9/11 Conspiracy Theories Megathread (please read first post)

[LesMTS]

Originally Posted by reptilian

and there was radar gaps around the pentagon?????

No. Who says that? The plane that hit the Pentagon was tracked successfully from just shortly after the transponders had been switched off. It was tracked until impact.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...4365-2001Sep11

[LesMTS]

Originally Posted by pANDAS Radio

So, hijackers knew exactly what parts of the country had the poorest radar cover, only used those areas a flightpaths--straight to Washington and New York, obviously places that wouldn't have primary radar . It's not exactly a good description of how 4 passenger planes managed to vanish and not be found until three of them slammed into heavily populated areas. It's things like this that will continue because there wasn't a proper investigation.

It doesn't suggest they flew to their destinations outwith radar. Only that the use of only primary radar to track a plane complicates and confuses issues.
Seems in the case of the first plane they had 24 minutes between the transponder being switched off and impact, during which time they had to rely only on primary radar to track the plane. Primary radar gives no indication of the identity of a plane, it's just an anonymous blip, which is why it's so confusing, especially when there are primary radar blind spots.
Twenty four minutes. To track and speculate on the intention of the aircraft using only primary radar, then scramble fighter jets to intercept.

[endless psych]

Originally Posted by pANDAS Radio

It's things like this that will continue because there wasn't a proper investigation.

There never could have been a proper investigation. At least not one that would satisfy the minority of people counted in the ranks of conspiracy theorists.

What constitutes a proper investigation for such an act?
What procedures, that may or may not have been in place at the time, were used correctly or incorrectly?
Who should it have been conducted?

To use a random analogy the police investigation into Jack the Ripper didn't result in any arrests does that mean the chief of police was gutting prostitutes?

Originally Posted by LesMTS

I mean we don't perform rigorous autopsies on someone we've just witnessed being beheaded.

Although an event such as a terrorist attack, indeed the first attack against the US on US soil, is probably deserving of a rigourous autopsy anyway.

[LesMTS]

Originally Posted by endless psych

Although an event such as a terrorist attack, indeed the first attack against the US on US soil, is probably deserving of a rigourous autopsy anyway.

Not for details such as how the towers fell. I think it's entirely feasible that, if the official story is correct, it would be considered unnecessary and not particularly odd that one wasn't carried out.
Also, the area's status as a rescue scene and mass grave trumps that of its status as a crime scene, in terms of protecting the evidence.
I don't think this point favours the official line particularly, just that the "evidence was removed quickly" argument is largely meaningless or useless.

[pANDAS Radio]

So the US is defenceless against aircraft that they can't identify and a suspect plane can be tracked until it hits the home of the US defence department? Consider the fact that the White House is just 2.8 miles across the river (as shown in here) and that entire area is a no fly zone with a US air force base protecting it. Yet no fighters were scrambled towards a passenger flight with it's transponder switched off heading straight for the most important buildings in the country?

I'm also sure that 24 minutes isn't a short period of time if you're tracking a plane travelling at 600mph, that means they started tracking it when it was at least 250 miles away and still had no time to scramble a jet because every single jet that guards Washington was supposedly over Alaska running drills on how they'd deal with hijacked passenger flights?

[pANDAS Radio]

Originally Posted by endless psych

There never could have been a proper investigation. At least not one that would satisfy the minority of people counted in the ranks of conspiracy theorists.

I think you'll find that the people calling for a proper investigation also include victims families and members of the rescue services.

Originally Posted by endless psych

What constitutes a proper investigation for such an act?

One which explains exactly what went wrong and why there was no defence from the US military despite multiple planes "vanishing" for over an hour. One which doesn't exclude evidence from people which may result in an extra question needing to be asked. One which was run by members of law enforcement rather than committee and then edited by one person? Basically, one that isn't the 9/11 Commission.

Originally Posted by endless psych

To use a random analogy the police investigation into Jack the Ripper didn't result in any arrests does that mean the chief of police was gutting prostitutes?

That analogy doesn't work because it mentions the police and something which was the subject of an ongoing investigation.

[LesMTS]

Originally Posted by pANDAS Radio

So the US is defenceless against aircraft that they can't identify and a suspect plane can be tracked until it hits the home of the US defence department? Consider the fact that the White House is just 2.8 miles across the river (as shown in here) and that entire area is a no fly zone with a US air force base protecting it. Yet no fighters were scrambled towards a passenger flight with it's transponder switched off heading straight for the most important buildings in the country?

