#232232 - 31/08/2004 20:35
I recently ran across this.
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pooh-bah
Registered: 15/01/2002
Posts: 1866
Loc: Austin
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#232233 - 31/08/2004 20:49
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: RobotCaleb]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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I remember the first reports that day coming from some random dude who had a window that faced in that direction and his account of the impact was much different than the later released official version. I don't now remember what it is he said, but I do remember that his account didn't sound much like the official one at all.
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Bitt Faulk
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#232234 - 31/08/2004 20:50
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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In addition, if it wasn't the jetliner that they said it was, what happened to that jetliner?
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Bitt Faulk
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#232235 - 31/08/2004 21:31
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: wfaulk]
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 08/02/2002
Posts: 3411
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Got shot down under vice-presidential orders?
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#232236 - 31/08/2004 22:33
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: RobotCaleb]
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old hand
Registered: 16/02/2002
Posts: 867
Loc: Oxford, UK
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Please pardon my geographical ignorance here; assuming that AA flight 77 was shot down by "friendlies", what other likely target might the US government have realistically thought they were protecting?
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#232237 - 01/09/2004 04:45
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: RobotCaleb]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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I'll just paste my response to this from another site this came up on.
Wow. I'll just state one thing about the video...
They try to prove a plane crash leaves very visible remains when it crashes by showing pictures of other crashes. Well, guess what. Most crashes, and likely all shown had a trained pilot trying to guide the plane to safety. So if there is a way to slow the plane down, it will happen. If there is a way to level it out and try to prevent a direct impact, it will be done. These types of efforts result in less damaging crashes, and might (slim chance) allow for survivors.
The attack on the Pentagon was exactly that, an attack. No attempts to slow down, so the plane will not leave any big pieces behind. The planes in NYC left no huge chunks behind like what was shown in those photos, and they hit a softer building.
Thats just the biggest flaw I saw. Most others will probably be covered by others.
And they never attempt to answer why. Why would the Pentagon hide what happened? Where is the gain? And if it was a cruise missle, where did that come from? Where did the plane go that was still being tracked by radar up until the impact and visible to probably thousands of people, many not even part of the government. Radar and plane tracking systems for planes are monitored by many civilians across the US.
I also have a friend who worked IT at the Pentagon when it happened. Not that saying that will mean anything to the tin foil wearing folks, but getting his story was very interesting.
I also find such claims like this one being the equivalent of spitting on the graves of the people who died that day.
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#232238 - 01/09/2004 05:54
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: drakino]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Maybe. But, at the very least, what happened to the wings and engines? There are no holes in the building to account for them and no apparent wreckage outside it.
Also, how does potentially pursuing the truth about the fates of those victims denigrate them?
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Bitt Faulk
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#232239 - 01/09/2004 06:47
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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Because the truth is, and has been known for almost 3 years now. Why the resurgence in this tin foil hat conspiracy theory? Of course the most degrading thing is to the people who died on that flight. Lets see, they recovered proof that all passengers minus one were in the Pentagon damaged areas. But someone is managing to get more and more people to believe these people never existed, and something other then a hijacked plane slammed into the pentagon. This conspiracy has been around long enough to be completly debunked many times over. Why did the plane not make a plane shaped hole in the building? Well, because it was being smashed to bits starting the instant the thin metal of the plane touched a building built with layers of limestone, brick, cement, and steel. For a more in depth explaination of the damaage, I'll quote one of the subsites from the link above: Paul: The question and photos are misleading: Parts of the plane penetrated the ground floors of the second and third rings of the building. These photos show only their intact roofs. Eyewitnesses and news reporters have talked about the twelve-foot hole punched through the inside wall of the second ring by one of the plane’s engines. More importantly, the question focuses on the plane’s size and weight, making it sound extraordinarily heavy, but leaves out the size and weight of the Pentagon – America’s largest office building with three times the