When Al-Qaeda themselves claimed responsibility, even with overwhelming evidence aside? Why were so many people still reluctant, I was researching about this stuff and was shocked to see people who I respect a lot believe in this
Because Bush and company did everything they could to protect the Saudis and the Bin Laden family, and then made massive fortunes attacking Iraq which had nothing to do with the attack.
At best, the Bush administration were opportunistic war-profiteers who abused the situation for their own gain.
That doesn’t validate any of the absurd theories about demolitions or RC planes.
Unfortunately many “leaders” seem to abide by the saying “Never let a good disaster go to waste.”
Every conspiracy theory comes back to covering for oil money and the political party they run (Republicans).
Watergate proven to happen? “Yeah, but aliens…” worked so well to distract and muddle the public that Reagan was elected in another landslide six years later.
Not to mention all the ties between the Bin Laden family, the Saudi royal family and the Bush family… https://www.denverpost.com/2006/09/11/bush-ties-to-bin-laden-haunt-grim-anniversary/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Bush,_House_of_Saud
It’s easier to believe the people in charge are secretly in control of everything than to believe they’re barely in control of anything.
This.
Conspiracy theories are comforting because they are more pleasant to believe than the truth, which is that we’re all aboard a ship going full steam ahead with nobody at the rudder.
It also gives people a sense of deep satisfaction believing they know some dark hidden secret nobody else does… regardless of how absurd it is
Vanity. It’s the Devil’s favourite sin.
Nobody’s at the rudder, but also all of us are. Everyone has more capacity than anyone is comfortable with
Also, at the time, in the west, Al Qaida were a largely unknown terrorist cell operating in far-away third-world countries. It seemed incredible that such a devastating attack could be carried out on US soil by a small group most people had never heard of.
And yet, this all powerful government couldn’t even fake finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to “validate” their invasion reasons.
Government incompetence is the main reason I didn’t go down the conspiracy rabbit hole. They’re too stupid to pull most shit off without tripping over their own dicks.
I didn’t actually believe this, but it was fun to entertain the idea.
Here’s why. At the time, there were a bunch of very odd coincidences. I’ll do my best to remember the best of them.
- The CIA/NSA (one of the “secret” agencies) put out a budget report showing a large amount of money that was not trackable, in the billions.
- Coincidentally, the section of the pentagon hit by the “plane” was reportedly where financial records were stored.
- By “plane”, I mean object. If you watch the 1 video that got out (all other videos were confiscated) from the nearby gas station, the thing that hits the pentagon does not look like a plane but instead a missile.
Next!
- reportedly, the owner of the twin towers took out a massive insurance policy against the buildings the day or week before 9/11 (I forget exact timing)
- also, the building was covered in asbestos, the cost to remove was in the billions, and the cost to keep the building occupied always also increasing
Next!
- building 7 (I think that’s the right one) collapsed under what appeared to be demolishing conditions
- building 7 was never hit by a plane or anything else, it just dropped like it was purposefully demolished
Edit: forgot one!
- the towers were obviously hit by planes, we have plenty of video evidence of this. The controversy is around how the towers actually fell. This is where the “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams” meme comes from.
There are more, but it’s been 20 years and my memory is hazy.
Overall, there were some oddities around the whole event that, when allowing yourself to think completely outside of reality, make sense as to why it was an inside job.
Finally, personally I believe the Saudis did it in cooperation with Bin Laden and their goal was to bankrupt America. They did a pretty good job, from their perspective.
I can’t vouch for the veracity of most of your content but I wanted to add that building 7 was also announced to have collapsed before it actually did.
I can’t vouch for the veracity of most of your content but I wanted to add that building 7 was also announced to have collapsed before it actually did.
Yep. There was also the quotes from Rudi Guilani where he said something along the lines of “Pull Building 7”, where pull is demolitions parlance to set off the charges. This was like a day of audio snippet. Its also basically impossible to find the original footage that isn’t pure conspiracy drivel, but I remember it from the time when all of this was happening. There was so much going on in the wake of 9-11, with the country pretty much instantaneously jumping into war mode, being immediately handed a narrative around al-Qaeda with no investigation into the causes or veracity of the government claims around al-Qaeda.
The push back on questioning the narrative was surreal. Like, you would be drawn and quartered publicly for doing so. The ‘feeling’ at the time was that the investigation into what actually happened and how felt like a complete sham that the government didn’t really want to do because so many people weren’t accepting the party narrative.
Also, keep in mind the context. There was a strong anti-war sentiment in 2003 going into the invasion of Iraq. The “9-11 was an inside job crowd” found themselves running with the anti-war crowd as general anti-institutionalists. This was when Alex Jones was just finding his footing and definitely wasn’t quite fully right wing. He was more accurately (at the time, in historical context) anti-establishment. The modern right-wing movement hadn’t fully formed, although it found its roots in this historical period (the Tea party would also come out of this period).
