9-11 conspiracy theories

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* Paul Wolfowitz did it
 
* Paul Wolfowitz did it
 
'''Comment:''' The above four people were already on record as wanting a "new Pearl Harbor" as a reason to mobilize the US armed forces into the Middle East in a new hot war.
 
'''Comment:''' The above four people were already on record as wanting a "new Pearl Harbor" as a reason to mobilize the US armed forces into the Middle East in a new hot war.
 +
'''Rebuttal:''' The "new Pearl Harbor" quote was in reference to modernizing the military and had nothing to do with declaring a war.
 
* Elvis Presley pretending to be a janitor did it.
 
* Elvis Presley pretending to be a janitor did it.
 
* Goats did it
 
* Goats did it

Revision as of 19:46, 19 October 2009

On September 11, 2001 a conspiracy was unleashed on the United States like nothing seen since at least Pearl Harbor.

The most common theory to explain the conspiracy is that Osama bin Laden, "leader" of al-Qaeda, set up (in the end) nineteen men, mostly from Saudi Arabia, to hijack four jet airplanes and crash them into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and probably the White House. This explanation is accepted by most people.

A variety of other theories related to the attacks have proliferated, however. The most extreme claims are that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by the United States government in order to launch the War on Terror.[1]

Contents

Claims of the conspiracy theorists

There is no conclusive video evidence that any aircraft hit the Pentagon

The one video camera on the scene that was actually trained on the site of the crash was a time-lapse camera that flipped from a vague shot of the beginning of something incoming to a full-blown explosion. 9/11 truthers have argued that without a direct image of an airplane in the security footage, it can't be proven that what hit the Pentagon was actually a plane. They claim to back this up by saying that there was no plane visible in the post-crash pictures.

Rebuttal: There is some video of the crash[2]. Furthermore, there is photographic evidence of wreckage on the scene and eyewitness accounts of plane wreckage and damage consistent with a plane crash[3]. Essentially, the problem for no-planers is that the plane did not just hit the outside of the Pentagon, but actually penetrated some distance into the structure on impact, some of which actually collapsed on top of the plane. Numerous witnesses saw it approach, the plane's wings took out several light posts on a nearby roadway on the way in, and plane components were scattered all over the Pentagon lawn.

Also, although inconclusive — and "personal commentary" — a photo was presented on a 9-11 truther website claiming that the "round" debris observed was not possibly the wheel of the alleged jetliner. However, it clearly was, albeit stripped of its outer edge[4].

The damage at the Pentagon is not large enough to have been caused by a passenger jet

Rebuttal: These claims rely on the remote assessment of nonspecialists against the on-site investigation of experts on structural engineering. The Pentagon is a reinforced concrete building with blast-resistant windows. It was struck by an aluminum-skinned commercial aircraft that had already lost a wing before hitting the building. The damage is consistent with this scenario[5].

If people driving near the Pentagon who apparently were witnesses of the plane actually saw it, it would have blown them off

Rebuttal: Not proved, and insignificant. (See rebuttal to the next point.)

Other evidence suggests it was a missile that hit the Pentagon

Rebuttal: The preponderance of evidence suggests that a commercial aircraft hit the Pentagon. An aircraft is known to have gone missing, its wreckage was found at the crash site, and the damage was what structural engineers expected from such a strike.

In NYC, explosions were heard/seen that suggest the WTC buildings were deliberately destroyed

This rather tedious contention, known to most as the "controlled demolition" theory, claims that the World Trade Center buildings, either WTC 7 or the entire complex, were brought down in a stealth demolition similar to the destruction of large buildings. The problems with this are, to say the least, numerous, and we'll deal with them in little bits.

The preparations were made in secret

This is pretty much completely impossible. Planned implosions require months of preparation, including tearing apart walls to place charges, removing extraneous material from the building, laying miles of carefully measured detonation cord, and the intentional damaging of support columns. Even night work would attract attention from the cleaning crew, as well as the workers who came in the next morning to find walls covered with fresh plaster.

The towers fell in their own footprint; if they collapsed from metal fatigue they should have been all over the place.

This is a very, very common comment by 9/11 truthers and is readily refuted by simply watching the collapse videos—a large chunk of one of the towers, nearly a third of the building, actually fell sideways (towards one of the cameras recording it), and unlike in a controlled demolition the dust from the collapses covered rather a large area of Lower Manhattan.

If this was a controlled demolition, it was done with extreme incompentence.

The central problem with this is people not understanding physics, and personal unfamiliarity with how objects of that size move. The taller a thing is, the longer it takes to tip over—much as how a longer pendulum has a slower swing. With an object the height of the WTC towers, the time it takes for it to collapse straight down is far, far quicker than the time it would take to tip over.

