Actually, it was somewhat sincere; This site maintains the circled portion shows the nose of whatever struck the Pentagon.

So you want to discuss whether the claimed reason for withholding evidence was rational.

Not exactly. I want to know whether certain allegations of fact are held on a basis other than belief; i.e., I want to know how the allegations were tested.

Well, that's not a discussion about facts, but about whether the reason allegedly operative in government (or whoever) to withhold evidence answered certain normative requirements. That is not subject to objective examination.

No, you've again wrongly reformulated my question.

The Pentagon withheld the video for a long time. That is inescapable fact. There are a number of hypotheses being put forward to explain the delay. That is, there are propositions alleging motive.

One proposition is that they did not wish to taint Z. Moussaoui's trial.

Another is that the Pentagon felt evidence contained in it would challenge the official story or support some conspiracy theory.

Yet another argues that it was done to bait conspiracists into making a claim that the video would refute, in order to discredit them.

We can continue to hypothesize ad nauseam, but the point to all of this is that each hypothesis we pose is by nature an allegation of fact. Any allegation of fact is subject to objective examination. That is, each hypothesis is either true or false according to historical occurrence. It is not subject to belief or to normative requirements.

This is something that scientists understand easily, but over which philosophers habitually stumble. Philosophers are uncomfortable with the notion that there exists an absolute truth. I do not wish to discuss the questions above in any sort of subjective framework, and you have several times now attempted to steer this discussion into normative territory. This is not a question of what is believed to have happened, but what actually happened and how we can come to know it. The account of what actually happened is a matter of absolute fact and exists independent of any belief for or against it.

I'll remind you of a similar argument you made earlier and conceded. We disagreed over the intent behind a certain statement that appeared in the NIST report. You interpreted it as claiming a certain thing, and I interpreted it as specifically avoiding any such claim. At first you argued that you were not interpreting it. Then we discussed various possible interpretations and you conceded that you were indeed applying an interpretation. Then you attempt to argue that the interpretation of a reader would supplant, in some ways, the original intent of the author. But there again you were forced to concede that the author's intent behind a statement remains intact regardless of what others may believe the intent of it to have been. This prompted your as-yet unsuccessful inquiries at NIST.

You conceded in the above argument that the author's intent is an absolute truth. It does not change character as others' belief about it changes, or as evidence suggests one thing or another about it.

The same holds for the intent in delaying release of the Pentagon video. The intent behind it is an absolute truth, and it exists regardless of what you or I might believe or argue. We may hypothesize until the cows come home and allege any number of putative facts. But unless that hypothesis coincides with that independently-existing absolute fact, the hypothesis is wrong in an objective sense.

Now here we draw an important distinction. I illustrate it best by a contrasting example. We had a lively but largely pointless discussion here earlier about your motive in continuing to post here. There was a lot of speculation, observation, rendition of opinion, argument, and inference. But you, as an individual, are the only authority on your intent as it exists absolutely. You may not exhibit any exterior evidence that leads someone else to know your intent. It is purely internal.

However, when we consider entities such as "the government" or "the Pentagon" that are corporate in nature, if they are said to have a motive then it must be a unified motive in order for the argument to hold. Otherwise we consider the unapproved actions of rogues, not a concerted course of action. A unified corporate motive must be the product of deliberation, and that deliberation will be externalized. That is, if the motive of "the Pentagon" was, in fact, to bait conspiracists into an untenable position, then in order to assign the motive as such, there must be a meeting or discussion or statement or other instrument by which the corporate nature of that motive was established.

Thus while an individual's motive may be inscrutable, and thus untestable and subject to presumptions affecting the burden of proof, a corporate entity's unified motive is not inscrutable. It may be difficult to discover, but it is possible to discover. If it is possible to discover, then the burden of proof lies upon those who assert its existence.

Thus the hypothesis, for example, that the Pentagon's motive in delaying the video was to embarrass conspiracy theorists is (a) an allegation of objective fact, (b) is scrutable, and (c) imposes the burden of proof upon its proponent. And thus my question is: what was done to satisfy that burden of proof?

