Did the U.S. government have a hand in the 9/11 attacks?

The text I bolded is an assumption. Who's to say that it would take 100s of people acting with full knowledge before the event? Who's to say that there couldn't have been as few as 50 (or less) individuals orchestrating the events? I do think it's plausible that those that orchestrated the events (we're sticking with the idea that they were orchestrated by someone other than Bin Laden) would work to keep it covered up. I don't think your average Joe working maintenance without anything to gain was knowingly involved.

All of the mainstream theories regarding the JFK assassination seem plausible. But they certainly aren't all true. And sometimes what's true doesn't seem plausible.

And that Popular Mechanics link doesn't really give me hard information, like the presence of molten steel. It uses information provided by NIST, and it seems biased from the get go:

"Healthy skepticism, it seems, has curdled into paranoia. Wild conspiracy tales are peddled daily on the Internet, talk radio and in other media. Blurry photos, quotes taken out of context and sketchy eyewitness accounts have inspired a slew of elaborate theories: The Pentagon was struck by a missile; the World Trade Center was razed by demolition-style bombs; Flight 93 was shot down by a mysterious white jet. As outlandish as these claims may sound, they are increasingly accepted abroad and among extremists here in the United States."

 

Blackwater?

 

precisely.

 

Come on, seriously?

 

Okay, depending on what one believes happened that day, here is what you'd need:

- People in New York pre-9/11 planting explosives in one to three buildings.

- People in Washington pre-9/11 planting explosives in one building.

- If you believe that the hijackers couldn't fly, people on the planes who with 1) adequate piloting skills and 2) suicidal tendencies.

- If you believe that the Schenksville plane didn't crash, people using voice-changing technology to fake calls home to their families, and people willing to kidnap and/or kill a plane full of people.

- People in state and federal agencies who would participate in covering up evidence, playing up the "official story," etc.

Even if you believe in just one of the five things above, that's still a lot of people involved. Even if it was just 50, you don't think that any of them would have had second thoughts about doing it, or a crisis of conscience afterwards regarding what was the biggest massacre of civilians on American soil since the Civil War?

Really, not a peep from these people? And if the assassins were themselves assassinated, how come we haven't heard about their deaths?

Down this road lies madness.

 

Yes, it really depends on what scale the government was involved. But even if they were involved in the entire operation I don't think it takes 100s of people. With absolutely NOTHING to back-up my feelings I could see a small crew (5?) setting up the explosives in all buildings over the course of a couple days or weeks. (I have no idea what volume would have been needed, so maybe that's unrealistic.) They would be taking orders from someone, or a group of people (shadow group). Aside from that I don't think there needs to be any other people knowingly involved. The shadow group could have arranged for the Arab hi-jackers to fly the planes. Local officials being part of the cover-up would be after the fact and would never have been privy to the plans, so there's not a smoking gun that they could come forward with.

And I wasn't really serious about Blackwater - they're just an example of people out there that are willing to do unscrupulous things for large sums of money.

Again, I'm not saying this is what I believe - just thinking of possibilities to show those that discredit the idea that the government was involved that their reasons for discrediting are potentially as baseless as those of the conspiracy theorists.

 

911mysteries.com the dvd part 1 the demolition is mind boggling. i heard partts on the radio and had to buy it, worth every penny a billion times over. infact i think you can watch it online...

http://www.911weknow.com/index.php?opti ... &Itemid=19
9/11 We Know - Watch 911 Mysteries Part 1: Demolitions (1 of 3)


there it is.


extremely thought provoking no matter which side of the debate your on. just watch and listen. THEN talk.


sorry if any of this was brought up previously i dont have the patience to read through all of this i just know this is the most important thing iv seen on the whole issue.

 

Normally when I wander away from here to long, I kick myself for missing toys, now, I'm just amazed at where this is going.
It is really interesting and I think we are all after the same thing and enjoying the same thing: a level headed, friendly, open, intelligent debate... cool!

I think, like Roger said, he is looking at it from a totally different point of view.
I think the blackwater analogy is valid.
Most of those points Roger brought up can be tied together into a ptretty smooth operation, without to much of a stretch.

You need to look at the big picture and what the goal was.
Obviously, one of the goals was to create a situation where the US could legitimately and heavy handedly involve it's self in the middle east, for, if nothing else, oil.
When the stakes are high enough, nothing is too extreme.
It's callous and cold, but it is often the way, whether bought out by money or ideology, people do do things that we may not understand from our position.

To me, that is why it is plausible.
It's a needs must situation.

I'm struck by the poll at the top. 60% of the people suspect at least something.
I have also found that most people who are not american are more prone to suspicion (this is not a racist slight, just an observation).


I think my own personal "out there" theory about the whole 9-11 is flight 93, for some reason, everything I have heard about that flight seems like total bollocks to me. But that may be a different thread.
Also, I am incredibly suspicious of building 7, I think if building 7 didn't happen, I would be more likely to buy the "official" story... I'd still ask questions though.

