I see you are a specialist in the Socratic method. What, according to you, are the rules?

I have not said that it was irrelevant. I have said that that constituted insufficient grounds for me to accept your position.

The second presumption is Turbonium's; the first presumption is your misunderstanding of what I was putting forward in that discussion.

now that's a good one! The point being that it is exactly the point of the discussion to establish what in this context would be justifiable. So I can't define that here and now. It is not yet defined at the outset of the discussion; that's the whole point.
('us' is shorthand for something like: any rational person who is interested in getting some answer to this question).

This was obviously a hot topic for discussion at work right after it happened. Where I worked at the time, I saw a lot of people over the span of the week, and always the same people. We would talk about things and speculate. Based on what little I knew and thought I knew about this, I had two ideas to maximize damage from crashing a jet in to the Pentagon. The first was approach on about a 30 to 45 degree angle and hit the top of a wedge section spreading out the debris along the rings of the building rather than go into the side.

The other was to try to hit the inside ring by attacking from the opening in the middle. The thinking here was that building was more reanforced along the outer edge, and that firefighting efforts would be more difficult since access was much more limited.

Someone did suggest straight down, but I think we decided that on a building that low, there wouldn't be a lot of penetration like there would with a taller one. I have no idea and make no claims about how effective either of those might have been, they were just the thought at the time.

__________________
I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

But you did bother to respond to posts and repeat an assertion which I had already asked you to address, namely providing eyewitnesses who contradict the vast majority who say AA 77 hit the Pentagon. Given your assertion, now repeated twice, you must have the information to make that assertion so can easily respond quickly and with links.

So, rather than waste time explaining what it's like to be in a minority, just respond to the questions please.

I see you are a specialist in the Socratic method.

I don't claim that, no. But if you take the time read my 5,000+ posts to this forum you'll find I employ the method quite extensively. Like you, I don't admit to a perfect understanding or execution of it. But I'm no stranger to it. Engineers do take philosophy classes, you know. When you work in a field where "right" is always a matter of professional success and often a matter of life and death, methods for understanding what that means take on significant. Not every such method is helpful, but engineers do wax philosophic when required.

Earlier I argued that the Socratic method is best suited for questions in which concrete definitions are elusive. I spoke too hastily. What a forensic engineer does when he engages in Root Cause Analysis bears an important resemblance to the Socratic method as used to expose hidden axioms or postulates.

The Socratic method applied to an ethical question may expose that the advocate of some particular ethical maxim basis his argument on an arguable or simplistic notion. For example, if one says that it is ethically unjustifiable to allow prostitution because it is a form of slavery and one has a natural right to liberty, then a Socratic exploration of that argument might expose a hidden premise whether one's "natural" right to self-determination includes the right to revoke that self-determination on one's own behalf -- i.e., to choose voluntarily a life of submission and servitude that denies one's further right to choose. Socratically then, we peel back the layers of the discussion and reveal propositions that may, in fact, contradict statements held elsewhere.

The peeling back of layers to expose underlying causes and effects is Socratic enough, and forms the basis of Root Cause Analysis. Why did some airliner crash? Because its engines failed. Why did its engines fail? Because of fuel starvation. Why was the fuel exhausted? Because not enough was loaded for the journey. Why wasn't enough fuel loaded? Because a ground crewman converted improperly between pounds and kilograms. Why was such a conversion necessary? Because there was an inappropriate lag in the publication of appropriate reference tables? Why was there such a lag?

And so forth. The principle is essentially the same. At each step you see what else needs to be questioned, and at each step you see whether you can see anything that contradicts what has been previously observed. You either keep going, reach an impasse, or reject a particular hypothesis that is guiding your questioning.

But I will stipulate that you likely know more of the Socratic method than I, in which case you will be able to justify your behavior in light of it by sound argument rather than by vague handwaving and assertion, if you so choose.

What, according to you, are the rules?