I'm also sure that 24 minutes isn't a short period of time if you're tracking a plane travelling at 600mph, that means they started tracking it when it was at least 250 miles away and still had no time to scramble a jet because every single jet that guards Washington was supposedly over Alaska running drills on how they'd deal with hijacked passenger flights?

They did scramble jets, and there were no drills being run (see my earlier link).
It's not that they had 24 minutes to scramble a jet, it's that they had 24 minutes to work out which radar blip they were tracking (using only primary radar, which offers no identification), decide what was happening and act on it.

American Airlines Flight 11 Boston enroute to Los Angeles
FAA Notification to NEADS 0840*
Fighter Scramble Order (Otis Air National Guard Base, Falmouth, Mass. Two F-15s) 0846**
Fighters Airborne 0852
Airline Impact Time (World Trade Center 1) 0846 (estimated)***
Fighter Time/Distance from Airline Impact Location Aircraft not airborne/153 miles

United Airlines Flight 175 Boston enroute to Los Angeles
FAA Notification to NEADS 0843
Fighter Scramble Order (Otis ANGB, Falmouth, Mass.
Same 2 F-15s as Flight 11) 0846
Fighters Airborne 0852
Airline Impact Time (World Trade Center 2) 0902 (estimated)
Fighter Time/Distance from Airline Impact Location approx 8 min****/71 miles

American Flight 77 Dulles enroute to Los Angeles
FAA Notification to NEADS 0924
Fighter Scramble Order (Langley AFB, Hampton, Va. 2 F-16s) 0924
Fighters Airborne 0930
Airline Impact Time (Pentagon) 0937(estimated)
Fighter Time/Distance from Airline Impact Location approx 12 min/105 miles

United Flight 93 Newark to San Francisco
FAA Notification to NEADS N/A *****
Fighter Scramble Order (Langley F-16s already airborne for AA Flt 77)
Fighters Airborne (Langley F-16 CAP remains in place to protect DC)
Airline Impact Time (Pennsylvania) 1003 (estimated)
Fighter Time/Distance from Airline Impact Location approx 11 min/100 miles
(from DC F-16 CAP)

Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon, had fighters scrambled as soon as the notification came in from the FAA.

The main problem was that no-one knew what the fuck was going on.

Originally Posted by pANDAS Radio

One which explains exactly what went wrong and why there was no defence from the US military despite multiple planes "vanishing" for over an hour. One which doesn't exclude evidence from people which may result in an extra question needing to be asked. One which was run by members of law enforcement rather than committee and then edited by one person? Basically, one that isn't the 9/11 Commission.

But the planes didn't "vanish" at all, let alone for over an hour. They just didn't know what was going on.

[pANDAS Radio]

So they just missed the passenger aircraft that was flying straight towards, and then in, a no fly zone?

[LesMTS]

Originally Posted by pANDAS Radio

So they just missed the passenger aircraft that was flying straight towards, and then in, a no fly zone?

No, they didn't have time to intercept it.
If you look at the notifications from FAA to the military regarding suspicious aircraft and the times the order was given to scramble you can see that the time decreases. Six minutes for flight 11, three minutes for flight 175.
In the case of Flight 77, it was immediate.
Thirteen minutes from FAA notifying the military that something was awry (that means they identified it 108 miles from the Pentagon, assuming a speed of 500mph), and identifying the location of the suspicious plane, to impact. Jets scrambled immediately. The jets weren't airborne until six minutes later (which is impressive, considering prep and take off time). Impact was seven minutes after that.
They were just too late. That's all.

[endless psych]

Originally Posted by pANDAS Radio

One which explains exactly what went wrong and why there was no defence from the US military despite multiple planes "vanishing" for over an hour.

I think this kinda ties in with the point I was making.

Two versions of this here aircraft business being offered, Les's which needs not any nefarious conspitators and just bad timing and yours which repeats the word vanishing a lot

There could have been no event of this magnitude for which there would be a "proper investigation". If nothing else the priority that rescue work took over evidence gathering would be seen as enough to tarnish it.

[pANDAS Radio]

Sorry, I'm just remembering what the airlines were saying on the day of the attacks. And sorry if vanish doesn't seem a good enough word for you but what word would you substitute for it to describe something which was trackable then became untrackable and 24 minutes later was found in the side of a building?

Maybe "flange"? Like in all the movies where we see the guy at the radar say "sir, the enemy aircraft. It just flanged off the radar".

[bugpowderdust]

Note to self: Stephen, no matter how bored you get do not read the conspiracy thread.



Urg. Les and Endless Psych, you deserve medals.

