Posted on 03/10/2002 9:55:18 PM PST by CalConservative
I receive a lot of strange information from a wide variety of sources. Some of it is intriguing. Some of it is flat-out weird. I try (and frequently fail) to temporarily set aside my own personal prejudices to objectively as possible consider the merits of both the intriguing and weird.
Recently, an interesting French website has been asking questions about the crash of American Airlines Flight 77, which reportedly crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11.
The conventional wisdom has been inculcated into us that there were four terrorist hijacked airplanes that tragic day. But there are refutations for each of the official scenarios floating around. The conspiracy theory industry hasn't been this jazzed since the JFK assassination.
However, in the shadow of the creative writing, multi-phased propaganda and bovine excrement, there are several questions that at least should be asked and answered.
The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State.
– Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels
The French website has pictures of the Pentagon from Sept. 11. I looked at the pictures shown and, frankly, (despite my visceral reluctance to buy into another conspiracy) can't answer the questions raised. Maybe our readers can? Click on the French link and let us know what you think. I have also viewed the MSNBC footage over two dozen times and I still can't see the plane. Can you?
1. The first satellite image shows the section of the building that was hit by the Boeing. In the image, the second ring of the building is also visible. It is clear that the aircraft only hit the first ring. The four interior rings remain intact. They were only fire-damaged after the initial explosion.
How can a Boeing 757-200 – weighing nearly 100 tons and traveling at a minimum speed of 250 miles an hour – only have damaged the outside of the Pentagon?
2. The next two photographs show the building just after the attack. The aircraft apparently only hit the ground floor. The four upper floors collapsed toward 10:10 am. The building is 78 feet high.
How can a plane 44.7 feet high, over 155 feet long, with a wingspan of almost 125 feet and a cockpit almost 12 feet high, crash into just the ground floor of this building?
3. Look at the photograph of the lawn in front of the damaged building.
Where is the debris? Any debris! Did it all disintegrate on contact?
4. There are photographs, which show representations of a Boeing 757-200 superimposed on the section of the building that was hit.
What happened to the wings of the aircraft? Why isn't there any wing damage?
5. One journalist asked: "Is there anything left of the aircraft at all?" At a press conference the day after the tragedy, Arlington County Fire Chief Ed Plaugher said, "First of all, the question about the aircraft, there are some small pieces of aircraft visible from the interior during this fire-fighting operation. I'm talking about, but not large sections."
The follow-up question asked, "In other words, there's no fuselage sections and that sort of thing?" Plaugher replied, "You know, I'd rather not comment on that. We have a lot of eyewitnesses that can give you better information about what actually happened with the aircraft as it approached. So we don't know. I don't know."
Wait a minute! Time after time (Oklahoma City bombing, TWA Flight 800, Flight 93 et al.) we are told not to depend on eyewitnesses?
When asked by a journalist: "Where is the jet fuel?" The chief responded, "We have what we believe is a puddle right there that the … what we believe is to be the nose of the aircraft."
Notwithstanding the collective myopia in not being able to see what we are being told, there are more questions.
One pilot wrote, "I flew the Boeing 747 jumbo jet, but not this 757 … from what I see (or don't see) looking at these pictures, it's hard to pick out aircraft parts:
Whatever inexplicable anomalies exist, the passengers on Flight 77 died that tragic day. Barbara Olson called her husband from Flight 77 and told him about the hijacking in progress. There was most certainly an American Airlines Flight 77 with real people on board, and families in grief.
What did happen to the plane? Where is it?
Wait, let me see. On one hand we have hundreds of witnesses who saw a jetliner crash into the Pentagon.
On the other hand we have, what, a hundred or so people who saw a white; no, yellow; no orange; no blue streak coming from the south; no, soutwest; no, east; no, north.
When you have hundreds of people, accompanied by other evidence (pictures, plane debris, etc), who all saw the EXACT SAME THING, it is an easier thing to believe.
So you cowardly ignore all the other unanswerable questions.
SO let's hear it, once and for all, WHAT IS YOUR EXACT THEORY?
You aren't even worthy of the tinfoil-hat moniker.
The proof is in the MSNBC footage. Click on start and let the frames run until the final one, then grab the frame indicator with your mouse, dragging it back to the start position.
