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Chimpy McHitlerburton’s smirky rodeo ride through history:  Fight the Future

From UPI:

A former Bush team member during his first administration is now voicing serious doubts about the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9-11. Former chief economist for the Department of Labor during President George W. Bush’s first term Morgan Reynolds comments that the official story about the collapse of the WTC is “bogus” and that it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7. Reynolds, who also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas and is now professor emeritus at Texas A&M University said, “If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an ‘inside job’ and a government attack on America would be compelling.” Reynolds commented from his Texas A&M office, “It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7. If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely to be correct either. The government’s collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms. Only professional demolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapse of the three buildings.”

When asked if the two giant passenger jets that flew directly into the buildings live on national television and then exploded into fireballs, igniting jet fuel that cooked the buildings’ substructure, might have played a role in the destruction of the buildings, Reynolds was coy, noting that “lots of things can be made to look like jets filled with passengers and terrorists that aren’t really jets filled with passengers and terrorists—including super secret government weaponry built with technology found in the downed alien spacecraft General George Patton recovered from a North Africa crash site during WWII and towed back with him to allied command using nothing but his tank and a team of very dedicated and trustworthy donkeys.

“Which, where do think the technology for the universal remote came from—humans?  Please…”

****

update:  Ace offers his thoughts.

91 Replies to “Chimpy McHitlerburton’s smirky rodeo ride through history:  Fight the Future”

  1. Another Freakin’ Loon(tm).

  2. SeanH says:

    What an asshole.

  3. Diana says:

    … but do you know for a fact that it was “live on national television”?

  4. Ouch. My tinfoil hat and lead codpiece just melted.

  5. rbj says:

    Morgan, don’t bogart the joint.

  6. Joe says:

    Give the guy a break. It says he was the chief economist at DOL during the first Bush administration, so clearly the disparity between his data and the MSM reporting of the worst unemployment in history since the depression caused the poor bastard to lose his sanity.

  7. Chrees says:

    I didn’t think it was possible until now, but apparently you can be worse than all the Aggie jokes put together…

  8. Alpha Baboon says:

    I’m just curious. Why is everyone so quick to dismiss the possibility that the 9/11 attack wasn’t carried out exactly as we were told? I mean, obviously we all watched as two commercial jets slammed into the towers and witnessed the explosions .. We’re told that it was orchestrated by small suicide squads of Muslim terrorists using box cutters and sanctioned/financed by al Qaeda money.. All very plausible. But why do people seem offended that maybe they didn’t get to see all of the evidence..? or weren’t told the whole truth..? or God forbid, that 3000 dead were acceptable losses to some extremist faction within our own government?

    I’m not saying that I believe that to be the case. I don’t WANT to believe that’s the case.. but why do so many apparently fear to even consider the possibility? Is it that offensive or scary to think that your own government doesn’t always tell you the truth (for whatever reason)?

  9. Jeff Goldstein says:

    I think it’s because they aren’t completely nuts.

  10. spongeworthy says:

    Mind if I take this one?

    In this particular case, I trust my government to tell me planes hit the towers because I looked out my windows and saw it. Tell me Bush is really really busting on Sheik Mumbles to free up Saudi Arabia and I’ll be skeptical. Tell me Hillary had good and innocent reasons for white-gloving Vince’s office and I’ll laugh in your face.

    But corrobation like watching this shit go down is hard to come by, and I’m going to seize on it.

  11. Joe Ego says:

    There’s a serious difference between the clusterfuck of Pat Tilman’s own unit trying to cover a friendly fire kill and some shadowy government agency purposely killing thousands of citizens in public and on live TV.

    Maybe we weren’t told every single little detail about how it happened.  But not only am I not scared to contemplate such outrageous possibilities, I am, as noted, not completely nuts.

    Anyway, I’m just upset that Patton had a role in all this…

  12. me says:

    I thought Bush was too stupid to even tie his own shoelaces! Yet he was able to pull 9/11 off?

    BRILLIANT!!!

    Another Guinness please.

  13. Forbes says:

    If it was a planned demolition–what did they use for an explosive device? Chewing gum?

    There would be explosive chemical residue over much of the debris.

    Nobody noticed the sounds of explosions?

    Anyone ever watched a planned implosion of a high rise building? They don’t pancake one story at a time.

    Such a fantasy requires the cooperation of all the firemen and policemen on the scene to not investigate what is apparently the obvious cause to this former Labor Dept. economist.

    Gives a bad name to economists.

