| James H. Fetzer, Ph.D. A lot of intellectual rubbish has been published about the 9/11 Truth movement, but none quite as reprehensible as Matt Taibbi, "The Low Post: I, Left Gatekeeper", ROLLING STONE (26 September 2006). He begins with a blunder and ends with a travesty. He asserts that "9/11 Truth is the lowest form of conspiracy theory, because it doesn't offer an affirmative theory of the crime." But 9/11 Truth is dedicated to exposing falsehoods as well as revealing truths. If the government's account of 9/11 were true, there would be no need for an "alternative theory". We are critics of the official theory, which, in case Taibbi hasn't noticed, is itself a conspiracy theory! Taibbi appears to be massively ignorant about the objective and scientific evidence that demonstrates the official account is not only false but cannot possibly be true. If he had visited the web site for Scholars for 9/11 Truth at st911.org, for example, he would have been confronted with extensive evidence that establishes the untenability of the government's account. Consider, for example, some key findings that are presented in "Why doubt 9/11?", which reflects elementary knowledge for those familiar with the case, including: * The impact of the planes cannot have caused enough damage to bring the buildings down, since the buildings were designed to withstand them (as Frank DeMartini, the project manager, has observed), the planes that hit were very similar to those they were designed to withstand, and they continued to stand after those impacts with negligible effects. * The melting point of steel at 2,800*F is about 1,000*F higher than the maximum burning temperature of jet-fuel-based fires, which do not exceed 1,800*F under optimal conditions, so the fires cannot have caused the steel to melt, which means that melting steel did not bring the buildings down. * UL certified the steel in the buildings up to 2,000*F for at least six hours before it would even significantly weaken, where these fires burned too low and too briefly--about one hour in the South Tower and one and a half in the North at an average temperature around 500*F--to have even caused the steel to weaken, much less melt. * If the steel had melted or weakened, the affected floors would have displayed completely different behavior, with some asymmetrical sagging and tilting, which would have been gradual and slow, not the complete, abrupt, and total demolition that was observed. * Heavy steel construction buildings like the Twin Towers, built with more than 100,000 tons of steel, are not even capable of "pancake collapse", which normally only occurs with concrete structures of "lift slab" construction and could not occur in "redundant" welded-steel buildings, such as the towers, unless every supporting column were removed simultaneously. * The destruction of the South Tower in 10 seconds and of the North in 9 is even faster than free fall with only air resistance, which would have taken at least 12 seconds, which, as Judy Wood has emphasized, is an astounding result that would have been impossible without extremely powerful explosives. * The towers are exploding from the top, not collapsing to the ground, where the floors do not move, a phenomenon that Judy Wood has likened to two gigantic trees turning to sawdust from the top down, which, like the pulverization of the concrete, the official account cannot possibly explain. * Pools of molten metal were found at the subbasement levels three, four, and five weeks later, an effect that could not have been produced by the plane-impact/jet-fuel-fire/pancake collapse scenario, which, of course, implies that it was not produced by such a cause. * WTC-7 came down in a classic controlled demolition at 5:20 PM/ET after Larry Silverstein suggested the best thing to do might be to "pull it", displaying all the characteristics of classic controlled demolitions, including a complete, abrupt, and total collapse into its own footprint, where the floors are all falling at the same time at free fall speed. This event was so embarrassing to the government's account that it is not even mentioned in THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT. Similarly for this article in the ROLLING STONE. The actual evidence of controlled demolitions at the World Trade Center is so embarrassing to Matt Taibbi's position that he doesn't bother to acknowledge its existence. That is a form of intellectual dishonesty that ought to be beneath the standards of this once-great magazine. Alternatively, if he is so ignorant that he doesn't know it exists, he was incompetent to write this article. Either way, the editors ought to have known better than to publish it. Most of his piece, of course, is intended to satirize an alternative account. Establishing what actually happened is far more difficult than proving what did not. If anything like what he describes is the actual sequence of events, then it does have aspects of the absurd about it. But it would be perfectly consistent with the incompetence and recklessness that this administration has demonstrated repeatedly in relation to its interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention the mess it is making of America. Bush himself has admitted that Saddam Hussein had "nothing to do" with the events of 9/11. A Senate Intelligence Committee investigation has established that Saddam was not collaborating with Osama bin Laden but actively opposing him. And the FBI has recently acknowledged that it has "no hard evidence" that connects Osama to 9/11. If it was not Saddam and it was not Osama, then who was responsible for the events of 9/11? We believe that the American people are entitled to know and we are doing our best to find out.
James H. Fetzer, Ph.D. |
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