Patriots for 9/11 Truth

DELMARVA PATRIOTS FOR 9/11 TRUTH

United for an unbiased, complete, and open 9/11 investigation

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>> read more: "Lankford states," says the letter, ‘I have questions for those who choose not to look at the evidence or reject it out of hand’" (italics supplied). He goes on to respond, "What Lankford is stating is, basically, those who don’t agree with his investigation and theories on this matter are wrong and misinformed; no opinion other than his own is valid" (italics supplied). I do not know if Col. Lankford actually made the statement here attributed to him, but that doesn’t matter. In any case, the inference from the writer’s remark fairly leaps into awareness: he, like many anti-Truthers, does not know the difference between evidence and opinion. This is perhaps the greatest achievement of the neoconservative noise machine, amplified most adroitly by Fox Noise, over the last decade or so: They have persuaded a thick slice of the public that there is no such thing as fact or information, only opinion, and one opinion is as good as any other. And one’s own opinion is even better. Okay, boys and girls, listen up. I will make this as simple as possible. Rational inquiry, also known as the scientific method, is generally thought to work as follows. You look at the available evidence, the facts relevant to whatever question you are asking. Eventually you develop something called a hypothesis, a theory that you think will explain all the facts, and the relationships among those facts. Then you continue to examine the evidence, including any new evidence that comes to light, to see if your hypothesis logically explains the evidence. If it does, your hypothesis is confirmed. If it does not, then you need to change your hypothesis, adopt a new hypothesis that seems to better explain the evidence. This reliance on observable evidence, by the way, is known as empiricism, and the evidence itself is called empirical evidence. For example, let’s say when you wake up in the morning and look out the window and see the grass sparkling in the sun with moisture (evidence); moisture is drip-dripping off the trees in your yard (more evidence); there are puddles in your driveway (still more evidence). You remember that when you went to bed the night before, everything around your home was dry, not a sign of water anywhere (one more empirical fact to consider, more evidence). The hypothesis that you are most likely to infer is that it rained during the night. To be sure, you should respect other opinions and consider the possibility that there may be other evidence that you don’t know about. Perhaps your neighbor’s lawn sprinkler went berserk and soaked your yard and its environs. But it’s too early to disturb your neighbor, so for the time being you assume that, in fact, it rained last night. Then your husband wakes up and staggers into the kitchen for the morning coffee that you have thoughtfully prepared. "Hey," you tell him cheerfully, "it looks like it rained last night." He looks up at you over his coffee cup. "That’s impossible," he says. "Channel 47, Channel 16, and the Weather Channel all said there would be no rain for the next couple of days. So it couldn’t have rained last night." "But look outside the window," you blurt out incredulously. "There’s rainwater everywhere." Hubby may or may not look out the window, but all he says is, "Well, you’re entitled to your opinion." Clearly, he has chosen to believe the authorities on television (Weatherpeople are never wrong in their predictions, are they?) rather than make a logical inference from the facts in front of his eyes (assuming he directs his eyes toward the watery evidence). You’ve been married to this guy a long time. You know there’s no point in arguing. He is comfortable with his authority figures, and it would serve no useful purpose to disturb his complacency. Life is short. Ignorance is bliss, and he may as well enjoy it. (I do wonder though: if all opinions are equally valid, how do you know when to come in out of the rain?) Now let’s see how this works when applied to one hypothesis about 9/11: that the WTC was brought down by controlled demolition. Here we have first of all historical evidence. Controlled demolition has been executed more times than anyone knows. (See the videos, for instance, of the recent destruction of the North Korean cooling tower. Its top tips over and then straightens up before falling straight down, just like the top of WTC 1. Videos of other controlled demolitions are available at some of the websites listed below.) We know that these demolitions share certain characteristics: 1. Extremely rapid onset of collapse 2. Symmetrical collapse; building falls into its own footprint, hardly touching any adjacent structures 3. Speed of fall; building falls through itself, the line of most resistance, at virtually the same speed as a single brick falling through thin air 4. Pulverization: most of the building and its contents were turned into enough dust to cover much of Manhattan for weeks 5. Massive pyroclastic clouds of the dust, also seen in volcanic eruptions 6. Total destruction down to individual structural steel elements – obliterating the core steel structure The web is overflowing with empirical evidence showing that all three WTC building collapses exhibit all of these characteristics, most of which are obvious to even the casual observer of the videos. Indeed, newcasters from all sides commented in early broadcasts on the similarity to controlled demolition. In addition, more than a hundred eye/ear witnesses – most