I'm just curious about the Pentagon damage done on 911. The damage to the pentagon doesn't seem to indicate that a Boeing 757 crashed into it. For example at the trade towers the complete outline of the jet is shown. It just looks like a fairly small hole at the pentagon. Also, is it true that the government would have video of the entire crash shown completely clear? I don't mean the 4 or 5 frames that were released, but actual video so we can see it happening without doubt?

Im not a conspiracy theorist or anything, i'm just looking for answers. Thanks.

The damage is not as clear an outline as people would have you think on the towers and the construction differences explain the differences in penetration.

No it is not true that the government would have that video.

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Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Welcome to the board!

Try looking at it this way: What is the Pentagon made of? How flexible is its construction compared the former WTC? Different materials will alter how the crash site looks.

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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!"

Thanks for the Welcome. A much quicker response than I had expected.

I've been reading through the many posts on the forum, and I've noticed that it's almost like there is no such thing as a conspiracy according to many of the members here. I don't believe in a secret government of world order or something like that, but I do believe that there is corruption and greed that exist. The problem I have is that I can't seem to find any unbiased answers. It's either completely pro-conspiracy, or, like this board seems to be, completely trustworthy of what the government says. I don't mean to be too critical..sorry..

I think you aren't reading deep enough. Many times members have expressed that they do not, in fact, trust the government implicitly or even like who is in office. That, however, does not prompt them to give up scientific thought and rationality. One reason you may not see a lot of criticism of the government here is because this board is focused on science. We try to stay away from talking about politics because it is such a hot button issue. I am probably one of the more conservative members of the board and even I am no where near completely trustworthy of my government.

Also, bleated welcome.

edit, heh bleated... what a typo. That is supposed to read belated.

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Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Actually you'll find that rather than being "completely trustworthy of what the government says," people on this board tend to weigh up the evidence on a scientific basis and see where it leads. The fuselage of a 757 is only about 16 feet across, the hole was 20 in the second floor and quite a bit wider in the ground floor, so a plane would have easily fitted. There are people on this board who have worked at the pentagon, some in a military position, other as civilians. The general concenous of those people is that the Pentagon has very few security camera, that they instead use active patrol which is considered better and cameras are only used in high traffic areas, such as car parks.

I doubt that there is one person on this board that doesn't believe that a conspiracy can happen, nor that they have occured in the past and will in the future, but for the majority they also don't believe that it is possible to pull off a perfect conspiracy that leaves no evidence, and they certainly don't accept "proofs" that are created by ignorance of the appropriate science and political leanings.

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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

What exactly is that supposed to mean?

editWeird. There was a post between PW and me.

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Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

One of the things to remember is the unusual construction of the support columns in the building. Orginally the building was only going to house the military for the duration of WW2 then be turned into a records repository afterwards.

As such the building was constructed to take the enormous weight of thousands of full filling cabinets.

The other thing to remember when looking at photos. There are no actual images of the hole. When the impact occured the area was obscured by fire smoke etc. A little later a section of the second floor collapsed into the breach. So what you see after the event is nothing like the orginal damage.

And just to reflect on some of the earlier posters. I see myself as very much a liberal when it comes to my politics. Having said that, I find it very refreshing to be able to spend time here talking about my true passions, rather than endless, unresolveable debate on political ideals

G'day mdbapa

I think just about everyone on this board would agree with you that corruption and greed exist, and that the world is a poorer place for it. But that doesn't mean that the conspiracies discussed on this board are real. The first doesn't automatically lead to the second.

Each conspiracy theory needs to be examined on its evidence, and the thing is that the conspiracy theories which interest conspiracy theorists (9/11, Moon hoax, President Kennedy, and so on) don't have good evidence to back them up.

The really unfortunate thing is that many conspiracy theories which may be worthy of further investigation don't seem to interest conspiracy theorists, either because the events took place somewhere other than the USA, or earlier than the 20th century.

Well as a New Zealander my opinions of US political party don't really matter in US politics, but it's safe to say I think very little of the current administration. Further than that I won't go because of the rules here on politics and ad homenims.

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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

No such thing as a conspiracy involving so many people that it is possible to keep quiet. Someone will tell.

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"The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head" Terry Pratchett

I can give you point-for-point examples on more than a few conspiracies--the actual one of the actual terrorists among them! But once the conspiracy numbers more'n about a dozen or so people and/or lasts for more than five years or so, I don't give it much credence. People talk; it's what they do. I created a conspiracy in one of the books I've written, and the way it's blown, at least in part, is one of the conspirators confessing to his daughter, who was one of the victims, and I find that a totally plausible way for things to happen. (There's other evidence, too, of course, and one of the other conspirators gives more detail on it. But still, that's two guys talking out of maybe a dozen or so.)

