Wow

[warrior1]

http://www.bartcop.com/mad-vet.htm

[warrior1]

1. A question I would like to asks this guy.

Which I did. Send it to Bartcop.

If these planes could not have brought down these two buildings because of one where they hit and the structure of the building, how big would a plane have to be to do this? Or is it impossible to bring down buildings in the manner?


A couple more. The timing of the fall. Second building hit, first to fall.

First building hit, allowed more people to get out of the second tower. First tower seeing the second going down must have been pretty vacant.

The firemen hearing explosion.

WTC7 falling because of a fire, bullshit.

[spooked911]

2. For me, the suspicious thing is not so much that the towers collapsed but

the WAY they collapsed-- so rapidly straight down with incredible amounts of powder being blown out in an almost volcanic type eruption.

Then there is the fact that firemen witnessed bombs and are being stifled from talking about it for fear of their jobs and pensions, there was the rapid recycling of the steel and incredible security around the scrapped steel, the insurance deal with Silverstein, and the whole thing stinks to high heaven.

[JackRiddler]

3. Firemen witnessed bombs?

Certainly, many firemen and others at the scene have spoken of hearing or feeling "explosions" going off between the plane crashes and the actual collapses.

However, these explosions could have causes other than explosives: transformers, fuel tanks and generators, pressure blasts from fires, weapons stores,* etc.).

If you look at the sequence in "Loose Change" (which I think is a terrible film!) that shows a number of firefighters on video talking about "explosions," you'll realize that nothing any of them actually says on video necessitates explosives. (The filmmakers are incredibly lazy and disingenuous by not trying to track down these firefighters for clarification.)

My problem with bombs preceding the actual demolition is simple: what's the point?

Let's say demolition theory is true. Let's say the true conspirators did indeed rig both Towers to explode sequentially all the way down to the ground, in a fashion designed to deceive people into thinking it was a pancake collapse. Let's say they also rigged Seven for a more conventional demolition.

Since this would destroy the whole complex, why would they bother to set off small "foreplay explosions" all around the complex and thus raise suspicions?

If you're going to blow the whole thing up, what's the point of preceding the "main event" by blowing up the lobby windows, setting off a bomb in WTC 6, or doing any of this other small-time stuff that people think the bad guys (also) did?

---

* yeah, as in at FBI or other government offices.

[Rich Hunt]

4. yes, Jack

Thank for bringing some clarity and science here.

[spooked911]

5. All good points, BUT

unfortunately we don't really know what the planners were thinking and what they planned. We simply don't know how the towers were brought down with bombs. Perhaps the early bombs weakened the structure enough to cause a pancake-type collapse. Perhaps the early bombs were weakening the structure for the main explosives. Perhaps different people knew of the attacks and set different bombs in the towers, and some were more effective than others at causing the destruction. Perhaps the timing was simply off and some bombs went off early. There could be many reasons why some bombs exploded before the main collapse.

The fact is there was good eye-witness evidence of bomb damage in both basements of the WTC towers well before they fell. Does it make sense? No. But it looked as though the basements were hit with a big bomb.

Moreover, why the cover-up? Why aren't firemen allowed to talk about explosives in the towers? And why the secrecy and security over the steel?

[philb]

6. There's clearly a huge cover-up going on and no logical reason for it

from a national security stand point. Who are they protecting by this massive cover-up and refusal to release any information, allow public to see evidence, and putting a gag on FAA and FBI officials and firefighters,etc.?

[JackRiddler]

7. clarifications

"The fact is there was good eye-witness evidence of bomb damage in both basements of the WTC towers well before they fell. Does it make sense? No. But it looked as though the basements were hit with a big bomb."

I can't find the item you're referring to but have read it many times (on this board of course) and remember it well. A couple of workers go into a sub-basement section and discover that a 50-ton press (this is a press that can exert 50 tons of pressure, i.e., it does not actually weigh 50 tons) and a big section of parking lot are destroyed; but they do not mention fire. Ergo, I don't believe this was due to bomb damage.

This could have been due to a fuel explosion; much excess fuel might fall through gaps and elevator shafts and quickly accumulate down below somewhere before igniting (at the 78th floor where the upper shafts end, but also all the way down in the case of the freight elevators). But again, since the workers mention no fire, only destruction, I don't expect this was due to the fuel. (However, fuel going down shafts and falling straight down to the ground is no doubt what caused the fires in and around the WTC 1 lobby immediately after the plane crash.)

My hypothesis therefore is that the initial plane impact (which caused each tower to sway up to 15 inches in a pendular motion for minutes thereafter) transmitted a great deal of energy to the tower. This in turn was transmitted as a shockwave down through the bulk of the tower and did its damage at the ground level and below. It cracked the lobby windows (as visible in the Naudet video) and tore apart a section of the subbasement.

