If the plane is say halfway into the building then that section you circle must be within 88 feet of the wall but your circle itself must be close to 88 feet wide(using the height of the building as a guide, it being about the same). Its a judgement call but that would mean that the plane is only barely contacting the wall if it is even there yet. Since the fireball is already well underway in this frame we can safely assume that the plane has indeed heavily impacted the wall as far as the wings, where the fuel is which makes what you circled too far away to be part of the plane.

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"Man has always found it easier to sacrifice his life than learn the multiplication table." - Somerset Maugham

PLease enlarge the first picture to the same size for better reference. It appears to be the square building seen in the first picture to me.

That does not mean I do not believe the aircraft story though .

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

I was not talking about myself here, but making a statement about what many other "conspiracists" believe to be the case. So, no such presupposition.

Accepted, but you commonly vacillate between defending other conspiracists and distancing yourself from them. You walk a fine line that aggravates those of us who try to pin you down to something you might actually have to defend. So then the question becomes more complex.

Why do you believe this video was delayed, and what's your evidence for that belief?

The other conspiracists of which you speak might be considered (but not necessarily partitioned), according to your argument, in two camps: those who have offered some sort of alternative explanation for the Pentagon incident, and those who have said they shouldn't because the evidence is being withheld in order bait them into discreditation.

In the former case the criticism that they are drawing a premature conclusion would be legitimate. That camp generally presumes that evidence is being withheld because it would support their alternative hypothesis. Do you agree or disagree that it is appropriate to criticize a conclusion knowingly made with presumptions about evidence not yet disclosed but known to exist?

In the latter case, it would be appropriate to question whether the claimed reason for withholding evidence was rational. If conspiracists are wary because they say there is a trap, we should be allowed to determine whether that reason is based on evidence or merely on presumptive paranoia. Again, do you agree or disagree with that approach?

However... can anyone explain to me how this video was supposed to be at all relevant to Moussaoui's trial? I don't really see how. Neither, I believe, could JudicialWatch.

Nor can I, but I decline to beg the question of relevance.

I think the problem I and others have with your arguments, Brumsen, is that they refuse to state anything defensible or refutable in the long term. I am extremely put off by sophistry for its own sake. On the one hand you seem to remind us of conspiracist arguments, urge us to take them seriously, and offer a defense for them. But on the other hand when we delve into a rebuttal you back away and refuse to make any further defense or to take any personal responsibility for the claims you bring to light. Do you intend ever to produce anything beyond hot air?

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

You walk a fine line that aggravates those of us who try to pin you down to something you might actually have to defend.

"Aggravates" is too mild a word. Brumsen's "tap dancing" could have given Sammy Davis Jr. a run for his money.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

This issue isn't whether you, or JudicialWatch, or even the US Justice Department thinks it's relevant--the issue is whether a court might conceivably rule that it's relevant.

Let's suppose two things: first, that the video had been released, and, second, that Moussaoui had been sentenced to death. Suppose also that four years from now his case were to be reviewed by the US Supreme Court, and his lawyers were to claim that some of the jurors were unduly influenced to vote for the death penalty due to their having repeatedly seen the video. Suppose further that the balance of the court were to have shifted somewhat to the left, and that one or two conservatives were forced to recuse themselves (note: this could easily be the case; former US Solicitor General Theodore Olsen, who was on the short list for the last two Supreme Court vacancies, lost his wife in the Pentagon attack). If the court were to rule, say, 4-3, that Moussaoui should not receive the death penalty, then the tape would definitely be relevant.

So, my counter question to you, Brumsen, is, why should the Justice Department have taken such a risk, even if small, merely to satisfy public curiosity?

[edit: text formatting]

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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

Ooops! I tried to merge in a second thread that was started on this subject, but messed it up. My appologies to Eric Vaccine, who started the other thread.

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All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

Let me try this again...




And for comparison's sake:



The same two images, but with the contrast jacked up really high:



Somebody please tell me I'm going blind.

(edited on request of moderators)

The first camp believes that there is other evidence justifying the conclusion that it was not AA77 that hit the Pentagon. They merely believed that the video would provide further evidence. So, in answer to your question I'd say: it depends how central that particular piece of evidence is to the conclusion.