I don't propose to enumerate them. That's not necessary in order to note violations.

Do you agree that red herring responses and meaningless obfuscation are not allowed in a valid Socratic dialogue? Do you agree that changing horses is not allowed in a valid Socratic dialogue?

The second presumption is Turbonium's...

But you agree with Turbonium, therefore it is also your presumption. Or do you now say you disagree with Turbonium? If the former, please supply an argument for the alleged unamity of witnesses, or refer to where Turbonium made it. If the latter, you have changed horses.

...the first presumption is your misunderstanding of what I was putting forward in that discussion.

But I know what I was putting forward, and you responded with an allusion to a red herring argument that J. Durnavitch expounded. Only after we exhausted the obfuscation did you admit you didn't know what investigations had been made. Note how I didn't pursue the matter further; the explicit admission was all I was after. You would have saved us a lot of time by doing that up front, and the outcome would have ben exactly the same.

I'll give you credit for admitting your argument on some point is weak. You only raise my ire if you continue to buttress a failing conclusion with increasingly absurd arguments.

If you admit that your understand or execution of the Socratic method is imperfect, then you might stipulate to the preceding examples under that admission. In that case you should have no problem also stipulating to my assertion that not everything you say or do here is proper to the method you claim to be using. And if that's the case, then our rejection of your arguments may not have anything to do with misunderstanding your method or failing to accept it as valid.

now that's a good one! The point being that it is exactly the point of the discussion to establish what in this context would be justifiable. So I can't define that here and now.

But this is nevertheless useful. I asked for your definition of "justifiable" and you responded (agreeably) that it depends on context. That's a perfectly proper answer, because it establishes that many different definitions of "justifiable" can be formulated and discussed. It also establishes that there exists such a thing as a "context" whose nature must now be explored and understood.

But those questions are relevant and interesting only if some variance in the quality of those things is presumed. That is, if the definitions we contemplate are qualitatively equivalent, then it doesn't matter which we choose. But you imply that it does matter, hence your reluctance to commit to any one of them without examination. Therefore we have to conclude you believe that some approaches to measuring the strength of the evidence are better than others. If some are better than others and it's important to get a good one, then by what criteria do you propose to evaluate them?

('us' is shorthand for something like: any rational person who is interested in getting some answer to this question).

Do you admit that among those who express an interest in the amount and quality of evidence for an airliner crash at the Pentagon, there can be found those who are irrational as well as those who are rational? If you stipulate as much, then do you agree it is not worth trying to satisfy the irrational ones? How then do you propose to distinguish between rational and irrational people for the purpose of "justified conviction" according to this evidence?

If the argument above holds, then merely questioning the evidence does not ipso facto qualify one as rational, nor the grounds upon which it is questioned.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Do you agree that red herring responses and meaningless obfuscation are not allowed in a valid Socratic dialogue? Do you agree that changing horses is not allowed in a valid Socratic dialogue?
The first two, yes. The third - changing horses - if I understand your use of the term correctly, is allowed, as far as I know.

The second presumption is Turbonium's...
But you agree with Turbonium, therefore it is also your presumption. Or do you now say you disagree with Turbonium? If the former, please supply an argument for the alleged unamity of witnesses, or refer to where Turbonium made it. If the latter, you have changed horses.
No. I agreed on a particular point with Turbonium. Nothing to do with unanimity of eyewitnesses.
For the rest I neither agreed nor disagreed with him.

If you admit that your understand or execution of the Socratic method is imperfect, then you might stipulate to the preceding examples under that admission. In that case you should have no problem also stipulating to my assertion that not everything you say or do here is proper to the method you claim to be using. And if that's the case, then our rejection of your arguments may not have anything to do with misunderstanding your method or failing to accept it as valid.
Strictly speaking that is of course true. But of course it is the reasons that I am given for rejection of my arguments which led me to make that claim.
I think the disagreement about whether "changing horses" is allowed is important in this respect.

