and simply stick to the relevance of the arguments, based on inpartial evidence (This is definitely the main if not only issue here).

Once again, at that point I do not pretend to know what really happened, but I certainly cannot think that the conspirationnist version is impossible. So I'll keep searching for evidence and reading various points of view, hoping not to find so many despising comments, which do not help the views expressed in them.

Please excuse my approximative english.

A french citizen.

Anonymous said...

Dennis,
I am beginning to believe(theorize) that reporters like yourself (hold on to your hats folks) actually HAVE done the research and find that the evidence does in fact point to an inside job on the part of our current government. I think you are actually attempting to mobilize and give credence to our movement and your vehicle is the conservative MSM machine (the Trib) Judging by the comments on this blog you have accomplished that goal! Whether that was your goal or not, that's exactly what you did while exposing the minority of goose steppers who still buy the official lie.
Thank you for giving us yet another platform!
T

Anonymous said...

Dennis,
I am beginning to believe(theorize) that reporters like yourself (hold on to your hats folks) actually HAVE done the research and find that the evidence does in fact point to an inside job on the part of our current government. I think you are actually attempting to mobilize and give credence to our movement and your vehicle is the conservative MSM machine (the Trib) Judging by the comments on this blog you have accomplished that goal! Whether that was your goal or not, that's exactly what you did while exposing the minority of goose steppers who still buy the official lie.
Thank you for giving us yet another platform!
T

Anonymous said...

Sulfur is present in all fossil fuels, including jet fuel. It may catalyze the iron oxide-aluminum reaction. Thermite may have indeed brought down the towers, but the required ingredients -- iron oxide, aluminum, heat -- were already there. No one had to plant them.

The problem with investigators and analysts is that most are structural engineers, who do not understand the chemistry. Bin Laden himself, a civil engineer, thought that only the top stories would collapse.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Byrne, this column spurred me to action. Just wanted to let you know that you are a breath of fresh air on the Tribune op-ed page with this column and the rest of your columns. Long may you write! John H

Anonymous said...

Well, looks like the nutters have effectively hijacked yet another blog. Way to go, folks! Don't you ever get tired of copying and pasting the same old nonsense over and over again? Or is spamming dissenting sites considered a crucial tactic in your so called 'movement'?

For anyone who wants to discuss things in a less heated and oppressive environment, please go to forums.randi.org

And turk182, you really don't need to rape your poor caps lock key. Reading all caps text hurts the eyes, it's bad to read, and chances are that people rather skip your musings than to put their eye sight at risk. Most of all it makes your texts look like the electronic equivalent of a Hitler speech.

Arus said...

Troy, all your "points" have been answered ad nauseum. The fact that you refuse to do any amount of research, by you and your ilk proves why the Conspiracy theorists only rely on what other people tell them.

Anyone who buys into any CT for 9/11 needs to get out of the house for a bit, and live in the real world, and that government backed conspiracies come from the bad writing of hollywood.

Anonymous said...

If there is a whole in any part of a story that questions the integrity of the entire story.

If the 757 that hit the pentagon was vaporized by a jet fuel explosion...

How do the jet engines control the combustion of jet fuel to produce forward motion?

I work for AA and have for over 2 years. I work with jet fuels.
Please provide a reference to any conclusion for or against.

Anonymous said...

Yes, the flash word labels are a sham. Even the term "conspiracy theory" is far from correct when there is so much evidence that the attack on the WTC had to have inside help. It is not a theory, it is a fact that our US air defenses were diverted, prevented from intercepting the planes. It is a fact that WTC building 7 was brought down with pre-planted demolitions, with people all around the building, this was admitted by Silverstein on a video taped interview. It is a fact that the Twin Towers came down very fast, and into its base. The speed was too fast to have been a collapse due to fire. Many of us remember saying to ourselves the first time seeing the towers fall "It looks just like when they demolish a building." YES, it looked just like a professional demolition because it was a professional demolition.

Anonymous said...

Donald Rumsfeld has also used the term "Islamic fascists" recently in a desperate attempt to deflect blame for the Iraq fiasco. The basic tenet of fascism is that the strong should dominate the weak. Since America is the dominant power in the Middle East, it is more correct to say that the Islamists are opposing fascism.

Anonymous said...

"Unless you believe that the magazine, too, is in cahoots with Bush."

Hearst Corp, which owns Popular Mechanics, contributed $7,650 to Bush.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/telecom/analysis/InfluenceTracker.aspx?MODE=CONTRECD&RECIPID=648

Anonymous said...

Merely donating money to a politician does not mean one is in "cahoots." Companies typically give to the party in power, whoever that might be. This year the Democrats are raising more money than the GOP because most people think there is going to be a changing of the guard.

Anonymous said...

Someone said:

"NO STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS IN THE ENTIRE WORLD AGREE WITH THE CONSPIRACY THEORISTS."

False.

Members of the group Scholars for 911 Truth:

Joseph M. Phelps (FM)
Structural Dynamicist Charter Member, Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers

Doyle Winterton (FM)
Civil Engineering Structural Engineering

Michael Lovingier (AM)
Information technology manager , Structural/Environmental Engineering

Ted Muga (AM)
Naval aviator; Commercial pilot; Structural engineering

Judson Witham (AM)
Civil Rights Laws
High Rise/Mid Rise/Low Rise Construction/demolition

Other structural/civil engineers of note:

Structural & Civil Engineer, Charles N. Pegelow with 35 years experience in the field.

Judy Wood, a mechanical engineer at Clemson University

As time passes, more and more engineers are stepping forward. They risk their jobs, their careers and the welfare of their families by doing so. Would you take that risk if you were a civil engineer who believed explosives were used to take down the WTC buildings?

Keep in mind that many civil engineers and civil/structural engineering companies rely heavily on government contracts. A company would not allow an employee to make public statements that would risk future contracts. You can see this by the disproportionate number of academic professionals that are standing up for the truth. Most jobs are protected at institutions of heigher learning, so the risk is reduced.

Anonymous said...

It is good to question the official version. However, there are other possibilities that do not require a conspiracy. As mentioned previously, all the ingredients of thermite were present on that fateful day. Moreover, the airplane contained two flammable metals, aluminum and magnesium, that burn at very high temperatures. The possibility of an aluminum fire was actually considered in one investigation. It was dismissed as not likely, since aluminum burns with a bright white flame, which was not observed. If, though, the metal went down an elevator shaft, it would not be visible from the outside.

All the ingredients for producing extremely high temperatures were present. No one had to plant them.

The Bush administration is too inept at every level to have planned such a complex operation. Iraq and Katrina certainly prove it.

Jeff said...

Here's the only proof I needed that explosives were used in the WTC and that the media helped to cover it up. This video, just released, is after the 1st Tower collapse. If you still dont believe after watching this...you and your future generations will be slaves forever. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5182535448932065917&q=hbo+911&hl=en

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