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Twin Towers:

Conspiracy Theorist (CT): There is NO WAY that the twin towers came down as a result of the plane impacts. Preposterous. Jet fuel does not burn hot enough to cut steel. Thermite does. It’s the standard demolition explosive and the collapses do indeed look like demolitions. You can see the flashes of the thermite charges going off in sequence and there are photos of the site afterwards showing thermite-cut steel girders among the wreckage. Then there’s the smoke; jet fuel burns with black smoke, thermite with white. The black smoke dissipates, then the white smoke goes off and the towers come down. And that’s without any Conspiracy Theory. That’s just common sense.

That’s the other reason I don’t believe in terrorists; if they meant it, they wouldn’t concoct some wacky super-villain scheme involving four simultaneous hijacked suicide planes. It’s far too elaborate; why not put three teams of four guys in vans, equipped with appropriate explosives, to do a complete circuit of a city and cut every road, bridge and rail line in a single night? Billions in economic damage, low to zero loss of life, minimal logistics. For the effort and resources that went into 9/11, they could do that to every city in England in one night; War on Terror over and they won.

OUR COMMENT (OC): Imagine the planning committee for the alleged 9/11 government conspiracy (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld etc)… “Right, guys, we’re going to use 20 Muslim fanatics to hijack four planes using, er, box cutters. Then we’re going to have the twin towers rigged to blow. Those rag heads had better do a good job or our demolition squad will look a bit dumb! We’ll also have the Pentagon rigged for explosion, and the White House and Capitol Hill too (glad no one noticed while the demolition squad were setting up their stuff). Right, we’ll also take out Tower 7 because we have some dodgy Enron records there. Might as well get rid of Tower 5 while we’re at it. In fact, let’s clear the whole site. We took out insurance, guys, didn’t we? How many deaths do we want? – er, anything over 100 will be fine, but thousands would be much better. Better make sure all of the important guys are out of the Pentagon, and – obviously – the White House – don’t want to be hoist with our own petard, huh? Then we can launch a full-scale attack on those Muslim bastards in Afghanistan and Iraq and grab their oil, and anything else they’ve got. We’ll be helping our Zionist buddies, of course. It’s the ultimate winwin situation. A few of our people will have to be sacrificed, but big deal.”

Doesn’t this sound a bit far-fetched? No sophisticated conspiracy plan would ever involve something as primitive as box cutters, yet we know these were the weapons used (together with fake bombs). This was no grand, well-oiled, massively funded operation. It was a bunch of near-amateurs using whatever they could smuggle past airport security. If there had been a genuine conspiracy they would have been allowed to take guns and real bombs on board.

And the twentieth hijacker never even made it, having been previously arrested by the authorities. (Strange how the American conspirators sabotaged their own conspiracy by arresting this man.)

He’s in jail now – having confessed to the whole thing. If his case had been properly handled, 9/11 would never have happened:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zacarias_Moussaoui#Capture

“Had that happened, the Report opined, the U.S. might conceivably have disrupted or derailed the September 11 attacks altogether.”

The fact that George W Bush was visibly astonished when he heard the 9/11 news demonstrates that he was fully in on the plan and gave it his personal authorization, doesn’t it? Er, doh!

The Muslims had previously targeted the Twin Towers – the failed truck-bomb attack of 1993. Was that part of the conspiracy too?

CT: For me, the War on Terror stands or falls on 9/11. If the official story is true then everything that’s happened since, massively profitable as it has been for the supposedly aggrieved party, the US, and much as it has cost us in ‘Civil Liberties’, which used to be called ‘Rights’, is totally reasonable.

If it were true, then OF COURSE we’d embark on the current course. Except that line of thinking leads pretty quickly to the idea that a good deal of modern history is actually wrong, governments don’t lie to people, the only wars we’ve ever fought are just wars and Johnny Foreigner has it coming for one reason or another; in this case, “They hate our freedom.”

OC: Your entire stance seems to be predicated on the necessity of false flag attacks in order for governments to justify their actions. Are you actually willing to accept that non-Westerners can ever attack Western nations? Don’t you think plenty of people have plenty of reasons for wanting to attack America and the West? The West doesn’t need to perform any false flag attacks, frankly.

