quote:
Originally posted by Boomer Chick:
The looniest of all 9/11 conspiracy theoriesby Gerard Holmgren
Astute observers of history are aware that for every notable event there
will usually be at least one ,often several wild conspiracy theories which
spring up around it. "The CIA killed Hendrix"; "the Pope had John Lennon
murdered"; "Hitler was half Werewolf"; "Space aliens replaced Nixon with a
clone," etc, etc. The bigger the event, the more ridiculous and more
numerous are the fanciful rantings which circulate in relation to it.
So its hardly surprising that the events of Sept. 11, 2001, have spawned
their fair share of these ludicrous fairy tales. And as always, there is --
sadly -- a small but gullible percentage of the population eager to lap up
these tall tales, regardless of facts or rational analysis.
One of the wilder stories circulating about Sept 11 (and one that has
attracted something of a cult following amongst conspiracy buffs) is that it
was carried out by 19 fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil
genius named Osama bin Laden, with no apparent motivation other than that
they "hate our freedoms."
Never a group of people to be bothered by facts, the perpetrators of this
cartoon fantasy have constructed an elaborately woven web of delusions and
unsubstantiated hearsay in order to promote this garbage across the Internet
and the media to the extent that a number of otherwise rational people have
actually fallen under its spell.
Normally I don't even bother debunking this kind of junk, but the effect
that this paranoid myth is beginning to have requires a little rational
analysis, in order to consign it to the same rubbish bin as all such silly
conspiracy theories.
These crackpots even contend that the extremist Bush regime was caught
unawares by the attacks, had no hand in organizing them and actually would
have stopped them if it had been able. Blindly ignoring the stand down of
the U.S. Air Force, the insider trading on airline stocks (linked to the
CIA), the complicit behavior of Bush on the morning of the attacks, the
controlled demolition of the WTC, the firing of a missile into the Pentagon
and a host of other documented proofs that the Bush regime was behind the
attacks, the conspiracy theorists stick doggedly to a silly story about 19
Arab hijackers somehow managing to commandeer four planes simultaneously and
fly them around U.S. airspace for nearly two hours, crashing them into
important buildings, without the U.S. intelligence services having any idea
that it was coming, and without the Air Force knowing what to do.
The daunting task of analysis
The huge difficulties with such a stupid story force them to invent even
more preposterous stories to distract from its core silliness, and thus the
tale has escalated into a mythic fantasy of truly gargantuan proportions.
It's difficult to apply rational analysis to such unmitigated stupidity, but
that is the task which I take on in this article. However, it should be
noted that one of the curious characteristics of conspiracy theorists is
that they effortlessly change their so called evidence in response to each
aspect which is debunked. As soon as one delusion is unmasked, they simply
invent another to replace it and deny that the first ever existed.
Eventually, when they have turned full circle through this endlessly
changing fantasy fog , they then reinvent the original delusion and deny
that you ever debunked it, thus beginning the circle once more. This
technique is known as "the fruit loop" and saves the conspiracy theorist
from ever having to see any of their ideas through to their (ill)logical
conclusions.
The fruit loop
According to the practitioners of the fruit loop, 19 Arabs took over the
four planes by subduing the passengers and crew through the use of guns,
knives, box cutters and gas, and then used electronic guidance systems which
they had smuggled on board to fly the planes to their targets.
The suspension of disbelief required for this outrageous concoction is only
for the hard core conspiracy theorist. For a start, they conveniently skip
over the awkward fact that there weren't any Arabs on the planes.
If there were, one must speculate that they somehow got on board without
being filmed by any of the security cameras and without being registered on
the passenger lists. But the curly question of how they are supposed to have
got on board is all too mundane for the exciting world of the conspiracy
theorist.
Who's on first?
With vague mumblings that they must have been using false ID (but never
specifying which IDs they are alleged to have used, or how these were traced
to their real identities), they quickly bypass this problem, to relate
exciting and sinister tales about how some of the fictitious fiends were
actually searched before boarding because they looked suspicious.
However, as inevitably happens with any web of lies, this simply paints them
into an even more difficult corner. How are they supposed to have gotten on
board with all that stuff if they were searched? And if they used gas in a
confined space, they would have been affected themselves unless they also
had masks in their luggage.