floor space of the Empire State Building - as well as the difference in relative stiffness and energy absorption between a building and an airplane. Each side of the Pentagon contains over 100,000 tons of Potomac sand mixed into the steel-reinforced concrete under its limestome facade. There are nearly 10,000 concrete piles anchoring each side of the building. And in the wake of bombings in Oklahoma City and Saudi Arabia, that portion of the Pentagon had just been reinforced with a computationally modeled lattice of steel tubes designed to prevent it from collapsing after an explosion. By contrast, the plane is only 100 tons of custom alloys stretched thin enough to fly. It’s not like a giant bullet; more like a giant racing bike. Even so, the plane knocked down 10,000 tons of building material - 100 times its own weight - in the crash and subsequent collapse. Another 57,000 tons of the Pentagon were damaged badly enough to be torn down. The Brobdingnagian scale of the Pentagon makes the total area of damage seem small, but it would hold several Silicon Valley office buildings, or an airport terminal. Patrick: Watch the videotapes of the planes hitting the World Trade Center. They were traveling at approximately 400 mph, and they hit an aluminum and glass building. An entire plane went in, and hardly anything came out the other side, 208 feet away. Here we have a plane traveling at nearly 250 mph (just over 1/2 the velocity of the WTC planes, meaning just over 1/4 of their kinetic energy), hitting the ground (which would absorb much of that energy), and only then sliding at a much slower speed into a steel-and-kevlar-reinforced concrete and brick building. Obviously, it's not going to go very far. Still, parts of the plane penetrated into the C ring.
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#232240 - 01/09/2004 08:36
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: drakino]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 15/08/2000
Posts: 4859
Loc: New Jersey, USA
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Uh, you rang? I know there are other Pauls on the board, but I don't think any are (well, were) involved in this thread. Just a clarification.
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#232241 - 01/09/2004 09:55
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: pgrzelak]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 05/01/2001
Posts: 4903
Loc: Detroit, MI USA
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He was pasting from another site. And I guess that one has a Paul too! I think this theory popped up here before right after 9-11. Some French guy came up with the idea that the US and Isreal planned the whole deal and even piloted the planes ourselves. Fits right into the ripe anti-Semitic atmosphere in France now. Tom's post is correct. The Pentegon is huge and is massive and the plane that hit it was light, slow and hit the ground first. Still, the Pentagon suffered severe damage and death. I imagine the burning fuel on board took care of whatever remained of the plane. What sickens me is that this video, which is dishonorable to the people that died there, is simply being brought up because the election is nearing. "To hell with the people that died, George W. Bush and anyone that supports the Jews must go."
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Brad B.
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#232242 - 01/09/2004 13:26
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: SE_Sport_Driver]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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I still don't understand how this is "dishonorable". There's compelling evidence in that video. It may be explicable, but it's not obvious. As far as I know, no one has ever really come out to say it's not true. And, to be honest, as anti-Bush as I am, I never connected this with any anti-Bush sentiments. My first thought was that the terrorists had some sort of missile that, for some reason, the government didn't want us to know about. Of course, that probably flies in the face of them going out of their way to scare us at every possible opportunity.
From a site linked from that about.com site that is actually trying to debunk, it says:
Quote: Eyewitnesses and news reporters have talked about the twelve-foot hole punched through the inside wall of the second ring by one of the plane’s engines.
Then later on says:
Quote: Since the plane hit the ground and skidded into the building, enough energy was lost by the initial impact and friction with the ground that the engines probably did not penetrate the building.
So which is it? Of course, this isn't proof that their entire explanation is wrong (although they debunk a different, if similar, set of evidence and doesn't mention some of the things brought up in this presentation), but it does make you wonder if they're stretching just as far to explain it as being an airplane hit as the makers of this video are stretching to make it appear not to be.
I'm not saying that this is an answer. In fact, it's not answering anything. It is, however, raising, I think, legitimate questions that have never been answered, including by the debunking sites referenced.
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Bitt Faulk
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#232243 - 01/09/2004 13:35
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: wfaulk]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 15/01/2002
Posts: 1866
Loc: Austin
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to quote someone else that i am discussing this with: Quote: Hmmm... I would probably go along with the theory that the planes in Pennsylvania and DC were both shot down before they hit their intended targets. It's possible someone then decided to fire a missile into an unfinished and therefore mostly empty wing of the Pentagon to disguise the fact that our planes killed our people.
