pap

Loving this at the moment. Steve/Baj : Server speed is ace atm.

I think one positive is the strong association with the club. Being part of a house all gave us a sense of identity, and it's clear from this thread that some of us still retain a bit of allegiance to our old houses. Perhaps it'll make the Cantell kids more likely to be Saints fans. We'll need them in that 90K stadium when we're tearing teams a new one in the CL

I'm stressing capability. Who has more resources at their disposal? Who would be more capable of making it happen? Capable of overcoming the problems that they would undoubtedly face in completing their objective? Let's look at one small detail in terms of capability. How would you get three planes to highly symbolic targets and crash into them? Who would be more capable of that? What's Al Qaeda's plan here? Do they have someone on the inside? Just hope for the best? So let's compare that with the capability of a hypothetical conspiracy with access to different branches of government. Well, it might have capability to run drills simulating the exact same attacks on the exact same day. That could be confusing. The sad thing is that it is exactly what happened - a NORAD wargame happening on the same day. So are you really telling us that a group of Arabs led by a man in a cave had greater operational capability than a group of conspirators with access to the apparatus of state?

I admire your creative use of language. I'm happy to have been thought of as a favourite uncle. I hope that you get back into this debate, and play the ball, not the man.

Thanks for your considered approach on this, saintbletch. As to your questions of possibility? They break down into largely two sections, which I'll cover separately. I've paraphrased you a little bit. 1) Is it possible for this to have been implemented? History has shown us that people at the top of Government have been involved in conspiracies. Kennedy, Oliver North Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, etc. There is a hierarchical framework is in place to involve people in a conspiracy without them actually being complicit. 9/11 was a conspiracy, irrespective of who committed it. If were able to treat this topic dispassionately, and looked at 9/11 from the perspective of being a crime, we'd be looking at things like motive, capability and the evidence. I've laid out potential motives for 9/11, and tried to back them up with documents proving that many of the things made possible by 9/11 (such as pre-emptive war doctrine and the invasion of Iraq) were desired by the Bush administration before 9/11. I think we can all agree that on capability terms, an internal conspiracy with hooks into the Government has a far better chance of pulling this off than ( as VFTT puts it ) 'lowely Al Qaeda' operatives. Indeed, some have questioned whether the AQ boys had the capability at all. Let's not forget that these guys managed to hi-jack four planes and navigate three of them to highly symbolic targets through some of the most protected air-space in the world. In a typical investigation, conclusive evidence beats pre-held conceptions every time. If a detective is investigating a murder, and uncovers evidence that points the blame away from someone who was previously the prime suspect, then the detective will rightly construct alternate hypotheses, taking the new evidence into account. Yet, for the most heinous crime in our collective memory, we've effectively suspended this method of investigation. The story is the story, and damn ( or simply ignore ) any facts that contradict it. So yeah, I think it is possible for a conspiracy to be implemented. 2) 1) Is it possible for this to have been covered up, particularly after new Governments, etc, come to power? This is actually a more interesting question. In the immediate aftermath, it would be relatively easy to cover up. Proceeding from the assumption that people in the Government were involved, they have all the apparatus of state at their disposal plus the power to set the terms of the investigation. The 9/11 Commission is a case in point. Underfunded, with a short time span, and rife with conflicts of interest, the Commission is supposed to have produced the definitive account of the event using the best evidence at the time. Max Cleland resigned almost immediately, citing that "I, as a member of the commission, cannot look any American in the eye, especially family members of victims, and say the commission had full access. This investigation is now compromised.". Even two of the commisioners that stayed on have both since claimed that the investigation "was set up to fail". In the end, the Commission's report ended up being a regurgitation of the official account. It doesn't cover the destruction of WTC7 and treats the matter of who funded 9/11 as "no practical significance". How can the moneyman behind the biggest atrocity on US soil be of "no practical significance"? In every other investigation, people follow the money. You also ask a decent question about successive Governments. My hope is that in time, as happened with the Kennedy assassination, a future government will have the courage to look at the matter with fresh eyes. It took almost 15 years to even get close to the truth on JFK. In terms of scale, 9/11 is much larger. It is one thing to admit that Kennedy was "very likely assassinated as a result of a conspiracy". It's something else entirely when you have to say "elements within our Government may have been complicit in the murder of 3,000 citizens". Assume for a second that you are President Obama, entering the Oval Office for the first time after inauguration. During your first intelligence briefing, you discover that 9/11 was orchestrated by members of the previous administration. What do you do with that? What, indeed, can you do with that? The only two options at that point are to plan for full disclosure or continue the cover-up. Full disclosure is tricky. You have your sons and daughters fighting wars in foreign lands based on an entirely false premise. What do you say to the parents who have already lost loved ones? What do you say to the international community that supported you in these efforts. What would your standing in the world be if you had to admit that your foreign policy was essentially based on a lie, and that the hundreds of thousands of people slain to date had effectively died to sate the perverse ambitions of a twisted few? In those circumstances, what would most do if they were new to power, and had just found that out? Especially if as in Obama's case, you represented an unprecedented choice of President that a few people, rightly or wrongly, were not sure of because of his colour. I'll make one further point on this. I've said many times on this forum that I believe that true power lies not in governments, which are effectively transient, but in the institutions that retain their power through governments, such as corporations, security services and the military. If there was a conspiracy, it is unlikely that it could have happened without the partial complicity of institutions that fall into this category. While the Bush administration is mercifully now an artefact of history, there could still be people in a position of power with a vested interest in keeping things as they are.