Now you've already answered that in part. You said that those who argue the Pentagon's motive was to conceal problematic evidence had other reasons for believing that motive was most probable -- i.e., evidence of certain discrepancies in the official story.

Irrelevant.

Even in the most charitable case where we accept that evidence as convincing (which it most certainly isn't), the line of reasoning is still inappropriately indirect. That someone has a reason for believing a certain motive was at play does not touch the absolute truth of the actual motive.

A simplified example might help illustrate.

Given two people, Jane and John. We'll postulate some reason for Jane to hate John: maybe the usual suspects such as greed, sexual rejection, control. It doesn't matter.

Now we thicken the soup a little. We say that Jane goes out and buys a handgun. And we observe her shadowing John in her car, stalking him on foot, and loitering outside his home and office.

We might indeed infer from her hatred and her behavior that she has a motive to murder John. But the question is whether such an inference may be extended to assert a proposition that Jane actually murdered John. Intuitively we say no because this is a simplified example with its essence laid bare. Showing that Jane has a predisposition to murder John, and the tools and opportunity to do it, does not provide a suitable argument that John now lies dead.

The question of John's vivacity is conclusively deterministic per se. It need not be the product of inference; it can be observed directly. If John can be produced in vivacious form, then no argument for his murder -- however apparently well-inferred -- can be valid. Even if Jane were to confess to the murder, such a confession (long considered the linchpin of culpability) would be invalid. Motive notwithstanding, the absolute fact reigns supreme.

Unfortunately the converse of this is exactly what many conspiracy theories do. Instead of looking whether something can be observed directly, they construct elaborate inferential proofs that suggest some desired proposition. Rather than calling up John to see if he's dead, they pontificate and ruminate endlessly on whether Jane really had a strong enough motive. Similarly, rather than see whether there is any physical or documentary evidence that the Pentagon intended to withhold damning evidence, they ruminate on whether other factors would have given them a motive.

In conspiracism the reason for that is clear: it prolongs the debate, which is the only circumstance in which the conspiracist enjoys fame or fortune. If no one ever checks to see whether John is dead or not, conspiracists can spend endless hours on talk shows or writing books debating Jane's shadowy actions and inner motivations -- largely subjective and speculative discussions, or at best debatably inferential.

Knowing the right question to ask is crucial in real-world investigations. You constantly try to take me to task for asking questions you feel are inappropriate. Yet I constantly see you trying to push the discussion into subjective or indirect territory. I'm the one asking whether you've checked to see if John is actually dead or not. If you find those questions uncomfortable or inappropriate, then investigation is not your strong suit.

Now you re-affirm what you said earlier... in a constructive discussion it's the ideas that matter, not who holds them. You're giving me far too much importance.

No, this oversimplifies what's going on here. A constructive discussion is about an idea, but it is between a proponent and a critic. Absent any of these three there is no discussion. The critic's job is to attack the idea (not maliciously, but vigorously) according to sound principles of reasoning and sufficiently equipped with fact, and thus test the idea's integrity. The proponent's job is to defend the idea against faulty criticism.

At times you act in the capacity of a proponent for these conspiracy theories -- but only at times. Specifically, you seem to advocate them when it is convenient (or at least not dangerous) for you to do so. But as soon as the idea comes under attack that would require you to defend a weak position, you disavow any responsibility to continue advocation. You say they're not your ideas, and you decline to purse the debate further. Thus you calculate to prevail in a meta-debate by selectively engaging and disengaging, making an idea seem more plausible than it really is by bowing out of the dance before it gets to the hard part. Your mistake is in assuming that passive-aggressive strategy is not transparent.

Very well, if you advocate the ideas then you -- in the capacity of their proponent or advocate -- have a responsibility in a constructive discussion either to concede or to persevere. If you do not advocate those ideas and, in fact, disagree with them, then what business is it of yours if we also disagree and can provide good reasons for doing so?

It's not a matter of giving you too much importance; it's a matter of compelling you to choose once and for all how important you're going to be.

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

Processing video so as to put it into a digital format is not manipulation, even though it can negatively affect video quality to some degree. Manipulation involves changing the content of the video itself. We have no reason to believe that was done.