[Zooropa]

Originally Posted by Charlie Brooker

I've got a theory - an untested, unprovable theory - that the more interesting your life is at any given point, the less lurid and spectacular your dreams will be. Think of it as a balancing procedure carried out by the brain to stop you getting bored to death.

If your waking life is mundane, it'll inject some thrills into your night-time imaginings to maintain a healthy overall fun quotient. So if you work in a cardboard box factory, and your job is to stare at the side of each box as it passes along a conveyor belt, to ensure they're all uniform and boxy enough - and you do this all day, every day, until your mind grows so dissociated and numb you can scarcely tell where the cardboard ends and your body begins - when your daily routine is THAT dull, chances are you'll spend each night dreaming you're the Emperor of Pluto, wrestling a 6ft green jaguar during a meteor storm in the desert just outside Vegas.

All well and good in the world of dreams. But if you continue to believe you're the Emperor of Pluto after you've woken up, and you go into work and start knocking the boxes around with a homemade sceptre while screaming about your birthright, you're in trouble.

I mention this because recently I've found myself bumping into people - intelligent, level-headed people - who are sincerely prepared to entertain the notion that there might be something in some of the less lurid 9/11 conspiracy theories doing the rounds. They mumble about the "controlled demolition" of WTC 7 (oft referred to as "the third tower"), or posit the notion that the Bush administration knew 9/11 was coming and let it happen anyway. I mean, you never know, right? Right? And did I tell you I'm the Emperor of Pluto?

The glaring problem - and it's glaring in 6,000 watt neon, so vivid and intense you can see it from space with your eyes glued shut - is that with any 9/11 conspiracy theory you care to babble can be summed up in one word: paperwork.

Imagine the paperwork. Imagine the level of planning, recruitment, coordination, control, and unbelievable nerve required to pull off a conspiracy of that magnitude. Really picture it in detail. At the very least you're talking about hiring hundreds of civil servants cold-hearted enough to turn a blind eye to the murder of thousands of their fellow countrymen. If you were dealing with faultless, emotionless robots - maybe. But this almighty conspiracy was presumably hatched and executed by fallible humans. And if there's one thing we know about humans, it's that our inherent unreliability will always derail the simplest of schemes.

It's hard enough to successfully operate a video shop with a staff of three, for Christ's sake, let alone slaughter thousands and convince the world someone else was to blame.

That's just one broad objection to all the bullshit theories. But try suggesting it to someone in the midst of a 9/11 fairytale reverie, and they'll pull a face and say, "Yeah, but ... " and start banging on about some easily misinterpreted detail that "makes you think" (when it doesn't) or "contradicts the official story" (when you misinterpret it). Like nutbag creationists, they fixate on thinly spread, cherry-picked nuggets of "evidence" and ignore the thundering mass of data pointing the other way.

And when repeatedly pressed on that one, basic, overall point - that a conspiracy this huge would be impossible to pull off - they huff and whine and claim that unless you've sat through every nanosecond of Loose Change (the conspiracy flick du jour) and personally refuted every one of its carefully spun "findings" before their very eyes, using a spirit level and calculator, you have no right to an opinion on the subject.

Oh yeah? So if my four-year-old nephew tells me there's a magic leprechaun in the garden I have to spend a week meticulously peering underneath each individual blade of grass before I can tell him he's wrong, do I?

Look hard enough, and dementedly enough, and you can find "proof" that Kevin Bacon was responsible for 9/11 - or the 1987 Zeebrugge ferry disaster, come to that. It'd certainly make for a more interesting story, which is precisely why several thousand well-meaning people would go out of their way to believe it. Throughout my twenties I earnestly believed Oliver Stone's account of the JFK assassination. Partly because of the compelling (albeit wildly selective) way the "evidence" was blended with fiction in his 1991 movie - but mainly because I WANTED to believe it. Believing it made me feel important.

Embrace a conspiracy theory and suddenly you're part of a gang sharing privileged information; your sense of power and dignity rises a smidgen and this troublesome world makes more sense, for a time. You've seen through the matrix! At last you're alive! You ARE the Emperor of Pluto after all!

Except - ahem - you're only deluding yourself, your majesty. Because to believe the "system" is trying to control you is to believe it considers you worth controlling in the first place. The reality - that "the man" is scarcely competent enough to control his own bowels, and doesn't give a toss about you anyway - is depressing and emasculating; just another day in the cardboard box factory. And that's no place for an imaginary emperor, now, is it?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...eptember11.usa

[LesMTS]

Originally Posted by Zooropa

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...eptember11.usa

YouTube - Charlie Brooker Is Right About...

[Zooropa]

Thats my bebo video.

He really is.

YouTube - Charlie Brooker on My Sweet 16