"Excuse me sir, why do you have a boxcutter, a gun, a container of gas, a
gas mask and an electronic guidance unit in your luggage?"
"A present for your grandmother? Very well sir, on you get."
"Very strange," thinks the security officer. "That's the fourth Arabic man
without an Arabic name who just got on board with a knife, gun or boxcutter
and gas mask. And why does that security camera keep flicking off every time
one these characters shows up? Must be one of those days I guess..."
Asking any of these basic questions to a conspiracy theorist is likely to
cause a sudden leap to the claim that we know that they were on board
because they left a credit card trail for the tickets they had purchased and
cars they had rented. So, if they used credit cards that identified them,
how does that reconcile with the claim that they used false IDs to get on to
the plane?
But by this time, the fruit loop is in full swing, as the conspiracy
theorist tries to stay one jump ahead of this annoying and awkward rational
analysis. They will allege that the hijackers' passports were found at the
crash scenes. "So there!" they exalt triumphantly, their fanatical faces
lighting up with that deranged look of one who has just experienced a
revelation of questionable sanity.
Hmm? So they got on board with false IDs but took their real passports with
them? However, by this time the fruit loop has been completely
circumnavigated, and the conspiracy theorist exclaims impatiently, "Who said
anything about false IDs? We know what seats they were sitting in! Their
presence is well documented!"
And so the whole loop starts again. "Well, why aren't they on the passenger
lists?"
"You numbskull! They assumed the identities of other passengers!" And so
on...
Finally, out of sheer fascination with this circular method of creative
delusion, the rational sceptic will allow them to get away with this loop,
in order to move on to the next question, and see what further delights
await us in the unraveling of this marvelously stupid story.
"Uh, how come their passports survived fiery crashes that completely
incinerated the planes and all the passengers?"
The answer of course is that its just one of those strange coincidences,
those little quirks of fate that do happen from time to time. You know, like
the same person winning the lottery four weeks in a row. The odds are
astronomical, but these things do happen...
This is another favourite deductive method of the conspiracy theorist. The
"improbability drive," in which they decide upon a conclusion without any
evidence whatsoever to support it, and then continually speculate a series
of wildly improbable events and unbelievable coincidences to support it,
shrugging off the implausibility of each event with the vague assertion that
sometimes the impossible happens (just about all the time in their world).
There is a principle called "Occam's razor" which suggests that in the
absence of evidence to the contrary, the simplest explanation is most likely
to be correct. Conspiracy theorists hate Occam's razor.
Hijacking 101
Having for the sake of amusement, allowed them to get away with the silly
story of the 19 invisible Arabs, we move on to the question of how they are
supposed to have taken over the planes.
Hijacking a plane is not an easy thing to do. Hijacking it without the pilot
being able to alert ground control is nearly impossible. The pilot has only
to punch in a four digit code to alert ground control to a hijacking.
Unconcerned with the awkward question of plausibility, the conspiracy buffs
maintain that on that Sept 11, the invisible hijackers took over the plane
by the rather crude method of threatening people with boxcutters and knives,
and spraying gas (after they had attached their masks, obviously), but
somehow took control of the plane without the crew first getting a chance to
punch in the hijacking code. Not just on one plane, but on all four. At this
point in the tale, the conspiracy theorist is again forced to call upon the
services of the improbability drive.
So now that our incredibly lucky hijackers have taken control of the planes,
all four pilots fly them with breathtaking skill and certainty to their
fiery end -- all four unflinching in their steely resolve for a swift
meeting with Allah.
Apart from their psychotic hatred of "our freedoms," it was their fanatical
devotion to Islam which enabled them to summon up the iron will to do this.
Which is strange, because according to another piece of hearsay peddled by
the conspiracy buffs, these guys actually went out drinking and womanizing
the night before their great martyrdom, even leaving their Korans in the
bar -- really impeccable Islamic behavior -- and then got up at 5 a.m. the
next morning to pull off the greatest covert operation in history.
This also requires us to believe that they were even clear headed enough to
learn how to fly the huge planes by reading flight manuals in Arabic in the
car on the way to the airport. We know this because they supposedly left the
flight manuals there for us to find.