However, I'd need to see alot more verifiable facts before I began stating one scenario or the other is true. Until then, I am comfortable with saying, "I'm not sure what exactly happened, but I am sure it was a horrible tragedy."
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#232244 - 01/09/2004 13:47
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
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I don't think there is much compelling evidence in the video.
For example, the fact that they have found a couple of dozen people who think they saw a small jet rather than a airliner means nothing. People are terrible at being eye witnesses.
When I was watching the second NYC attack live (and seeing recordings of the first) the newscasters kept repeating that the planes were small jets when it was very clear from the pictures I was seeing that they were airliners.
Also, how many of the thousands of people who must have seen the Pentagon plane thought it was an airliner ? Unsurprisingly the video doesn't show any of their witness statements...
Somewhere in the video a statement says something like "it was travelling so fast, it couldn't have been a plane". Well duh, planes do travel very fast. Even if this plane was only travelling at 250kts, that is nearly 5 times the speed of most US auto traffic and as it was flying very low it would have seemed much faster than planes people are used to seeing at height.
The pristine lawn does look a little odd, but I'm sure I saw pictures nearer the time showing an impact trail along the grass ?
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#232245 - 01/09/2004 13:59
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: andy]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Yeah, the eyewitness (and random joe) accounts are easily the weakest point of the presentation. But one set of bad evidence doesn't contaminate the rest.
The pentagon yard is pretty clear in those photographs. Where else do you expect a debris or impact trail to be? I suppose it's possible that the airplane hit precisely, like a drop shot in raquetball. Maybe that's why there's no debris anywhere. It all fell into the corner.
To me, the lact of any indication of wings is the biggest problem. Also, given the fact that there's no apparent entry point for the engines on the outside of the building, what's the twelve foot or so high hole in the interior? If someone with authority could come along and say that it's easily feasible for the wings to have folded up and followed the fuselage into the building via the same hole, I'd be satisfied, but right now, I don't see how that could be the case. There doesn't even seem to be any dent in the building where they might have hit in order to collapse.
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Bitt Faulk
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#232246 - 01/09/2004 14:29
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 05/01/2001
Posts: 4903
Loc: Detroit, MI USA
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Quote: I still don't understand how this is "dishonorable". There's compelling evidence in that video.
I think it's dishonorable because I don't think there is any compelling evidence to support it, so, to me, it is clearly frivolous. If you think the evidence is that compelling, then I can see how you would see nothing dishonorable. To me, it's just a conspiracy theory. I'm sure we never landed on the moon either.
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Brad B.
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#232247 - 01/09/2004 14:45
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: SE_Sport_Driver]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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I think that if you don't see anything there that's worth considering, even if it's to immediately dismiss it, then you've been brainwashed hard.
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Bitt Faulk
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#232248 - 01/09/2004 14:59
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 05/01/2001
Posts: 4903
Loc: Detroit, MI USA
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I didn't mean that it's bad to look at this stuff and talk about it, I was directing my comments at its creator because anyone who took the time to investigate this would have realized that it wasn't true and would have not gone through making and distributing it. I dismissed this when it came out several years ago.
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Brad B.
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#232249 - 01/09/2004 15:02
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/03/2000
Posts: 12338
Loc: Sterling, VA
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So what happened to the plane carrying the people? What happened to the people? Am I supposed to believe that first they shot down the plane down somewhere between Dulles and DC (not very far), then launched something, anything else at the Pentagon, all this over a metropolitan area and the biggest roads in Virginia?
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Matt
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#232250 - 01/09/2004 15:12
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: Dignan]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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First off, I have no idea. I'm not saying that this is true. I'm just saying that there's something there, even if it's answerable in an intelligent manner. So far, however, nothing I've seen has done so.
Second, to be fair, while the takeoff and crash points were not very far from each other, flight 77 had made it to about the KY/WV/OH border before it turned around, or they lost radar contact, or whatever.
I'll admit that this is far-fetched, but it's conceivable that the plane was shot down by US military and that the Pentagon attack was something else, say a missile. And then the government covered it up for some reason, transporting the dead from the Appalachians to DC. Now, I don't believe that for a minute, but it's feasible.