So just broadly consider the different vectors operating on public perception at the time. We were basically instantly construction a “Going to War is the Solution” narrative within hours of 9-11 happening, and the narrative around that construction was found to be fully formed as soon as it emerged, almost as if the institutions of the US government and its surrounding media had been prepared for this exact moment. Push back against this was effectively an instantaneous scarlett letter and there basically was none in US mainstream media*. There was a strong push back against any kind of independent investigation into the events leading up to the event. We got reports from the CIA and FBI, but considering the context, like, if those are the parties in question, do you believe them? Then you had the Saudi Bush family connections, the fact that we were basically going to war with Afghanistan when we knew it was the Saudis that did 9-11, which was like a pretty big red flag. Then there were the reports that globally, many governments warned about this happening to US intelligence agencies, but it seemed like they just kind of let it happen. Which is really where the conspiracy was focused. These days it gets too wrapped up in ‘inside job’ etc, but the general scheme was more about 9-11 being allowed to happen as an excuse for a Bush invasion into the middle east. This wasn’t a conspiracy that was built in hindsight, the speculation was built in real time (before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq), and then go figure, Bush invades the middle east, and specifically, goes after Iraq. This basically fully validates the theory, and to put a cherry on top, the evidence on Iraq was all just… fraudulent. So if you limit the scope of the theory to 9-11 was ‘allowed’ to occur to justify a military industrial complex incursion into the middle east, its kind-of like “well yeah duh” because thats exactly what happened.
Wild fukin time and wild bit of history. Important to keep context in mind, and to have sources of information about the past which aren’t ‘edited’ to reflect newthink.
*Democracy Now did exist by this time (finding its establishment after the Seattle WTO protests). If you want to really understand what was going on at the time, this would be the media source I would recommend.
Do you write? I really enjoyed reading your comments, just flowed naturally talented
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it.
I’m a scientist, so I do ‘write’ professionally, but its a very different kind of writing than I do here, and I would say that they are entirely seperate (excepting my discussion sections where I afford a bit more liberty to style, although I tend to be more focused on methods in my publications, where I don’t give myself as much liberty).
I attribute my writing style to years of participating in forums and threaded discussion boards, starting in the early 90s. I try to use quotes from who I’m replying to, hyper links, bold and italics for emphasis, but to use a conversational/ editorial style. When I was coming up on the internet, I truly believed that the internet allowed for the democratization of ideas, in that, on the internet you have no appeal to authority on your credentials or name or background. The only weight you can provide is rhetoric and whatever evidence you can scuff up, and because of that, the best ideas should find their way to the top. Boy was I wrong, but I still believe in the virtue of good ideas, and that belief is part of my motivation for being involved in places like (formerly) reddit or (currently) lemmy.
I would attribute not to all the writing you’ve done, but all the reading.
As a scientist, how did you feel at the time about the railroading of scientist Bruce Ivins for the Anthrax scare?
Before the Bush election, Cheney and Rumsfeild belonged to a think tank called a New American Century that created the plan to invade Iraq in order to create a government friendly to the US.
One author even said that America would need a new Pearl Harbor to regain its military strength.
I mean, this shit writes itself. If history were a work of political fiction, it would be called out as tropish, too on the nose and goofy to sustain disbelief.
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The push back on questioning the narrative was surreal.
The vast majority of the time, the pushback was low effort “asking questions” based on fundamental misunderstanding of the subject matter or entirely pulled our of their asses.
Bro say what you will about the baselessness of it, but 9-11 conspiracy theorists were anything but low effort. People made documentaries, traveled to track down steel, built media enterprises off the back of it.
Time consuming sure; But doubling down on their own fundamental misunderstandings and preconceived notions isn’t what I would classify as real effort.
And those people are all people like Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson who are totally shameless liars and manipulators, all his 911 truth stuff led to stuff like the sandy hook denials and maga nonsence.
Yes, terrible people all.
But not lazy people. Not ‘low effort’. Its important to get criticism right. These people went completely down a rabbit hole and committed to it fully. In doing so they were able to form a kind of platform that would buoy the communication and mental frameworks that have set up the current white nationalist and christian fascist movements. They invested enough effort to effectively and successfully restructure American politics. If not for the work they did in this time period, which might reflect banal in juxtaposition, the MAGA movement of 2016-current might not actually exist.
Yes. Terrible people and actions of huge consequence in hind sight. But not people just lazily asking questions.
The if you truly find your self in opposition to white nationalism, fascism, dominionism and zionism, you do both yourself and the rest of us a disservice if you fail to understand history and how these movements form and function, and what motivates these people to do what they do. To trivialize their efforts, its to underestimate them, and to set all of us in a position of weakness relative to a common opponent. These people are not for lack of effort, they do not lack for resources, and they are clever, if wrong in the conclusions they’ve made about the world. They are organized, motivated, funded, and fully committed to the vision. This final bit, their commitment, is the part that white liberals simply can-not comprehend. These people lack the cynicism that permeates white liberalism. They truly believe the things they do - whereas white liberals will only associate with political movements that are safe, low social impact, and demand little from themselves. White liberalism mistakes that every one else is as cynical as they are. See the comments by @phillaholic as an example of this political philosophy. Because of this cynicism, they constantly and completely underestimate the strength of their opponents. Examples of this political philosophy in action and its consequences are represented in modern political history throughout: Bush v Gore; The anti-war movement of 2003; The housing market collapse of 2007-8 and the refusal to hold capitol accountable in that time; Occupy Wallstreet; Obamas entire 8 years as president; Clinton campaign 2014-16; All of the investigations into the Trump administration 2016-2020; BLM 2016-2021; etc. We are all bearing the cost borne of the cynical heart of white liberalism.
