Do you believe that 9/11 was an inside job?

Oh for fuck’s sake, no. I’m so sick of this conspiracy theory crap. I think Bush did a lot of things that allowed it to happen, because he’s a hapless moron, but other than that, no.

Have you ever watched any of Alex Jones movies, or actually done REAL research on it? Or do you just think it’s all a conspiracy without any actual knowledge of what happened?

Bush is not a hapless moron, he’s a inept idiot.

I am not huge into conspiracy theories but on this one I have to say I lean toward the government being responsible. Look at the Gulf of Tonkin. They lied to get us into a bullshit war once why wouldn’t they do it again? Watch the movie Why We Fight, very interesting. Not that I didn’t know some things in it already but it still sheds light on some things I didn’t know.

Define inside job. Did the president know about it? Probably not. I don’t think he’s smart enough to mastermind something like 9–11. Did any one person in a government position know about it. It’s statisticly likely, yes.

I mean do you think 9/11 was the governments doing, including Bush. Was the government RESPONSIBLE for it. Was it them who set the whole thing up.

And also look at Bilderberg, look at who has been to those meetings, and go read the Logan Act. Read the documents, look at the raw facts, and then please come tell me what you think.

No I don’t think it was an inside job. Alex Jones is full of shit.

No.

Have you heard about these “think tanks” such as the Project for the New American Century? they are essentially public, government-funded programs that think of new ways to get us into wars. It’s all because the Military Industrial Complex is out of fucking control and shit like cooking for the military is run by PMC’s just so the rich can get richer. I sincerely hope we have a revolution one day and that I can drag a fucking blue blood piece of shit out of his bed and beat him to death for all the deaths he has caused on account of greed. sorry this subject tends to get me pissed off haha

@PupnTaco Back what you say up. What do you believe then.

Nope.

Can anyone please tell my WHY they don’t think it was?

@ chelsea I am with you! everyone says “no” as if thats the end all to end all.

@madcapper It’s like I can back up why I believe it WAS. But I’ve noticed people who don’t think it was, just say “No”, with no reasons.

How about indulging me and telling me why you believe it wasn’t.

I agree. I get this sane thing with religion. I can say why I don’t believe but religious people just say “because” as if that makes any sense.

Because I trust my government. I have faith that they would do the right thing.

Alex Jones, Loose Change, etc. hook you by asking “innocent questions.”

Then they describe what they position as “reasonable” hypotheses without any real evidence.

I’ve watched the videos. Seen the web sites. Listened to the AM and shortwave radio broadcasts. And I’m not convinced.

—

What I’ve learned since then is that there’s no way to convince those people who buy into it otherwise. It all comes back to the government is “so big” and “someone had to know” and it fits in with a “master plan” to create a North American Union, switch to the amero, and enact martial law.

@Elumas That’s it? You TRUST the government?
Sad thing.. I did too. Til I did my research.

It so totally was.

Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth
Pilots for 9/11 Truth

@ elumas then your insane. 9/11 conspiracies aside I would never trust the government. What makes you think they give a shit about you? money and greed run our country.

Everyone WANTS to believe their government is all good. Who WOULDN’T want that. I know I want to be able to. I heard about certain things, and never ever thought about them again. Then I did my research and everything was completely explained. How and why did Building 7 go down? WHY did it go down? And why are NY Firefighters telling people that the building was ‘pulled’? What, did they pull that out of their asses?

@ rob well there is evidence such as jet fuel can’t burn hot enough to melt through the beams in the WTC. just an example. And I am not unshaken in my belief, if someone could fully connect all the events that happened that day logically then I would believe it, but everything is just loosely told to us by the government and we are supposed to believe. There are too many coincidences in one day and unless Bin Laden has master intelligence operatives he would not have been able to know all of the things going on that day.

@chelseababyy: backing up what I say:
The 9/11 attacks were planned and carried out by Al Qaeda operatives. I have seen no credible, convincing evidence to the contrary.

Conspiracy theorists are delusion and messianic. I could find any number of people to believe any horseshit I could come up with, including “the sky is green, blue is an illusion perpetrated by the Illuminati.”

There’s this principal called Occam’s Razor‘s_razor. In the absence of any credible evidence otherwise, the simplest answer is the correct one.

@taco are you saying that you, simple old you, could convince people the sky is green by claiming its a conspiracy? If so oh great one then I would start a cult because thats a great way to get people to do shit for you…

@PupnTaco Go read about Tim Osman. Go read up on the 1993 WTC attacks, which were SUPPOSED to pan out way worse than they were.
Delusional and messianic? Those people are fucking dumb. Unfortunately when I come across something I do research, I don’t just believe it because someone says or writes it.

I say no. But I do doubt the existence of Al Qaeda. I think it’s like the ELF (Earth Liberation Front); it’s just a scapegoat group we use when we can’t find out who really did it.

I don’t believe it was a government conspiracy because I don’t believe that every single one of the people necessary to make it happen would have remained silent for the past decade without suffering a single pang of conscience and speaking out.

I mean, suppose that the WTC had explosives planted so that it would collapse. Someone had to plant those explosives, and several someones would have known what they were and what was going to happen with them. It’s not hard for me to accept a leader saying “the deaths of 3000 people are irrelevant compared to the success of this plan.” It’s really hard for me to accept a worker planting explosives to destroy a building, especially one who doesn’t speak up after he realizes what he’s done.

A lot of things are unclear about that day, but I am more suspicious of theories that explain everything tidily than of theories that leave things unexplained.

I’ve read all the supposed “evidence” and yes I know about PNAC, etc. Still doesn’t convince me it was an inside job.

Bush was certainly asleep at the wheel, but that doesn’t make him responsible.

Read about Tim Osman yourself.

well I definitely do not think Bush’s moronic ass had anything to do with it because he was a puppet, but I do believe that something is “rotten in Denmark.” It just doesn’t add up…

I’m sorry, but I’m not gonna read about it in a bullshit forum. I’d rather do the research myself and go read actual documents.

You’re gonna believe what you want to believe.

That “bullshit forum” is dedicated to skeptical inquiry and rational thought.

Who writes the stuff you believe?

@cwilbur, here’s my favorite: The elevators in both towers were upgraded within months of Bushco taking office.

And, the way around the “someone had to know” argument is that it could have been done by a faction of “government” that includes both US and other operatives who are not loyal to the mom and apple pie vision of the USA. So they knew, but they either didn’t care, were coerced, or believed it was necessary for their definition of a higher good.

@chelsea: You mean, you have actual documents at your disposal? Real, honest-to-goodness, not on the internet, official documents? With a seal on them and everything?

@chelseababyy Yet, you are going to get your information from a man who couldn’t graduate from community college (click on the radio host link)? Here’s a guy who has limited intelligence, but likes to stir the pot. So what if Bilderberg is secret conference of elite businesspeople. That, alone, does not qualify as a secret cabal who want to rule the world. Just because they are secretive doesn’t make them capable of or even willing to exact some sort of nefarious plan.

No, I don’t have official documents in my hands. And I’m sorry, but it’s not just ELITE BUSINESS PEOPLE. Try government officials from other countries. And government officials from our country

If the government doesn’t care why would they send troops over to the Middle East to protect us?

@chelsea: Then you’re reading stuff a 5 year old could’ve posted and calling it research. Grow up.

Remember, @chelsea… Alex Jones and pals are the same folks who were screaming that W. would declare martial law and stop the election. Or the inauguration.

