US Releasing 9/11 Flight 77 Pentagon Crash Tape 1098
Robotron23 writes "The BBC is reporting that the US government has decided to release the videotape depicting the crash of Flight 77 into the Pentagon building, nearly five years after the 9/11 attacks. The government had previously withheld the tape due to 'ongoing investigations' into al-Qaeda's Zacarias Moussaoui. A government representative commented that they 'hope that this video will put to rest the conspiracy theories.'"
You can't stop the paranoia. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't put the conspiracy theories to rest. They already believe you're covering something up, so if you release a report that shows...
...the conspiracy theorists will just claim you've fabricated or altered the "new" evidence.
Probably not (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that there is not a clear view of a 747 running into the pentagon. Just a streak and a fireball. Kinda like those UFO pictures and videos.
What is that saying? "I want to believe", right?
Re:Well thats nice (Score:4, Insightful)
They did release it immediately. The Moussaoui trial just ended. It's common that the government and companies do not discuss details relating to a trial while it's in progress.
The fact is, the integrity of the tape will be questioned more because of what it is and who it's from than how long it took to release it. There would still be skeptics if it was released immediately
Fox News Has It (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't show us anything new. It answers no questions. The frame rate of the camera was too low to catch the plane/missile/emu (take your pick) as it came in.
What would have been good would be a release of the other video tapes that were seized on 9/11. Even if their quality wasn't that good, I'd imagine at least ONE should have something vaguely resembling a plane in it.
Re:You can't stop the paranoia. (Score:4, Insightful)
Any rational explanation is simply "ignoring the facts" and any evidence that counters is faked.
I bet the Fark article on this is full of references to thermite, missiles, and crazy conspiracy theories all over again.
I saw the recording and... (Score:5, Insightful)
No plane can be seen and all you really see is a flash of light then an explosion.
I'm not one of those whack-job conspiracy theorists but for Judicial Watch to make claims of, "this will end all conspiracy theories" and then go on to release this load of steaming dog poo is poor judgement and will only continue to be fodder for the tin foil hatters the world over.
Absurd (Score:5, Insightful)
We should have had this on day 1. How did keeping this under wraps help the Moussaoui trial?
This kind of secretive attitude creates an environment where conspiracy theories flourish. If the Government wants to disprove these theories, they should release as much information as they safely can, instead of fighting tooth and nail to keep everything secret.
Re:Probably not (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't matter. The government can't win. There are two possible scenerios for releasing the tape:
1) They release it immediately after the attack. People claim that there is no way they could release the tape that quick so it must have been fabricated beforehand.
2) They release it well after the attack. People claim they had enough time to fabricate the tape.
It's a no-win situation.
Re:Absurd (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Probably not (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, yes, that's a problem for people that only believe what they see on what they presume to be un-alterable video tape... but why not just ask the people that watched it happen [awitness.org].
Re:Response to 911: Loose Change (Score:2, Insightful)
It makes me think that there way too many looney toons out there...
-h-
Futile task (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, that's really stupid and pointless task. Every conspiracy theory is not falsifiable [wikipedia.org], so there's no point in disproving it.
In short, there's no proof that you can give to conspiracy theorist, that will convince him he is wrong. Just ask any of them, if there is anything in the world that would make him change his mind.
Robert
Re:Well thats nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The official story is a conspiracy theory. (Score:5, Insightful)
Excellent point AC. Most Conspiracy Theories can be dismissed easily because there probably wasn't even a consipracy to begin with. But 911 *was* a conspiracy, so by defintion any explaination is a conspiracy theory.
Note that even the official theory has all sort of bizarre aspects (James Bond-style mastermind villian in his secret underground bunker, for example).
Re:Absurd (Score:1, Insightful)
Time heals wounds, make you move on. But then they dosify you with some more scare videos/tapes
so you don't forget and give them a new blank check to do anything they want.
What saddens me the most is the relatives of the people that died on that flight. You try to heal, yet
they come back and twist the knife inside you some more. Despicable.
Re:The official story is a conspiracy theory. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Probably not (Score:5, Insightful)
I think he meant it would put to rest all those crazy theories that have recently surfaced that the government is engaging in illegal domestic spying.
