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I don’t know how elaborate the “conspiracy” would need to be. I am by no means a military expert, but given the extreme circumstances of 9/11, I can certainly envision a scenario where an order is given to shoot a plane down, and then try to justify it. I wouldn’t think it would take much to convince the pilots that their actions were justified (and for the record, I agree). Given the emotionally-charged situation, I can understand why a different scenario was put forward.

 

You don't necessarily need to keep them quiet. It's not as if, for example, Smedley Butler's 'war is a racket' caused some radical reworking of American foreign policy.

 

Wrong. Adherents come from both the left and the right. The Conservative supporters of the movement usually come from a Libertarian background. Libertarians for justice, among other groups, serves as a prime example of this. By contrast, I have yet to see a liberal group claim that Obama is really a Kenyan citizen* or is engaging in a secret plot to kill old people under the guise of health care reform. The allegations of socialism are ludicrous as well, since even a cursory check reveals that, in nearly every possible category ranging from healthcare to bailouts to gay marriage, Obama's platform is far to the right of the socialist party platform. It isn't even close.

* And before you again erroneously claim that Obama still hasn't shown his birth certificate, think back to my old factcheck link in which Obama posted birth certificate online before he was even elected, or just look here.

 

Splunge, the event occurred a few years before 9/11 when it was considered unthinkable to shoot down a civilian aircraft (even though the Vincennes did it). The conspiracy theory also contends it was a Navy ship that fired the missile since the streak of light went up from the ground (according to a few witnesses out of over 700). There are several hundred sailors on any ship with that capability.

 

Gah! I was thinking of the 9/11 Flight 93. But in my defense, yesteday was a tough day and I was tired when I posted. Yeah, I'll go with that.

 

Sigh, read this. Hawaii has two forms, the one you linked to is the minimalist one which provides none of the information that the "birthers" want to be able to investigate his birth. Now my link says that Hawaii no longer issues the "certificate" only the "certification" however you would think that Obama or somebody would convince them to do so to make this issue go away.

This is the reason I don't believe the conspiracy theory (same as with 9/11). If a missile had launched from a ship there would be a shipload of people who would know about it, and I doubt that the ship was crewed by people hand picked by Carl Rove. The 19 year old sailor who cleaned the food trays doesn't really have anythign to gain by keeping "the secret", actually he has way more to gain by saying they did shoot down the plane. I don't believe missiles have a "silent" mode when they launch.

 

A missile moving at mach 4 is heard for miles around. In fact, it's deafening when you're close to the launch point.

 

I live right next to an airport. They fly over my house literally by the hour. It shakes the foundation of my house. Especially when they are practicing for an air show. If anyone was in range of a launching point of a missle, they would be 100% sure, there is no mistaking it. If only a few say it was a missle, they are shoveling it pretty high, IMO.

 

Not necessarily true Blades, they just don't know what a real missile is like. The whole thing happened in seconds and it takes a while for the mind to grasp what it just saw. In those people's mind, they saw a missile (which can and has been explained in several scenarios) -- they not have know exactly what they saw, but their mind latched on to a missile and so that is what they remember.

 

Eh... I guess that might qualify as a 'conspiracy'... but only in the most broad definition of the word. A goody-two-shoes conspiracy, where no malice aforethought is present, the acts themselves are morally grey but heroic, and the motivation for secrecy is to protect the public from some depressing news. Such optimism, it's like it's straight out of a fairytale.

You are aware of the scala of atrocities the US military has committed in the past? And still; this is the worst you think they are capable of? A little white lie?!

As far as credibility, the incompetence theory doesn't hold water. For so many things to go wrong all at once, is mindboggling. 22 live-fly hijack drills (on the same day) just happened to keep the interceptors preoccupied? 2 months earlier, the whitehouse just happened to order that air interception should have whitehouse approval before they could leave the ground? Pentagon SAM air defenses happened to be malfunctioning? That's a lot of tripe to swallow; I'm gonna have to supersize my stomach!

 

Coin, you should really check your facts. There is no SAM capability at the Pentagon. The Pentagon is ~½ mile from the flight path to Ronald Reagan Airport and a no-fly zone around the Pentagon is just not possible (nor is having anti-aircraft weaponry). You should also do a bit of research on ready air status and air interception around major cities -- pay particular attention to the operational differences before and after 9/11. Attack of a civilian aircraft would require NMCC (the President) authority, but the actual launch of the aircraft would not.

