The Nation/CBS Hit Piece on 9/11 Truth

The 9/11 Truth Movement's Dangers Nation
This article kind of pisses me off. It has a interesting thesis:

"the danger is that it [the 9/11 truth movement] will discredit and deform the salutary [healthy] skepticism Americans increasingly show toward their leaders"

So basically if the truth movement takes hold, all "legitimate" questioning of our "leaders" will just be branded as kooky conspiratorial questioning? One of the premises of this article is that the reason the 9/11 truth movement is growing is because:

the government these Americans suspect of complicity in 9/11 has acquired a justified reputation for deception: weapons of mass destruction, secret prisons, illegal wiretapping. What else are they hiding?

The fact that these ideas might actually be true, and that a growing number of Americans have the courage and intelligence to see through the mainstream media's lies doesn't enter into the equation.

Complementing "Loose Change" are the more highbrow offerings of a handful of writers and scholars, many of whom are associated with Scholars for 9/11 Truth. Two of these academics, retired theologian David Ray Griffin and retired Brigham Young University physics professor Steven Jones, have written books and articles that serve as the movement's canon.

Not to appeal to authority (a logical fallacy), but these people have their PhDs, how about showing a little respect and putting a Dr. in front?

jet fuel burns at 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit and steel melts at 2,500

Under ideal conditions jet-fuel burns at around 1800 F and steel melts at 2750 F. There is no indication that the steel got anywhere near 600 F, and even NIST's own data shows this.

If the official story is wrong, then what did happen? As you might expect, there's quite a bit of dissension on this point. Like any movement, the Truth Movement is beset by internecine fights between different factions: those who subscribe to what are termed LIHOP theories (that the government "let it happen on purpose") and the more radical MIHOP ("made it happen on purpose") contingent. Even within these groups, there are divisions: Some believe the WTC was detonated with explosives after the planes hit and some don't even think there were any planes.

And some people who support the official story molest their children. In regards to LIHOP vs MIHOP. The vast majority of the truth movement is MIHOP, but articles like this would much rather focus on our differences then on what brings us together.

But furthermore, a lot of the best LIHOP arguments are in a lot of ways a lot more damaging then the MIHOP arguments, which focus more on the physical evidence. Americans are so ignorant of science that in some of our schools we don't even teach the theory of evolution. After all, its "just a theory", instead we teach something called "intelligent design", so its unreasonable to expect Americans to understand that it is physically impossible for debris to be ejected out hundreds of feet laterally from the WTC buildings in a GRAVITY powered collapse. It is unreasonable to expect Americans to be able to understand that the massive dust clouds after the demolitions that we saw, that covered the streets of New York "from river to river" with dust "two to three inches thick", as described by N.Y. Govenor George Pataki to CNN, is simply impossible in a gravity powered collapse. (set timer to 9:50 to hear Pataki). It is also unreasonable to expect Americans to understand that red hot molten metal from the still smoking rubble pile weeks later, could not possibly be caused from jet-fuel.

However, when we find out that the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Porter Goss (who subsequently became head of the CIA) and Bob Graham, were meeting on the morning of September 11th with the head of Pakistani intelligence Mahmood Ahmed, and that it would later be reported that Ahmed gave the order to transfer $100,000 to lead hijacker Mohamed Atta, well thats something that Americans can sink their teeth into, because after all, us dumb Americans love us a good conspiracy theory.

And then of course there is the Able Danger program, and the Norman Mineta testimony, and
The Israeli Spy Story. None of this sort of stuff these hit pieces ever want to talk about. Its much easier to make us all look like fools by talking about pod-planes, particle-weapons and cg graphics.

To the extent that there is a unified theory of the nature of the conspiracy, it is based, in part, on the precedent of the Reichstag fire in Germany in the 1930s. The idea is that just as the Nazis staged a fire in the Reichstag in order to frighten the populace and consolidate power, the Bush Administration, military contractors, oil barons and the CIA staged 9/11 so as to provide cause and latitude to pursue its imperial ambitions unfettered by dissent and criticism. But the example of the Reichstag fire itself is instructive. While during and after the war many observers, including officials of the U.S. government, suspected the fire was a Nazi plot, the consensus among historians is that it was, in fact, the product of a lone zealous anarchist. That fact changes little about the Nazi regime, or its use of the fire for its own ends. It's true the Nazis were the chief beneficiaries of the fire, but that doesn't mean they started it, and the same goes for the Bush Administration and 9/11.

This is my favorite part of the whole article. Look at these silly conspiracy theorists. They are so dumb that they base their conspiracy theory off of a disproven conspiracy theory (and not just that but one that has to do with nazis) Now, I know very little about the Reichstag fire, but how about these examples of U.S. shenanigans (aka false-flag operations). How about the USS Maine incident that lead us into the Spanish-American War, or the USS Liberty, or the Gulf of Tonkin incident? How about Operation Northwoods, or Operation Gladio and the "strategy of tension"? How about Operation Condor?

Not that any of these programs and events matter one little bit. And why you ask? Because it is absolutely impossible that all of the phenomena exhibited in the collapse of the WTC buildings can be explained through a gravity powered collapse. And guess what? The NIST report doesn't even try. I can see you all shaking your heads incredulously, but I will say it again they don't even try. Because the NIST report isn't a theory of the collapse of the towers, it is a PRE-COLLAPSE THEORY.