Who says that there were alterations? And if so, what are they? The expert you reference in the link doesn't make any specific claims of manipulation or alteration. He simply offers that "they've been tinkering with it". Really? How so? Where? He doesn't say.

Seabhcan doesn't even seem to suggest that. The only thing I gather from his posts is that there may have been some format shifting going on.

Jay, I must just again express my utmost admiration for your ability to marshal ideas so succinctly.

This paragraph in particular captured in a few simple words the very essence of my frustration with conspiracy theorists.

__________________
"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

Rather than calling up John to see if he's dead, they pontificate and ruminate endlessly on whether Jane really had a strong enough motive.

They won't call John because it's actually John's long-lost twin brother whom Jane tracked down through a detective agency, and bribed to assume John's identity. That no record of John's ever having had a twin can be found, and that John's parents, aunt and uncle, and six older siblings and first cousins swear that John had no twin is irrelevant--clearly John's family, the county records clerk, and the hospital are all in on The Conspiracy.

Also, Jack White will demonstrate conclusively that several of John's family photos have been doctored to conceal his twin.

__________________
--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

Back on topic, the video does prove that a missile did not strike the Pentagon--the huge fireball that rises considerably above the top of the building could not have come from any missile.

__________________
--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

Ah, but that's what they want you to think....

No, the same guys who pre-wired the WTC for demolition, pre-supplied the Pentagon with barrels of extra fuel.

The barrels were made so they'd look like aircraft parts, after the big explosion, to provide fake evidence.

That engine that was found, was pre-positioned in one of those barrels. But as the barrel was too small they used the wrong engine, thus the "global hawk" hypothesis that actually makes for good disinformation.

After all, why else did the airliner happen to hit the side of the building that had recently been reinforced?

...that (remodelling) was when they did the preperation!



(Darn this stuff is easy to make up. Gotta sell a book.)

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Back on topic, the video does prove that a missile did not strike the Pentagon--the huge fireball that rises considerably above the top of the building could not have come from any missile.

Hey, I've seen Godzila. A Hellfire missile can clearly create an explosion powerful enough and with an explosion big enough to knock the top off the Chysler Building. Don't you be telling me that the explosion was too big for a missile. I've seen Demolist Man and Golden Eye too. They made a explosion even bigger that the Pentagon one with just a few blocks of C4. [/woowoo mode off]

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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

Ok, well my interpretation is that that is smoke or dust. The left engine is right in front of that and the fuselage runs horizontally above that. That is my interpretation of what I see but it's still a pretty useless image.

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

Just a little thought on the "missile" interpretation. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but a missile would actually be too small, at that distance, to appear in the images, wouldn't it?

The fact that something appears in the images discounts the idea of a missile, doesn't it?

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

Not sure, does anyone know how far the flightpath was from the camera. We could do the math and work it out.

__________________
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

Well, I wouldn't really know even what kind of missile to guess, but if we say a Tomahawk Cruise Missile, it would have been either 5.56m or 6.25m long, with a diameter of 0.52m. That diameter measurement might even make it less than the height of a pixel, hence invisible.

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

Are the no peculiarities or anomalies at all in their depiction?
http://www.pentagonstrike.co.uk/

Well, he seems to know something about video, and provides a reasonable explanation of how a very fast-moving object could be distorted within a single frame, but IMHO he falls down here:

and here:

He seems to think that this is suspicious (note the "has been made to look" language) when it's exactly what the time-lapse VHS machines which are ubiquitous in security sytems do in playback.

In order to produce an output signal viewable on a NTSC-standard monitor, the recorder has to put out video at a frame rate close enough to 29.97 fps for the monitor's sweep circuitry to lock to. When what's been recorded was every sixteenth or thirty-second incoming frame for an effective frame rate of 2 or 1 fps, the only way to produce video that a standard monitor will display, without making things look like the closing credits of the Benny Hill Show is to repeat a recorded frame 16 or 32 times, then advance the tape to the next frame and repeat the process.

