November 13, 2010
By Craig McKee
Conspiracy “debunkers” have a number of weapons at their disposal to discredit those who try to expose deceptions and cover-ups.
They will often condescendingly brush aside what these people say by making fun of their ideas so they don’t have to actually refute them. If that doesn’t work, they can explain how the conspiracy would be too involved or that someone would give away the secret or that the powers that be “would just never do anything that terrible.” Failing that they can resort to putting their hands over their ears and singing, la la la la la la la la until their opponents go away.
But there’s another way touted enthusiastically by believers of official stories. That is to invoke the dreaded Occam’s Razor, which most people take as being “the simpler of two theories is usually the best.” Once this has been cited, any conspiracy proponent is supposedly left helpless.
What is Occam’s Razor? It is a principle credited to William of Occam, a 14th century Franciscan friar. His notion was that when choosing between two competing theories – all other things being equal – the simpler one is usually better.
It can be very useful for scientific debates, but unfortunately it has been co-opted to mean that conspiracies don’t happen because the explanation of how they were done seems more complicated than the explanation of the cover story. This, of course, makes no sense when the possibility of deception is involved.
In a deception, the idea is to do one thing, but to make it look like something else, or to make it look like someone else did it. The perpetrators want their cover story to seem like the most appealing, least threatening, and the simplest. Simple, but false.
Let’s take an example of how Occam’s Razor is misused to debunk 9/11 conspiracy theories. We’ll use what happened at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001:
Pro-official story – American Airlines Flight 77, hijacked by Islamic terrorists, hits the Pentagon, killing 125 employees along with 64 people on the plane.
Anti-official story – A complicated conspiracy involving dozens if not hundreds of government people was employed to create the illusion that a passenger plane hit the Pentagon when in fact it did not. Explosions were set off inside the building and a passenger plane flew past the Pentagon as the outer wall exploded.
Using Occam’s Razor, the first one must be true, right? It’s clearly simpler. But let’s take a closer look at the believability of the official story when a few more details are included:
A group of Islamic terrorists slipped through airport security with knives and box cutters, which they then used to take control of Flight 77, even though the Flight Data Recorder indicated that the cockpit door never opened during the flight. With just these crude weapons, the hijackers herded everyone, including the crew, into the back of the plane. The pilots were somehow prevented from dialing a four-digit code indicating to air traffic controllers that a hijack was in progress.
One of the hijackers, a failed flight student who had been refused rental of a Cessna a month earlier because of his poor piloting skills, took over. He flew several hundred miles west without being detected by radar, pulled a 180-degree turn and headed back to Washington. No fighters were able to intercept this or any of the other three hijacked planes that day.
Then, instead of simply flying straight into the Pentagon and doing maximum damage, he initiated an incredibly difficult 330-degree spiral to hit the building on the one side that would result in very few casualties. The plane hit the building, making a small hole, and then completely disappeared into the building. There was minimal damage to the building’s facade, including where the plane’s engines and tail section would have hit. The plane hit the first floor of the building but caused no damage to the lawn.
The plane travelled at 530 mph even though professional pilots will tell you that it is physically impossible to fly at that speed just a few feet above the ground. No airplane part that could positively be tied to Flight 77 was found. Photos of the damaged section of the building show that columns that would have to have been destroyed for the plane to completely enter the building are still intact.
Suddenly the official story isn’t so simple after all. True, the “inside job” theory is extremely complex and would involve many things going according to plan, but it doesn’t break the laws of physics several times the way the official account does.
The other thing to keep in mind through all of this is that when one story (the official one) is unquestioningly accepted by the media, all the onus is on those who disagree with the government account to prove it to be false. All contrary versions have to be measured against the official story, which itself doesn’t have to be proved; it is taken for granted.
Treat the “19 hijacker” theory as equally unproven, and it’s a whole different ballgame.
Very nice post Craig.
Holds up even if flyover didn’t happen. The precision of the piloting (if a real commercial plane) suggests complexity in the remote control system, but employing such systems provides a better margin of predictability and reliability and Occam Razor simplicity than relying on in-the-cockpit human pilots.
The lighting poles are what interest me, as well as the physics of them being clipped by aluminum wings of a commercial aircraft (versus an unmanned military aircraft versus a military drone or cruise missile) at the supposed speed it flew.
Good work, Mr. McKee.
You’re absolutely right that it holds up even if you don’t support the flyover theory. And I’m not 100% committed to that theory; I’m trying to look at all the possibilities and to make sense of what could have happened. Based on the evidence presented in the film National Security Alert (from Citizen Investigation Team), the flyover seems the most logical to me right now, but I’m keeping an open mind.
The light poles interest me, too. I’m sure that no 757 knocked them over based on the eyewitnesses (including two Pentagon cops) who say the plane came in to the north of the gas station, meaning that it could not have hit the poles. I don’t believe the perpetrators would take the risk of having any plane hit the poles because of the likelihood that a major chunk of wing would break off. And if that happened, the plane would crash and give the whole thing away.
No, I don’t see how any plane could have hit those poles. I think this was an essential part of the deception, but it was messed up by the witnesses at the gas station. If we had real media, they would be investigating.
I love it how the dreaded “Official Story” is made to look more complicacted than it is by injecting all the Truther canards, opinion based “anomalies” and conjecture. William of Occam is raped to show that it is the “debunkers” that abuse his Razor. “See? The Official story is Our Theories so Occam’s Razor cannot be used either way” is the logic here.
Occam’s Razor doesn’t say that it is the simpler hypothesis per se that is to be preferred. It says the simplest hypothesis that explains the data that is to be preferred.
Herein lies the problem for the Truth movement. 1) the TM feels compelled to make it look like that the 19 hijackers narrative doesn’t explain the data by making data up and throwing the full weight of their logical fallacies against it. And 2) There is no data that supports their “inside job” theory.
It’s amazing how people can sound so sure of themselves while saying nothing at all. The official story is complicated by the fact that literally hundreds of elements of it fly in the face of the evidence. There’s something wrong with pointing out anomalies? They’re clues that something isn’t adding up.
