911 - was it self inflicted?

[Ned]

Firstly, the Pentagon. A building designed to withstand a nuclear strike is not going to leave much wreckage or show too much damage when hit by a jet. Apart from the fuel itself, the vapour igniting would have enough temperature to vapourise much of the plane. The recent explosion at the fuel depot in the UK shows just what ignited fuel vapour can do.

As for the WTC, there's a very detailed explanation of the reasons for the collapse on Wikipedia. Those who put forward conspiracy theories never explain exactly why, if demolition charges were set throughout the building (for example) they waited almost two hours to blow them. Waiting to kill the rescue workers and up the death toll (a reason I have heard for the delay) is not logical. An immediate collapse of the towers would have killed far more people than allowing a partial evacuation.

The only secrets involved with this attack, in my opinion, is blown intelligence and a probable shoot down of Flight 93. The rest of it is just head in the clouds stuff.

[The Last Word]

Ned wrote:

> An immediate collapse of the towers would have killed far more people than allowing a partial evacuation.

And looked rather suspicious - I'm fairly certain physics would not allow an immediate collapse (there was a very good documentary on the physical hows and whys a while back. Part of the Horizon series, I think.)

If anything untoward was involved, you can guarantee this would've been taken into consideration.

[Bob Singleton]

dynatech wrote:

SNIP

...Fuck terrorism, the U.S now has everyone over a barrel and there's fuck-all anyone can do about it.

========================================================


Almost but not quite!

If the Euro became the currency of choice for trading oil instead of the Dollar, the US economy would pretty much implode. The last major oil producer to sell oil in Euros was Iraq. Recently another major oil producer, Iran, has talked of using the Euro...

Guess who's next on the US's list of countries to be "liberated"

[strictlybroadband]

While there are precedents for the US faking attacks on themselves in order to start a war (see Tonkin Bay), I doubt 9/11 was it. More likely, Bush & co took advantage of the attack to do what they were going to do anyway: attack Afghanistan, then Iraq, then Iran. I used to fly a lot on internal US flights, and they had the worst security you could imagine: often just a sign reminding passengers to surrender their guns to cabin staff before boarding.

Bin laden's group took advantage of this to launch the attacks. It was a soft target: 19 guys with knives could never have boarded planes in Europe, but no problem in America. Then came the big lie: Rumsfeld quickly claimed that "al Qaida" had 100,000 members. That lie became the "war on terror". I'd guess bin laden had a few dozen hardcore followers at the time of the attack, tops. His little group of nutcases has been magnified into a "global threat" - it infuriates me that Blair has joined the Yanks in playing this game of lies.

[The Last Word]

dynatech wrote:

> In fact my initial reaction was a sign and "oh well, I'm sure they're already scripting the movie"

There's two lined up right now. United 93, about the doomed flight, is allegedly excellent, and Oliver Stone's 9/11 firefighter drama. The latter has me a bit worried.

Still, it will be interesting to see how these films stand up in the face of the lazy and patronising journalistic assumption that we've become desentitized from the horror of reality via cinema etc. 9/11 itself was often described as like something from Hollywood, yet the awful, jarring reality made us realise how cinema tries not to desensitize with this sort of thing, but rather to over-sensitize. However, not to be horrifed and appalled, but impressed, and excited. In that sense, 9/11 was nothing like cinema.

[jimslip]

What's odd, is that the best Al Quaida has ever come up with before or since are car bombs and suicide bombers. 9/11 was pure Hollywood.

Also how come Osama didn't immediately claim responsibility, surely the whole point of a terrorist act is to say, "Look i did this and now this is what I want."

This is pure American Imperialism gone mad. Finally just think, who has really benefited out of this act?

The arms companies , the oil companies and the Neo Conservatives all of whom have a stranglehold on the USA and the World itself.

[jimslip]

To put your mind at rest, the official version is that a Boing 757 made a 30ft hole in the Pentagon, and both wings and tail politely folded up and went through the hole as well, complete with engines. Strange that all CCTV footage of the event was confiscated by the FBI shortly afterwards. Oh yes the aircraft also managed to penetrate 3 bomb proof concrete walls in 3 seperate buildings before finally making a hole out the other side.

[Steve R]

Even if twenty 757s had hit those buildings - one after the other - they would not have collapsed.

As regards fire, you could have set those buildings on fire and poured a full plane-load of fuel on them every single day since, yet they would still be standing today.

Those buildings were brought down in controlled demolitions. One only had to look at the pyroclastic flows following the collapses. Only two things on earth cause a pyroclastic flow - volcanos and high explosives.

[Fred]

Reading this thread, I guess a good conspiracy theory is greatly comforting to many people.

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/pentagon.htm

Personally I'm rather more inclined to believe in incompetence theory...