And that the steel-toed jack boots of the oppressive regime would prevent any change in power so that it could continue its reckless and hateful vendetta against the American people.

Gee, how’d that turn out?

@robmandu You must know how this is playing out in their (and their rabid followers’) minds, right? Yes, Bush left, but, he and Dick Cheney are still secretly pulling the strings (so secretly that only Alex Jones can figure it out). Or, the New World Order or Illuminati allowed Bush to leave and be replaced by another puppet in Obama. Or, some other crazy plot. And on, and on, and on….

@shi, right-o. It’s a shell game where the conspiracy theorists need not provide proof… just redirection.

Yup. Keep your head down. Work harder. Pay your taxes. Watch your HDTV. Watch the debates between the only two candidates for president. Too bad all those Arabs are getting killed. Too bad we can’t find Osama. Too bad for all that contractor stuff over there—something about Halliburton. Too bad we didn’t find WMDs. Too bad nobody can figure out how to fix the economy. Too bad the government can’t seem to do anything about the banks keeping all that bailout money. Et cetera, et cetera.

^speaking of shell games and redirection^

@kevbo, your point is right on… and exactly what I describe.

Those things are reasonable to get answers on. Real answers. Verifiable answers. I just think Alex Jones and his ilk are whipping up fear and misdirection and riding it for all it’s worth.

< < has way more confidence in @kevbo and his position than anything that Alex Jones might say.

Though I find the moon landing to be suspect, I realize that the burden of proof lies not on those who believe what they see, but on those who are presenting an alternative that is not parsimonious, visible, or likely.

I think that the side with the least parsimonious explanation needs to do the explaining. It’s impossible to “prove” that there is no god, that the moon landing happened, or that 9/11 was what we saw. Nobody—on Fluther, at least—has access to the sources that could answer these questions.

Thanks, Rob.

Alex & co are whipping up fear and misdirection (as is Rush) because that’s what sells. But, I don’t think we’ve ever gotten real and verifiable answers from a mainstream source to any of the above. So what is one supposed to think? We can believe that our government is stupid and inept (which also sells), because they can’t seem to exercise common sense, or we can conjecture that something ain’t right. There are a plethora of “fringe” explanations of why and how things ain’t right, but part of that is because none of us really see the (obscured) big picture. At some point we have to make an educated guess. Guessing wrong or partially wrong, though doesn’t mean that everything is okay.

I didn’t have a reason to believe any of this, by the way, until I stumbled on info about this and other stuff. I have to say, it’s very hard not to see the world otherwise once you buy in. Of course, it’s easy to go to the nth degree with stuff about aliens or whatever, but this 9/11 stuff is pretty plain once you look at it with fresh eyes. “9/11 Press for Truth” is a good example for skeptics because it only uses mainstream media sources.

@tonedef, Richard Hoagland (whom most regard as a nutball, but I digress) has said that NASA planted the faked landing story to shroud the real truth about ruins on the moon. There’s a lot of talk online about obscured and downplayed images (the face on Mars, e.g.) and the fake moon landing story is supposed to have been an effort to hide that truth. He was there at NASA during the moonwalk mission as a science reporter for CBS and draws on many original sources and images.

When can I get my credit card implanted in my wrist and vacation in the World Government Capital City?

First off, Alex Jones is completely full of shit. He sensationalizes items because he has a clear and obvious motive for doing so – fear stories gain him a large number website hits, which translates to advertisers buying ad space. It also keeps his name in the public’s mind. To make it crystal clear: Alex Jones explicitly profits off of tricking you into believing what he says.

Secondly, the simplest explanation for the terrorist attack is in fact that Osama Bin Laden was responsible for planning and executing it. Anyone who knows one thing about America’s history with the Middle East knows that America’s had their hand in it, fucking things around for a long time now, aiding with coups here and there. If I were a resident of a country where this happened, I would sure as hell be angry and resentful! Osama Bin Laden has made it very clear why he attacked the country in one of his video addresses. Hint, it’s not what Bush told you (something along the lines of “they hate our freedom”), it’s because of American policy in the Middle East, and the support for Israel, in addition to the wrongs committed by America against him and his people in the past. A equals B. It’s as simple as that.

I was happy to hear recently that India’s space program has mapped portions of the moon and confirmed the landing sites of the Apollo missions. One less thing for skeptics to believe in… yeah right, they’ll just believe that India’s in on it too!

dynamicduo, why can’t we see the Apollo landing debris with our telescopes, praise Ganesh.

I do beleive we don’t know all the details, but I also believe we never will. There is more to this story than we know, but how does one know what to believe? I think the kooks are allowed to come out of the woodwork with stories to keep us confused and in the dark.

i don’t have a completely educated view on this, but my grandmother completely believes it was an inside job. she used to work for the government in new york prior to retirement – i’m not sure what aspect she was involved in, sorry – but she really really doesn’t believe that what was reported is what happened.
i don’t know if it’s a ‘mystery’ we’ll every be able to solve though really.

I am by no means a conspiracy theorist, but as Kevbo points out, there is plenty of interesting information – from mainstream media sources – to make me wonder what exactly happened.

There is no doubt that Bush used 9/11 as his Little Black Dress throughout his presidency. He used it as an excuse to limit our civil liberties, hold and torture people at Gitmo without charges, to start two wars (or as I shall refer to them henceforth, two quagmires), and to secure lucrative contracts for many of his cronies. It is all just a little too convenient for me to swallow. Besides, Cheney and Rumsfeld are both anti-Christ’s so there’s no telling what they are capable of.

Why do human beings persist in seeing conspiracies everywhere we turn? There is no way in hell that at least one credible person wouldn’t have told someone what was going on. There just is no way that the number of people required could keep a secret that big.

In relation to this…has anybody seen Oil, Smoke, and Mirrors?

Even if it was not an inside job in the sense that it was organised by the CIA and Bush pressed the button, I am pretty sure that there was a conspiracy involved. At least in that there was an “understanding” between the US government and their old friend Bin Laden (whom they were officially sponsoring as late as 1999 and they unofficially met a couple of months before the attacks)

I’m late to this discussion, but wanted to add my take. Short version: Having gone down the rabbit hole of looking into what happened that day, I highly doubt the official version our government tells us could possibly be true. Here are the Top 40 reasons to doubt the official story.

The one that resonates most strongly is this one:

2) Air Defense Failures
a. The US air defense system failed to follow standard procedures for responding to diverted passenger flights.
b. Timelines: The various responsible agencies – NORAD, FAA, Pentagon, USAF, as well as the 9/11 Commission – gave radically different explanations for the failure (in some cases upheld for years), such that several officials must have lied; but none were held accountable.
c. Was there an air defense standdown?

I used to live in the small town of Ashland, Oregon, and when Bush visited nearby Medford, air security was so intense that a local man’s harmless little personal airplane was forcibly ushered out of the skies, simply because Bush was in the area.

On 9/11, two planes crashed into the WTC buildings, and then two additional planes went completely off course and headed for Washington, DC. After what happened in my little town on a minor presidential visit, to think that our air defense, with the most advanced military in the world, wouldn’t usher those planes out of the skies… it’s just inconceivable to me. (Oh, and no one was ever held accountable for this massive failure.)

And this is just one anomaly. Did cell phones work at 30,000 feet in 2001? What caused the collapse of a third skyscraper, WTC 7, which was not hit by a plane, and crumbled at 5:20 pm that day?

