Yeah, yeah, I’m a few days late on this one. Sue me.

I’m making this post because I grow tired of seeing both sides of this debate spewing vitriol at each other and proclaiming with absolute confidence: “I’m 100% correct and anyone who disagrees with me is an idiot!”

It's time to open up a great big can of worms...

This may seem stupid, but we should begin by getting something very basic out of the way:

What is a Conspiracy?

con·spir·a·cy 

1. a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful."a conspiracy to destroy the 
2. the action of plotting or conspiring.

It doesn't matter which party was responsible for the events on 9/11. It was a conspiracy. A group of people conspired to murder thousands of civilians. Whether it was Al Qaeda, the U.S. Government, The New World Order or alien lizard people; it was a conspiracy.

Any attempt to explain the events of that day without total and complete knowledge is a conspiracy theory. So we're all conspiracy theorists, okay? Let's move on. 

Casting Doubt on Common Conspiracy Theories

I’m not going to pretend to be an expert. I’m no scientist, I’m not an architect, and I wasn’t there. But my own research tells me that there’s a lot of reason to doubt some of the popular theories. I’ll mostly be focusing on the claim that 9/11 was a controlled demolition.

No, the towers did not collapse at freefall speed. They fell at almost half the rate of a freefall. This factoid may not convince anyone that there was no foul play, but if you want to make a case, don’t rely on bad arguments that are so easy to disprove.

Stop saying that “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams.” Everybody knows that. No one is claiming that jet fuel melted any steel beams. All it takes to cause significant damage and even collapse is a loss of structural integrity. Sure, steel will only melt at 2750°F, but it will bend and buckle and far lower temperatures. Steel loses about 50% of its strength at 1100°F. Jet fuel burns at temperatures between 800°F and 1500°F. 

To dispel another argument; explosions of dust coming out of the building as it collapsed is not proof that the building was lined with explosives. Such explosions would occur as the collapsing floors pancaked on top of each other, shooting out air and debris.

“What about Building 7?” you ask, “Ah ha! Checkmate!”

Again, I’m no expert. But here’s a quote from people who might know a bit more than you and me. You can take or leave this analysis, I don’t care. I’m not trying to convert anyone to a certain way of thinking, I’m just saying things aren’t so clear cut, and people aren’t “stupid sheeple” for believing one story over another. 

Many conspiracy theorists point to FEMA's preliminary report, which said there was relatively light damage to WTC 7 prior to its collapse. With the benefit of more time and resources, NIST researchers now support the working hypothesis that WTC 7 was far more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report indicated. "The most important thing we found was that there was, in fact, physical damage to the south face of building 7," NIST's Sunder tells PM. "On about a third of the face to the center and to the bottom—approximately 10 stories—about 25 percent of the depth of the building was scooped out." NIST also discovered previously undocumented damage to WTC 7's upper stories and its southwest corner.

NIST investigators believe a combination of intense fire and severe structural damage contributed to the collapse, though assigning the exact proportion requires more research. But NIST's analysis suggests the fall of WTC 7 was an example of "progressive collapse," a process in which the failure of parts of a structure ultimately creates strains that cause the entire building to come down. Videos of the fall of WTC 7 show cracks, or "kinks," in the building's facade just before the two penthouses disappeared into the structure, one after the other. The entire building fell in on itself, with the slumping east side of the structure pulling down the west side in a diagonal collapse.

According to NIST, there was one primary reason for the building's failure: In an unusual design, the columns near the visible kinks were carrying exceptionally large loads, roughly 2000 sq. ft. of floor area for each floor. "What our preliminary analysis has shown is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors," Sunder notes, "it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so that the entire section comes down."

Source: Popular Mechanics

The truth is I have a lot of trouble believing that the government would be competent enough to pull of a demolition conspiracy of this magnitude, let alone keep it a secret for 15+ years.

I see so many conspiracy theorists touting shaky interpretations of photos and videos as hard evidence and building entire narratives around them. Conjecture based on no evidence (or a layman’s bad understanding of photographs and videos) is not more valuable or more likely to be true than even the difficult-to-trust state sources.

Don’t fight fishy evidence with fishy evidence.

Did the Government Have Foreknowledge?

I don’t believe that there was a controlled demolition. But that doesn’t mean I discount all possibility of a conspiracy within the government.

President George W. Bush said, “Nobody in our government at least, and I don't think the prior government, could envisage flying air planes into buildings.” And he wasn’t alone in making this claim. Both an Air Force general, FBI director Robert Mueller, and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice claimed that they could never have predicted an attack where the perpetrators used airplanes as missiles.

These statements are demonstrably false.

I’m not going to list all of the warning signs that the government had. A simple Google search or a peak at this Wikipedia page will give you everything you need to know. I will tell you that through the 90s there was more than one plot by individuals or “terrorist groups” to use airplanes to attack U.S. targets. On top of this, NORAD had run a war game scenario in which a hijacked commercial airliner crashed into The Pentagon.

…My ass they never considered the possibility.

The U.S. Government also received many warnings specifically about the 9/11 attack in the months preceding it from foreign intelligence agencies. The attack should not have been a surprise.

This raises the question: why would all of these top government officials universally make the claim that they had no warning when it’s clear that the CIA and FBI had plenty of information that said otherwise? I’ll leave you to ponder that question for yourself.

I have my suspicions but I won’t make absolute claims about things that I don’t really know.

Not only is there some shady evidence of government foreknowledge, but there was an unusually high number of shares in airlines and insurance companies traded just before the attack. Oh, but don’t worry, a U.S. Government official said that there was no malfeasance. Everything is perfectly normal and above-board here, thank you very much.

You can make of this evidence whatever you will.

What Do We Know?

Despite the claims of the rare conspiracy theorist, it is almost universally agreed upon that 4 airplanes crashed on September 11th: two into the Twin Towers, one into The Pentagon and another into an empty field.

The government (and possibly other wealthy elites) had at least some foreknowledge of the attack. Whether or not their foreknowledge was specific enough to warrant action is a matter for debate.

The U.S. (and other governments) have proven that it is not beyond their moral threshold or capabilities to target their own citizens to achieve political gain. See Operation Northwoods.

This is what we know.

So can we stop calling each other "shills", "sheeple", "idiots" and "morons"? Not one of us knows to any degree of certainty what exactly happened and who is responsible.

I'm sure there is someone out there who can debunk everything I wrote, and I'm sure there's someone else who can debunk the debunker. 

Let's be polite and try to find the truth without forcing each other into opposing camps and firing shots. 

We don't have to be enemies. 

We all want truth. 

~Seth

P.S. I'd like to thank my wife for giving me a couple days off from writing and then totally kicking ass with her blog entries!

Image Sources:

• Twin towers photos - Wikipedia
• George W. Bush - Wikipedia
• Drawings by me!