Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

[andybot]

well it was a conspiracy, right? or did one person act alone?

no, it was a group of hijackers, what do you mean one person acting alone?

thing is, half of America thinks saddam Hussein did it. who are the crazies again?

Well that was W. and crew conflating Iraq and al-Queda

the architects, the ones in the video, are full on legit and well educated people. and there are thousands of them.. to dismiss what they have to say or observations made by them is shortsighted if you ask me..
I also can't recall any of them outright accusing any person or group of people as being the perps.. they're pretty much saying there are holes in the story and would like a new investigation.

I'm saying that blaming some Deux ex machina explosions for causing the towers to come down just seems pointless. Finding out more to understand how structures catastrophically fail in extreme conditions is plenty worthwhile.

[Jeff Hammond]

well it was a conspiracy, right? or did one person act alone?

no, it was a group of hijackers, what do you mean one person acting alone?

[wiki]a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future. [/wiki]

just saying that it's highly highly (highly) probable that a conspiracy took place.. i'm sure you agree with that.. so are you a conspiracy theorist too? (point is, i think it's a bit of a misnomer)

I'm saying that blaming some Deux ex machina explosions for causing the towers to come down just seems pointless. Finding out more to understand how structures catastrophically fail in extreme conditions is plenty worthwhile.

who's blaming anyone? (re: this thread & the subjects of the thread)

but yeah, regarding your second sentence, i agree and i hope most people can.. If those buildings (all 3) fell due to fire and a big amount of people that actually design/build those types of building think they should of fully withstood the planes/fire then.. well, we have a problem.

[andybot]

OK, plenty of semantics to get wrong here. What I mean is that there seems to be some underlying notion of a government (or alien... ) coverup. I think the various loose ends are generally attributable to run-of-the-mill incompetence in the original investigation. By "Conspiracy": I mean specifically the idea that some agents (government or otherwise) rigged the WTC buildings to explode and miraculously timed it to look like hijacked airplanes crashing into the building. I don't buy that.

[Jeff Hammond]

i don't believe it either (well, let me rephrase.. i don't know what happened but there is a possibility that it was someone(s) other than 19 egyptians and some rich saudi arabian)

i do think it's possible for the buildings to have been rigged with explosives of some sort prior to the plane hitting..

i mean really.. what would it take? a group of 4 or 5 guys with proper security clearance working for a month or two? it's not that farfetched.

not any more farfetched than 20 guys learning how to fly commercial jets over a period of 3-4 years then hijacking them with box cutters and driving them into a few buildings..

both stories, to me, are just as likely to occur.

[TomDC]

(...) 19 egyptians and some rich saudi arabian)

If memory serves, there were no Egyptians among the hijackers. Most were Saudis, I believe.

The Pentagon possibly mistook Iraq for Saudi Arabia.

i do think it's possible for the buildings to have been rigged with explosives of some sort prior to the plane hitting..

Could very well be, but where's the proof? So far, no tangible evidence seems to have surfaced. Which would presuppose a giant cover-up. Did someone mention Occam's razor yet?

[andybot]

Well, at least the slick thing about the guys with the box cutters and the flying lessons is that it was out of the realm of the imaginable before 9/11. Explosives in the building - that was already tried in WTC, and I would imagine a lot more attention would be paid to that sort of effort, especially considering the quantities of explosives required. Also, to be able to coordinate the two in a convincing fashion would take some serious engineering. Unless you're saying that there were no aircraft hitting the buildings on 9/11... in that case back to the tinfoil hat

[Jeff Hammond]

Could very well be, but where's the proof? So far, no tangible evidence seems to have surfaced. Which would presuppose a giant cover-up. Did someone mention Occam's razor yet?

it seems (again, i'm trying to be careful as to how i word this stuff but i'm sure i'll mess it up soon enough ), that much of the evidence, if there was any to be found, was destroyed prior to proper investigation.. that was by far the biggest crime scene ever in the city and i don't think it was treated as such..
(but hey, we've all received the same info here.. we're all drawing conclusions from the same pool.. for all i know, the beams/rubbble were inspected prior to destroying them.. i just haven't read anything about it.)

likewise, i don't think it would be a 'giant' coverup… very few people would need to be involved.. it's not like, if it were a u.s. based attack, the whole government is in on it but keeping their mouths shut..