The focus of the Investigation was on the sequence of events from the instant of aircraft impact to the initiation of collapse for each tower. For brevity in this report, this sequence is referred to as the "probable collapse sequence," although it includes little analysis of the structural behavior of the tower after the conditions for collapse initiation were reached and collapse became inevitable. (p xxxvii/39)

NIST simply cannot account for the lateral ejections of debris, the pulverization of concrete and the ensuing massive dust clouds, the speed of the "collapse", or all of the molten metal that still existed weeks later, so they don't try.

In March 2005 Popular Mechanics assembled a team of engineers, physicists, flight experts and the like to critically examine some of the Truth Movement's most common claims. They found them almost entirely without merit. To pick just one example, steel might not melt at 1,500 degrees, the temperature at which jet fuel burns, but it does begin to lose a lot of its strength, enough to cause the support beams to fail.

The Popular Mechanics hit piece has been thoroughly debunked by the 9/11 truth movement. Link 1 Link 2 Link 3 Link 4 Furthermore, as you will see from examining any of the links, the Popular Mechanics piece does not examine the truth movement's "most common claims". Instead their technique is to employ whats called straw-man arguments. A straw man is a false claim that you ascribe to your opponent for the sole purpose of debunking. In fact, the first myth (and I won't use quotes around myth here since it really is one) that they debunk (again, no quotes) is that there were no explosive pods attached to the buttom on the planes that struck the towers. Glad they cleared that one up for us.

Of course, the purpose of hit pieces like this isn't to try and convince anyone who has already defected from their media-driven-lies, it is to try and insulate and poison the minds of those who might otherwise approach 9/11 truth with a more open-mind. And it isn't a hard thing to do, after all, who would want to believe that their government (no, not the postman) could be responsible for such a horrible crime? Nobody would. So they say they assembled some experts, and claim that they have debunked all those myths (pod-planes, mysterious white-jet, etc). And of course, if you repeat the lie enough it will start to be believed, and again- especially from those who already want to believe it anyways.

And so the article continues:

And yet no amount of debunking seems to work. The Internet empowers people with esoteric interests to spend all kinds of time pursuing their hobbies, and if the Truth Movement was the political equivalent of Lord of the Rings fan fiction or furries, there wouldn't be much reason to pay attention. But the public opinion trend lines are moving in the truthers' direction, even after the official 9/11 Commission report was supposed to settle the matter once and for all.

You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to think the 9/11 Commission Report is a joke, and for his credit, he does concede that:

Of course, the ommission report was something of a whitewash — Bush would only be interviewed in the presence of Dick Cheney, the commission was denied access to other key witnesses, and just this year we learned of a meeting convened by George Tenet the summer before the attacks to warn Condoleezza Rice about al Qaeda's plotting, a meeting that was nowhere mentioned in the report.

So it's hard to blame people for thinking we're not getting the whole story. For six years, the government has prevaricated and the press has largely failed to point out this simple truth. Critics like The New Yorker's Nicholas Lemann might lament the resurgence of the "paranoid style," but the seeds of paranoia have taken root partly because of the complete lack of appropriate skepticism by the establishment press, a complementary impulse to the paranoid style that might be called the "credulous style."

Those other key witnesses that he is referring might have been Lt. Col. Anthony Schaffer of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), who was prepared to testify but was blocked by top Pentagon brass. And then there is the aforementioned Norman Mineta testimony, which seriously contradicts Cheney's timeline, and is probably a good reason (but certainly not the only one) why Bush and Cheney testified not and under oath and behind closed doors: so that Cheney wouldn't have to perjure himself and/or create a big stink about the contradictions between him and Mineta. I can only imagine them behind those closed doors, eating pizza and watching Goonies.

Satisfied that the 9/11 truth movement has been sufficiently debunked, Hayes then goes on to further explain why we might all be so guillible and then to further explain his thesis.

In August 2003, to cite just one example, the New York dailies breathlessly reported what one U.S. official called an "incredible triumph in the war against terrorism," the arrest of Hemant Lakhani, a supposed terrorist mastermind caught red-handed attempting to acquire a surface-to-air missile. Only later did the government admit that the "plot" consisted of an FBI informant begging Lakhani to find him a missile, while a Russian intelligence officer called up Lakhani and offered to sell him one.

Just one example is far from enough. I'm sure everyone remembers those liquid-explosive bombers that were going to blow up 10 planes bound for the U.S, but the London police stopped them right at the last minute, and now we can't take water on planes anymore and mothers have to taste their baby's milk. Google it.

Or how about the football stadium attacks? Here is an article from today in the London telegraph, Christmas Terror Attack 'highly likely'. They don't care if these arrests and false reports later turn out to be unfounded, just as long as terrorism stays in the news. And when it does come out that there was nothing really going on, it ends up in the back pages of the paper, and probably receives no t.v. coverage at all.

And speaking of London. Learn about the London 7/7 bombings because if you think 9/11 is a joke, then you haven't seen anything. Here is Peter Power, formerly of Scotland Yard and now with a company called Visor Consultants- a crisis managment firm, talking about how he was involved in running drills simulating terror attacks on the exact same tube stations at the exact same time as the actual attacks. Did I mention that the #30 bus which was blown up that day happened to be the only bus diverted by the police.

Its really simple, sometimes there are coincidences, and sometimes there is conspiracy, and the laws of physics don't care one way or the other.