For pity's sake, it was a few short months after the Tate-LaBianca murders that one of the murderers, who was totally devoted to Charles Manson and believed he was the living incarnation of Jesus, spilled to some of her friends in prison (she was there on a related charge, though nobody knew that at the time). She ended up testifying before the grand jury, too. (She later recanted the whole thing, naturally. But by then, it was too late; she'd led them to about a ton of physical evidence.)

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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!"

A belated welcome from me to the boards.

That's a simplified view of things.
Conspiracies can and do happen. It's the scale and duration of them, as well as the circumstances, that lead to skepticism about them.

For instance, what's more believable:
A group of extremists planned to fly planes into the WTC and Pentagon as part of the worst terrorist attack on the US....
OR
The govt planned the whole thing, using controlled demolition to bring down the WTCs (includng #7) and used a missile on the Pentagon.

There has to be evidence for a conspiracy theory to make it plausible.

We too know that corruption and greed exist. You might have heard of the supression of global warming data, as mentioned in a blog entry by the BA.
Such a thing makes me wonder; what does the Bush administration feel it has to hide from such an act? Do they think there's a connection?
And then there was a similar incident with the FDA (also in the BA's blog entry).
And who can forget Watergate?

The thing about the conspricacies discussed on these forums is that they are not believable. Most are about the supposed "moon hoax", which contridicts a great deal of evidence.
And as has been discussed also is that there is no evidence to truly support 9/11 conspiracy theories.

I hope this helps in your view of these forums.

Again, welcome.

__________________
This is no fantasy. No careless product of wild imagination. - Jor-El

Godspeed, John Glenn. - Scott Carpenter

And these atomic bombs that science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men that used them.
- H.G Wells, The World Set Free

To the conspiracy crowd, radiation is a big Boogey Man that inspires terror and death in all who encounter it. - JayUtah

Shouldn't that be "a bleated welcome?"

Welcome to the BAUT, mdbapa.

As has been mentioned a few times, it is doubtful you will find anyone who is a regular on the BAUT who takes the US Gubmint at their word on anything. What we do is listen to what is said, then look at all the evidence, and then decide for ourselves.

It's just that sometimes - much as it chagrins some of us - they get it right.

And, as has been pointed out, there have been conspiracies in the past, probably are some going on now, and will be some in the future. But, they seldom hold up for very long because people talk.

(Who was it who said, "Three people can keep a secret as long as two of them are dead?")

As for as greed and corruption, we are talking politics, right?

The differences in the damage done to the WTCs and to the Pentagon are due to their differences in construction. The WTCs were glass and steel, very open construction; the Pentagon is reinforced concrete. Because of this, while the Pentagon does show damage very consistent with and indicative of a strike by a 757, it doesn't show it the same way as the WTCs.

__________________
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

Ben Franklin gets the most hits.
Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

BAAAAAAAAAAA.

"He's dead, Jim."

Couldn't resist.


And according to some CTers, it is capable of withstanding "bunker busting cruise missiles".

Funny, wouldn't you need a building built like a bank vault for that?

__________________
This is no fantasy. No careless product of wild imagination. - Jor-El

Godspeed, John Glenn. - Scott Carpenter

And these atomic bombs that science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men that used them.
- H.G Wells, The World Set Free

To the conspiracy crowd, radiation is a big Boogey Man that inspires terror and death in all who encounter it. - JayUtah

These posts are helping me out quite a bit.

However, both stories seem implausible.

1.) 19 angry muslims who, lead by Osama Bin Ladin living in Afghanistan, took control of 4 commercial jets and crashed 2 into the trade towers, one into the pentagon, and missed on the third attempt and crash landed in a field.

Ok, if this is exactly what happened, which would have to be the best thought out terror attack in history… How on earth could our government be so incompetent? Why was there no government officials removed from their positions due to their incompetence? Why did we only send 10-20 thousand troops into Afghanistan, if the people who were responsible were trained there? There were many warnings of a possible attack, too many to ignore. Even if I believe in the official story, I am still left with just as many unanswered questions.

2.) And the conspiracy theories that are talked about. It would take me forever to go over the details put forward- That should say enough about the implausibility.

The people trying to prevent terrorist attacks have to be lucky every day. The people conducting terrorist attacks only have to be lucky once.

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Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. ---Cardinal Wolsey (1475-1530)

I think "incompetent" is not the correct word to describe the situation. Try "complacent". The Cold War was over and we had won! There was not another nation on the planet that could best the U.S. on the conventional field of battle. All other foreign terrorist attacks had taken place "over there" and not on U.S. soil. No administration up to that point had seen it as an emerging threat and therefore did not take it as seriously as it turned out to be.