CT: What we’re being told is that Osama and Omar were sitting in their cave one day, having a bit of a break from oppressing women and worshipping Allah, when they conceived a grand scheme to destroy the Great Satan.

OC: It was a propaganda stunt for the TV cameras and to rally and inspire the Islamic holy warriors all over the world. Slamming hijacked planes into prestigious buildings isn’t a “grand scheme”. It’s a crude extension of the pro-Palestinian plane hijackings of the 1970s and 80s.

CT: Perhaps they were smoking opium, I don’t know, but they’re these two guys who just happen to be ex-mercenaries each in command of a gang of fanatical followers, and they start kicking this idea around for blowing up the World Trade Center. And all the basic questions get answered; fanatical suicide commandos:

CHECK; network of agents already in place in US to ease infiltration: CHECK; insider with a commercial airline to get Intel and flying lessons: CHECK; budget for all this: CHECK; and they’re ready to go just like that; America is doomed. Until Omar says to Osama, “Hey, after the WTC goes down what then?” Osama replies, “Why then, all praise to Allah!”

OC: That’s pretty much how it went down! Except this had been planned for years. Ever heard of sleeper cells? How expensive is it to send twenty Muslims to America? Bin Laden’s millions would certainly have covered it. Suicide bombers? There are thousands of them queuing up to martyr themselves! Have you not been watching the news for the last ten years?

They did it for the same reason that Palestinian suicide bombers go to Israel and achieve counter-productive outcomes – pure desperation.

Also, news flash – these people really believe in martyrdom and in getting on the fast track to Allah for their allocation of seventy-two virgins! Winning isn’t the point – it’s showing Allah that you have faith that is the most important thing. Christians worship a Jewish carpenter who was hung on a cross – great plan, that one. Shia Muslims idolise a guy who was surrounded and slaughtered by his enemies. The Serbians revere Kosova – a battle they lost, the British the Somme, the Scots Flodden and Culloden etc. Look at the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Little Big Horn, Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg, the Irish Easter uprising etc. Glorious defeat is inspirational and can often trigger real and meaningful change in the long term. It’s better than getting shafted forever.

The charge that the American government perpetrated 9/11 could not be more serious. It is high treason demanding the death penalty and the overthrow of the whole American system of government. Why would anyone buy into the most disturbing conclusion imaginable if the evidence is so weak? The official story doesn’t seem wacky – the idea of the American government deliberately killing its own innocent citizens certainly does.

CT: I don’t think that 9/11 was a grand conspiracy concocted by Bush et al, so much as that the origins of it were in Washington and that the CIA had a hand in it all; otherwise I don’t see how these Afghani troglodytes could possibly have pulled it off. And I don’t think putting thermite in the building would have been a bigdeal; Navy SEALS dressed as workmen? Special Forces guys would not talk. But I’m speculating as to how; I just see those explosives going off inside the windows and I see how the buildings fell, and I know that jet fuel cannot bring down a skyscraper. Were they piloting the plane? Different question, obviously someone was, and he must have been suicidal. It would just be so much easier to get him in there and teach him to fly if the CIA helped.

OC: The Taliban didn’t do anything apart from provide training camps to Bin Laden, and give him a guarantee of protection. Bin Laden sent a small group of his suicide fanatics (like the Islamic Assassins of history) to the States to carry out a low-tech attack using a brand new weapon sure to take the enemy by complete surprise – suicide hijacking. There’s no mystery, no puzzle, no false flag component. Bin Laden had both the capability (the money, the resources, the suicide hijackers), and the motive – he was already one of America’s most wanted enemies before 9/11. Bill Clinton had tried to assassinate him. He was behind the bombings of the American embassies in Africa. This guy’s fingerprints were all over 9/11 in an irrefutable way. You could argue, in Conspiracy Theory world, that he was actually a CIA operative, ordered by Bush to carry out this attack against America. Then again, you can argue anything you like in CT world.

CT: And then, next question, how? By hijacking four planes… desperate and daft.

OC: Desperate, yes. Daft? How so? It worked brilliantly. It is still hailed by Muslims everywhere as a great blow against the Satanic West. And are you implying that the hijackings had nothing to do with the American government’s conspiracy? After all, why would they make a dangerous and daft act the sine qua non of the conspiracy? Haven’t you just shot yourself in the foot?