The timing of the tape release couldn't be more perfect, as a reminder to the populace for the reason why their civil liberties are being curtailed. Hopefully this will re-scare enough people to get Bush's approval rating moving in the other direction.
On the other hand, (Score:5, Insightful)
These are the kinds of conspiracies that occur without the protection of the federal government. What kinds of schemes might people think up if they're free from any oversight whatsoever?
I'm just saying that a little paranoia is a healthy thing. I'm not saying that our government hides aliens with guitar pick-shaped heads, or that they orchestrated the 9-11 attack, or that they conspired to fool everyone into thinking Iraq had nuclear...
Black Ops (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You can't stop the paranoia. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I now approve of Bush! (Score:2, Insightful)
Um, WWII ring any bells?
Incredibility (Score:2, Insightful)
Like no one anticipating that someone would use planes as missiles into our tall buildings - or that levees would collapse in Katrina. Like no domestic calls being spied on. Like cheaper, more plentiful oil. Like cutting federal spending. Like securing our borders. Like increasing the integrity and dignity of the White House.
When lying liars lie about all those important activities, there's no reason to trust evidence they produce that merely protects another story they tell, which if exposed would have kept our country from going down the track to hell it's been on for the past 5 years.
Re:The official story is a conspiracy theory. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, most people in the Conspiracy Theory world don't really understand the difference and there's very much a "ends justify the means" attitude where any crazy idea is good if it will raise doubt on the official theory, and that approach tends to cast the whole lot in tinfoil.
And it still doesn't change the fact that an official conspiracy theory was put forward, and acted on, without a whole lot of evidence. (Not just "religious extremists", but the whole "Al Qaeda==Worldwide Terrorist Network", when the reality is that the conspiracy theory created Al Qaeda rather than visa-versa.)
Re:Fox News Has It (Score:3, Insightful)
1) where is American flight 77?
2) where are all the people that were on board flight 77?
3) why are the family members of all the people on board flight 77 not concerned that a plane is missing.
These are the same questions that (presumably other?) conspiracy theorists are asked about KAL flight 007. Some answers they have given in that case and probably do now about flight 77:
a) There was no flight 77
b) There were no passengers aboard flight 77
c) The "families" are all government employees in on the conspiracy
etc. etc.
I mean none of this can really be disproved; that's the thing. It sounds nutty, and it *is* nutty, but to someone who really believes it, there is no way to definitively prove a person's family member isn't secretly a member of the CIA.
Conspiracy theories rely on the idea that in most cases, you can't prove a negative. They rely on "facts" that are refuted only if you don't believe in the conspiracy.
And they also persist because there are real conspiracies that have gone on and are still going on. We've only just gotten the tip of the NSA domestic spying thing, most likely. There was Watergate. There was Iran-Contra. How many more conspiracies have occurred in government that have never been uncovered?
But that doesn't mean everything is a government conspiracy. Most events have other explanations and you'd have to have a complete inability to objectively look at where the evidence points to think otherwise.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Response to 911: Loose Change (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Probably not (Score:3, Insightful)
What all of them?
Or just one loon?
Re:Bin Laden and the CIA (Score:2, Insightful)
This is not as far out as it seems. What everybody seems to forget is that Bin Laden was a CIA agent for years and years when he was part of the mujahideen [wikipedia.org] that were fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. He was our boy, on our payroll. We gave him cash, weapons, logistical support, equipment and god knows what else. So what I wanna know is this:
When exactly did Bin Laden quit the CIA?
That's all I wanna know. Well, that and how he did it. I just can't imagine that leaving the employ of the CIA is as easy as leaving, say, Sears. Do they hold you an office party where you're blindfolded the whole time or something? Do they just say, "Remember all that classified info you were privy to over the years? Can you, like, not say anything to anyone about that? K, thx, bye."
It all seems a little fishy. Can somebody point me to a document proving Bin Laden is no longer working for the CIA? Otherwise, don't we have to assume that he is still in their pocket?
Witnesses Stories Don't Match (Score:3, Insightful)
i call bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
New? That is an OLD VIDEO (Score:2, Insightful)
And no, I can not spot a 757 in that video. If I was a man in the desert for 50 years, and never heard of 9/11, then saw that video for the first time and was asked to describe what I saw, it would be: "a stream of smoke, a flash, a ball of flame".
Whatever. This news is an insult. A joke is being played here. Again.