When I scan that article I linked above, it’s just impossible for me to think that ALL of the items listed could be wrong, and Bush, Cheney, and co, are all telling the truth.

What I was implying but didn’t say directly: the only thing that makes sense to me about why those planes weren’t ushered or shot down by our air defense is that our fighter jets were ordered to stand down.

What other explanation could there be? I don’t think I’m open to changing my mind about the official story being true. But I’m honestly open to hear another explanation for the failure of our air defense that day.

There is to much evidence pointing towards a government conspiracy to ignore. I know it doesn’t seem that significant in the grand scheme of things but what about that news report that came out on the day of the attacks that stated that the 2nd tower had collapsed before it had actually collapsed.

@Trustinglife: Before 9/11, when people hijacked planes, the expectation was that they wanted to make a political point and take the plane somewhere, and that the best plan was to cooperate with them, get the plane to land, and then rescue the passengers. The idea that someone would fly a plane into a building to destroy it was not even considered, because it had never been done before, and it requires incredible logistics to accomplish.

The US military is a bureaucracy, and it is exceptionally good at following plans. If someone hijacking a plane to use it as a weapon had been in the plans, someone would have said “Execute plan 15-C!” and everything would have gone off without a hitch. But if there is no such plan, the military cannot magically coordinate and reconfigure itself to respond to a completely unforeseen situation in the space of an hour.

@cwilbur I understand what you’re saying and I don’t dispute it. I’m not referencing the first two planes that hit the WTC. I’m talking about the next two planes that were hijacked, abandoned their route, and headed straight for Washington DC. There was way more than enough time for those planes to be taken down, and I would think that our air defense was on high alert given what had already happened that morning.

It is no use arguing with conspiracy theorists. Regardless of whatever evidence, whatever proof, or whatever logic you bring to bear, they can always respond with some variation of, “That’s just what they want you to think.”

Don’t waste your time.

@cwilbur It should have been considered, since Tom Clancy wrote ‘Debt of Honor’ with that plot in 1994. I remember when I read it I though ‘I wonder how long before someone will actually do that’. I guess the answer was 7 years, more or less.

@cwilbur, also it is my understanding that there had been lots of “chatter” in the intelligence community about planes being used as weapons up to 9/11. I’m pretty sure that is mainstream media stuff, not fringe conspiracy stuff.

@cwilbur, if you will indulge me by watching 9 or 10 minutes of video, I would appreciate you going here and skipping ahead to 31:31.

I promise you there aren’t any whackos in the video. It is purely an examination of clips and headlines/articles from mainstream media sources.

Alternatively, here is a USA Today article that talks about drills that NORAD conducted in the years prior to 9/11 for such a scenario.

I think your commonsense POV is reasonable given what we’ve been told. I would be interested to know if you feel the same way after looking at either of those links. Thanks.

@kevbo: I looked at the USA Today article. It doesn’t contradict what I said in the slightest. (I didn’t watch the video, because I prefer reading to watching.)

NORAD conducted some drills on this scenario. This clearly didn’t make it out where it needed to be, probably because they thought the scenario was really unlikely. When push came to shove, there was no play in the playbook covering the scenario.

The argument here in favor of a conspiracy is that because NORAD conducted these drills, clearly they were aware of the possibility, and so the only possible reason that they would not have used the same tactics is because someone told them not to. But I’ve worked in large bureaucracies: I think it’s far more likely that after the first plane hit the towers, a junior officer somewhere who had been on a training drill tried to tell people what was up, and by the time the information filtered up (especially when officers not involved in the training drills were responding “Nonsense! That’s not why people hijack planes!”—which was the conventional wisdom before 9/11) the other planes had crashed and hit the Pentagon.

Plots in Clancy books, chatter in the intelligence community, drills in NORAD—these are interesting but not proof of a conspiracy. The contingency plan and the response needed to make it into the general playbook for the Air Force. They didn’t. This is far easier to explain as the standard operations of a bureaucracy—hidebound, conservative, and resistant to change—than as an active conspiracy.

Find me one person involved in the conspiracy at any level who’s willing to testify under oath to that fact and I’ll believe you.

So what if I did? How would you verify that they are credible?

Who was responding, “Nonsense!” I never heard or read about that.

How could there be a drill, but no play in the playbook? Aren’t drills used to practice plays in the playbook?

I’m not going to bother linking (it’s accessible via my first post on this thread), but there were multiple drills happening on the morning of 9/11 all over North American airspace. Cheney was in command of the operations that morning. The drills were designed to obscure the actual hijacking and delay the response of rank and file participants by confusing them. Remember “Is this real world or exercise?” The same setup was used to pull off the subway and bus bombings in London on 7/7. First responders were tied up in drills of the very same nature on the very same morning.

So, no one is going to change your mind. That’s fine. It baffles me (just as I’m sure folks of your ilk are baffled by someone with my opinions), but it’s also pretty interesting how views on the same event can be that divergent.

I accept also that I may change no one’s minds here. But I want to make sure I’m being clear.

My understanding is that when ANY plane veers off-course and heads toward Washington, DC, that plane is immediately ushered or shot down by the best air defense force in the world. They have jets and pilots on ready – like a fire department – ready to be in the air within two minutes, with jets that fly much, much faster than any commercial plane.

That any plane going off-course, into DC airspace, then into the Pentagon, and wasn’t shot down, makes absolutely no sense to me. Unless… it was ordered to stand down, or there were drills happening simultaneously designed deliberately to obscure what was happening. This negligence to protect our capital and Pentagon is beyond my wildest imaginings about what would be allowed to happen – honestly. Otherwise, heads would have rolled.

I’m normally not a conspiracy theorist. But there’s just a little too much shadiness for this little head of mine to consider that the official story is near the truth.

AH! Okay. Let me read all this, I havent had internet!

@kevbo: what you’re asking me to believe is that hundreds of people knew something was up with this, cooperated to pull it off—and then that not one of them stepped forward to talk about what they did.

You’re asking me to believe that the Air Force was told to allow a plane to hit the Pentagon, and yet not one outraged pilot has said anything about it.

You’re asking me to believe that explosives were placed in the World Trade Center to hasten its collapse, and yet not one building manager or maintenance worker has said anything about it.

For you to establish to my satisfaction that this was a conspiracy and not just a major bureaucratic fuckup would require that you demonstrate intent—not merely that it could have been planned and pulled off with the cooperation of people inside the American government, but that it was planned and pulled off with the cooperation of people inside the American government. In other words, not only that there were drills happening elsewhere, but that the drills were happening with the intent of allowing 9/11 to happen.

But none of the evidence you’ve presented speaks to intent. You ask reasonable questions—such as, if NORAD was running drills with this as a premise, why weren’t we better prepared? The thing is, in the absence of clear documentation of intent, every point you raise can be answered by bureaucratic incompetence.

I’m not completely on this train cwilbur, but even a couple of high ranking officials could have coordinated this thing and covered it up with bureaucratic incompetence. I’m saying COULD. I’m not saying did.

@bodyhead: Exactly. And what I’m asking for is the evidence to get from “it could have been a conspiracy”—which I’m perfectly happy to agree with, although I consider it unlikely—to “it was a conspiracy.”

@cwilbur, stick with your government incompetence theory. It’s amazing how incompetent the government is when it comes to anything but siphoning money, isn’t it?