The time-lapse recorders sold on the security sytems market are generally analog devices designed to a price point of 300 bucks or so; they don't have anything like a digital frame store to do the necessary repeating. It's usually done in a manner similar to freeze-frame on a standard VHS machine, by scanning the same helical track over and over. Opening up one of these machines and watching the tape and head drum motion while playing back makes the action pretty obvious.

So, again IMHO, by assuming that the repeated frames are the result of digital processing, asserting that he can think of no other explanation and insinuating that this is "manipulation", Seabhcan is revealing ignorance of an important aspect of how security cam systems work.

But, playing these "where's the plane" games is a typical conspiracist mistake. Just as the reality of the Apollo missions doesn't rest on one particular moon rock, or photo, or videotape, the conclusion that the death and destruction at the Pentagon on 9/11 is best explained by AA77 having been crashed into the building doesn't depend on what a couple of security cameras captured.

There's a whole body of evidence; multiple eyewitness reports, the reconstructed radar track, the damage to light poles near the Pentagon, the finding of identifiable aircraft parts among the debris, some of which were photographed in situ and the photos published, the finding of human remains and their subsequent identification as belonging to people known to have boarded AA77, the fact that neither the passengers nor hijackers have ever been heard from since...

which any theory of what happened at the Pentagon has to explain simultaneously. The theory that AA77 was crashed into the Pentagon accomplishes this. I haven't yet heard a conspiracist theory which can do that without an awfully big dose of handwaving and magical thinking.

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Really the evidence for AA77 hitting the Pentagon is pretty damming.

- The radar tracking shows the flight go there and then vanish.
- A large number of eyewittnesses saw the flight seconds before impact at low altitude and heading directly for the petagon. More saw it actually impact with the Pentagon itself.
- Wreckage located and photographed in the rubble has been positively identified as belonging to a 757 (possible serial numbers tracing it to AA77?)
- Wreakage in grounds bears colour scheme of AA
- Passangers remains found in Pentagon.
- Lamp poles knocked down reported by a 757
- Generator bears scars of being hit by wing of 757.
- Hole = main body size of 757
- Computer simulation of impact replicates damage caused
- Black boxes for AA77 found in Pentagon

Where's the reasonable doubt?

__________________
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

In viewing the Pentagon video many people believe that the approaching object is too small to be Flight 77. After all, Boeing 757s are big, but the approaching object looks fairly small. However, that reasoning underlying so many flawed analyses out there of the video demonstrates poor spatial reasoning. For example, commercial jets at altitude may appear as small as grains of rice, but who'd assume they're flying rice? The "it's too small" assumption is clearly demonstrated here.

A rough but reasonable approximation of the size of the approaching object can be made by simply knowing that the Pentagon is 77 feet high (source). With that fact and the impact location in hand, I produced the following simple analysis:

Pentagon and Flight 77: an animated size analysis

Now, Flight 77 approached at an angle (~35 degrees from a line orthogonal to the impacted Pentagon wall) from a direction further from but approaching closer to the camera. Therefore, due to distance away from the orthogonal line illustrated in my analysis and angle-induced foreshortening, the length of "the approaching object" is necessarily shorter than it would appear had it approached along the depicted orthogonal line. That fact strengthens the conclusion that the length of the object is greater than the 77 foot height of the Pentagon. Given that the full length of the approaching object runs off the video frame and is longer the 77 feet, it does not appear to be smaller than a Boeing 757.

Comments are encouraged! I won't be able to respond till late Saturday. ~Ian

I'm trying to work that out myself. Who is our DC-area member(s)?

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In the progress of this discussion I shall endeavor to give a satisfactory answer to all the objections which shall have made their appearance, that may seem to have any claim to your attention.

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Given that the full length of the approaching object runs off the video frame and is longer the 77 feet, it does not appear to be smaller than a Boeing 757.

Nice animation, but I think you are pointing to the smoke from the engines, not to the plane itself. I think the body of the plane is obsured by the box and all that can be seen is the tail. What I'd like to see is a setermination or the "tail" section compared to what it should be assuming that a 757 was in the same place.

__________________
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

No argument there---maybe we'll get more of the videos:Where might this be found?