 

Backtrack, I see where you're coming from, but I don't see how these statements reflect critical thinking:

I think you're correct in believing that 9/11 is something Bush, Cheney, etc. would like to do because it would be in their best (and openly stated) interests.

However, I also think you put way too much faith in their ability to coordinate and control an event like 9/11, and the more one delves into 9/11 conspiracy theories the more and more complex and convoluted it gets.

This is a good quote from the Wikipedia article that sums a lot of this up for me:

 

Roger-

A interesting way to look at it would be from the other way round- for example:

if you list both possible theories only one of them contains IMPOSSIBILITIES.

So first the controlled demolition theory-

1) Would have taken X amount of people all keeping a secret- Unlikly but not impossible

2) would have required people to get into the buildings before hand- Unlikly but not impossible

3) would require Bush and Cheney to allow killing of their own citizens- quite probably, how is killing people in new york different from killing people in Iraq- wheather Iraqi or American.

4) Crazy stuff- remote controll aircraft, nerve gas on planes, missiles shot at them pentagon- again highly unlikly but not impossible.

Note- hard to believe, ridicolous, fantasy but not impossible.

Now the official version of events ( what the 911 comission wants us to believe.)

1) 19 Hijackers take control of 4 planes- Not impossible

2) NORAD told to stand down- Not impossible

3) Planes flown into buildings- not impossible

4) Jetfule fires burning away in 10 mins then a resulting office fire burns for an hour across 10 floors-

then the towers collapse at free fall speed meeting no resistance meaning that all of the support baeams must have failed at all the same times from a fire that was 1000's of feet away in the top 1/3 of the building.

Even if you go by the assumption that the 911 comission report wants you to believe that the jet fule was in some way hottenough to weaken the steel- it is IMPOSSIBLE that it could have melted tonns of steel 1000's of feet away in the basement.

Scientifically impossible- physically impossible.

So as Sherlock Holmes says- "once you have removed the IMPOSSIBLE from the equation- what you are left with is the truth however inplausable it may be."

To finish- I cant tell you what did happen with the twin towers- but I can tell you what didnt happen and it wasnt what they want you to believe in the 9/11 comission report or the NIST report. But the people at the 9/11 comission and NIST are smarter than me and if the investigated it at all they must have known what really happened and yet they covered it up and think the world is dumb enough to believe this fantasy world they created.

So where does that leave us?

 

You can make lists of possible, even probable events all day, but the fact remains is that those things are supported by a small amount of evidence, and most of that evidence is anecdotal.

Compare that to the overwhelming amount of evidence that supports the official story, the majority of which is quantifiable and verifiable from multiple sources, like the seismic data.

For every person that says they saw a missile fly into the Pentagon, you will find at least fifty who will say they saw a passenger jet fly into it. Who are you more likely to believe?

 

That still doesnt explain the molten steel-

The way I see it you cannot sit on the fence about it- you can either-

1) deny it exists ( like that chief NIST guy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lihj-Kz9 ... re=related

2) accept it and begin to actully think about the force required to create it and where it came from and then look at the edivence from there....

What is it gonna be? as soon as you accept the molten steel- everything else about the official story crumbles.

 

P.S- I gotta go to bed now as it is the middle of the night here, but I will carry on debating you tomorrow, its good to have a sensible discussion- for a lot of people 9/11 is so taboo they completly shut down, you would have more luck convincing them that aliens shot JFK.

 

There is a difference between melted steel and molten steel. Molten is only partially melted. Melted is liquified. It takes much less heat to have molten steel as it does to have melted steel.

Retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn said, "I have never seen melted steel in a building fire. But I've seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel." The steel must be molten in order for it to be twisted, warped, and bent. Blacksmiths have known this for hundreds of years, and all they had to use was coal and wood.

 

"I have also found that most people who are not american are more prone to suspicion"

That's because it's easier to bag on someone else's government. You know MI-5 blew up those buses and trains in London, and CNI blew up the trains in Spain, right?

 

Dont shoot the messanger here- people do say that the London tube bombs were done by MI5 but all I do is look at the edivence, the most I heard about the London Bombs was that all the bombers had return tickets and that one had a McDonalds for breakfast. Strange but it doesnt prove anything.

From what I gather there was both, deeper down in the basement levels it was suspose to be like a 'Foundry' and like 'Lava.'

Are you saying that the initial fires could have created molten metal?

 

Well, I think that that is a simple way of looking at it, I personally would say that often you are too close to the painting to see the bigger picture.
Also, the news that we are privy to is different than your own.
There are lots of theories about 7-7 (the London Tube Bombings), however, for the most part, it was a pretty straight forward attack, that is not to say that I am not curious, but...

I'm in no way saying they co ordinated the attacks, I am merely saying they too advantage of a situation. Much like anyone else might (albeit on a much grander, diabolical, misanthropic, altogether evil scale).