Re:Absurd (Score:2, Insightful)
(For the record, I think it is pretty clear that the events of that day were not the result of an American conspiracy. As other people have pointed out, the easiest way to explain why this is extremely unlikely is the "house of cards" analogy: such an elaborate conspiracy could be defeated by a single leak, and hundreds or thousands of people would have to be involved in matters that would test their consciences immensely. Furthermore, by Occam's Razor, we should remember that there are people out there who actually had much clearer motives for performing the attacks - even though the stance of the al-Qaeda and similar fundamentalists may not be that of "hating our freedom", there is no denying that there is a significant amount of animosity in the world directed towards western civilization in general and the United States in particular. In other words - there is no need for a conspiracy to explain these attacks.)
Re:Video conspiracy debunking work (Score:4, Insightful)
It's fairly sensible to accept more sloppy language in something disputing an extraordinary claim than in something making the claim in the first place. If you think about it, you see it everywhere. It's the same reason Snopes is reasonably trusted -- debunking a claim doesn't take nearly the credibility it takes to make one. After a claim is made, the incentives shift, and parties previously uninvolved are brought in. The dialogue changes, but the debate also changes to be more fact-check-y and less initial-claim-make-y. This permits sloppier language to be taken more seriously.
But by all means -- and I say this without sarcasm -- take seriously anything you want using whatever credibility metrics work for you.
A fallacy of your own (Score:1, Insightful)
It appears that those claims were false. For them to be considered lies, you need to demonstrate the intent to deceive. Feel free to give it a shot, because it may be true, but everything I've heard so far has been circumstantial.
Re:The official story is not a conspiracy theory. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bushy (Score:4, Insightful)
1 Bush is not a patsy. He is a member of the cabal who is perfectly happy to be seen as "too dumb to sin". Makes any future trial a LOT easier. But he is in it up to his neck for the same reason Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld are: he's an oil man. Nothing more and nothing less. Oil and oil shares are the only things he cares about and he's as happy as the rest of them to kill a few hundred or thousands (especially if they are foreigners) to get them. Iran is just sabre-rattling to boost the price of oil and their collective pension funds.
2. I think Bush simply ignored the warnings because he and his friends thought it was going to be a small attack like the van bomb. That would have been enough of a "Pearl Harbour" for the PNAC. He was genuinely shocked when the scale of it became clear. He must have been thinking about what would happen if the story of all the warnings he'd had came out before his friends in the media clamped the lid on it. He had a close shave but Fox et al came to the rescue and people like John O'Neil were literally buried in the bad news and shock.
Now the reality bit: all empires have been founded on economics. They have to be. It is only in the post-WWII era that governments have decided to pretend otherwise (around the time the War Department became the Defence Department). The reality is that America needs Iraq's oil and now it has it. And if they did not, the American economy would be in deep shit very soon. In the old days this would have been explained openly - proudly - and then the troops sent in. Britain did it all the time. Japan did it. Germany and Italy did it. The Romans did it (grain mostly rather than oil). It's a fact of life. What has changed is that an extra layer of hypocrisy has been added. But there's nothing unusual about invading a country with or without a pretext to seize its resources, even if it means letting someone attack you first when you could have stopped them. The alternative is to drastically change your way of life, a way of life that these guys at the top simply worship and can not even imagine changing just because a bunch of dirty foreign rag-heads object! The idea actually makes them feel ill; you can see it on their faces when they talk about countries that have oil and aren't being properly servile. They hate that. They are by their own definition the pinacle of human achievement and despise anyone who does not vocally agree with that assessment. Look at Bush's crack about the London anti-war protests. The rabble are not entitled to an opinion.
A hundred years ago Wolfowitz would have got a medal, now he gets a cushy job in the World Bank. He successfully defended the American Way of Life(tm). And if you read his speeches and letters about why a pretext for invading Iraq had to be found, I think you'll see that's what he thought all along.
Imperialists are all the same in every place and every time.
TWW
Re:You can't stop the paranoia. (Score:3, Insightful)
Tactical situations involving national security should *always* err on the side of caution. The side of caution would dictate to *always* scramble- you can always recall later, and of course standard miltiary procedure would be to attempt to contact the off-course aircraft upon intercept, not just shoot it down. In addition to that- ANYBODY putting aircraft, on orders, without a flight plan or transponder and without notifying the people in charge of watching that aircraft, is dangerously negligent and should be court martialed. The fault is with the chain of command- and if they try to fight back against you, well, take your story to the public, we'll see how long that general lasts in his job having endangered civilians for a military exercise.
