Let's Not and say we did. (although I'm sure that was your point.)

Perhaps a government intruder is more dangerous than someone who breaks into your house. They can do things more subtly and before you know it you, and your family, are trapped...no way out.

The Nazis were good at that, you know, they would use a few soldiers with machine guns and a few snarling German Shepherds to herd many hundreds of Jews onto the box cars. At any time those hundreds could have overwhelmed the few soldiers and dogs...could have torn them apart. Yes, many Jews would have been killed too..but not all (as they all were eventually). But, they all obediently climbed aboard those box cars with the false belief that they were all just being relocated to work camps that would last only until the end of the war. Yes, some had heard rumors...wild conspiracy theories about death camps. But why listen to conspiracy theories, right? No, listen to the authorities...and everything will turn out all right. All they had to do was follow orders and not make a fuss.

The Nazis even had string quartets made up of musically talented Jewish musicians playing relaxing and emotionally reinforcing chamber music as the box cars arrived. "Men to the left!" "Women and children to the right!" the Gestapo pigs would shout.

My feelings on all of this violence is that it is steming from all of the nasty lies being spread on the Internet by the Koch-Teapublicans and the NRA & their E-mail flunkies. These jurks will believe anything that they are sent no matter how foolish it looks, sounds, is. They never check thing out just automatically send it to their E address book.

It has been going on since Obama became President, none stop. Not sure if it is racial, or because they are very poor losers?

This is a quote that Ken provided from Shaym Sunder, the lead NIST investigator for the World Trade Center investigation (yeah, right, what investigation?): I'll use his initials:

Quote SS:
In the case of the World Trade Center towers, the buildings had collapsed. And also there was an immediate need for search and rescue of people who might have been buried under the rubble. So there was also a need to clear the site as quickly as possible. It's very unusual that the evidence is so completely scattered, and that made our investigation a lot more complicated.

This sounds plausible except that in any other case, eg: a crashed airliner, the pieces are all gathered up and reassemble in some hanger. In the case of the WTC wreckage, they didn't even bother to store the parts after they hauled them off. They should have stored them in some field and covered and kept them around for analysis and investigation. But what did they do? They immediately shipped them off to China to be melted down...evidence destroyed. This is NOT the way to carry out an investigation unless you are trying to cover up. The way you conduct a proper investigation is to consider ALL possibilities...even the possibilities that might conflict with the political pressures for a desired outcome that would support the government's conspiracy theory. Nano thermite was not unknown to NIST and they knew full well what it is..they knew full well what the standard procedures were for investigating crime scenes. But NIST did everything they could to avoid the subject of explosives, nano thermite, demolition, or any other thing that would point to an inside job.

Yes, they had to rescue bodies and that could be a valid excuse for why they didn't carry out a lengthy on-site investigation but it doesn't excuse them from not storing the debris long enough to carry out a proper investigation. It is very likely that they wanted to prevent an analysis of the explosion cut marks or chemical analysis of those cuts for the presence of nano thermite residue. The temperature it takes to melt steel, or even weaken it enough to exceed the building designer's specs that were made to handle an airliner crash is way higher than was was possible in those jet fuel fires. So where did all of that molten steel come from? To melt steel..especially a lot of steel...like that which filled the basement levels and impeded construction crews from their demolition work...and was still molten in spots weeks later. What high temperature caused that? So, all of those beams would have had tell tale nano thermite marks...like the one in a photo at the WTC site. Perhaps, this is what they didn't want experts to analyze...unless they were experts bought and controlled by the government that committed treason against their own people.