The point being that it is exactly the point of the discussion to establish what in this context would be justifiable. So I can't define that here and now.
...if the definitions we contemplate are qualitatively equivalent, then it doesn't matter which we choose. But you imply that it does matter, hence your reluctance to commit to any one of them without examination. Therefore we have to conclude you believe that some approaches to measuring the strength of the evidence are better than others. If some are better than others and it's important to get a good one, then by what criteria do you propose to evaluate them?
This is the important question, IMO. I don't have a ready-made answer. I'll let you know when I've got anything to say on it.

Do you admit that among those who express an interest in the amount and quality of evidence for an airliner crash at the Pentagon, there can be found those who are irrational as well as those who are rational? If you stipulate as much, then do you agree it is not worth trying to satisfy the irrational ones? How then do you propose to distinguish between rational and irrational people for the purpose of "justified conviction" according to this evidence?

If the argument above holds, then merely questioning the evidence does not ipso facto qualify one as rational, nor the grounds upon which it is questioned.
No, of course it doesn't. And I agree that it is not worth trying to satisfy the irrational. The point of the Socratic question I proposed is just that: to try to establish how far one's duty to supply evidence in an investigative discussion reaches. If the Socratic question is correctly explored and leads to a usable answer, this will by itself lead to a distinction between the rational and the irrational on this matter. If evidence (of a 757 having crashed into the Pentagon) is supplied that satisfies the criteria that come out of the Socratic investigation, then those that do not accept that evidence may be called irrational.

I will note that, while Turbonium has, however poorly, answered some of the questions posed, it's still more than Brumsen has done.

Hey, Brumsen, there were direct questions asked of you that were not intended to be answered by a philosophical debate but instead by presentation of evidence. Can you do that? If not, how do you justify your belief, whatever it is, that the "official" story is wrong?

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I played around with Photoshop and enhanced the "smoke" trail from AA77 by combining the inverse (negative) of one image without the smoke with the positive of one showing it.

I'm trying to come up with an image that only shows the difference between the two images, i.e., deleting all common elements between the two images. Don't know if it will work though.

Brumsen can correct me if I'm mistaken, but I get the distinct impression that he more "hopes" the official story is wrong, rather than "believes" it is wrong.

__________________
--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

The third - changing horses - if I understand your use of the term correctly, is allowed, as far as I know.

"Changing horses" is the English vernacular for a kind of ad hoc revision that surreptitiously deploys a new proposition in place of the original topic. It is intended to distract from a failed argument.

If a Socratic examination proposes to identify a contradiction to something said earlier in the dialogue, allowing revision ad hoc will escape the contradiction artificially. Some lines of questioning require the proposition to remain unchanged in order to achieve a proper examination.

This is not to say that all revision in a dialogue is bad. But one must pay very careful attention to the disjunction at the point of departure to ensure it holds.

For example, if one wishes to argue that same-sex marriage should be forbidden because it harms the children of such marriage, one could lose that point and still go on to argue that it should be forbidden also because taxation policy would be too drastically affected. Here we might consider the disjunction appropriate because either reason alone might be thought sufficient for a public policy decision, or both together.

In contrast, the G.W. Bush administration is accused frequently of having changed horses on the justification for the invasion of Iraq. Initially the claim was that Iraq and its alleged WMDs posed an exigent threat to the United States. After WMDs failed to materialize in expected quantities, the claim became that Saddam Hussein and his regime was an intolerable threat to world security. The disjunction is not as clear in this case because while some might consider the former reason appropriate, they might not agree that the latter is sufficient.

And no, I'm not advocating any position on these political matters; I'm just citing them as examples of debate in which revision is variously allowed.

No. I agreed on a particular point with Turbonium.

Fair enough.

But of course it is the reasons that I am given for rejection of my arguments which led me to make that claim.