@nocountry2, Thank you for suggesting Oil, Smoke and Mirrors. It provided a POV on the subject that I hadn’t fully fleshed out or considered, and it has sort of allayed some anxiety that I feel toward this topic. A little truth goes a long way in that regard. Thanks.

Interesting the idea that Bush could do whatever he wanted with 35% approval. I’ve been thinking a lot about how mind control (or by another name- propaganda) and reality intersect, and it really gives you pause to consider all the messaging in the media (tv, movies, etc), where it comes from and to what purpose.

One other thought related to that movie is that I have little doubt that there are other energy technologies that are being suppressed. So, yeah, we’ll run out of oil at some point, but then we’ll see better efficiency or a new technology emerge that we’ll migrate over to, and it’ll cost us enough to keep us in debt further still. Somehow, we’ll still be made to pay for the privilege of conducting our daily lives.

@cwilbur I actually found myself slightly swayed by your post! Wow! Wasn’t expecting that. I can’t demonstrate intent. But I know if I were orchestrating this, I would sure make sure no documentary proof was left undestroyed.

@kevbo What about cwilbur’s point about no one stepping forward to report foulplay in planning? Any evidence of such a thing?

@kevbo: the government is actually pretty incompetent at siphoning money, for that matter.

@Trustinglife, The best I can come up with is the telling FBI agents or whomever to back off investigations of the bin Ladens and the ignoring of multiple warnings, but I don’t think that even cuts the mustard. The other thing I would say is that no one was punished for 9/11, which is what you’d expect from a bureaucratic fuck up of that magnitude—in fact, people were promoted.

I think the answer to that question is that you’re not going to get an answer. Dead men tell no tales, and anyone else who would have been involved in something like that sure as hell wouldn’t come forward. Psychopaths and dissociative personalities don’t have consciences like the rest of us. The fallacy is believing that these people care about us like we do. The mistake is not understanding that when they say “we” they don’t mean “us” like we do. If these people are going to kill a couple hundred thousand Iraqis, what the fuck to they care about 3,000 Americans? Especially when it means that they get to make a shitload of money off of the war?

If anything, the Oil, Smoke and Mirrors thing puts some perspective on the issue. We (which “we” anyway?) “had to” take control of the Middle East to ensure that we get control over the last big pockets of oil and not China or whomever. Well, then, I guess the men and women who jumped from the towers to their deaths died for the greater good, huh? Except what if (as I believe) that efficiency technologies have been suppressed for all this time. Then what should we conclude?

@cwilbur, dude, you and I are not even in the same ballpark. You want this thing gift-wrapped, and that’s just not going to happen. You started out saying “there was no such plan” and then it’s “well, there was a drill, but the plan wasn’t fleshed out enough.” And now I have to go through my rolodex of bad guys and come up with someone involved who will testify under oath at some imaginary trial. It’s going to be 51% against no matter what I say, so have it your way.

This thread sparked my interest in the whole 9/11 Conspiracy Theory, I started to follow some of these links and search on my own.

This video from the BBC is one of the more interesting things I have seen. Why exactly are they reporting that tower seven already collapsed when it was clearly visible in the background? Why did they lose their feed minutes before the tower actually collapsed?

The more I see the more I’m agreeing with Kevbo and the others who think that something had to have been fishy. I’m not sure to what extent, but I am pretty convinced that somebody, somewhere in our government knew something was going on.

P.S. I’m pretty sure Oswald acted alone and that we really did put a man on the moon.

I so appreciate the civility in this thread. I’ve actually found myself excited to see new responses on this question in my activity. It’s quite stunning to me that we can hold respect for each other, listen, and disagree about an issue that is often so polarizing. Thanks y’all.

SuperMouse, I feel the same way. Something fishy went on. Not sure what exactly, or who was behind it. But the pieces don’t fit at all. Thanks for investigating.

Do you guys want some credible people to bring up some more good questions?
This is Norman Minetta, Transportation Secretary, testimony at the 9/11 Commission talking about things that were happening while Dick Cheney was in charge that morning. Remember, Bush was at the school in Florida. Was it shot down? Was it not?

One of PNAC’s goals was to increase defense spending. Rumsfeld was meeting in the Pentagon, on the opposite site of where it was hit, the morning of 9/11 , with congressional delegations, saying, “Rumsfeld: I had said at an 8:00 o’clock breakfast that sometime in the next two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve months there would be an event that would occur in the world that would be sufficiently shocking that it would remind people again how important it is to have a strong healthy defense department that contributes to—That underpins peace and stability in our world. And that is what underpins peace and stability.

In fact we can’t have healthy economies and active lives unless we live in a peaceful, stable world, and I said that to these people. And someone walked in and handed a note that said that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. And we adjourned the meeting, and I went in to get my CIA briefing—.

This is Congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney grilling Rumsfeld on a few things about 9/11 and especially the 4 drills going on on 9/11. Footage also includes some questions for a general on these drills.

This is a long series of 9/11 Commission testimony from family members of those lost raising some good questions, most of which were never answered.

This is a list of a whole bunch of unanswered questions of the 9/11 commission from the Family Steering Committee. Some of these questions are questions asked on this site, that family members also asked, which were simply ignored.

@Trusting, Up there you mentioned that you would try to destroy documentary evidence that pointed out the conspiricy. Not me. In fact I would donate enough money to dicredible crackpots that they all make documenarys. If your opponents are all crazy, it’s easy to discredit them. It’s the people who lean too far and wear tin foil hats that really make people believe the offical story. Do I believe CNN or a crazy person who has also claimed to be visited by aliens?

I’m just saying.

I’m not saying I’d believe the guy visited by aliens, but I will not trust the corporate owned, corporate ran, agenda driven, war mongering, war profiteering, media to give proper information on something that would not positively benefit profits.

And no one is talking about aliens here anyway. We are just talking about stories and new footage that journalists have reported on, it just wasn’t the breaking news of the day, so most people forgot it about it the following day.

Here’s another angle on this event. If you buy it, you’ll never look at movies the same again. (I think part 1 is actually a little weak, but I expect the subsequent parts will make up for it.)

I found one on my own that I haven’t seen online anywhere. It’s discussed here.

@kevbo, you’re using the word “conspiracy.” If you can’t prove anything even to 51%, “conspiracy” is an awfully strong word to use.

Conspiracy requires intent. No intent, no conspiracy. Prove the intent, you prove the conspiracy. Until then, you’ve just got a series of unlucky coincidences.

9/11 was the doing of the railroad transportation community to scare flyers out of the sky.

26 matches for the word “conspiracy”..... 27

@cwilbur How do you prove intent? Is the only way to prove something for the intenders to admit that they intended something? What other ways would proof be possible? What if all the intenders denied it? What if they destroyed all the evidence of their intentions, making it impossible to prove?

I’m imagining in your shoes it might be exasperating to hear these persistent questions – how do you prove a conspiracy is wrong? I don’t know if that’s possible either. If you’re willing to continue to engage, I’m curious what you would say to these questions.

You get where I’m coming from on this. I’d say about 50 unlucky coincidences start to become something other than coincidences. But you’re right – I can’t prove it. All I’m left with is gratitude that the alleged perpetrators are out of office, and the hope that someday we’ll receive a fair, thorough investigation.

@Trustinglife: if you can show a significant pattern of behavior from one person that has no other interpretation—the legal standard is “beyond a reasonable doubt”—except that he intended 9/11 to happen.

