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Conspiracy's?

#61
I have to admit that the pentagon part has always bothered me a bit. Not much for eye witness accounts and very poor video of the incident. I am told that there is a missle defense system protecting washington DC. Is it possible this failed ? or maybe this plane was taken down by us and somehow hit the pentagon? seems a bit far fetched , but the fact remains something happened and there are missing passengers (presumed dead) and a missing plane. The thing that really bothers me is that it came in very low and made a very accurate hit in the side of the building without first hitting the ground before impact, Im not a pilot but im guessing that takes more skill than pointing an airborne object at a vey tall building, sort of point and shoot as it were, Whoever was piloting that plane had some skills to be that accurate or they got incredibly lucky. And how come no one had video or a photo of this thing coming in over a major populated area before it hit the pentagon, someone must have seen it or heard it and got there attention, I dont recall anyone reporting this, I'm sure it happened quickly but they had to know it was off course and that someting was up. I think there are alot of unanswered questions regarding this particular incident. If someone here has more info on this please enligthen us.
 
#63
1958Bassman said:
First, if the PA jet had been shot down, debris from the device fired at it would have been found under that location, on the ground. Small pieces, definitely, but some larger pieces would have survived. Debris from the jet would have been found, too- it's impossible to shoot down a jet and have all of the material remain intact. The debris field would have been much larger. Nobody came forward to say large parts landed on their house or car, etc.

Second, I would hope the designers of the WTC took future demolition or possible collapse into account. When I studied architecture, we discussed certain buildings and how they were constructed. The WTC had a main frame near the center where the elevators and electrical/mechanical systems rose from the basement areas. The outer frame was meant to be as light as possible, to allow as much open space inside as possible. This being the case, I would have thought that more of the center framework would have been standing after the collapses, but that's for the structural analysts to comment on. The impact from the crashes blew off most of the insulation covering the structural framing members, exposing all of it to the heat from the fire. Contrary to what Rosie O'Donnell says, the heat from jet fuel and the remaining building contents is definitely sufficient to affect structural steel. During a fire, the heat causes horizontal members to sag and attachment points to soften enough that the shear forces acting on them cause failure. This happens when the steel starts to become elastic and once the floors above the gaping holes fell onto the floor below, it just continued to take out each successive floor's connecting points.

WRT building 7 falling/being taken down, I can't see how the main towers could fall so close and NOT affect nearby foundations, even though they go deep into the ground, to bedrock (bedrock, unless they used pilings or caissons).

I wouldn't be surprised to find that someone in government was fairly sure it would happen, but I don't think they would be so callous that they would sacrifice 3000+ people to find a reason to start a war. If they did this and don't care, they should all be ground into a fine paste.
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No, I get it. I've read that popular mechanic article, and I've seen a lot of very convincing counters to the popular conspiracy theories too. I just can't shake the relative neatness of it, or even if one building spontaneously collapsed in a neat footprint, the chances of the second one, or the third one all collapsing in their footprint just seems too hard to write off as coincidence. Not to mention all the eyewitness accounts of explosions happening in the basement prior to the collapse. Like you, I'm just a layman here. Perhaps there's a simple explanation for this. Perhaps (and this would make a lot of sense in areas like Manhatten) buildings are built this way, so if they do collapse they collapse in a relatively organized fashion for safety reasons. But when you couple this with all the eyewitness accounts of explosions prior too the collapse, I just feel there might need to be further explanation. Perhaps a popular mechanic article part II?

Regarding the 'why' aspect of all this. It's all speculation. I don't have an answer, and this part to me is the hardest part to figure out. Eventually the experts will weigh in, and hopefully explain away some of the stuff discussed in that link I provided, because ultimately that's science and physics and there are knowledgeable experts that can provide valid theories to either corroborate or dispute this stuff. But regarding the 'why' part. I don't want to believe our government is so corrupt that it would let an attack happen, or worse, coordinate an attack either directly or through a hired proxy. But as I grow older and as we move farther and farther away from 9/11, I've definitely become much more suspicious and wary of the government. But still, the notion that it was an 'inside job' is just a pill too big to accept at this moment, IMO. I really don't have an answer to the 'why' or 'who' aspect either.
 
#64
Lol everyone has an opinion... And yet with all the theories and the amount of information, ability to share that info. without gatekeepers and technology available in the private sector ... No one has ever given any solid proof that debunks the official story.