As to the latter camp, you surely meant "it would be appropriate to question whether the belief in the claimed reason for withholding evidence was rational"? On their hypothesis, the reason for withholding the evidence surely was rational - but was there any evidence that this reason was operative?
Again I'd have to say: that surely depends on how strong the rest of the evidence for the no-plane theory is. The stronger that evidence, the more reason to believe that the video is withheld in order to put the 9/11 movement on the wrong foot.

So, as usual, you're trying to isolate one point of discussion, and as usual, that seems inappropriate to me.

What do I think the reason for delay was? Well, it may have had to do with the trial, although I find myself utterly unconvinced by Spitfire here. I don't really know what to think, especially since the video shows so preciously little.

The problem here is that I would really like to see the discussion here as constructive. A discussion in which points are explored, and in which there is a common attempt to get nearer to the truth. You, on the other hand, now make it clear that you prefer to see it as a debating exercise, in which every participant starts with their own strong view, and may the strongest debater win. Ho-hum. A cultural difference, perhaps? The big pond has never seemed so unbridgeable to me.
Anyway: if that's what you call producing hot air... indeed, it may well be that I won't produce anything but.

Daryl71:

First pic of your last post shows two darker areas (matching the location of the top and bottom of the "tail fin" in second pic), they can very well be just bushes which were lit up by the explosion causing the fin shape to show up. The shape is easy to see on second pic, but I think it's there already in 1st pic, just harder to see.

I must agree with Brumsen its complitely ridiculous these video clips were kept secret because of ongoing trials... How can a clip showing just about nothing be any importance? Everyone saw the pics of smoke coming out of pentagon, the clip offers no new information.
However stupid it may sound, i can only imagine it as a case of massive bureaucracy, nothing to do with connection to ongoing trials in practise.

Actually, it's this one that's the money shot. You can clearly see the tail fin just above the box-like thing in the right foreground. I would expect that at the speed the plane is traveling, that it would be completely impacted on the building by the time of the second shot 0.5 seconds later.

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Old laser physicists never die, they just become incoherent.
These days, every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks he knows what a photon is, but he is wrong. - Albert Einstein

Truly i cannot see anything. Some fuzzy spots which can be anything . This photo has no value to me.

Laser Jock, I don't think the plane is even in the picture in that first shot.

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All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

I thought the white thing on the right was the front side of the fuselage. At least it was desribed like that in the news. If that black thing is the vertical tail, the white behind it must be some dust trail.

Daryl: I think you muscut in the smaller lower images. I think one image is shifted wrt the other one. In the large images, what you identify as the tail is already present in the first I mage I think. It is just harder to see with no light explosion behind it.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Edit: looking at the second image, there appears to be a white dust trail indeed. that would make the black thing in the first image (above the front box) the plane's tail. Does that fit the overal lighting or are we misinterpreting things?

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Yes it is. I've circled the fin from the first shot in the first attachment. The second shot is a zoom on the fin. The third is a zoom of the same place in the second shot. Notice that the structure I call the tail fin is missing.

Attached Thumbnails

     

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Old laser physicists never die, they just become incoherent.
These days, every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks he knows what a photon is, but he is wrong. - Albert Einstein

I believe I heard that the plane is trailing smoke at that point. That's not surprising considering that it already bounced off the freeway and killed a cab driver before either of these shots.

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Old laser physicists never die, they just become incoherent.
These days, every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks he knows what a photon is, but he is wrong. - Albert Einstein

I'm not saying you folks are definitely wrong about these images, but...

...why am I suddenly thinking about "crystal worms" and "palaces" on Mars?

Wouldn't the absolute minimum requirement for interpretation be to figure out just how large a 757 would look in those images, given its impact site, angle, and distance from the camera? Honestly, the things you're circling might be anywhere from the size of a book to a baseball infield, for all I can tell.

Also, how much motion blur would be expected given the speed of the impact, and how would that affect the appearance of the plane?

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Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

I never heard that before. Do you have a link or can you give some more details?

It sounds as if he was extremely "lucky" to still have hit the Pentagon full on.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Keep in mind that adjusting the contrast will produce illusions of contour that don't necessarily represent actual physical objects.

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

The problem, Brumsen, is that your methodology is entirely counter-productive. As an old saying goes, you've built your house upon sand: there's no foundation for a constructive discussion, because you've given no indication that any facts are "solid" for you. Without that, there's nowhere to go but a point-by-point dissection of your statements.

