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September 11th Attacks

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Skeptics of the conventional account of the collapse of the twin towers suggest that their fall was not physically possible except by timed explosives.
On the day of the 9/11 attacks, George Bush made the statement "The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts". A week later, Bill Maher, host of 'Politically Correct', while agreeing with the president that the terrorists should be hunted down and punished, disagreed that the terrorists were cowardly. This caused a great deal of controversy, and shortly afterward, his show was canceled, arguably making him a modern day martyr of free speech.
The standard account of the September 11th Attacks is that they were orchestrated by Al Qaeda. However, some people, particularly critics of the United States, have argued that the US Government knew about or even planned the attacks.
Wikipedia
On [the] morning [of September 11, 2001], 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours, destroying nearby buildings and damaging others.
Conservapedia
9/11 conspiracy theories are claims that the September 11, 2001 attacks did not happen in the way they are traditionally thought to have happened. Most theories state that, in one way or another, the United States government attacked its own country ... The evidence provided by the conspiracy theorists, also known as Truthers or "9/11 truthers" has been widely debunked by many famous researchers and even some 9/11 sympathizers.
Jessie Ventura
When I finally did watch [Loose Change, the film arguing that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by the US Government] I went through every emotion you could imagine, from laughing, crying, getting sick to my stomach, to the whole emotional thing.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
[Satirical reenactment of government officials:] It's done. The plane targeted at Congress was crashed by those on-board, but the Pentagon and Trade Center attacks occurred just as scheduled. ... Congress seems sufficiently angry in any case. ... I don't think the further steps of the plan will meet with any opposition. We should gain the governmental powers we need, and the stock market should move as expected. ... Have you prepared the conspiracy theorists to accuse us?
Frank Moscatelli
[The collapse was] due to the large mass and height of the towers. The airplanes destroyed 20 stories of the buildings, and gravity did the rest. Their splendor was their undoing. ... [The energy was] equivalent to the detonation of 0.2 Kilo tons of TNT... as comparison, the Hiroshima bomb was 10 kilo tons TNT equivalent.
George W. Bush
The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.
Jessie Ventura
If you took a billiard ball and dropped it from the height of the World Trade Center in a vacuum it would hit the ground in 9.3 seconds and if you took that same billiard ball and dropped it 10 stories at a time and merely stopped it and started it it would take 30 seconds - if you dropped it every floor of the World Trade Center to the ground, simply stopping and starting it on gravity it would take over 100 seconds to reach the ground.
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Since the release of the Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers in October 2005, NIST has received many questions from interested readers curious about NIST’s findings and the technical basis for them. The complexity of the investigation and the length of the final report ... have made understanding of the investigation a challenge for many interested readers. In response, NIST has prepared simplified answers to the most frequently asked questions.
Bill Maher
Crazy people who still think the government brought down the Twin Towers in a controlled explosion have to stop pretending that I’m the one who’s being naïve. How big a lunatic do you have to be to watch two giant airliners packed with jet fuel slam into buildings on live TV, igniting a massive inferno that burned for two hours, and then think, well, if you believe that was the cause… Stop asking me to raise this ridiculous topic on the show and start asking your doctor if Paxil is right for you
Rush Limbaugh
[that the 911 hijackers were not cowardly] was, in my mind, one of the few things Bill Maher has ever said that's correct.

New Comments

1 Point       Benja       27 Apr 2010     Did the US Government play a part in the 9/11 attacks? Disagree
"This is just my opinion and you people might disagree with me but, i dont really care"

A glib attitude like this is fine if we're talking about the color of your underwear. But we're talking about 3,000 lives that were lost and the legitimacy of the US government. It's part of our social responsibility to care about what other people think on matters that we find mutually important. In this particular case, to not care, would be to not care the lives lost on that day, and perhaps far worse, not care about the future of the far great number of lives affected by the US government.

