13/3/10
Paranoid
fantasies about 9-11 detract from the real issues
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 it's 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 US 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 4 planes simultaneously and fly them around US airspace
for nearly 2 hours, crashing them into important buildings, without the
US intelligence services having any idea that it was coming, and without
the Air Force knowing what to do.
The huge difficulties
with such a stupid story force them to invent even more preposturous 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 re-invent
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.
According to the practitioners
of the fruit loop, 19 Arabs took over the 4 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.
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 got 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 Arab 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
of 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 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 it's just one of those strange co-incidences,
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 co-incidences 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.
Having for the sake
of amusement, allowed them to get away with 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 breath-taking skill and certainty to their fiery end, all four pilots
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 am 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, it's not clear why they would have decided
to risk blowing their cover to US 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.
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 it's easier to invent new laws of physics in order to keep the delusion rolling along.
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 it's 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
kerosine,and which burns at a maximum temperature of around 800 deg 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 kerosine – 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 lbs of metal for
each gallon of kerosine.
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
kerosine, something hitherto completely unknown to science, but just discovered
by them, this very minute. 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 are always larger than life, and certainly larger
than the intellects of these cretins.
"It's 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, and not vapourized into 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 it's a "well-known fact"
and that "it's never happened before, so we have nothing to compare
it to", the conspiracy theorist has now convinced himself (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...
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 kerosine. 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 kerosine.
For this, it's necessary
to sweep aside the second law of thermodynamics and propose kerosine 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, the kerosine
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 deg 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 kerosine is enough to: completely
vapourize a 65 ton aircraft; 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), and still have enough
left over to pour down the elevator shafts and start similarly destructive
fires all through the building.
This kerosine really
is remarkable stuff! How chilling to realize that those kerosine 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 kerosine lamps out camping. One moment you're
there innocently holding the lamp – the next – kapow! vapourized
into nothing along with 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 kerosine 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 – therefore,
not particularly hot, they trumpet an alleged temperature in the building
of 2000 deg 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.
Since they've already re-engineered the combustion qualities of jet fuel,
violated the second law of thermodynamics, and re-defined 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 September 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. "Muslim terrorists stole my
notes, sir." "No Miss, the kerosine heater blew up and vapourized
everything in the street, except for my passport." "You see sir,
the schoolbus 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 kerosine 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 deg C isn't really required, 100 deg 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.
That's right! If you are killed by an Arab terrorist in New York, 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 the people inside it were all but one 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.
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 5 rings
of building, each with a space inbetween. Each ring of building is about
30 to 35 ft 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 of about a 12-foot diameter through
three rings (six walls). A little later a section of wall about 65 ft 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 ft and a length
of 155 ft, 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 physically impossible.
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 then 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's 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 plane never entered the wall, having blown
up outside, and then suddenly backflip to explain the 250 ft 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 stupidity.
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 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 September 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.
It's time to stop loony
conspiracy theories about September 11.
© 2003 Gerard Holmgren 02-15-2003
Source: http://www.911studies.com/articles2.htm
© 2003 Gerard Holmgren 02-15-2003
Source: http://www.911studies.com/articles2.htm