However, Nick, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you watch a History Channel special about the 9/11 Conspiracy Theories. It really goes in depth to debunk most of the claims that you will find on the internet. Your post turned into a nice tribute, but for a minute I was about to really lambast you for usually being a very intelligent poster. I'm sure they'll be showing it today and if not today, they'll hit on it sometime this week. For example, about the demolition and jet fuel claim, they say that jet fuel DOES have the ability to melt steel, but that it wasn't just that. It's been a while since I've seen it, but you really should watch it.
That's not quite the same thing as a building collapsing, but consider the following ...
1) the heat from the fire in the building had nowhere to "go," meaning, it built up. The truck's heat had somewhere to "go."
2) there was considerably more fuel in the planes than in the truck, so it lasted longer. I think the fire from the collapse was finally put out, like, 17 days after they fell.
3) the beams compromised on the bridge were considerably stronger than the pre-fab metal joists supporting the floor plates in the tower.
If you're in a big-box store like Home Depot or whatever, look up and you'll see pre-fab metal joists similar to the ones used in the WTC. Compare those joists to the big metal (or concrete) beams under an overpass. Big difference in size and strength.
The joists in the WTC were meant only to transfer floor loads to the structural columns, which were placed throughout the building and were part of its famous exterior. Essentially, the WTC was a structural "tube," one of the stronger and more efficient structural techniques (if not a little unsightly).
You will recall that, when the buildings collapsed, they "pancaked" rather than "tipped over." This means that the fire caused floor plate joists to fail, then they fell down on the one below, caused them to fail, and that was that. If the "tube" had failed, you would have expected it to "tip over." But that's not what happened.
It also explains why the tower hit second fell first. It was hit lower; there was more weight above the impact zone in the columns, and I think it affected more floors. But the mechanism was the same "pancake-ing."
From an engineering standpoint, the fact that the buildings stood as long as they did was nothing short of miraculous. I think that, at that time of a normal workday, about 50,000 people are expected to be in the structures. The length of time allowed all but about 2,600 to get out. When you consider that about 150 were on the planes and about 350 were heroes who ran into the building, that leaves about 2,100 of 50,000 that died.
It's 2,100 too many, but still less than 5% of the people who were on site at 8:46 AM.
And...it's still a hole. That bothers me for reasons I probably don't need to mention.
Quote: NicksGamingStuffI think it is very short sighted to dismiss these ideas with the idea that our country could never do such a thing, or the idea that a person who believes the us was involved is not patriotic.
If the government was in fact not involved, then it is unpatriotic to spread rumors and innuendo suggesting it was. the reason is that such suggestions undermine the government's ability ot fight the enemy.
Quote:I do not fully understand how a war with Iraq is fighting terrorism when most of the terrorists that day were from Saudi Arabia and other countries.
Overreaction.
It doesn't matter whre the particular terrorists came from, but rather where and when they recived, training, financing, orders and support. All that came from Al Qaida, who were aided and abetted by the Taliban in Afghanistan. You will recall that's where US and NATO forces first directed their efforts.
Looking back on it, invading Iraq was a mistake. There seemed good reasons to do so, like Saddam's support of terrorists and terrorist groups, and his possesion of chemiacal weapons. Imagine what Al Qaida or a similar group could so with easy access to Sarin and Mustard Gas. Except such reasons applied more strongly yet to Iran and Syria. The mistake lay in Bush's aim, not in his intentions. The idea was to prevent other states from harboring and suporting terrorists, and using them to further their intersts. Iraq had the capability to do that, surely, but Iran was actively doing it and still does.
Afghanistan was a good response to the outrages of that day, and I kind of feel concentrating on that at the Pakistan borders should have been Bush's main focus, not finishing a job his Daddy didn't.
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The reason most of the 9-11 truthers are dismissed are that they have not a single claim that hasn't be refuted and rebutted and done over. It's a ugly thing to suggest that was a conspiracy when there was none. Instead there was a bunch of scumbags who decided flying passenger planes into a civilian made any sort of point apart from dehumanizing everyone and causing divisions in the world.
The response 10 years on to the first responders and those needing insurance and health care is sickening. You have to question what goal people are serving when the firefighters are sidelined at the memorial. Everyone else should be standing back and letting such remembrance be for those people who were there that day at the front lines.
Quote: NicksGamingStuffI have read that the ways the towers fell were more demolition style, and that jet fuel could not have melted the steel.
The steel did not have to melt. I saw a nice essay on the subject by a structural engineer several years back.
I've read a little bit of the 9/11 conspiracy stuff. They start out asking reasonable enough questions that have never been adequately addressed (Were the Pentagon and WTC not restricted airspace? What's up with the old interviews with people saying that there existed permanent shoot-down orders for that airspace? Why did administration and military officials insist that they never contemplated such a scenario, when Library of Congress reports show exactly such a scenario suggested as a hypothetical possibility as early as 1999?), but then they move into absolutely lunatic territory claiming that the President and other officials were actually "reptilian aliens". They'd be a lot easier to take seriously if they hadn't insisted upon dragging the sci-fi stuff in. I'll die a happy woman if I never hear the phrase "alien shapeshifter" again.