You are entitled to your opinion - but honestly, don't really think you've done much to verify it. Weird how everyone thinks you're a bright bloke until you say something that they do not agree with.

No I'm not. I'm saying that key planks of the official story are undermined by scientific investigation, eyewitness accounts and what we know about science. I am sorry to hear about any that lost their lives on that day, but your cousin's grief doesn't mean we should not agree with everything we are told.

They won't let me watch the X-Factor in the front room anymore in my house.

I think you've just ignored every detail on the way. You have no argument, spent a great deal of the thread asking for answers you knew people weren't in a position to give, as if their inability to prove them is somehow validity of your claim. Then, when confronted with specific points about things about specifics that do not add up, you simply ignore them. Throughout, you have been unfailingly condescending, ascribing statements to me that I didn't make, constructing your own conspiracy theories. Your rebuttals, such as they are, amount to "that's wrong" or no "that's wrong", and pretty much every source you've wheeled out has been debunked or thrown into question. From the way that the likes of Turkish and dune went on, I was led to believe that you were some intellectual heavyweight. Having had the opportunity to 'debate' with you on this matter, it's pretty clear that you believe you're always right, and that there is nothing that anyone can do to get a more conciliatory kind of response. Even when presented with a series of credible resources, you simply dismiss the lot because someone won't spin you a fairytale. You may have a lot of knowledge in your head, but if you're only going to fill it with the stuff you want to hear, insulting anyone who says otherwise, then I'd say you're not making optimal use of resources. I'm sending 5 minute YouTube videos in support of the arguments. You're asking me to read entire books to prove your case. You won't say whether the books disprove some of the contradictions that have been enumerated. You just won't even address them. Are these the standards of debate that Verbal, unofficial king of the intellectuals, adheres and subscribes to? I'm almost anxious to know what you do for a living. I hope it isn't any form of investigation.

The most sensible thing you've said so far. As the US Senate Committee into the Kennedy assassination proved, a bit of space can be a valuable asset in an independent investigation. Hopefully, a future generation will get to examine these events from a fresh perspective. But you're blind to the details, your big picture is fundamentally flawed, and there really is no point in perpetuating this discussion.

If you're going to make assessments about my mental capabilities, at least do me the honour of pointing out why. Just calling someone a retard without backing it up is, pardon my French, a bit out of order.