Well, at least the slick thing about the guys with the box cutters and the flying lessons is that it was out of the realm of the imaginable before 9/11.

nah.. even those bowling for columbine kids were talking about doing the same thing.. and they died a couple of years prior to 2001..
the japanese have definitely used planes for missiles against the u.s.. the buildings were designed with the possibility of an aircraft crashing into them (granted, probably not with the idea that the plane would be a weapon.. but an accident such as the plane that crashed into the empire state building back in the day (but that thing easily survived fwiw)..

i think it was fully imaginable prior to 9/11 and i also think the defense dept has had this on their radar since, well, since a few years after kittyhawk..

Explosives in the building - that was already tried in WTC, and I would imagine a lot more attention would be paid to that sort of effort, especially considering the quantities of explosives required. Also, to be able to coordinate the two in a convincing fashion would take some serious engineering. Unless you're saying that there were no aircraft hitting the buildings on 9/11... in that case back to the tinfoil hat

no.. i saw planes flying into buildings

re: 'some serious engineering'
maybe.. i don't know.. i've never blew up a building.. half of me tends to believe it wouldn't be incredibly hard to do though.. (assuming access to high tech explosives and key parts of the buildings etc.)

[andybot]

Yep Tom - my first post on this thread!

occam's razor anyone? What kind of rube goldberg setup of explosives and timers and etc. would be required to precisely mimic the obvious and largely accepted version of events?

Jeff, my main point of contention is that the explosives and the planes crashing would have to be coordinated to some degree. That would point to a broader conspiracy.

[TIG]

We can but hope for Machiavellian politicians - always hoping that they are on 'our' side...
BUT my enduring experience is that they are always a bunch of 100% dorks - irrespective of their political leanings !
If we were to assume for a moment that Bubba and co, or anyone who might have ever listened to them, were capable of anything half as effective as this outcome then we are all doomed, and deserve the leaders we get !!
BUT, they have capitalized on the fallout, whilst unbelievable sidestepping any 'real' blame [e.g. where was the air-force?]: no more, no less...

[tomot]

I'm not a quasi engineer, simply an observer of natural events, plus having worked in the construction industry for well over 40 years.
A Semi-trailer truck might weigh as much as one of these beams. A 150 mph tornado has no problem picking up a Semi-trailer truck and tossing it around like a toy. I cant see those type of forces having being generated by this so called natural collapse, much less the total pulverization of gravel/rock into dust particles. Even a typical demolition using traditional methods, involves the removal of broken pieces of concrete, and reinforcing steel. Also keep in mind that buildings, designated for demolition, do not contain combustible materials, they have all been removed prior to the demolition. So how did all these combustible materials disintegrate into dust for these 2 buildings? The Pile which was left, as described by the NYC firefighters, had a temperature of 3000 degrees for several weeks. Where did that heat come from....jet fuel?

I'm not here to destroy anyone's belief system, I have not seen God, Jesus or Fee energy machines.
It all depends on your point of view, or who you believe is telling you the truth, its simply your choice.
However what might keep anyone interested in the subject and occupied for some time is trying to get answers to some of the 100's of unanswered questions pertaining to 911:
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICL ... =911q.html
Also have look at this video where members of the NYFD describe what they saw and heard on 911.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXD3bAbZ ... re=related

[andybot]

The Pile which was left, as described by the NYC firefighters, had a temperature of 3000 degrees for several weeks.

edit: thanks TIG for the cogent response...
no tomot - because there's heat doesn't mean there's explosives.

[TIG]

How about that a lot of this heat came from potential energy [in the assembled structure] that became kinetic energy as it fell...
Millions of tons of ex-building plummeting to earth and then stopping abruptly.
The contained energy has to be 'converted' in some way - so there's some redistribution as lateral kinetic energy [ejections], but mainly the disintegration of the assembled parts, a lot of noise and then heat are the natural result of this.
Unless we repeat it with another similar building we can never be sure.
But we don't need a complex conspiracy theory to fill in the gaps.
Just some logical ideas...

IF the buildings had been deliberately 'brought-down' using thermite etc then the residual heat would have only been in localized molten steel as it acts very efficiently.