This SS guy tries to make the case that the combination of the jet fuel..which he admits largely all burned off within a few minutes..then tries to say that the office material continued the fire and that the fireproofing material was knocked off of the steel beams letting the heat from the fires make the steel "soft as playdough". GET A GRIP PEOPLE! This is abosolutely ridiculous if you know anything at all about the maleability of steel and what temperatures it takes to make steel lose it's strength. Blacksmiths bury the piece they are working on in coke that has been fed a constant stream of oxygen making the temperature almost hot enough, but not quite, to melt steel...at least it makes the steel glow reddish yellow. The blacksmith can then hammer it into shape. The airliner fuel and the office fires were so NOT HOT enough to melt or even weaken steel as can be witnessed by you if you watch those videos of the WTC towers. The black smoke was a tell tale sign that those fires were oxygen starved. Black smoke is what you get when you don't have enough oxygen. A fire that is oxygen starved is not a very hot fire at all. I wouldn't stick my hand in it but it doesn't do anything to steel except just make it hot. It won't even glow a dull red color. So what caused all of those pools of molten steel in the basement? Certainly not the airliner jet fuel or office fires. It could only have happened by extremely high temperatures caused by an explosive like nano thermite.

The evidence is in the dust if you really care to read the scientific paper on it. But I doubt many people will. It is much easier to believe in a government conspiracy theory of Arab Muslim terrorist by a revolting little mastermind with a long beard sitting in a cave in Afghanistan. I'm sure if the government had been able to hide the dust evidence...they would have done that as well.

Quote Ken:
You were right about the main support beams

Ken: It's funny how you are able to make emphatic statements about how I was wrong (the beams, etc) and then turn right around, after you have done a little reading on the matter, and admit that I was right. This has happened many times now. Well, at least I have to thank you for eventually admitting you were wrong. I believe that you actually believe what you are saying at the time you are saying it even though you are very wrong about what you are saying. But, you still persist in asserting that all of the rest of the points I made are fallacious...just wacko conspiracy theories. And then you try to use a report by NIST.

Quote Ken:
Even with the report from the N.I.S.T. I am sure you will claim they are part of the conspiracy to cover up the government’s involvement with 9/11.

Yes, you are right again, I believe, as do many other people that NIST is part of the problem. They have repeatedly been caught in trying to obfuscate and hide relevant information to support their lies. First they try to say, about their "pancake theory" that the fuel fire was so hot that it weakened the truss connections to the vertical central core beams. Then, when they were challenged on that, they changed their tune to a "buckling of the truss beams, pulling the outer walls inward and disconnecting like a zipper. The outer supports were shown not to have pulled inwards as NIST insists.

But one thing that NIST can't explain sufficiently is that if the floors all "pancaked" why did the central core beams not remain vertical and protruding out of the top of the "pancaking" floors? This didn't happen...not even a little bit...the central core beams came down right along with each level just as would have happened during a demolition where explosives were used to cut the supporting vertical beams. The only vertical beams that remained after the collapse in the photos are some less massive outer beams...right at the bottom of the heap. The central core beams were so massive that, if pancaking occurred, the central core beams should have towered all the way up into the sky or have toppled over across the tops of the surrounding buildings...but this did not happen.

NIST's computer simulations omitted information like cross beams that would have made all the difference in the world as to the relevancy (rather irrelevancy) of their simulations. They have continually made glaringly false statements that were picked up on immediately and were refuted by hundreds of engineers, scientists, and other professional people who weren't on the payroll of some government contract. The fact that NIST has acted in such a dishonorable manner, over and over again, shows that they have been trying to cover up the treasonous misdeeds of a corrupt government.

NIST is part of the government that uses lies to hide embarrassing information. They are part of a government, run by criminal elements, that have been working to destroy Social Security and other social programs. What part of HELLO don't you understand!?? Wake up and see the real conspiracy...the one the government (or at least the one's wielding the power in our government) has created to scare the rest of us into submission. They are part of a government that has let the wealthy criminals loot our treasuries while allowing these thieves to take away vital benefits, like health care, and a decent wage. I'm sure you will agree that both parties are part of this nationwide scam. There is nothing honorable about our system of government when it has been hijacked by the criminal elite. And these people will do anything to maintain that status including scaring everyone out of any resolve to do anything, really meaningful, about it.