WTC 7 was demolished by order of the WTC's owner

This comes primarily from two miscommunications. The first was by the BBC News, which broadcast an erroneous report that WTC 7 had collapsed while the building was still standing through the window of their New York studio. The second was an evacuation order ("Pull it") that went out shortly before the building, badly damaged in the collapse of the main towers and on fire from a large reserve of diesel fuel stored in it by New York City's emergency management agency, collapsed of its own accord.

Although it wasn't completely obvious to the untrained eye at the time, WTC 7 had been seriously compromised by a 20-story gash in one corner facing Ground Zero, and by the time the evacuation order was given was visibly sagging. Conspiracy theorists have also tried to claim that "pull" is standard jargon within the demolition industry to fire off demolition charges within the building; demolition experts have denied this.

As some have said that the explosions were heard 90 minutes or so before the explosions (what???), that does not explain why the building took so long to fall. And if it was only 10-20 seconds 'earlier', it could simply be the crashing into the other tower.

Thermite was used to cut structural members in the buildings

This is based on a few pictures of vertical beams that had been sheared off by recovery workers. Although the thermite reaction is highly exothermic, it is nearly impossible to effectively channel it sideways to cut a vertical beam, since it tends to pour straight down as it burns. Some creative truthers have suggested the use of "thermite straps"; given that thermite is generally a powder delivered from a cone-shaped cup, it's not clear that such a device is even possible, much less practical.

Explosions coming out the windows of the towers are indications of an explosive demolition

What happens when you squeeze a concertina? These side-jets of air and dust were not really explosions as such but debris being expelled from the buildings as the floors pancaked on top of each other. There is a lot of air in a quarter-mile-tall office building, and when compressed it has to go somewhere.

There was a nuke in the basement

No there wasn't. The physics departments of NYU, Columbia, Stuyvesant High School, and every other school in the area would have been all over that with Geiger counters.

Hysterical Do-gooders ensured there wasn't enough asbestos in the building

This theory, proposed by none other than Andrew Schlafly, holds that 'Big Government', Nanny-Statism, hysterical environmentalists, lawyers and do-gooders had ensured that spray-on asbestos was not allowed in the WTC buildings, thereby ensuring it was not properly equipped to resist the fires that engulfed the structures.

Powerful oil money/Bush family/military-industrial conspirers did it, all of whom needed a new war in the Middle East for various commercial reasons - oil, arm sales, real estate, etc

Rebuttal: While it could easily be said that "they" used 9/11 to create an unrelated Iraq War, they did not blame the Iraqis, but al-Qaeda, which isn't really as convenient if you want to declare war with Iraq and not lose some friends. Also see the section below.

It was a neoconservative plot

  • Dick Cheney did it

Rebuttal: Actually, he might have done it.

  • Donald Rumsfeld did it
  • Richard Perle did it
  • Paul Wolfowitz did it

Comment: The above four people were already on record as wanting a "new Pearl Harbor" as a reason to mobilize the US armed forces into the Middle East in a new hot war. Rebuttal: The "new Pearl Harbor" quote was in reference to modernizing the military and had nothing to do with declaring a war.

  • Elvis Presley pretending to be a janitor did it.
  • Goats did it
  • I didn't do it

As with any claim, the burden of proof lies upon the claimant. Apart from the one about me, because I definitely didn't do it.

The military would have scrambled to intercept

A charming conceit on behalf of people with a childlike faith in the US military, who cannot possibly imagine how bloated and inefficient an organization with unlimited amounts of money can get.

There's also a thread of racism here, too: the idea that its impossible for brown people to pull off such a thing.

A number of Al-Qaeda members conspired to hijack some planes and blow up some buildings

... Okay, we'll give you that one.

Loose Change

An Internet phenomenon, Loose Change is a work of amateur film-making that was a huge hit on Google Video and beyond, and is one of the rare examples of an amateur Internet film to have made the leap to the mainstream media, going on to be broadcast in the UK. It advances many of the most popular conspiracy theories about 9/11.

Problems with the "Bush Did It!" theory

The biggest problem is that for the Bush administration to successfully enact such an abhorrent plot and keep it a secret would seem to require a level of competence they've never displayed at anything else.

The second biggest problem is that if BushCo did stage the 9/11 attack, their failure to place the blame directly on Saddam Hussein's regime is rather baffling, since their alleged main "use" of 9/11 was to force the US into war with Iraq.

See also

External links

Footnotes

  1. They certainly took advantage of the attacks in order to execute the plans they had already made up their minds to push, even before getting into office.
  2. Watch the upper right corner at 0:24
  3. "Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report - Flight 77 Debris". Popular Mechanics. March 2005. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html?page=6#flight77debris.
  4. That's what made one RationalWikian get a divorce from the extreme wing of 9-11 nuttery.
  5. "Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report - Big Plane, Small Holes". Popular Mechanics. March 2005. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html?page=6#bigplane.
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