You should never underestimate true believers.
Countless incorrect things were announced. Everyone was collectively panicking. That’s odd, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anything considering the building was already visibly damaged.
Incorrect information in a chaotic situation? Would never happen!
The building had been on fire for hours at that point with no water pressure to run the sprinklers or allow firefighters to effectively combat it. It was decided to stop efforts to save the building as it was presumed the integrity of the structure was damaged beyond repair.
As for the reporters announcing it collapsing early, its doubtful that it was anything but one of many mistakes reporters made live on air hours into an exhausting day of chaos. Maybe that had been told the building was going to collapse at any minute or maybe they had been told efforts to stop collapse had ceased and an assumption was made by the crew on the ground it had already fell. As I recall it was the BBC that said it fell before it actually did, so the idea of a foreign news outlet being in on a false flag conspiracy is just too ridiculous to be believable over something such as an exhausted reporter misspeaking in the middle of an emotionally overwhelming day.
A building fire started by jet fuel absolutely can melt steel beams, and the collapse of building 7 occurred exactly as you would expect from a building fire, which happened because the fire in the other buildings was blown across by the wind and explosions. None of the building collapse videos look like a demolition.
If the government wanted to execute an attack on Americans, why not just fund the terrorists and ignore warnings? Let the jihadists crash planes into buuldings. Setting hidden, controlled demolition charges and trying to make it look like a collapse is harder than finding some terrorists willing to die for their cause and teaching them to fly.
It is conceivable to me that members of the intelligence community, the military-industrial complex, and/or the government ignored warnings and allowed the attacks to happen for their own benefit. I would prefer to think it wasn’t true, but I must concede that it would explain many inconsistencies.
It is theoretically possible, but implausible to me, that those same people would coordinate the attacks and support the terrorists to ensure that the attacks would happen as a false flag operation. This is an extraordinary claim with almost no evidence.
It is not in any way possible that the government demolished any of the buildings attacked on purpose and then covered up all evidence of the demolition. There would need to be too many people involved, too many videos altered or destroyed, and too much evidence planted after the fact. It is demonstrably false.
and the collapse of building 7 occurred exactly as you would expect from a building fire
It wasnt the first skyscraper fire, but it was the first and still only skyscraper to collapse from a fire. So no i wouldnt say its expected at all.
Depends on who you ask. https://www.nist.gov/world-trade-center-investigation/study-faqs/wtc-7-investigation#Collapse
Even if you ask them
“The collapse of WTC 7 is the first known instance of a tall building brought down primarily by uncontrolled fires. The fires in WTC 7 were similar to those that have occurred in several tall buildings where the automatic sprinklers did not function or were not present.”
There’s a first for everything. And after reading the report, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that a building under those conditions would be expected to fail.
like a first for govenment coverup of a building demolition disguised as a terror attack?
Could have been, but it wasn’t. It’s utterly absurd to think it was logistically possible to do so without anyone seeing or leaking anything. That plot wouldn’t make it out of 9th grade creative writing class.
As I said with the very first statement, I don’t believe any of this.
why not just fund the terrorists and ignore warnings?
This is exactly what many tinfoil hatters thought and probably still think.
I mean… In a way they were financed and armed by the US, just not recently…
The main one for me was that NORAD, for the first time ever, was “stress testing” their system and running every flight sim they had, so when things went down, they had no idea what was real and what wasn’t.
The order to do so, for the first time, unprovoked, unnecessarily and unneededly came from Dick Cheney himself, who didn’t even have the authority to order the Pentagon to do ANYTHING but his orders were followed regardless.
That’s a pretty big discrepancy. It’s really hard for me to rule that one out
Building 7 is a big leap of faith to hurdle.
The twin towers themselves collapsing in a controlled manner, that doesn’t happen without blowing individual floors. Buildings in war zones don’t fall down vertically, they’ll partially collapse or fall over, not straight down - that ONLY happens with controlled demolition.
That’s a big leap of faith.
Like almost everyone else, I was glued to the TV all day on 9/11. I remember when the Pentagon footage was aired on TV. It was played ONCE. That was a missile. It was clear as day. Beyond that, if it was an airplane, where’s the fucking wreckage? Cuz that would be the first plane crash in all of history that left zero wreckage.
That’s a big leap of faith.
It requires to many leaps of faith to believe the given story. Idk the whole of what happened, but I know we weren’t told it.
