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On September 11, 2001, at the behest of radical Islamic jihadist Osama bin Laden, nineteen Muslim terrorists hijacked four American airliners and used them to kill almost twice as many people as the Japanese did with their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. There was one big difference, however. While most of the people the Japanese killed were soldiers and sailors, except for the military personnel who died in the Pentagon (evidently a ?secondary target?), the vast majority of victims on 9/11 were civilians: men, women and children totally uninvolved in whatever inspired the hatred that drove the terrorists who murderously snuffed out their lives.

According to one engineer I read about in a news story, if the WTC towers had acted as rigid bodies instead of flexible bodies, the torque created by the initial impacts would have knocked them over. In that case, we wouldn't have been talking about 3,000 people dying and comparing it to Pearl Harbor. We would have had 30,00 - 50,000 dead and would be comparing it to Antietam or Gettysburg.

My pet theory is that the first attack which hit the North tower on the 92nd floor (where the impact would generate more torque) was intended to knock it over and cause a chain reaction that would knock down other nearby buildings. The pilots of the second 767 seeing the North Tower still standing but on fire aimed lower on the the South tower to make evacuation more difficult for people in the upper floors. I think that if the first tower had collapsed on impact, the second plane would have also aimed for the upper floors. I have no way to prove this, because most of the conspirators are dead.

Bin Ladin's family made their money constructing high-rises in Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Ladin was trained as a construction engineer. According to stories released after 9/11, he had hoped that the buildings would fall over rather than collapse in on themselves. As you say, that would have killed far more people.

Even as it was, it is only by God's blessing that 20,000 or more weren't killed in the collapse. I have heard of several people who seemingly accidentally didn't get to work on time that morning.