It gets better. Their practical training had allegedly been limited to
Cessnas and flight simulators, but this was no barrier to the unflinching
certainty with which they took over the planes and skillfully guided them to
their doom.
If they are supposed to have done their flight training with these tools,
which would be available just about anywhere in the world, its not clear why
they would have decided to risk blowing their cover to U.S. intelligence
services by doing the training in Florida, rather than somewhere in the
Middle East, but such reasoning is foreign to the foggy world of the
conspiracy theorist, too trapped in the constant rotation of the mental
fruit loop to make their unsubstantiated fabrications seem even
semi-believable.
A Ryder truck with wings?
Having triumphantly established a circular delusion in support of the
mythical Arabs, the conspiracy theorist now confronts the difficult question
of why there's nothing left of the planes. Anybody who has seen the
endlessly replayed footage of the second plane going into the WTC will
realize that the plane was packed with explosives. Planes do not and cannot
blow up into nothing in that manner when they crash.
Did the mythical Arabs also haul a huge heap of explosives on board, and
manage to deploy them in such a manner that they went off in the exact
instant of the crash, completely vapourizing the plane?
This is a little difficult even for the conspiracy theorist, who at this
point decides that its easier to invent new laws of physics in order to keep
the delusion rolling along.
There weren't any explosives. It wasn't an inside job. The plane blew up
into nothing from its exploding fuel load! Remarkable!
Sluggishly combustible jet fuel, which is basically kerosene and which burns
at a maximum temperature of around 800 C, has suddenly taken on the
qualities of a ferociously explosive demolition agent, vapourizing 65 tons
of aircraft into a puff of smoke. Never mind that a plane of that size
contains around 15 tons of steel and titanium, of which even the melting
points are about double that of the maximum combustion temperature of
kerosene -- let alone the boiling point -- which is what would be required
to vapourize a plane. And then there's about 50 tons of aluminium to be
accounted for.
In excess of 15 pounds of metal was vapourized for each gallon of kerosene.
For the conspiracy theorist, such inconvenient facts are vaguely dismissed
as "mumbo jumbo."
This convenient little phrase is their answer to just about anything factual
or logical. Like a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of a hat, they suddenly
become fanatically insistent about the devastating explosive qualities of
kerosene, something hitherto completely unknown to science, but just
discovered by them, at that very moment. Blissfully ignoring the fact that
never before or since in aviation history has a plane vapourized into
nothing from an exploding fuel load, the conspiracy theorist relies upon
Hollywood images, where the effects are always larger than life, and
certainly larger than the intellects of these cretins.
"Its a well known fact that planes blow up into nothing on impact," they
state with pompous certainty. "Watch any Bruce Willis movie."
"Care to provide any documented examples? If it's a well known fact, then
presumably this well known fact springs from some kind of documentation --
other than Bruce Willis movies?"
At this point the mad but cunning eyes of the conspiracy theorist will
narrow as they sense the corner that they have backed themselves into, and
plan their escape by means of another stunning backflip.
"Ah, but planes have never crashed into buildings before, so there's no way
of telling," they counter with a sly grin.
Well, actually planes have crashed into buildings before (and since). None
of them vapourized into almost nothing.
"But not big planes, with that much fuel," they shriek in hysterical denial.
Or that much metal to vapourize.
"Yes but not hijacked planes!"
"Are you suggesting that whether the crash is deliberate or accidental
affects the combustion qualities of the fuel?"
"Now you're just being silly."
Although collisions with buildings are rare, planes frequently crash into
mountains, streets, other aircraft, nosedive into the ground, or have bombs
planted aboard them, and don't vapourize into nothing. What's so special
about a tower that's mostly glass? But by now, the conspiracy theorist has
once again sailed happily around the fruit loop. "Its a well documented fact
that planes explode into nothing on impact."
Effortlessly weaving back and forth between the position that its a "well
known fact" and that "its never happened before, so we have nothing to
compare it to," the conspiracy theorist has now convinced themselves (if not
too many other people) that the WTC plane was not loaded with explosives,
and that the instant vapourization of the plane in a massive fireball was
the same as any other plane crash you might care to mention. Round and round
the fruit loop...
