You want a really good conspiracy theory to go along with this?
What if I told you that there was a number of structural engineering studies that determined that yep, this was exactly how this type of building would fail and that these studies were supressed, because there are a number of other large buildings around with this design (flaw) that would fail in the same catastrophic manner with just a regular fire (flying the airplane into the side didn't really do much to the structure). What if I told you these studies were done before 9-11.

The last part is not true, and the studies were not supressed (most conspiracy theorists just don't want to hear what engineers say - "don't confuse the issue with facts") but it sure makes the conspiracy part more interesting doesn't it.  

By the way, we observed a minute of silence before my sons soccer game on Saturday.

mornhm - FSO wrote on 09/13/10 at 05:57:58:




Id say thats not reasonable, based on my experiences with everything Ive ever done with metal. Ya DONT get symmetrical failure with ASymmetrical damage, ever,

aaahhh...
...right.

As does the Spanish-American war being declared in 1898 because the USS Maine misteriously exploded in Havana harbor - when Spain was the one who least wanted a problem with the US.

Strike 1

Or like when the RMS Lusitania was sunk by (reportedly) a German U-Boot in 1915, when records proved she was being used to smuggle armaments to the UK to support their war effort
(for the record; by International Law, the Laws of the Sea and Humanitarian Law (aka the Geneva Convention), any civilian vessel or vehicle transporting weapons, ammunitions or parts thereof, constitutes a legitimete military target)
(The ship's Captain, Capt. Dow, protested the Lusitania was being converted into an armed cruiser - and was relieved of his command)

Strike 2

Or like when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on a Sunday morning, when all the gunships were in harbor, but somehow the Enterprise and its entire carrier Group was at sea, hundreds of miles to the north, on a surprise military exercise...
...on a Sunday morning ???

Strike 3

Now we have the Twin Towers... the Conspirationists, given the precedents, are having a ball.

justin_o_guy2 wrote on 09/13/10 at 07:11:26:

Justin,

Your examples of how pieces of metal fail don't really apply.

Simply put, a building is not built from a solid piece of metal. It is a  structure and the structure is designed to spread stresses around evenly to the load bearing members (this is why we can build skyscrapers that aren't solid with a footprint about the same size as the height and with a point at the top - think pyramids).

When one or more of the members loses its load bearing capacity the structure will distribute the stresses to the remaining members until the capacity of the load bearing structure is exceeded,  total failure is also distributed (or symetrical).

Gravity pulls straight down, and in this case caused the building to collapse almost straight down. The forces on the bottom structure caused by the impact of the upper structure coming straight down exceeded the load bearing capacity in a spectacular fashion. The buildings fell down, not because of the heat (that caused members to fail), but because the structure of the building was compromised in a way that allow the weight of the building to come to bear on the non-load bearing interior of the building.

Yes, the WMD "excuse" for the invasion of Iraq was just that, an excuse ... the events of 9/11 provided the impetus as it were ... one might suppose that one of the real reasons for the U.S. going into Iraq was to have a ready army on the doorstep of Iran, whose nuclear ambitions and potential threat were/are well know to Western Intelligence. After The Gulf War of the early 90's the 2 stringent no-fly zones, economic embargo, not to mention spy satellites & drones, etc. would've ensured that Saddam would never again stockpile WMD's ... that's only common sense b'y ...

Afghanistan on the other hand may have been neccessary as that was where Bin Laden was reportedly hiding out ... the mistake by Western Govts (Canada included) may have been to get themselves mired into a situation that is unwinnable in the conventional sense ... look what happened to the USSR there for instance ... immediately following 9/11 the United States had a very good idea of where Bin Laden was situated in Afghanistan and should have used that opportinity to send a strong message ... a tactical nuke into the mountains where B.L. was hiding could've been that message ... sure it may not have killed him (he was in a cave after all) and all you might have gotten were some goats and a few of B.L.'s terrorists, but the message would have been STRONG ...

... a building rigged and wired for demolition, looks very much like a building rigged and wired for demolition....
You can't hide all that, and you can't do it without anyone noticing...

... plus,... you either have to imagine that they waited for the top to start to collapse, before blowing the charges at the bottom,... which would be redundant...
... or,... that they set the charges at the 80th floor, and knew in advance, precisely where a jetliner traveling the speed of bullet would hit,.... and that it would hit without damaging the wiring and demolition set-up...

Absurd... and I'm hardly the person to defend GW and his motley crew...
I wouldn't intellectually put it past them,... it just couldn't be done...

... not to mention,... "In for a penny, in for a pound",... once you accept the conspiracy theory, you have have to include buildings 1, and 2, and 7, and the lone jetliner, and the Pentagon... all coordinated at the same time... with background covers prepared for every "alleged" passenger on every plane in place...

... and then you trigger all this into action, while GW sits reading to kids in Florida, looking a complete fool...

The more you think about it,.. the sillier the idea gets...

I'm with Serow,
the logistics of doing all that in secrecy, and having the planes hit the right floors, right time, etc.

yannow a govt agency would screw it up.....

and if they did, someone would know something and would blow the whistle on something so heinous.