With your cursor still on the frame indicator, move it back and forth between frames one and two, like an animator would flip cartoon pages.
Above and behind the right post, you will see the tail of the jet, along with a dust trail, that disappears in the second frame.
The second frame, taken perhaps a second? later, shows the beginning of the explosion and the dust trail now goes all the way to the front of the explosion.
The plane skidded along the ground, across the lawn and into the building in that short time, it was moving so fast.
NO, NO, NO! You've got it all wrong. Those guys are putting the debris OUT, so gullible people like us will take pictures of it and think a plane hit the building.
Great pictures, BTW.
This story is so ridiculous it is not even worth my spending the words to debunk it. Besides, Snopes did a better job of it than I ever could at this page:
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/pentagon.htm
(I really wish people would check Snopes before wasting FR bandwidth.)
Same goes for the one that crashed in Penn. Nothing but a big crater in the ground. I found that weird
Okay!
I'd like to try to put an end to your misery; since you've only been here since the end of October of 2001, you probably
do not know that THIS POSTER is Barbara Olson, who died on this plane.
She was a Freeper.....and a Freeper friend.
Tell it to people who might believe you.......over at DU.
Thanks. A number of those threads were nuked.
Ted was totally unconvincing after her death and is now hanging out with some 25 year old doll... not exactly what you would expect.
To the contrary, it makes sense.
I too went through a traumatic event last year, and could not repeat the same level of "convincing" each & every time I recounted the tale to someone. Eventually someone commented on how dispassionately I told the story, and I pointed out that I simply had no more emotional energy to expend on it.
As for the "25 year old doll": not an uncommon way to cope. He just lost his wife, and was smacked in the face with his own mortality; many deal with this at a base level by seeking to procreate rather promptly.
A plane would have messed up the grass directly in front of the building which it did not (not open for discussion).
Oh, suddenly a point is not open for discussion without any evidence? PROVE IT. When a TFHer stops discussion cold on a point, that's ususally regarding the best proof he's wrong.
A plane would have gone through 3 rings of the building which MSNBC just reported... look at the picture below and previous pictures and you'll see the demolition only took out the first ring.
I look at the top-down photo, and it's plain as day that the impact punctured the first ring, and continued to puncture & damage the inner rings with progressively less damage. Comparing before & after shots makes it plain. That the structures were strong substantially lessened the damage per ring, but there is damage nonetheless.
none that saw both plane and explosion...
BS. That few saw both is reasonable, as it came in low and fast; few are observant enough to react & watch. We've even got it on video (the parking lot camera).
This theory is not comforting but it is the only thing I can come up with that is realistic.
And it's downright pathetic. Why COULDN'T a terrorist hijack a plane and drive it into the biggest building in DC? There are indeed people on this planet who hate the USA that much, hijackings do happen, and it's hard to not hit the Pentagon if you're trying to hit it.
That bears repeating: WHY _NOT_ A TERRORIST-DRIVEN CRASH??? Just because you, and armchair conspiracist, can't immediately explain a few bits of photos & burrowcrap drivel doesn't mean it didn't happen. Just because someone's tone of voice seems a bit off, and few millimeters of photo look odd, doesn't mean squat. I've seen car crashes in person, examined them, and realized that nuanced "evidence" is more likely misunderstood than proof of my impressions.
This conspiratorial drivel is just pathetic. "It wasn't terrorists crashing planes...it must be the Mossad & CIA who planted thousands of pounds of explosives at one of the nation's most secure sites, stole an airliner, flew it toward the point but missed at the last second, then made it and all the passengers disappear in-flight, and faked surveilance camera footage, and got most of the crash patterns right, and managed to keep absolutely everyone who knew silent, and and..., all just to hide a little blackmail" SHEESH! This drivel is pathetic. I do not rightly apprehend the mindset which rejects the simple and obvious in favor for the incredibly complex yet pointless.
How right you are. But I prefer "like flies on s**t", it's more descriptive.
What nonsense it that? That a jetliner crashed into the Pentagon?
I leave the thread!
Then why are you still here?
Of course, you can make a post telling me why you won't answer the questions, but you won't answer the questions.
You are a coward.
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