I understand that you believe we reject your approach because we are not familiar with the Socratic method nor recognized it. My response was that we do recognize the Socratic method but do not, on the one hand, consider it applicable to many of the questions we are discussion; nor, on the other hand, believe that you have exercised it properly or with constructive intent.

This is the important question, IMO.

This is the important question in your philosophical formulation of the problem, yes. Unfortunately if you're going to hold philosophy over everyone's head, we are at an impasse until you are prepared to make your argument on it.

Some of us are ready now because these kinds of investigations are already familar to us. There already exists a number of contexts in which evidence of this kind is routinely evaluated according to its power to convince and in which its availability and provenance is considered. Your call for a Socratic examination on it can be interpreted merely as your personal inexperience in this type of investigation; therefore you want to start from first principles rather than deal with the philosophy already in place.

The point of the Socratic question I proposed is just that: to try to establish how far one's duty to supply evidence in an investigative discussion reaches.

It sounds like you're changing horses. Originally you spoke of the "amount" and "quality" of the evidence. Now it seems you want to talk of the "duty" of people and organizations to "supply" it. I don't consider those equivalent.

First, the existence of evidence in a forensic examination is not necessarily subject to control. One is limited in nearly all cases to convenience samples. When considered in the arbitrary context of "duty" this may suggest a responsibility were none exists.

Second, the arbitrary release of evidence in custody is governed by many factors, many of them fairly immovable. Other parties' interest in it cannot be considered necessarily indicative of any "duty".

It seems you're trying to rewrite the evidence argument once again according to your political bias. The possible outcomes of your proposal seem limited to whether the custodians of evidence are acting appropriately, not whether the nature of the evidence itself compels belief. I don't see where your approach has the possibility of being constructive.

If evidence (of a 757 having crashed into the Pentagon) is supplied that satisfies the criteria that come out of the Socratic investigation, then those that do not accept that evidence may be called irrational.

This smacks of circularity. People are deemed rational if they accept a certain line of reasoning. But the validity of a certain line of reasoning is considered on the basis of whether rational people accept it.

Further, I have a serious problem with the implications of your approach. It sounds as if you wish to establish, by philosophical wrangling, that some objective standard of evidence exists. Then any belief for a proposition failing to meet that standard is somehow automatically irrational. I have already stated why I do not find that a useful approach. Please address my discussion on the difference between an absolute and comparative approach. If one's belief is in the hypothesis for which there is the most and strongest evidence, why would you argue it is not rational.

Your proposed approach boils down to little more than FUD draped in the robes of Socrates. You propose only disbelief.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

The other was to try to hit the inside ring by attacking from the opening in the middle. The thinking here was that building was more reanforced along the outer edge, and that firefighting efforts would be more difficult since access was much more limited.


I agree - However the ability of the building to contain fire due to the materials used may not have produced the sort of damage hoped for.

And this is one of my major objections to the idea of a cruise missile. The people organising such an attack would know just what a tough old bird the Pentagon is.

Seriouly - Given the place was slapped with a fully loaded commercial airliner, it barely took much more than a scratch, and the vast majority of the facility could have continued functioning as if nothing had happened.

Now it seems you want to talk of the "duty" of people and organizations to "supply" it.

I think he means his duty to supply evidence in the investigative discussions here. Based on what he has posted, I gather that he wants to:

1. Not push a specific line.
2. Just ask questions.
3. Not have the duty to supply evidence.

In other words, he wants to be a conspiracy theorist.

I don't know, most conspiricay theorists that I've dealt with want to talk about the actual conspiracy, not the mechanics of it's discussion...

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The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

Same here. Most CTs I know actually are interested in point-by-point discussion. Of course they seldom actually listen to the points contrary to their position (well, I suppose that is what makes them CTs; world views can be hard to change regardless of what side of the aisle one is on), but very few of them actually argue the nature of the argument.