I'm not saying it's not possible there was something more to this... But if there was then why haven't these theorists gotten off their "armchair quarterback" arses, found some sort of real, undeniable proof and published it? Laziness? Complicity?
Nah... I think people just want to have their own opinion and feel good about it without having to do any actual work,
 
#66
bluesblaster said:
I have to admit that the pentagon part has always bothered me a bit. Not much for eye witness accounts and very poor video of the incident. I am told that there is a missle defense system protecting washington DC. Is it possible this failed ? or maybe this plane was taken down by us and somehow hit the pentagon? seems a bit far fetched , but the fact remains something happened and there are missing passengers (presumed dead) and a missing plane. The thing that really bothers me is that it came in very low and made a very accurate hit in the side of the building without first hitting the ground before impact, Im not a pilot but im guessing that takes more skill than pointing an airborne object at a vey tall building, sort of point and shoot as it were, Whoever was piloting that plane had some skills to be that accurate or they got incredibly lucky. And how come no one had video or a photo of this thing coming in over a major populated area before it hit the pentagon, someone must have seen it or heard it and got there attention, I dont recall anyone reporting this, I'm sure it happened quickly but they had to know it was off course and that someting was up. I think there are alot of unanswered questions regarding this particular incident. If someone here has more info on this please enligthen us.
Click to expand...

Investigators identified remains at the Pentagon site of all but 5 of the 64 passengers on Flight 77. Invalid Link Removed; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FirstFloor_Pentagon_Bodies.png.
 
#67
livinitup0 said:
Lol everyone has an opinion... And yet with all the theories and the amount of information, ability to share that info. without gatekeepers and technology available in the private sector ... No one has ever given any solid proof that debunks the official story.

I'm not saying it's not possible there was something more to this... But if there was then why haven't these theorists gotten off their "armchair quarterback" arses, found some sort of real, undeniable proof and published it? Laziness? Complicity?
Nah... I think people just want to have their own opinion and feel good about it without having to do any actual work,
Click to expand...

This is valid too. I personally don't have the time to explore it, so I'm just another armchair quarterback myself.
 
#69
MakiSupaStar said:
I just can't shake the relative neatness of it, or even if one building spontaneously collapsed in a neat footprint, the chances of the second one, or the third one all collapsing in their footprint just seems too hard to write off as coincidence.
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I'm no structural engineer, but I thought high rises like that were designed to crumple in on themselves when there's catastrophic structural failure.
 
#70
Puffs Of Dust
Claim: As each tower collapsed, clearly visible puffs of dust and debris were ejected from the sides of the buildings. An advertisement in The New York Times for the book Painful Questions: An Analysis Of The September 11th Attack made this claim: "The concrete clouds shooting out of the buildings are not possible from a mere collapse. They do occur from explosions." Numerous conspiracy theorists cite Van Romero, an explosives expert and vice president of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, who was quoted on 9/11 by the Albuquerque Journal as saying "there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse." The article continues, "Romero said the collapse of the structures resembled those of controlled implosions used to demolish old structures."


FACT: Once each tower began to collapse, the weight of all the floors above the collapsed zone bore down with pulverizing force on the highest intact floor. Unable to absorb the massive energy, that floor would fail, transmitting the forces to the floor below, allowing the collapse to progress downward through the building in a chain reaction. Engineers call the process "pancaking," and it does not require an explosion to begin, according to David Biggs, a structural engineer at Ryan-Biggs Associates and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) team that worked on the FEMA report.

Like all office buildings, the WTC towers contained a huge volume of air. As they pancaked, all that air—along with the concrete and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse—was ejected with enormous energy. "When you have a significant portion of a floor collapsing, it's going to shoot air and concrete dust out the window," NIST lead investigator Shyam Sunder tells PM. Those clouds of dust may create the impression of a controlled demolition, Sunder adds, "but it is the floor pancaking that leads to that perception."

Demolition expert Romero regrets that his comments to the Albuquerque Journal became fodder for conspiracy theorists. "I was misquoted in saying that I thought it was explosives that brought down the building," he tells PM. "I only said that that's what it looked like."

Romero, who agrees with the scientific conclusion that fire triggered the collapses, demanded a retraction from the Journal. It was printed Sept. 22, 2001. "I felt like my scientific reputation was on the line." But emperors-clothes.com saw something else: "The paymaster of Romero's research institute is the Pentagon. Directly or indirectly, pressure was brought to bear, forcing Romero to retract his original statement." Romero responds: "Conspiracy theorists came out saying that the government got to me. That is the farthest thing from the truth. This has been an albatross around my neck for three years."

