Bully for the US government!
Not content with letting the moonbats, the freaks, the paranoids, and the ignoramuses who spout 9/11 conspiracy theories get away with their nonsensical idiocies any longer, the government released two separate reports debunking several major claims of the 9/11 fantasists in an effort to keep the record of that horrible day from being hijacked by crazies.
And as a bonus, in the process of answering the reports, two major 9/11 conspiracists have revealed themselves to be laughable, hopelessly moronic nutcases.
Kudos also to New York Times reporter Jim Dwyer whose brilliant summary of the evidence includes his own debunking of the “implosion theory” of how the towers fell. Dwyer’s piece should be required reading for every school kid in America so that future generations will see these 9/11 fantasies for what they truly are; pathetic mouthings of desperately unbalanced people whose “evidence” depends more on wishful thinking than empirical proof.
Nevertheless, federal officials say they moved to affirm the conventional history of the day because of the persistence of what they call “alternative theories.†On Wednesday, the National Institute of Standards and Technology issued a seven-page study based on its earlier 10,000-page report on how and why the trade center collapsed. The full report, released a year ago, and the new study, in a question and answer format, are available online at http://wtc.nist.gov.About a dozen researchers produced the new study over the last two months by assembling material from the longer report that addressed the conspiracy claims.
“With the fifth anniversary coming up, there seemed to be more play for the alternative viewpoints,†said Michael E. Newman, a spokesman for the institute. “We have received e-mails and phone calls asking us to respond to these theories, and we felt that this fact sheet was the best means of doing so.â€
The fact that it took a dozen people two months to condense the evidence for the tower’s collapse down to 7 pages should make you angry. This waste of time and resources is the direct result of people who should (or actually do) know better but whose ignorance and inability to grasp reality (or who choose to believe otherwise for political purposes) have infected the gullible, the shallow thinkers, and out and out loons who have spread their laughable theories on the internet and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Dwyer easily demolishes the implosion theory with the help of a couple of experts:
The demolition theory has managed to endure what would seem to be enormous obstacles to its practicality. Controlled demolition is done from the bottom of buildings, not the top, to take advantage of gravity, and there is little dispute that the collapse of the two towers began high in the towers, in the areas where the airplanes struck.Moreover, a demolition project would have required the tower walls to be opened on dozens of floors, followed by the insertion of thousands of pounds of explosives, fuses and ignition mechanisms, all sneaked past the security stations, inside hundreds of feet of walls on all four faces of both buildings. Then the walls presumably would have been closed up.
All this would have had to take place without attracting the notice of any of the thousands of tenants and workers in either building; no witness has ever reported such activity. Then on the morning of Sept. 11, the demolition explosives would have had to withstand the impacts of the airplanes, since the collapse did not begin for 57 minutes in one tower, and 102 minutes in the other.
Professor Steven Jones, a physicist at Brigham Young University and a God in the 9/11 tin foil hat community, makes an utter fool of himself trying to answer several of the simple questions Dwyer raises above:
In an e-mail message yesterday, Professor Jones did not explain how so much explosive could have been positioned in the two buildings without drawing attention. “Others are researching the maintenance activity in the buildings in the weeks prior to 9/11/2001,†he wrote.He said his investigation was finding fluorine and zinc in metal debris and dust gathered from near the trade center site, and argued that those elements should not have been found in the building compounds. “We are investigating the possibility of thermite-based arson and demolition,†he wrote, referring to compounds that, under controlled circumstances, can cut through steel.
The federal investigators at the National Institute of Standards and Technology state that enormous quantities of thermite would have to be applied to the structural columns to damage them. Not so, said Professor Jones; he said he and others were investigating “superthermite.â€
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? “SUPERTHERMITE?”
What’s next? Invisible “maintenance workers?”
Also making a himself look like an idiot was that gadfly of the 9/11 conspiracy bozos Kevin Ryan whose online publication www.journalof911studies.com, has been filled with some of the most uproariously funny takes on who or what brought down the towers including this gem: “The Flying Elephant: Evidence for Involvement of a Third Jet in the WTC Attacks.”