Additional security measures also costs money. It is terribly hard to justify spending millions or billions on a problem that people do not think exists.

Regards,
Bean Counter

I'm speculating here, so bare with me.

It seems to me that the terrorists basically utilized the weaknesses in our homeland security at that time.
IIRC, NORAD was looking for threats outside the US, not within. So, when calls of hijacked aircraft came in, it was assumed they were approaching from overseas.
Security and background checks most likely weren't as strict as they are now, especially for people that are being trained to be commercial pilots.

I've no idea about the reasoning for the troop deployment. Probably because that was considered to be a sufficent number.

The signs might have been there; they just weren't put together.

It seems to me, then, that terrorists weren't considered capable of such an act. The general idea was that terrorits were thought to want attention, not a lot of people dead. 9/11 changed that attitude.

It seems to me, then, that it was no one person's fault. It was just part of the mentality held at that time, possibly the same reason the attack on Pearl Harbor happened.

While one can have questions regarding the events of 9/11, as well as the events that lead to it, it doesn't have to make the offical story less plausible.
It's like the Titanic disaster; we know what happened. It's the circumstances that people have questions about. Ditto for 9/11.

Again, these are speculations. They may be as wrong as can be.

__________________
This is no fantasy. No careless product of wild imagination. - Jor-El

Godspeed, John Glenn. - Scott Carpenter

And these atomic bombs that science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men that used them.
- H.G Wells, The World Set Free

To the conspiracy crowd, radiation is a big Boogey Man that inspires terror and death in all who encounter it. - JayUtah

The reason is totally tactical. General infantry historically gets cut to pieces in terrain similar to Afghanistan. Special Ops like Rangers and Commandos are more mobile, flexiable and easier to keep supplied and prootected.

If I recall correctly, the US government was going fo a mass deployment in the region, but the military suggested a smaller, more specialised deployment would be more effective based on the recent Soviet experience

Both the British and Australian governments arrived at the same conclusion. So rather than being an odd decision, in fact the US made a very intelligent and measured choice

Hope that helps

I saw a video of an abc world news tonight where they reported on NORAD doing simulations of terrorist attacks with airplanes on the day of 911. Peter Jennings reported it, and possibly had a liberal spin or something intended. But whether it was done on exactly 911 or any time before, it still shows that an attack like this was at least considered possible. Whats hard to believe about terrorists wanting to crash planes into the two most arguably recognizable buildings? That seems elementary to me. They tried to blow it up once before for crying out loud. NORAD is to defend US ( North American)airspace, not whats going on "over there-off us soil." All of the planes did'nt strike their targets simultaneously. There was something like 20 minutes from the first jet hitting, the second jet, and some time later the pentagon was hit. Why Pres. Bush sat in that stupid classroom for 15 minutes after being informed of the attack is beyond my understanding.

19 angry muslims.

This is a common theme in 9/11 conspiracy theories, that somehow 19 Muslims couldn’t have possibly managed an attack of such magnitude.

This requires the persons to be unfamiliar with how al Qaeda operated. Al Qaeda had a number of successful attacks against US targets, from the USS Cole to the US Embassy’s. A common denominator in these attacks is a trend toward simultaneous attacks on multiple targets.

Under the Clinton administration the al Qaeda threat was taken seriously, because it had years of experience in tracking the growing threat. When the Bush administration started, it was still working under the cold mentality and viewed al Qaeda as lesser threat, in much the same manner as people now want to dismiss al Qaeda as either a bunch of angry Muslims or a bunch of crazy people living in caves.

The leadership of al Qaeda is intelligent, educated, and determined. Underestimating them lead to 9/11.

People wonder how our government could be so incompetent to allow this to happen. It wasn’t incompetence or even complacency per se. It was a justifiable mindset that caused us to dismiss signs about this particular attack. Every day, there are intelligence reports indicating an attack on the United States. Most of these intelligence hits are nothing more than people talking with no means of actually carrying out such attacks. However, against this backdrop the actual chatter of a real terrorist has to be winnowed.

Certain types of attacks were given a lower probability. One group was large scale suicide attacks in the United States. This is because there is an inherent problem with getting the suicide attackers to complete the mission after they have left their handlers. It is estimated that more than 30% of all such attackers in Israel change their minds before the attack. This is immediately after leaving their handlers. A time measured in a few hours at most. It was presumed that having a keeping a large number of suicide bombers in the United States for a prolonged period was an unlikely avenue of attack.