  14. me says:

    Oh, and one pint each for my friends Elvis and JFK, please.

  15. Alpha Baboon says:

    Interesting.

    In the halls of power in this country, there are no gods.. no saints.. not even any virgins.. just men (and women), each with their own agenda, drives and aspirations.

    Saddam Hussein was simply a man that had thousand s upon thousands of his own people killed with bio & chemical weapons.. Hitler was just a man that had 6 million Jews and Lord knows how many other undesireables, methodically killed and ‘recycled’ for useable material. But the evil guys arent always THEM and the whitehats arent always US.

    Weve watched CEOs steal benefits from their employees and leave them penniless, all to make themselves even richer. Weve watch corporations closed shop and send their work overseas and put thousands out of work without flinching.. all for a little more profit. These people destroy lives of working people everyday and think no more of it than stepping on an anthill. And they do it just to inflate their already obscenely bloated bank acounts (offshore of course).. Their stakes are just money. What would such men do if the stakes they were playing for were more money than even they could count and the power to control the world and its resources. To be in effect King of the World ?

    A thought experiment: If you could press a button and someplace 3000 people youve never seen or met would die.. but you’d instantly become a multi-billionaire.. Would you press it ?

  16. me says:

    Did I miss the Credibility Check girl at the front door?

  17. Jeff Goldstein says:

    Thank you for saving us from unthinking obeisance to our own government, monkey. 

    And for the mini-lecture on the how the fall has made us all susceptible to sin—not just A-rabs and Germanic monsters.  I hadn’t realized any of that that until I saw it spelled out with such solicitousness here in the comments section of my blog. 

    THE VEIL, IT HAS BEEN LIFTED FROM THESE JINGOISTIC EYES!

  18. Alpha Baboon says:

    Good.. So long as at least one person’s eyes have been opened to the possibilities.. I’m satisfied.

  19. Sean M. says:

    Hry Occam, that there ape needs a shave.

  20. AGR says:

    No, Jeff, no. Here, have a glass of Kool-Aid.

  21. JFH says:

    See, AB, “evil” CEOs get CAUGHT, either by the press or our judicial system.  Why would anyone/any group risk the crime of the millenium for a questionable return (still not sure who benefits from the destruction of 9-11; especially WTC #7- who gives a crap about this building that you’d risk getting caught rigging explosives compared to the Twin Towers)?

  22. Jeff Goldstein says:

    Will this Kool-Aid make me affect a condescending air and then wax pseudo-poetic about the potentiality for evil in all men—regardless of their race, creed, color, or political affiliations?  Because I just can’t enough of that shit.

    A thought experiment: If you could press a button and make every conspiracy theorist in the US cease coming up with loaded “though experiments” by having your black helicopter lackeys zap them each with a brain taser, would you do it—even if you knew the brain tasering might cause their cortexes to smoke like Cheech and Chong at a Dead concert?

  23. JFH says:

    YES, without hesitating

    Turing word: “works” as in “works for me”

  24. me says:

    What’s with all the button pushing? Is this some kinda conspiracy?

  25. Alpha Baboon says:

    Good point JFH.. As I mentioned near the beginning, I’m not stating that I believe the Towers were dropped by our own governments operatives… It just bothers me that many people get upset at the mere asking of the ‘what if’ questions, as if its treasonous to question such events or even consider an inside job as a possibility.

    I’m not an engineer or a demo expert.. I really have no idea what it would take to begin the floors pancaking one on top of the next.. I have no idea what security was like in those pre 9/11 days.. Could a team discreetly entire those buildings and do the neccessary staging? I dont know.. but I’d love to hear an opinion from someone with expertise in the field that does know..

  26. kyle says:

    Let me guess – the phuqtard from SDA is here masquerading as Alpha Baboon?

  27. Alpha Baboon says:

    I interpret that to mean that your answer to the ‘Thought Experiment’ is that you’d like to answer ‘No’.. but you know deep down its probably ‘yes’.. so youre going to lampoon the question rather than addressing it..

  28. Alpha Baboon says:

    No.. I dont need anyone from SDA to make me a phucktard.. I was one long before I ever knew of them.

  29. Jeff Goldstein says:

    I interpret that to mean that your answer to the ‘Thought Experiment’ is that you’d like to answer ‘No’.. but you know deep down its probably ‘yes’.. so youre going to lampoon the question rather than addressing it..