In this case, you’d have to show, for instance, that Cheney ordered the air defense to stand down so that the plane could hit the Pentagon, and that there was no other plausible reason for him to do so—that proves intent. And then you’d need to show that Cheney was in touch with the hijackers of the planes, directly or indirectly, so that they could have planned something like this, and that there was no other plausible reason for him to be in contact with them.

I can’t show that there was no conspiracy. But we have an explanation that covers the major points, and which doesn’t require a great conspiracy and cover up to work. So if you want me to believe that this was not a terrorist attack, but a conspiracy by people at the highest levels of government to commit treason, you’re going to have to do more than show me that there were a bunch of coincidences that can’t be explained.

Frankly, I think that the errors in judgment that the Bush administration made are damning enough—capitalizing on the general ignorance of geography and Middle East politics in order to gain public support for the adventure in Iraq as some kind of reasonable response to 9/11 is just the beginning—that there doesn’t need to be a conspiracy. The villains are villainous enough without needing to twirl their moustaches.

ISI chief: 1) meets with top US intelligence officials the week before 9/11, and 2) orders his deputy to wire $100,000 to Mohammad Atta, but the US does not pursue this anomaly.

The FBI admits it has no hard evidence connecting Osama bin Laden to 9/11.

ARE WE TO MAINTAIN, THEN, THAT BIN LADEN DID NOT CONSPIRE TO EXECUTE THE 9/11 ATTACKS?

I have spent the better part of the last four evenings following these links and finding more and more of my own. There is officially no doubt in my mind that we are not being told everything about 9/11. There is certainly more to this than meets the eye.

@kevbo: Considering that Osama bin Laden has claimed responsibility for the attacks, I think the question is asinine.

At this point, I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by engaging further.

@cwilbur, wouldn’t it be in bin Laden’s best interest to claim responsibility whether or not he was truly behind the attacks? If he can get people believing that he is capable of destruction on that level it certainly causes fear and awe, and most of all name recognition for him personally and Al Qaeda. I for one had never heard of Osama bin Laden prior to September 11, 2001. Isn’t the idea of terrorism to get the terrorist’s names out there along with the cause they are fighting for? His being blamed for the attack on the twin towers certainly did that.

Hey, I’m claiming responsibility. I must have done it, too.

@cwilbur

Please post the link where Bin Laden says he claims full responsibility.

I was also under the impression that Kaleed Sheik Muhammed was responsible for the attacks.
Which is it?

Watched some of Kevbo’s suggested videos about Hollywood foreshadowing.

If you can watch those and come away thinking, “OMG! It’s all right there, spelled out in black and white. They said what they were going to do. And we never even noticed.”... well, then you’re a conspiracy theorist of the first order.

On the other hand, if you watch those and then think…

- but the World Trade Towers were iconic to the NY skyline… of course, they’re shown a lot.
– wait… did they flip the video image 180 degrees just to show “116” as “911” on a video control panel?
– yah, but “ground zero” has always been a term of the center of a catastrophe, ever since the invention of the nuclear bomb
– they lost me at Ernest + file cabinets + a poster with an airplane on it.
– blowing up buildings was the end result of what Fight Club was actually about… and the impact being a reset of global economy.

…then welcome to the dark, unenlightened side. Here there be no dragons. (sigh)

—

By the by, I didn’t watch the second one… but am wondering if there was any mention of the Tom Clancy novel Executive Orders wherein terrorists flew a plane into the Capitol Building and decapitate the U.S. government (POTUS, VP, House, Senate) in one fell swoop. That was five years in advance of 9–11.

@rob, no Executive Orders but there’s this pilot episode of a show called The Lone Gunman, which was filmed six months before 9/11 and is basically “the plot.” Skip ahead to 4:50.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu1AUhyCBWY

I actually think that series is a little weak, and I was sort of shooting from the hip when I posted it (unfortunately). So, I’ll back off the movie angle since it sort of confuses the issue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5jsb4Yzd8g

Rescue Me on FX is going into 9/11 conspiracy theories this season. This clip exposes PNAC and it’s goals well before 9/11.

I did enjoy the small series of episodes of The Unit on CBS where the colonel got married and it turned out his new wife was actually part of the internal fraternity of real power in Washington… and her job was to recruit him at the expense of his men.

I enjoy the conspiracy as entertainment.

Yeah, I’m a Unit regular myself (and David Mamet fan), although sometimes they get a little too metaphysical (e.g. the episode with the spear point) and they stretched out the resolution of the affair between the colonel and the dude’s wife way too long. It’s another show I want to like a little more than I actually enjoy.

Hot off the press.

1. NSA was monitoring and wiretapping alleged 9/11 terrorists, including bin Laden, and notified no one. 2. NSA chief was never reprimanded for failure. 3. Bush appoints NSA chief to oversee expansion of domestic wiretapping and then appoints him director of CIA. 4. 9/11 commission never examines role of NSA in intelligence failures.

Are we still believing this is incompetence? Or is it more likely that there’s some puppetmastering at work?

I, too, have looked at all of the footage, opinions, articles, and whatnot that admittedly makes a decent case for 9/11 being an inside job. Much of it, however, appears to be used as props to support the basic case that the Government has successfully started a war and removed liberties from us. But we can arrive at this same place another way. Consider the following:

Did the 911 attacks scare the bejesus out of a good number of Americans? Yes.

Did the Government capitalize on the fear following the 911 attacks? Yes.

Did the Government use the 911 attacks as a pretense for war? Yes.

Did the Government use faulty intelligence data in making its case for war? Yes.

Did elements of the Government use the 911 attacks as a pretense for sweeping changes in civil liberties? Yes.

Is it possible that the Government simply dropped the ball on 911? Yes.

Is it possible that elements of a bloated bureaucracy saw warning signs prior to the 911 attacks? Yes.

Is it possible that those same elements were prevented from acting on those warning signs not because of some malicious intent but instead from any combination of ignorance, ego, and/or outright lack of communication with other elements of the same government? Yes.

Is it possible that the 911 attacks could have been thwarted had the warning signs been acted upon? Yes.

What is more of a stretch for the imagination?

A. Our government (or elements therein) maliciously plots an elaborate scheme designed to destroy buildings, kill citizens of many countries, and terrorize Americans which then allows the Government (or elements therein) to carefully pull certain civil liberties away from its citizens. The Government (or elements therein) achieves its goal and pulls the nation into a war, while making claims of terrible weapons being developed and hoarded by another country knowing full well those weapons did not exist and would need to be “discovered” at some point to justify the war, only to later never find said weapons or even to try and plant them.

or

B. A group of terrorists maliciously plots a somewhat simple scheme designed to destroy buildings and kill citizens of many countries and terrorize Americans. The plot largely relies on the possibility that the country rests within a false sense of security. Lacking any real situational awareness, the Government (or elements therein), in essence, gets caught with its pants down and the country gets suckered punched. In a fit of rage, revenge and perhaps even embarrassment, the Government (or elements therein) find any and all excuse to bring the country to war up to even using the notion of terrible weapons being developed and hoarded by another country. So strong is the desire for revenge that data either gets overlooked or perhaps willfully ignored by the Government (or elements therein).

So we arrive at the same destination. Our government failed us. Specifically it failed the 3,000+ souls lost on that day. But it doesn’t need the conspiracy and subterfuge of an elaborate scheme to get us to the present day.

Very interesting. I find myself somewhat convinced. Kevbo, any response?

A is also known as LIHOP (let it happen on purpose) or MIHOP (made…)

B is what I would characterize as the “incompetence theory.”