Thanks to Samba, I took a look at a few things on youtube and found this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM7HI4kjtvA&feature=related
Now, when this thread was revived, I was not to caught up or interested in molten (or melted, semantics as far as I am concerned, most people don't know the difference, and really don't care. I think it this case, the terms are used interchangeably) steel, however this clip is quite interesting and raises a few questions.

History is anecdotal. Evidence can be manipulated.
The evidence presented v the evidence suppressed.
At the end of the day, until you have a fully open, totally transparent, independent investigation, you will never know the whole truth.
The truth has been suppressed for a variety of reasons, including and I am sure not limited to: sensitivity to the victims, criminal investigations, petty inter-agency bickering and of course, that old all encompassing, no need to ever explain and none of your damn business anyway cuz your just a little person who wouldn't understand the inner workings of the world... National Security.

 

Sorry. Absolutely not true. I don't get my news from the mainstream American press. It's pretty much the BBC. Unless the "different news" you're referring to is from all that other rag journalism you have in the UK. Then you're on your own. As for the assertion that yours and Spain's government had involvement in those bombings....that was sarcasm. I happen to believe that my government (the administration, not the intelligence services) dropped the ball big time, just like they've been continuing to fumble with it the last 8 years. That should soon change. Does that make me "blind" or "miss the big picture"? Maybe in your eyes. In mine, conspiracy theorists are "nutters". Just remember, for every "conspiracy expert" you folks dig out to "prove your point", I can find 10 that say the opposite.

 

A problem with the question posed by the thread title is the phrase "U.S. Government." Many of the historical clandestine actions known to have occurred were orchestrated by rogue elements within various governmental organizations, often with the help of shady contacts outside those orgs. As an example, immediately after the Kennedy assassination, both VP Johnson and individuals at CIA suspected conspiracy other than the common "it was Castro" speculation at the time, although nobody assumed that it was an "official" hit. Actually there were some who suspected Johnson of ordering the hit (puh-leeze) but to this day that theory isn't taken very seriously.

If there were members of the Bush administration who either "allowed it to happen" for whatever agendas, it seems to me very unlikely that Bush himself or for that matter DOI Tenent would have had knowledge or a direct hand in the affair.

OTOH Darth Cheney ...

 

building 7 was bullshit.
i watched that building go down from across the river WELL after the other stuff happened. right there i knew something was up. i also dont understand how they could have pointed fingers almost immidiatly. i was in school when i heard the news and the word was already out not 5 min after the first buiilding was hit.

 

For real-

Second plane hits and they start repeating Osama Bin Laden over and over.

Did you know that the BBC and one of your American networks also ( CNN or NBC?) announced that building number 7 had collapsed 20 mins before it actually had?

Here even firemen at the seen say- "Keep your eyes on that building, its gonna blow up, its coming down."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9CXQY-bZn4

The crucial point about this is in the official report it said was unexpected, and still to this day they are NIST are working on the final report on WTC7 ( it was suspose to be out july 07)

How can you know that building was coming down if it was unexpected? Not only know, but announce it on the news before it has happened, and start giving the reason as to why it collapsed. No other steel buildings in history have collapsed because of fire. its a fucking joke anyways- the building doesnt collapse it fucking desintergrates, the concrete turns to dust- fire cant do that- how fucking stupid do they think we are?

 

This couldn't be chalked up to simple human error? That morning it was also reported that there was a car bomb set off in front of the State Department, and that smoke was seen coming out of the White House.

Also:

Wasn't it at least a couple of days until the government announced anything about Al Qaeda's involvement? (Apparently some people in another part of the world must have had an inkling about it, though. Remember the night time assaults in Afghanistan we saw on the news that evening?)

I have a pretty vivid memory of being at work on Thursday (doing nothing, of course, because that damn worm had totally clobbered our network) and listening to the radio with some co-workers. One of them asked, "Why would they want to hurt us so badly?" I got really angry with her, explaining that we had been pissing in the politics of the Middle East for so long that such a tremendous amount of resentment was inevitable. Interesting how you can remember things in such detail sometimes.

And as we found out afterwards through Richard Clarke's testimony, Cheney and company were pretty anxious to blame the whole thing on Iraq.

 

I was curious so I dug up the thread we had running on Toybox DX at the time of the attacks:

http://toyboxdx.com/phorum/read.php?1,11845

A couple of mentions about an attack on the White House and State Department in there. Boy, this is really bringing me back, and not in a good way.

 

Hm, I guess the buzz about Bin Laden did start on that day:

http://toyboxdx.com/phorum/read.php?1,11938,11938

 

You're conveniently leaving out the fact there was a 10 STORY gash on the south face of the building. No steel structure may have ever collapsed due to fire, but all of these buildings that collapsed suffered structural damage due to collision (be it plane or other buildings). As for the firefighters' announcement...is it that hard to believe that a person trained in listening to the various sounds and looking for the bulging, would be able to predict a collapse? If they said "this one looks like it's coming down" and the press hears that and takes off with it......