9/11 conspiracy theories

[angle20]

If anyone can give me a reasonable explanation barring the real reason, ie terrorist attack then ill be amazed to be honest.

It enabled the American government to persuade the American people of the need to engage in a "war on terror". Just to recap on what this has involved:

 

America firstly invaded a country - Afghanistan - which did manifestly have an Al-Qaeda connection, but after a little while got bored with this and wound down the operation there. They then invaded another country - Iraq - which had nothing whatsoever to do with Islamist terrorism. Now, however, Iraq is an Al-Qaeda operational zone (where the Al-Q people have formed an unholy alliance with Saddam's Sunni loyalists). Then the Americans decided it was a mistake to have got bored with Afghanistan and have had to go back, but fortunately their limey pals are doing quite a bit of the dirty work there at the moment. More recently America has made threatening noises towards a further country - Iran - which is unlikely to have links with global Islamist terror groups (though it probably does have with regional guerilla groups in Palestine/Lebanon). Lastly, there is another country - Pakistan - which does seem to be the location of a lot of Al-Qaeda planning and training, but oddly, the Americans are best mates with the guy who runs that place, as they are with the guys who run another country - Saudi Arabia - which is thought to have been involved in some shady dealings involving the supply of funds to Al-Qaeda.

 

I hope that's clear and we can all appreciate what a spiffingly coherent and successful enterprise the "war on terror" is.

 

Actually, there are other things involved - oil, arms and drugs - which just happen to be the world's three biggest trades. The arms industry is one of America's biggest, and American construction companies have benefitted from the 'reconstruction' of Iraq. Also of note is that the American dollar is a petro-currency and a narco-currency, ie its value is partly sustained by the fact that is needed in order to purchase oil (legal trade) and drugs (illegal).

[angle20]

There was no real air defence because there never is (or at least never was), because we have been watching the routes the russians will take not watching civilian airports.

You're pulling our leg, Ken? Where have you been since 1990?

 

The USA had a well established procedure for intercepting apparently rogue aircraft: there were 67 interceptions between Sept 2000 and June 2001. The first hijacked plane on 9/11, Flight 11, went off air at 8.14am; the last plane, Flight 93, crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.03am - nearly two hours later.

 

The Pentagon was hit at 9.38am - 52 minutes after the North Tower attack (and 84 minutes after Flight 11 first gave signs of being hijacked). Andrews Air Force base lies only 12 miles from Washington. There was time for the pilots at Andrews to go for breakfast, have a second cup of coffee, and still be in the air in time to intercept the Pentagon attack.

[angle20]

I am rather more sceptical about whether they could hit a specific floor

Oh, come on. In the case of the Pentagon attack you seemed to suggest that the pilot would be able to land a 757 on a sixpence but now you are making out that it was a great piece of skill to hit one of the towers at all.

[KenH]

You're pulling our leg, Ken? Where have you been since 1990?

.

 

Well I was flying aircraft around the USA for a fair part of it if that helps. As a result I know a fair bit about interceptions and just how quick they are. The problem with the conspiracy theories is that everyone looks at the situation with hindsight. We all know (at least the sane ones) that the aircraft were crashed into buildings, so we say things like "went off the air" as if this would immediately bring forth a multitude of jets that were standing by on the runway for just such an eventuality. The fact is that being unable to contact an aircraft is simply not a bit deal, neither is the transponder not working. When they eventually did realize something was amiss, which I believe was some time after the aircarft hit the first building then they launched the nearest fighters which were miles away. Of course they may have had fighters at Andrews but they would have had to get them ready, arm them, find pilots etc. The situation wasn't one where they were expecting a russian invasion so they wouldn't have had people sat in jets with the engines running at every military airport.

 

The reason I suggest that it is extremely difficult to aim at a particular vertical point is that I know how hard it is because I have tried it. Contrast this with the speculation from the fruitcakes on the internet who usually have no practical experience and have never experimented. It is possible with a long run in to get an exact angle and to keep the speed constant and so hit a particular spot, but you need that long run in and major vertical changes would be very hard. The faster the aircraft travels, the greater the forces on the control surfaces. If you dive at high speed the wing gets more lift and the aircraft wants to climb. You can keep pushing down but it can be very hard and the control surfaces can run out. These are just thoughts on why I think aiming for a vertical point in space is very hard and certainly not something you could rely on if you were placing explosives in advance.

[ann_a]

In light of KenH's remarks,this is of particular interest....especially to him.

http://www.newsofinterest.tv/audioPages/alexJones_colRobertBowman_01.html

 

over an hour long..but worth it.

[Tony]

ann_a, I'm not being rude, but is there anything specifically revealing in that link that's of interest? I'm not spending an hour listening to Alex Jones going over the same old stuff just because somebody happened to be in the Air Force 30 years ago.

[KenH]

ann_a, I'm not being rude, but is there anything specifically revealing in that link that's of interest? I'm not spending an hour listening to Alex Jones going over the same old stuff just because somebody happened to be in the Air Force 30 years ago.

 

I am, although I should do some work. So far I have found out that a) he has lectured to the House of Lords b) he is an archbishop c) he says "it is clear there must have been a conspiracy, it is just a question of who was behind it.

 

 

I will report on the rest later, as I am interested in knowing what he has to say about interceptors as I know what the system is and so want to see how he talks his way out of it.

[Tony]

Perhaps he'll say that the Air Force was experimenting with yogic flying for world peace instead of F15's?

[KenH]

In light of KenH's remarks,this is of particular interest....especially to him.

http://www.newsofinterest.tv/audioPages/alexJones_colRobertBowman_01.html

 

over an hour long..but worth it.