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Bitt Faulk
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#232251 - 01/09/2004 16:29
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: wfaulk]
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Master Boot Logo(er)
Registered: 26/08/2003
Posts: 525
Loc: California
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This thread prompted me to find out more info and found this
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#232253 - 01/09/2004 17:43
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: mschrag]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Well, I don't know that I'd call Snopes ever-reliable. However, it does have a plausible explanation for the wings that I hadn't seen before: Quote: As the front of the Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon, the outer portions of the wings likely snapped during the initial impact, then were pushed inward towards the fuselage and carried into the building's interior; the inner portions of the wings probably penetrated the Pentagon walls with the rest of the plane. Any sizable portions of the wings were destroyed in the explosion or the subsequent fire.
It also shows a picture of what they claim to be wing damage to the Pentagon, which shows, essentially, the building's fascia scorched and blackened on either side of the impact point. If you assume that the wings did mostly snap off, it's possible that there was an immediate explosion of the fuel in the wings that disintegrated them. And I suppose it's possible that an engine could have gone in with the plane.
To be honest, both Snopes' theory and the not-a-plane theory are a little too convenient and hopeful of coincidence. However, given that we know other planes definitely did hit buildings that day in similar ways....
I still don't know what that tiny thing is in the first frame of the Pentagon time-delay camera.
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Bitt Faulk
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#232254 - 01/09/2004 18:12
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31597
Loc: Seattle, WA
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Quote: I still don't know what that tiny thing is in the first frame of the Pentagon time-delay camera.
I find that gettng a proper sense of scale when photographing large objects is difficult. here and here are photographs where I was trying to capture the scale of some gigantic windmills, and failing miserably. In order to get the proper sense of scale for something, you need the proper lens and you have to frame the photograph carefully, and even then it's not always enough. Just because something appears small in a photograph doesn't mean it's small in real life.
From what I understand the pentagon camera was an automated security camera, not the best way to get a photograph that makes something "look big".
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#232255 - 01/09/2004 18:20
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: tfabris]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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While I understand your point, the Pentagon photo provides a pretty clear sense of scale. I mean, we have something equally the same distance away in the picture, and the plane seems incredibly small. I know that the pentagon is a big building, but assuming that each of its five stories is 20 ft. high, then the plane appears to be like fifteen feet tall.
Actually, there was a report somewhere that listed the height of the Pentagon and the height of a 767 and it didn't seem to match what was in the photo.
Of course, I could be wrong.
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Bitt Faulk
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#232256 - 01/09/2004 19:39
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31597
Loc: Seattle, WA
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Quote: I mean, we have something equally the same distance away in the picture, and the plane seems incredibly small
I disagree. The building is very large, many acres in size, and the perspective of the camera's viewpoint emphasizes the section of the building that is nearer to the camera. You can't say the building and the plane are equally distant, the majority of the building is much closer. Also keep in mind that the plane approached the building at an angle, coming somewhat towards the camera rather than moving exactly perpendicular to it. I don't think the plane looks incredibly small in that picture, I think it looks exactly as big as I would expect it to look, given the angles involved, and given the fact that it was skidding along the ground without its landing gear.
Attachments
231403-pentagon-moving.gif (147 downloads)
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#232257 - 02/09/2004 00:17
Threadjacking! Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: tfabris]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 06/10/1999
Posts: 2591
Loc: Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
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Quote: I think it looks exactly as big as I would expect it to look, given the angles involved, and given the fact that it was skidding along the ground without its landing gear.
Not too mention that at a bazillion miles per hour, the fuselage was probably already compressed vertically by 27 percent as soon as it touched the turf.
But I have another agenda! This thread is now *Mine*!
I can blame this thread for triggering a memory..... Some years ago, I read a mass-market spy novel....maybe one of the Gardner James Bond series, I can't remember. The fact that I can not remember, though, is bugging the hell out of me.
