4um: The 9/11 conspiracy plots thicken

They are politically diverse and include academics, ex-officials and Web surfers. All share a belief that the Bush administration played a role in the 9/11 attacks. Their numbers seem to speak to Americans' innate distrust of their government.

NEW YORK — He felt no shiver of doubt in those first terrible hours.

He watched the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and assumed al-Qaida had wreaked terrible vengeance. He listened to anchors and military experts and assumed the facts of Sept. 11, 2001, were as stated on the screen.

It was a year before David Ray Griffin, an eminent liberal theologian and philosopher, began his stroll down the path of disbelief. He wondered why Bush listened to a child's story while the nation was attacked and how Osama bin Laden, America's Public Enemy No. 1, escaped in the mountains of Tora Bora.

He wondered why 110-story towers crashed and military jets failed to intercept even one airliner. He read the 9/11 Commission report with a swell of anger. Contradictions were ignored and no military or civilian official was reprimanded, much less cashiered.

"To me, the report read as a cartoon," Griffin said. "It's a much greater stretch to accept the official conspiracy story than to consider the alternatives."

Such as?

"There was massive complicity in this attack by U.S. government operatives."

If that feels like a skip off the cliff of established reality, more Americans are in free fall than you might guess. There are few more startling measures of American distrust of leaders than the extent of belief that the Bush administration had a hand in the attacks of Sept. 11 to spark an invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.

36 percent suspicious

A recent Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll of 1,010 Americans found that 36 percent suspect the U.S. government promoted the attacks or intentionally sat on its hands. Sixteen percent believe explosives brought down the towers. Twelve percent believe a cruise missile hit the Pentagon.

Distrust percolates more strongly near Ground Zero. A Zogby International poll of New York City residents two years ago found 49.3 percent believed the government "consciously failed to act."

Establishment assessments of the believers tend toward the psychotherapeutic. Many academics, politicians and thinkers left, right and center say the conspiracy theories are a case of one plus one equals five. It's a piling up of improbabilities.

Thomas Eager, a professor of materials science at MIT, has studied the collapse of the twin towers. "At first, I thought it was amazing that the buildings would come down in their own footprints," Eager says. "Then I realized that it wasn't that amazing — it's the only way a building that weighs a million tons and is 95 percent air can come down."

But the chatter out there is loud enough for the National Institute of Standards and Technology to post a Web "fact sheet" poking holes in the conspiracy theories and defending its report on the towers.

The loose agglomeration known as the "9/11 Truth Movement" has stopped looking for truth from the government. A cacophonous and free-range a bunch of conspiracists, they produce hip-hop inflected documentaries and scholarly conferences. The Web is their mother lode. Every citizen is a researcher.

Did you see that the CIA met with bin Laden in a hospital room in Dubai? Check out this Pakistani site; there are really weird doings in Baluchistan ...

Peter Knight, senior lecturer in American studies at the University of Manchester and editor of the 2002 book "Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America," called the movement "a strange beast, an amalgam of elements. You've got the anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war crowd — you know, if they lied about the war, maybe they lied about 9/11. Another part is people merely interested in the anomalies, with no preconceived political agenda.

"Then you have the more traditional right-wing conspiracy part of the continuum that believes a vast cabal has taken over the United States, the mega-conspiracy of the right's new world order. To them, all of these things are connected. Each group inserts 9/11 into its pre-existing conspiracy model."

The academic wing is led by Griffin, who founded the Center for a Postmodern World at Claremont University; James Fetzer, a tenured philosopher at the University of Minnesota; and Daniel Orr, retired chairman of the economics department at the University of Illinois.

The movement's de facto minister of engineering is Steven Jones, a tenured physics professor at Brigham Young University who has studied vectors and velocities and tested explosives and concluded that the collapse of the twin towers is best explained as controlled demolition, sped by a thousand pounds of high-grade thermite.

Jones has been placed on paid leave while the Mormon-church-owned school investigates his claims, it was announced Friday.

The physicist published his views two weeks ago in the book "9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out."

Former Reagan aide Barbara Honegger is a senior military-affairs journalist at the Naval Postgraduate School in California. She's convinced, based on her freelance research, that a bomb went off about six minutes before an airplane hit the Pentagon — or didn't hit it, as some believe the case may be.