    And that’s the exact interpretation I’d expect from someone who thinks he’s showing intellectual bravery by appearing to seriously consider idiotic and paranoid conspiracy mongering.

  30. SarahW says:

    Morgan Reynolds is just another victim of Bush derangement syndrome. 

    Or some of that crazy cow meat.

  31. mojo says:

    “AB”: No. I don’t kill people for money. Ever.

    I do it for ideological reasons, like everybody else.

  32. me says:

    Yawn!

    I believe most people get upset at the mere utterance of something utterly preposterous, not at the ‘…asking of the ‘what if’ questions…’.

  33. JWebb says:

    Arent’ we really missing the obvious here? Who, as it turned out, stood to gain the most from the Towers demise?

    INVESTIGATE DONALD TRUMP NOW!

  34. BLT in CO says:

    AB: “What if” you stopped beating your wife senseless every evening?

    “What if” you stopped deflowering puppies?

    Asking “what if” questions is not always a harmless exercise.

    When the evidence seen by just about every living soul on the planet shows planes full of fuel being driven into buildings, then Bin Laden takes credit on camera for same, asking “what if” the US Government was behind it is not only extremely foolish, it’s truly dangerous.

  35. me says:

    BINGO!

  36. AGR says:

    Exactly right BLT.

  37. Alpha Baboon says:

    Why?

  38. Razorgirl says:

    Wasn’t Texas A & M the site of the disasterous log tower collapse a few years back? I work for engineers. It has been pointed out to us on more than one occasion that the occupation of “engineer” is listed quite often next to the names of the most wanted terrorists.

    On the day of the 9/11 tragedy as everyone in the office forgot their work so that we could watch what was happening, the engineers in the office predicted the collapse would happen, and it did. Remember, it had been tried previously to bring down the buildings internally without success.

    Also, how is Mr. Reynolds going to explain the “missing persons” that were on those planes and what really happened to those planes.

  39. me says:

    To put it another way…in fact there are such things as ‘stupid questions’.

  40. ss says:

    Thought experiment: Why?

  41. SarahW says:

    Razor girl, you gotta realize Barbara aand Ted Olsen were in on it.  You may be shocked to see that a cruise missile hit the Pentagon, and that Flight 93 was shot down, apparently on the orders of Donald Rumsfeld and a treacherous neocon cabal. no ways could “guys in caves” and 19 “dumb” arabs knock down the WTC.

    Bush Lied, he explains, in this archive of Reynold’s essays. Name that brain insult/lesion/disease.

    Why else would Rumsfeld mention Pearl Harbor prior to 9/11. 

    That point alone must settle the question.

    PS – Jeff, would you condsider adding back the smiley with the googley askew eyes?  He is gone and I am sad.

  42. SarahW says:

    Oh I just linked to one of his scribbles.  Here’s the archive link.

  43. Alpha Baboon says:

    So Me… You consider the question ‘stupid’ because… what? You believe your government wouldnt do such a thing ? Or, you believe your government couldnt actually plan and execute such an operation? Or, you dont believe such an operation could be kept secret after the fact ?

    I’m just curious what your thought is beyond ‘its stupid’…

  44. BLT in CO says:

    AB: “Why?”

    You’re a smart guy.  You know why.

    But to spell it out, if my probing questions about your alleged wife beating and puppy molestation were confined to Jeff’s comments, there’d be little problem.  But suppose I looked you up and found your home town, then took out a half-page advert in your local paper asking the same questions.  Now it becomes a more serious matter, no?  How about I include a picture of you in the ad for good measure?  How about I print these unproven – thus potentially true – accusations on the headlines of every paper in the US?  “Wife maiming puppy-fucker” would be your new title, wherever you went.

    Does that make the point?

    Asking if Bush & Co. had 3000 people slaughtered to further some evil agenda has consequences and you know that as well as I do.  Asking the question is effectively the same as making the claim, you wife maiming puppy-fucker.  (Not!)

  45. ss says:

    I regret to inform all that we are no longer accepting submissions to the thoughtful “Why” thought experiment. The correct answer was “Fudge.” “Fudge.”

  46. wishbone says:

    First Alpha,

    Go to Popular Mechanics website and track their very good analysis of all the crackpot claims about 9/11.

    Second, your query about the button and a billion dollars is a red herring and only a truly sick fuck would vaporize 3000 innocent people for gain.  That’s why we have those things called laws and, even more, I had a gray-haired southern grandma (make that two, one of whom is still with us at 93) who taught me pretty well about right and wrong.  What you propose is definitely the latter.