CT: These guys are desert fighters, they fight in the desert; crossing half the world in an elaborate plot worthy of Sax Rohmer to strike a purely symbolic blow against the Great Satan… it’s like something cooked up by Fu Manchu, the opener to a grand scheme involving the heroin trade and the bold forces of Interpol, back up by our Yankee allies, the CIA, off to shoulder the ‘White Man’s Burden’.

OC: The hijackers were middle-class, westernised Saudi Arabians. The Palestinians hijacked loads of planes back in the day. Aren’t they Arabs like the Saudi Arabians? The only new ingredient was the suicide angle. Bin Laden would have been delighted with this plan, and with its outcome. He’s not Fu Manchu!

CT: There are some who think it was a huge media scam, the towers were hit by missiles or nuked from the basement, and that the planes were put in by CGI on the news. Now that’s a Conspiracy. I have a friend who thinks they were demolished afterwards, that the smoke and so on was literally a smokescreen. I’ve tried to convince him otherwise.

OC: This is exactly what happens when CTers are let loose.

CT: Israel IS allied to the Great Satan and much nearer, besides being smaller and hated in its own right by 99% of the Muslim world. Why didn’t they attack Israel?

OC: They’ve been trying to get Israel since 1948!!!!! The time had come when they decided that it was better to attack the paymaster – the USA.

CT: And if Bush, Cheney et al are callous enough to spin a big fat dollar out of the War on Terror, simply using 9/11 as an excuse handed to them by happy chance, then they’re more than nasty enough to engineer the plot in the first place.

OC: That’s hardly an airtight argument!

CT: Bush needn’t even have known; we could be looking at a modern Thomas Beckett scenario; an unguarded remark by Bush to the wrong CIA agent (and he has dropped some clangers), and all those Black Ops guys swing into action.

OC: There was no accident about Beckett’s death!!! And no one would take a decision like 9/11 without the highest possible authority, signed in triplicate. There are no rogue units doing ludicrous things on that scale. It would mean the death penalty and perpetual infamy for you if you got it wrong and were caught. What’s your excuse going to be? – “Oh, I thought the President had given me an order by winking at me!” Yeah, right.

CT: I don’t see how these Afghani troglodytes could possibly have pulled it off.

OC: They didn’t. It was middle class, well-educated Saudi Arabian fanatics.

CT: And I don’t think putting thermite in the building would have been a big deal; Navy SEALS dressed as workmen?

OC: You think blowing up three thousand of your own citizens is standard Special Forces drill, do you? “Hi dear, just back from work – boy, that thermite is good. Killed three thousand scumbag Americans today.”

“But, honey…you’re an American too.”

“Well, I was given my orders. You know what it’s like.”

“Sure I do, honey. Put your feet up. Bottle of Bud? Want to watch American Idol?”

Yeah, right.

CT: I simply don’t believe the official story on 9/11; skyscrapers don’t collapse from fire. Everything else is detail, the basic fact is it would be a freakish miracle, on top of the attacks happening at all, for the towers to collapse.

OC: So, now we have it. The entire basis of your case is that you are a self-proclaimed expert on civil engineering and materials science. If a jet were flown into any tower on earth, the tower wouldn’t collapse, you say. You know that for a fact. So, all of the recognized civil engineers and material scientists who support the official version are liars and are part of the conspiracy. I think I’d be more inclined to support the experts than the speculators.

Because you don’t believe in skyscrapers collapsing after being hit at high speed by jets with full fuel-loads, you are prepared to believe that America hired Bin Laden to get a group of suicidal hijackers together to attack America – to destroy the Twin Towers, the White House/Capitol Hill and the Pentagon? Oh, and the Navy Seals had to be inside the Twin Towers soon afterwards with thermite to bring the buildings down. Er, why exactly? The false flag attack had already worked. Why bring the towers down? Gilding the lily, surely?

American reaction would have been exactly the same regardless of whether the towers came down so deliberately bringing the towers down is, frankly, absurd, pointless and incredibly risky. Which great American strategist said, months in advance of 9/11, “Once our guy Bin Laden’s done his stuff, let’s bring the frigging towers down. That ‘ill show ‘em.” I think I’ll go with the skyscrapers falling down on their own scenario.

