Q for Shades about 911 conspiracy

[_Bryan Inks]

My 2 biggest questions are:

- Why did bush just sit there with the schoolkids well after he was told about the attacks?
- Why weren't the fighter jets more responsive?

However, I tend to believe those were a result of bush's idiocy and incompetence (based on his track record), rather than any big cover-up.

In answer to the second question, the fighters were involved in almost 100 simulated situations at the time. One of which was terrorist attacks on WTC/Pentagon/White House using hijacked airliners. These simulations involved inserting phantom radar images in the radar readings of the fighters and controllers.

Cheney, in charge at the Pentagon at the time of the attacks, was alerted nearly 30 minutes before the first impacts of the assumed hijacking. When a subordinate asked if they should sound an alert his response was, paraphrasing from memory, "No, my previous orders still stand."

As for the first question, I think A. he was forewarned, B. he's a moron and C. he was forewarned.

The White House issued a message to many state and federal officials nearly a week before 9/11 "recommending" that they not take any flights on 9/11.

[_Who Knows]

In the meantime, i found this site: Screw Loose Change which has a number of rebuttal videos to the one you suggested Shades. I haven't watched it, and only will once I watch the original (if I get around to it).

[_The Nehor]

My 2 biggest questions are:

- Why did bush just sit there with the schoolkids well after he was told about the attacks?
- Why weren't the fighter jets more responsive?

However, I tend to believe those were a result of bush's idiocy and incompetence (based on his track record), rather than any big cover-up.

Well, the first time he was told that a plane crashed into a building. He assumed it was an accident and not an attack. A tragedy certainly, but not something he would have to rush around because of. When he heard of the second hit it was clear that these weren't accidents.

[_Sethbag]

No, there are pictures of aluminum pieces on the grass. Not plane wreckage. I did find a site that claimed to have photographic proof of engine parts, landing gear, etc. but it was proven that most of the images were taken from other wrecks.

Nor has there been any photographic evidence of passengers, luggage, seats, the *supposedly* undestructible "Black Box".

From the Popular Mechanics article:

FACT: Blast expert Allyn E. Kilsheimer was the first structural engineer to arrive at the Pentagon after the crash and helped coordinate the emergency response. "It was absolutely a plane, and I'll tell you why," says Kilsheimer, CEO of KCE Structural Engineers PC, Washington, D.C. "I saw the marks of the plane wing on the face of the building. I picked up parts of the plane with the airline markings on them. I held in my hand the tail section of the plane, and I found the black box." Kilsheimer's eyewitness account is backed up by photos of plane wreckage inside and outside the building. Kilsheimer adds: "I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?"

So basically you're saying Allyn Kilsheimer was in on the big conspiracy, right? And that he lied about having picked up parts of the plane with airline markings on them, handling some of the tail section, the black box, and finding uniform bits from crew members, and body parts?

by the way, black boxes are made to be very survivable so that the data inside can help determine the cause of crashes. Nothing is truly indestructible, however. Black boxes don't always survive intact, despite the best efforts to give them the greatest chance of doing so. I don't recall whether the black box of the plane that hit the pentagon was still readable or not.

Bryan, have you seen this YouTube video showing an F4 Phantom jet crashing into a concrete wall? It was doing 500 mph, in the ballpark of what the 9/11 hijacked planes were doing. It's said in the video that the F4 essentially atomized, that only the wingtips survived, and that's because the wings were wider than the concrete block, as you can see in the video.

The Pentagon walls were strong, reinforced structures. The plane that hit it was shredded on impact, leaving most just small fragments. Were you expecting to have a large fuselage section left or something, like a twisted car body in a car accident? Sorry, 500 mph aircraft collisions into steel reinforced concrete structures on the ground just don't do that.

I don't like the Bush administration either, but that's no reason to embrace dubious to absurd conspiracy theories either. The evidence is clear that Osama bin Laden's crew did this with hijacked airliners. That some in the Bush administration have taken this and gone with it much further than they ought to have, and have done some pretty bone-headed things in the world since then, is not evidence that 9/11 was actually allowed, caused, or participated in by the US government.

Oh well, I'm done with this topic. Once diehard conspiracy theorists get a hold of something, there's simply no reasoning with them, no evidence they'll accept, no nothing.

Don't get sucked into the conspiracy theories. A mind is a terrible thing to waste on crap like that.

[Reflexzero]

My rule of thumb regarding conspiracies:

The more people that would have to be “in on it,” the less likely it is true. If it is true, then the more people that would have been “in on it” directly correlates to the inevitability that someone will “spill the beans” (just ask Nixon).

[_Bryan Inks]

So, I'm reading the Popular Mechanics article right now, and I'm only on page 3 and have serious issue.

Intercepts Not Routine
Claim: "It has been standard operating procedures for decades to immediately intercept off-course planes that do not respond to communications from air traffic controllers," says the Web site oilempire.us. "When the Air Force 'scrambles' a fighter plane to intercept, they usually reach the plane in question in minutes."