One area I not heard explored is what happens at these extremes - when very hot molten aluminum meets hot rusty steel...
Thermite is basically a mixture of powdered aluminum and 'rust', if you get it reacting by applying a hot enough initial 'fuse' then the aluminum oxidizes by taking the oxygen from the rust, leaving molten iron behind in an exothermic reaction...
We have a crashed plane and adjacent office furniture and glazing systems made predominantly from aluminum. In a purely jet-fuel+furnishings fire it could get hot enough to melt the aluminum - unlike structural steel which should only get hot enough to 'weaken'.
There was molten metal seen pouring from parts of the towers - it was yellow and not pure bright-silver, suggesting it was not pure molten aluminum, but perhaps also contained some iron or other molten metals.
Now let's suppose... we have molten aluminum running across floor-plates and down onto the structure below it - where there is potentially rusty steel [exposed when the spray-on fire protection blew off]. If hot molten aluminum meets warm rusty steel does it kick off a thermite like reaction? Producing exothermic heat as the aluminum oxidizes, leaving molten iron behind - and which then most definitely would compromise the steel structure?
Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn't - I've seen no tests or experiments either way.
It's just an idea...
I think these kind of 'thought experiments' make far more sense that supposing that the buildings were rigged with explosives and deliberately demolished in some super-conspiracy.
There are many unanswered questions about 9/11, but answering them with a 'bald', "It was a conspiracy..." is naïve.
There were a lot of poorly handled matters, followed by extensive 'arse covering' afterwards, but that doesn't mean a 'prior involvement' leading up to it.
It there is any proof of a prior conspiracy I have yet to see it.
Putting forward a theory that says perhaps this and that happened because of... a 'fagot-of-twiggy-ideas' id not proof. Assuming certainty from ignorance is not a valid stance. The bits of 'evidence' collected to support a conspiracy theory can be explained in many ways. When the more likely explanations are shown to be ineffective the more radical ones step in, the conspiracy-supporters choose to skip over any 'better' explanations because it suits them.
If they are eventually proven right, it's OK, but let's be sensible in our thinking here guys...
We have no more proof it was a deliberate demolition than we do that a cloaked flying saucer zapped the buildings with invisible death-rays to bring them down - we have no aliens to admit to it, just as there are no peripheral-conspirators coming out of the woodwork... we do have lots of unanswered issues - so let's get some proper answers.

[mitcorb]

Quote: "Assuming certainty from ignorance is not a valid stance." This is heavy.

[TIG]

It's not 'heavy' at all.

It's a known trait that most humans [especially non-scientist] will often make this leap from 'abject ignorance' to 'complete certainty'; with little or no supporting evidence, and then accept it as the definite 'truth'.
As I said before...
You saw a UFO?
Well it must have been aliens in a space-ship visiting the Earth.

There is no valid way you can arrive at such conclusions from the observed phenomena.
But humans hate 'not knowing', so we'll 'assume' an answer to fill in the gaps [i.e. to remove our uncomfortable ignorance]. These 'answers' might be a lucky guess and thereby be valid... BUT it's still a guess based on scant or no evidence, which we then take to fit just the 'facts' that we choose to consider. Self fulfilling assumptions are not the truth.

Because some of the aspects of 9/11 might be construed as resulting from a conspiracy doesn't mean they were, or that they add up to much at all.
There are many puzzling and unexplained issues, but blanketing them under the title 'it was a conspiracy' does nothing to answer them. Many government departments and security agencies were both dilatory and inept, before, during and after these events. But it doesn't make a conspiracy, just crass mediocrity that snowballed...

In passing... I'm happy to accept that some things - like the terrorists' passport later found on the footpath, which supposedly survived the crash and collapses [that otherwise destroyed virtually everything else] - are very unlikely coincidences; but that doesn't mean it was all a conspiracy, perhaps that one part was just some minion in the secret-services doing some clumsy arse covering...

There is still a lot to resolve, but I can't see a general conspiracy at all; even if some later fudging was done to 'cover up personal failings' it does not follow than there was anything done to precipitate the initial events... Some security guys do need to take a long hard look in the mirror... but their possible complicity by inaction/omission/mistake, is not the same as complicity by deliberate inaction/omission or even worse complicity by direct-action...

[Jeff Hammond]

how much of the jetfuel was incinerated in the initial collision (the huge fireball at impact.. that had to be all jetfuel, right?)

would there be any fuel left to burn after, say, the first minute?

I know if I pour some gas on the ground and ignite it then the fire goes out in a matter of seconds.

just wondering if the fuel was still burning when the structure was compromised or was it entirely paper/furniture/etc burning at that time. ?