I don’t believe it is possible that the government simply dropped the ball after the hijackers were “discovered.”

Is it possible that three steel buildings could on the same day collapse into their own footprints from fire and impact for the first time in history (even though those buildings were designed to withstand the impact of similarly sized airliners)?

Is it possible for them to collapse at a freefall rate without some kind of help?

Is it possible that the government dropped the ball during the plane crashing phase, but already had a backup plan to blow the towers in case of catastrophe and then executed that plan to prevent damage to surrounding buildings?

Is it possible for airplanes to vaporize upon impact?

Is it possible for flaming airplane impact to produce molten steel that remains for weeks?

I understand that it was an inside job (not believe). The people who deny it, to me, are akin to young Earth creationists and Holocaust deniers.

All you have to ask is: Why wasn’t a plane found at the Pentagon? There was no plane there.

Alex Jones hit the nail on the head. Watch his Obama Deception to find out why.

@cwilbur
Where is the wreckage outside of the Pentagon? Do you really think jet fuel can burn/vaporize the engins from that plane? Wouldn’t the tail have been sitting on the ground outside, the wings sheared off and most of the fuel deposited on the outside?
Seemed the hole was rather regular shaped too. No imprint of the wings and they would have been wider than the hole in the building. Look at the WTC before it fell and see what the planes did there.

@DREW R
So how do you account for the missing planes and people at the Pentagon and Pennsylvania field. There were planes, there were people, and they are gone. If there’s no evidence of the planes at crash site then where did they go?
If one wants to raze buldings to start a war with reckless disregard for human life, is it necessary to have a controlled demolition? Why not take out a couple of thousand others?
Is it possible that through subterfuge and money channeling that the CIA enlisted the aid of actual terrorists to precipitate a war?

@DREW_R Isn’t it amazing that the HUGE number of people a conspiracy of this magnitude would require would ALL keep their mouths shut. Not one of them got so much as a guilty conscience on their deathbeds. WOW!~

@The_unconservative_one
There have been people that were on the inside and the media has put them right where you are talking about as just conspiracy therorists and bullshit artists. When I personally believe that they are the ones we need to listen to. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

@SeventhSense I don’t believe there were planes in the Pentagon and in PA. There was no wreckage, luggage or bodies/parts.

So where did they go? There were actual planes and there are actual missing people. You can speak to their families if you don’t take my word for it.

@SeventhSense Only the shadow knows. ;)

@DREW_R
Eeeeeggggsactly.
Worth looking into before chasing conspiracy theories.

Alex Jones seems quite crazy. There are many questions about 9/11 that should be answered though, and people like him makes normal people look crazy when they ask similar or sometimes the same questions.

If it’s an inside job is not the question really. It’s why we won’t get explanations for several events and things around and after it, that doesn’t make sense.

@oratio If we got the answers we would know who to put the noose on. ;)

Rescue Me on FX has been digging into some details this season.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnrVt9BmKzE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j-03up50Bk

I’d like to say that it’s interesting to ask “do you really believe that jet fuel can vaporize a plane’s engine?” etc. when you really know nothing about the subject and have no scientific background whatsoever. It’s easy to state science-y sounding things as evidence for your cause when you have no real fucking idea what you’re talking about.

@quarkquarkquark Have you ever seen a vehical engine vaporize due to heat? The only comparable damage I have seen is with a white phosphorus gernade and it melted through the whole engine block in a neat little circle. They are made of parts to hold up to that kind of heat. Use your own fucking head instead of the main stream media.

The point is this: I, using my own head, am not a credible source. Common sense doesn’t explain anything. Similarly, you, unless you are an expert in one of the involved fields, cannot defend a scientific viewpoint by “using your own fucking head.” I believe the mainstream explanation because that explanation is supported by science.

Conspiracy theories thrive on incorrect initial information. The “official explanation” does not claim that the engines “vaporized.” If indeed they did, then I agree this would be suspect. Parts of the engines from all four planes were found. Neither you nor I would expected them to have found a fully intact engine, but it’s important to know that the “disappearance” of the engines is not a claim anyone is making. The engines, like the rest of the plane, were blown apart in the respective impacts, and were found in pieces.

@quarkquarkquark There, I see it again. A blind faith in the main stream media. Sheeple is what we have in America these days and people don’t think for themselves. They don’t take into account that there are respected scientists and engineers that have refuted the findings of the main stream media scientists and engineers.

I can’t argue with this viewpoint: you’re dismissing respected sources as “mainstream media” and using the phrase “main stream” as a kind of invective. I understand that you do not trust the mainstream media. This is fine; they are hardly trustworthy. But I don’t believe that the scientists and engineers whose opinions I respect are members of a vast conspiracy to cover up the truth, and while I believe that they are capable of being wrong, the demolition theory is a minority opinion. Most scientists and engineers (including an architect I know personally—I promise he is not a member of the conspiracy), when presented with the facts about the construction of the WTC, say that the impacts could and did cause the collapse, and that in fact a demolition would have been costly, complicated, and incredibly hard to pull off. The general consensus among professionals in these fields is that the official explanation is both plausible and probable. “Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth,” for example, makes valid points. That is, their explanations are completely and totally possible. But the majority of their colleagues disagree on scientific and logistical grounds. I don’t think it’s reasonable to dismiss this opinion simply because it is “mainstream.” Your distrust of the media is perfectly well-founded, but it is not sufficient evidence to reject a perfectly reasonable explanation.

I tend to agree with the “Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth,” but that there was a very well-reasoned post. Excellent points.

@Trustinglife, thank you. You seem unusually reasonable for someone with this alternative belief. I am interested in hearing your side of things: why favor a so-called “expert” opinion that is in the minority? Why not accept a truly reasonable explanation?

@DREW_R, your silence is both conspicuous and telling.

I’m leaving momentarily for vacation for several days, so now’s not the good time for a full answer. My short answer… from the explanations that I’ve seen, the most plausible are on the side of the “conspiracy” theory, rather than the official explanation of what happened. There are so many holes in that official version, that I simply can’t believe it as credible. Details on all that are above on this thread. Thank you for your respectful curiosity, @quarkquarkquark.

@quarkquarkquark Your disregard of the othersides findings is also telling.

I’ve read all of it; I just don’t believe it. The so-called official explanation makes much more sense to me. While I don’t agree with @Trustinglife‘s opinion, you have been very combative and you have not given a reason to accept your position as valid. A demolition is complicated to pull off, as is a vast conspiracy. My close friend the architect is very incredulous about the findings of the “other side.” I need some reasons for your rejection of the reasonable explanation.

@quarkquarkquark I have watched alot of the same stuff you have I am sure. I am not just talking about the Towers either. The PA crash site pics and vids I have seen show stuff on the ground but nothin, IMO, close to what should have been there from an air liner plowing the field. Same at the Pentagon. There would have been big pieces of the plane outside like sheared off wings and tail section. The body of the aircraft could have made it in accordian style but the continuing hole had to have some kind of hardened projectile to go as far as it did thru reinforced concrete.

As to the towers, I saw the PBS and Dicovery channels vids. They made a bit of sense but how do you explain the precise cuts in the gurders and I really do not believe the assertion that jet fuel weakened the internal skeletal stucture enough to melt it or weaken it enough to come down on itself.

Most of all it is a measure of how much I distrust our government.

I haven’t really watched anything except for the conspiracy vids. Everything I’ve got is from personal research. I like to draw my own conclusions, same as yourself.