The scene that sticks in my mind, the denouement more or less, was when about 100-200 junior spy agency employees were loaded onto a jet airplane under false pretense with a couple of the main "good guy" characters standing on the tarmac chatting in hushed tones about how the jet was going to be purposefully crashed/destroyed (ummm, killing all those junior analysts) just to tie up a few loose ends of the story's main struggle.
So, does anyone remember this? Can you put me out of my misery?
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Jim
'Tis the exceptional fellow who lies awake at night thinking of his successes.
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#232258 - 03/09/2004 12:54
Re: Threadjacking! Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: jimhogan]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 06/10/1999
Posts: 2591
Loc: Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
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Wow, well I didn't *really* mean to kill this thread as dead as I did. Maybe I didn't. Maybe it was already played out. I have to admit part of me was looking to inject a little distraction. I'm actually a bit surprised at lengthy discussion about Flight 77. I mean where *else* did it go? There's some philosophical construct that comes to mind...Occam's Razor?...no, not really....hmmm.
It also occurred to me as I was about to hit the "Submit" button that I was employing a hijacking....metasimile?...in my post (without any particular initial intent) as we approach the 3rd anniversary of 9/11. So I thought "Should I take that out?" but then just hit submit. That was conscious and maybe a little hangover from reading "Imperial Hubris". This probably isn't making *too* much sense, but if I start another semi-incoherent thread about yellow ribbons, that's what that is all about.
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Jim
'Tis the exceptional fellow who lies awake at night thinking of his successes.
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#232259 - 03/09/2004 14:40
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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Quote: or they lost radar contact
Radar contact was not lost until it impacted the pentagon. You can't make a commercial jet invisible to radar, it's not a stealth plane. The part people get mixed up is the transponder was turned off, so people on the grould no longer had the insturmentation readouts or the call sign of the plane. And again, a lot of people were watching the radar data by that time, scattered all around the US.
Quote: As far as I know, no one has ever really come out to say it's not true.
So that makes it true? Does the fact that Apple doesn't publicially dismiss rumors of a dual CPU colored Powerbook make that true?
There is enough evidence from when it happened to prove that flight 77 hit the Pentagon. They recovered 99% of the bodies, both black boxes, and tons of other commercial airliner pieces from the Pentagon.
A decent computer simulation done by an independant group is here. Much more scientific, and no attention grabbing music to try to make you believe some nonsense.
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#232260 - 03/09/2004 16:07
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: drakino]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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Quote: Radar contact was not lost
Sorry. Misused terminology. Of course it was the transponder. Regardless, my point remains the same, that it had gotten far away from the DC area.
Quote: As far as I know, no one has ever really come out to say it's not true.Quote: So that makes it true?
Of course not. As I've said time and time again in this thread, it just raises interesting questions that I didn't have good answers to. In the same way that it's up to the producers of this presentation to prove their points, it's as much up to the researchers to prove that a plane did hit the Pentagon. We have little-to-no visual documentation, and many opposing eyewitness accounts, as opposed to the WTC crashes. Most of the explanations for why the Pentagon ended up that way (one wingless hole, basically) are based on the "well it must have happened that way because a plane hit it" argument, which is less than scientific. Also, if you're trying to disprove that someone is lying, giving evidence provided by that same organization is less than convincing. It's like saying "Bitt's not lying because Bitt said he wasn't lying."
I'm happy with the explanations given, finally, by various folks linked to by this thread, most especially the photograph of the scorched area of the Pentagon left by the wings. I never really believed any of the things almost proposed by the presentation, but there were things in it that seemed anomalous to me. There still are, but fewer of them.
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Bitt Faulk
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#232261 - 03/09/2004 16:40
Re: I recently ran across this.
[Re: wfaulk]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31597
Loc: Seattle, WA
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Quote: there were things in it that seemed anomalous to me. There still are, but fewer of them.
The thing in the presentation that still bothers me is their claim that there should have been a few other security cameras which captured the incident, but that the FBI confiscated the tapes and have not released them to the public.
That could be a baseless accusation, though. I have no way of independently verifying it. For all I know, the cameras in question might never have existed, or they weren't pointing the right direction, or they weren't working, or whatever.
But I do find it surprising that a single, blurry frame from a single security camera is all that was recorded.
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