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"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
Mark Twain

Avatar courtesy of Bunny.

The difference is not cultural, is philosophical, to you, all views are valid a-priori, at least ideally. To people who work with science, views which are a) not supported by facts as understood by science and b) not consistant with what has been established as factual, are invalid a-priori.

Before you ask what "why not question whatever view has been established as factual" the answer is: they are questioned continously and if everytime the view stands as factual, there is an extremely strong possibility that the view in question IS factual.

The approach you take might be useful when dealing with opinions only, but is completely useless when dealing with things that NEED to be treated with the scientific method. And yes it can be seen as a debating exercise where the stronger debater wins, and the strentgh is measured as mentioned above.

I remember reading a critique on pseudoscience that had an interesting phrase: "Science takes no prisoners", and it doesn't, why can anyone make an assertion of that? well, next time drive your car, use your computer or make a phone call through a cell phone, remember that the scientific principles that made the existance of those devices possible WERE determined by this process. So for better or worse it's the best method we as a species have found to make science work for us.

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Actually, after checking some sources on that one, I'm not sure if it's true. I'll withdraw it for now.

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Old laser physicists never die, they just become incoherent.
These days, every Tom, Dick, and Harry thinks he knows what a photon is, but he is wrong. - Albert Einstein

Particularly when you introduce so called "possibilities" into the discussion...for instance..."It's possible that the remains of the passengers were kept elsewhere and not removed from the pentagon".

That form of "reasoning" is really insulting, to the surviving family members, and to the emergence workers who removed the remains.

Yet ou have no qualms at all about introducing that idea (as if) it were a possibility...

Well, ya know what? It you want that to be a "possibility", then you're going to have to demonstrate that it is more than just your HOT AIR.

You have not done so, or even attempted to do so...

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

The first camp believes that there is other evidence justifying the conclusion that it was not AA77 that hit the Pentagon.

Irrelevant. If there exists unknown evidence that is believed to be pertinent, the conclusion is tentative regardless of what other evidence might exist.

...it depends how central that particular piece of evidence is to the conclusion.

Irrelevant. If the argument is, "We believe something other than AA 77 hit the Pentagon, and we believe that the government is suppressing evidence of the impact because it would reveal what really happened," then relevance is not in question. This was the argument to which you originally referred.

Now you say that there may exist conspiracists who suspend judgment because, while they recognize the existence of the data, they rightly decline to speculate on its nature and how it might affect their assertions. Granted, they may exist, but I have yet to see any evidence of it and therefore little desire to discuss it. The line of reasoning I see most often is stated above and that's what I want to discuss, not some straw man whose hypothetical existence justifies your fence-sitting.

The argument above is yet another appeal to motive. It proposes a motive to have done a certain thing. Thereafter it's supposed to follow that the thing was done because someone had a motive to do it. I.e., because there is (supposedly) evidence a real airliner did not hit the Pentagon, then "naturally" the government will want to supress evidence of that. So if anything is withheld, it's "naturally" for that reason. I'm surprised I have to elucidate that fallacy.

As to the latter camp, you surely meant "it would be appropriate to question whether the belief in the claimed reason for withholding evidence was rational"?

No, I meant what I said. Kindly address the argument I made, not the argument you wish I had made. We are talking about the analysis of a claim that is subject to objective examination. I have little interest in rhetorical justifications for belief. I am not interested whether their reasons make sense from their point of view. I am interested in whether allegations of fact have objectively valid arguments in favor of them.

A claim that the goverment withheld the video in order to bait conspiracists into committing to conclusions that the video would later refute, is an allegation of fact. It is either true or it is not. It is not dependent on someone's political disposition, marital status, or national origin. It is therefore proper to question how the objective truthfulness of that statement was tested. If no test can be shown, we rightly reject the proposition.

The stronger that evidence, the more reason to believe that the video is withheld in order to put the 9/11 movement on the wrong foot.

Hogwash. As is typical of conspiracy lines of reasoning, you're trying to avoid testing the proposition at hand. Instead you're trying to test an easier straw man that is said to imply the proposition. Unable to prove the government planned to discredit conspiracists or keep pertinent information away from them, you argue only that they would have had a motive to do so -- even when such a motive wouldn't prove actuality.