And what is your hypothesis that explains the data? You can’t answer this because the facts aren’t on your side. Occam’s Razor is so often twisted to serve one view or another, and 9/11 is no exception. You can’t favor simplicity when deception is involved!
So, we’re making the data up, are we? Are we making up the fact that the hijackers had ties to U.S. intelligence; some were trained on secure U.S. bases. What about some of them turning up alive? What about explosions in the World Trade Center basements. What about molten metal under all three towers? What about Building 7 falling symmetrically into its own footprint in 6.5 seconds? Why was that reported on the BBC half an hour before it happened? I won’t even get started on the Pentagon.
Sorry, buddy, but you can throw around clever terms like “logical fallacies” and “opinion-based anomalies” but they won’t change the basic fact that you have no truth on your side. I’m putting my side out with every post. What “data” do you have?
It is actually amazing how people can sound so sure of themselves without having any evidence at all.
It is also amazing how people can sound so sure of themselves while putting their personal, crackpot opinions, above the primary evidence, like truthers do.
Your “anomalies” are no evidence at all. You “anomalies” do not exists in the real world. Your “anomalies”are basically just this: discrepancies between the primary evidence and your opinions. Rather than, when noting such a discrepancy, concluding that your opinion on it is wrong, you conclude that the “official story” is wrong.
You throwing more of the same “anomalies”, distortions and falsehoods, at me in a rebuttal does not refute my observation, as apparently intended, rather, it confirms it.
You’re absolutely right. No evidence. Distortions and falsehoods. Crackpot opinions.
Where did you learn to debate so eloquently and effectively? You’re so good that all you have to say is that someone else is wrong; you don’t have to back that up with even ONE fact. You’re very special indeed.
Your nonsense has been debunked a gazillion of times already, for some reason you have the desire to recycle your age old, long debunked nonsense like “the hijackers are still alive.” Why is that?
Because some of them have been proven to be alive. They’ve even given interviews. You know, just saying that something is debunked doesn’t make it so. Why don’t you explain to me and my readers how the evidence supports the nonsense story about 19 Muslim hijackers. My guess is you’ll just come back with a few more mindless attacks, but you won’t try to give facts to back up the official story. Because you can’t. Prove me wrong.
Where is the evidence that the hijackers are still alive? Where are these interviews?
Here’s a link from the BBC: <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1559151.stm
Here's a site with several links: http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/hijackers.html
And here's another with several links on the subject: http://guardian.150m.com/september-eleven/hijackers-alive.htm
That took me all of five minutes to find. I'm sure there are lots of others. Where's your evidence that the 19 alleged hijackers got on the planes and then were killed?
In the immediate days after 9/11 there was confusion about the identity of the hijackers. Names where circulating. People with identical names gave interviews saying “I ain’t dead. I ain’t no terrorist.”
E.g. Waleed Al Shehri is not an uncommon name: http://www.facebook.com/search.php?q=Waleed+Alshehri&type=users
And now, *Snicker*, an interview from 11/23/2001, the immediate aftermath, is supposed to “prove” hijackers are still alive. *Snicker*
That;s what I mean when I say you recycle age old nonsense.
The hijackers are stone dead. Here are the flight manifests from the Moussaoui trial
http://911myths.com/index.php/Image:Flight_11_Manifest_Moussaoui.gif
http://911myths.com/index.php/Image:Flight_175_Manifest_Moussaoui.gif
http://911myths.com/index.php/Image:Flight_77_Manifest_Moussaoui.gif
http://911myths.com/index.php/Image:Flight_93_Manifest_Moussaoui.gif
The planes *have* been hijacked as witnessed by phone call recordings of the people on the damn planes: http://www.911myths.com/images/flash/flights/MainNew.swf
DNA of Arabic nationals *has* been found in the crash sites.
Waleed Al-Shehri was depicted in FBI photographs as being one of the hijackers. This same man gave an interview to the London-based Arab daily newspaper Al-Qods al-Arabi on Sept. 22, 2001 saying that he was in fact alive. There were several other examples of this, including Saheed al-Ghamdi and Salem al-Hazmi. I would refer you to the excellent essay, “What we now know about the alleged 9/11 hijackers” by Jay Kolar, published in “The Hidden History of 9-11, edited by Paul Zarembka.
DNA of Arabic nationals? You’ve got to be kidding. How does DNA show which country you’re a citizen of?
All the evidence converges unequivocally on the conclusion that 19 Arabians hijacked the four planes. There is DNA evidence, there is the boarding video evidence, there is the flight manifests, there is there are recordings phone calls from the passengers that are about Arabians having hijacked the planes, there are the “we have planes” ATC recordings there is the CVR from UA93 that has the chatter of Arabic speaking individuals.
There is no doubt the hijackers are dead. Their DNA was found at the crash sites. The flight manifests prove they where on the planes. The planes crashed at 400-800 mph into buildings or the ground. Crashes at that speed kill people.
That’s why you Truther nutbars have nothing better to offer than recycling nonsense again.. 11 days after 9/11 confusion about identity.. and here comes an interview 11/22/2001 as “proof.”
Where is your proof that the Waleed Al-Shehri from the flight manifest is the same Waleed Al-Shehri from the 11/22/2001 interview? I haven’t seen any proof. I have seen only you reiterating that claim.
Note you are wrong at several levels. You have no evidence that these individuals are one and the same. Second, even if they where one and the same. That would not rule out several other possibilities: e.g. the hijacker in question used a false id, the FBI was mistaken about the identity of the hijacker, etc. But Truthers are always quick to jump to the conclusion that favours their paranoid agenda.
Yes, race can be deduced from DNA, may I suggest you educate yourself a bit on the matter? Heck, using DNA it is even possible to deduce how the various peoples migrated over the world over the last 70,000 years or so. Mitochondrial DNA. Learn a bit.
I really enjoy your comments because everything you write makes your case look more ridiculous. Unlike you, I will give specifics. First of all, Arabian is not a race. DNA cannot tell which country you are from. It doesn’t matter about your ancestors 70,000 years ago. We’re talking about proof that DNA proves that the same Saudi Arabians pictured by the FBI are the ones who died. Please provide YOUR proof of this alleged DNA evidence and how it proves anything. We know Waleed al-Shehri is the same one because he saw his own picture in the newspapers, publicized by the FBI, and he came forward and said that he was very much alive. He’s not the only one. Any you think the FBI didn’t think of the fake ID thing? You people always fall back on “mistakes” to explain everything.