of them first responders – report that they heard and/or saw explosions both prior to and after the buildings’ disintegration. Seismic evidence also points in the same direction. So our hypothesis seems to be confirmed. But it is essential to consider other hypotheses. The hypothesis of the government’s conspiracy theory is that the buildings fell because the steel in the buildings was weakened by the heat of the fires as well as by the impact of the airplanes. So let us look at the evidence for this hypothesis. Oh. There is none. The only evidence is negative. That is, no steel framed building in all of history has ever fallen because of fire. Several of the websites listed below cite large, steel framed buildings that endured fires much hotter than those caused by the kerosene jet fuel from the planes that struck the WTC, and for much longer (for instance, see http://911research.wtc7.net). In one case, the building was able to bear the weight of a giant crane perched atop the still standing steel framework. Jet fuel cannot reach the temperatures necessary to weaken steel even under optimum conditions, mostly available oxygen. In addition, fire burns unevenly, hotter where there is more fuel and oxygen and less hot where there is less. Damage to the WTC, on the contrary, is uniform, causing the simultaneous collapse of the whole structure. In the course of their global disintegration, WTC 1 and 2 ejected sections of steel framing weighing many tons outward from the towers, impacting buildings hundreds of feet away. Mere gravity, while it can generate a great deal of kinetic energy, does so only in one direction – toward the center of the earth – not laterally. Building 7 was not struck by any airplane and suffered only minor damage from debris falling from the other buildings, at least 100 yards away. Yet it collapsed in the same way as WTC 1 and 2, with all the characteristics listed above of controlled demolition. (For a more complete review of the evidence from WTC 7, see www.journalof911studies.com and scroll down to Volume 5, November 2006). It should be noted, moreover, that the conspiracy theorists that wrote the 9/11 Commission’s report do not mention Building 7. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Bupkiss. One can reasonably infer that they couldn’t account for its collapse and therefore preferred to pretend that it didn’t happen. I can only conclude, then, that the controlled demolition hypothesis is the only one currently available that logically accounts for the evidence that we have. If there is other evidence that I have not considered, I will be happy to review it. I will be equally happy to consider any refutation of the logic of my inference. Based on past experience, though, I should stipulate that calling me a crazy, whacked out, tinfoil-hat nutcase does not qualify as a refutation. Logicians refer to that as "name-calling," one of a long list of logical fallacies to be found in any textbook on argumentation. Please don’t waste our time. Life is too short. As nearly as I can find out, on the other hand, the only evidence for the Commission’s alternative hypothesis is not empirical at all but consists entirely of the government’s tenacious insistence that it’s true. This is enough for the kind of folks who, like the husband portrayed above, believe whatever has the authority of the government behind it. The logic textbooks call this fallacy "appeal to authority." (Many of these same people, to be sure, whine incessantly about "Big Government" and the "crooked politicians" that comprise it. They nevertheless take comfort from this same government’s easily understood explanation of an otherwise mysterious cataclysm. Psychologists call this mental process compartmentalization or dissociation, but that is a topic for another time.) Of course our letter-writer can follow this argument only if he understands the difference between evidence and opinion. Anopinion is a conclusion inferred from the evidence, and that opinion is valid only insofar as that inference is logical. Nonetheless, I am eternally grateful to him for helping me to better understand why so often 9/11 Truthers and anti-Truthers seem to be living on different planets. Meanwhile, if he wishes to take comfort in the conclusions provided by his parent-figures in Washington, he has every right to do so. If ignorance is indeed bliss, I am content to let him go for it. But knowledge is power, and for the reality-based community, more information about 9/11 can be found atwww.delmarvapatriots.org, the local Truther website, or at any of the following: Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (www.ae911truth.org) Scientific Panel Investigating Nine-Eleven (physics911.net) 9-11 Research (911research.wtc7.net) Pilots for 9/11 Truth (www.pilotsfor911truth.org) Scholars for 9/11 Truth (911scholars.org) Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice (stj911.org) Journal of 911 Studies (www.journalof911studies.com) Patriotsquestion911.com (www.patriotsquestion911.com)