    Third, your attempt to equate a 9/11 coverup with generic bureaucratic fog excercises is–to use another comparison–eerie similar to the lefties attempts at moral equivalence in the War on Terror.  Sorry, sell that brand of bullshit somewhere else.

    Fourth, would someone please get the conspiracy kooks to explain exactly what Chimpy would gain from such a plot?  I always have a hard time with that one.  Really hard.  And calculus is no big deal to me.

  47. Alpha Baboon says:

    But its not a fair comparison. I didnt ask a loaded question. I didnt ask “Why did Bush have the WTC bombed?” or “When did Bushco decide to authorize that operation”… I didnt mention Bushco at all.. In fact I voted for him. What I asked was “Is it possible that some Right Wing Extremist’ group, someplace within or own government or military could have been complicit in the act? I’m not suggesting that those planes full of people werent hijacked or werent flown into the buildings… That would be ‘idiotic’.. That event was eyewitnessed by many and watched on TV by many more, live. I’m asking , is it posible, POSSIBLE, that that was the “shock ‘n awe” but the event had a hand ‘to make sure’..Its not a nice thought. or a comfortable thought.. but I dont think anyone should be afraid to ask the question. I’d love to see both the Pros and Cons present their best theory, best arguement and best evidence as to what happened as witnessed by something more reliable than our eyes or the media.. like hard evidence.

  48. me says:

    Seeing as, as BLT stated above, “When the evidence seen by just about every living soul on the planet shows planes full of fuel being driven into buildings, then Bin Laden takes credit on camera for same…” (which pretty much clinched it for me) and that I am a licensed structural engineer who has studied the engineering reports that outline the failure mechanisms that led to the ‘pancaking’ of the floors, I believe the theory to be stupid from the get go.

    The idea of a government conspiracy being behind 9/11 is so ‘utterly preposterous’ that it’s not a giant leap of intellect to state that this particular ‘what if’ question/conspiracy theory is clearly a stupid one. This particular juror knows this beyond a reasonable doubt.

    I think that it is bordering on being dangerous to even lend this theory credence by considering it to be anything else but stupid.

    Ask any other ‘what if’ question and I’ll tell you if, IMHO, it’s stupid or not.

  49. Alpha Baboon says:

    Wishbone.. Thanks for the Popular Mechanics tip.. Thats the kind of thing I’d like to read.. Presumably it explains how the crackpot claims couldnt have worked because of some physical reason or limitation and not just ‘because we at Popular Mechanics are uncomfortable with the question.. and youre a freakin commie terrorist supporter & liberal dogshit for asking it..”

    wink

  50. wishbone says:

    Hard facts:

    http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html

    And, yes, as someone who did visa work in Saudia Arabia AFTER 9/11–it is a stupid question.  Mohammed Atta and his posse were the guys who hijacked the planes and flew them into the WTC full of fuel.  Period.  End of story.  Why is this so damned hard to believe?

  51. Jeff Goldstein says:

    Alpha Baboon —

    Not thinking the question worth asking is not the same as being “afraid” to ask it. You are not being brave by asking it. You are being provocative, and not (in my opinion) in a particularly interesting way.  The suggestion that an unwillingness on the part of some of us to take your thought exercises seriously reveals us as close-minded, incurious partisans is both condescending and intellectually dishonest.

    If others want to keep arguing with you on this, fine.  Me, I won’t dignify this with another response.  And your bullshit little emoticons to highlight what you perceive to be your intellectual superiority on this matter is beginning to reall

  52. Alpha Baboon says:

    ME.. If the question of exactly what caused the WTC to fall was so obvious and questioning it so stupid, why did you bother looking at, much less studying the engineering reports related to the WTC event … wasnt it obvious on its face that the plane and its fuel caused it.. It would have been nice if you would have established your bonafides about 40 comments ago.. It would have been interesting to hear the opinions and observations of an engineer rather than simply sniping back and forth.

  53. me says:

    Ignorance of the facts prior to asking doesn’t make a question any less stupid.

  54. Alpha Baboon says:

    Ok.. Thanks Jeff..

    Wishbone, are you an engineer as well?

  55. me says:

    I studied the reports in an attempt to learn to make such structures less prone to progressive collapse.

  56. Alpha Baboon says:

    …on this matter is beginning to reall

    What does ‘reall’ mean ? Typo or did you leave off part of your sentence?

  57. polly666 says:

    Alpha Guy – Off your meds again I see.  Man! Pop a couple of hundred!  You’ll feel better!

