9/11 Truthers Are Idiots
Some people are so ideologically married to certain beliefs, that nothing will ever sway them. One of the best examples of this is the 9/11 Truth movement. These people believe that the government carried out the attacks on September 11 and blamed radical Islam for it so that they could chip away at our civil liberties and start new wars.
There are a few things that the 9/11 "Truthers" regularly spout off as proof that the attacks were carried out by the government, including Building 7, the phone calls from the hijacked planes, and the way the twin towers collapsed. Each of their "theories" can easily be disproven by science and common sense.
They talk about how the collapse of the twin towers looked similar to controlled demolition videos of other buildings sometimes seen on television. Controlled demolition takes weeks or even months to set up, depending on the size of the building. In Detroit, a 33 level structure took three months to properly wire and set up for demolition.
Controlled demolition requires cutting into nearly every beam and structural support. With two buildings over 110 stories tall that were open 24 hours a day, with billionaire businessmen paying thousands of dollars in rent per square foot, it would have been impossible to pull off without anyone knowing, as people would’ve wondered what was with all the construction crews.
One of the biggest things to note of all is that while controlled demolition happens from the bottom up, the twin towers collapsed from the top down, proving it was a natural collapse and not a controlled demolition.
People have pointed out that fire cannot melt steel. Well duh! Fire doesn’t melt steel. It does however weaken steel, and that’s all that’s needed. Once the steel was weakened enough, the laws of physics took over and the building buckled. The airplanes careening into the buildings did enough damage, but when you add in steel softened by raging fires, it was more than enough to bring the structures down.
The Truthers point out the speed at which the buildings fell, but conveniently leave out crucial information. Both towers fell close to freefall because the buildings were mostly air. The twin towers were not composed of solid concrete. They were designed to be incredibly lightweight. As each floor subsequently gave way, they were in near-freefall.
The Truthers talk about how Building 7 collapsed without an airplane hitting it, but fail to understand the structural impact that two 110-story buildings falling in on themselves had on it. Also, thousands of tons of debris hit Building 7, damaging the structure and starting fires.
Conspiracy theorists also claim that the phone calls from the hijacked planes must have been faked because no one can make a phone call from 30,000 feet. True, but they weren’t at 30,000 feet. They’d only been off the ground for a short time before being hijacked. After that, they had to bring the planes to a lower altitude so that they could strike their targets. If people can make a phone call from the top floor of a skyscraper, they could have done so while inside a low-flying plane.
So according to these geniuses, the phone calls that were received and the messages that were left describing terrorists were all faked, meaning that the government would have known who was going to be on the plane well in advance, gotten their voiceprint, and in some cases even had a conversation with a trusted loved one. This from the same government that left General Colon Powell looking like an idiot at the United Nations two years later, and could not prevent PFC Bradley Manning from stealing crucial information. They’re giving the government way too much credit here.
If the government had really wanted to bring the towers down, they could have gone about it much easier. A few properly wired trucks could have been driven into the basements and set off. Being nearly identical to the 1993 attempt, the suicide bomber aspect would’ve been equally plausible. Only a few security cameras would have required tampering, which would’ve been much easier to pull off than faking hijackings, phone calls, and so on.
Conspiracy theorists like Jesse Ventura and Alex Jones cater almost exclusively in devious plots, which is why they view everything as a conspiracy. To this day they’re still fooling people with slick videos, edited phone recordings, photos where the debris at the Pentagon was edited out, and catchy slogans.
There is no conspiracy surrounding 9/11. The U.S. government was not the enemy, Dylan Avery is not the plucky hero, and this is not the grand arena. Radical Islamic fundamentalists found the simplest method of getting around defenses that had grown relaxed and bloated, and the U.S. tragically paid for it.
When it comes to September 11, perhaps Bill Clinton said it best.
http://www.policymic.com/articles/7677/9-11-truthers-are-idiots