Your whole case is that it was somehow necessary for the Twin Towers to be brought down. As if anyone cares. It wouldn’t have made ANY DIFFERENCE AT ALL to me whether the towers came down, and nor to the American people. It was the hijacked suicide planes crashing into the towers that 9/11 was all about. Your whole conspiracy theory is based on a meaningless technical curiosity that the twin towers collapsed in the manner of a controlled demolition. So what? Are you telling me that the American reaction was based on the collapse of the Twin Towers and not on the fact that they were struck by suicidal Islamic hijackers? That’s what I call a crazy theory. Since the American reaction was not predicated on the fall of the towers – everything would have proceeded in precisely the same way had they not collapsed – the authorities plainly weren’t involved. Same goes for Tower 7. You’ve been chasing the wrong hare.

Just to reiterate. Your case is based on a disbelief that steel acts as if cut when subjected to a massive impact, a huge explosion, an intense jet-fuel fire, and the weight of a hundred floors of incredibly heavy concrete. But, as I’ve said, the collapse of the towers is irrelevant, and clearly would have formed no part of any false flag operation. So, there is no reason to disbelieve the official story, is there? You don’t disagree that the planes that slammed into the twin towers were viable killing machines that slaughtered hundreds on their own account. So, were the hijackers fake Islamic terrorists bravely giving their lives for the great CIA? What planet do CTers inhabit? Whatever happened to Occam’s Razor?

CT: The Towers were built to resist an airplane crash and fires.

OC: CTers have a touchingly high regard for the infallibility of engineers and scientists, except of course when they contradict the CTers, at which point they become part of the conspiracy. Impact tests and fire predictions are based on many assumptions and computer simulations. The more data that goes into the models the better. Next time, the models will be much more accurate since they have all that 9/11 data now.

As everyone knows, a structure is only as strong as its weakest link. What’s wrong with the official version?…

“The report concluded that the fireproofing on the Twin Towers’ steel infrastructures was blown off by the initial impact of the planes and that, if this had not occurred, the towers would likely have remained standing. This was confirmed by an independent study by Purdue University. W. Gene Corley, the director of the original investigation, commented that ‘the towers really did amazingly well.

The terrorist aircraft didn’t bring the buildings down; it was the fire which followed. It was proven that you could take out two thirds of the columns in a tower and the building would still stand.’ The fires weakened the trusses supporting the floors, making the floors sag. The sagging floors pulled on the exterior steel columns to the point where exterior columns bowed inward. With the damage to the core columns, the buckling exterior columns could no longer support the buildings, causing them to collapse.

CT: Special Forces guys would not talk.

OT: Yes they would. An American helicopter pilot turned his guns on his own troops at the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam. He reported them all to the authorities. Do you think Special Forces guys are psychopaths? They’re elite soldiers, not people who unquestioningly go around killing their own friends, relatives and fellow citizens.

CT: If my argument boils down to a non sequitur then yours is based on a fallaciously high burden of proof. You’re working from the position that the official story is automatically the truth and requiring a level of evidence to refute it far in excess of what you could present in its support.

OC: The official story has been verified in the following ways:

1) Government commissions.
2) The trial of the “20th hijacker”.
3) The court of general public opinion.
4) The prima facie events of the day.
5) The admissions of Osama bin Laden.
6) The delighted reaction of PLO supporters on 9/11.
7) The extensive debunking of the debunkers.
8) General scientific and engineering opinion of the academic community.
9) Common sense.
10) The prevailing political situation.
11) Occam’s Razor.

None of these is infallible, of course… but they constitute a high bar for the CTers to surpass. The CTers can’t offer a case that amounts to much less than the evidence supplied by the official position and expect to be taken seriously. You are being challenged to present a case that is as persuasive as the official version. You are not being subjected to a higher requirement.

All of the points you have put forward have already been comprehensively debunked by any number of YouTube videos. Also, if the CTers show themselves susceptible to the sort of thinking that lends itself to invisible, pan-dimensional aliens, hollow earth, Nibiru, etc…they have put themselves outside the bounds of logic and science and placed themselves firmly in the religious camp. The official case does not rely on anything outwith conventional, widely accepted science and engineering practice.

