View From the Bushes

In our conversation yesterday, what I said, and I stand by it, is that there were shenanigans. Here's my thesis:

* The government had covert operatives, vast intelligence organizations, procedures and policies, and plenty of fighter jets. The Bush administration nevertheless allowed not one, but TWO identical attacks to be perpetrated by known enemies of US on the same day. The airplane crashing scenario was not widely known by civillians, but washington had been aware of the possibility of for quite a while. It's their job to detect it, stop it in advance, and intervene once it starts. They failed. It ended in the worst possible scenario, with two gigantic buildings being completely destroyed. Total failure. At best it was unbelievable incompetence and a total lack of leadership.

* The explanation given by NIST is complicated, hard to believe, and doesn't match the evidence very well. Until I did some background checking myself I believed it simply on the assumption that they wouldn't make it up. But after looking at it myself and looking at some past data, I doubt that their explanation is correct.

Are our leaders conspiring terrorists, bumblers lying to cover their incompetent performance, or just so stupid that they actually have no idea what happened? I would put the odds on #2, but I hold it against them whichever it is.

The government has a site describing their position on the matter and responding to some of the conspiracy theory books. I have read the info available from both sides. The federal government web site describes the various conspiracy books as "hodgepodge of sinister, unfounded allegations", and I think that's largely the case. Mostly people are making a bunch of wild guesses about who and why. I don't pretend I have the answer. I'm not claiming there were missiles or aliens or crazy superweapons from the 4th density. I'm NOT claiming that there were no terrorists involved. Frankly, I don't have enough information to know.

But it's clear that there are inconsistencies in the government explanation, and that occam's razor was NOT employed by FEMA and NIST in concocting the official government statement on what happened. Occam said: "one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything". There is no implication that an explanation is simple because it is a commonly held belief or because it is propounded by a source of authority.

According to the governement (http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Sep/16-241966.htm) both towers allegedly collapsed because of the combined structural weakening by aircraft impact, dislodged insulation, and multifloor fires. Essentially NIST states that it was an "unlikely" event. This is not their original theory, but one of several revised explanations. And I think they are full of crap.

Here's my reasoning:

(1) Skyscrapers have been hit by airplanes before--never with similar results. For example, a b-25 bomber full of fuel crashed into the empire state building and exploded. It was not destroyed, nor was the steel in the building melted.

http://history1900s.about.com/library/misc/blempirecrash.htm

(2) Lots of steel-framed concrete buildings have caught on fire before, but a building like the trade-towers has not collapsed from a fire before, that I can find a history of using google. For example, venesuela's tallest building burned out of control for 17 hours without collapsing. You can find more stories this if you look for them. Meridian Plaza in Philadelphia caught on fire and burned for 24 hours, but still didn't collapse.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1389

(3) 85 minutes my ass. Burning jet fuel would have to be really concentrated, and in massive quantity to melt steel, or even weaken it. And it would need to burn for a long time. The melting point of steel is about 2750 Degrees Farenheight, and there was a lot of steel supporting those buildings. Steel doesn't even start to soften until 1100 degrees or so. Those buildings were built specifically to withstand an airplane impact and subsequent fire caused by burning fuel.

There is a pretty famous letter from an executive at the UL laboritories. Thats who certified the steel used in the twin towers. Essentially the exec says "there is no way the steel softened or melted from jet fuel or office fires."

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/RYA411A.html
http://www.voicesofsept11.org/archive/911ic/082703.php

You can google and find many reprints of that letter online. He is not saying the steel didn't melt--he is saying it wasn't from the planes or the fuel or from a structural defect in the steel

(4) The very same Osama Bin Laden we allege is behind 9-11 snuck a big tank of cyanide and a huge truck full of explosives into that very same building and tried to blow it up back in 1993. So clearly it is possible to get explosives into the towers or at least parts of them without being detected. If you had an inside man, it seems it would be plausible to get explosives into the building lots of different ways.

The official explanation is neither simple nor consistent with other evidence, which is what occam's razor is all about. According to NIST, two well-designed buildings collapsed within hours of each other due to the exact same "fluke." It would be the first time that a fire OR an airplane impact or both ever caused a steel-framed skyscraper to collapse uniformly and suddenly. And according to the official story, it happened TWICE, on one day, two times within literally a few minutes, and both towers were completely obliterated.

If you watch the videos in slow motion, you will see two buildings collapsing in what looks like a demolition. And so occam's razor would suggest that it was, in fact, a demolition. If you see something that looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and makes duck noises, then occam's razor suggests that it is probably a duck. And NIST asserts a far more complicated scenario that has NEVER happened before to any other skyscraper (and that the designers of the building took great cause to prevent.) While I don't believe that occam's razor proves anything (it's just an approach to looking for evidence) I certainly don't think that in this case it supports the official government statement on the matter.

If you read carefully in the letter from the UL Exec above, you will note that he refers to an August 2003 reversal of position by the the inspectors who formulated the official government statement on the collapse of the towers.

I think YOU want to use occam's razor to say: "Well, a government conspiracy or cover-up is much more complicated than an exceptionally unlikely double-disaster," but in fact I think we have plenty of evidence that incompetence could have (and has in fact in the past) allowed people to get explosives into the towers and that the government has covered up lots of incompetence.