Then there's Morgan O. Reynolds, appointed by George W. Bush as chief economist at the Labor Department. He left in 2002 and doesn't think much of his former boss.

"Who did it? Elements of our government and M-16 and the Mossad. The government's case is a laugh-out-loud proposition. They used patsies and lies and subterfuge and there's no way that Bush and Cheney could have invaded Iraq without the help of 9/11," Reynolds asserts.

They are cantankerous and sometimes distrust each other — who knows where the double agents lurk? But unreasonable questions resonate with the reasonable. Colleen Kelly's brother, a salesman, had breakfast at the Windows on the World restaurant on Sept. 11. After he died she founded September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows to oppose the Iraq war. She lives in the Bronx and gives a gingerly embrace to the conspiracy crowd.

"Sometimes I listen to them and I think that's sooooo outlandish and bizarre," she says. "But that day had such disastrous geopolitical consequences. If David Ray Griffin asks uncomfortable questions and points out painful discrepancies, good for him."

Griffin's book, "The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11," sold more than 100,000 copies and became a movement founding stone. Last year he traveled through New England, giving speeches. One evening in West Hartford, Conn., 400 mostly middle-aged and upper-middle-class doctors and lawyers, teachers and social workers sat waiting.

Griffin took the podium and laid down his ideas with calm and cool. He concluded:

"It is already possible to know beyond a reasonable doubt one very important thing: The destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job, orchestrated by domestic terrorists. The welfare of our republic and perhaps even the survival of our civilization depend on getting the truth about 9/11 exposed."

Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a Boston-based left-leaning think tank, is no fan of the 9/11 Commission. He believes a serious investigation should have led to indictments and the firing of incompetent generals and civilian officials.

"They don't do their homework; it's a kind of charlatanism," says Berlet. "They say there's no debris on the lawn in front of the Pentagon, but they base their analysis on a photo on the Internet. That's like analyzing an impressionist painting by looking at a postcard.

"I love 'The X-Files' but I don't base my research on it. My vision of hell is having to review these [conspiracy] books over and over again."

In the days after Sept. 11, experts claimed temperatures reached 2,000 degrees on the upper floors. Others claimed steel melted. Nope. What happened, says Eager, the MIT materials-science professor, is that jet fuel sloshed around and beams got rubbery.

"It's not too much to think that you could have some regions at 900 degrees and others at 1,200 degrees, and that will distort the beams."

The truth movement doesn't really care for Eager. A Web site casts a fisheye of suspicion at the professor and his colleagues. "Did the MIT have prior knowledge?" notes one chat room. "This is for sure another speculative topic ... "

Professsor Jones' suspension was reported Friday by The Associated Press. Peter Knight was quoted by McClatchy Newspapers.

Reply: I know Loizeaux wasn't the author of the article. He was part of AGA's list (#9) that you quoted in a post to him (#1137 You To: AGAviator #1096) . The title of the thread was mentioned in my post to you to bring the topic back to the subject of CD and Loizeaux's statement about it at #9 in AGA's list, the premise of which was already debunked with an alert to that fact at Post #982 and again at Post #1109.

Replying to AGAviator @ Post #857 of the 9/11 demolition theory challenged:

What satelite phones with noise filters? I don't understand your next question about sotto voce. There were places in the alleged phone call recordings without anyone speaking and no engine-noise heard. And the Right Here link you posted to me is the very same NTSB pdf footnote link I posted to you from your Wikipedia page reference for Flight 77 that had nothing in it at all about 40 hours and 11 flights prior to 9/11 on the FDR.

It brings to tears to my eyes since several REAL attempts to persuade and convince a pile of rabble rousers, HELL bent on pushing a conspiracy agenda killed the thread. That thread could have gone stellar here at 4um bringing the truth about some of the silly conspiracy plots.

Yes buckie, you cried like a little girl when nobody wanted to buy the BS you were selling, and instead, people posted facts and evidence which tore your little fairie tale to shreads.

Which as usual, you cannot explicitly cite, but only assert exists some place, some where.

9. Play Dumb. No matter what evidence or logical argument is offered, avoid discussing issues except with denials they have any credibility, make any sense, provide any proof, contain or make a point, have logic, or support a conclusion. Mix well for maximum effect.

