Chill You To the Bone

Just spent some time listening and watching the NYT's amazing audio site dovetailing the 9/11 recordings with transcripts and the plotted positions of the hijacked planes.

Incredible.

Hallowed, My Butt

(via Felix Salmon)

The brilliantly named History Eraser Button blog shows you some of the sights and sounds surrounding our most hallowed ground zero.

Short version: It's only hallowed if strip clubs and bars are now holy.

But see for yourself

Jumpers

That this should happen at all is unacceptable.

That among its victims were those who sought only to help others makes it even worse.

All our endeavor is based on our belief that even in the depths of barbarism, mankind retains a fundamental minimum of humanity. Events such as this can make it very hard to maintain that belief.

But if abandon it, we must admit there is no difference between man and beast.

And this we will not admit.

We will build and we will rebuild - if only to prove to ourselves and our posterity that the common causes of progress and simple human charity do not end here.

9/11 Conspiracy theorists: liars or retards?

Cracked magazine ends the debate.

Yeah, this is old - but they had a new picture that made me laugh. Then I followed the related link.

Hee hee hee...

(H/t Bad Astronomy)

Haec credam a deo pio, a deo justo, a deo scito?

This...is seriously messed up.

A 9/11 Widow, Killed in Crash Near Buffalo

I've said it for my own reasons, but it's doubly true for Ms. Eckert:

Some things are immune to all reason.

Calling you out

Wow.

The chair and vice chair of the 9/11 Commission are going public (in the NY Times Op-Ed) with an obvious truth:

Those who knew about [the now-destroyed CIA interrogation] videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.

There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the C.I.A. — or the White House — of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot. Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations.

Can't get any clearer than that.

I can practically hear the beltway punditry opining how the American People (whom they've presumably never met) "are tired of these scandal investigations." How we should "move on" and "get to work on the important issues."

For my money, it's hard to get to an issue that is more important than an executive that is flouting the law and refusing all inquiries about their conduct.

Read the Op Ed.

Let the hearings commence.

The obvious question

Where were you...?

National Security Archive FOIA Request Yields 9/11 Air Traffic Control Transcripts

Because more information is a good thing:

National Security Archive has posted the 9/11 Air Traffic Control Transcripts

1328:16+
UAL-93 *** (mayday) *** (hey get out of here) ***

1328:48+
UAL-93 *** (get out of here) *** (get out of here) ***

1329:14+
LOR-R [Lorain Radar - Ground control] United ninety three verify three five zero.

1329:20+
LOR-R United ninety three verify you're at flight level ah three five zero.

....[LOR-R repeatedly attempts to contact the UAL-93]...

1331:55+
UAL-93 *** please sit down. keep remaining seating. we have a bomb on board, so ***

1332:05+
LOR-R er uh calling cleveland center you're unreadable say again slowly.

1335:36+
LOR-R ah United ninety three if able * ah squawk trip please.

1336:51+
LOR-R [Cleaveland center announces that UAL93 is turning south and east and climbing].

1339:10+
UAL-93 ah this is the captain uh would like to all remain seated there is a bomb aboard and we go back to the airport and to have our demands so please remain quiet.

This is the last time UAL-93 appears in the transcript.

Controlled demolition? They beg to differ..

All dressed up and nowhere to go. I was going to post a long rant debunking controlled demolition as a reason why the World Trade Center collapsed – but somebody has nicely put it all in a single document.

I will post a few choice bits I found that tackle the notion advanced by conspiracy theorists, namely:

“…2,000 lbs of RDX-grade linear-shaped charges (which could have been pre-positioned by just a few men) could cut the supports at key points so that gravity would bring the buildings straight down.”
-Prof. Stephen E. Jones, Brigham Young University

Professor, meet a man who blows up buildings for a living:

“The explosives configuration manufacturing technology [to bring down those buildings] does not exist… If someone were to attempt to make such charges, they would weigh thousands of pounds apiece. You would need forklifts to bring them into the building.”
-Mark Loizeaux, Controlled Demolition, Inc.

Loizeaux goes on to say that the biggest commercially available charges can cut through steel that is three inches thick. The box columns at the base of the WTC towers were fourteen inches on a side. If big enough charges did exist, Loizeaux says, for each tower it could hypothetically take as long as two months for a team of up to 75 men with unfettered access to three floors to strip the fireproofing off the columns and then place and wire the charges.

“There’s just no way to do it… If you just put bulk explosives in file cabinets next to every column in the building, it wouldn’t knock those columns down. It would blow the windows out. It would trash the [building] and probably blow out two floors above and a floor below… but it wouldn’t knock the building down.”
-Mark Loizeaux, Controlled Demolition, Inc.

On to the really good stuff. It turns out yesterday, the folks over at Implosionworld.com (gotta love the name) have released a report on controlled demolition theories at the WTC.

Their verdict – the Controlled Demolition theory folks don’t have the faintest idea what they are talking about.

Read all about it. (PDF)

That sinking feeling...

In plugging around for the previous post, I came across the following article on Vanity Fair:

9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes

Transcripts and audio from NORAD. Shows the chaos and confusion of that morning.

9:32:20
MAJOR JAMES ANDERSON: Have you asked—have you asked the question what you're gonna do if we actually find this guy? Are we gonna shoot him down if they got passengers on board? Have they talked about that?

Worth a read, and a listen.

Memo to 9/11 conspiracy buffs everywhere: Making movies is easy. Research is hard.

I've watched the internet film "Loose change," about 9/11 - and come away with the same sense of bewilderment that I first had when I read the JFK conspiracy book "Best Evidence."

Can't be... it just can't be...

Were I still the 17-year old twerp who read JFK assassination books, I'd still be wondering about 9/11. Thankfully, I have a cerebral cortex, and the curiosity to use it.

Loose change's slick production values give it the appearance of credibility. Quick cuts, edgy music. Interviews that ratchet up the sense of alarm.
Part of the wow factor of this movie is that it was made by total nobodies on a shoestring.

Nobodies on a shoestring don't usually have quality fact-checking.

The problem with going after these guys is you typically come off like you're as kooky as they are.

For what it's worth:

• When conspiracy theories go bad. by David Corn


• Popular Mechanics on 9/11: Debunking The Myths


• Fahrenheit 2777 by Michael Shermer


• State Department's refutation


• Line by line refutation of Loose Change movie (Not very professional, but not terrible either)