Here’s Ryan vainly trying to challenge the existence of the nose on his face:
The report brought to light one little-known detail about the morning: a private demolition monitoring firm, Protec Documentation Services, had seismographs at several construction sites in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.Those machines documented the tremors of the falling towers, but captured no ground vibrations before the collapses from demolition charges or bombs, according to a separate report by Brent Blanchard, the director of field operations for Protec. It is available online at www.implosionworld.com.
Asked for comment, Mr. Ryan said that his online 9/11 journal would soon publish an article on those seismic recordings. He also maintained that the Protec paper did not adequately address why puffs of smoke were seen being expelled from some of the floors. However, the federal investigators said that about 70 percent of a building’s volume consists of air, and what looked like puffs of smoke were jets of air — and dust — that were pushed ahead of the collapse.
Maybe it was Howard Dean. He certainly blows a lot of smoke and do we know where he was on 9/11?
The other report was issued by the State Department’s PR department and contains simple, easy to understand counterpoints to the top ten conspiracy theories about 9/11:
The State Department report, which officials said was written independently of the new institute study, is titled, “The Top Sept. 11 Conspiracy Theories†and says, “Numerous unfounded conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 attacks continue to circulate, especially on the Internet.†Produced by an arm of the State Department known as a “counter-misinformation team,†the report is dated Aug. 28 and appears as a special feature on the department’s Web site, at http://usinfo.state.gov/media/misinformation.html.
These reports, as Dwyer points out, will not convince any of the true believers among the 9/11 conspiracy crowd. It does something much more important; it halts the momentum that was being generated by the fact that the 9/11 fantasists had the playing field pretty much to themselves. They were able to advance their stupidities and begin gaining acceptance for their cockamamie theories because the effort to debunk them was not half as organized as the effort to hijack the narrative. In the game of public relations, those who are most organized usually win. In this case, the government has taken it upon itself to expend the resources necessary to give the lie to the conspiracist’s notions of what happened on 9/11 while publicizing its findings nationwide as only the government can. At the very least, there is now another source – one more accessible and easy to understand – that people who are truly interested in the subject can turn to for information.
The release of these two reports should not have been necessary. Not that people shouldn’t question the government’s investigation but rather they should believe the integrity of the scientific process as well as the mountain of evidence that the government used to come to the conclusions it did about 9/11. There comes a point where even skeptics have to give in to the weight of evidence and common sense. These reports help that process enormously.
Today is a good day for the truth. And it is a good day for those of us who are fighting to make sure that 9/11 remains as a reminder of who attacked us and why rather than a day that Americans will be forever confused about the nature and origin of the pain and trauma we suffered.
UPDATE
Ed Morrissey doesn’t believe the reports will do much good:
As I wrote a couple of days ago in relation to the nut who thinks Stephen King killed John Lennon, one cannot counter insanity and paranoia with sweet reason. King himself tried to do so with Steve Lightfoot, the paranoid who has pursued him for over twenty years, and his effort got paid off by Lightfoot’s insistence that King’s kind message constituted a death threat in code. Reason doesn’t enter into it. Mental illness does not respond to reason, and this impulse reflects a sickness that all of the scientific studies and review of facts will never cure. It’s a belief that all evil begins in America and that everything wrong in the world has its source in Washington DC —combined with an unhealthy dose of Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Don’t expect a cure for this insanity any time soon. If anything, these reports act as a vaccine for the unafflicted—and a warning for those who may be tempted to stare into the abyss.
I agree with Ed’s analysis, especially that the best we can hope for with the release of these reports is that fence sitters and those with an open mind can be convinced.
See also this Reuters article I got from Blue Crab Boulevard whose own take is well worth the read.
10:33 am
The Futility Of Applying Reason To Insanity
With the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks fast approaching, the government has busied itself with answering questions raised by conspiracy theorists who fervently believe that the World Trade Center towers had help in their destruction. The State Depart…
11:54 am
[...] Rightwing Nuthouse [...]