And you know, sarcastic attacks work much better when there’s some meat to them. Yours are full of air.
Ah, I see.. nitpicking and playing semantics is “giving specifics” in the Truther book.
Look, it is possible to deduce how the various peoples migrated over the globe over the last 70,000 years. Had you had the most rudimentary intellectual capabilities, which you apparently lack, you would have understood the relevance. The underlying idea being that when social groups are isolated from each other their DNA fingerprint will diverge over time, This goes for peoples around the globe today as well. Now, clearly, deducing people migrations over many millenia is a way more difficult undertaking than establishing to which group a few individuals belong today. My logic was that if the former is possible, which it is, the latter is certainly possible. And it is possible and has been done.
You Truthers always cling on “anomalies” rather than resolving them, to keep your delusional beliefs afloat,
Let us see. FBI says a guy named ABC took part in a hijacking and died of his act. ABC goes to the press and says “It wasn’t me”
Possible reasons for this anomaly include:
– The FBI was mistaken: it was guy XYZ.
– XYZ used a false identity ABC.
– There are two guys named ABC. The first died, the second is alive and kicking.
The possibility that there was not a hijacker at all is ruled out by the evidence. Some of which I mentioned previously.
Let’s resolve this one:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2006/10/911_conspiracy_theory_1.html
“A five-year-old story from our archive has been the subject of some recent editorial discussion here. The story, written in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, was about confusion at the time surrounding the names and identities of some of the hijackers. This confusion was widely reported and was also acknowledged by the FBI.
The story has been cited ever since by some as evidence that the 9/11 attacks were part of a US government conspiracy. ”
“The confusion over names and identities we reported back in 2001 may have arisen because these were common Arabic and Islamic names.
In an effort to make this clearer, we have made one small change to the original story. Under the FBI picture of Waleed al-Shehri we have added the words “A man called Waleed Al-Shehri…” to make it as clear as possible that there was confusion over the identity. The rest of the story remains as it was in the archive as a record of the situation at the time. ”
You are wrong. But keep it up! Keep dwelling in your delusions. You need your crank beliefs.
I have another scenario: maybe some commenter ABC forms an opinion XYZ. No matter how many holes are shown to exist in XYZ, ABC makes the “facts” fit his or her version. ABC uses insults, sarcasm, and distortion to muddy the waters. Phrases like “The possibility that there was not a hijacker at all is ruled out by the evidence” are supposed to stand on their own. Readers are not supposed to notice that the substance is missing.
You have still failed to provide even the most basic proof that DNA of the hijackers was found, and that it proved that they were “Arabian.” I ask again, how do you know this? Apparently you’re too busy talking about global migrations from thousands of years ago. It does give me a laugh at least. By the way, please give me an example of nitpicking, and another of playing with semantics.
You suggest that a mistake could have been made. If there was only one hole in the government’s story, that might fly. But EVERY element of the story requires that many mistakes were made.
I will finish on this: I have no problem with people telling me that I’m wrong, even that my arguments are nonsensical. But I do have limits. If you rely on comments like, “Had you had the most rudimentary intellectual capabilities, which you apparently lack, you would have understood the relevance” then I will grow tired of the debate. Yes, it just makes you look bad (especially when it’s tied to your crazy DNA thoughts) but it brings nothing to the debate. I’d rather expend my efforts on people who are willing to debate facts and not assume that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is stupid.
Let me get this straight.
I do not claim that you are not that bright because you disagree with me. I come to the conclusion that you are not the sharpest knife in the drawer on the following grounds:
1) You apparently inability to absorb anything of a coherent thesis. You pick out a word and start rambling about it, ramblings that have has little or no connection to the thesis presented.
Dismissing the dna migration stuff as “irrelevant” is a nice example. Even a child can make the connection with determining the race of someone. And you start nitpicking about “Arabian is not a race.”
This very post of yours is another. I explained in clear terms in several posts here in different wording how the “FBI said ABC was a hijacker, ABC says ‘I’m still alive'” “anomaly” can be and is resolved. You pick out the letters “ABC” and start rambling about scenario’s and posters.
2) Your continuous spouting of incoherent, self contradicting nonsense that you take to be the gospel. Nonsense that can be dismantled by trivial google searches. Nonsense that has been demonstrated to be nonsense years ago, and a gazillion of times.
Do you really believe you have facts for debate to offer? You have none. Do you really believe you have anything for intelligent debate to offer? You have none.
Your whining about terms you do not understand (“opinion based anomalies”)
and your failure to see that you commit this fallacy of incredulity all the time does not alleviate matters.
Look Craig, that’s when I think “this guy is really dumb.” And I stand by that. If you are intelligent you sure know how to hide it.
If you want my respect you have to earn it. You need to start talking rationally, start talking facts instead of incredulity, and start talking coherently.
Sehr geehrter Herr Hauptstadter,
Stirring up FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) is about the extent of your abilities, because to address head-on the issues is an impossible task if your superiors haven’t previously had the moxie to address them and provide you with the appropriate spin.
Take a step back and view the identity issue as thus. No arabic names were on the flight manifests that I have seen, and no names aligned with the named suspects/patsies which was broadcast within a couple days of the event complete with pictures. And when some of the named suspects are alive and well in foreign countries and disputing their involvement, a rational person would think: “Ah, just a case of identity theft that we’ve learned to be fearful of because of those damn Mexican laborers stealing the manual labor jobs that no one wants and having to fake their identification and social security information to be paid.”
A hallmark of the G.W.Bush and his administration was to never admit they were wrong. On anything. Ever. Not even doing cocaine or not fulfilling national guard service. Nothing.
The FBI and others could easily have said, “Oops! My bad. Yes, indeed, identity theft occurred.” The reason they didn’t was that it opened up a can of worms for which they didn’t have a full explanation worked out, and lying on the fly is bad form and is easily caught. No Arabic named passenger A on the manifest? Arabic named person alive and well? Then what passenger name X was used instead? How did the hijacker get that fake identification? Are there conflicts with the name X and a real person X already accounted for on the flight?
