9/11 Conspiracies

There was no 9/11 conspiracy.

Its as simple as that. Unfortunately, the truth of what really happened isn’t quite so simple. Which is probably why people love to believe that “the government did it” or “the explosions were really bombs from the inside”. These things are much simpler to understand than why a sane human being with a wife and three kids would want to blow himself up for his country. But simple doesn’t make it true.

Most people relate 9/11 to the Kennedy assassination in that most people know exactly where they were when it happened. I was in high school taking the SATs. (I think. Standardized testing all runs together in my head.) After the news was announced on the intercom, everyone was already saying weird shit about what they think happened. I felt bad. Not horrible, because I had studied the crusades in my spare time, but I felt bad. I don’t think I felt horrible until I started reading crackpot theories on what people think happened. I did question the government for a bit as any skeptical person would, but it just doesn’t make sense to believe in some of the Loose Change nonsense. Here’s why.

1. The explosion was not hot enough to melt steel.

This is a misleading statement. Its true, that the approximate 1,000° Fahrenheit is not enough to melt steel which doesn’t melt until 2800° F. However, 2800° is the temperature it takes to melt a bar of steel into absolute liquid. To take a building down, you don’t need to liquefy it. This is silly. All you need to do is weaken the structure so it collapses in on itself. Furthermore, when the steel weakened, it bent down and all the floors above it put pressure down on the steel. When this collapsed due to the heat and pressure, that put pressure down on the floor below it. And that put pressure down on the floor below it. Etc, etc. This is called “structural integrity”. And 1,000° is most definitely sufficient to weaken the world trade center’s structural integrity since steel loses half its strength at 1,200°. This will cause the sides of the building to pull inward. The sides cannot take the weight of the middle, so it eventually falls inward. You can see depictions of this below.

(Images from NOVA audio slideshow)

2. WTC Building 7 collapsed. This isn’t possible without bombs placed on the inside since it wasn’t even hit by an airplane.

Debris fire spreads fast. Conspiracy theorists make the claim that the damage wasn’t enough to cause the building to fall at the time that it did. The show pictures of the north side of the building as proof. Of course, the north side was never at risk of damage. This is why the conspiracy theorists will never show you this picture of the south side:

I don’t know about you guys, but that damage looks pretty damn horrible. Probably horrible enough to… oh, say, topple a building. Even firefighters on the job at the time made comments about how horrible the damage was on the south side.

“We were told to go to Greenwich and Vesey and see what’s going on. So we go there and on the north and east side of 7 it didn’t look like there was any damage at all, but then you looked on the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building with fire on several floors.” -Richard Banaciski, World Trade Center Task Force Interview

I think its fairly obvious that conspiracy nuts will pluck out whatever information they can that agrees with whatever nutjob theory they came up with.

3. WTC 7 WAS an inside job! The building leaseholder, Larry Silverstein, even admitted it!

Silverstein said this:

“I remember getting a call from the fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, ‘We’ve had such a terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.’ And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse.”

People usually take the last sentence out of context. In context, I believe its obvious that he was talking about pulling any firefighters remaining in the building. Oh, and then there’s the fact that his spokesperson said exactly that:

“Mr. [Dara] McQuillan has stated that by ‘it,’ Mr. Silverstein meant the contingent of firefighters remaining in the building.”

So that clears that up pretty easily. (Never mind the fact that it doesn’t even make sense for a leaseholder to want to blow up his own building.)

4. The planes were holograms!

I’m not even going to address that.

5. The pentagon was hit, but there was no damage! There was no debris! It was staged!

This is another angle thing. Most people who say this will show you pictures that don’t get a full view of the fire. These two will show you the damage and debris:

There are also many reports from people on the scene. Such as a disturbing comment from blast expert Allyn E. Kilsheimer,

“I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?”

Do you conspiracy theorists feel like assholes yet?

6. The government had every motive to do it! Its all for Bush’s oil!

This doesn’t make any sense at all. Mostly because the oil is in Iraq, not Afghanistan. The war in Iraq has nothing to do with 9/11. If Bush wanted to stage an attack on American soil to get oil from another country, he would have gotten Iraqis to do the attack, not Afghanis.

Its probably true that the government is taking advantage of the situation on economic grounds. But they didn’t create the situation.

7. There’s no motives for Al-Qaeda.

Wow, that’s horribly wrong. I think comedian David Cross put it best when he said,

“I don’t think Osama bin Laden sent those planes in to attack us because he hated our freedom. I think he did it because of our support for Israel, and our ties with the Saudi family and all our military bases in Saudi Arabia. You know why I think that? Because that’s what he fucking said!“

Not only that, but Islamic terrorists have attacked the world trade center countless times. 9/11 just happened to be the first time they got away with it. Multiple attacks and an admission of guilt from Osama bin Laden himself. What more could you want?

So there you have it. Now go to those message boards and stick it to those annoying conspiracy ball sacks!