MMmmNACHOS - Thank you for your comment. I guess it is not too late for this old dog to learn from events that happen in our world. I just hope enough people wake up and start massive non-violent protests as was done in Washington with the Million Man March. I still believe there are people out there who will find others who think that acts of violence and an armed clash with the government is needed for change. Hopefully, I will never be proven right. The bombing in Mass., was so unspeakably wrong, that I hope people come together to voice what is wrong with Washington, in a massive but peaceful manner. Violence should be the last resort when protecting one's family and him or herself if attacked by some perpetrator. If we use violence as a means of protests it will be meant by the military and para-military police and the end result would only be a negative situation where innocent people of all ages will be hurt or killed. I will be one of the first protesters carrying a sign in a friendly manner of change. I believe my first grandchild, who be born in five weeks, as well as the bombing of innocent people in Mass. made me realize that any violence brought forth by Americans will only have a negative outcome, especially since we are a nation of heavily armed citizens who seem to respond with violence if we see ourselves as being violated by another entity! It would be chaos that could escalate into a situation that could and would destroy what is left of our personal freedoms. K.W.

Palin - If you Google the Twin Towers you find several more articles that support the findings listed above. I wanted to show how there are people on both sides that have different opinions of how and why the Towers did not withstand the attack from the two airliners crashing into them at full throttle. I respect your theory and it is backed by very educated individuals as is the theory that I posted from the report the N.I.S.T. gave to Congress. Have a good day. K.W.

Re-posted from 9-16: Palindromedary - I wanted to re-post my comments that include an analysis of why and how the towers cam down, because I posted so late you might have missed it.

Palindromedary - here is a copy of the transcripts from the investigation conducted for Congress by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. You were right about the main support beams and this report explains what happened and what caused the towers to fall. This information was copied from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/world-trade-center-collapse.html This report supports what I believe happened on 9/11 to the twin towers. Ken Ware.

SECTION 1: THE INVESTIGATION

SHAYM SUNDER: I'm Shyam Sunder. I am the lead investigator for the World Trade Center investigation that was conducted by the National Institute of Standards in Technology.

In many typical investigations, you have a partially collapsed building standing there that can be looked at by engineers.

In the case of the World Trade Center towers, the buildings had collapsed. And also there was an immediate need for search and rescue of people who might have been buried under the rubble. So there was also a need to clear the site as quickly as possible. It's very unusual that the evidence is so completely scattered, and that made our investigation a lot more complicated.

We realized that we had to model the complete aircraft impact. We had to model the evolution of the fires over the next hour, or hour and half. We had to model how the steel weakened as a result of the high temperatures. And lastly, we had to model the progression of failures-- local failures in the structure, which then led to the overall initiation of collapse. Each of these stages had very sophisticated models that were validated using the photographic evidence we have, validated using laboratory experiments that we conducted. And validated, ultimately, based on how the buildings actually collapsed using videos.

SECTION 2: IMPACT

Through a fairly sophisticated analysis of the video information, we were able to determine the airplane speed, direction of the airplane, and the orientation of the airplane as each of the airplanes impacted each of the buildings.

The north tower was hit at 8:46 by a 767-200 extended range airplane, between the 93rd and the 99th floor. The airplane was flying at about 550 miles an hour, with a total weight of somewhere on the order of 283,000 pounds.

The second building to be hit, which was hit 16 minutes later, was hit on the south face of the south tower. Again by a 767-200 extended range airplane, but this time between floors 77 and 85.

And one of the questions that comes out from looking at this information is how is it here we have two seemingly similar buildings—they were called Twin Towers—and they were hit by nearly identical airplane, but how come one building lasted for 102 minutes, the other building lasted for 56 minutes, which is nearly a factor of two.

SECTION 3: IMMEDIATE DAMAGE

On the outside of the buildings, on the perimeter, there were about 59 to 60 columns on each face. The first thing that happened as the airplanes went through the dense grid of column is that they got disintegrated by the columns, which acted like knife edges. Pieces of the airplane actually came out from the other end. For example, we had landing gear come out from the south side of building one, and we had an engine component come out from the northeast corner of building two.