So, just like the initial NIST documents on the WTC destruction ignored WTC-7, just like the 9/11 Commission ignored and omitted things like Able Danger, Sibel Edmunds, Mr. Rodriquez, Mr. Jennings & Mr. Hesh, … just like the NIST/FEMA assumed it was commercial aircraft and office fires so didn’t test for accelerants or plutonium, the FBI on this hijacker front had to ignore this incongruity.
It was important for the 9/11 cheerleaders to be in lock-step on all points, however stupid or debunked. Keep repeating the lie. National Security was indeed at stake even if the cheerleaders suspected they were giving lip service to lies. If any of the lies are exposed, the whole house of cards could come down and the fallout will be our nation, certainly our govt, and most definitely the job security of those in govt at all levels.
Yes, they may have given their oath to the Constitution, but by golly their family still needs to be fed, and the consequence to wanna-be whistle-blowers was made clear. When did the Anthrax attacks occur, who was targeted, and who did they blame?
The issue with the DNA is an issue with the aircraft. You see, in all four cases, the crash and fires were supposedly so intense that they vaporized the aircraft, which supposedly explains the lack of wreckage, luggage, aircraft debris, bodies, and body parts. But if the aircraft were vaporized, kindly calculate the intense heat required and what would happy to bodies and body parts subjected to such aircraft-vaporizing heat.
If DNA was found, why not more of the aircraft? Conversely, because more of the aircraft wasn’t found, how were they able to find DNA?
Hey, the lies on this could go either way and both ways at the same time just to keep it suppressed, and keep the FUD going.
Here’s another point. Human remains were found in tiny pieces on the roof tops of adjacent buildings. Kindly calculate the energy required to sever a body into tiny pieces and eject it those distances. How do we know that the remains on those distant building roof tops was from WTC office workers or fire fighters and not those of the hijackers?
I’m not hesitant to point you in the direction of http://www.septemberclues.info to find out the media manipulation that duped the world. But that rabbit hole takes a deep and nasty twist (that I don’t fully endorse yet) regarding simPeople, simPassangers, and simVictims. I’m not saying that there weren’t real victims, but were those victim numbers faked and enhanced? I don’t know. As far as I do know, the 9/11 families asking that questions be answered in an independent investigation does not include any victims from the airplanes. Their families were all just hunky-dory with the govt settlements and the airline settlements and with the explanation in general, they’ve been legally barred from discussing it. Makes it easier if many of them weren’t real and if the real ones went into a witness protection/re-location program (if they weren’t off’ed in any number of ways, including gassed at altitude and flown remotely to convenient disposal places.)
Mit freundlichen Gruesse,
Herr Der Elf
It’s funny how W. Hauptstadter scoffs at the supposedly debunked “hijackers are alive” idea but accepts without question the myth that DNA was collected that proved the identities of the hijackers. Maybe they found some DNA floating around with the melted planes under the towers…
Recycle nonsense. I posted links to the flight manifests as used in US court. These contain the 19 names.
Using a CNN victim list as proof that “the hijackers where not on the manifests” doesn’t work. This Truther myth rests solely on this victim lists.
Here you go.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2808599.stm
http://www.newsweek.com/2009/01/02/remains-of-the-day.html
Please note that there is several lines of evidence that converge on the conclusion that 19 hijackers of Arabic descent hijacked the planes. Some of this I mentioned above.
Dear Herr Hauptstadler,
Here is a great quote from the opening paragraph of the second link you provided.
“The collapsed World Trade Center towers had burned at temperatures reaching 2,000 degrees, incinerating those trapped inside. Many of the bodies of the passengers aboard the two airplanes that struck the buildings were consumed by burning jet fuel, leaving only traces of DNA, much of it so damaged that it was impossible to read. Few bodies were found intact. Most of the human remains culled from the vast wreckage at Ground Zero were little more than tiny fragments of charred tissue and bone.”
So how exactly did temperatures reach 2000 degrees?
The last sentence deserves an explanation: “Most of the human remains culled from the vast wreckage at Ground Zero were little more than tiny fragments of charred tissue and bone.”
Assuming that most of the humans in the towers were on their way out and distributed vertically along the escape stairwells, how is it that their remains would be charred?
Could it have been nukes (or other means of controlled demolition) that made them tiny fragments of tissue and bone and charred them as well?
Listen, I’m the first to admit that I’m not William Petersen or Gary Sinise when it comes to knowledge about DNA, but I find it impossible to believe that hijackers were identified by DNA from steering wheels of rented cars. How do you know who have touched that steering wheel (that’s assuming it’s even possible to pick up skin fragments from such a surface)? And the samples came from the FBI. How reliable is that given that I’m accusing the government of carrying out the attacks.
Evidence of the use of nuclear weapons, or “other means of controlled demolition”, on 9/11?
How the material reached 2000 degrees? How about… fire? See f.i. http://www.mace.manchester.ac.uk/project/research/structures/strucfire/DataBase/References/CICOM%20Paper%20(Colin%20Bailey-one-stop-shop).pdf, where a fire reached a temperature in excess of 2200 degrees.
*Snicker* Proposing *nuclear weapons* as a means for *controlled* demolition.
The smallest nuclear warhead in the US arsenal is the Davy Crockett device, It was based on the W-54 design of which the yield was tunable from 10 tons TNT to 1000 tons TNT,
Even with 10 tons of TNT equivalent you don’t demolish a building *controlled*; you blow it up. With a kiloton you vaporize it. And then we are not even talking about the radiation. You get the radiation of the fission products and you get Plutonium pollution: low yield nuclear weapons are inefficient, they fission only a small percentage of their nuclear fuel.
Controlled demolition with nukes.. Utterly nuts,.
Mein lieber Herr Haupstadter,
The first error in the first referenced article and your posting is not providing units on the degrees. I assume you mean degrees Fahrenheit. Your second error is an inability to Google. Let me help you with a quick copy-and-paste.