Quote: thecesspitI don't need to look back at Iraq as a mistake. It was a mistake at the time, based on the reasons that Bush and Blair were giving. It was not a terrorist safe haven (Sadam was secular despot and wanted to desperately keep any religious groups out of the country, so Al Qaeda support would have been at double arms length at best), there was no convincing reports of WMD's
Saddam supported teror groups in the past, and at the time even ahnded out rewards to the families of Palestinian homicide bombers. That's a big deal, but not as big sa Iran supporting Hizbullah and Hamma, in bids to, as it turns out successfully, control Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority.
As to chemical weapons, he had several the UN had tagged and left in place. This was known. He also amde every effort to appear to ahve more. You may recall Saddam prevented UN inspectors from going to several facilities. If someone is acting as though he's hiding something, you must assume he has something to hide. BUt again that's not as bad as Iran developing nuclear weapons.
Quote:and the removal of the state didn't not improve living conditions for the local populace.
I know I'll come accross as cruel for sayign this, but that's not necessarily a relevant aspect of war.
Quote:Given the Arab Spring Revolts we've seen recently... Sadam's time was coming anyways.
No way to tell that ten years ago.
Quote:Afghanistan was a good response to the outrages of that day, and I kind of feel concentrating on that at the Pakistan borders should have been Bush's main focus, not finishing a job his Daddy didn't.
You can look at it that way if you like. But you should acknowledge most Democrats in congress authorized the war.
Conspiracy theories abound because of the unlikelihood of success: being able to take over the cockpit of planes (easy) without resistance (not so easy); being able to pilot a plane into WTC and have two planes do it 16 minutes apart; slow communication from the flight controllers to the FAA to the military to not scramble the jets in time; inability to react properly to the memo; massive intelligence failures due to lack of communication between agencies; lax airport security allowing boxcutters to get through the metal detectors; the fall of the towers themselves. A pile of failures allowed this to happen.
If any of these things didn't happen as planned, the towers might still be standing today, and America and the world would be a much different path than it is today. Yet, all of these events have been explained in the 9/11 commission reports and are well documented and backed up by science and logs. Many, many television documents have been produced debunking all of the conspiracy theories and backing up the true events of the day.
Absolutely, first responders and those working around WTC at the time of the attacks are heroes and needed to be at the memorial.
Quote: NareedI know I'll come accross as cruel for sayign this, but that's not necessarily a relevant aspect of war.
Indeed, but if one of the claims is "this war will make everything better for the locals", then... well.. that's naive.
Quote:You can look at it that way if you like. But you should acknowledge most Democrats in congress authorized the war.
What's the Democrats stance on this got to do with anything? I didn't say "and therefore vote Democrat?". Not least, as I don't vote at all in the US....
It's also true a lot of the UK parliament voted for the war. And I didn't agree with them either at the time, and didn't vote for the party's that supported the war before or after that event. I might vote for them in the future based on other issues.
Quote: thecesspitIndeed, but if one of the claims is "this war will make everything better for the locals", then... well.. that's naive.
It's worse than that. It's "Just War" theory.
Quote:What's the Democrats stance on this got to do with anything?
Plenty. The spin is that Bush wanted the war, or the neo-cons, or the GOP did, and the rest of the country, not to mention the world, had to put up with the lone cowboy. When the truth si the democrats voted for it, so the country through their elected representatives did.
Quote:It's also true a lot of the UK parliament voted for the war.
And there's that, too. Other countries also approved of the war someway and many of them sent troops.
Quote: ItsCalledSoccerCoincidentally, about the same time when the jet-fuel-can't melt-steel theory was prominent, there was a visible accident under an overpass in (I think) California where a fuel truck exploded. The bridge's beams were structurally compromised as a result of the heat from the blaze, and the bridge had to be condemned.
That's not quite the same thing as a building collapsing, but consider the following ...
You make lots of good points. This "jet fuel can't melt steel" thing drives me crazy. The people who spout it seem to think the steel must be in a molten state to fail. I grew up meeting all kinds of former steelworkers. Heard all kinds of mill stories. One thing the public does not get is the terms. You will hear "cold mill" used. But don't get the wrong idea, these mills heat the steel to about 1300-1500F for rolling. IOW, at the temps the WTC was getting, steel is soft enough to be rolled and formed, surely it will lose structure.
One guy last week said, "but they closed a bunch of the floors." Horse Hockey, I replied. In a 110 story building there will always be tennants coming and going. Floors will be closed to all but building maintainence.
But the simplest one they miss is that to implode a building takes a huge crew weeks to do and requires many trucks of explosives and other tools. The number of people who could implode buildings like the WTC is very few, to get them all at the same time on the down-low would be impossible.