And to me, that seems like a stupid mistake for the conspirators to make. If Cordite is being used for naval guns, odds would be good that the Pentagon would have people that could recognize the 'unmistakeable' smell and give away that fact that there was a cordite explosive used. At least better odds than someone on the police and fire crews would.

I agree, it is a stupid mistake. But it shouldn't be dismissed on the unfounded assumption that conspirators would have been "too smart" to make such an error. In fact, it seems to me that an anomaly such as this should warrant further investigation.

Most CTs I know actually are interested in point-by-point discussion.

The aim of conspiracy rhetoric is to bog down the discussion. That can be done in a few ways. You can argue over some single bolt or bullet. Or you can talk endlessly about how the discussion should proceed. The whole point is to generate meaningless words than can fill books and videos, not to arrive any better understanding of the truth.

If the question at any given moment were, "Which is a better theory: Theory A or Theory B?" it would be answered in short order and no one would get noticed or make any money. But if you change the question to, "Here's all the things wrong with Theory A," you can gossip and niggle on that until the cows come home.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

What do you think of the clip of the other Pentagon camera? Seems to me that consistency requires that you also interpret the white object there as "smoke." As such, we have to believe that a white 757 in a sunlit field is effectively and inexplicably invisible, except for the inexplicable emission of horrendous amounts of white "smoke" from its engine(s). The easier explanation is that the white object is the white 757 that hit the Pentagon.

Actually, that model matches my point. Examine it in a graphics program and you'll see that a shade filter has been placed over white fuselage that appears just above the foreground box. There is a little bit of the white surface that the filter did not extend over located at the rear base of the vertical stabilizer (see). But when we're talking about an area of an inch, more or less, assuming that the given model is perfect is pushing the limits. And look at the actual image below it, the alleged vertical stabilizer isn't even a coherent object, it looks like several disjoint things. Face it, the white 757 that hit the Pentagon is the white object.

Com'on guys, it's time to admit that the expert authors of the ASCE report (see page 13) probably know what they're talking about and sunlit white 757s don't appear to be black against a dark background. ~Ian

See: Which is Flight 77?

Many of which had been asked multiple times over the course of a number of days, giving plenty of time to respond. Many of which were also asked before posts you've chosen to respond to...

Please point out the many questions asked multiple times over several days to me which I have failed to address.

I understand the issue, but it seems more obvious that this is a case of "completely avoid the points you can't address and respond to the ones you can handwave away."

Why do I think this? You've made statements about the damage to the Pentagon and the street lights, both well after I've posted evidence that proves those statements to be amazingly weak, and both in response to posts following mine. Meaning? You've apparently seen those points and decided to ignore them.

You know, rather than waste time by making all sorts of assumptions about me, all it really takes is a simple "turbonium, could you please answer the questions I asked you in post #__ ?" Or if I missed answering one or more of the questions in a particular post, just say "turbonium, could you please answer the question about _____ that you missed in post # ___?"

It gets right to the point, and makes the thread move along a lot smoother.

Not so difficult, is it?

Edit to add: PeterB is very good at doing this - he refers back to a post# that was addressed to me but I hadn't responded to. I appreciate this method of debate. He seems to understand that there are times when sheer volume of material makes an oversight occur. And then I am more than happy to say "Sorry, Peter, I will reply in my following post." And I then make a priority of answering it.

I'll make my repeated question easy by not even refering back to a post (but I can do so if you would prefer).

Earlier, you said that the 757 'was built to mil-std'.

That is plain wrong, and I can give evidence easily to prove it so.

Would you like to retract your statement about 'mil-std' or would you like me to post the evidence?

__________________
"For ignorance to reign, all it takes is for knowledgable people to say nothing"

Lonewulf

??? They are able to make an entire plane completely vanish, eliminate all the passengers and crew, set up some sort of fuel tank to create the fireball seen in the video, hit he Penatagon with some other type of explosive device, and move in a lot of debris from a jetliner, (wheels and landing gear). All without being seen by anyone. And yet, when the time comes to choose the type of explosive to be used, none of the planners of this thing are smart enough to realized that 757's arent made of cordite???