For argument's sake, I'll honour your assessment of the footage. Does that explain why ALL of the buildings turned to dust? Even if the planes hit the central core, the only part of the core they could have conceivably hit is around the area of impact. The central core runs right through the building. How does the entire core, top to bottom, get compromised? Why does the entire building turn to dust, collapsing at almost freefall speeds? The NIST report tells us that the mass at the top of the building pushed down on the rest of the building. This is the official explanation. Regardless of what went first, I think we can both agree that the top of the building was gone. Either dust or smaller chunks of building. However you might describe it, the top of the building's mass was totally dispersed. Bits were exploding away from the tower. The amount of weight the bottom of the tower had to support was greatly reduced. So straight away, there is a big problem with the official explanation. Those towers had supported the weight of the intact mass for decades, yet they are unable to support the dispersed mass of dust and debris? The suggested explosives are something called thermate, supposedly attached to the central cores. It's a cutting explosion set at a diagonal angle, the reaction takes intense heat to start. The Architects and Engineers video gives a good account of this, but long story short, the reaction of the material creates molten metal, cutting through the beams. With the support gone, the whole building slides in on itself. The explosives are not explosives in the Hollywood sense. They're just there to break the structural integrity of the building. The problem is that they didn't do that. They could have done exactly as you describe. It's the simplest and most logical approach. If they had done as you suggested they would have caused a lot more destruction. They didn't. They apparently went out of their way to hit the side of the Pentagon on the other side, performing an aerial manoeveure that commercial pilots have said would be impossible to do. This expert feat of flying was accomplished by a pilot described as unsafe by his former flight instructors. Well, it's good to have some debate, but I'd have to disagree on the last point. Mentioned the Manhattan Project before in this thread, a project so secret that Truman had to be told about it, yet 129K people were involved in bringing it to fruition. They all played a part, but very few of them would have been told what their part in it was. I know that the proposed big picture looks ridiculous, but look at the example given with the Towers. The only explanation that fits our understanding of science is a massive failure of structural integrity, and the most common mechanism for that is controlled demolition. We've seen planes hit steel-framed buildings, we've seen fires in steel-framed buildings, burning hotter and lasting longer. Prior to 9/11, no other similar edifice had ever turned to dust in less than 2 hours. Science, tried, trusted and refined over centuries is telling us one thing. The Bush administration has told us another. Lest we forget, these guys were lunatics. In the 1980s, their rest of the Republican party called these guys "the crazies". During their time in office, they approved the use of detention, rendition and torture, conspired their way into war with Iraq, an act that they'd planned prior to the September 2011 attacks. Now, given the way that they conducted themselves in the open, science wins every time.

As I said before, it works perfectly on the overall picture, VFTT. It's the details where it doesn't work. Take the Towers as an example. The first two Towers don't share all the characteristics of a controlled demolition, but the official account tells us that the impact of two planes, plus the burning of jet fuel evaporated the central steel columns causing the building to pancake. Prior to 9/11, no steel-framed building in similar circumstances ever did what those buildings did on that day. The tops of the buildings turn to dust first, yet somehow, the weight of all this dust is bearing down on the rest of the tower so fast it turns everything below it to dust too. The Architects and Engineers vid illustrates this impossibility well. So while you're quite right, and Occam's razor doesn't slice the theory as a whole, when we look at the destruction of the Towers in isolation we get something that :- Shares characteristics with a controlled demolition Scientifically impossible Not consistent with plane crashes into skyscrapers Not consistent with fires in steel-framed skyscrapers The simplest explanation is some form of controlled demolition. So yep, Occam's razor slices very well for the official account on the whole, but the devil is in the details.

You may be well read, Verbal, but I think you're either lacking in deductive capacity or deliberately being thick to hang on to some sort of point. As you well know, democracies can't go around invading countries without a reason. Absent Saddam taking leave of his senses and getting uppity, there was no way America would have gone back to war with Iraq. 9/11, and by extension, the policy of pre-emptive war allowed the neo-cons to carry out a long-stated aim. And you don't see the possibility of a link between the two events? Quite right. But what you omit ( common theme this, isn't it ) is that some of that think-tank went on to become very powerful figures in the Bush administration, including **** Cheney (VP), Donald Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defense), Paul Wolfowitz (Dep Secretary for Defense), John Bolton (UN Ambassador - how did that ever happen?) and Richard Armitage. So senior members of the US Government signing up to a document advocating American dominance through force of arms isn't germane to this discussion? The age of the doctrine doesn't matter. The fact is, without 9/11, it would have been politically impossible to sell. And claims is all they turned out to be, mostly based on an utterly reliable Iraqi asset codenamed Curveball. It is now a matter of public record that members of our own Government cooked up the case for war, misleading Parliament and public in a conspiracy. I guess that's not relevant either. No - only a web page, and not a book - but some interesting stuff nonetheless. I take it that you've forgotten all about the Oliver North thing, a conspiracy in the 1980s that involved government agents selling drugs to finance covert operations? And as I think we've already established, Iraq could not have happened without some catalyst - Saddam was not going to oblige, and as has been proven, the West could have had weapons inspectors in there for years and not have found any pre-text for war. Are you telling me that you see no potential benefit to having enormous influence in these two countries? Natural resources? The strategic location. If you honestly don't see any motive in any of that, then I can't help you. The faux-clueless thing doesn't suit you, Verbal.