Appeals to motive are quite popular among conspiracy theorists. If we disregard momentarily that motive does not imply action, we still have the problem that motive is almost impossible for a third party to prove. Motive can be argued, but rarely proven. As such it can rarely be refuted as well. So the appeal to motive provides not only the indirect and easy argument, it provides endless rhetorical muck in which a conspiracist's critics can become mired.

So, as usual, you're trying to isolate one point of discussion, and as usual, that seems inappropriate to me.

No, I'm resisting your dodging, weaving, and selective rewriting and restatement of the argument to avoid saying anything you'll be compelled later to defend. You simply change approach as needed to escape ever having to state and defend a claim. I'm trying to stay true to my specific line of questioning.

If you have a belief, state it and defend it. If you haven't one, then in your reproduction of others' beliefs kindly do not take us to task for our consideration and rejection of them, for in doing so you indirectly advocate them.

I don't really know what to think, especially since the video shows so preciously little.

Fair enough. I'm not necessarily going anywhere with that question; I simply wanted to see whether you had a belief and whether you would state it. If you have suspended judgment, then I have no further questions about your beliefs regarding the video.

The problem here is that I would really like to see the discussion here as constructive.

I don't see any evidence that you desire a constructive discussion. I see you pushing a pro-conspiracy agenda using the same old tired arguments that conspiracy theorists have used for decades, with the same old faulty reasoning. I see you evading a meaningful discussion at all costs simply by failing to advocate any proposition.

A discussion in which points are explored, and in which there is a common attempt to get nearer to the truth.

Probation of claims is the classic method by which ideas are tested for their convergence toward the truth.

In this thread you drew attention to the allegation that the government withheld material in order to discredit conspiracists. We probed that allegation and found it not to have been based on evidence but rather a conclusion that, if certain other propositions held, there might exist a motive to do so. We know from principles of sound reason that such an argument is specious. Therefore it is not likely to be true. The attempt to get nearer the truth necessarily involves the rejection of ideas that are shown not to approximate the truth.

You, on the other hand, now make it clear that you prefer to see it as a debating exercise...

Projection. I am testing your ideas to see whether or not they are likely to be true. Unfortunately we cannot ever be sure whether anything you say is your idea, or whether it's something you'll just later disavow when it's shown to be preposterous.

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

Right---but is that the nose of a 757?

The usual suspect have already chimed in on C2C last night....I will nott recapitulate the specious arguments presented, but sit fiducit, they are the usual ones...

Dale

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"Ad astra per aspera"

When I look at the top picture I believe it shows the tail for a number of reasons. Firstly the structure does look tail-like and then vanishes from the socond image. Secondly it's in what would be approximately the right place considering both the new shot of the nose and the known flight path. Thirdly the white "cloud" along the ground appears to have disappated and stretched to the explosion in the second shot. This indicates to me that the cloud is most likely smoke from the damaged engines. If there are witness reports of smoke then this would certainly confirm that it is highly likely. Because of the thickness of the cloud in the first shot, the plane must have only just passed that point. The second shot clearly shows the rapid dispersal of the cloud on the right of the when compared to the defined area in shot one, and the presence of the cloud in increasing thickness on the left all the way to the explosion. This to me is indeed very strong evidence to the dark tiangular object being the plane's tail.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

I had a pretty good chuckle this morning. One of the stations was talking about CT's and this tape. The commentators were going on, how the CT's were turning to the cnn reporter's words in the aftermath, as proof of a missle. One guy finally said "It would be great, if there were no conspiracy theories". The other guy replies back, "Yeah, but there would go six hours of overnight programming for the station" (The station carries C2C overnight)

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" The universe is running away
I heard it on the news just the other day
There's this new stuff called dark energy
We can't measure and we can't see..." - from Jimmy Buffett's What if the hokey pokey is all it really is about?

I strongly endorse these comments. I'm a little surprised and disappointed that people are discussing the artefacts of the images without establishing something so basic as exactly how big the plane would look in the picture.

When I saw the footage on the news last night (nice large wide-screen TV) I was fairly sure I saw the vertical stabiliser for the first time. But I'm still not sure.

After over four years with only 5 indiscernable frames released from one camera, we now have a few more equally indiscernable frames from the same camera. At this rate, we might be lucky if we get a few indiscernable frames from another camera in, say, 10 or 15 years. Is this the Pentagon saying "Here you are, everybody - these are the best images we've got!"?