12:18 pm
“...it halts the momentum that was being generated by the fact that the 9/11 fantasists had the playing field pretty much to themselves.”
So the government should spend our hard-earned money playing in that “playing field” as well, and you think that’s a good way to spend time and money? A humorous diversion from the real war so the far-superior right-wingers can elbow, elbow, snicker, snicker amongst themselves? How is wasting time with paraoid conspiracy theorists helping your war effort, pray tell?
I don’t believe in a paranoid, moonbat 9/11 conspiracy any more than I believe in a paranoid, moonbat terrorist behind every bush, but if the government wants to appear blameless, issuing a report on a study of itself is as ludicrous as a military investigating itself for war crimes. Conspiracy or not, it’s a waste of money and lacks credibility. Just ask President Bush. He didn’t want a 9/11 Commission, partly for that reason. Right?
Proud American
1:40 pm
“So the government should spend our hard-earned money playing in that ‘playing field’ as well, and you think that’s a good way to spend time and money? A humorous diversion from the real war so the far-superior right-wingers can elbow, elbow, snicker, snicker amongst themselves?”
This may be the most incoherent post I’ve ever seen. You’re accusing right-wingers of promoting a war out of an inordinate fear of terrorism, but at the same time these fearful pants wetters are also diluting public support for the war by providing humorous diversions from it.
I wish I were a lefty. If I were, I could unselfconsciously spew utter nonsense all day and night without feeling like a complete jackass. In this world, only right-wingers are required to make sense.
2:59 pm
Sunday Funnies
image found at Barking Moonbat
image courtesy of faithmouse
The Voice has Comedy Night.
Its Miller Time at Ogre’s.
Barking Moonbat gets fuzzy.
Hot Air shows us a lesson on global warming.
Lil Duck Duck Blog has the carnival of vanities.
The …
8:44 pm
The first time I heard one of the conspiracy theory “experts” speak in a tv interview, I thought it was a joke. But no, just a new level of Bush Derangement and the old hysteria that the government is so evil it is out to kill our own citizens for political points. It is sick. And don’t forget the nutbag instructor in Wisconsin who is teaching a course in Islam history and devoting 2 weeks of instruction to his conspiracy beliefs. Yeah, I’d be a proud parent financing that course.
3:19 am
[...] Meanwhile, enjoy The US Naval Drill Team at the Maternal Optimist, and Rick Moran’s take on the 9/11 tinfoil hat brigade. [...]
6:44 am
It is a shame that these conspiracy therorists get any air time at all, but after all, its just another way the lame stream media can hurt the Bush Administarion.
All the shows on Discovery and History channels have DEBUNKED these LOONS and its about time someone in authority told em to stop, perhaps bill clintoon could speak up, but I doubt they’d even listen to him as they are part of moonbat land and think so little of their own country and government that they still presist in spewing this bull hockey crap now and its gonna ramp up the closer we get the the Anniversy. It just makes me so sad for the families of these innocents.
7:38 am
The possibility that the towers were destroyed by Giant Space Laser Frisbess has yet to be ruled out.
9:06 am
Why Is The Left Obsessed With Conspiracies?
Rick Moran has …
12:12 pm
[...] I don’t especially need to “remember” 9/11. I remember it, exceedingly well, indeed and in much detail. But I’m going to remember the days and weeks after 9/11 and wonder exactly how it is that some people can willfully forget or misunderstand so much. [...]
2:07 am
Submitted for Your Approval
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… here are all the links submitted by members of the Watcher’s Council for this week’s vote. Council li…
8:03 am
Watchers of weasels 9/06/06
This week’s nominations are in … AbbaGav moderates the moderate Ayatollah Khatami’s moderate words so we don’t have to. It makes it all the more understandable why moderate moonbat, former President Carter would honor moderate former President Kha…
9:34 am
[...] Right Wing Nut House, “9/11 Tinfoil Hats Are Melting†[...]
9:41 am
The fact that it took a dozen people two months to condense the evidence for the tower’s collapse down to 7 pages should make you angry.
The architect who designed it said it could go down like that. What more authoritative source do they need?
What we have here is the true face of mental illness.
