Sunday, August 12, 2012

CONSPIRACY THEORIES

American fascination with mystery is boundless.

Whether it is Harry Houdini’s remarkable tricks of legerdemain, the claimed sightings of UFO’s, the Kennedy assassination, an alleged complicity of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the attack on Pearl Harbor, or the ‘real truth’ about Mitt Romney’s income taxes or Barack Obama’s academic record, we seem to have an insatiable appetite for juicy narratives based on speculation and inference.

I’m sort of a common sense, practical kind of guy. Time spent in the judiciary has steeled me against snap judgments, and infused a benign skepticism into my skull.

I try not to jump to conclusions, especially when we’re speaking off the reservation about something mechanical, electronic, technical, scientific or just plain hokus pokus.

And there’s a theory in the law that public officials are presumed, at the outset at least, to do their jobs.

Whatever the faults of the Warren Report, I tend to believe that Chief Justice Warren and his colleagues gave it their best shot and honestly believed their conclusions were accurate.

So, I suppose, should the folks who authored the so called 9-11 Report be given a nod that they did the best they could.

Still.

Still, I get this email from a friend who insists that I visit:

http://www.wtc7.net/articles/kimball/thirdskyscraper.html

And so I did. He also sent me some links to video taken on 9-11 in which the building known as WTC 7 is shown imploding into its own footprint.

You’ve seen implosion footage I’m sure. When they brought down Kerns or the J.L. Hudson Company building. Those are big events for the gawking public.

A whole building falling right down into its own basement. BOOM. Just like that.

WTC 7 was a 47 story steel and concrete office building. It was a part of the World Trade Center complex, located about 300 feet from the twin towers.

It was not hit by an airplane.

Tenants in WTC 7 included offices of the Department of Defense, the Secret Service and the CIA as well as other government agencies.

The South Tower collapsed just before 10 AM. The North Tower went down at 10:28 AM.

There were scattered fires in WTC 7 caused by the intense heat and falling debri from the Towers. New York firefighters were in the building, trying to contain them and evacuating all civilians.

Mayor Giuliani had a crisis office on the 23rd floor of the building, but he had set up his operations down on the street, closer to the Towers. If he had any staff in WTC 7, they were evacuated.

At 4:20 PM all firefighters were called out of the building. It was being reported that building 7 was in danger of collapse. Fire department leaders established a safety perimeter around the building and kept everyone away from it.

By 5:30 PM there was no one in the building. At that moment, more than seven hours after the Towers had collapsed, WTC 7 came down.

It came down in 6.6 seconds, just six tenths of a second longer than an object would take to free fall from the 47th story.

In the demolition industry, it would have been a perfectly executed implosion.

Experts tell us that to do a thing like that would take weeks of preparation. It’s not the kind of event that can be orchestrated in six or seven hours of panic.

Conspiracy theories abound. I don’t subscribe to them. I like to think there is a perfectly logical explanation.

But it does seem a little curious that the so called Nine Eleven Commission, which was supposed to tell us what the heck happened that day never even mentioned WTC 7.

Perhaps it was, as they say, unrelated collateral damage.

But still….

3 comments:

  1. The prearations to implode a building with demolitions involves tearing out the walls of the building and pre-cutting beams. This is something that takes weeks to accomplish and can't be done seceretly in an hour inside of a burning building. It would also be obvious to anyone investigating the collapse.

    The collapse of WTC 7 was thoroughly investigated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology with the assistance of American Society of Civil Engineers (SEI/ASCE), the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE), the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC), the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), and the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY).

    The only reason that the collapse of WTC7 wasn't included in the 9/11 report is that they couldn't begin the investigation into the collapse of WTC 7 until they completed the investigation on the twin towers. This was bacuse there are only so many engineering experts to go around and they were all tied up investigationg the twin tower collapse.

    The final report on the collapse of WTC 7 was issued in 2008. The investigation of the collapse is one of the most difficult and intensive failure analysis investigations ever conducted.

    The investigation concluded that the WTC 7 collapse was a result of structural failure caused by uncontrolled fires inside of the building. Fires burned inside of WTC 7 for hours before it collapsed. Its fire suppression system had inadequate water pressure to contain the fire.

    Firefighters put out some spot fires and searched the building for people. However, they were also unable to effectively fight the fire due to low water pressure. Firefighters finally eveacuated the building when they noticed the side of the building bulging and heard creaking sounds. A short time later, the building collapsed.

    The collapse of WTC 7 is neither a mystery nor a conspiracy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Before WWII, very few Americans owned cars. Cities were dense, walkable,
    and well-connected with electric trolleys. MUCH less energy was spent on the simple act of getting around.
    Our national train system was the envy of the world, so people could travel to
    most destinations without a car and businesses could ship merchandise without the need for
    trucks. Once again, MUCH less energy was spent for travel and shipping.
    . . We now live in a society where you almost HAVE to own
    a car to function. Car companies dumped the cost of road building and maintenance on us to
    keep this system running. Retailers have dumped the cost of shipping/delivery on us as consumers.
    We have to buy a car, maintain it, insure it and fuel it just to go to
    work, school, church and the grocery store. It makes no
    sense. We could do all of these things without cars, save ourselves the money, and enjoy better health and air quality.
    . . Sprawling suburbs are directly correlated with growing rates of obesity,
    heart disease and diabetes. Kids can't walk to school or any other civic function anymore. I've heard it said that corporations such as Wal-Mart require this living arrangement, calling
    it an "economy of scale". Well, cities can be scaled up as
    well as out, and logically, why should we foot the bill to keep Wal-Mart in business?
    . . Why do we need cars? Why not highly-efficient mass-transit, biking and walking (like many international cities)?
    If you feel it's because of "the market", please explain why most American cities have zoning laws that prevent walkable, car-free neighborhoods from being built. Please explain why car-free environments such as Disneyland or Venice are so popular. I want to know why we really NEED cars (not WANT them)..
    Also visit my web site : international-shipping-services

    ReplyDelete
  3. The bigger questions that the 911 Commission dodged,
    fumbled and punted

    include

    1)Why didn't the president and his cabinet and staff
    read the intelligence reports 6 months prior to 911
    and then take strong actions to prevent the tragedy?

    2) Why didn't the 911 Commission question the Pres and VP separately and under oath like a Watergate style investigation?
    (even an insurance investigation would not allow the parties
    to hear softball questions together so they could
    "get their stories straight"

    3)Why was the 911 Report 'Political' and not
    investigated as a legal investigation?

    4)After 911, when all planes were grounded nationwide,
    why were prominent Saudis and members of the Bin Laden family
    allowed and helped with free air passage out of the country?

    I could give you a list of at least 20 questions, but you get the idea.

    Political investigations made to whitewash the facts
    and not cause embarrassment seem to have replaced
    hard hitting, factually and legally based investigations
    of major events when the public has the right to know the
    complete 100% facts.

    ReplyDelete

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