I refer to that thing nearly everyone has recieved by now about being an evil overlord:

"I will employ as one of my advisors an average 5 year old child. Any flaws spotted by this child will be changed before implementing my master plan."

Again, if there MUST be a conspiracy about this, why not just have the Evil Overlords(tm) place a device on the plane to remote control it from their base in the hollow mountain and actually crash a 757 in to the building? That would eliminate most of the anomolies in the story, and still allow for a reason to be paranoid.

__________________
I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

Getting back to the issue of mil-std. specs, Obviousman. Looking back at your original reply question....

To what airworthiness standard did the 757 have to comply for the issuence of its Type Certificate?

I assume you are referring to FAR Part 25 airworthiness standards for transport category airplanes. That isn't relevant to my point, however, which was about parts traceability for these aircraft.

I was actually thinking of Mil-Std 130, which applies to parts traceability for military aircraft and equipment. So while 757's are not built to mil-std. specs, that is a standard used for parts traceability. And it also proves that there is much more to mil-spec. than jt-3d said....

That's cute. Do you even know what that means? MilSpec numbers are used to identify campatility between different types of grease in the aviation biz. They also are used for O-rings and adhesives but that's about it.

Very cute indeed, jt-3d.

Since I'm referring specifically to parts traceability within the manufacturing sector, it's related to the Quality Systems under which they must be regulated and in compliance with. For commercial aircraft, that would be programs such as ISO 9000/9001 and AS9000/9100.

The relevant point I was making was that 757's are indeed able to be traced through individual part identification back to the parent aircraft.

??? They are able to make an entire plane completely vanish, eliminate all the passengers and crew, set up some sort of fuel tank to create the fireball seen in the video, hit he Penatagon with some other type of explosive device, and move in a lot of debris from a jetliner, (wheels and landing gear). All without being seen by anyone. And yet, when the time comes to choose the type of explosive to be used, none of the planners of this thing are smart enough to realized that 757's arent made of cordite???

I'm sure they knew very well that 757's "aren't made of cordite". Or have anything to do with cordite. What does that mean? They should have used the type of explosive that 757's are made of?

Seriously, though - how can we possibly know what the reason is for why they would use cordite, beyond speculation? The point is, it doesn't matter why. It only matters that there is a viable indication that it was used (according to those witnesses), and that's reason enough to look into it further, imo.

As for being able to make the plane and people disappear, etc., you must be aware that Operation Northwoods included similar plans......

An aircraft at Elgin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CJA proprietary organization in the Miami area. At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone [a remotely controlled unmanned aircraft]. Take off times of the drone aircraft and the actual aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rendezvous south of Florida.

From the rendezvous point the passenger-carrying aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly into an auxiliary field at Elgin AFB where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the aircraft to its original status. The drone aircraft meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When over Cuba the drone will be transmitting on the international distress frequency a "May Day" message stating he is under attack by Cuban MiG aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of the aircraft, which will be triggered by radio signal. This will allow ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization radio stations in the Western Hemisphere to tell the U.S. what has happened to the aircraft instead of the U.S. trying to "sell" the incident.

And another plan...

We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba . . . casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/IM...rthwoods13.gif
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/IM...rthwoods14.gif

If they were confident of pulling off these kinds of stunts back in 1962, they certainly would have been able to conduct similar operations in 2001.

Again, if there MUST be a conspiracy about this, why not just have the Evil Overlords(tm) place a device on the plane to remote control it from their base in the hollow mountain and actually crash a 757 in to the building? That would eliminate most of the anomolies in the story, and still allow for a reason to be paranoid.

I thought bin Laden was the Evil Overlord(tm) controlling his suicidal minions from his base in the hollow mountain (or cave)?