By the way, there were no live-fly drills. The author of that story was a little liberal in his interpretation of facts.

 

This is the Bush administration we're talking about. This was no mere theory - the incompetence was about as close to an absolute fact as one can get.

 

Of course. It is perfectly reasonable to expect Hawaii to unearth an out of use format -- for the sole purpose of printing a single document -- just to shut up a bunch of moronic conspiracy theorists who remain unwilling to accept a certified and legal proof of Obama's birth from the state of Hawaii while simultaneously embracing a clear and obviously fake Kenyan "birth certificate" that got Obama's father's age wrong, was issued by a Kenyan republic that didn't yet exist, in a city that was not yet part of of Kenya (Mombasa was part of Zanzibar when Obama was born), and was apparently signed by a laundry detergent (E.F Lavender? Really? Yeah, that name sounds Kenyan.). Totally reasonable. The birthers clearly epitomize reason with their frivolous lawsuits, obviously fake "Kenyan" documents, and utter refusal to acknowledge facts that are right in front of their faces. People as reasonable as the birthers will clearly stop claiming Obama is a secret Kenyan after each and every one of their absurd demands are met.

To rub even more salt into this utter stupidity, Obama's mother was still American and Obama still spent the vast majority of his childhood and adulthood living in the US. Even if he were born in Kenya, it would make no difference regarding his eligibility for the presidency of the United States of America, since he's still a natural born citizen, and he's still lived in the US for at least 14 years. The birthers are lunatics, morons, and losers. That the republicans haven't done everything within their power to ostracize them from the party is an utter disgrace. They should not be acknowledged, let alone defended, and if we acknowledge them at all, it should only be for the purpose of ridiculing them. Only an ignorant, gullible, brain-dead moron with no grasp of reality whatsoever would buy this crap*.

* For any birthers that take offense to this, I apologize. What I meant to say, of course, is that every birther but you is an ignorant, gullible, brain-dead moron. Really.

 

I do check my facts. Do you?
NO SAM defense?! So the US's military headquarters, arguably the most strategically important building in the world, has no personal air defense? What if someone sneaks up to the front yard and fires an anti-tank or anti-aircraft missile? That doesn't make sense at all. What about the fabled SDI project? The DOD possesses an advanced radar tracking system, separate from the civilian radar system, and not relying on aircraft transponder signals. They were capable of identifying and downing objects traveling at a speed of up to 13000 miles/hour. So, huge commercial jetliners flying at 600 miles/hour shouldn't stand a chance. And they didn't have seconds to respond, they were warned 40 minutes in advance.

What exactly does it mean to be 'liberal' in the interpretation of facts? Do conservatives hold a mandate on truth and reality now?
If that's the case, hear a conservative republican (describes himself as a 'demolition hobbyist') give his viewpoint:

 

T2B specifically pointed out that Reagan National Airport has planes taking off and landing just about a mile away from the Pentagon. A plane taking off or approaching Reagan that instead flew into the Pentagon would literally take seconds.

 

I was going to say I think we've gone through all this before, but I think you actually brought up a few new points -- which is quite refreshing.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. The air defense network for Washington DC was removed in 1948 (I think, that's the year that sticks in my mind) [Edit: 1962 is the year I've seen in news reports]. In 2002 (on 9/11) they started using point defense missile trucks -- parking them in random places around the capitol. Basically, the military leaders were (and are) cocky and don't believe anything can hit the capitol without sufficient notice to engage. But then, using a civilian aircraft as a bomb was not considered a viable threat on September 10, 2001 (even though it was in a Tom Clancy book).

The same thing that happens if someone drives a truck filled with diesel fuel and ammonia, runs into the building with bombs strapped to their body, brings their mule loaded with nitro, or fills a subway car with tons of explosives and parks it under the Pentagon. If they are successful, the Pentagon gets damaged and people die (the probability of success is low in any of these scenarios). However, in true Pentagon mentality the offices on the outside ring are not crucial to defense of the country (and are the most expendable).