18. Emotionalize, Antagonize, and Goad Opponents. If you can't do anything else, chide and taunt your opponents and draw them into emotional responses which will tend to make them look foolish and overly motivated, and generally render their material somewhat less coherent. Not only will you avoid discussing the issues in the first instance, but even if their emotional response addresses the issue, you can further avoid the issues by then focusing on how 'sensitive they are to criticism.'

You cannot even abide by the points of discussion you yourself post. Six insults in 14 hours just to buck. That I can quickly observe. There are unquestionably more to me.

Are you upset because I spent a little time pinning buckie's ears back. Such petty jealousy.

My point of course, which you took out of context of course, was I simply grew tired the childish antics of you and buckie. As well when I insult someone it is clearly an insult and not an attempt to avoid issues or derail the discussion. It's just that you two with your barbarian table manners earn every drop of vitriol which I drop in your direction. So, I gave you some of your own medicine. You're just jealous because I'm better at than you are, and even worse I use all them thar edumacated wurdz you don't understand. Cry me a river shipmate, cry me a river.

Oh, by the way, I'm sure this eluded you, I didn't use any crass 4 letter vulgarisms of the kind you and buckie seem to be so fond of. Ain't that just the shits?

As already stated, you're a pathological lying windbag who can't abide by the rules you yourself post.

Not at all my dear microencephalic neanderthal, unlike you when I levy an insult it is not to win the debate, or because I am so ungracious as to emulate the dregs in an ill tempered tantrum because I have been proven wrong on a point (not that, that happens), but because the level of refinement of another, such as yourself, encourages comparisons worthy of the churlish behavior exhibited. Mind you I am not saying you are without some class it is simply that it is all of the lowest order.

What a pansy assed jerk... "I do believe" .... no facts, no data.... as always... NADA... like all your posts.

Why didn't you just come right out and say the truth concerning your own opinion: "I, Original_Intent have my nose firmly planted in your South end."

There you go with that transference again. I guess it is one of your quirks to express your homoerotic tendencies and impute them to others - perhaps in the hopes they might reciprocate? However, and whatever, the case may be unlike you and your boyfriends my interest in other men is upon a more normal level of one hetero man to another. I do hope you find your life partner some day but you are barking up the wrong leg here.

You pansy assed poster... you can't say anything without some wiggle room in your posts... NO FACTS, NO DATA ... just "maybe" "possibly" "I guess" ...

Isn't this a chit-chat channel where you want to read and understand objective and (perhaps) not so objective opinions and ideas?

Hey pal... you and FL ensured another thread was killed by the site management. Your heckle & jeckle is well known.

Of course. Explain to me why you don't posses any FACTS other than BS, innuendo and hearsay.

it wasn't FL and OI who were using the most vulgar language. why don't you all agree that you're never going to change each other's minds on 9/11 and either bozo each other or go on to other topics?

if that's not possible and the gross ad homs continue, i'll lock down this thread too.

I would hope that everyone concerned realizes that the endless posting on the same subject is slowly dragging 4um down.

You are correct not my 4um but for my friends here, please show a little more respect for the rest of us.

Cyni, People are free to block the thread and/or any posters they don't like. Picture how many posts there would be if not for the 9/11 posts.

You make good points. Another thing to consider, now that buck and aggravator have found out that all they have to do is post endless references about their homoerotic fantasies and other vulgarities they can get threads locked which the government would rather people not talk about. And people can ignore the threads if they choose. Locking the threads so that they go down the memory hole plays into their hands in my opinion.

As I stated last night, I have been down this road before. Starting way back with the people that made FR a "success". Without going into detail, there were people that know where the bodies are buried.

With that in mind, the last forum and chat room that I helped to found and maintain became a total failure because the owner refused to maintain control of the forum.

Christine as an example, believes in freedom of speech without limit. While that is a laudable trait, it DOES NOT WORK.

One. Nowhere in organized society is ANYONE allowed to express themselves with vulgar and obscene language. Expressing a view in acceptable language IS FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Expressing ones view in gutter language is acceptable NOWHERE. That is not my opinion, it is a fact that may be discerned by trying it in Church, in your restaurant even at Wal Mart, and you will be hustled out into the street. It is NO different here.