The Arabic name doesn't bother me. But this is the same Aziz El Hallan that as this guy?

As we've already established, Verbal - there are plenty of motives for a 9/11 conspiracy. 7/7 is shakier, and I believe I conceded that point. 9/11 has plenty of potential motive, broadly power and money driven by a perverse assessment of what America should be. Do you deny that there were plans to invade Iraq prior to the September 11th attacks? What about "Rebuilding America's Defenses"?. What about pre-emptive war doctrine? Would the US people have stood for that if not for 9/11? The money that is made selling heroin from Afghanistan? The oil in Iraq? The no-bid contracts which went to major US corporations to rebuild Iraq once the "Coalition of the willing"? The strategic position on either side of a stated adversary? Western friendly governments in the Middle East? No. No motives at all.

A few more books on my "to read" list is nice, but how is this addressing any of the concerns that I've enumerated? How do these books explain that? How do you? Do they address the evidence that was left out, by say, the 9/11 Commission? The problem is Verbal, you only want to have a discussion on your terms, with the evidence you deem is submissible. Furthermore, you're listing books, which you know I don't read, that are already narratives on account of being books in the first place. I've linked scientific studies, eyewitness testimony and videos from the day which all contradict the official account. You're telling us to read stories. Please correct me if I'm wrong, your argument seems to be "because a few authors have written books, there is nothing dodgy about the official account, and everything is tickety-boo" ( paraphrasing of course ). Primary evidence and scientific study trumps the written word every time, especially when corroborated. So unless you're telling me that reading a few books will invalidate all the copious quantities of uninvestigated forensic evidence out there, what is the point in reading them?

I was Polymond, and you'll be pleased to hear that Arundel were a good bunch in my year.

You've talked about plausibility, and there's a hint of Occam's razor implied. The problem is that while you're happy to apply that to the concept at large, you're somewhat less keen to apply it to the finer details. You've put up the Popular Mechanics article as evidence of the fallacies of 9/11, a deeply flawed article which targets the low-hanging fruit, ignores the bigger questions, and was compromised from the start due to the inclusion of Benjamin Chertoff on the investigation, cousin of Michael Chertoff, then Secretary of Homeland Security, on the scientific investigation team. The David Ray Griffin video posted earlier characterises this evidence as a hit piece and demonstrates that the article didn't even try to address some of the firmer stuff. Can you honestly pin your mast to this 'evidence'? Evidence that began, not with independent rigorous scientific investigation, but took NISTs findings as a point of absolute truth. I'm a scientist at heart, so if anyone can provide me with decent evidence of why I am wrong, I'll admit it. So far, your track record on producing conclusive rebuttal evidence has been almost as disappointing as your unwillingness to accept there is anything dodgy with the official account. The document I just linked contains links to numerous sources which validate the things it is saying. So far, you've come up with likely propaganda and an invitation to read The Looming Tower, as if one book is going to disintegrate all of my doubts. Is it really that well researched? Does it cover every question? How does it stack up against the claims of The Power Of Nightmares, the BBC documentary which covers the same ground ( the formation of Al Qaeda ) but reaches different conclusions concerning the threat they pose to Western societies? That our politicians wilfully portrayed Al Qaeda as a sinister organised Islamic force? If this one book sorts it all out for you, fair play to you. I prefer the process of investigation and corroboration.