Again, this seems much more credible to me than the idea of completely useless "foreplay explosions" in advance of a demolition, which would only serve to give away the game for no discernible purpose.

You speculate as follows:

"Perhaps the early bombs weakened the structure enough to cause a pancake-type collapse."

How could they rely on such a dubious method? What is visible in the actual collapses looks like massive amounts of explosives (far more than necessary for a controlled demolition) blowing it apart from the impact zones downwards, section by section -- and not like pancaking, which is why so many people believe in demolition (including me about half the time).

"Perhaps different people knew of the attacks and set different bombs in the towers, and some were more effective than others at causing the destruction."

Oh, come on. Perhaps two Oswalds shot at Kennedy simultaneously by coincidence (as in the famous 1979 NY Times editorial, "Two Shooters - No Conspiracy.")

"Perhaps the timing was simply off and some bombs went off early."

It's ridiculous to think anything would be left to chance. Someone would be overseeing this while it happened and program the bombs to go off in the right sequence starting from the impact zone.

If anything went off early, it would run the danger of setting off the rest of the explosives!

Again, all this seems weak compared to the following explanations for the "foreplay explosions":

- shockwave of impact shatters windows at lobby level and damages subbasement levels, crushing 50-ton press;

- fuels accumulate in lower sections of buildings or fall from the outside down to street and roofs of surrounding buildings, setting off explosions and fires;

- fire causes explosions of generators, transformers, fuel tanks, possibly even weapons stores, as well blowing off doors and windows from heat pressure;

- sound of bodies smashing into ground after 100-story falls confused for explosions.

Of course, this creates a context in which evil ones might sneak in a couple of attacks designed to destroy a particular office, piece of evidence, or kill someone like John O'Neil.

But the main event (assuming it was a demolition) of exploding the buildings to the ground would require none of this foreplay, so I tend to look for alternative explanations.

[philb]

8. I've posted lots of URLs with reports of explosions by firefighters,

building engineers, helicopter news reporter, others

here are a couple- my web site has lots more:

http://64.233.161.104/custom?q=cache:c4SKNriFRpIJ:www.reopen911.org/Tarpley_ch_6.pdf+Webster+Tarpley+9/11&hl=en&ie=UTF-8


German Engineers: planes and gravity could not have caused WTC collapse
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/GER312A.html

see the pictures of the huge fires in the basement before the collapse.

[JackRiddler]

9. please note...

except for Louis Cacchioli, most of these suggest bombs going off DURING the collapses -- not before them

I'm trying to tell you that while bombs BEFORE the collapses (what I call "foreplay explosives" are not technically impossible,

a) they are illogical to plan on the part of masterminds who are going to blow up the entire complex; and

b) they can be explained by the phenomena I describe in the post above.

Furthermore,

c) they are irrelevant to the actual demolition (if that is what actually happened).

So if you believe in demolition, it's logical to concentrate on just that: the demolitions, not the "foreplay" explosions.

[spooked911]

11. I agree with most of your points yet

one has to wonder exactly how many bomb-like phenomena there were in the towers after the planes hit and before they collapsed. How many gas-lines blew up, how many weapons stores blew up, how many jet fuel-explosions, etc-- and how many of these would really mimic a bomb effect.

I agree that the "foreplay" explosions don't make a lot of sense, but we simply DON'T KNOW WHAT happened, and we have to use all the evidence at our disposal.

One other possibility for the foreplay bombs: they were bombs that had been placed and accidentally went off after being exposed to burning fuel or other fires in the building


One other possibility that seems really remote but is worth mentioning, they were small devices set in there to serve as warnings for people to get out of the buildings.

[Kevin Fenton]

10. Why only this

"Let's say demolition theory is true. Let's say the true conspirators did indeed rig both Towers to explode sequentially all the way down to the ground, in a fashion designed to deceive people into thinking it was a pancake collapse."
I think it is blatantly obvious that it is a controlled demolition and I can't see any real attempt at deception. If somebody had wanted to deceive others that it was a controlled demolition, then they could have done a much better job, for example by leaving the bottom part of the buildings standing.
Given that I have serious doubts that the government knew the attacks were coming or that it would kill 3,000 of its own citizens to acheive any aim, I can only suggest that the explosives were placed in the towers after the failed 1993 attack (the bombers' aim was to topple the north tower onto the south tower, which then would have fallen over in the direction of Wall Street, their fatalities estimate was 250,000). If the towers had been hit by another truck bomb, the government could have brought them down quickly without them flattening the rest of lower Manhattan. This would then be why the NY emergency centre (in WTC 7) was built within sight of the twin towers. This is the only explanation which begins to make sense to me.