The Patriot Act was introduced 5 weeks after the attack. 342 pages, no contradictions in the whole thing. Introduced, passed, and signed into law in 4 days. 5 weeks isn’t enough time to read 350 pages of legalese, let alone write it. It was ready to go
Add to all the sus, America’s government post WW2, at least, has not warranted any trust from the public. The CIA has done a LOT of fucked up, illegal shit to us. The Bay of Tomkin was a false flag fucking lie to the people. The incessant lie of Neoliberalism telling us that GDP is up! But everyone’s quality of life is being striped away faster than our rights. Citizens United is bullshit, 2000 election was bullshit, Iraq and Afghanistan were both bullshit, qualified immunity and civil asset forfeiture are fucking repressive FASCIST bullshit and yea, you know, I don’t think the people calling the shots have our best interests in mind, how could you?
“_______ doesn’t happen without _______” all all bullshit based on nothing. NIST has published their findings. They had 200 Experts, 125 of which came from the private sector investigate how the towers came down, and there is absolutely no evidence what so ever that they were brought down in a controlled manner. I even remember watching a documentary that interviewed the owner or engineer of one of the US’s top demolition companies that easily pokes holes in the idea that a major skyscraper with people, furniture, etc could be brought down like that at all. It’s total nonsense. NIST has a FAQ page
Someone showed a video of WTC 7 collapsing to a Dutch demolitions expert. He said it was clearly brought down in a controlled demolition.
Sure, one guy looks at a video for twenty seconds and that counters 200 experts spending months researching and simulating it and those opinions are equal. If it were clear, you’d have thousands of experts claiming it. In reality, you have one guy willing to tarnish his reputation by making an impulse statement after seeing none of the facts.
This is a textbook example of cherry picking.
Donald Trump’s presidency pretty much removed any doubt I had about the official 9/11 story.
He proved that our government is full of regular idiots who are just barely able to work together. Of course the 3 letter agencies have a lot of power and fancy technology, but if the CIA or NSA was seriously that in control of this country, Trump would have never happened. He is a bumbling moron who did a ton of damage to this country and nobody lifted a finger apparently? Damaging alliances, burning undercover assets, etc.
Our Congress can’t work together long enough to pass basic bills. No way the Patriot act was planned with a false flag in mind.
The 9/11 conspiracy is just way too big and would need way too many participants to keep it under wraps like that.
Plus, every big disaster has conspiracy theories. If you believe all of them, you’re pretty much saying bad things never happen without the overlords planning them. 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, JFK assassination, RFK assassination, Pearl Harbor, and every other major event have had massive conspiracy theories and claims that they were inside jobs.
Yeah, the official story has holes but reality is messy. It was a big attack involving/affecting a lot of agencies, corporations, and people. It’s pretty much guaranteed that out of the measly 365 days in a year, a lot of these groups and individuals would be doing their “once a year” inspections, misremember details in their panic, deal with other terrorist attacks, intersect with ongoing crimes that were being committed separately, etc.
Seriously, a plane crashed into one of the biggest and wealthiest business centers in the world. The conspiracy theories write themselves no matter how clear the evidence is. Of course one of those companies has ties to foreign governments, obviously one of the CEOs is commiting fraud, one of the employees is bound to have worked for the government in a sensitive role. Imagine the ties you could find on one of the planes alone. Every plane in the sky right now has a politician’s relative, a political activist, a criminal, a foreign diplomat, high-ranking military, or all of the above. All of these things would spark a great conspiracy theory. Imagine the things you could find if you wanted to blame Boeing. Start looking into details about every employee they have and connect some dots. It’s easy.
Oh I agree, you dig for dirt, you’ll find it, guarenteed. Whether or not it’s actually connected and not happenstance, that’s a different story.
You only need you and 23 other people in a room to find two people with the same birthday. Coincidence is much more common than we think, just like true random doesn’t feel like random to us, and if something doesnt make sense, the brain can basically retcon on the spot and you’ll believe it as dogma to your core.
It’s important to be aware of and to acknowledge our limitations, for sure. Crazy important.
But let’s keep playing. Take my comment and strike out everything about the buildings falling and I’m still calling it sus.
Were we just that unlucky that the first ever stress test of NORAD happened to coincide? Maybe, it’s a possibility, an extremely small one. 1/18687 to be exact. Not very probable.
How about the missile into the Pentagon that was broadcast on live TV? The gas station footage was broadcast not the actual live event. Story goes reporters found a single camera that hadn’t already been seized and was pointing in the right direction.
So I’m a poli sci guy. Where normal people flow sports teams or celebrities, I follow politics. Global politics as well as domestic, both federal and my state. It’s just what I do. Easily I’ve read 50+ articles a day since 1997. EASILY. That day was the first day for me at a new tree service, and I was the first guy to arrive at the arborists house before we rolled out and I delivered the news of the attack. Guys started showing up, we had the news flipped on and BAM 2nd Impact. Work was called off that day, after that. The Pentagon news came about 2 hours later, we were all still sitting in the arborists living room, just watching when the footage played, so 5 sets of eyes saw it and I said bullshit that’s a plane. 2 guys were ex military, they went off, about wreckage, how small the impact is. I can not forget that memory, besides the 2nd tower falling, the Pentagon lie, a quick oopsies they hoped ppl would forget if they just lied loud enough and fast enough, that redacting in real time, really set the dark tone that was to come. It wasn’t that we were just attacked. Some part of it was opportunistic.
