Nice writeup at the Rolling Stone about those 9/11 conspiracy theorists who think that it was "an inside job".
For those who think that the twin towers were demolished by explosive devices, ask yourself this; why don't the theorists have any structural engineers in their group. Anyone with a mote of engineering and who has studied the design of the building (which was seriously flawed regarding any kind of fire) will fully understand why they both collapsed when the temperature of the steel pillars reached a few hundred degrees.
In a nutshell:
Building was designed to have an open floorplan. There were no structural support walls. The entire structure was supported by tubular steel columns on the outside and a traditional structural steel column in the center where the elevators were located.
This produced a large strength requirement and no commercially available steel could handle this load.
Heat treated steel was specified as it was able to withstand the load. The only problem with heat-treated (tempered) steel is that it looses its temper when it gets hot. (some loss at 300°F, major loss at 500°F, putty at 800°F)
The buildings were 110 stories tall, the airplanes driven by the terrorists came in around the 70th floor. The flights had just taken off and were transcontinental runs so they were full of fuel.
When the steel temperature reached a couple hundred degrees, a forty-story pile-driver nailed the building into the ground killing the 3K innocent civilians and Firefighters and Police Officers trapped inside.
End of story...
Anyway, check out the Rolling Stone article:
THE LOW POST: I, Left Gatekeeper
Why the "9/11 Truth" movement makes the "Left Behind" sci-fi series read like Shakespeare
A few weeks ago I wrote a column on the anniversary of 9/11 that offhandedly dismissed 9/11 conspiracy theorists as "clinically insane." I expected a little bit of heat in response, but nothing could have prepared me for the deluge of fuck-you mail that I actually got. Apparently every third person in the United States thinks George Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks.
"You're just another MSM-whore left gatekeeper paid off by corporate America," said one writer. "What you do isn't journalism at all, you dick," said another. "You're the one who's clinically insane," barked a third, before educating me on the supposed anomalies of physics involved with the collapse of WTC-7.
I have two basic gripes with the 9/11 Truth movement. The first is that it gives supporters of Bush an excuse to dismiss critics of this administration. I have no doubt that every time one of those Loose Change dickwads opens his mouth, a Republican somewhere picks up five votes. In fact, if there were any conspiracy here, I'd be far more inclined to believe that this whole movement was cooked up by Karl Rove as a kind of mass cyber-provocation, along the lines of Gordon Liddy hiring hippie peace protesters to piss in the lobbies of hotels where campaign reporters were staying.
Come on Matt -- tell us what you really think! Heh...
He continues:
I don't have the space here to address every single reason why 9/11 conspiracy theory is so shamefully stupid, so I'll have to be content with just one point: 9/11 Truth is the lowest form of conspiracy theory, because it doesn't offer an affirmative theory of the crime.
Forget for a minute all those Internet tales about inexplicable skyscraper fires, strange holes in the ground at Shanksville and mysterious flight manifestoes. What is the theory of the crime, according to the 9/11 Truth movement?
Matt gives a possible fly-on-the-wall view of the Oval Office planning for 9/11 and then concludes with this thrown gauntlet:
I challenge a 9/11 Truth leader like Loose Change writer Dylan Avery to come up with a detailed, complete summary of the alleged plot -- not the bits and pieces, but the whole story, put together -- that would not make any fifth grader anywhere burst out in convulsive laughter. And without that, all the rest of it is bosh and bunkum, on the order of the "sonar evidence" proving the existence of the Loch Ness monster. If you can't put all of these alleged scientific impossibilities together into a story that makes sense, then all you're doing is jerking off -- and it's not like no one's ever done that on the Internet before.
And Dylan, while you are at it, run those by a licensed structural engineer and have them sign off on them.
I'll be here waiting...
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