There is NO excuse, in this day and age of multiple civilian navigation and communication technologies, for having an aircraft off course and not responding to communications. Add to that a flight path into restricted airspace after intercept- and I want those soldiers shooting first, not asking questions of the chain of command. If the current code of military justice doesn't allow our soldiers enough freedom to protect our civilians in the heat of the moment, then it needs a serious reworking until it does. Until then, it's so seriously broken that we might as well not have a military at all.
Re:Where's The Plane? (Score:3, Insightful)
If so, I want to stay far, far away from you, because you're a dangerous fool.
Re:Yep. (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, everyone posting this crap learned their physics from Bugs Bunny.
Re:Incredibility (Score:4, Insightful)
Arguing with bellicose right-wingnuts is starting to feel a lot like arguing with Soviet appoligists back in the day. They reply to perfectly ordinary claims of fact--that Bush & co. lied about Iraq's WMDs and much else as a pretext for war--with a completely irrelevant non sequitur.
For those lacking basic English comprehension skills, no one claimed that Iraq never had WMDs, and trying to twist the argument to answer that premise is nothing more than an obvious admission of that fact.
This non sequitur was quickly followed by another: invoking the Ghost of Presidents Past in the form of Bill Clinton. Bellicose right-wingnuts have reached the bottom of the polemical barrel--they are now reduced to waving a stuffed scarecrow of a man from the better part of a decade ago in a desperate attempt to divert attention from the uncontroversial fact that they and theirs have lied American into a pointless and stupid war that has killed thousands of Americans for no discernible purpose.
Give it up guys--every time one of you clowns mentions Clinton it's just more proof that you have lost. Your time is done.
Re:You can't stop the paranoia. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You can't stop the paranoia. (Score:2, Insightful)
That's not really true. Many planes are not required to even HAVE transponders, much less use them. Transponder use is only required in certain airspace or situations.
That said, it would have been apparent to these controllers that the targets on their screens
should have had a transponder. They were all in either Class A or Class B airspace,
except possibly the one in PA, and were probably moving fast enough that they were clearly
jets, not propeller planes. (All jets are required to file IFR flight plans, which for all
practical purposes means they need an operating transponder.)
So clearly, the controllers could see that something was amiss. Was it mechanical, pilot error, or a hijacking? The first two are the most common, the third really rare. And in the event of a hijacking, controllers (and flight crews) were trained to go along with the hijackers' demands. (That has changed since 9/11!) So they would not have considered scrambling fighters to shoot them down until the much more common explanations had been checked out.
Time ran out on them before that happened.
Today, with new procedures and protocols, it might be different. I'm just a private pilot, with no ATC inside knowledge, but I suspect they are much more proactive about such incursions. The actual response time is probably classified. (rightly so, I think)
Re:You can't stop the paranoia. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Then explain this. (Score:4, Insightful)
The word "pull" is used in the demolitions industry to indicate manual demolition through things like wrecking balls and, literally, pulling the structure over or down. When you talk about explosive demolition, you use the word "shoot".
There is no evidence "melted steel", especially at WTC7. Of course, steel doesn't have to melt in order to fail. I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that at half its melting point, steel has only 25% of its strength.
lol. Wow, awesome. You fell for that claptrap hook, line, and sinker. Did you know that the Windor building is a predominately concrete structure? Did you realize that the steel parts of the building exposed to the fire did fail?
Don't waste my time if you can't be bothered to do basic research [911myths.com].
My God... Why do you people keep insisting that fire was the only cause of these collapses? You only demonstrate severe ignorance and blindness when doing so. Have you forgotten about the two planes that impacted WTC1 and WTC2? How about the severe structural damage (evidence for which I linked to earlier) of WTC7? How many other steel building in history have been subjected to these conditions? You're conveniently ignoring all of this.
Re:You can't stop the paranoia. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're wasting time. It doesn't matter how often you point out a hole or inconsistency with the official conspiracy theory, they will just ignore it, call you a nut, and believe their conspiracy theory. They wil lsay you're a conspiracy theorist and ignore that what they believe is also a conpsiracy theory, and one which doesn't make much sense.