The debris that was generated by the airplanes covered nearly between four and six floors of the buildings. Of course, in addition to the debris, we also had jet fuel that was dispersed in that region.

On the interior, in the core of the building, these buildings had 47 columns-- fairly massive columns inside. In the case of building one, six of the columns were severed and three of them were heavily damaged. In the case of building two, 10 of them were severed, and one was heavily damaged.

What is very important to note is that in the case of building two, that damage to the core was heavily in the southeast corner. So, it's like looking at a three or four legged stool, and essentially taking out one leg. Inherently, the second building was a lot more unstable than the first building, and one of the key reasons why the second building collapsed much faster.

SECTION 4: INFERNO

A number of factors contributed to having a very large, multi-floor fire that was uncontrollable. First and foremost, the sprinkler system was not functional, because the water supply to the sprinkler system was damaged by the airplane impacts.

We had dispersion of very large amounts of jet fuel through multiple floors, igniting fires through a large segment of all of those floors, which is very, very unusual.

Most of the jet fuel was burned in a matter of a few minutes-- maybe five or six minutes, but certainly less than ten minutes. Furthermore, about a third of the jet fuel actually burned outside the building, as a result of the fire balls.

So, what really was burning for the next hour or hour and a half was the everyday contents of the buildings. The workstations, the computers, the paper, the carpets and so forth.

In building one, the fires moved from location to location, every 20 minutes, consuming the combustibles in any given location. And as long as the windows kept breaking to provide the air that was needed for combustion, the fire kept propagating. Toward the end of the period when the buildings were about to collapse, the fires were actually on the south side of the building. And it's the south side of the building that played a key role in the collapse.

In the case of building two, a significant amount of the combustible debris was piled up on the east face of the building. And therefore, there was a persisting fire in the same location for a very, very long time. And the second reason for the early collapse of the second building was really this persisting fire on the east face of the building.

SECTION 5: COLLAPSE

The World Trade Center towers would likely not have collapsed under the combined effects of aircraft impact damage, and the extensive multi-floor fires if the fireproofing had not been widely dislodged by the aircraft impact.

What was applied to these buildings was spray-applied fireproofing. And the use of this kind of fireproofing for the floor system, the floor trusses, was very unusual.

When you heat steel up, and particularly when there's no fireproofing, the steel tends to soften, and loses strength and stiffness. It becomes very much like play dough.

In addition to the columns weakening, the floors that were in the vicinity of those faces also weakened. And as a result of that, the floors sagged. And the sagging of the floors actually helped pull the external columns inward. And caused an inward bowing of the external columns. That is captured in photographs.

What then happened after the inward bowing is there was a stage at which a critical amount of inward bowing took place, and the columns snapped. And essentially the columns, once they snapped, the inwardly-bowed columns suddenly sprung back and out. And once that happened, the top mass, that rigid mass of somewhere on the order of 10 to 20 floors just started moving downward.

And the structure below, because of the fracturing of the columns just before it, that had snapped, was unable to withstand the energy that was released.

The primary reason for the collapse was the fact that you had massive airplane damage. A massive amount of fireproofing that was dislodged, and a really huge fire, that all three combined initiated the collapse. There was no one particular event that played a more significant role. It was a combination of events that led to a general system collapse of the building.

SECTION 6: SAFER BUILDINGS

Our investigations are geared toward fact finding, and they're geared toward enhancing safety of buildings in the future. They're not geared toward fault finding. However, what I am able to say is that we did not find a deficiency in the building, in terms of the building being inconsistent with the New York City building codes, in a way that influenced the outcome of 9/11.

We made 30 recommendations as a result of the investigation. Both in the area of structural design, and in the area of evacuation and emergency response, we can make considerable improvements with minimal investment. And the return is going to be exceedingly high for those minimal investments. Particularly since, when we are dealing with tall buildings, we're dealing with the lives of a very large number of people.