0 Points       Benja       10 Apr 2010     Did the US Government play a part in the 9/11 attacks? General Comment
I did some research as to whether the collapse was physically possible, and did not come to your conclusion. Please check out the evidence in the linked question: "Was the collapse of the twin towers only physically possible by controlled demolition?". The physics supporting the standard account - that the load bearing structures were compromised to the point that they could no longer support the immense weight of the building - seems entirely sound to me. Be wary when people use common sense arguments when physics is involved. Always look at the math on both sides, and only then make a conclusion.

0 Points       OmnipotentRabbit       10 Apr 2010     Did the US Government play a part in the 9/11 attacks? Agree
And, of course, the only people that so far agree with this are hardly literate and do not wish to reveal themselves. I understand the desire for anonymity on this opinion. But it is hardly necessary.

There is a reason for the attacks. There always has been, throughout the last hundred years, a reason to provoke attacks, or create very believable fictions of attacks on the US to initiate wars, which have proved to be a source for economic benefit and political control since World War I. This was done in 9/11 to create a war against the most vague of enemies, terrorism, allowing the US government (and whichever others feared terrorists) to apply whatever laws they wanted to "prevent terrorism". But as anyone can see, these measures have only reduced liberties, and when analysed from a rational viewpoint, do not actually stop any terrorists.

Moreover, from careful analysis of the television footage, most anyone with some understanding of architecture and engineering can see that it is physically impossible for a plane crash to ignite a steel building or impact it with enough strength to cause its collapse. And then there's the lack of plane remains of decent size both there and the Pentagon...

The evidence for this is overwhelming. It is understandable that not many people agree with this, it would be an assumption that the US government is not to be trusted. But it is a reasonable assumption indeed.

0 Points       JGWeissman       27 Mar 2010     Did the US Government play a part in the 9/11 attacks? Disagree
The government had no conspiracy to cause the attack. Their response, however, was horribly incompetent. They should have been able to limit the damage to the loss of the hijacked planes, by shooting down the planes when the hijackers refused to communicate.

The government's use of the attack to justify attacking Iraq, which was not involved, was criminal.

It seems we are forgetting the firefighters,police,news and people on scene who state there were secondary explosions. Explosions in the basement, on multiple lower story floors. The evidence was everywhere. But when you murder over half the witnesses by crumbling the building around them you don't have to answer their questions. Building 7? B.S. what a crock. oh, oh, and the pentagon! How many cameras were on that side of the building? 50 or so? and we have two frames of footage? yeah right. Flight 93? no bodies? no luggage? no jewelry? no nothing? phffff!! Oklahoma city? 3 more bombs found inside building. Wheres the MAJOR medias report on that? When people first got there there was no report of a truck bomb. the damage done was reported to be from the 1 bomb that went off from inside the building. (local media)
It wasn't until the Fed's and Major networks showed up that we heard about a truck bomb. But then what happened to the Bombs the FBI was pulling out of the building? The American people are being spoon fed BS and taking it in, in the name of patriotism. So you probably wonder who is this guy? I'm an OIF2 war vet. I served as a scout/sniper. Our sector was the major portion of downtown Baghdad and the northern half of Sadr city. I have seen the lies first hand in combat. I have seen what the government is all about. It's about saving face. Not patriotism or loyalty or caring for it's citizens. It's about control. Media,civilian, control plain and simple. Our government is no longer "of the people, by the people and for the people" Wake up America. Before your put to sleep permanently.

1 Point       Benja       13 Sep 2008     Was the collapse of the twin towers only physically possible by controlled demolition? General Comment
As a leader who should have experience in delegation, why is Jesse not relying on a physicist to answer this question? It seems he's making the assumption that each floor would provide enough resistance to (at minimum) momentarily stop the motion of the floors above it.


September 11th Attacks Question Index

Did the US Government play a part in the 9/11 attacks?
Were the 9/11 hijackers cowardly?
Was the collapse of the twin towers only physically possible by controlled demolition?
Has the money spent on airport security since 9/11 made us safer?