But since the government said it, and they are unwilling to seriously look at the evidence, or consider anything that doesn't agree with the official conspiracy theory, they will not pay attention to you.
Re:The official story is a conspiracy theory. (Score:5, Insightful)
So I think it's a little off-base to say that anyone allowed disasters to happen. The chain of events leading up to them is always clear in retrospect, but another flaw in conspiracy theory is that it attributes such masterful vision and control to the conspiracists leading into the event, and then presumes such incompetence in handling and covering it up. In reality, no one has such complete control nor such prescience. Things become immensely confusing and fractious around such events, and no one who has ever been in the middle of such confusion could give much credence to these grand theories of shadowy orchestration. The Clausewitzian concept of "friction" is very real and works against such clockwork machinations as most concepts of conspiracy would have you believe.
Re:You can't stop the paranoia. (Score:2, Insightful)
Agreed. And if the WTC towers had collapsed at a rate consistent with that idea, we'd basically be done.
But they didn't. They collapsed at, essentially, freefall speed.
There's NO WAY that could possibly happen unless almost all of the internal support (being provided by the large internal steel structural members) was completely removed immediately prior to the collapse. Simply weakening them isn't enough. The lower floors that were still being supported would have slowed the collapse considerably.
Because of that, the fact that the kerosene fires were relatively cool (fuel rich) as evidenced by the plethora of black smoke from them, the visual evidence of squibs (or something that looks like it) being set off in the lower parts of the building immediately prior to collapse, the still molten and/or yellow-hot steel in the basement rubble weeks after the collapse, the reports of multiple explosions within the buildings immediately prior to collapse, and on and on, I'm completely convinced that the trade center towers were demolished using some combination of thermite/thermate and high explosives.
I'm not a conspiracy nut by most measures. I believe whatever the evidence most strongly suggests. And in this case, it most strongly suggests a controlled demolition of the WTC towers.
See the paper and other supporing material here [byu.edu].
Re:The official story is not a conspiracy theory. (Score:4, Insightful)
BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Hijack 'suspects' alive and well
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1559
BBC News | MIDDLE EAST | Hijack 'suspect' alive in Morocco
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1558
BBC News | AMERICAS | FBI probes hijackers' identities
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1553754
So much for "facts" about your 19 hijackers.
And by the way, you speak of facts, but we have never been shown proof. You know, that thing that establishes facts as such. We were told it was Bin Laden within hours of the attack, and we were told proof was forthcoming. But it never, um, forthcame.
Re:(conspiracy nut) (Score:3, Insightful)
This is exactly what I'm talking about with wish fulfillment. You assume you know something about how something works then assume it is an inviolate law of the universe, which completely upholds and supports your position, but mostly because it is what you want to believe. Perhaps the cell phones had poor connections or experienced frequent drop outs, but work they did. No doubt you will fire back with some other half backed urban nonsense to prove me wrong. But I won't bother responding to what would be a pointless debate the likes of which I've had dozens of other times with conspiracy nuts who believe in things like: crop circle (alien origin), Face on Mars, Faked Moon landings, and Creationism.
Re:The official story is a conspiracy theory. (Score:3, Insightful)
Military precision? I'm confused. How much "military precision" does one need to book tickets on four different airline flights that will be taking off at about the same time? And then say, "Okay, twenty minutes into the flight, get up and..."
I once arranged flights for people leaving from NY, San Diego, Indy, and Chicago to go skiing in Denver. We all ARRIVED within 30 minutes of one another, gathered up our gear, headed out to the waiting rental car, and took off to the prearranged condo.
I guess I must be ex-military...
Re:You can't stop the paranoia. (Score:4, Insightful)
The terrorists weren't able to make "amazingly tight turns." The words of the air traffic controller was that they "were making dangerously sharp turns" and that "you shouldn't fly a 757 that way." Rookie luck, or rookie blundering? Turning a plane too hard is typical of rookies. Face it, they didn't really care about how much stress they put on the passengers or the plane. I doubt they were worried about the maintenance record that day.