CT: Am I required to be an expert in engineering (or indeed military history, politics, guerrilla warfare, etc, etc) to make common sense observations? No, not at all. My assertion was not that steel does not behave as if cut etc; jet fuel does not burn at a sufficiently high temperature to cut steel. That is a fact. To obviate that, you would need to prove that back draft from the fireball combined with the air-con in the building to focus the flame to a cutting torch. Conceivable, but entirely impossible to prove and highly unlikely to occur in both buildings, while giving no explanation for Tower 7. But that’s what would have to happen for burning jet fuel to cut steel.

OC: The common sense case is the opposite of your one. Where’s your evidence that steel was cut? That’s supposition, not fact. Check the debunking material which shows that 9/11 workers used high temperature torches in the clean-up operation. How can you differentiate this type of steel cutting from what you propose? (Link removed)

CT: Jet fuel does not burn at a sufficiently high temperature to cut steel.

OC: No one said it did. The question is whether the circumstances of the event can lead to the collapse of the steel framework. You have to establish that they cannot: a commission of experts has already found that they can.

Rather than address the findings of the commission, you will simply claim that they are part of the conspiracy. You are refusing to engage with the facts. There is no evidence that any steel was cut prior to clean-up operations commencing. Also…how would you differentiate cut steel (thermite does not produce laser cuts as you seem to believe) from steel that has been severed by a huge shearing force? (a tower collapsing!)

CT: I also made no mention of Navy SEALS in the building AFTER the planes; that’s just silly. It would be quite simple for Special Forces to enter the building months in advance among genuine contractors during normal renovation. That’s easy; lay the charges in advance. The other idea is that high-tech modern Ninjas assailed the burning towers in the midst of the crisis (possibly parachuting in from the invisible fifth plane), to set thermite charges and somehow escape the building’s subsequent collapse. That would be a suicide mission or the plot of a really bad action movie (I’m imagining a team-up featuring Bruce Willis, Steven Seagal, Brad Pitt, Vin Diesel and The Rock). The argument that special ops couldn’t or wouldn’t do that is fallacious; they can and do perform those kinds of missions on enemy nations. If ordered to do so, they would attack a friendly target; soldiers are trained not to reason why, just to obey. The question is whether those orders given, and if so, why?

OC: If the thermite explosives were planted beforehand, how could the bombers be sure that the bombs wouldn’t malfunction and detonate unexpectedly, as many do? How could the government possibly explain that one? What if the materials degraded? What is your timescale for when the thermite was planted? The day before? (What if the weather was bad next day and planes couldn’t fly?) Six months before? Were they to be detonated by timer or remote control? What if something went wrong with the timers or detonation signal? Also, why didn’t the bombers detonate the thermite as soon as the planes hit (in an attempt to make it look as though the impact and explosion brought down the towers)? Why wait an hour? What agenda did a delay serve?

Soldiers are trained to obey lawful orders…not insane orders that would represent high treason against their nation and merit the death penalty if they were caught. You have an extremely odd idea about soldiers. Do you imagine the SS would have exterminated ordinary German citizens in the death camps? It’s ridiculous. You kill your perceived enemies, not your fellow citizens. There is no military group on earth that would obey orders to kill its own people, other than in incidents involving serious riots and widespread disorder. Give me a single example from history where, in peacetime, soldiers have killed their own citizens on a huge scale without one iota of provocation. Sure, soldiers are not the friends of the people and will kill them in certain situations, but not in the circumstances of 9/11.

No one gave any such orders…no soldier would ever carry out such orders to kill thousands of his own countrymen without any attempt at justification…so there is no “why” except in the minds of the CTers. If 9/11 was in fact a false flag attack, no conceivable purpose would have been served by bringing down the towers. The pretext for an aggressive response by America was furnished by the two planes hitting the two towers, not by the towers coming down. No covert operation would carry out needless and highly risky actions.