  58. Shawn says:

    Dr. Morgan Reynolds is retired from Texas A&M University

    But still, that tells this Longhorn alum more than enough.  wink

  59. Phinn says:

    Please don’t lump me in with the loonies, because I really just want a straight answer.

    I have read some of the materials from the conspiracy theorists about how the buildings came down, and there are some things that do not add up as to Building 7. 

    Someone asked “Anyone ever watched a planned implosion of a high rise building? They don’t pancake one story at a time.”

    Did you all see Building 7 come down?  It came down from below, with the foundational supports on all 4 corners collapsing simultaneously, so that it collapsed within its original footprint. That’s how demolitions are done. 

    There is even the claim that the owner/manager admitted in a documentary that they “pulled” it.  I cannot verify this, since I didn’t see the documentary.

    Building 7 was not hit by an airplane.  It was across the street, and had only a small fire or two in the upper floors.  It came down around 8 hours later. 

    All the evidence I have seen indicates that it was brought down by a controlled demolition.  Has anyone seen anything that contradicts this?

    This is all very different from Towers 1 and 2, of course.  I saw the second hit along with most of America.  I saw all the photos and video from hundreds of cameramen and photographers.  I saw how they collapsed, live on TV—from the top down.

    But Building 7 seems different.  Does anyone know of reliable information about that one?

  60. Phinn says:

    P.S.  Hook ‘em!

  61. peggy says:

    It freaks me a lot that yesterday I spent many hours of my little life that I’ll never get back again reading a similar comment thread over at Crooks and Liars, over this same 9/11 conspiracy stuff. (“Former Bush Team member: WTC collapse likely and inside job”).  I was left with a need for a shower, a good slap in the face, a winning lottery ticket, a fresh-baked pie from my neighbor, or something.  Not this conspiracy shit.

    I’ve read it. It’s shit. I work with horses. I know a big pile when I see one. C’mon, people.

  62. Building 7 did not have a “small” fire.  Falling debris from the collapse of the earlier towers did huge amount of damage at the time.  Its collapse was a combination of fire and structural damage and there is absolutely nothing mysterious about it.

    And do you have any idea of how silly, given that it was obvious what happened to North Tower and South Tower, focusing on a peripheral building sounds?

    The 9/11 conspiracy loons demonstrate a complete lack of any reasoning facilities.

  63. Alpha Baboon says:

    Phinn,

    Read the Popular Mechanics piece linked about a quarter of a page up. Theres some info on building 7 specifically that you’ll find interesting.. Appearantly the damage the building took from falling debris was substantial. they do a good job of explaining how it caved in on itself, but through a slower process..

    The article is good in general. Appearantly PM took the mythology thats grown up around this subject seriously enough to use a team of professionals and a great deal of resources (including the FEMA investigative team) to debunk the most widespread myths and to explain what actually happened. Its the kind of article that lets non-engineers seperate fact from fiction .

    Does anyone know if the FEMA report was published this Spring on schedule ?

  64. Walter E. Wallis says:

    Building 7 had diesel day tanks for emergency generators. The failure mechanisms of 7 and of the towers has been thoroughly explored in Engineering News Record. The only thing unresolved is whether environmentalists caused the collapse by banning asbestos insulation of structural steel half way through construction.

  65. Matt says:

    Alpha Baboon,

    I think what you’re missing here is this.

    Is it possible that gravity is not what we think it is, and that the only thing holding us down is our belief in it?

    Is it possible that we got all our microprocessors from a crashed spacecraft in Roswell and that the government covered it up?

    Is it possible that we’re all hooked up to computers and that this reality is like the Matrix, and we’re all being controlled by malevolent machines sucking out our brain power?

    Yes, yes, and yes.  Of course these things are possible.  But they’re also freaking ludicrous.  We’ve looked at the facts.  We’ve heard the phone calls.  That Bin Laden took responsibility.  That we had war declared on us.  That the WTC collapsed where the fire was burning.  We see all this and we make up our minds that it happened the way it did.  It’s comforting that the government happens to agree with what the rest of us have come to believe—that it happened the way it did.

    The thing is, once we’re satisfied with the answer, the rest of us normal people quit wasting our time thinking about these “thought-experiments” and get on with our lives.

    Here’s a thought-experiment for you:  Who’s better suited to navigate this world—the man who looks around him, analyzes the things he sees, and makes a decision about what they are—or the man who endlessly questions the nature of everything, to the point that he can’t decide which way is north because he can’t get past how arbitrary our sense of direction is, in the greater scheme of things?