2:28 am
The Council Has Spoken!
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are It’s Not a War. It’s a Trendy…
7:15 am
[...] The Watcher’s Council has announced its picks for the most outstanding posts of the preceding week. The winning Council post was The Sundries Shack’s “It’s Not a War. It’s a Trendy Buzzword!â€. Second place honors went to Joshuapundit for “It Is Time for Jews to Think About Leaving Western Europe†and Right Wing Nut House for “9/11 Tinfoil Hats Are Meltingâ€. [...]
9:11 am
The Council Has Spoken …
This week, the winning Council post was It’s Not a War. It’s a Trendy Buzzword! by Jimmie at The Sundries Shack, who explains, once again, that there are those who are serious about the war on Islamic fascism and then
4:57 am
Watcher’s Council Results
This just in from the Watcher’s Council! the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are It’s Not a War. It’s a Trendy Buzzword! by The Sundries Shack, and Hezbollah Probably Lost the War, But They May Never…
8:42 pm
...alot of interesting name calling going on here but that doesn’t clear up anything for me…
such as: how could an airplane hitting a tower ‘up there’ totally demolish (pulverize) a 110 story building all the way ‘down there’ at the base, 2 times (er, 3 times with building 7, even though it suffered no plane strike) c’mon, use your head…and how come there wasn’t any aircraft pieces at Shanksville site, jumbo passenger aircraft DO NOT vaporize, in cartoons maybe…and I have yet to figure out what hit the Pentagon, it clearly wasn’t a large passenger jet, we all can agee on that…I do not know who was behind the murders on 9/11/01, but you got to admit, if you research beyond what FOX,CNN,and the other mainstream media tells is feeding us, the ‘official story’ stinks to high heaven…
10:26 am
Watcher’s Council results; carnivals
The Watcher’s Council voting for the last couple weeks brought to the surfrace a number of excellent posts. For September 1 (nominees, full results), Gates of Vienna, the Johan Santana of the Watcher’s Council, fed up Empire and Apocalypse: The first…
7:29 am
“and I have yet to figure out what hit the Pentagon, it clearly wasn’t a large passenger jet, we all can agee on that”
Given the witnesses, no, we cannot agree on that.
Given the parts recovered from the scene—of both the aircraft and the victims—no, we cannot agree on that.
You’re an idiot. A lunatic. You’re the type of person who shouldn’t be trusted with a spoon.
10:13 pm
That’s right, let your parties and your clubs speak for yourselves. You people are all as insane as these ‘left wing’ conspiracy theorists. The truth is that anyone who votes democrat or republican for the sake of being in the cool kids club is absolutely insane and should be shot for not voting an intelligent vote. Not a single person on this website is capable of making an informed decision because you basically spend all your time talking in your little codes about “moonbats” and “tin foil hats”, etc and loving the right and hating the left when that has nothing to do at all with politics. You will all disappear in the next 50 years when the younger generation who realizes how insane you all are decides NOT to be like you. Au Revoir.
4:03 am
Of the council and carnivals 09/17/06
Last week I was unable to record Watcher’s councils results for September 8, 2006. They are available in their entirety at the Watcher of Weasels. The result was a 3-way tie and the Watcher himself had to settle the tie and chose It’s not a war it’s…
7:44 am
I particularly enjoyed the musings of Professor Jones who maintains that flourine and zinc should not have been present in the building materials. First, the building were not empty, they were poacked with all kinds of office furniture, carpets and supplies which may have been the source of the materials. Second, the building is comprised of many more componenets than mere steel, concrete and glass. Zinc for one is commonly used in the coating of fasteners, duct work & other items.
I hope that someone sent him the requisite roll of extra heavy duty aluminum foil.
10:40 pm
[...] 9/11 Tin Foil Hats Are MeltingRight Wing Nut House [...]