>> read more: Clever or not, though, he doesn’t seem to know much about how large conspiracies among powerful players work. As a rule, various steps of an operation are compartmentalized. Most of the individuals involved are not necessarily themselves conspirators but simply carry out their own assignments. People responsible for one segment often don’t know how it is connected to the operation as a whole, or even know that it is in fact connected. So there may very well be a large number of participants who don’t even know that they were part of the event. They have no whistle to blow. More importantly, it should not be hard to imagine that an individual might be reluctant to confess to her participation in a mass murder. She might hope to be granted immunity in exchange for her information and her testimony, but she couldn’t count on it. Those with the power to grant immunity have not shown that much interest so far in getting at the truth. The 9/11 Commission didn’t even use their subpoena power. Secondly, the potential whistle blower might be forgiven if she fears for her own safety or that of her family. She would be exposing, after all, people who are already responsible for the deaths of almost 3000 human beings. (Of course, that number does not include those who died from debris exposure in lower Manhattan, after it had been declared safe by our government.) Such people are unlikely to have many qualms about the death of one more person, or one more family. Let us suppose, then, that in spite of these risks, our informant has the courage to come forward. We have to ask, Come forward to whom? If she knows that government officials are involved, then which part of the government could she safely approach? Would she be welcomed as a voluntary source of crucial information? Or would she be interrogated at Guantanamo Bay, or like Jose Padilla be held in isolation in a Navy brig for years on end and finally be persuaded to plead guilty to something or other? Or perhaps she would be "renditioned" to a secret prison in Bulgaria or Jordan or Egypt, where her memory could be jogged by some of the same techniques as those used on the Canadian citizen who was tortured for weeks and then left on a hillside in Macedonia when it was discovered that, oops, they had the wrong guy. In the movies, our whistle blower would come forward to the press, in most such movies to the New York Times. But could aTimes reporter be trusted not to tip off the FBI, the same agency that ignored dazzling warning signs before the event? The same agency into whose hands all of the dozens of Pentagon security camera tapes for 9-11 disappeared forever? Neither the Timesnor any other of the corporate media has shown any interest in anything that deviates from our government’s own home-cooked conspiracy theory. They have refused to bestow even a passing glance upon any of the omissions, inconsistencies, and self-contradictions of the 9-11 Commission’s theory, catalogued in fully documented detail in several of David Ray Griffin’s books. These dedicated defenders of freedom of the press have instead consistently suppressed, ridiculed, and/or marginalized the discoveries of the 9-11 Truth Movement. Even when the Times has a story, moreover, it can’t be counted on to print it. It suppressed the story of our government’s illegal telephone/email surveillance for two years, finally publishing only after a reporter wrote a book breaking the story. The venerable Times did not want to be scooped by one of its own writers. So with or without whistle blowers, the chances of the truth ever emerging are slim indeed. Our only hope is ourselves. If enough people have enough information (see delmarvapatriots.org), and if enough people insist that this information be dealt with, then maybe, just maybe our government and our media can be pressured to permit a real investigation. But that will take a good deal more than just one person.
>> read more: Still there are in fact good reasons to be cautious, skeptical of any given conspiracy theory. Like any other theory (the sun is the center of the solar system, germs cause disease, the fossil record seems to validate Darwin, what goes up must come down), a conspiracy theory is merely an attempt to explain available evidence. For instance, many historians agree that the 1933 fire that destroyed the German parliament building, the Reichstag, was set by the Nazis, who then blamed the Communists – ready-made villains, like today’s terrorists. Then they used the fire as an excuse to pass sweeping laws – not unlike our Patriot Act and Protect America Act and a plethora of Executive Orders – that have undermined civil liberties like freedom of association, assembly, speech, the press, and so on, and opened the way for a police state and World War II. The scholars who point to the Nazis have undoubtedly pored over official documents, newspaper accounts, autobiographies and journals of contemporaries, eyewitness accounts, and all sorts of other evidence to reach their conclusions. They have connected the dots. On the other hand, no one can guarantee that some day a diary or a letter or a series of photographs will not emerge to prove that indeed the Communists really did set the fire, or the anarchists, or mischievous teenagers, or a janitor who couldn’t quite light his cigarette and hang on to his schnapps bottle at the same time. Or the Nazi party. For my own part, I don’t even have a position on the Kennedy assassination, despite that cockamamie single-bullet theory. It’s certainly true that the Warren Commission does not seem to have made much of an effort to get at the whole story. But it’s also true that it may have come up with a correct conclusion, mostly by accident or coincidence. Someday we may discover audio tapes, photographs, and/or a signed confession proving conclusively the identity of the real culprit(s). No matter how elegantly and persuasively the dots are connected, we can only connect the dots we have, and we can never be sure that we have them all. This does not mean, of course, that all theories are equally valid. Just check out all the court decisions about creationism and intelligent design. Not long ago, John McCain mentioned The Manchurian Candidate in a