 

Thanks, like many of the other fruitcake videos/audios, I have heard this one. Aside from anything else, you need to know that he uses his daft ideas to drum up support for standing for president. He also calls himseld an Archbishop of a breakaway catholic church.

 

Here are some of the things he said and an explanation.

 

In his biography he claims to have lectured the House of Lords.

 

He first got an idea that something was wrong when the government which was so clueless that it couldn't stop the attack managed to give the names of the attackers so soon afterwards (the next day?). Also they blamed Bin Laden very early on, possibly during the attacks.

 

He alledges that the government confiscated and destroyed the ATC voice tape.

 

The interviewer talks some nonesense about how the hijackers were so incompetant that they couldn't even get a Cessna off the ground and had abandoned it on the runway. This is complete *****ocks. What is actually happening is that the interviewer is putting together two discrete events and as if they happened at the same time. Two of the hijackers were investigated for leaving an aircraft on the runway but this was nothing to do with not being able to fly it, they simply dumped it and went off somewhere else, they basically didn't put it away after they had used it. Rather than say "I have investigatged thes pilots and they had hundreds of hours and were competant pilots", he says that "that is about right" and then goes on to bluster a bit about not actually having seen this himself etc etc.

 

When asked about the aircraft being flown in a military manner, he says he didn't see "those things come in - whatever they were" and then goes onto say that he doesn't know if those manoevers actually happened but, if they did happen as some people have described then "it is a heck of a feat for these arabs who flunked out of flight school".

 

Look again at that last paragraph. Firstly he says "those things come in - whatever they were". He must be under the deluded idea that they could be something other than large commercial aircraft. Do we need to know anything else about this archbishop? Then he goes on to perpetuate another myth which is that the terrorists had "flunked flight school". This is not the case, they had passed many exams, flight tests and ratings including some of the most advanced possible. There is simply one case of one of them trying to rent an aircraft and being turned away because the instructor didn't like his flying. He went on to rent aircraft from other places.

 

He says the big thing is that they wouldn't have got near those targets if ordinary, common sense procedures had been followed. He mentions as his only example the tragic crash involving Payne Stewart where he says that within 16 minutes of losing contact there were fighter jets (note the plural) escorting the aircraft. http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/2000/AAB0001.pdf If you read this you will see that Paynes jet was intercepted in 25 minutes but this was by a test pilot who already happened to be flying as he was "vectored to that area". The actual interceptors met the stricken aircraft 1 hr 46 minutes after the last transmission as the aircraft passed over Oklahoma.

 

The interviewer, talking about the same Payne Stewart incident in 1999 then says "the FAA reports say that within 16-18 minutes there were 5 X F16's shadowing the aircraft". Bowman agrees by saying "that's right". Anyone can read the incident report and see that there were 5 in total eventually, but never altogether. The first one was the test pilot who was already flying and not an iterceptor. Then there was the pair, almost two hours later, from Oklahoma. These two also left and two F-16s took over from North Dakota. These final two arived 2.5 hours from the initial problem (not 16 - 18 minutes).

 

He then says that such intercepts happened 67 times in the year to September 2001. This is true but they are not all within 16 minutes as claimed, they are more likley to be in 1 hr 40 like this incident. When intercepts are fairly quick it is because an aircraft is unidentified and heading towards a restricted military area, often an airbase. I can only assume that he picked this one example because there was a rapid interception even though it was by a test pilot in a test aircraft from a test squadron in a part of the country where there are lots of bases. It is far from representative and the test pilot would not have been armed.

 

The interviewer then suggests that the interceptors on 9/11 were apparently ordered to fly at 357mph, the stalling speed of the F16(might have misheard and might be F15). Bowman doesn't immediately rubbish this but does say he hasn't heard that but has done his own calculations. Acoording to his calculations the interceptors couldn't have got there any quicker than they did. So Bowman is saying he has done calculations and says they couldn't have got there any quicker - I thought that bit was worth repeating. Instead he claims they were scrambled 30 minutes too late. He doesn't explain where he gets this figure from.

 

He then claims that when an airliner goes significantly off course, OR when it loses voice comms, OR it loses it's transponder then there isn an automatic scramble of an interceptor. Just in case there could be any confusion he states again when any of these three happen there would be an interception. This is total rubbish. In the case of the loss of voice there are procedures that are followed to make sure there are no conflicts. The loss of a transponder is a common occurance which, if it was to result in a scramble every time, would mean that fighters were never on the ground. I have epersonally lost my transponder at least 10 times in recent years, including in the US shortly after 9/11 with no issues whatsoever. This is because ATC also have you on primary RADAR and, to be frank, they don't much care. I do think that given ALL three things happening something should have been done, but I am pointing out that Bowman is not a credible witness. I would also point out that all three things happened but none of us would have expected it to lead to a suicide attack. He then goes on to say that had one of these three conditions applied then the default is for there to be an interception unless it is countermanded, thereby implying that there must have been a cover up. In fact it is perfectly legal to fly across much of the US without a radio, without a transponder, without a flight plan and without sticking to any particular routes. What he is talking about is the way that an aircraft would be intercepted if it passed into prohibited airspace, which only one did and then it was too late.

 

The rest of it is about how it must be a conspiracy because of all the things that happened afterwards, such as getting a war on terror.

 

Al in all he is an impressive sounding person who talks utter rubbish.

[ann_a]

This is a man,former Republican,who served two administrations and has military credentials,honours that apparently could fill many pages...and you say he talks utter rubbish.

It was where you said in your previous post that communication lost,plane off-course,and the transponder turned off is seemingly of no consequence..really?Will listen again to the tape,and try to verify your other claims..