WTC7 collapsed because debris ignited the 47,000 gallons of diesel fuel stored in the building as part of the emergency command center. The building was burning and belching smoke from nearly every window for three hours before it finally collapsed. No one was surprised by it. The firemen evacuated the area around it two hours before it fell because they knew it was going to come down when huge cracks appeared up and down the facade.
As for the twin towers and why and how they collapsed -- simply look up any of the dozens of engineering studies on the failure mode of the building. The impact most likely knocked away the "blown on" insulation over the steel, and the jet fuel and collateral materials burned long enough to heat the steel. As the steel expanded, it would have snapped the joints connecting the support beams to the floor connections. As soon as one floor collapses, it puts that much more weight on the floor below it, then that floor fails, then the floor beneath, etc. What you get is a perfect "stack of pancakes" collapse, which is exactly the failure mode you see in the towers. The central core stabilizes the collapse and maintains the nearly vertical fall. I've seen interviews with the designer of the building, and he said that the way the building fell is exactly how it was *designed* to fail in a catastrophic event. No one wanted the building to wipe out half a mile of buildings around it in some unplanned catastrophe.
What was Bush doing reading? Perhaps he was scheduled to read to a group of elementary students for weeks or months in advance. Perhaps the terrorists weren't considerate enough to inform Mr. Bush of the impending attack on the World Trade Center. According to reports, when the first sketchy information about a plane hitting the World Trade Center came in, Bush's first reaction was, "That's one lousy pilot." Which, I have to admit was my first reaction upon hearing the news on my clock radio that morning. In fact, I spent twenty minutes getting up and ready before I switched to headline news to see "if they might show the moron". By that time, the second plane had already hit. According to the Conspiracy Theorists out there, I must have been part of the conspiracy because I was brushing my teeth while the planes hit the buildings. It's just as valid as your statement about Bush.
Clearly the terrorists wanted to learn how to fly because they needed the knowledge. Clearly they knew they weren't going to land, so they didn't bother with that part of the training. Was it well rehearsed and well planned out? In retrospect, it was blatantly obvious and amazingly amateurish. In retrospect. Of course, before 9/11 no one thought about flying planes into buildings.
In retrospect, the theory of gravity is blatantly obvious. Clearly we should be calling Newton incompetent and claiming that he was part of the "Gravity Conspiracy". Sheesh.
Re:Of Bunkers and Reichstag fires.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Or is video footage of the towers collapse beginning at the same floors where the planes struck them coincidence? Or did demolition experts also willing to commit suicide and wearing fireproof suits run into the building and onto those floors and, in the middle of a raging inferno, place high explosives in the exact spots need to "pull" the building?
Yeah, I can see how that kind of "theory" is more plausible...
Re:This footage is worthless and very non-convinci (Score:3, Insightful)
It's quite simple, actually: the tape will last a lot longer if you shoot it at only one frame per one or two seconds. If you're trying to find out at what time did a car enter or exit the compound (which the cameras the footage was taken from seem to be there for, judging from their position), this will just about suffice; with any luck, you'll even see a blurry picture of the driver. You can see a police car in the videos; this is something the camera was meant to take pictures of. You cannot see the plane, but it's hardly surprising as a plane can move a lot faster than a car.
Re:Speaking of which... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I guess that's my cue.
Since I was on an on-site call for much of yesterday, this is the first opportunity I've had to post here. Sorry for the delay.
Well, I've looked very carefully at the newly released video (as I'm sure everyone else in the nation has by now), and like most others, I'm rather disappointed. I was really hoping for some sort of conclusive evidence (one way or another) so we might finally put one of the 9/11 controversies to bed.
Unfortunately, the newly released video shows nothing conclusive...quite the contrary. There is only one frame that contains new information...the alleged 'nose cone'. However, this nose cone certainly does not look like it belongs to a 757, although it is understandable that at the speeds this object was travelling (450-500 mph), there will be a certain amount of blurring.
It's a real shame that the only frame in video 1 that seems to show any of the aircraft has the aircraft hidden behind that yellow column, while the only frame in video 2 that seems to show any of the aircraft shows only a tiny bit of the nose. I realize that these are CCTV cameras whose framerate is not high, but while it's unfortunate that video 1 contains no useful information about the aircraft, the fact that video 2 has no useful info either can only be described as unfortunate squared. How unlucky can you get?