campaign speech. Within hours some wag – I believe it was the ever waggish Keith Olbermann – pointed out that McCain’s record as a former POW fits the character in the film much better than any other candidate’s. Cute. But of course Olbermann knows that this proto-theory can be quickly undermined by even a cursory look at the facts of McCain’s life, though I will admit that the demeanor of Ms. McCain is almost eerily reminiscent of Elsa Lanchester’s character. The 9/11 Commission Report’s theory, although obviously much more complex, is similarly inadequate on its face. In the first place, it is presented as a prosecution brief. It starts with the unquestioned assumption that the attack was the a result of a conspiracy among nineteen young Saudis, a twentieth terrorist who missed his plane, and Osama Bin Laden, operating from a cave, or a tent, or a primitive safe-hovel in the wilds of Afghanistan. There is no brief for the defense, not even a hint that there might be some countervailing argument. To a knee-jerk skeptic like myself any one-sided argument is suspect. In addition, this prosecution brief is itself remarkably weak. The only "evidence" against the alleged conspirators is the citation of alleged terrorist detainees who provided, we are told, certain key information. We also know, however, that neither the commission nor its staff ever met with these detainees. Nor were they allowed to see video or even transcripts of the detainees’ interrogation. Their testimony is hearsay upon hearsay, inadmissable in any court of law, and for good reason. Not to mention that this particular hearsay appears to have been induced by torture. In essence, the reader is required simply to take the Commission’s conspiracy theory on faith. Even more importantly, a theory stands or falls on the degree to which it accounts for all the available evidence. The Commission’s theory doesn’t even try. Anyone who watches cable news, for instance, knows that three World Trade Center Buildings collapsed that day: Buildings One and Two (the Twin Towers) and Building Seven (The Salamon Building). Building Seven is the most troublesome, because it was not hit by any airplane. Yet it fell straight down into its own footprint, just like the Twin Towers. The Commission’s conspiracy theory deals with this mystery by simply ignoring it. Building Seven is mentioned nowhere in its report. Far from accounting for this available evidence, the Commissioners seem not even to have known about it. Then the Commission’s theory also ignores the issue of how the buildings fell: tens of thousands of tons of concrete and steel dropped straight down, with no twisting or toppling anywhere; tens of thousands of tons of concrete and steel fell through themselves at virtually the same speed as a single brick falling through thin air. This global disintegration ejected tons of dust hundreds of feet out from the buildings in what are known as pyroclastic clouds. The official conspiracy theory offers no explanation of any of these facts: These planes hit the buildings, see, and they fell down. Trust us. It’s just that simple, according to the Commission. Still more egregiously, this conspiracy theory ignores an already existing explanation for the facts in question. Most TV newscasters alluded to it in their first accounts: they pointed out that the buildings’ collapse looked just like the controlled demolitions that we have all seen on television from time to time. Indeed, these journalists were for once aligned with scientific fact. Both the speed of the fall and its symmetry have been seen before: in controlled demolitions, and only in controlled demolitions. The facts are only slightly different regarding the pyroclastic clouds. They be produced by controlled demolition or by something else: volcanic eruptions. So a plausible conspiracy theory must either conclude that the buildings were brought down by preplanted explosives in a controlled demolition, or else account for the instantaneous, global simultaneous disintegration of these buildings in some other way. Instead, the Commission – as well as the Department of Commerce scientists in the National Institute of Standards and Technology – account for this available evidence by pretending that it is not there, asserting that no evidence has been found for controlled demolition, apparently because nobody looked for it, not even on television. That’s enough for me. Innumerable other questions have been raised about the official conspiracy theory in mountains of research readily available in bookstores, libraries, and the internet, and I will continue to review them. But for me the verdict is in: the government’s conspiracy theory does not hold water. Not even close. In fact, the Commission’s theory is not, properly speaking, even a theory: it does not even attempt to account for the relevant facts. The most compelling alternative theory is that our government, or parts of it, were at least complicit in the mass murders of September 11. Certainly, the preponderance of the available evidence leans in that direction. We still don’t know, however, about the unavailable evidence, and we probably never will, absent a new, truly unbiased investigation, with subpoena power, sworn testimony, etc. Senator Bob Kerrey has had perhaps the best idea: a permanent 9/11 Commission, one that could act as a clearing house for information and analysis that might have a chance of someday reaching conclusions that a reasonable person doesn’t feel the need to laugh at. Such an investigation should be the goal of everyone who genuinely cares about the truth, or about the future of our nation.