The looniest of all 9/11 conspiracy theories

From: "csrs2003"
The_looniest_of_all_9/11_conspiracy_theories

From the August 2003 Idaho Observer:

http://proliberty.com/observer/20030811.htm

The looniest of all 9/11 conspiracy theories
"Let us not tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories," President Bush
stated amid increasingly loud accusations that his administration may
have allowed the tragic events of 9/11 to occur as a pretext
justifying U.S. expansion of armed conflict around the world to
allegedly wage war on terrorism. Curiously, most of the "outrageous
conspiracy theories" to which he refers incorporate some extremely
sound science, logic and witness testimony where the official version
is lacking in those critical areas. The following is a rather clever
and immensely sarcastic approach to the government's explanation of
9/11 -- which follows a pattern established by the "magic bullet
theory" to explain the assassination of JFK and a Ryder truck full of
fertilizer and fuel oil to explain the damage at the Murrah federal
building in OK City.

by 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@hotmail.com

The Idaho Observer
P.O. Box 457
Spirit Lake, Idaho 83869
Phone: 208-255-2307
Email: observer@coldreams.com
Web:
http://idaho-observer.com
http://proliberty.com/observer/