  66. me says:

    Sigh.

    Turing word: change, as in change the subject and have another guinness!

  67. CraigC says:

    Come on, Jake.  Tell everyone that you were poking your stick at an anthole.  Please?

  68. Alpha Baboon says:

    Ummm.. How about the one that doesnt accept what ‘everyone knows‘ to be the truth, that the Earth is flat and he’ll fall off if he sails too far out, but instead listens to the handful of crazies that make the arguement that the earth is in fact round, regardless of what your eye tells you is logical.

    I want to believe that the Muslims took the buildings down just as it appears on the face, but I wont ignore the possibility that there are those in the political/paramilitary portions of our government that might not see 3000 dead as too high a cost to pay to gaurantee support for the invasion of Iraq by the public and basically insure Bush’s reelection.(A possibility with much better chances of being true than the ridiculous sci-fi examples you provide) Bush won by just a couple percent… after 9/11.. New mind game: Would Bush have won if there had not been the perceived threat from terrorists..? Without the votes from the worried middle voting for a Strong Defense would he have beat Kerry?

    There’s possible motive. Means, of course they have. Opportunity? In the pre 9/11 days I’ll bet access could have been worked out.. Does that mean the government was involved with setting demo charges, of course not… but I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility before the investigation is complete, no matter how much I believed it happened another way.

    The Popular Mechanic piece did well in explaining that one need not look further than the burning planes as the cause of the towers collapsing. They didnt just say it; they explained why it is so. FEMA has a report out or coming out on the matter. I’m prepared to accept the findings of these investigations as fact, I’m just not willing to accept anything that hasnt been properly investigated as fact just because it doesnt jive with everyone’s understanding of what is true.

    Turing word: alone

    As in: I dont mind being alone in my beliefs long face

  69. CraigC says:

    oooooooooooooookaayyyyy.  You’re on your own here, bud.

  70. Alpha Baboon says:

    OK.. I’m done.. Nothing more on this subject.

    Next subject: ROSWELL NM

    Can we all at least agree that the government recovered the UFO and the live Grey back in ‘47 ? Hell, we’ve all seen the actual film footage of the autopsy.. How much more proof does anyone need?

    Turing word: Dark

    As in: another dark operation that the government will never admit to.

  71. kyle says:

    My 14-month-old son does this sort of thing when he really wants attention.  You know, he’ll do something like yank off his diaper and piss on the living room carpet or something.  Same level of intellectual seriousness as this “exercise.”

    anti-spam: last

    as in, I hope this is the last we hear of this crackpot DU crap.

  72. Bucko says:

    To those of us who sat in a Midtown hotel and watched the towers collapse not knowing we lost a best friend on Flight 11, the dim-witted tire kickers like our simian friend are neither intellectually interesting nor productive.  The memory that Islamofacists killed 3000 of our friends and neighbors is dishonored when we ignore the plain facts and run off with the vapid big-breasted blond conspiracy because she’s not plain.  Dumb-ass questions are not to be confused with intellectual curiosity.

    anti-spam = waiting

    Waiting for alien ship to show up at Yankee stadium instead of the desert or a remote Michigan lake.

  73. Hey, give the poor guy a break.  It coulda happened.

    Of course, for it to have happened, either the entire WTC would have had to be fitted with explosives, or the aircraft impacting the WTC would have had to do so with a rather high degree of accuracy, in order to impact at or near the one section that’d been fitted with explosives.  Which, for realism, would have been different from one tower to the next.

    And of course those explosives would have had to have been fit in such a way that an enormous airplane, tanks full, wouldn’t have disturbed them or their arming/firing circuitry unduly.  And of course, those at the controls would have to wait long enough for a decent fraction of the people to leave, but not so long that the fire would finish destroying the heat-treatment in the tower structure, resulting in them falling down anyway.

    Lastly, as pointed out by someone upthread, the explosive would have to be of some new and undetectable type, whose waste products are something highly common like water and CO2.  Or, alternatively, the evil government would have had to sequester every last scrap of building material and debris and scrub them thoroughly so that the conspiracy wouldn’t be compromised.

    Myself, I’d be more inclined to think that teams of fight-clubbing anarchists parked vans full of nitroglycerine (manufactured of the liposuction waste from wealthy women’s fat asses, natch) in the parking garage and brought the towers down that way, but the tower didn’t fall consistently with that. Unless you consider that every video made of the collapse has been captured (without it making the news) has been extensively digitally edited to make it look as if the tower collapse started near the impact point. 