2001 was basically the stone ages compared to now. The Internet was still geocities, a/s/l chatrooms. All your base had JUST belonged to us. It would’ve taken a whole lot less individuals to conduct something in an unmonitored world.
I don’t claim to know what happened, I just knew we’re being lied too. There’s no theory, just calling bullshit for what it is.
if it was an airplane, where’s the fucking wreckage? Cuz that would be the first plane crash in all of history that left zero wreckage.
There was plenty of wreckage. There were no big chunks of fuselage or wings or engines, but that isn’t uncommon with extreme accidents. A plane at high speed slamming into the ground, a cliff, or a heavily reinforced building, is going to disintegrate into pretty small pieces, making investigations difficult. And indeed there are photos of small chunks of plane wreckage found at the Pentagon on 9/11.
How can you not believe any of what you wrote but also say that you believe the Saudis did it? The Bush-Saudi connection was known for a decade before September 11th.
Bush Sr. literally invaded Iraq to protect Saudi oil interests. No one at the top actually believed Saddam was an immediate threat to U.S. interests.
The only planes that flew out of the U.S. after the attacks were Saudi nationals who were granted exception by the White House to flee the country.
I’m not the person you’re responding to, but where I land on the question is basically I think there’s a very good chance that GWB knew about a credible threat of something like 9/11 happening and deliberately chose not to interfere. So more like an act by intentionally doing nothing.
It’s been pretty well publicized that the lack of collaboration between the three letter agencies allowed them to slip through the cracks. Foreign intelligence knew about it, but domestic wasn’t aware. The fact of the matter is, they aren’t just sitting around getting 1 of these reports every couple months that they have to investigate. They get Thousands of these constantly. There’s a declassified docuseries on Netflix, that despite being “copaganda” to a degree, all describe legitimate threats that could have turned into big things if they were left along. There’s no doubt what the individuals intended to do. I don’t think the Bush Administration left anyone do anything, they simply didn’t let a tragedy go to waste.
Do I think Dubya sat around in dark rooms in 2001 with Bin Laden, planning every stage of 9/11? Absolutely not. I don’t know any serious Truther who does, either. But there’s no doubt in my mind that some members of the Bush admin and the Pentagon knew in advance that something big was going to happen. That, in my mind, is qualitive enough to be an inside job
I don’t know any serious Truther who does, either.
The word “serious” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. There are a ton of truthers out there with some truly unhinged theories about 9/11, and I’d say that the unhinged truthers outnumber the reasonable ones by a fair bit.
Because I knew someone would take the bait. The saudis did it is another conspiracy theory from the time.
The conspiracy theories around 9/11 are almost as numerous and as fun to play with as JFK assassination.
the towers were obviously hit by planes, we have plenty of video evidence of this. The controversy is around how the towers actually fell. This is where the “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams” meme comes from.
Of course, the meme is a parody of anyone who thinks that’s a legitimate argument. You don’t need to liquify a material for it to lose its structural integrity.
No, people actually believed it from day 1.
Yes, people believed “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams”, but the meme is a parody of people who believed it.
Sometimes parodies are just literal reflections.
Building 7 had one of the towers fucking fall on it, was seen bulging massively before collapsing, and it was pretty obvious what was going to happen, hence people getting confused and saying it had already collapsed.
Weren’t the towers completely closed just prior to the incident?
Because the FBI gave the terrorists all the training, weapons, and about $2bn in cold hard cash money that lead to them being able to commit the act. Because “jet fuel doesn’t melt steel beams”, although it does weaken steel beams. Because engineering and demolition experts came out and said the whole thing seemed coordinated exactly in the way in which they coordinate tear-downs for a living. Because the terrorists who on the same day planned to blow up the George Washington Bridge got sent home on a plane and were never spoken about publicly again. Because it was obvious Saidi Arabia had a hand in it, which later became confirmed fact, and we’re buddy buddy with Saudi, so somebody had to have known something was going to happen but didn’t sufficiently try to stop it on our side of the water. Because the Bin Laden family and the Bush family have a weird amount of connections. Be cause conspiracy theory culture was seen as more typical/harmless, and less of a thing for Nazi terrorists like today. Because the FBI had Bin Laden dead to rights in 1998 and had a bedside conversation with him instead of taking the opportunity to kill him while he was on dialysis. Because the 40 years that preceded 9/11 were lousy with proven incidence where our leadership, specifically the FBI & CIA in conjunction with corrupted presidents, in which American citizens were coerced, sabotaged, drugged, tortured, and killed, and all the leaders had to say about it was ‘whoopsy doopsy, so sowwy’
the whole thing seemed coordinated exactly in the way in which they coordinate tear-downs for a living
Oh, yeah, there’s that. The buildings had a very unusual¹ structure that tends to naturally collapse on a similar way as controlled demolition. It’s extremely unlikely for normal buildings to go down that way, so it did raise some suspicion.