The "new math"
But the hurdles which confront the conspiracy theorist are many, and they
are now forced to implement even more creative uses for the newly discovered
shockingly destructive qualities of kerosene. They have to explain how the
Arabs also engineered the elegant vertical collapse of both the WTC towers,
and for this awkward fact the easiest counter is to simply deny that it was
a controlled demolition, and claim that the buildings collapsed from fire
caused by the burning kerosene.
For this, its necessary to sweep aside the second law of thermodynamics and
propose kerosene, which is not only impossibly destructive, but also
recycles itself for a second burning in violation of the law of degradation
of energy.
You see, it not only consumed itself in a sudden catastrophic fireball,
vapourizing a 65-ton plane into nothing, but then came back for a second go,
burning at 2000 degrees C for another hour at the impact point, melting the
skyscraper's steel like butter. And, while it was doing all this, it also
poured down the elevator shafts, starting fires all through the building.
When I was at school there was a little thing called the entropy law which
suggests that a given portion of fuel can only burn once, something which is
readily observable in the real world, even for those who didn't make it to
junior high school science. But this is no problem for the conspiracy
theorist. Gleefully, they claim that a few thousand gallons of kerosene is
enough to:
1. completely vapourize a 65 ton aircraft;
2. have enough left over to burn ferociously enough for over an hour at the
impact point to melt steel ( melting point about double the maximum
combustion temperature of the fuel );
3. still have enough left over to pour down the elevator shafts and start
similarly destructive fires all throughout the building.
This kerosene really is remarkable stuff! How chilling to realize that those
kerosene heaters we had in the house when I was a kid were deadly bombs,
just waiting to go off. One false move and the entire street might have been
vapourized. And never again will I take kerosene lamps out camping. One
moment you're there innocently holding the lamp, the next moment -- kapow!
Vapourized into nothing along with the rest of the camp site, and still
leaving enough of the deadly stuff to start a massive forest fire.
These whackos are actually claiming that the raging inferno allegedly
created by the miraculously recycling, and impossibly hot burning kerosene
melted or at least softened the steel supports of the skyscraper. Oblivious
to the fact that the smoke coming from the WTC was black, which indicates an
oxygen starved fire and, therefore, not particularly hot, they trumpet an
alleged temperature in the building of 2000 C , without a shred of evidence
to support this curious suspension of the laws of physics.
Not content with this ludicrous garbage, they then contend that as the steel
frames softened, they came straight down instead of buckling and twisting
and falling sideways.
Laws be damned
Since they've already re-engineered the combustion qualities of jet fuel,
violated the second law of thermodynamics, and redefined the structural
properties of steel, why let a little thing like the laws of gravity get in
the way?
The tower fell in a time almost identical to that of a free-falling object,
dropped from that height, meaning that it's physically impossible for it to
have collapsed by the method of the top floors smashing through the lower
floors.
But, according to the conspiracy theorists, the laws of gravity were
temporarily suspended on the morning of Sept 11. It appears that the evil
psychic power of those dreadful Arabs knew no bounds. Even after they were
dead, they were able, by the power of their evil spirits, to force down the
tower at a speed physically impossible under the laws of gravity, had it
been meeting any resistance from fireproofed steel structures originally
designed to resist many tons of hurricane force wind -- as well as the
impact of a Boeing passenger jet straying off course.
Clearly, these conspiracy nuts never did their science homework at school,
but did become extremely adept at inventing tall tales for why they couldn't
complete their assignments.
"Muslim terrorists stole my notes, sir"
"No miss, the kerosene heater blew up and vapourized everything in the
street, except for my passport."
"You see sir, the school bus was hijacked by Arabs who destroyed my homework
because they hate our freedoms."
Or perhaps they misunderstood the term "creative science" and mistakenly
thought that coming up with such rubbish was in fact, their science
homework.
The ferocious heat generated by this ghastly kerosene was, according to the
conspiracy theorists, the reason why so many of the WTC victims can't be
identified. DNA is destroyed by heat. (Although 2000 C isn't really
required, 100 degrees C will generally do the job).
This is quite remarkable, because according to the conspiracy theorist, the
nature of DNA suddenly changes if you go to a different city.
Not all DNA created equal
That's right! If you are killed by an Arab terrorist in NY, your DNA will be
destroyed by such temperatures. But if you are killed by an Arab terrorist
in Washington DC, your DNA will be so robust that it can survive
temperatures which completely vapourize a 65-ton aircraft.