Two. From my experience in a forum failure, endless, mind numbing posting hour after hour destroys the intent of any forum. No one is doing 4um and Christine a "favor" by posting vulgar tirades all day and all nite. That is NOT what the forum was created for. These threads have accomplished one thing, I and others have stopped posting.

The argument for bozoing is a childish cop out that does not work, it only helps those that destroy. Been there, done that, civil management has to be maintained or Christine will be left holding a forum with half a dozen posters before the collapse.

The concept that somehow these threads are helping the forum is totally wrong, good, intelligent people need to rethink something, the 4um is Christines, no one has a right to dominate and destroy.

When I first came here, Christine asked me to refrain from posting on certain threads, I have respected her wishes and we get along fine. That was forum management, her forum, her job and I complied.

So let's research just what exactly "vulgar," "obscene," and "gutter language" consist of.

In your paradigm is saying "Go sleep with your boyfriend" acceptable, and a reply "Go fuck yourself, little faggot wannabe" ***vulgar?***

You have nothing to say against the fact that WTC 7 was a controlled demolition. Not one bit of evidence from you, yet you still cling to your fantasies that is just fell down due to minor damage and a few small fires. No wonder you have to try to divert this thread to language usage, because you surely can't defend your belief the government told the truth about WTC 7.

Wow, did everybody see that fire in that window? I know it was hard to see, and many times you couldn't see it at all, but if the camera was moved just right you could see a fire in one of the windows! Golly gee, I guess that caused a 47 story building to come straight down. Maybe they should have made the building better and able to withstand hurricane force winds. Oh, but they did build it to withstand hurricane force winds. LOL! Again you have nothing but a puff of smoke and a trash can fire. That is not evidence supporting the collapse of a 47 story steel framed building.

No, that was the One Meridien Plaza Fire, burned for not 18 minutes or even 80 minutes but EIGHTEEN HOURS. And it didn't fall. hmmm.

No, not that one either. That was The First Interstate Bank Fire (Los Angeles). Burned for 3 and 1/2 hours. Didn't fall down. (In spite of the total burnout of four and a half floors, there was no damage to the main structural members and only minor damage to one secondary beam and a small number of floor pans.)

No, foiled again. Despite being a much longer lasting fire and obviously far more extensive The Beijing Mandarin Oriental Hotel didn't get tired and fall down.

No, not debunked. A four story building is not a high rise and wasn't made with with special high-strength steel like the WTC towers were. The WTC towers were made to handle 2000% more than their stated load bearing capacity. All high rises are over engineered on purpose. That's why none of them have ever come down due to fires. The WTC towers didn't come down due to fires either, they were demolished floor by floor.

Steel beams have melted from fuel fires, although no one is making that claim with WTC. The claim is made that the WTC fires warped the steel, which happens at far lower temperatures than is needed to melt the steel.

Steel framed buildings have also collapsed due to fire before the WTC buildings collapsed. So claims that steel buildings can't collapse from fires are similarly false.

Quibbling about this building or that building does not invalidate fires melting and weakening steel, or steel buildings collapsing from uncontrolled fires burning inside thetm.

Design Claims

Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson White Paper

A white paper on the structure of the Twin Towers carried out by the firm of Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson contained eleven numbered points, including:

The Richard Roth Telegram

A telegraph from the architectural firm Richard Roth, partner at Emery Roth & Sons, was distributed to reporters on February 14, 1965. The telegraph was in response to claims by real estate baron and Lawrence Wien that the design of the Twin Towers was unsound.

Engineering News Record

The Engineering News Record (ENR) contained a number of articles on the design and construction of the World Trade Center. The article "How Columns Will Be Designed for 110-Story Buildings" quotes lead architect John Skilling:

A very interesting reference. I think I've seen parts of it quoted in other articles but it is nice to have a fuller more robust reference.

I think this is where the Shills go back into the "Fruitloop" and restate an already disproved disinfo claim. Maybe their "1" "expert" Dr. Rent-a-Prof Eager who will not document, nor publicly defend his claims.

Yup, I was right. Here we go back through the "FruitLoop" as he repeats his greatest irrelevancies. Photobucket

i sense that both of these shills voted for Chimperor I at least once each AND for hObama...can't prove it of course, but it fits.