From the BBC article: Exactly how is a blurry, indistinct shot of a nose cone that doesn't seem to belong to a 757 going to 'put to rest' the conspiracy theories? All this video can do is fan the flames.
This video was not released to attempt to put the conspiracy theories to rest...it was released for one purpose only...to forcefully remind the general public of 9/11. Bush' numbers at the polls are abyssmal, and beating his breast over 9/11 hs been proven to help them. After all, the link to the video on Fox News is titled 'Timely reminder of a clear and present danger'. Timely, indeed.
If the government was truly interested in ending the controversy, why not release the several other videos that were shot that day? Neil Cavuto of Fox News said that 'the other videos didn't pan out', but if that's the case, why does the government need to deny access to them at all? Why can't we see them? It's not like the don't exist [rense.com].
Another quote from Fox News' Neil Cavuto: No, Neil, it's not 'odd' at all. It's what we've come to expect from a President who shamelessly uses [washingtonpost.com] the horror of 9/11 to further his own political ends.
Re:Video conspiracy debunking work (Score:3, Insightful)
When there is a crime, there needs to be a complete investigation of the physical evidence. That's standard procedure for all crime scene investigations. You don't just march in, declare what happened, and throw all the evidence in the trash. If, however, you do decide to violate these age-old procedures, it makes you look extremely suspicious.
"...why would they invest that kind of time and resources?"
Look, they have to clean up the sites. They are going to encounter plane parts in the debris. How much extra time and effort is it to gather all the plane debris into a hangar? Very little.
Re:damn you, Scuttlemonkey!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
I just don't see a part of our government having what it would take to pull off such a massive undertaking, and be able to not only successively pull it off, but, keep the evidence of their involvement covered up.
Re:The official story is a conspiracy theory. (Score:3, Insightful)
This administration has been seen telling a big lie (Iras has WMD) and getting along with that without even a word of excuse.
It then told another big lie (Iraq-Al Quaeda ties). What is so unbelievable in the fact that they could have lied on another intelligence report ?
Conspiracy Theories (Score:4, Insightful)
The most frustrating thing about conspiracy theories is not the individual factoids that comprise them, but the profound ignorance of human nature, and the obessively magical thinking, that underlie them. As Ben Franklin said, three may keep a secret if two of them are dead. 9/11 conspiracy theories require thousands of conspirators--think of just what would be required to run drone planes into buildings, dispose of all the passengers, rig the buildings, fake everything so that the airlines wouldn't notice, and on, and on, and on. Even the mafia can't keep a secret when the boss tells one guy to whack another, and that's a conspiracy of two, protected by the Omerta!
Only a true fanatic can keep secrets like these, and then, only for a short time, provided he is kept relatively isolated. The Al Queda plan was remarkeably low tech with few moving parts and carried out by a small group of fanatics, most of whom did not arrive in America until a couple days beforehand. Even so, it almost got discovered beforehand. In the aftermath, there is almost no detail of how it was done that we don't know. Compare this with conspiracy theories, which remain isolated pinpoints of data organized by a unifying myth. The Al Queda plan left a big footprint. A government conspiracy would have left an even bigger one.
Conspiracy theories are the new secular religion, supported by the same cognitive errors which support religion, and serving the same purpose. To the conspiracy theorist, the dark cabals which run the world are both stupid and supernaturally brilliant, fools who are somehow capable of godlike prescience, omiscience, and control. The conspiracy theorist himself is a figure on the same mythical scale: he has pierced the veil of the illuminati, seen what few have seen--he is the great challenger to this omnipotent cabal. By following his warnings, we shall overcome the evil presence which has corrupted our world from within, and restore all to goodness and innocence. It's all good, because the solution is so simple.
You'll never convince him otherwise, because his entire conception of self is wound up in the idea that he is the rare visionary, the one who cannot be fooled. To admit that he is wrong would require him to admit that he is profoundly wrong, not just gulled, but gullible. This would be a fall of luciferian proportion, from grand visier to court fool. Conspiracy theorists tend to be marginal and disenfranchised. The fall from mythic heights to the harsh reality of their lives is very hard indeed.
The reality, of course, is that there may actually be no one in control, that both the leaders and the conspiracy theorists can't tell their assholes from a gopher hole, and that this has been the situation for nearly all of hum