What temperature does jet fuel reach in open air? 287.5 °C (549.5 °F).
What temperature does steel lose strength? The properties of steel vary widely, depending on its alloying elements. At about 550° C (1,000° F) Steel is at 50% strength and at about 800° C (1472° F) structural steel loses 90% of its strength.
The problem, Herr Haupstadter, is that neither jet fuel nor office furnishings can reach the high localized & sustained-over-time temperatures needed to weaken steel. The WTC tower fires in question were billowing black, sooty smoke, which is an indication of being oxygen starved. Firefighters who made it to the impact scene of the 2nd tower said words to the effect: “two isolated pockets of fires; two lines to knock them down. The 2nd tower was imploded at about 56 minutes after its impact.
As for the document you linked, I suggest you understand it and determine its relevance before promoting it as the holy grail on fire.
To your point, yes, a test fire did reach a temperature in excess of 2200°F. So? Ever hear of worst-case testing, which this obviously was? This wasn’t what was happening in the WTC towers.
Yep. That’s my explanation and I’m sticking to it until someone proves it otherwise.
Check out this video?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU8L3YuIDus&feature=player_embedded
You tell me that this destruction doesn’t scream nukes. Look in particular at the tiny (or flattened) rubble piles for WTC-1 & 2. Look at the crater in WTC-6 that the collapse of a neighboring tower can’t explain, because not enough debris from the towers is in the crater to account for it. Look also at the cylindrical and spherical holes in WTC-5. Look at how neatly (relatively speaking) WTC-7 folded in on itself.
Here’s something else, but you have to keep in mind the original plane and office furnishing fires were 80+ stories in the air.
The above was the debris pile. I say unspent but fizzling nuclear material accounts for this. Are you trying to say that buried & smothered office furnishing fires accounts for this?
By the way, when you think nukes, think milli so that the order of magnitude of its designed yield can be scaled properly. Milli is not megaton.
Lieber Herr Hauptstadter,
I apologize for having missed your second posting until now. Mr. McKee is known for delays in getting around to moderating comments. The time stamps reflect when we posted our comments but not necessarily when the comments appear.
Herr Hauptstadter hat mal geshcrieben:
I think we should correct this statement and add preface it with: “The public thinks that…” Or, “the public has been told that …”, because the exact up-to-date state of our nuclear arsenals falls under National Security and wouldn’t be public knowledge.
Doesn’t the Davy Crockett device go back to 1962 or so? Seems reasonable to assume with the run-away military industrial complex budget that on September 10, 2001 the Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld couldn’t account for $2.3 trillion would have made some mighty fine developments in that area. Do you think there might have been some in the military just dying to try them?
Herr Hauptstadter shrieb weiter:
You are probably absolutely correct regarding the damage that we could expect to see with those particular payloads. Allow me to point out that obvious in the prefix milli that I would regularly append to nukes. It isn’t that I think that milli is the exact order of magnitude, but it is to get readers thinking small, or certainly smaller than the kilo or mega prefixes.
Other obvious things are that they’d try to direct the energy, probably in a tightly narrow cone downward. Because the top-most milli-nukes would have been below the crash site and would have many floors of structure above them, they did blow up. In one case, the top floors gained angular momentum off to the side and should have toppled over, until that angular momentum was arrested through the process of being turned to dust.
Vaporization did happen, but on a much smaller scale. Where are the desks, computers, chairs, office partitions, people? Oh, the latter have been found in small charred fragments on the roof tops of neighboring buildings.
Radiation? Yes, one of the factors in designing a nuke that can be played with. The evidence of nuclear weapons does not live or die with govt reports that state “there wasn’t radiation or it was below some govt specified threshold”, particularly when the govt agencies have a track of less than forthrightness regarding 9/11. Aside from the toxic mix of other (nuclear) pulverized building content that first responders inhaled and contributes to their ill health, don’t you think radiation poisoning could contribute too?
Again, you are correct with your statement regarding the inefficiency of low yield nuclear weapons and only fissioning a small percentage of their nuclear fuel. Follow that thought and contemplate what would happen to the larger percentage of their nuclear fuel. Do you think that it would be fizzling in very hot, foundry-level fires under the rubble for months as we observed?
Herr Hauptstadter shrieb:
Not really so utterly nuts when you consider what was learned from the 1993 WTC attacks. That core columns were much tougher than they thought. The logistics of wiring the core (as opposed to the outer walls) for conventional controlled demolition could be reduced by many orders of magnitude if low yield redundant milli-nukes were employed.
You asked me what could cause temperatures up to 2000 degrees. The link I provided proves that fires can reach temperatures over 2000 degrees.
If remains from 9-11 show signs of being subjected to temps up to 2000 degrees, Occam’s Razor dictates that we prefer the conclusion that the fires the heating rather than invoke rather insane theories like the use of nuclear weapons.
You respond with quotes taken out of context and distortions that appear to be designed to argue that the fires in the WTC towers where not really that big, could not have been that hot, and could therefore not have caused the collapse of the towers, so that we should seek alternative explanations.
The irony of the above in a thread that accuses “debunkers” to twist Occam’s Razor to serve the “Offical Story” does not go unnoticed.
You quote mine from the document at the link I provided, apparently to support the assertion that steel frame buildings cannot collapse due to fire. Your quote-mining is in vain: that a test setup did not collapse in a hot fire does not imply buildings cannot collapse due to fire. Steel framed buildings can collapse due to fires. Steel framed buildings have collapsed due to fire. Viz. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaK5YVVaRCo. That is why real engineers, as opposed to the ignorant nutbars in the truth movement, conduct tests and write reports and books like the document I linked to and the other documents at http://www.mace.manchester.ac.uk/project/research/structures/strucfire/DataBase/References/defaultSteel.htm, because the performance of structural steel in fire *is* a concern in regard to building safety.
Like most truthers You seen to be wrong and confused about the temperature a fire can reach. Your logic seem to be that when a f.i. jet fuel burns at, say 600 C in open air, a jet fuel fire can not get hotter than 600 C.