I don’t know that much about the PA crash site. The key thing you say that makes me wary of your position is “IMO”—you know I’m a big believer in expert opinions.

As far as the Pentagon goes, there is video that I’m sure you distrust of the plane going in, as well as eyewitness accounts of a plane from the surrounding area. Everything I’ve read points to the results of the Pentagon impact being consistent with what we are told happened.

Here’s the thing about the towers. People say it looked like a “controlled demolition.” I agree. It did look like that. But here’s the thing. Each floor in the twin towers was supported by beams hung from columns that extended up from the foundation, all the way around the perimeter of the building. There were several dozen of these columns. If the buildings were indeed to be professionally demolished, a charge would have to be placed at the base of each column. If the charges were placed asymmetrically, the building would have toppled like a tree instead of pancaking. So I ask: why would you want to make it look like a professional demolition? If you were to perpetrate this gigantic hoax on the American people and the world, why not place charges that would more believably simulate the effect of an airplane impact? One alternative scenario is this: the plane hits, weakens columns on one side of the building, and the tower collapses, causing twenty times more damage than it would have pancaking. This could have been easily simulated by placing charges only on one side of the building. Why would conspirators work hard to make it look like a controlled demolition?

You say “I really do not believe the assertion that jet fuel weakened the internal skeletal structure enough to melt it or weaken it enough to come down on itself.”
This is not really an issue of what you believe. It’s physics. People in the Truth movement like to say that jet fuel does not burn hot enough to melt steel. This is TRUE. But no steel melted. Jet fuel burns more than hot enough to weaken steel. And all that was necessary was to weaken it the tiniest bit in order for the top floors to collapse onto the middle floors. From that point on, the combined weight of these floors was too much for even non-weakened beams to support. Thus, the building pancakes.

“Most of all it is a measure of how much I distrust our government.”
I distrust the government too. I feel shitty every day about the fucked-up workings of the government. But this is not a measure of what you, as a layman, believe. Everything in the official explanation works as it should scientifically. But you are impervious to science; you will continue to defend the conspiracy theories at all costs because of your mistrust of the government, whatever the cause.

A final note on “Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.” A lot of their assertions make sense, scientifically. HOWEVER, they base these assertions on faulty initial information, for example the presence of “molten steel” in the wreckage of the Twin Towers. The scientific conclusions they come to regarding the presence of molten steel are very sound. But there was no molten steel. This type of thing has been refuted again and again. But they, like you, harbor a deep mistrust of the government and will AT ALL COSTS disbelieve ANY OFFICIAL EXPLANATION.

Napoleon said, and I can only paraphrase, ‘Do not attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.’ The government sucks. It sucks enough to let this happen, and so much that it could never accomplish a conspiracy like the one you propose.

@cwilbur I’m joining on pretty late here, Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility did he? In that case why does the tape showing this have him writing with his right hand when he is left handed, I’m left handed and I would never do that, it doesn’t even look like him either…if this was a court case against the government it wouldn’t be as simple as an acquittance they defiantly were up to something, you can’t ignore the chain of events and the science…any dim-wit can see there’s a few too many holes in the official story. Many countries in history have destroyed their own building icons eg Germany to side fear on their population, because the US are ‘the good guys’ they wouldn’t do it either?! Look at the history of US politics and warring and you will see otherwise…

Terrorism is not a big threat to the US, more people die from gun crime from within your own population! Unnecessary dietary conditions such as obesity, why isn’t the affort put into solving this problem?
There are people out there that want to kill Westerners but you won’t catch them all, we won’t win this war, its costing a fortune, and its not doing us any favors and when the hell is it gonna end? Will it be over by Christmas? (pun intended)...

Wrong. All wrong. No possible response.

Mainstream media interview with Architects and Engineer’s for 9/11 Truth spokesman Richard Gage, AIA

I think I’ve addressed this.

9/11 Press for Truth documentary airs on Denver PBS station KBDI

@quarkquarkquark- wake up, dude.

holy shit! you’ve changed my mind! I wonder why so many well-informed experts who have been presented with this information haven’t also changed their minds! Who knew a minority opinion had no reason for being a minority opinion?

… and yet “I think I’ve addressed this” is supposed to mean something.

@kevbo That was some awesome media dude.

Thanks. ;-) Also, from what I’m reading lately, it looks like the seams might be splitting (for the bad guys) on a global level. We’ll see.

Welcome. Fingers crossed that some stuff falls through the cracks and they get exposed. Like that will happen, but hey, gotta have faith.

More and more people are now comming out with a conspiracy theory, after all, they found Suddam, yet have yet to find Bin Ladin who is responsible. Yet war was declared and Suddam put to death. I liked what this one stand up comc said, unfortunately, this man is no longer alive due to sting ray, but send in the crocodile hunter to find bin ladin, by gosh, this man has been able to escape the american troups, but alas, what is this hidding under a rock, it is bin laddin. LOL Look war is for profit. Germany was depressed by the French from WWI yet blamed the jews for prosperity. Jeleous I think so. If about economics, they would have declared war on France. Jews, were and easier target, and antisemitism is alive and well to this day. Let’s start another war because they don’t have the same religious beliefs as we do. Is that not the way it has been since the beginning of time.Worked then and still does now. That is why I hate religion of any kind as it is an excuse to killl

Yes. I believe that 9/11 was allowed to happen by disabling/confusing NORAD.

New video that shows how officially recorded eyewitness testimony contradicts official Pentagon account.

“NATIONAL SECURITY ALERT – SENSITIVE INFORMATION”

shit.

No, It was to well organized to have been an American project.

ba dum cha

Anyone who believes this bullshit is a grade-A, certified fruitcake. What idiocy!

I answered a similar conspiracy question concerning our manned moon landings. I work for the government, and I’ve seen NO evidence the US federal government could pull off such a conspiracy without screwing it up or leaking it before, during and after the fact. I worked in the Navy Annex about ¼ mile uphill from the Pentagon, and heard/felt the boom from the explosion as the United Airlines 767 hit the ground in front of, and skipped into the Pentagon. Our fire alarm went off shortly thereafter, and we exited the building into the east parking lot just as a huge, black smoke cloud came roiling up the hill toward us. I walked down with a couple thousand other military and civilians, and worked at the crash site ‘til about 9:00 pm that night. There were no pieces of the aircraft on the outside of the building, but I saw the damage it caused on the outer ring of the Pentagon, and was a part of the complete confusion that ensued following the attack. I ate lunch in the courtyard at the Pentagon a few days later, and there was still a 767 engine lying nearly intact in the grass, roped off with police tape and guarded by federal police officers. I have to ask the question for those that think the US fired a cruise missile at, or otherwise orchestrated an attack on our own military headquarters: where did the United Airlines 767 (and the passengers and crew aboard it) go if not into the wall of the Pentagon? Where did the other three airliners, passengers and crew go, if not into their respective targets (or the field in Pennsylvania)? Is it AT ALL conceivable that our own air defense over our capitol is not what it used to be since the threat of Soviet attack during the Cold War? I personally witnessed examples of many of the above, and I think if the US government were really behind this, the response to this unprecedented attack would have at least appeared more organized and decisive. I can say that none of the people working side-by-side with me on the Pentagon helicopter pad had any prior knowledge or suspicion of the events of 9/11, and were equally shocked/horrified/baffled/confused/sad.