Read more: 9/11 Conspiracy Theories - Debunking the Myths - World Trade Center - Popular Mechanics
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I found this compelling. It definitely explains away some of my doubts regarding the explosion aspects of this. Hell, if I keep this up, I might debunk my own doubts just from re-reading the same article. :D
 
#73
The American Society of Civil Engineers has already weighed in. I'm sure their report is still available on the net somewhere.
The "pancake" failure mode of the buildings is entirely consistent with a structural failure of some upper floors. This failure was caused by prolonged exposure to fire which weakened the steel to its failure point. The driving force here is the "dead" weight of the building itself. Upper floors collapse onto lower floors. The momentum of the failure builds as it picks up mass because the dead weight of floors are being added as the collapse proceeds downward. As has been mentioned before, the design of the building with most of its structural strength in a central "core" contributed to the symmetry of the failure. The fires weakened a section of the central core in a particular area. This area failed first and started the collapse from that point downward. Once the buildings withstood the plane impacts, there was no other significant external force being applied. So, it was just like you suddenly kicked the props out from under something very heavy. It dropped straight down like a rock "pancaking" floors one on top of the other.
The loud popping, explosions, etc. that have been reported by some were probably large steel "W" sections suddenly failing in shear mode. When you have that magnitude of weight dropping that far, you generate a tremendous amount of energy. That energy was dissipated through breaking things (mostly concrete, people, furnishings, etc.) into relatively small pieces. Some fairly large pieces of structural steel did survive the tremendous impact.
There's no mystery here. Americans just don't like admitting that they got caught with their pants down again. The terrorists had already tried the largest bomb they could deliver near the WTC foundations and it didn't work. So they tried something else.
 
#74
NelsonNelson said:
Hearsay from my own father and personal family friend? Ok. My dad called me that day and said, "A missile just hit the Pentagon."

A missile has wing sections, and travelling at a high rate of speed is very similar in appearance to a plane. Know your stuff before you try to argue. Then there were firefighters who were quoted talking about how the twin towers were demolished and before they collapsed they heard the popping sounds of the demolition beginning. I don't intend to argue, but 9-11 was not what were were told and sadly, Americans are too stupid to put science together + common sense and realize they were lied to. Who did this we'll never know, but I don't believe the mainstream garbage nor do I think it was "the government". I don't know about that.
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Did your father and friend actually witness the "missle strike"?
 
#75
Alright guys, I might be leaning back the other way. When I first read the Popular Mechanic article, I didn't have any specific things I was looking for. Now I've seen a few conspiracy videos and being generally open-minded, I found myself questioning things. Now, I've gone back to the popular mechanics article, some of the explanations for some of the things I questioned sound very reasonable. Some of my disbelief has been suspended for the moment. Now I have different directions to read. Good thing I'm not running for office because I'd be a horrible waffler. :D
 
#76
I'd still like to know if Washington DC and the buildings of importance to our national heritage and security are in fact protected by some sort of surface to air defense system and if so why was that not employed when the planes trajectory was clearly DC ? yes, I know there were a plane full of civilians but I believe when push comes to shove there not above sacrificing innocents to avert some bigger catastrophe, it happens fairly frequently during the course of war. Of course if no such thing exists than it is a moot point, I'm just really curious how this plane got through to the pentagon. I've heard its intial target was suppose to be the white house but have no way to confirm that, again maybe here say. To me this terrorist/ pilot/kamikaze nut job was the most skilled aviator of the bunch. They can scramble a fighter squadron within minutes, Who was running the show when all this was unfolding ?
My apologies about the "presumed dead" in an earlier post, I meant no disrespect and was more a sideways dig at the missle theory.
 
#78
FREAKYSTLYEY said:
Eyewitness reports contradict so much what the media says.

And the second part is just a question. How did the 3rd tower fall? Trainers of the pilots saying they couldn't fly a Cessna or whatever for **** how could they pilot that airbus
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Well...............here is another eyewitness account for you.

I was there for the whole thing (retired NYPD).

Building 7 was severely damaged from debris from the other towers coming down, and was on fire.

There was no demolition, or any other plane. It simpy became unsound and collapsed - yes, in front of my own eyes.
 

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