I was a house captain at Cantell too, but when my aunties and uncles went to school in that building when it was called Glen Eyre, so I'd say that their ( and Alps ) claim is a bit better. I'm officially a "Tower Era" Cantell kid now

The official conspiracy is the one that was on the news. Tom posted a link earlier in the thread, reproduced here:- Do look at the full article though. Contains links to sources, etc.

"David Comes to Life" by "F*cked Up". Concept album. Three guitars. Growling lead singer who apparently likes to self-harm on stage. Takes about six listens to click, but is awesome when it does (if you like your rock music).

I must admit, I do find your line of reasoning brilliant, buctootim - especially as you likened debating with me to arguing with a cat.

There is some serious doubt of how the Vietnam War actually started. Read up on the Gulf of Tomkin incident.

This is just second hand, but some possible explanations for the above are as followed:- The contention is that this was accomplished in the weeks leading up to the attack. This article mentions a company called Turner Construction, a company that was hired to renovate the building and was apparently working right up until the day of the attack. They are out of business now, and there are no records of their activities. Available (linked article has a FOI request/response which claims that the records were destroyed in the fire). The Architects and Engineers handle this point pretty well. They show the floor plan of the WTC, illustrating that access to any of the structural steel columns, which basicaly formed a square ring around the perimeter of the elevator shaft, are very easily accessible from the elevators. So, a possible answer to your question is that the explosives were set up well in advance of the incident. They didn't. Go back and watch some slow mo footage of the Twin Towers going. The top of the building goes first - not where the planes hit. The NIST report claims that the bottom of the building went from the amount of mass being pushed down on it, yet the mass as the top of the building was already widely dispersed ( i.e. dust ) at that point. So if the top of the building is dust, people are asking where the mass that would be required to turn the lower floors to dust is coming from. There is some debate on the precise nature of the explosion, but most point to a variant of thermate. This stuff is normally triggered by a catalyst of intense heat, and by that, I mean a chemical catalyst. Don't know, but I do think some of the questions relating to the Pentagon incident are interesting, if you'll indulge me. a) A number of professional pilots have gone on record to state that they would have not been able to pull off the manoeveure that led to a plane crashing into the Pentagon. b) The supposed pilot was an amateur who had problems controlling a Cessna. He is alleged to have pulled off a move that commercial airline pilots have characterised as 'impossible' c) There is also a question concerning the part of the Pentagon that was hit. The section that was hit was sparsely populated and under renovation and on the complete opposite side to the pilot's flight path. He had to go out of his way to hit it. Dive bombing for the roof would have been an easier way to exact more death and destruction. Here is an aerial shot of the Pentagon. I'd question "heavily populated". The building has no residential dwellings around it - mostly car parks. The side that was hit has a large field in front of it. So on a normal day, the Pentagon is not heavily populated, certainly not by people who don't have some form of business there. During the hysteria of that morning, it would probably have been even less so. This is another big defence of the official account. People must have known. Someone must have talked, etc. Keeping stuff secret is not hard. Consider the sheer amount of manpower that went into the Manhattan Project, then consider how many people actually knew about it. The project was so secret that Harry S. Truman had to be told about it when he assumed the office of the presidency. As I said earlier, knowledge of a conspiracy isn't a pre-requisite for participation, especially in hierarchical military structures where people are used to following directives without questioning them. The same can be said about many aspects of "the official conspiracy theory". FWIW, I think the truthers are asking the more pertinent and realistic questions. You're asking "who did it, where, why"? That's a tall order. If it was a conspiracy, it is unlikely that too much evidence would have survived. Instead, truthers are focusing on stuff they know they can prove. In dealing with the accusations of a conspiracy theory, the authorities have had two main strategies so far. First, emphasise the stuff that is totally batsh*t crazy, presenting it as what all conspiracy theorists believe. Second, completely ignore the stuff that they can't explain. Verbal's citation of the Popular Mechanics work is a case in point. If you're genuinely interested in the other side's case, this video is worth watching. If you are going to call me a crazy person of some description, I'd appreciate something different than "'kin loon" or "utter utter nutjob". Those two have been taken.