    Certainly a possibility, sure.  If there were only a single scrap of evidence that pointed in that direction, I wouldn’t be nearly herniating myself holding the laughter in.

    Turing word: board.  As in, I’m board by this endless parade of wacky conspiracy theories.

  74. Alpha Baboon says:

    Would any one of you guys that have had so much fun slamming me please cut ‘n paste to a new comment the part of ANY of my comments in which I state that;

    The US Government WAS involved in the WTC Bombing”, or

    The Government was LIKELY involved”, or

    I BELIEVE The Government to have been involved

    All I’ve said is that all of the available evidence should be examined by experts without any bias as to who could ultimately be involved in the larger operation. Follow the evidence to where it leads regardless of where that is. If no evidence points in the direction of government complicity, then thats great news.

    I dont want to blame the government but neither do I want to assume no part of the government could be involved IF there exists credible evidence that they are involved. And for what its worth I have NOT seen ANY credible evidence for government involvement presented.. Just baseless speculation .

  75. Assuming I’m part of your radio audience as regards that last message, Alpha, I didn’t say a thing about what you believed to be true.  And what you believe or disbelieve is pretty much beside the point.

    As for the available evidence, there isn’t any as far as I know.  In fact, as far as I know, there’s just exactly as much evidence for WTC having been brought down with explosives as there is for the buildings having been brought down by having invisible faerie giants sit on them.

  76. me says:

    Ok. One last kick to the dead horse…

    “I have NOT seen ANY credible evidence for government involvement presented.. Just baseless speculation .”

    NO sane person has seen any credible evidence. That’s why no sane person is still wondering(or defending those that do) if there could be an alternate explanation.

  77. Alpha Baboon says:

    Slart,

    I havent seen any evidence pointing that way either.. In fact, after reading a number of the weird conspiracy theories (substitute planes, cruise missiles, fuel tankers made to look like commercial jets, etc etc), the ONLY one that seemed even remotely plausible was the idea of wiring the building with demo to assure a collapse. After reading up on the event and the various reports regarding the dynamics of the collapse I’m satisfied that the planes and subsequent fires were the sole reason for the collapses.. I even went so far as to call up an active operator that I know and ask his opinion as to whether it was even a possibility that a small spec ops type element could carry out the clandestine operation of demo’ing the building, support it and keep it completely secret.. His answer was an unqualified ‘No’.. Too many assets required to provide logistics, intel, coordination etc, too much support required.. security & secrecy a big problem, etc etc He believes it would be an operation beyond the capabilities of any of the ‘normal’ special operations teams..

    Having looked at all of the information available to me, I’m convinced that the planes and their suicidal Arab Hijackers were the full cause of the 9/11 WTC collapse.. but not because everyone says so.. because I’ve seen and heard what I consider to be compelling evidence to support that conclusion.

  78. Jeff Goldstein says:

    TV Show Depicts 911 as Bush Plot. From the article:

    As ludicrous as it may sound to most Americans, the tale has resonance in Germany, where fantastic conspiracy theories often are taken as fact.

    Many Germans think, for example, that the 1969 moon landing was faked, and a poll published in the weekly Die Zeit showed that 31 percent of Germans younger than 30 “think that there is a certain possibility that the U.S. government ordered the attacks of 9/11.”

    Another one of those German “thought experiments,” most likely (my favorite is, “what if the Jews were responsible for German unemployment, a flagging economy, and the loss of Germanic pride?). 

    Oh well, let’s cut them some slack.  They’re just intellectually brave and curious—positing fictional scenarios as a way to expand their understanding of contingency.  No harm, no foul.

  79. Matt says:

    Alpha- There has been conclusive evidence presented, reviewed and certified by experts, indicating that the cause of the collapse of the towers was the aircraft which struck them and the resulting jet fuel fire.  The rancor being directed at you right now, seems to me, to be based on the fact that alot of us DO question our government, believe that we should question our government BUT questioning our government about the destruction of the towers (no matter what your theory is) is the height of lunancy.  Considering the sheer amount of scientific extrapolation done on the subject by experts (which, I assume you haven’t read- in truth, I’ve read the Pop. Science article on the subject but thats it), there is no point to having a thought exercise on the issue because you shouldn’t, in the face of such overwhelming evidence, have any doubt as to what caused the tower collapse.  The problme, as Jeff points out, is that the left and foreign crazies will believe this shit and in their argument, will cite to americans who ponder these ridiculous conspiracy theories.  I get it all the time from lefties “oooo well republican/conservative X says Y is possible so it must be true”. 