1 - Unusual for buildings in general, but common for buildings of that size.
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I think it’s because people would rather believe the world is secretly controlled by some truly awful people than acknowledge no-one’s steering the bus.
I think it is because of the bizarre way the towers collapsed. Just like a controlled demolition looks like. The way the WTC7, that did not get hit by any plane, also collapsed. Supposedly because it caught on fire too.
I think this is really the cause of suspicion, it was just pretty bizarre. A lot of people came forward to explain that a fire couldn’t brind such a massive structure down.
Also, the US is known for doing weird shit behind everyone’s backs. The CIA is constantly doing shit like taking governments down or causing a drug crisis in black neighborhoods. You gotta admit the US agencies are sneaky in general, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if they were actually responsible for the twin towers. There’s no evidence but I’m pretty sure the CIA was somehow involved with the Nord Stream pipeline
Also a lot of people came forward to explain that a fire couldn’t brind such a massive structure down.
And yet One Meridian Plaza was a skyscraper built in the same era as 7 World Trade Center that had a fire so bad that caused the building to be condemned due to structural damage caused by the fire. The only reason One Meridian Plaza didn’t completely collapse during the fire was because there were fire sprinklers on some of the floors and the fire got up to a floor that had them.
So now Lower Manhattan had lost water pressure, making the fire sprinkler system worthless. You also had a lot of the people who would be responsible for fighting the fire pancaked in debris nearby. This was the first skyscraper of its size in a over a decade allowed to burn.
But a controlled demolition is a lot more comforting of a thought that the complete failure of disaster response.
I think the biggest evidence of structural damage and not a controlled demolition is the lack of explosion sounds. This is what a controlled demolition sounds like, but witnesses didn’t hear or feel explosions:
https://youtu.be/HfQOfNyn6Zc?feature=shared
more demolitions:
Also, in the WTC7 collapse video, you can see the rooftop penthouse collapse into the building a few seconds before the building collapses. This was the floors collapsing as the inner columns failed which left the building as an empty shell that had no lateral support. Controlled demolitions don’t look or act like that.
How do you place explosives at exactly the height of impact?
I’m not saying it is a conspiracy, I was just explaining why people think it is.
But let’s assume they did place the explosives, they wouldn’t have to be in the place of impact, they would be located in many places, just like a controlled demolition.
Again, not saying that’s what happened, just saying that the US is constantly doing sneaky stuff under the covers, which is why most conspiracies don’t seem far fetched.
Do you really think it is insane to believe the US made up the moon landing as a propaganda campaign against Russia? I believe we went to the moon, but if they came up with official documents saying we didn’t, I would be like “welp, US doing US things I guess”
Do you really think it is insane to believe the US made up the moon landing as a propaganda campaign against Russia?
Which moon landing? All of them? There was more than one. And yes I think it is very nearly insane given how much evidence we have.
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If you want to take this to a philosophical extreme so you understand my argument, is it possible to ever know anything with certainty?
What do you call evidence? Photos, videos, testimony… Do I personally trust in that evidence? Yes, it would be very unlikely to be fake, but many unlikely conspiracies have surfaced in the past.
No. Not doing it. Do you have evidence or not? Go find someone else who wants a bong hit and agrees with your “you can’t really know anything man” shitck.
It’s fine, have a nice day.
Here is an interview with a Dutch demolitions expert, who claims that WTC 7 was clearly brought down in a controlled demolition.
That’s an awful video, he didn’t talk technically about anything.
This explains most conspiracy theories: it’s easier to believe that the bad in the world is caused by some evil cabal than it is to accept that it’s just chaotic and crazy shit happens. It’s no surprise that most conspiracy theorists are also religious and believe there is some fight between the devil and god playing out. It’s a small leap from one position based on faith to the other.
Because there was some legit sketchy shit:
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Bush was warned at least a month in advance that an attack was coming. He deliberately did nothing. This was documented publicly in a Senate hearing afterwards. We don’t know whether he did nothing because of incompetence or malice, and we don’t know who else knew in advance as well, but either way, at least he and the people who briefed him knew.
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The dirty secret of skyscrapers is that they’re mostly made of nothing. They’re almost entirely air. It takes precious little to weaken them and bring them down. The Bin Laden family was in the construction business and they knew this fact very well.
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As others have noted in the thread, Bin Laden and the Muhjadeen had been funded, trained, and armed by the USA. They were our creation.
Usually when people are suspicious, they’re right to be suspicious. They’re not always right about what to be suspicious about.
It takes precious little to weaken them and bring them down.
I would argue that an airliner filled with tons of fuel is not “little”. That was a lot of mass moving really fast into the towers. Even then, it took a while for the structures to become weak enough to collapse. Given the circumstances, it was amazing the towers lasted as long as they did after they were hit.
Your core description is correct though: There really isn’t much to skyscrapers.