PD - I'll admit I haven't read much related to the conspiricy theory you speak of. But I have to take Ken Ware's side on this one. For one thing, Occam's Razor must come into play here. As you know, that's the principle that states "the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one". Bin Laden had been linked to other acts of terror and was highly motivated to strike at the United States. In fact, we had advance intelligence indicating just that intention. It's also the case that OBL was an engineer and this kind of thing would have appealed to him. I'm not claiming that he single handedly ran the calculations that determined it was possible to bring down the towers with aircraft, but as you pointed out earlier, some of those foreign dudes are pretty smart. And what if they hadn't even imagined that the towers would collapse? Wouldn't it have been enough just to inflict the kind of damage on the WTC with the planes that would have otherwise occurred?

A second, and even more compelling argument against the conspiracy theory is that, as you describe it, a very large number of insiders would have had to be involved to pull this off if it were in fact an "inside job". Think about just the logistics of planting all that explosive and the control system that would be needed to detonate it. How about all the FBI and CIA and other people "in the know" that would have had to maintain rigid discipline in order to keep the lid on? And even if that were possible, a dozen years later, someone, maybe multiple someones would have cracked by now and spilled the beans. Either that, or a whole lot of people would have had to be "disappeared", some of them high ranking. I think this would be glaringly obvious.

While I believe that there are certain people evil enough to conceive something like this (e.g., Dick Cheney) I don't believe it could have been pulled off in secrecy. If anyone in the Bush Administration was in fact complicit in any of this, It was probably limited to suppressing the intelligence that could have prevented the act.

Palindromedary - here is a copy of the transcripts from the investigation conducted for Congress by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. You were right about the main support beams and this report explains what happened and what caused the towers to fall. This information was copied from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/world-trade-center-collapse.html This report supports what I believe happened on 9/11 to the twin towers. Ken Ware.

SECTION 1: THE INVESTIGATION

SHAYM SUNDER: I'm Shyam Sunder. I am the lead investigator for the World Trade Center investigation that was conducted by the National Institute of Standards in Technology.

In many typical investigations, you have a partially collapsed building standing there that can be looked at by engineers.

In the case of the World Trade Center towers, the buildings had collapsed. And also there was an immediate need for search and rescue of people who might have been buried under the rubble. So there was also a need to clear the site as quickly as possible. It's very unusual that the evidence is so completely scattered, and that made our investigation a lot more complicated.

We realized that we had to model the complete aircraft impact. We had to model the evolution of the fires over the next hour, or hour and half. We had to model how the steel weakened as a result of the high temperatures. And lastly, we had to model the progression of failures-- local failures in the structure, which then led to the overall initiation of collapse. Each of these stages had very sophisticated models that were validated using the photographic evidence we have, validated using laboratory experiments that we conducted. And validated, ultimately, based on how the buildings actually collapsed using videos.

SECTION 2: IMPACT

Through a fairly sophisticated analysis of the video information, we were able to determine the airplane speed, direction of the airplane, and the orientation of the airplane as each of the airplanes impacted each of the buildings.

The north tower was hit at 8:46 by a 767-200 extended range airplane, between the 93rd and the 99th floor. The airplane was flying at about 550 miles an hour, with a total weight of somewhere on the order of 283,000 pounds.

The second building to be hit, which was hit 16 minutes later, was hit on the south face of the south tower. Again by a 767-200 extended range airplane, but this time between floors 77 and 85.

And one of the questions that comes out from looking at this information is how is it here we have two seemingly similar buildings—they were called Twin Towers—and they were hit by nearly identical airplane, but how come one building lasted for 102 minutes, the other building lasted for 56 minutes, which is nearly a factor of two.

SECTION 3: IMMEDIATE DAMAGE

On the outside of the buildings, on the perimeter, there were about 59 to 60 columns on each face. The first thing that happened as the airplanes went through the dense grid of column is that they got disintegrated by the columns, which acted like knife edges. Pieces of the airplane actually came out from the other end. For example, we had landing gear come out from the south side of building one, and we had an engine component come out from the northeast corner of building two.

The debris that was generated by the airplanes covered nearly between four and six floors of the buildings. Of course, in addition to the debris, we also had jet fuel that was dispersed in that region.