First off, thanks, ktesibios, for engaging with that seriously. Looks like you may have a point there, about this frame-multiplication.

And I would agree with the above quote, saying that the whole body of evidence needs to be considered. However, that's just what Jay keeps telling me off for; and my assessment of the incontrovertibility of the evidence that you cite is less optimistic.

It's important to know when and by whom it was put into a digital format. The judge ordered the release of the video; don't you agree that it would be strange to digitize an analog video before releasing it, thus widely opening the floodgates to claims that it has been manipulated?
Anyway, the guy's claim is: it was first put into digital format, and then back, to make it look like a VHS copy. Should this prove to be true, wouldn't you agree that that was suspicious?

He doesn't, because he has no idea, and because that's outside his expertise. That's what everybody craves for here, isn't it, not saying anything beyond one's expertise?
I don't really have an idea either, given that the video is already so unclear.

I really thought it would come out bigger. Appologies but this tiny little gif makes it pretty easy to see the 757 in front of the smoke cloud. I'm affraid I'm not very good at making gifs.

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

Really? Yet he introduces himself to the forum by saying:

Sounds like just the person to offer a specific suggestion to explain what he asserts to be an issue.

__________________
"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams

"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful." - Ian Faith

Mike J. Wilson made a 3D model of the Pentagon event using SolidWorks a few years ago. The distances in his work are as precise as it gets (I believe he was working with photographic evidence only) and the size of 757 is very accurate. The size of the Pentagon is pretty accurate as well.

Here's what he got by comparing his 3D model with one of the still frames of the security cam video.
http://www.mikejwilson.com/911/security_cam1.jpg

I'm not sure what manipulation was done to account for the wide angle lense perspective, but the scene does seem similar to what I got, when I fooled around with a calculator and Photoshop a while back. The 757 wouldn't stick out from behind one of the security check posts as much as mentioned rense page is showing and the overbloated plane at prisonplanet is just preposterous, although I understand it's just sarcasm.

You can find Wilson's complete (20.4MB) SolidWorks project here, along with eDrawings presentation (4.8MB).
http://www.mikejwilson.com/911/

There are also two animations of the plane coming in, which account for the toppled lamp poles, hole in the chain linked fence, gouged and rotated diesel generator with part of its roof torn off, a crushed concrete wall of the vent system by the helipad (or whatever it is, or was), standing cable spools and the ammount of damage to the Pentagon wall.
http://www.mikejwilson.com/911/911_p...ion_lamps1.zip (5.7MB)
http://www.mikejwilson.com/911/911_p...animation1.zip (3.2MB)

While Wilson's work links together a lot of photographic evidence and eyewitness accounts it's still far from conclusive. Yet it allows one to check his accuracy, which IMO lies way above the rense article and the rest of the ilk.

Here's what he got by comparing his 3D model with one of the still frames of the security cam video.

Well that looks pretty darn good to me. I've spent the past few hours playing about with PSP and some photos (The camera image, one of the pentagon and one of a 757,) and while I couldn't be absolutely sure of distances and things (I'd have to have precise measurements to prove what I come up with) from the impact angle, I worked out that the plane's apparent length to the camera would be only about half of it's actual length. The images on most of the CT sites I have seen use the full side on view when overlapping the images. Wilson's work looks a lot closer to what I came up with than anything I found on the CT sites.

__________________
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

Actually I was looking at the shadows in the pictures. They aren't parallel so it must be fake.

__________________
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

Sssshhhhhhhhhhh - you'll blow NASA's cover. I bet Jack White is already looking for a way to tie them to the 9/11 story and who else but NASA could replace the real Sun, which casts parallel shadows as everybody knows, with an artificial sun, which casts divergent ones.

Sssshhhhhhhhhhh - you'll blow NASA's cover.

But we already know NASA was behind it. One of the witnesses the CT's love claimed that the plane he saw, 2 miles away, had no windows and a big blue circular logo.

Jack has already "proved" that the pentagon photos were all fakes because of a fence that was mising from them (it was put up afterwards) and a truck that changed positions between photos (isn't that what wheels are for?) Oh, and vehicles that change colour and height after they have been burned.

__________________
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