I have no doubt that there were indicators of such a plot and the subsequent attack, but I’m sure we didn’t have the mechanism in place to weave all the separate threads together, and correctly interpret the hints and clues leading up to 9/11. Aside from Tom Clancy, I don’t think any of us were remotely prepared for the audacity of an attack on US soil using OUR OWN airliners. Maybe I’m just naive….

@trident86, welcome to Fluther. Forgive me for picking apart your statements. It’s more a compulsion of mine than anything to do with you personally.

There’s a decent documentary online that posits (through multiple, independent yet corroborating testimonies) that the plane took a different flight path than officially described, flew low over the Pentagon and landed at Reagan National. I couldn’t say what transpired from there.

It’s interesting that you were inthe Navy Annex, because the “alternate” flight path alluded to above actually meant the plane came in low over the Navy Annex, so I’d be curious to know if you remember hearing it pass over prior to the explosion.

The alternate flight path, by the way, would have made it impossible for the plane to have done the damage it did on it’s approach to the Pentagon, but there’s lots out there to say that felled lamposts and the like were staged prior to the approach.

It’s interesting that you say there were no plane parts outside the building and then say that the engine was sitting on the lawn. That seems contradictory. Also, that the plane skipped across the lawn. I wasn’t aware that it had, but maybe it’s one of the details I’d forgotten about.

It’s difficult to reconcile that Rumsfeld reported on Sept 10 that $2.3 trillion was missing from the Pentagon budget and that our air defense was inadequate on 9/11, but if both are true, then the real crime is our fake defense budget/political slush fund.

Kevbo,

Don’t worry—I wouldn’t post on here if I had thin skin, and the thing that drew me to this site in the first place was the dialog from so many different points of view. I’ve watched most of the documentaries on TV, since I actually missed a lot of what happened on that day due to my proximity to just one of the events. I remember hearing that a plane hit one of the World Trade Center buildings, and immediately discounting it as an accident involving a small private plane. My boss suggested we walk to the other end of our building and down a floor to the Navy Public Affairs office, since they had the only TV in our wing of the building. We got downstairs just in time to hear the news about the second impact, and watched video of the fire from the first impact. My boss made the comment, “We’d better get back upstairs. This may not directly affect us, but we’re about to get really busy.” At the time, we worked in the Navy Bureau of Personnel, which dealt with administrative issues for the Navy and its people. As we entered the stairwell headed back to the third floor, we heard a loud boom, which sounded to me like someone slammed a set of double doors to the stairwell. By the time I got back to the third floor where we worked, someone had pulled the fire alarm, and people were headed for the fire escapes. I swept our office to make sure no one was left inside, then left the building and joined the masses already assembled in our parking lots. Smoke was rolling up the hill from the Pentagon, and I spoke with someone who was looking out the window just as the 767 passed low over our building and exploded upon impact.

I checked out with my boss, then headed down with several hundred people toward the Pentagon to help out, assuming the airliner had an in-flight emergency and had tried to make an emergency landing at Reagan International Airport. Once I got to the southwest lawn outside the Pentagon, I could see the grass adjacent to the helo pad torn up where the airliner hit the ground just prior to impact with the side of the building. There was a cut in the side of the building where the aircraft impacted and drove through at least the outer wing of the Pentagon. I assume that the entire aircraft was pushed through the side of the building, and at some point exploded. I also assume that one of the engines was thrown up and over the five rings of the Pentagon proper, coming to rest in the courtyard at the center of the building where I saw it a few days later.

Interestingly enough, once I got up to within 100 yards of the building, my perspective shrunk to the hole in the building, the flames coming out of the side, and the argument between the local police, firefighters, FBI and the military brass starting to file out of the Pentagon over who was in charge of the “incident”. I distinctly remember the on-scene fire chief saying, “Once you guys figure out who’s in charge, why don’t you send someone over to check in with me.” When no one else was quite sure how to deal with this disaster, the fire fighters were the only ones with even a semblance of a plan.

A week or so later, I spoke with a technician who was tightening the guy wires to one of the antennae on our roof as the airliner flew low overhead, who said that he nearly fell off the building watching what appeared to him to be an airliner trying to make an emergency landing. He said he watched the airliner impact the lawn just short of the southwest wall of the Pentagon adjacent to the helicopter pad.

That is my mental picture of the events of that day as I witnessed and experienced them, accurate or inaccurate. The question I have in my mind is “why do is take the worst of mankind to bring out the best in mankind?” I witnessed some horrifying things on 9/11, all of which were washed out by incredible acts of compassion and heroism. It’s sad that it often takes a disaster to bring out the best in mankind.

@trident86, it’s difficult for me to tell whether your recollection contradicts or confirms what I’ve regarded as the most likely explanation. It kind of depends on what the technician you spoke to meant by “overhead” and whether he really saw it bump the lawn or interpolated that detail based on what he witnessed before and after the crash/explosion. My understanding is that only the top floors of the Pentagon are visible from the Navy Annex, due to a stand of trees in between (which would make it difficult/impossible to see the lawn), but I’ve never seen any of the geography in person.

Anyway, here’s the video with testimonials that put the plane over the Navy Annex and definitively north of Columbia Pike. The video is 22 min.

Now that I’ve looked at my previous responses, please note that it’s pretty much the same video as referenced above.

Also, I get now that you distinguish between the courtyard and the lawn, so that part makes sense. Sorry… never been there myself.

Thank you for sharing your perspective.

Operations Northwoods and Ajax prove that there are high level men in the United States Government who think its perfectly okay to stage terror attacks, or to let them happen, in order to usher in a new age of “security”. It takes a certain kind of mindset to think that way, and those kind of men invariably tend to end up in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Or at least they have on at least several times.

We know Northwoods and Ajax were real, and there’s no denying it.
As for the 9/11 incidents being an inside job, that of course has not been proven.

But the motive is there. The players (PNAC/Cheney/Wolfowitz/Rumsfeld/Kristol/puppet Bush) were there. And the architects and scientists “for 9/11 truth” deserve to be listened to, even if blowhards like Alex Jones don’t, necessarily.

Since 9/11, Americans have given up quite a few rights that Security Conservatives wanted us to give up all along. How convenient that a terrorist attack gave them almost everything they wanted.

And notice that the one year Bush did anything good, his 8th year, was the year he basically abandoned his Neo-Con allies on all sorts of things.

Clearly everybody has their own opinions and conclusions on this topic, and debates about just what did happen, and why, will continue for many years to come. However, everything I have read or watched about 9/11 leads me to conclude that the events collectively were an inside job. Did President Bush play any role in the planning and execution of the events? No, I really have concluded that he was kept in the dark by Rumsfeld and VP Cheney.

I also firmly believe that WTC 1 & 2 (the twin towers) and WTC 7 were deliberately imploded and that the two aircraft were planned diversions designed to hide the deliberate destruction of the buildings. Classical Newtonian Physics enters into play here, particularly Newton’s first law: for every action there is an opposite, but equal, reaction. The scenario is simple: a jet slams into the side of a tall building (action), causing the building to fall sideways (reaction). Yet the twin towers collapsed vertically into their own footprints, showing that some other action caused the collapses.

Further confirming this contention is the fact that multiple eyewitnesses (all completely ignored by the 9/11 Commission and the mainstream media heard very loud explosion around the base of the towers before the first plane hit. It was these support column cutting detonations that made it possible for the towers to fall at near free fall speed. Later in 9/11, a similar round of loud explosions were heard inside WTC 7 shortly before it, too, imploded.