On the interior, in the core of the building, these buildings had 47 columns-- fairly massive columns inside. In the case of building one, six of the columns were severed and three of them were heavily damaged. In the case of building two, 10 of them were severed, and one was heavily damaged.

What is very important to note is that in the case of building two, that damage to the core was heavily in the southeast corner. So, it's like looking at a three or four legged stool, and essentially taking out one leg. Inherently, the second building was a lot more unstable than the first building, and one of the key reasons why the second building collapsed much faster.

SECTION 4: INFERNO

A number of factors contributed to having a very large, multi-floor fire that was uncontrollable. First and foremost, the sprinkler system was not functional, because the water supply to the sprinkler system was damaged by the airplane impacts.

We had dispersion of very large amounts of jet fuel through multiple floors, igniting fires through a large segment of all of those floors, which is very, very unusual.

Most of the jet fuel was burned in a matter of a few minutes-- maybe five or six minutes, but certainly less than ten minutes. Furthermore, about a third of the jet fuel actually burned outside the building, as a result of the fire balls.

So, what really was burning for the next hour or hour and a half was the everyday contents of the buildings. The workstations, the computers, the paper, the carpets and so forth.

In building one, the fires moved from location to location, every 20 minutes, consuming the combustibles in any given location. And as long as the windows kept breaking to provide the air that was needed for combustion, the fire kept propagating. Toward the end of the period when the buildings were about to collapse, the fires were actually on the south side of the building. And it's the south side of the building that played a key role in the collapse.

In the case of building two, a significant amount of the combustible debris was piled up on the east face of the building. And therefore, there was a persisting fire in the same location for a very, very long time. And the second reason for the early collapse of the second building was really this persisting fire on the east face of the building.

SECTION 5: COLLAPSE

The World Trade Center towers would likely not have collapsed under the combined effects of aircraft impact damage, and the extensive multi-floor fires if the fireproofing had not been widely dislodged by the aircraft impact.

What was applied to these buildings was spray-applied fireproofing. And the use of this kind of fireproofing for the floor system, the floor trusses, was very unusual.

When you heat steel up, and particularly when there's no fireproofing, the steel tends to soften, and loses strength and stiffness. It becomes very much like play dough.

In addition to the columns weakening, the floors that were in the vicinity of those faces also weakened. And as a result of that, the floors sagged. And the sagging of the floors actually helped pull the external columns inward. And caused an inward bowing of the external columns. That is captured in photographs.

What then happened after the inward bowing is there was a stage at which a critical amount of inward bowing took place, and the columns snapped. And essentially the columns, once they snapped, the inwardly-bowed columns suddenly sprung back and out. And once that happened, the top mass, that rigid mass of somewhere on the order of 10 to 20 floors just started moving downward.

And the structure below, because of the fracturing of the columns just before it, that had snapped, was unable to withstand the energy that was released.

The primary reason for the collapse was the fact that you had massive airplane damage. A massive amount of fireproofing that was dislodged, and a really huge fire, that all three combined initiated the collapse. There was no one particular event that played a more significant role. It was a combination of events that led to a general system collapse of the building.

SECTION 6: SAFER BUILDINGS

Our investigations are geared toward fact finding, and they're geared toward enhancing safety of buildings in the future. They're not geared toward fault finding. However, what I am able to say is that we did not find a deficiency in the building, in terms of the building being inconsistent with the New York City building codes, in a way that influenced the outcome of 9/11.

We made 30 recommendations as a result of the investigation. Both in the area of structural design, and in the area of evacuation and emergency response, we can make considerable improvements with minimal investment. And the return is going to be exceedingly high for those minimal investments. Particularly since, when we are dealing with tall buildings, we're dealing with the lives of a very large number of people.

Palindromedary - I am also sorry; you are incorrect concerning the main support beams. I will try to locate more information concerning this subject and get back to you with the truth of how the towers were constructed. Also, you are mistaken when you say I get angry. I am aggressive by nature and you have mistaken aggressiveness for anger