11:52 pm
Why do so many Bush supporters vehemently oppose the true facts about 9/11, ie. Marvin Bush being the head of WTC security until 9/11/01, when John P. O’Neil (a Bush adversary) takes over and dies in the WTC on his first day on the job. Marvin Bush also sitting on the board of one of the insurance companies that stood to reap rewards from the destruction of the WTC building – building were insured 6 weeks before 9/11 with a special clause that stated that the owner, Larry Silverstein would not have to pay any more of the 99-year lease in the even of a terrorist attack. The WTC falling at near freefall speed; this defies physics, unless there are explosives to destroy the support beams and floors of the towers. The list goes on an on. How can you continue to support George W. Bush?
3:58 pm
I felt good about this post. It confirmed for me some of the things I’ve been thinking about.
6:11 pm
The title of your site says it all.
Who was it again that admitted that building 7 was demolished? Why is it that it looks like the twin towers fell the same way that building 7 did? That is, at near free fall speed into their own footprint? Instead of basing your judgements on speculation look at evidence no matter no circumstantial.
6:11 pm
*no matter how
4:27 pm
“Given the witnesses, no, we cannot agree on that”
...would that be the same witnesses who claim the aircraft skimmed across the lawn (undamaged, not a scratch) before striking the building (Pentagon)
“Given the parts recovered from the scene—of both the aircraft and the victims—no, we cannot agree on that.”
...there was a piece of fuselage and a few bodys, clearly not enuf wreckage to verify a jumbo passenger jet crashed there, oh I forgot, they ‘vaporize’ on imapct, just like on the wiley e coyote cartoons huh?
“You’re an idiot. A lunatic. You’re the type of person who shouldn’t be trusted with a spoon.”
...anybody who believes the ‘official story’ shouldn’t be trusted with a spoon I’d say, c’mon call me some more names…reminds me of the days on the playground, kinda’ cute…wise up fella’ we have been lied to and we all bought it, hook line and sinker, for awhile anyhow…it won’t be long and this whole 9/11 coverup will be blown wide open, and it will not be a good thing I don’t think…the truth always comes out eventually, no matter who controls the evidence…
12:15 am
Article on superthermite:
“Nanotechnology is grabbing headlines for its potential in advancing the life sciences and computing research, but the Department of Defense (DoD) found another use: a new class of weaponry that uses energy-packed nanometals to create powerful, compact bombs.
With funding from the U.S. government, Sandia National Laboratories, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are researching how to manipulate the flow of energy within and between molecules, a field known as nanoenergentics, which enables building more lethal weapons such as “cave-buster bombs” that have several times the detonation force of conventional bombs such as the “daisy cutter” or MOAB (mother of all bombs).
Researchers can greatly increase the power of weapons by adding materials known as superthermites that combine nanometals such as nanoaluminum with metal oxides such as iron oxide, according to Steven Son, a project leader in the Explosives Science and Technology group at Los Alamos.”
http://www.wistech.org/2005/01/superthermite_b.html
2:10 pm
I could see how it happened the day it happened before any expert analysis. If you watch the footage the buildings start to collapse at the entry points of the planes. The heat from the burning jet fuel weakens the beams that make up the internal structure, the beams that hold the floor above it up. Of course the windows of the floors below blow out as the floors above collapses on them. If you stomp on a milk carton the sides blow out. That doesn’t prove there were explosives in the milk carton, and if it had dust in it “smoke†would blow out the “exploding†sides. This whole argument is surreal. Someone says “there was no wreckage†and that becomes a “Fact†that needs to be refuted. There is a simple explanations, passenger planes hit the building weakening there structure and they collapsed taking some adjacent buildings with them, and a complex answer including hundreds if not thousands of conspirators and multiple and even inexplicable types of aircrafts. In the complex explanation conspirators would have had to carry out their plan in a building full of enough people that it needed its own zip code without being noticed. We all need to pick an explanation. Anyone ever heard of occam’s razor?
8:21 am
Wow! That’s a nice bit of Liable you’ve written there! How about producing some facts instead of insults and dribble? It seems that’s all you Neo Cons are capable of anymore. How about you do us Republicans a favor and get your lying, over spending liberal a$$es out of our party? At one time I thought there was nothing worse than a Democrap, but right in our midst was the enemy the whole time.