In reallity the temperature reached in a fire is determined by the amount of energy per second the fire generates, the amount of energy per second that escapes through transportation, conduction and radiation, and the heat capacity of the materials involved, not by the temperature of the flames of the combustibles in open air. So as long as a fire generates more energy than can escape the temperature will continue to rise, regardless of the open air flame temperature of the combustibles involved.
This is the stove effects. An extreme example of this are haystack fires. Bacteria munch at the hay. In doing so they generate energy. They don’t get hot. Individual straws, even bunches of hay don’t get hot. Yet, the continued energy production of the microcrobes inside a haystack combined with the heat insulation provided by the haystack can cause it to get the interior so hot that the hay ignites. See f.i. http://www.bioline.org.br/request?au97017.
The truther mantra ‘jet fuel burns at 800 C, so the fires where not that hot’ is therefore just ignorant nonsense.
You quoted a firefighter out of context. Let us put the quote into its context:
“Battalion Seven Chief: “Battalion Seven … Ladder 15, we’ve got two isolated pockets of fire. We should be able to knock it down with two lines. Radio that, 78th floor numerous 10-45 Code Ones.”
Ladder 15: “What stair are you in, Orio?”
Battalion Seven Aide: “Seven Alpha to lobby command post.”
Ladder Fifteen: “Fifteen to Battalion Seven.”
Battalion Seven Chief: “… Ladder 15.”
Ladder 15: “Chief, what stair you in?”
Battalion Seven Chief: “South stairway Adam, South Tower.”
The fighter was in the the stairways in the south tower. Now, that there where at a particular point in time in a particular spot in the tower there where only isolated fires does not imply the fires in towers where small. It is clear from the video evidence that they where significant in size.
Your out of context quote appears to be designed so that the reader would get the impression that the fires overall where not that big. You intellectual dishonesty did not get unnoticed.
Had nuclear weapons been used, even in their lowest available yield, the event would not get unnoticed. The air would have been purple because of ionisation due to rapidly decaying fission products. Lower Manhattan would have been contaminated with fission products and Plutonium. Fission products and Plutonium that went unnoticed after 9/11. Noone suffering from Plutonium poisoning or radiation sickness has been hospitalised in the aftermath of 9/11.
So high temperatures in a smouldering debris pile are evidence of nuclear weapons used?
There where large quantities of combustibles in the twin towers, paperwork, books, wallpaper, cubicles, furniture, cars, car fuel, computers, plastics, hundreds and hundreds of tonnes of it. All that was packed into a pile that went underground for six floors. Heat could not escape easily from that tub. As the combustibles smouldered and burned the temperatures rose as I explained earlier.
Your second to final argument, BTW, is an application of the Affirming the Consequent Logical Fallacy: nuclear weapons cause a lot of destruction, so when a lot of destruction is observerd, nuclear weapons where used. Pathetic in itself and in contradiction with your own “milli-nuke” concept.
*Snicker* This is a kind of self-defeating post. Making nonsense up as you go, all the whilst not having a single clue about what it takes to make nuclear weapons. “Milli-nukes” that nobody heard of, that nobody notices when they go boom, yet are so powerful that the can destroy the columns that a car bomb was not able to destroy and are so powerful that the enormous 9/11 post-collapse destruction is considered proof of their use. “Milli-nukes” that emit their energy uni-directional and produce no detectable radiation. “Milli-nukes” that nobody has noticed or found a trace of on and after 9/11.
“Milli-nukes” that cannot exist. One can’t make nuclear weapons arbitrary small. Nuclear weapons work by assembling or compressing a sub-critical configuration of fissile material into super-criticallity. There is are both lower and upper limits to the amount of fissile material in these configurations. Too much fissile material and the configuration cannot be sub-critical, such a configuration would self-destruct on the production line. Too little material and no amount of high explosives can compress the configuration into super-criticallity, such a configuration would not produce any nuclear yield at all upon detonation.
What would be the point of using these “milli-nukes” where a couple of ounces of cheap conventional high explosives in a linear shaped charge would be sufficient to cut a column?
Utterly insane.
Dearest Mr. Hauptstadter,
I commend you on your postings. You make Cass Sunstein and Phillip Zelikow proud. Unless noted otherwise, all block quotations are from Mr. Hauptstadter.
I agree, Mr. Hauptstadter, that under ideal conditions, (office) fires can reach temperatures over 2000 degrees F., and this was indeed performed in one of the six tests documented in your link.
Neither WTC tower fire was an ideal condition.
O-oooh, that dreaded Occam Razor you throw at me! Drats, you dirty bugger!
Too bad for your case that we both agree that “remains from 9-11 show signs of being subjected to temps up to 2000 degrees” (Fahrenheit) and that milli-nukes can account for it easier than non-ideal office furnishing fires. Plus, unlike weak-and-waning office furnishing fires, milli-nukes can Occam Razor explain pulverization of content, under-rubble fires burning foundry-hot for months, molten steel, fused “meteor” type objects, horizontal ejection of materials at great velocities, collapse at free-fall rates, EMP damage to vehicles outside the throw-radius of destruction…
How crazy is this “insane theory”?
Instead of “quotes taken out of context” and (down below) “quote-mining”, I prefer to call it by its tried and true name in serious research: “reference quotations”. Unlike you, it proves that I read the material, understood it, and could point out where it was and wasn’t applicable.
Wait a minute! Are you implying that Occam Razor can only be used one-way? One the 9/11 coincidence theorists such as yourself can invoke his hallowed name? This indeed does not go unnoticed.
I agree, Mr. Hauptstadter, that “steel framed buildings can collapse due to fires.” I also love how you gloss over that what I quote-mined from your document wasn’t a single test setup where very hot fires didn’t collapse buildings. No, it was six such tests, each progressively worse and allowing for ideal burning conditions.
Where we disagree is in the characterization, or framing if you will, of the office fires in three buildings. This “ignorant nutbar from the truth movement” seems to think that each fire was non-ideal, asymmetric, weak-and-waning, and (WTC-7 excepted) of short duration. And gee, while I don’t consider myself a “real engineer”, I have in fact taken (and passed) the same physics classes that “real engineer” are required to take.