You see, these loonies have somehow concocted the idea that the missile
which hit the pentagon was not a missile at all, but one of the hijacked
planes. And to prove this unlikely premise, they point to a propaganda
statement from the Bush regime, which rather stupidly claims that all but
one of the people aboard the plane were identified from the site by DNA
testing, even though nothing remains of the plane.
"The plane was vapourized by the fuel tank explosion," maintain these space
loonies, but only one of the people inside it were not identified by DNA
testing.
So there we have it. The qualities of DNA are different, depending upon
which city you're in, or perhaps depending upon which fairy story you're
trying to sell at any particular time.
Missiles have wings, too
This concoction about one of the hijacked planes hitting the Pentagon really
is a howler. For those not familiar with the layout of the Pentagon, it
consists of five rings of building, each with a space in between. Each ring
of building is about 30 to 35 feet deep, with a similar amount of open space
between it and the next ring.
The object which penetrated the Pentagon went in at about a 45 degree angle,
punching a neat, circular hole about 12 feet in diameter through three rings
(six walls).
A little later a section of wall about 65 feet wide collapsed in the outer
ring. Since the plane, which the conspiracy theorists claim to be
responsible for the impact, had a wing span of 125 feet and a length of 155
feet and there was no wreckage of the plane, either inside or outside the
building, and the lawns outside were still smooth and green enough to play
golf on, this crazy delusion is clearly a physical impossibility.
But hey, we've already disregarded the combustion qualities of jet fuel, the
normal properties of common building materials, the properties of DNA, the
laws of gravity and the second law of thermodynamics, so what the hell --
why not throw in a little spatial impossibility as well?
I would have thought that the observation that a solid object cannot pass
through another solid object without leaving a hole at least as big as
itself is reasonably sound science. But to the conspiracy theorist, this is
"mumbo jumbo." It conflicts with the delusion that they're hooked on, so it
"must be wrong" although trying to get them to explain exactly how it could
be wrong is a futile endeavour.
Conspiracy theorists fly into a curious panic whenever the Pentagon missile
is mentioned. They nervously maintain that the plane was vapourized by it's
exploding fuel load and point to the WTC crash as evidence of this behavior
(That is a wonderful fruit loop).
Like an insect which has just been sprayed, running back and forth in its
last mad death throes, they first argue that the reason the hole is so small
is that the plane never entered the wall, having blown up outside, and then
suddenly backflip to explain the 250 feet deep missile hole by saying that
the plane disappeared all the way into the building, and then blew up inside
the building (even though the building shows no sign of such damage).
As for what happened to the wings, here's where they get really creative.
The wings snapped off and folded into the fuselage which then carried them
into the building, which then closed up behind the plane like a piece of
meat.
When it suits them, they'll also claim that the plane slid in on its belly,
(ignoring the undamaged lawn) while at the same time citing alleged
witnesses to the plane diving steeply into the building from an
"irrecoverable angle."
How they reconcile these two scenarios as being compatible is truly a study
in applied stupidity.
Epilogue
Once they get desperate enough, you can be sure that the UFO conspiracy
stuff will make an appearance. The Arabs are in league with the Martians.
Space aliens snatched the remains of the Pentagon plane and fixed most of
the hole in the wall, just to confuse people. They gave the Arabs
invisibility pills to help get them onto the planes. Little green men were
seen talking to Bin Laden a few weeks prior to the attacks.
As the nation gears up to impeach the traitor Bush, and stop his perpetual
oil war, it's not helpful to have these idiots distracting from the process
by spreading silly conspiracy theories about mythical Arabs, stories which
do nothing but play into the hands of the extremist Bush regime.
At a less serious time, we might tolerate such crackpots with amused
detachment, but they need to understand that the treachery that was
perpetrated on Sept. 11, and the subsequent war crimes committed in
"retaliation" are far too serious for us to allow such frivolous self
indulgence to go unchallenged.
Those who are truly addicted to conspiracy delusions should find a more
appropriate outlet for their paranoia.
Its time to stop loony conspiracy theories about Sept 11.
Copyright Gerard Holmgren. Jan 2003 debunker@h...
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