Rebar and concrete
I think that is generally for the floor of each level and for the actual foundation of the structure itself.
The bulk of the primary structure core is just steel, I think. Skyscrapers need to bend and flex with the wind or during earthquakes. (I am not an architect, but I have watched a few TV shows about this stuff in the past. I think.)
I’m confused by this comment, what exactly is sketchy?
W is/was an incompetent fool that didn’t feel the threat was worth acting upon. Instead of imagining some 4D conspiracy its much easier to see and understand that him and his administration were inept.
There have been numerous documentaries and analysis about skyscrapers and planes and the conclusion was that the towers actually performed ABOVE average. People don’t seem to understand the power involved in a fucking jerliner slamming into a building.
Bin Laden was trained and armed to fight the Russians, which he did. He then decided to turn on us because he always was always a lunatic.
Again, nothing about 9/11 is mysterious to me and I don’t get the conspiracy thinking.
A lot of people grew up being used to a safe county. The idea that the government didn’t actually keep people safe, and that leaders could be so insanely incompetent, was so shocking it was easier to believe in crazy conspiracy theories.
It’s pretty easy to believe in an incompetent government after 9/11, but W came after Clinton and Bush Sr. The first Bush was the head of the CIA. He was evil, but highly competent. Clinton was clearly a world leader, also highly competent. Before that you had Reagan, who was Machiavellian as fuck running secret wars around the world. You had decades of these people looking like they were playing geopolitical 4d chess, then you had this clown who was playing checkers with pidgins. Then you had this incredible shock of the biggest attack on the US since Perl Harbor. It broke a lot of people’s brains.
Usually the conspiracy theories are along the lines of…
- Of course Bush did nothing, it was him who ordered the attacks.
- The skyscrapers weren’t attacked, they were demolished
- Bin Laden (and anyone outside the US) was nothing but a scapegoat.
The sketchy shit makes a lot more sense than the conspiracy theories about demolitions and no planes (just projectors, lmao)
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“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.”
Though I found that often malice has a part in problems.
A lot of it was shock and confusion. How could this happen? Why did this happen? People wanted answers and people got answers.
I was a truther right away, after 9/11. It’s embarrassing to say now. I fell for narratives like “jet fuel doesnt melt steel” and “only a controlled demolition collapses like that.”
Jet fuels softens steal beams, and they were holding up so much weight. And that’s exactly how a really tall building, surrounded by other tall buildings, looks when it collapses.
People were hot with emotion and it’s hard to be rational in that state of mind.
At this point, I believe some in the US government knew the attack was imminent but did not know when, and by the time it was happening, it was too late.
I can’t dismiss as out of hand the idea that Bush, Cheny, and some of their friends in Saudi Arabia (people who are now Donald Trump’s friends), wanted the attack to happen, specifically in order to justify wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which I do believe were just wars under a doctrine of irredentism.
Bin Laden was US-educated and a buddy of the Bush family.
To be fair the Bush family also hates Americans
Because two planes hit two buildings (and the other one) and like 3-4 buildings imploded. It didn’t look real.
Im guessing engineers didn’t plan for planes to strike the building which is why they crumbled.
That was literally it. It was so odd a situation to our daily lives that parts of it didn’t seem real.
They actually did design the buildings to survive such incidents, which is one of the many reasons that makes it all a bit fishy
They designed the buildings to implode because on the 60s and 70s there was a worry that buildings would topple over onto neighbouring buildings if damaged or compromised, and was a legitimate concern as architects were putting forth designs using less reinforcement because they didn’t need as much half a century earlier to build things like the empire state building thanks to better building techniques and materials.
They did exactly what they were designed to do when their integrity was compromised to the point to failure, which is impressive feet. Just ask any engineer what happens when a small but dense and fast moving object slams into the end of a second class lever.
The buildings were designed to withstand a small or medium sized aircraft at a relatively low speed with low fuel, similar to the incident with the Empire State Building. It’s not uncommon for other buildings to be built to similar standards, so I don’t see how this would be fishy. It’s a pair of skyscrapers, the threat of a plane hitting them accidentally during bad weather was a possibility. They were not designed to withstand a modern airliner travelling at an incredibly high speed with a full load of fuel. The fact they survived as long as they did is miraculous.
I’m going to give one that might be controversial. It was the first high attention news event after the internet made us more connected. It allowed for oddball ideas to get passed around faster than ever before, shaping a “coherent” narrative faster than old media could handle.
Yeah back in the day we were bored most of the time, news was in a paper or in 1 hour of TV in rhe evening.
Off course everyone was hyped up on any kind of weird news or other, 7-11 was just bigger than the classical ones like ghosts or murders etc.
must be because of the big gulp slurpies
Because the FBI lost 2.3 trillion the day before 9/11 (though note that this was brought up way before 9/11, but was restated the day before), and mixed with things like ruby ridge incident, Waco incident, and other things has lead people to be distrustful of the FBI, and I honestly can’t blame them.