[JackRiddler]

12. Thanks for reminding me of this...

Kevin,

I am not a structural engineer; I have not done spectroscopy on the dust from the Towers; and just like everyone else on the planet, before 9/11 I never, ever saw what the collapse of a 110-tower is supposed to look like, whether by explosive demolition (not really "controlled" in the traditional sense) or because of a plane impact and fires.

We are talking about two events entirely without precedent (1+2), albeit the third looks exactly like a standard demolition (7).

Therefore, though the tower collapse pictures look suspicious to me, and though the destruction of evidence and the fact of WTC 7 cry for a larger investigation that takes demolitions seriously as a hypothesis, I am loath to make any conclusive statements.

I'm studying it as well as I can. Interesting aspects for me include:

- the "squibs" detonating outwards during the collapses at regular intervals, each many floors below the lowest progress of the collapse wave

- the near free-fall acceleration of the collapse waves, with even squib-like jettisoning of debris at each floor (seems preposterous to think the floors are falling this evenly on to the next floor and creating such uniform jets)

- the high degree of pulverization (either the potential energy goes into smashing concrete and this slows the collapse or the whole thing's in near free-fall; how come both simultaneously?) - although it's untrue that ALL concrete was COMPLETELY pulverized;

- the fact that the NIST report admits its own fire tests at UL (WITH fireproofing) show that the steel structure should not have collapsed at the 800 decree C temps (so they assume the fireproofing has been blown off)

- Jim Hoffman's paper on thermodynamic aspects claiming the total potential energy of the South Tower would not have been enough to create a cloud of the volume and density he measures (in part assumes) after 30 seconds -- which should be peer reviewed, damn it...

- again, the way they sealed off the entire area, prevented views, arrested photographers, scrapped everything they could, kept next to nothing at the Staten Island dump but shipped it off...

- Seven. Whole different chapter, of course.

I'm less than impressed with all the bogus evidence used to make the case for demolition. I consider "foreplay explosions" nonsensical and easily explained by the kind of thing I list above. The "seismic spike" isn't a spike once you look at the time close-up, and anyway I'd expect the spike to be at the start of the process (when the most mass attached to the ground is vibrating, rather than when the final piece of mass hits the ground 10 seconds later). The talk of nukes or subbasement explosions makes no sense since we clearly see the collapses beginning at the impact zones, NOT from the ground. The latter especially sounds like an intentional red herring a la "pods."

ANYWAY, I got way off what you were talking about, but thank you for reminding me of a very interesting idea: that the Towers were rigged to demolish after 1993.

However, I don't believe this was done as a safety measure. I believe that would be the excuse. They'd absolutely plan it as part of the deal.

[Kevin Fenton]

13. Various points

There are two questions I ask myself:
(1) Is the collapse of the towers consistent with the explanation they were destroyed by the plane impacts and fuel fires?
My answer is no, basically I don't think the impact damage was that great and the jet fuel should have burned up within 15 minutes (the NIST presentation agrees about the jet fuel, but says that the South Tower did suffer a lot of impact damage - 11 core columns severed - although I have no idea how they reached this conclusion, because they can't see inside the tower and the metal obviously wasn't tested afterwards).
(2) Is the collapse of the towers consistent with the explanation they wre destroyed by explosives?
My answer is yes; almost everybody who claims it was a "natural" collapse focuses on question (1) and ignores this one.

Assorted other comments:
I think there were lots of explosives in the towers and placing them there was a major job - the refit after the 1993 bomb was an ideal opportunity for this.
I assume that when Bush finds out about the North Tower he gives the preliminary go ahead to get it ready for demolition - he said he activated some "emergency response plans", but these weren't the standard ones, so perhaps he's referring to the demolition (or perhaps he's just mistaken, as his aides claim). He stays in the classroom when he hears another plane just hit the other tower, because he's already given the appropriate orders and naturally (and correctly) assumes they'll just be extented to the other tower - Card says nothing about there being another possible 12 hijacked planes.
When it becomes obvious that the towers aren't going to fall over due to the aircraft impacts there is no reason not to cancel the demolition order, but Cheney (who I suppose has been watching the towers burn on CNN and working out the angles) manages to frustrate the process, this is where Mineta's "Do the orders still stand?" bit comes in. The young man is evidently referring to orders (1) given or (2) passed on by Cheney which should be cancelled because (a) circumstances have changed or (b) the original assessment of a situation was incorrect. This is why the people who worked on the demolition have kept silent - they think the towers were knocked over to save the rest of lower Manhattan - the plan's original aim.