I don’t know how to tell you this, Mr. Hauptstadter, but look on the bottom of your shoe. With the above paragraph, you really stepped in it and it stinks. I suggest you go double-check things with NIST, because they are the ones saying that the jet fuel burned off likely within the first 10 minutes. Therefore, in the office furnishing fires from minute 11 to minute 56 (I believe), jet fuel fires played no role in the first tower to collapse. A similar scenario is true with the second tower. WTC-7 wasn’t hit by a plane, so jet fuel didn’t play a role. This isn’t to say you are wrong, but you are certainly confused… And I’m starting to believe that your confusion is on purpose.
Applying the above to 9/11 and the towers, steel is a conductor of heat and to get to a point of failure (e.g., weakening) needs to be heated through and through. Thus, although Mr. Hauptstadter and I agree that “remains from 9-11 show signs of being subjected to temps up to 2000 degrees” (Fahrenheit), that is a one-time peak temperature of a flame and the material temperature was subject to the “energy per second that escapes through transportation, conduction and radiation, and the heat capacity of the materials involved”
I enjoyed your paragraph on the stove effect and the haystack bacteria. Too bad it isn’t relevant. I’d normally delete it in my response, but am keeping it around to show how you spin your wheels.
Drats! You almost got me again, you dirty bugger. Too bad the truther mantra is no such thing and you’ve misquoted me. “Jet fuel in open air reaches temperatues of 287.5 °C (549.5 °F).” This “ignorant nonsense” can be found with the Google. Ouch, Mr. Hauptstadter, your dirty tactics really hurt!
I removed the rest of the context, because Mr. Hauptstadter has provided it. Too bad it still supports my contention and merely pads his posting.
I’ll start with the last sentence first. From analysis of the amounts of smoke and color, the video evidence shows significant fires in the first tower hit (the North tower) and much weaker fires in the second tower hit (the South tower), where the fireman was.
What happened shortly after that “particular point in time” and the fireman’s report hit the airwaves? I speculate that it was an “oh-shit moment” for those implementing the plans and eavesdropping on the radio communication. The fires were supposed to have been hotter and bigger. Can’t have the New York’s finest putting it out with two lines, and thereby losing the ruse in the excuse for why these “white elephants” were destroyed. So, although it had less damage and weaker fires, it was destroyed first.
Yes, Mr. Hauptstadter, “intellectual dishonesty does not go unnoticed” here. Please, do keep it up.
You are absolutely correct. And this is why the PYSOPS team had people waiting in the wings to be interviewed and to immediately spin the story in the direction they wanted, and away from absolutely discussion of any form of controlled demolition, least of all nuclear.
And this is also why massive amounts of pictorial and video evidence was suppressed for years. Had that aftermath been shown as frequently as the pixels of the commercial airliners smacking the towers, the nuking of America would have been glaringly obvious.
You make all sorts of assumptions and speculation about the form and type nuclear weapons deployed, their yields, their side-effects. Trying to lead us off course, are we, Mr. Hauptstadter?
You’ve already demonstrated problems with the Google, sir. I suggest you try researching it some more and learn about the wide variety of nukes. Alos, why don’t you go review not just the following posting, but all of the articles on that particular blog.
A Brief Summary: WTC Destruction & High Temperature Aftermath: ONLY Nuclear Bombs and the China Syndrome Fit All the Evidence
Yes! By jove, I think Mr. Hauptstadter has finally got it!
Mr. Hauptstadter, aren’t you the cute one! Let’s go with your valid assertion about “large quantities of combustibles in the twin towers.” So sorry that 110 floors separated the combustibles from one another. So sorry that the milli-nukes pulverized the combustibles further separating them from one another and the flames from the 80th floor. So sorry that the pulverization of content “packed it into a pile that went underground for six floors” and thereby compressed it even closer together to allow for even less oxygen to get in and feed the flames. So sorry that unspent nuclear material from milli-nukes (that dreaded Occam Razor) don’t need oxygen to fizzle. So sorry that the very definitions of “combustibles smoldering” (inefficient supply of fuel or oxygen) kind of runs contrary to its ability to “burn and raise the temperatures”.
I commend you, however, Mr. Hauptstadter, for that awesome attempt at disinformation spin.
Really? Is that what my final argument was using? “Affirming the Consequent Logical Fallacy?” Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Learn something new every day. Thank you so much for enlightening me.
Maybe you can tell me what sort of argumentation trick you were using, whereby “a lot of destruction is observed” (something we both agree on) and a lot of hoops are jumped through as well as many laws of physics suspended in order to smoke-and-mirrors attempt to justify that a tiny remote probability exists that a gravitational collapse initiated by jet impacts, jet fuel, and office furnishing fires did it.
I’ve taken the liberty of appending your second response to this, where you begin:
“I know you are but what am I?” LOL! No seriously, *snicker* *snort* *gaff*! If my post was so “self-defeating” why was it necessary for you to respond?
By jove! I think Mr. Hauptstadter has indeed got it.
I do however dispute your last sentence. I think agencies did notice and did find traces of. The aptly named Ground Zero was under tight security, and the track record is rather impressive of govt agencies being, shall we say, “less than forthright.”
True that! I agree. And I stick by my milli-nukes. Although you accurately document obstacles to their production, deployment, and reliability, they are not road blocks.
“Utterly insane”, Mr. Hauptstadter, is exhibited in the above paragraph. Let’s see. “A couple of ounces of cheap conventional high explosives in a linear shaped charge … cuts a column” and has to be repeated (probably) for most columns on that floor and then everything done for that floor repeated on a certain number of other floors. How much time and access to the building does that take to implement?
Oh how “utterly insane” of me to think that planting just 2 (or maybe 6) milli-nukes per tower would be logistically easier.
“Cheap conventional high explosives”? Oh how you make me laugh “utterly insanely!” Why settle for cheap, when money was not object for the perps and they could afford the very best?
In conclusion, Mr. Hauptstadter, I thank you profusely and “utterly insanely” for your contributions to Mr. McKee’s discussion. You get a gold star! Now, when anybody asks Mr. McKee if he has seen any sort of Sunstein-infiltration of his blog, he’ll be able to point to your work as Exhibit A.