What if the hijackings failed and no planes stuck? What would the covert ops group have done then? Detonated regardless? Left their explosives indefinitely? Tried another hijacking another day? None of this makes any sense. Think it through. Provide a sensible scenario in accordance with sane covert operations thinking. What was the contingency plan? Why demolish towers for no useful reason?

Remember, elite soldiers would have to sign up to this and carry out the detailed planning. So, once again, why was the collapse of the twin towers a necessary component of this plot? Could it have succeeded without this being done? If so, why do it? Weren’t the plane strikes sufficient? Why not? What was the military reason for bringing down the towers? Why expend resources and take risks on this task? You must plausibly demonstrate why the whole operation hinged on this – because the main part of your case seems to be your disbelief that towers can collapse.

CT: The ‘why’ would be money; you said you can see no reason why America would want to stage a false flag attack and no benefit derived since. Strange, because it should be pretty obvious that the budgets of police, military and intelligence agencies has sky-rocketed since 9/11, and ‘Anti-Terrorism’ can now be used by any petty official to enforce any petty injunction (such as banning trainspotters because photographing trains poses a ‘security risk’). I should have thought these were taken as read, that 9/11 was the catalyst event to the War on Terror and has been used to justify the immensely profitable wars of invasion being waged worldwide.

OC: After an attack on America, all of the things you have mentioned would happen i.e. budgets would go up for all of these groups. You can’t argue that because budgets have gone up this must mean that a false flag attack was carried out. America is withdrawing from Iraq having failed in all of its strategic objectives…Iraq has not become a puppet American state in the Middle East, a friend and ally of Israel, a beacon of glorious American capitalist democracy in the Islamic world, a supplier of copious cheap oil to America. America will also withdraw from Afghanistan. The wars, especially in Iraq, were exceptionally unpopular…and extremely costly in terms of the hardpressed taxpayers. The America military has emerged with little credit. The CIA has been mocked and ridiculed. America was following a neocon agenda that, in particular, was very keen to target Iraq. If conspirators were conducting a false flag attack, they would have made sure that Iraq was the unambiguous main suspect with its hands all over the murder weapon – the 9/11 event. In fact, there are no links between Iraq and 9/11.

What you describe is the most half-arsed, unbelievable, sloppy, illdefined, confused and confusing false flag operation ever launched in human history. No expert in covert operations would ever subscribe to such a shambles. Read Clausewitz. They teach him at West Point. For 9/11 to be a false flag attack would mean that every part of military wisdom had been flouted. No military person would ever carry out 9/11, on military grounds alone never mind anything else.

CT: Motive, I can prove; ‘Mens Rea’, guilty mind, our suspects (Bush or Bin Laden)… both have that; money, money, money.

OC: Money is “guilty mind”? Do you mean that Bush and Bin Laden were in desperate need of money, hence had to carry out this action to get money? How would Bin Laden get any money out of this, and wasn’t he a rich man anyway? Clearly, the desire for money was no part of Bin Laden’s thinking. As for Bush – a very rich man from a very rich family, what does he need money for?

CT: Actus Reas is the problem; guilty deed. The only actual facts are that the WTC towers were hit by two planes and subsequently collapsed. Those are facts because virtually the whole world saw the events unfold on the news and there’s a bloody big crater to prove that the towers are indeed gone.

Everything else is speculation, supposition and rumour. I personally think that the impossibility of cutting steel with jet fuel is a fact, but I’m aware that experts have come forward on both sides to support or refute that.”

OC: Far more experts are on the side of the official verdict. Far more evidence is on the side of the official verdict. The conspiracy theory makes no sense.

CT: On the other you have a conspiracy theory. That the official story is in itself a conspiracy theory goes unremarked.

OC: There is no such situation. The official version makes perfect sense. The counter conspiracy theory is nothing more than a bizarre assemblage of minor details, virtually all of which have been accounted for, and the remainder are covered by the fog of any massive disaster where, for sure, odd, unexpected things will happen. Why is the official version itself a conspiracy theory if it accords with all known facts and is supported by virtually everyone other than the CTers? There’s only one conspiracy theory…and it’s yours. At most, 9/11 might be called a second-level false flag attack since Bush wanted something like that to happen to justify his neocon agenda in the Middle East. But he certainly wasn’t the Prime Mover of 9/11. That was Osama bin Laden.
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