[andybot]

OK, so the whole 3000 degree thing is bogus. In any case, steel starts to fail before it even gets to 1000 degrees F, and jet fuel can burn at 1500 deg. Do a little googling and it's not hard to find reputable info. Where is the statement 3000 degrees for a week from? That's what I was laughing at, it's just rather suspect - there is no fuel source to sustain that kind of temperature.

[TIG]

There's a lot of energy in falling objects.
It turns to heat when it 'stops'...

[andybot]

Well, yes, I understand about potential energy being converted to kinetic energy. Millions of tons of building material falling hundreds of feet will release a hell of a lot of energy. Not that there wasn't heat generated at all, It's just this 3000 deg thing is a claim of the truthers that jet fuel by itself couldn't get hot enough to cause the steel failure, hence must be explosives.

[tomot]

Its rather unfortunate that the entire 911 site was never designated a crime scene, that in, and by itself was a crime. If it had been, forensic exploration would have taken place. But someone made a decision to simply remove all the debris as soon as possible, before such action could or would have been allowed to take place. Hence there are only a few pictures of steel columns, like the attachment. Which raises the question about the the use of termite, and for which more that a few experts have lost their jobs, including Physicist Professor Stephen Jones. Does jet fuel really have the capacity to cut 2" thick steel diagonally? Note: the molten steel still remains solidified on the column as the temperature cooled. The official report is a total sham, and does not even discuss the collapse of WTC 7 which was not hit by a plane some 5 hours later.

[andybot]

Does jet fuel really have the capacity to cut 2" thick steel diagonally?

No, but I bet ya a hundred stories of highrise collapsing will.

[Box]

Which raises the question about the the use of termite,

Highly trained Ninja Termites?

[andybot]

Which raises the question about the the use of termite,

Highly trained Ninja Termites?

I think Pete left that one out of his funny pics post...

[Alan Fraser]

That's quite a well known picture of the column. There is no provenance for when it was taken. Truthers will have you believe it was immediately after the collapse...but there is no evidence for that. It could equally (in fact far more likely) have been taken days afterwards when the rescue and clear-up was well under way. Many such columns were then cut by oxy-acetylene in exactly that manner in order to create more manageable chunks for removal.

[Hieru]

There is a wider shot showing what looks like oxyacetylene equipment nearby.

It's dirty tricks like this - and harassing members who don't toe the party line - that makes a mockery of AE911. Worse still it gets in the way of learning anything valuable from this tragedy.

[Jeff Hammond]

my main point of contention is that the explosives and the planes crashing would have to be coordinated to some degree. That would point to a broader conspiracy.

speaking of coordination...
sort of interesting to think about why the buildings were hit/collapsed in that order (wtc1 hit first fell 2nd)

why did the demo engineer(s) time it in such a manner? you would naturally think that the 1st one hit would also fall first.. so they made a conscious decision to flip flop the sequence.. just curious as to why.. and why so late with wtc7? or maybe it was technical difficulties?

(*of course, all this assumes the buildings were brought down as a demolition instead of solely being an airstrike )


but leaving building 7 up for so long while it was rigged with explosives is just plain stupid of the engineers.. there's no way they could of been able to guarantee control of the building that day.. leaving it up so long left too much of a chance that their explosives etc would of been found by someone.

[bmike]

i mean really.. what would it take? a group of 4 or 5 guys with proper security clearance working for a month or two? it's not that farfetched.

not any more farfetched than 20 guys learning how to fly commercial jets over a period of 3-4 years then hijacking them with box cutters and driving them into a few buildings..

both stories, to me, are just as likely to occur.

It's not like there wasn't already a plan to do some terrorism and blame it on Cuba...

One of the most fascinating aspects of Operation Northwoods involved the proposed hijacking of an American passenger plane. The JCS proposed that a real plane containing American passengers would be hijacked by friendly forces disguised as Cuban agents. The plane would drop down off the radar screen and be replaced by a pilotless aircraft, which would crash, purportedly killing all the passengers. Under the plan, the real passenger plane would be secretly flown back to the United States.[14]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

[tomasz]

Many such columns were then cut by oxy-acetylene in exactly that manner in order to create more manageable chunks for removal.

I wouldn't cut it this way, if I would be asked to. Would you? The length of the cut is ca. 1.6 greater when a width of the column. It wouldn't be safe either. It is a standard way one would position steel cutting charges to remove vertical resistance of the column.