It's a fable. The project never proved viable. The ballistic missile defense program was an offshoot of this -- they have actually had ONE successful test launch from a naval vessel. But there's a big difference between ballistic missile defense (which is what SDI was all about) and defense from conventional weaponry.

IFF transponders are an intregal part of the system.

You're confusing this with the ballistic missile defense program. The SM-3 is designed to hit targets moving at high speeds either in orbit or at high (greater than 80,000 feet) trajectory. It can't even target a commercial aircraft.

There were a lot of mistakes made on September 11, 2001. Forty minutes was enough time to launch interceptor aircraft, but I think the entire country (including the military) was in a state a shock. The military was caught with it's collective pants down, hell they weren't even ready when Flight 93 was due in to DC -- they didn't even know where it was.

The attack on the towers was a heinous act and absolute tragedy. The attack on the Pentagon was an embarrassment (and a tragedy). Not a conspiracy.

 

The word is a lot older than it's political manifestation.

I do believe that video is the most intellectually dishonest one you've posted on the subject yet! First off, for a real comparison of 707s with 767s, look at this and this. Especially look at the tables showing their statistic further down. Look at the empty weight comparisons, where 767s can weigh as much as twice what a 707 does. Similarly, the take-off weights are sizable. As for fuel loading, they were transatlantic flights. That's one of the longest and most stressful flights possible. If the planes didn't have completely full tanks, they had close to it. On top of that, the fires didn't take out all the structural support, the impact took out most of it (you can see much of the damage plain as day in the videos), and what little remained didn't melt, it annealed, loosing the bulk of its strength in the process. As for the smoke, again, the narrator has it all wrong. Smoke in such conditions as this is more likely a sign of uncombustable particulate. Instead, what you should be looking at is the rate of airflow coming off, which indicates a larege airflow through the towers, which indicates a very strong and hot fire. The "screen netting" was the most idiotic comparison I've heard yet. The support pillars were nothing like a screen netting. They were a bunch of pillars, each one taking a small portion of the weight. Knock out one or two and you don't have a problem, but knock out a significant portion, and weaken the rest, and you're dead. The comparison between wind and the jet impact was similarly ridiculous. It's about like saying being struck in the head with a 90MPH fastball is no different than standing in 90MPH winds. Guess what? The one will kill you, the other may just knock you around some. As for the fire analysis, again, they're ignoring the facts. The fire retardants in the Twin Towers was a sprayed-on powdery foam. It's great if you have a fire, but in an explosion or other significant shock event, it all get's blown to the wind. Secondly, comparing the WTC to other steel-framed structures is pointless, because you're talking about two completely different types of frames. The degree of difference is so significant that the frame types make more of a difference than the material types. Ordinary steel-frame structures use an endoskeletal grid system, essentially dividing the interior into cubes. This provides significant localized reinforcement for the floors, ceilings, and walls, helping to prevent collapse and reduce the chimney effect. The WTC used a primarily exoskeletal system, with a reinforcing core, which relied on the entire system to support everything. This allowed for a massive chimney effect (as evidenced by the video footage) to stoke the fires. Furthermore, while the endoskeletal system is open enough (without walls) to allow free flow of air in and out in all directions, the WTC system was much more closed, creating an environment that had restricted inlets and restricted outlets of fast-moving air flowing right through the fire. This is similar to what we've used to produce the hottest fires possible for millenia.

Oh, and simply because I know it'll come up somewhere, the "burn temperate" issue. Burn temperature, as an absolute maximum, is a myth. Combustion is an exothermic reaction, meaning it adds heat to the environment. No matter what temperature the environment is at, burning something in it will raise that temperature. The so-called "burn temperature" of a material is how hot it instantaneously raises the air in the flames under STP and free air flow (meaning the heat isn't allowed to build up). For an example of the difference, for centuries, no known fuel was capable of melting steel. Steel that was forged and then damaged or used up was waste, completely unusable. The problem was solved when a blacksmith noticed that a potter's kiln was much hotter than his own forge. He asked the potter why and the potter explained that they used special bricks to make the kiln. These bricks, it turns out, reflect infrared radiation, further focusing the heat into the flames. Using the same old regular fuels, the blacksmith was able to melt steel in the potter's kiln.