I thought it was the Pentagon that lost the 2 trillion dollars
You can blame someone for believing stupid conspiracy theories without any concrete evidence though.
I mean prob because although it wasn’t done directly by the gov they had plenty of warning and did nothing.
Go pull the nyt for the week before. There were warnings of terrorist attacks, but they were believed to be threatening US bases overseas, specifically on Okinawa.
It’s not “they knew and did nothing”. It only becomes clear in hindsight. It was a massive failure. Of intelligence and of imagination.
What do you mean by they had plenty of warning? Do you consider the government, FBI, and CIA to be one entity?
Normally the agencies coordinate.
Cheney changed that when Bush was elected, and had everything go thru him. It was his decision what another agency and even the president was told.
The pieces were all there, but Cheney was literally the only person who saw all the pieces before it happened.
And he never said anything.
Maybe he was incompetent, maybe he was evil enough to let it happen.
But lots of people call Dick Cheney evil, no one calls him incompetent
Don’t quote me on this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if many other countries considered those to be in the same camp.
I drove away from the WTC on the morning of 2001-09-11. I watched from a safe distance as the towers fell. It was a surreal day I shared with like 10 million people as we watched the smoke and fires and falling structures, willing with every ounce of our being that our loved ones due to be in the area at the time - and one in the building interviewing upstairs - ended up far away at the right time. The universe delivered, and we luckily lost no dear friends that day, but it was tense while some of them were in the proverbial wind.
I still - I’m ashamed to admit - think something was SUPER-fishy about the pentagon strike. I believe it when they say the parts don’t add up, and I believe them when they say the surveillance tapes from a local gas station were taken, and I debated the significance of the lamp-posts being taken down in the days before where they magically didn’t get hit by the incoming plane. And I’m pretty sure the plane following that pennsylvania crash was doing more than watching.
Do I think the planes hit the towers? Yep. Do I think the jet fuel weakened the structure until it popped? Yep. But I can’t resolve the rumour that the basement was empty on that day of all days. I heard the stories that the tail numbers were spotted elsewhere and I briefly gave it some thought until I just went “nah, fuck that” and tossed that idea.
I don’t think there’s gonna be an alternate explanation to cover the weird concerns I have, and I can live with that; but I’m not gonna forget it.
That’s the way it is.
There is nothing to be ashamed about critically examining the evidence. Here is the video of the pentagon attack, if you ask me the object looks much smaller than a passenger plane.
Rebuttal: There were six frames showing the impact from a security camera, which were released after a FOIA request.[51] Furthermore, photographic evidence of wreckage on the scene and eyewitness accounts of plane wreckage and damage are consistent with a plane crash.[52] Essentially, the problem for no-planers is that the plane didn’t just hit the outside of the Pentagon, but actually penetrated some distance into the structure, some of which even collapsed on top of the plane. Numerous witnesses saw it approach, the plane’s wings took out several street lights on a nearby roadway on the way in, and plane components were scattered all over the Pentagon lawn.
Also, while inconclusive (and “personal commentary”), a photo was presented on a 9/11 truther website which claimed that the “round” debris observed possibly was not the wheel of the alleged jetliner. But it clearly was, albeit stripped of its outer edge.
Why would anyone expect a high-resolution video camera to be pointed at where the plane hit? The intrinsic improbability of such a circumstance would make it direct evidence of a conspiracy, and no self-respecting conspiracy would allow evidence of its existence to remain.
The Pentagon is a reinforced concrete building with blast-resistant windows. It was struck by an aluminum-skinned commercial aircraft that had already lost a wing before hitting the building: such an aircraft is mostly empty space, with voids in the wings for fuel and the fuselage for passengers; only the floor of the passenger compartment, the undercarriage, and the engine cores are particularly solid objects. The damage is consistent with this scenario: nobody but truthers would seriously expect a cartoony plane-shaped hole.[53]
Rebuttal from https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/9/11, which also debunks most other 9/11 truther nonsense.
I think you need to reassess these people you respect a lot. Belief in 9-11 conspiracy theories is not common.
The Venn Diagram overlap between anti-vaxxers, 9-11 ‘truthers’, and flat earthers is nearly a circle
Some would call them “independent thinkers”
What’s more admirable, to conform and be right or to think independently and be wrong?
I think the weaponization of ignorance is a more nuanced subject than a binary choice.
There is no merit in pushing significantly disproven ‘theories’ like flat earthism.
No doubt. But dang, when they call themself right because they quote the most popular authority, I feel a strong impulse to play it wrong.
I mean, I’d push flat-eartherism just to highlight the absurdity of the popular epistemology. But that’s generally a pearls-before-swine situation.
Funny you mention that, there is a Flat Earth society that was started as a joke with members just arguing for fun.
They were mostly all replaced by true believers by the late 90s, I got to watch it happen.
And it plays out the same way in so many ‘ironic stupidity’ forums.
The true believers have more zip than the careful contemplators, unfortunately.
This is a flaw in human nature that needs to be resolved before we move forward as a species.
It is no longer a survival benefit to follow loud, angry people.