[Alan Fraser]

So now you're a demolition expert too? presumably you'd cut horizontally, so you would have no control over which way it fell? Don't apply for a job as a tree surgeon.

I also can't understand this fascination with thermite. Truthers bandy it about like it was some kind of magic bullet. As TIG has already explained, it's just a simple chemical reaction that happens to be exothermic.

It's not even a low explosive, much less a high explosive; it's an incendiary. It generates a lot of heat...that's it. It's just as likely to weld stuff together as cut it apart. In fact that's been its primary use for over a century...welding lengths of rail track together.

Not being an explosive, it takes its own sweet time about severing anything. Also, not being an explosive, you'd need tons of the stuff...literally....on every floor. The notion that this would be used in what needs to be a split-second-perfect controlled demolition in preference to much more portable shaped charges that send a stream of vaporised copper instantly slicing clean through the columns is beyond absurd.

Truthers have posted a clip on YouTube showing a directed thermite ignition instantly severing a steel rod. However, they conveniently overlook the size of the necessary containment vessel compared to the thickness (or lack of) of the steel rod. Scale this up and you'd need something the size of a truck strapped to every column.

Its akin to suggesting that all those elaborate fountain displays you see in places like Vegas don't need computer controlled hydraulic systems but would work much better if you employed a few guys with millions of Coke bottles and a truck load of Mentos.

There is a cloud of utter incompetence surrounding 9/11...before, during and after. This is standard SNAFU for any government. It was exactly the same leading up to Pearl Harbor...which should have come as no surprise to anyone. I guess it's just a sign of the times (and the legacy of many, many Hollywood movies involving nasty NSA characters) that there were no such cries of "Conspiracy!" in 1941.
I'm surprised they haven't already made a movie about how FDR knew what was going down but supressed the information in order to create an excuse to get the USA into the war...maybe they have; and it went straight to video. You can't keep a good rumour-mill down.

[tomasz]

One doesn't have to be a demolition expert to know how to cut such a heavy thing to get it slide vertically.
Cutting it the way it is shown wouldn't give you much more control then cutting it horizontally. No one would start the job without an assistance of a crane anyway.

Check the document starting from 1h 33m . They dsicovered the presence of nano-thermite in debris and explain differences between thermite and its modern version. This is a material of military use which really shouldn't be there.

[TIG]

These self-appointed experts call it 'nano-thermite'... but naming something doesn't make it that thing.
They admit it's mainly aluminum and iron-oxide, mixed with other stuff like carbon, but that would have resulted from the catastrophic happenings and does not mean it was manufactured elsewhere.

There was undoubtedly molten metal present on the impacted floor-plates before the major collapse and the pulverization. It could have been a molten aluminium and iron/rust mixture.
Spraying this molten material into a fine aerosol [by 'explosive' collapse], mixed with a dust from other building-materials, it could coalesce in small 'droplets' of combined materials, giving this similar appearance [e.g. has anyone replicated this process; how is 'real' nano-thermite made etc].

I do not think that they have demonstrated this is 'military-grade' lab-made explosive called 'nano-thermite'.
It might contain many of the same components, but could have be made in several 'natural' ways.

The Danish chemist makes an unacceptable 'leap of assumption'.
He effectively says this is 'explosive' because the building was 'blown up' [...as (his) other 'evidence' shows...].

Where were the comparative microscopic images of this 'dust' and bits of 'real' nano-thermite ?
If they existed and were to be all but identical it would be a lot more convincing.
Sayings it's so doesn't make it so, without proof.

The chemist starts off with '[this dust]...is something we characterize as...', within a few seconds of edits it is 'thermite' - then it is 'nano-thermite'.
There is no proper proof offered as to its provenance or it's exact equivalence.
This is not science, it's unsubstantiated opinion [like mine ]

I feel this misinformation is almost intended to obscure the real issues about official incompetence, before, during and after the tragic events of 9/11. Many things were done wrongly or inappropriately, but that does not mean there was a single conspiracy - perhaps there were several mini-conspiracies after the events, intended to cover arses; but concluding that there were such wicked acts like 'deliberate demolition' does not follow from the 'real' evidence. There are undoubtedly many weird and puzzling things about the events, adding these extra layers of obscurantism does nothing to help us try to understand what really happened...