That presumption was trumpeted on 9/11. In an attack that was not remarkable difficult to carry out. Booking a flight is not difficult. Attacking innocent unprepared people is not difficult. Once the planes had been seized, hitting something is not difficult. We presume the targets were the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon, but we don’t know this for a fact. Perhaps the White House was the target, but that proved impossible, so the Pentagon was hit instead, because of difficulty in maintaining control of the plane.

What we do know is that the attackers kept reassuring everyone that everything was going to be all right, that nobody else was going to be hurt. This allowed the first three planes to complete their mission, because the passengers believed them. We also know that by the time of the fourth plane, the passengers were aware of what was happening and fought back. In less than six hours the opportunity for such attacks had ceased, because the mindset of the passengers had changed.

That is the essence of stopping terrorist attacks. You have to anticipate what they are capable of based both on their competencies and your vulnerabilities. This is difficult, and yet we get in right far more often than we get in wrong. It’s just you hear about the mistakes and the victories go wholly unnoticed.

Bear in mind though that 20 minutes really isn't that long to do very much (I'm not a military plane expert but I vaguely remember reading somewhere that a scramble order for a supermarine spitfire in World war II required of the order of about 45 minutes to get airborne and climb to altitude, this is however a very old memory and I don't have the source to hand so it may be completely made up, they may have developed better techniques since then as well but it isn't quick, also don't forget that even oncve you have a plane scrambled and at altitude it still has to get to the point of intercept that takes time even if the pilot is flying at full throttle, I don't know how far the nearest military base is from NYC but its easy to see 20 minutes gone before a military jet could even attend, not to mention whether someone would even be willing to give an order to shoot down a jet liner filled with civilians.

I mean, for heaven's sake, do people just not remember the hijackings of the 80s where you sit quietly, do what you're told, and live? I do. I remember watching one hijacking along those lines unfold live on TV. As I recall, all those passengers survived.

I'm pretty sure that it's in Lies and the Lying Liars that Al Franken tells of his first flight post-9/11, where he and his seatmate discussed what they would do if someone tried to take over the plane, including calling on having played football in high school some thirty years ago. The circumstances have changed.

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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!"

It is true that NORAD only looked outward before 911 which meant that final guidance to anything within the continental US had to be done by ATC which is far less experienced in that sort of thing. Now they look inward and outward. Before 911, the only intercept done by NORAD over US soil was the intercept of Payne Stewart's jet. That intercept took over an hour and a half. Some sources quote it as an hour shorter but they ignore the time change from Eastern to Central in the official report which adds an hour to the overall time. Also it should be noted that once the plane was intercepted, it was done with an unarmed plane that was already airborne for a training mission. It was even longer before an armed plane dedicated to air defense could get to the jet.

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"Eternal vigilance is the price of supremacy"
------------Mark Twain

"Women are like Voltron. The more you can hook up, the better it gets."

how are the simulations of jets crashing into buildings on the same day explained?

As simulations?

__________________
Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

The Air Force constantly runs simulations, as does the Army and Marine Corps. In fact, we have actual plans for the invasion of Canada, Mexico, Djibouti, and every other country. We run simulations on thousands of scenarios that are highly unlikely. The reason is it gives training to people. Having a plan to defend an attack and counter attack Djibouti gives the planners skills in order to plan for actual possible scenarios.

Now, let’s examine having a simulation run about planes being run into buildings on 9/11. We have been aware of the possibility of this being a possible method of attack since the 1983. However, it was generally assumed that the attack would take place from a plane arriving in the United States, not taking off in the United States. That aside, there is nothing unusual about a simulation of such an attack. You may think it coincidental that such a simulation would take place during an actual attack. This is neither uncommon, nor should it lead one to consider a conspiracy theory.

First, why would the conspiracy people plan a simulation and an attack on the same day? In order to be suspicious it has to be assumed the two are linked, and if they are linked there is no reason to have both occur on the same day.

Second, such coincidents occur more than you might think because simulations are being run more often than you think.

Third, something being a coincident or highly unlikely is meaningless in and of itself. The odds of you being born with exactly your set of chromosomes is trillions upon trillions to one. The odds of dealing out a shuffled 52 card deck in exactly the order it is dealt is 8.0658171709439 E 67. Yet, you are born and the cards are dealt. The improbable odds of either occurring do not matter in the least upon the reality that they occurred.

I'm not positive about this, but as I recall the exercises being run that day did not involve planes being flown into buildings. They included aircraft being hijacked in the more traditional way.

Can you give any source for the claim that the exercises on 9/11 included a WTC-like attack? A source other than a 9/11 conspiracy site, that is.

__________________
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)