Dear Mr. Hauptstadter,
Please re-assure me that the video below is not clear-cut evidence of 9/11 being a nuclear event.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU8L3YuIDus&fs=1&hl=en_US]
Or, if the above embed doesn’t work, here’s the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU8L3YuIDus&feature=player_embedded
Pay attention to the clock for when it gets to 3:47 until about 4:20. The corners of that building are quite some distance from the closest tower. The building has injected chex steel from the towers at relatively high location, which means that the force to get it there was even greater than had it been at a lower location.
As Ricky Ricardo would say, yousa gots lots uv ‘splaining to do, Hauptstadter!
In his imagination Mr. El Once sees “milli nukes” go off in the towers, and sees WTC exterior panels being thrown around with great force. He sees some of these panels striking an adjacent building. All the while assuming that his imagination is an accurate model of the behaviour of physical object in a nuclear detonation.
Mr. El Once then turns logic on his head and concludes from observing some exterior panels protruding from the corners of a adjacent building that nuclear weapons are used.
(This is the Affirming the Consequent Fallacy: if your roof leaks, the interior of your house will get wet. That doesn’t mean that when the interior of your house is wet your roof leaks.)
observation=protruding exterior panels -> ??????? -> conclusion=nuclear weapons used.
Doesn’t work.
Let us work from the facts to a conclusion, shall we?
1) The WTC towers where 415 meters tall, significantly taller then any building in the vicinity.
2) These towers collapsed on certain points in time.
3) When we look at video footage from the collapses we see that exterior panels fall off the towers and move away from the building.
4) As the exterior panels fell, they picked up considerable speed and, therefore, significant kinetic energy.
5) As the panels fell, the exterior panel kept moving away from the towers.
Conclusion: the exterior panels simply fell into the adjacent building.
I see, make more nonsense up as you. Of course, when a 110 story skycraper collapses the 109 floors stay intact so they seal the debris pile airtight. That this is in direct contradiction to GZ photographic evidence does not matter in the slightest.
I get it, “milli-nukes” exists, because noone knows about them.
I get it:
1. Me: Even the lowest yeld 10 tons TNT eq. nuclear weapon would get noticed. Noone noticed.
2: You: think “milli” “milli” is not mega.
3: Me: Apparently these “milli-nukes” are so small that noone notices when they go off. Consequently you need many to have an effect. Why not use cheap conventional stuff?
4: You: “muilli-nukes” are so big, you need only a few.
goto 1
There is no inherent inconsistent in you position at all.
And of course, someone bringing some sense to the nonsense is a government agent sent in to suppress the Truth. As if your position is so strong the the government needs to sent its troops to combat it. The paranoia is staggering. The delusions of grandeur are denser than lead. You spouting your nonsense is all that is needed to discredit it. No help needed. Just a little bit of tickling.
You sure have build a strong fence around your delusions. Good luck with them.
Dear Agent Hauptstadter,
I suggest you do some research into “Davey Crocket” from the early 1960s and a forerunner of milli-nukes. You should also look into depleted uranium weapons. And wasn’t President Bush scrapping all sorts of test ban treaties so he could deploy bunker-busting bombs? How many of them were in reality milli-nukes? I personally don’t know, because I don’t have access to national secrets.
Milli-nukes exist for the same reasons the U.S. arsenal has all sorts of weaponized poisons, gases, bio-terrors, etc. They had the black budget, the scientists, and the itch to find new ways to destroy things. Of course, none of it has anything to do with benefits to mankind or life forms on this planet. Obsessions of overgrown teenagers who did it just because (or to prove that) they could.
Agent Hauptstadter wrote:
I agree with the first sentence and disagree with the second. No one noticed? What a crock! Everyone noticed. It is glaring when from the initial seconds of demolition the content is pulverized and ejected horizontally at great force.
Even before the dust had settled, the pysops team was explaining to the public what they did not notice.
Newscaster: “It has some appearance of a controlled demolition.” (Only mentioned on 9/11; never again.)
Govt Spin Meister to Newscaster: “No, I think that the damage from the jet impacts together with the blazing hot jet fuel fires caused the steel to weaken and initiate the collapse that the rest of the structure just could not withstand so it pancaked into itself… Such a tragic loss of life today, and of those true heroes, those patriotic firemen who went into harms way into the burning towering infernos to rescue the innocent trapped victims and didn’t make it out… This has all the earmarks of Osama bin Laden.”
Please go and view some September Clues.
I loved your statement:
Agent Hauptstadter, here’s an analogy about how you keep twisting the discussion by orders of magnitude. A restaurant tab is placed on the table, it’s over $300 dollars, and gracious Uncle Sam who has very deep pockets is to pay.
Because you subsist on vending machine junk food, you insist: “It should be paid like I always do, one $1 or $5 bill into the change machine at a time to get quarters to feed into the candy machine.”
I say: “Uncle Sam has nuclear payment options.”
You skew one direction: “We can’t pay the tab with $10,000 bills!”
I counter: “Milli-nukes.”
You skew another direction: “We can’t pay with over 30,000 pennies when conventional quarters or dollars would stack up to the tab.”
I persist: “Milli-nukes are the $100 bills that we know Uncle Sam has in his wallet. We’d only need a few, and as a redundant backup, we can get conventional $20’s from the pocket-tellers.”
You end: “Paying with stacks of nickels converted from $1 bills would still be easier than your milli-nuclear $100 bills that I’ve never seen and am not even sure exist.”
So, Agent Hauptstadter, did you get a chance to view the Coast Guard’s aerial footage of the WTC destruction? Your non-commentary on that specific subject speaks volumes. Yep, it’s just over 5 minutes long, so maybe you should view it again. Tell this forum again that the white smoke is from smoldering office content and not from fizzling unspent nuclear material. Tell us again the coincidences in the absolute thoroughness of the towers and WTC-7’s collapse. What was your explanation for the multiple craters in WTC-6 and the circular holes in WTC-5? I want to know how that wasn’t a conspiracy. And on your way, please don’t forget to tell us about the gold that was stored in the WTC complex. How do you explain that some of it was recovered… not from the vault, but from a truck that was abandoned in the tunnels? No conspiracy there, right?