Again, as I said before, it may have been concluded that using an actual 757 would not be successful in being able to create the damage they wanted. Or that a remote controlled 757 could even hit the Pentagon without the risk of hitting the ground before reaching the wall, etc.

Why they would use cordite, or why they would not use an actual 757, are points of speculation. But they are not evidence against a conspiracy.

asked

ignored

asked again

Like, oh... I dont know... Jet Fuel???

So, overall, did more people smell cordite, or see a 757 hit the bulding? If not a 757 then a plane of similar size? Why are the people in the building that claimed to smell cordite more reliable than the ones that saw the jet?

I don't think the "WHY" they used cordite is specultion, I think the presence of cordite is speculation.

Substituting a plane in flight in 1962 over international waters would be a tad different than doing it over Washington DC in 2001. Would you at least agree to that? How many radar stations monitor air traffic in the Washington area in 2001? How many between Florida and Cuba in 1962? See where there might be a bit of a gap there?

Yeah, pretty much accepted.

But you still haven't explained what you think was used, other than maybe a bomb or missile or a smaller plane. You still haven't explained how they managed to get all the debris in there without anyone seeing them. You still haven't explained the theory in any sort of specific terms. All that has been done is to cast doubt on the evidence presented so far, the eyewitness acounts that support that evidence, and the official story as a whole. The few bits that you have presented are other sites that have been debated in this thread already.

Personally, I'm not looking for the evidence that proves your theory. I'm looking FOR your theory. If it can stand up with no internal errors, then it might be worth looking for supporting evidence, but by my standards, pulling off a scam like what you describe only to use a substance like cordite that would have absolutely no reason to be there is a pretty big internal error. If they needed a bigger bang than a 757, then why not a KC-10 refuling plane. It would carry more fuel that would would be expected to be there. It's very close in size. It would look enough like a 757 to fool most of the people that actually saw it.

Why do you feel a 757 would not be controllable near the ground? How do they land? If it's a matter of precision, they were aiming at the building, not the second floor window 15th from the corner on the west side.

If a 757 would not work, and they used another type of airliner, then why not skip AA77 and target a flight that used the plane they had ready?

What could be evidence against it? if all the reports, witness and evidence that the official story was right, isn't sufficient, surely doing three or four things the no one with an ounce of common sense would ever think would work couldn't be either.

__________________
I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

You're not fooling anyone, turbonium. The proof is there for all to see in the JFK thread. Why do you continue your disingenuous insinuation that you haven't intentionally failed to answer questions when the evidence is overwhelming that you do so whenever the questions get too hot?

No one's making any assumptions about your behavior; we've simply drawn a conclusion based on overwhelming evidence. I repeatedly called your attention to the many unanswered questions put to you in the JFK thread, except that I didn't repeat the post numbers, and you didn't bother to ask for them. I didn't include the numbers because at that point you hadn't answered any direct questions in nearly two weeks, and the ones I wanted you to address were marked "direct question" or something to that effect. So why are you continuing to insinuate that your failure to answer is merely due to the fact that there's only one of you, and that you just missed some questions?

Your statement is belied by the evidence from the JFK thread and other threads here and on apollohoax.com.

[edit: repeated word]

__________________
--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

Yes, I also would like to know what you would consider as evidence against a conspiracy.

It only matters that there is a viable indication that [cordite] was used (according to those witnesses), and that's reason enough to look into it further, imo.

I disagree that the indication is viable. The fact that cordite might have a "distinctive" smell does not equate to cordite's having a "unique" smell. I've never fired a cordite-propelled artillery piece, so I don't know what it smells like. However, I suspect that it might have a smell similar to burning jet fuel and aircraft parts (which I've thankfully also never smelled). The fact that two of the hundreds of survivors from the immediate area of the explosion thought they smelled cordite does not strike me as "a viable indication." Even granting for the sake of argument that it is a viable indication, though, how would you propose that the issue should be further investigated?

