The looniest of all 9/11 conspiracy theories

[Guest guest]

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@h...

 

 

The Idaho Observer

P.O. Box 457

Spirit Lake, Idaho 83869

Phone: 208-255-2307

Email: observer@c...

Web:

http://idaho-observer.com

http://proliberty.com/observer/

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" It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument. " -- William G. McAdoo

 

 

 

 

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