FACT: In the decade before 9/11, NORAD intercepted only one civilian plane over North America: golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet, in October 1999. With passengers and crew unconscious from cabin decompression, the plane lost radio contact but remained in transponder contact until it crashed. Even so, it took an F-16 1 hour and 22 minutes to reach the stricken jet. Rules in effect back then, and on 9/11, prohibited supersonic flight on intercepts. Prior to 9/11, all other NORAD interceptions were limited to offshore Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ). "Until 9/11 there was no domestic ADIZ," FAA spokesman Bill Schumann tells PM. After 9/11, NORAD and the FAA increased cooperation, setting up hotlines between ATCs and NORAD command centers, according to officials from both agencies. NORAD has also increased its fighter coverage and has installed radar to monitor airspace over the continent.

This is an outright fabrication.

In 2000, NORAD scrambled and intercepted around 75 off-plan flights. All within 30 minutes of no-contact deviation. They had a 100% accuracy in doing so.

I'm still reading, but based on this, I'm not impressed.

[_Sethbag]

My 2 biggest questions are:

- Why did bush just sit there with the schoolkids well after he was told about the attacks?
- Why weren't the fighter jets more responsive?

However, I tend to believe those were a result of bush's idiocy and incompetence (based on his track record), rather than any big cover-up.

The answer to the first question is that Bush was out of his depth, and simply hadn't a fecking clue how to respond to someone telling him that the US was under attack.

The answer to the second question is in the PM article linked to earlier in this thread. The hijackers turned off the transponders so that their aircraft wouldn't self-identify to the radar controllers were using anymore, and became just a few of hundreds or thousands of contacts in the sky. The sky over the US was chock full of aircraft flying around at the time, and the controllers didn't know what was going on for a while, probably weren't trained in rapidly finding and tracking aircraft doing the kinds of things these aircraft were doing, and weren't in good communications with the military. The military was equipped to look outward, not inward, so they weren't able to track the hijacked planes either.

Getting fighter aircraft into the sky take time. A pilot scrambles, gets into the aircraft, it still takes a few minutes to start the engines, taxi to the runway, take off, etc. Even going maximum speed getting from Otis Air Force Base on Cape Code to New York City would actually take some time, and that's assuming the pilot actually knew he needed to fly to New York City and not anywhere else.

When you add in the time it took before anyone in the air traffic controllers and the military knew that planes had been hijacked, realized they were being diverted to New York City, got in communication with military types who could scramble fighters, fighters could get aloft and travel the distance, etc., it was already over. This is a fact, and anyone familiar with the "fog of war" can realize just how this could possibly happen. The hijackers had the element of surprise on their side.

With all that's happened since, if other hijackers managed to take control of planes in the same manner, you might well see a different outcome, as our controllers and infrastructure now recognize this type of threat as a possibility, and undoubtedly have trained up in how to respond to it.

[_Bryan Inks]

Page 5, I'm unimpressed with as well.

Second, a fifth-floor fire burned for up to 7 hours. "There was no firefighting in WTC 7," Sunder says. Investigators believe the fire was fed by tanks of diesel fuel that many tenants used to run emergency generators. Most tanks throughout the building were fairly small, but a generator on the fifth floor was connected to a large tank in the basement via a pressurized line. Says Sunder: "Our current working hypothesis is that this pressurized line was supplying fuel [to the fire] for a long period of time."

According to the man quoted as evidence for the controlled demolition "Just Pull It", he wasn't referring to the building but was talking about the firefighting crews.

So, which is it? No firefighters or firefighters? If there was no firefighters, then why tell someone to pull them out?

[_Doctor Steuss]

Page 5, I'm unimpressed with as well.

Second, a fifth-floor fire burned for up to 7 hours. "There was no firefighting in WTC 7," Sunder says. Investigators believe the fire was fed by tanks of diesel fuel that many tenants used to run emergency generators. Most tanks throughout the building were fairly small, but a generator on the fifth floor was connected to a large tank in the basement via a pressurized line. Says Sunder: "Our current working hypothesis is that this pressurized line was supplying fuel [to the fire] for a long period of time."

According to the man quoted as evidence for the controlled demolition "Just Pull It", he wasn't referring to the building but was talking about the firefighting crews.

So, which is it? No firefighters or firefighters? If there was no firefighters, then why tell someone to pull them out?

No firefighting does not necessarily equate to no firefighters. From watching the video of one of the fire station crews (it was on PBS about 2 years ago, and has the first “confirmed” death from the WTC [I believe it was the station chaplain]) it appeared to be mainly a form of rescue effort and not a firefighting endeavor.

[_Sethbag]

What would you think if there were firefighters at ground zero concentrating mostly on search and rescue operations, rather than full-scale firefighting? After all, hundreds of firefighters were now missing under the rubble, and their friends and colleagues who survived would have been on the scene if they could be, and trying to find them.

The idea that there were firefighters on scene, but that full-scale efforts to control the fires in building 7 were not happening, is totally conceivable. What exactly should the priorities have been? There were potentially thousands of people missing, including hundreds of firefighters and police, and a large area including the whole footprint of the towers and the surrounding buildings was suffering horrific devastation. Would they, honestly, have been focused on trying to control the flames in building 7 at that time?