    Floating alternate theories on the trade center collapse flies in the face of logic and evidence– and when the answer to a question is sooooo obvious, it tends to piss people off when you repeatedly question the obvious answer.

  80. BLT in CO says:

    And again, AB, just throwing out baseless questions does not imply a line of reasoning.  This thing started a while back, Morgan Reynolds is just the latest to recycle the bizarre rumor.

    Notice he doesn’t offer a shred of evidence or proof, just supposed unanswered ‘questions’, which in my mind is plainly scare-mongering and even seditious.  Accusing the goverment of wholesale slaughter of its citizens without evidence borders on incitement to rebellion.  An extremely stupid position considering all the forensic and engineering (not to mention investigative journalistic) work that’s been done since 9/11.

  81. I think the faerie-giant theory ought to be floated as a retaliatory measure.  But that’s just because sometimes I amuse the hell out of myself.

  82. Matt H. says:

    Having looked at all of the information available to me, I’m convinced that the planes and their suicidal Arab Hijackers were the full cause of the 9/11 WTC collapse.. but not because everyone says so.. because I’ve seen and heard what I consider to be compelling evidence to support that conclusion.

    Don’t you get it, dude?  SO HAVE THE REST OF US. 

    You think we’re all a bunch of sheep?  That we believe the official story just because the government told us so?  Do you think we’re a bunch of freaking morons?  Or that you’re somehow special because you’re still entertaining the foreclosed possibilities almost four years later?

    You think you’re novel.  You think you’re getting the rest of us to think.  The joke’s on you, monkey.  You’ve done nothing but show everyone here what a condescending, pseudo-intellectual ass you are.

  83. Alpha Baboon says:

    Slart,

    I heard about that Faerie-giant theory in a German crime show.. and those people know their giants, so it must be true…

  84. Walter E. Wallis says:

    Some people are willing to babble absolute BS just to stick it to the grownups. While most of us value probity, there are some who lie even when the truth would serve them better.To them, a statement is not the conveyance of information but a one up gotcha point.

  85. Alpha Baboon says:

    Well Matt H. , I notice that you didn’t contribute any of your wisdom to the discussion on this thread, but rather just jumped in to bitch at the end…Not even the guts to take a stance on the issue one way or another until you see which way the wind is blowing, eh? Its not too hard to come off as condescending when talking to likes of you, worm.

  86. Matt H. says:

    Actually, Baboon, I posted before under the name “Matt”.  It turns out there was more than one Matt posting here, so I added the H to clarify.

    My previous comment began:

    Alpha Baboon,

    I think what you’re missing here is this.

    I stand by my criticism.  And you didn’t just help yourself by calling me the #1 puffed-up, I’m-smarter-than-you insult in the book.

  87. What do you expect from a species that communicates its mood by the color of its ass?

  88. Claire says:

    See, AB, it goes something like this:  Without hard, factual evidence to prompt it, asking a question like that becomes a recreational pass time.  Unfortunately, it is a pass time with a price as those who are less inclined than you to pursue a line of questioning will simply assume that the question wouldn’t have been asked without adequate factual evidence.  And therefore it must be at least somewhat true.

    If there is a percentage of the population of the US wandering around believing that horse hockey—even if they are the ignoratti—it weakens the resolve of the whole.  If the resolve of the whole is weakened, I end up wearin’ a burka and you end up with a bullet in the brain.

    See how that could honk off some folks?

    So, AB; can you tell me why this idea bothers you so much?

    [word – effects; as in think through the effects of what yer gonna say *before* ya say it]

  89. Jon says:

    AB-My problem is just that you are so late to the party, man.  Look, you want everyone to think you are an original thinker who isn’t taking anyone’s party line, but that would sell better if you weren’t still trying to figure out on of the most monumental events in American history four years on.  If you really were the great and original mind you pretend you are, you would have done all the questioning and investigation already, and come to a conclusion a few years back.  Most people read that PM article when it came out, or soon after.  How do you expect us to react when you come at us like a blast from 2002?  Like you are some kind of magic sooth-sayer and truth-speaker?  Chump.

  90. Walter E. Wallis says:

    Read the new skyscraper safety recommendations just out. The grownups have been doing grownup discussions.

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