As for being able to make the plane and people disappear, etc., you must be aware that Operation Northwoods included similar plans...

As I've pointed out in the past, Northwoods as approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff involved only fake casualties. Whether the plan actually violated US law is questionable.

And another plan...

We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba . . . casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

Didn't make it past the brainstorming phase.

If they were confident of pulling off these kinds of stunts back in 1962, they certainly would have been able to conduct similar operations in 2001.

The plan was never implemented, possibly because "they" weren't confident that they could pull it off (or, more likely, keep it a secret long enough). Also, as I've pointed out, the risk/reward calculation is completely different when one is facing a one-way trip to the execution chamber if the plan is exposed.

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--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

...it may have been concluded that using an actual 757 would not be successful in being able to create the damage they wanted.

Which would have made it obvious that a 757 was not used in the attack, thus needlessly risking exposure of the conspiracy. Also, how much damage did "they" want? Pentagon casualties had to be in triple digits? Double digits wouldn't have good enough?

Further, if "they" wanted more damage, why did "they" attack the section that had just been upgraded to resist terrorist attacks, and was only partially occupied?? This is simply an ad-hoc attempt to explain away yet another hole in your so-called theory.

Or that a remote controlled 757 could even hit the Pentagon without the risk of hitting the ground before reaching the wall, etc.

If an airliner can be remotely controlled well enough to land, it can be remotely controlled well enough to crash into the side of a 70-foot high building. Also, if the plane had missed a little high, it could still have struck the inside of "A" Ring on the opposite side after passing over "Ground Zero."

This brings up another point--if an airliner was not an appropriate weapon to use against the Pentagon, why not use a truck bomb instead, and simply make it look like that was part of the terrorists' plan? Would it have been so difficult for anyone to imagine that al-Qaeda Teams One, Two, and Three were supposed to hijack airliners and fly them into the World Trade Center and the US Capitol, and Team Four was supposed to drive a truck bomb into the Pentagon? Possibly you will claim that a truck bomb would have had a low probability of success, and that such success would have seemed suspicious; however, if, as you claim, "they" could plant a large number of witnesses who claim to have seen an airliner, then "they" could certainly have engineered a scenario where a truck carrying construction materials was hijacked, replaced with a truck bomb, and managed to slip through Pentagon security.

Why they would use cordite, or why they would not use an actual 757, are points of speculation. But they are not evidence against a conspiracy.

Still more burden-of-proof confusion. We don't need evidence against a conspiracy when there is no real evidence for a conspiracy.

[edit: Finally, they are evidence against a conspiracy, just not conclusive evidence. As discussed, they increase the risk of detection (greatly in the case of not using an airliner) for minimal incremental gain to the conspirators, which demonstrates that a conspiracy involving these elements is less probable than one that uses an actual 757 and no cordite.]

__________________
--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

Since I'm referring specifically to parts traceability within the manufacturing sector, it's related to the Quality Systems under which they must be regulated and in compliance with. For commercial aircraft, that would be programs such as ISO 9000/9001 and AS9000/9100.



ISO 9000/9001 requires batch tracking of parts not individual parts themselves, although some larger items of the aircraft, engines and such were stamped.

However.....you show your total ignorance for your own theory. The ISO standard was concieved in 1987 and introduced as a voluntary compliance in 1994. The new standard ISO 9000/90001.2000 (Introduced in 2001) requires compliance in many parts of the world such as the EU.

The aircraft that hit the Pentagon was built in 1991

http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/v...ican+Airlines+

It is smoke or dust and American's airplanes are silver, not white.
Not on this point they don't IMO. But for the purposes of that report, it doesn't really matter whether they point to the smoke or what I see as the airplane. It's mostly about how the pentagon withstood the impact and fire. And again, AA's planes are silver.

It also doesn't matter what we point to as the actual aircraft. It only mattered when you used what I concider incorrect measurements as evidence.

Also a bigger gif I made which I think shows things better.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel