Yeah, there’s gonna be a lot of that today. I just hope we don’t invade another country to re-affirm the principles of American democracy.

Osama brought down the towers, Bush used it as an excuse to invade Iraq and torture people, and Wall Street (Osama’s target) destroyed the American economy.

Oh yeah, and Congress abandoned the 9/11 first responders by passing a bill that will ensure they never get medical care.

9/11 brought out the worst in America’s worst.

If Obama behaves exactly like he would if he was a Republican mole setting them up to succeed at their goals, and GWB behaved exactly as he would have if he was an Al-Qaeda mole setting them up to succeed at their goals, does it matter if they actually are or not?

Fred Hiatt is the Scott Stapp of the Beltway. When he starts to belt out of one of his tunes, turn the dial, leave the room, or double up on the gin.

I see you’re staying with the ‘ass’ theme.

Oh, we’ve moved well beyond letting the first responders die. Have you seen Cantor’s latest? I believe we will now be instructing them to piss on fires to put them out and save lives with The Power Of Their Minds. Equipment is for elitists, obviously.

I’m starting to wonder if this has another goal in addition to just plain fucking meanness of spirit, maybe the GOP are hoping the cops and fire departments will be forced into doing more beefcake calenders to buy the stuff they need.

It’s heartening to read the smackdown of Hiatt in the comments section of that piece. Facts may never penetrate Fred’s skull, but WaPo readers apparently have learned the truth. Good to see.

9-11 raised the existing paranoid style in American politics to a level not seen in many years, elevating the crazies into the mainstream, where they remain.

9/11 brought out the worst in America’s worst.

This, this, a thousand times, this. And to anyone paying attention, we found out who America’s worst people were, Fred Hiatt among them.

Second that. Don’t know how TBogg can read that stuff and come away with any self respect.

As gil mann noted in comments over at alicublog: “I keep waiting for the Washington Post to change the name of that section from ‘Opinions’ to ‘Modest Proposals.’”

Some of the usernames are familiar here.

The United States went to war in Iraq on the basis of faulty intelligence and was arrogantly ill-prepared for the responsibilities of occupation once Saddam Hussein fell.

Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.

“faulty” had NOTHING the fuck to do with it, you Mass Murder cheerleader!

Thanks, TBogg, for posting this, and everybody else for what you said. I’m just glad I’m not alone in thinking the way I do.

Three concrete and steel buildings fell at 9.8 m/sec/sec as a result of an 800 degree fire?

Yes. Your failure to grasp elementary physics does not change the basic laws thereof. Not to mention, things fall at the rate they fall at due to gravity, not due to the reason they ended up falling in the first place.

Durr.

Physics and properties of materials: steel only has to get warm enough to deform. (This is a common error: assuming that steel has to actually melt before Bad Things Happen to stuff on top of said steel.)

Experiment:
Put a brick on top of a paper plate standing on pillars of frozen ice cream, all on on a tray or a large plate. Set the whole thing on your table. Wait for the ice cream to soften. Notice what happens.
(This works with candles, too, but big candles are harder to find an more expensive than ice cream.)

Also, too: most of the mopes make the mistake of saying “it wasn’t hot enough to melt an I-beam!”

Well, durr, first of all, as you’ve pointed out, steel loses its strength when it’s subjected to heat long before it melts. Secondly, and this is a really big thing: the floors of the WTC weren’t supported with I-beams but with trusses made up of much smaller cross-sections. And much smaller cross-sections fail under much lower temps. And once one member of a truss fails, it weakens the entire truss. Multiply that over hundreds or thousands of truss members, and you get floor failure. When the floor fails, there’s no bracing for columns against lateral loading (wind), which is significant when you’re 80 stories above the ground. And so on and so forth. It’s a chain reaction, and only people who’ve never studied physics could be convinced that there was anything surprising about the collapse.

never forget!
http://i.imgur.com/QiX8a.jpg

Edit function eated my comment.

I usually don’t leave the boat; the mangoes just aren’t worth it, but…

NPR on Friday: “In the days leading up to the 10th anniversary of 9/11, security forces in NYC are conducting an intensive program of random searches.”

Fred: “There was in fact no large-scale assault on personal freedoms.”

As long as you don”t mind random searches or being told to put your camera away or the fact that your sweet gray-haired mama can be locked up without recourse, Fred is absolutely right.

I have learned to ignore the ’9/11 Truthers’, as they don’t seem to be influenced by truth, to any degree.

Malcom X predicted that the ‘chickens would come home to roost’, that happened on that day in September, 10 years past. As was noted before, if the Administrations were not complicit in the attacks and the subsequent insanity, they have been very cooperative. I knew as soon as the ‘PATRIOT Act’ was imposed on us, it would only get worse. So far, I’ve been right.

Dammit.

The incessant 9/11 porn gets real old, real fast, and buries a lot of “inconvenient truths” in the process – jeebus, even freekin’ BBC had Rudy “9/11″ Guiliani on my radio box for commentary a couple nights ago – but having said that…
Stay classy, Elliot @19!

I’m too lazy to truddle out, plus I’m watching Shakira. I need to be there if she gets tired and needs a massage…

Did Lil’ Fred reference James Bamford’s The Shadow Factory? Nooo? Well, nothing to see here then. Move along….

My local subway has remote security that hassles people using cameras (which are not included on their extensive list of prohibited activities) but ignores the people with food and drinks (which are). Someone being conspicuous is of course a terr’ist….

If a fire ever breaks out at Cantor’s house while he’s in it, the local fire department should delay their response time by 40%, and provide him with 60% of the usual service.

These are pictures of spontaneous memorials that sprung up around the world in the days after 9/11 –

http://privilogic.com/wordsfail/

It’s a reminder that 9/11 united almost all of the world for a brief moment. And it’s a reminder of what those assholes in the White House cynically pissed away as they plotted how best to exploit the attack while the steel was still burning.

Before I flew out of Seattle this past Thursday night TSA confiscated my $40 hair product. When I flew out of Burbank this morning (9/11) TSA confiscated the toothpaste I had when I left Seattle. Sleep well, America. I gave up my toiletries for your safety.

Only after Eric first pays 100% of the free market rate for putting out fires & rebuilding homes – with all forms in triplicate and properly notarized & on file in the loxal courthouse BEFORE the fire starts.

I still think he needs to get his screed translated into Arabic so he can walk around what’s left of Fallujah reciting it (or having it recited for him) from a bullhorn.

I triplicate that.

Add TPS reports.

Chris Hedges;

The sad legacy of 9/11 is that the assholes, on each side, won.

“Three concrete and steel buildings fell at 9.8 m/sec/sec as a result of an 800 degree fire?”

If you’re going to pretend to understand classical mechanics, the least you could do is to get your fucking units straight, you sad little manifestation of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Never Forget.

(warning: a couple of horrific images therein)

So, my little big town has an editor with muuuuuuuch more sense than the editor of the WaPoo:

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/news_columnists/robert_rivard/article/Our-lasting-wounds-a-decade-later-2165097.php

I figured it meant 800C. Still not hot enough to make steel melt.

Why I avoid flying as much as possible. Annoy the hell out of legitimate travelers, while doing nothing for actual security.

What’s your (you all) excuse for the collapse of Building 7?

What do you make of these architects and engineers?

Hence the success of blacksmiths! 9/11 conspiracy theories are to the Left what creationism is to the Right.

I did not know the right rejected creationism out of hand, as the evidence is just not really there. Good to know. Thanks.

Sadness is why building 7 collapsed. Sadness over the fact there are so many people still trapped in that hour.

Also, too a 20 story gash and 20,000 gallons of burning fuel oil.

But mostly, sadness.

Fuck the truthers.
And fuck the non-truthers.
Because in this country, we are all FUCKED.

Does anyone actually believe this country is not capable of collusion, or allowing 911 to happen? Have you folks been missing the last 10 years? It was a shite investigation. And if that doesn’t raise questions and demands for answers, then we are all FUBARed.
I mean how many unanswered questions does one need? How many recent instances of war crimes and other acts of brutality do people need before they wake the fuck up?
This country is speeding, increasing not decreasing, off the cliff. Good luck to us all. We will need it. May someone have mercy on our souls. Because, after the terrorists we have become, Dawg will not.

Are 9/11 truthers also teabaggers? Or a separate kettle of wingnut.

Because the committee did a shit job doesn’t mean that there was collusion (outside of Shrub helping his buddies from Saudi Arabia get out of town).

It’s not really an either/or question. Some teahadists are truthers, some aren’t. (But a lot of them are Islamophobes because it’s part of their religion.)

Way too many fucking questions and “issues” to wipe that slate clean.
Our intelligence people were warned. But it got lost in the … bureaucracy?
Way too many fucking questions.
And from what I’ve seen this country do since then and what we’ve become, … way too many fucking questions.

Lesley, it is probably not useful to try to give them a home.

Rightards like to say they are Lefties because they accuse Bush and Cheney of conspiracy, but the primary characteristic of a Lefty is to examine evidence to find truth. So…as the Truthers will not even consider rational arguments from engineers, architects and metallurgists, they are not Lefties by default.

We Lefties understand that the Truthers are accusatory of the Bushies, but their mental masturbation over the explosions and tower 7 are reminiscent of rightards’ insistence to stick with a debunked meme.

So, they really are an island unto themselves. Kind of like Bigfoot hunters used to be until the NatGeo channel gave them legitimacy. (Hee)

Not much.

All you need is a few ambitious people in the right places to block the warning – or ignore it, like Shrub. (Never underestimate the power of an idjit in the wrong place. Look at this week’s power failure….)

“to block the warning – or ignore it”
Collusion then?

The idea that explosives could be planted to implode a building, while the building is in use, is one idea that should be shot down on sight. (It takes demolitions experts a couple of weeks to do that, in empty buildings where they have a full set of blueprints to work with.)

An American acquaintance of mine has just railed against my views that America erred in its response to the WTC attack. He accused me of hatred “on this of all days”.

It seems also that petulance is rife in NYC as well. At the Open in Flushing Meadow Serena Williams shouted disgust at the chair umpire when a point was awarded against her for a rules breach. She said, “How dare you. I’m an American”. Unsportsman-like rich girl, more like it.

As an Aussie in China, I have to deal with many ex-pat Yanks and most are sold on the big lies about Truth, Justice and the American way. Sad really.

Congratulations Samantha Stosur – a class act.

Heh.

OK, back to watching Shakira, whose butt is to the left and then to the right…

Nope – guys who saw an opportunity to get their plans for an American puppet in the mid-east going. And didn’t realize what a mess they were walking into. Remember Cheney was already laying plans: he just needed an excuse. Bush was, and still is, stupid enough to blow off a direct warning, and one that isn’t clear and obvious would be even less likely to get his attention. (They’d been trying to ignore that entire line of investigation since January, probably because it kept pointing at the Saudis and Pakistan, and we couldn’t be looking so closely at our ‘allies’.)

Lazy complacency.

Plus, his National Security Advisor was OCD over the “Russian Threat”.

like PJEvans says, all you need are the wrong people in the right place at the wrong time. I’m sure bin Laden thanked Allah the day the SC put Bush into office. He then knew that a fucktard of the highest order would make his plans easier to carry out. And he was right.

Word.

“Nope – guys who saw an opportunity”

Considering all that has happened, I, IMHO, that is far too simplistic a write-off. You can believe what you choose, and I shall do so as well.

“Lazy complacency.”

Humbly disagree.
This level of incompetence, at so many level of the security state, even then … no I’m not buying it. No way can I, me personally, write it off so casually.

I guess you weren’t paying attention when the same people staged and executed the war in Iraq.

What’s your (you all) excuse for the collapse of Building 7?

Rudy Giuliani, who stupidly created a command center with 20,000 gallons of fuel stored in it just a block from the site of an earlier terrorist attack.

i wouldn’t piss down fred hiatt’s throat if his lungs were on fire.

That’s the correct response! Always beat Fred Hiatt’s chest/head with whatever heavy object is handy in case of lung-fire.

osama bin laden? just like every other friend or associate of the bush clan, he was a prick.

The Truthers like to proclaim that Building 7 was untouched (aside from “a few small fires”) by the attacks. They don’t like it when pictures showing the massive damage WTC 7 suffered are exhibited.

And as JennOfArk and others have mentioned already, heated steel (as do other metals) starts to lose strength well before it actually melts into a liquid. A moment’s thought will show that this is what makes the fine art of blacksmithing possible. (You know, heating metal so it’s soft enough to be malleable?)

Already debunked here: http://ae911truth.info/wordpress/

The Truthers like to proclaim that Building 7 was untouched (aside from “a few small fires”) by the attacks. They don’t like it when pictures showing the massive damage WTC 7 suffered are exhibited.

I worked in the building that was kitty-corner to WTC 7 (and across the street from the Burlington Coat Factory Mosque), and we had fusellage on the roof and in some of the windows. Those planes didn’t stop when they hit the towers, they kept going — and one of the first things they hit was WTC 7. My building didn’t get a lot of damage because WTC 7 absorbed most of the impact, on its south side.

“Whom.” Who killed whom.

Whom killed the thread? expatjourno killed the thread!!!

(Time to hit the sack. Night all.)

What do I make of them? First of all, what I “make” is that I don’t ever want to venture into a building any of them have designed, because it’s pretty fucking obvious they haven’t the slightest grasp of mechanics. Secondly, I “make” that they probably should have their licenses revoked so they don’t continue to build shit that endangers the public.

Seriously, it’s not JUST the physics that says Truthers are nuts – it’s the common sense. If you’re going to blow up the fucking buildings, what’s the point in hijacking planes to fly into them? Huh? Riddle me that, Batman.

Here’s a simple primer for how the buildings failed: impact blew fireproofing off structural members. The delicate steel trusses which supported the floors were especially vulnerable, due to having members with cross-sections of 1″ or less. Didn’t take much heat to weaken the braces in those trusses. Once they failed, the entire truss gives way and along with it, the concrete floor slab it supports. When the floor caves in, several very bad things happen: 1) the floor is supported by truss connections to the exterior columns. When those trusses cave in, they pull inward on the columns. 2) The columns rely on solid floors for bracing against lateral forces. Once the floor caves in, you’ve got a column that is unbraced for 20′ or more of its height. 3) When a floor collapses, it falls onto the floor beneath it, which wasn’t engineered to carry the load of another floor in addition to itself. The overloaded floor is now subjected to stresses over and above its design load. As it sags under the weight, it ALSO pulls inwards on the exterior columns. Once columns are pulled out of true vertical, they can’t support the 20 or 40 floors of load above them. And so on and so forth.

Duh. This is how “pancaking” happens. It’s not fucking rocket science.

I do have to at least give those of you who have spoken up here this much credit: at least you didn’t subject us to the stupidity of the “only buildings subjected to controlled demolition fall this way” argument, which says that the buildings should have toppled over. That’s my favorite Truther nugget of wisdom, because everyone who’s studied gravity – from Gallileo and Newton on down – has noted its propensity to first pull objects to the right or left, north or south, east or west, before pulling them straight down to the ground. NOT.

Ooh, I love it when you get hot like that. Excellent.

Brava, and good night. On to 9/12, my sweetie’s b-day!

It was all to pretty, all to neat,
With untrained peasants in the flying seats
but they put them just where they had to go
and all fall down…what a show….

I could go on with this but it’s quite clear; anyone who thinks there’s a good chance that the whole episode was the perfect lever for the Bush junta which slithered quickly out of the wreckage and is therefore highly suspicious, is going to get short shrift around here. So be it.

For those of us suspicious of the event, the depths of the lies, corruption and hypocrisy, the torture, murder and rape of men women and children and the ongoing war (with attendant thuggish homeland ‘security’) that were the consequence, are just further confirmation.

She said, “How dare you. I’m an American”. Unsportsman-like rich girl, more like it.

Bullshit. What she said was, ““Code violation for this? I expressed who I am. We’re in America last time I checked.” And not for nothing but she was gracious in defeat. You distorted her quote so you could criticize her. You’d be right at home with Fox News and the Bushies. Seriously, why should we trust anything you say in your post? Did your “friend” really accuse you of ‘hatred on this of all days’ or are you just making it up like you did with Serena Williams?

Spot on, Lesley!

Love the Monty Python title!

Powerful piece. Wonderfully written. Thanks for posting.

Seriously, it’s not JUST the physics that says Truthers are nuts – it’s the common sense. If you’re going to blow up the fucking buildings, what’s the point in hijacking planes to fly into them? Huh? Riddle me that, Batman.

The wackiest truthers insist there were no planes – that military “orbs” projected holograms of planes, and hired actors portrayed grieving relatives. You can’t reason with these people.

I’m sorry glad I missed the party. I spent my Sunday doing normal stuff-sleeping late, going to friends’ for brunch, kid’s soccer practice, and then reading a wonderful Steve Hoffman forum thread about Bobby Whitlock and Derek and the Dominoes.

Duane-we will never, ever forget.

I’m not into the 9-11 truther stuff, but I certainly do question the involvement and/or compliance and/or convenient “ignoring” by the Bush Crime Syndicate in terms of 9-11.

It’s been made abundantly clear that the Shrub Admin was well-warned about 9-11, and that there was a lot of info out there about those who flew the planes getting training in FL, etc.

And it took the Bush Crime Syndicate, like, a NY nanosecond to immediately take away citizen’s rights, plus STEAL tons of money (see Dana Priest’s excellent expose on Frontline vis 911, which ran all this weekend… kind of like an antidote to the 9-11 PORNO that ran continuously)… all in the name of supposed “security” and “safety.” And sheep-like citizens duly snapped to it and went along with this crap.

Remember, as well, that back in the day anyone even daring to *question* the Bush Crime Syndicate for what it was doing was immediately shrieked at for “treason” and for being “on the side of the terrorists.” Citizens of all political persausions were only too too willing to give away the farm in the name of being “safe.”

9-11 pornography… in order to keep as all silent and compliant. What a load of crap.

Sleep well, America. I gave up my toiletries for your safety.

Yeah: ain’t that the stupidest thing going? OTOH, I’m glad that TSA exists to give US citizens jobs in our downwardly-spiraling economy. But the notion that TSA & their various rape/porno scan machines (which make Micheal Chertoff rich, rich, rich from YOUR tax dollar$ & mine) actually keep citizens “safe from terrrrrists” is so bogus as to be laughable. But hey: someone’s making money from it.

Sleep well, sheeple: the rightwing spoogebuckets are happily ripping us all off for fun & profit in the name of keeping you “safe.”

I have my own thoughts on 9/11 and what was behind it but most likely this will remain in the realm of conspiracy. What bothers me is what no one talks about, the only thing the administration got right. We were immediately warned about anthrax attacks and, lo and behold, we have anthrax attacks. That put everyone over the top and only rare mention of it since.

Kind of like posting a link to Drudge as proof that FDL has been ‘de-bunked’.

In fact it’s worse, the page you link to has no information as to who the authors are, look as I might, there is nothing like a “About Us” link.

What ever you think you know about the ae911truth organzation, their members are out in the open, and they don’t pretend to know for sure what happened, they merely want a real investigation.

What ever I might think I ‘know’ about the whole truther thing, I’m in awe of the engineering horsepower behind the ae911truth group, in much the same way I’m impressed with the political wisdom that is endemic to FDL.

I’d also point out that both co-chairs of the 911 commission stated that the investigation was “set-up to fail”

I think you’ve hit onto something with that beefcake remark. Turn all of our safety departments into gay brothels. Fiscal Surplus!

Oh, you’re a truther.
Should we believe you when you comment?

I’m in awe of the engineering horsepower behind the ae911truth group, in much the same way I’m impressed with the political wisdom that is endemic to FDL

Heh. I think that’s sums things up perfectly.

See, we really can find points of agreement.

You’re giving Bush waaaay too much credit. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

If this had happened on Gore’s watch, the media and their GOP allies would have called for his impeachment. Instead, they rally behind Bush.

Kind of like posting a link to Drudge as proof that FDL has been ‘de-bunked’.

Really? How? Name three things they get wrong, and show your work.

They back up what they say with cold hard reality. You, not so much.

They back up what they say with cold hard reality.

First off, I would have thought, because of our prior interactions, that you understood that I’m not pushing the whole truther thing , and second, you aren’t addressing my question;

Who are “They”, the link you provided goes to an anonymous page with no information as to who the publishers are?

Labeling and name calling are not acceptable tactics for debate, and neither is the use of anonymous sources.

I was merely pointing out that IMO, labeling the Architects & Engineers group as “truthers” is painting with a fairly broad brush because from what I have read they are asking for answers as opposed to claiming to ‘know’ what happened.

IMO, the ‘truther’ label more properly, and accurately describes those who insist that they ‘know’ what happened, and of course that what that is, is not what we’ve been told.

It gets worse from there, and yes, those people deserve to be ignored, if possible.

the page you link to has no information as to who the authors are, look as I might, there is nothing like a “About Us” link.

Obviously, this is just another part of the conspiracy. When I visit the page Phoenix Woman provided, at the top there are five links including one that says “About”. Clearly the government is hiding that link from you.

Thanks ItchyBrother,

I blew past the ABOUT link by clicking on the sub-link to Fair Use.

I’d like to say again, any reading of my past posts, (and I’ve been writing occasionally, and commenting here for a couple of years) would make it clear that I am not involved in pushing any conspiracy theories.

You will find me questioning people who insist they know more than can be known.

This question of the collapse of WTC7 would appear to be the greatest in engineering history. In over a century of experience with steel-framed buildings, fires have never caused the collapse of a single one, even though many were ravaged by severe fires. Indeed, fires have never caused the total collapse of any permanent steel structure. Except, supposedly, on 9/11/2001.

Surely, the remains of the building would be carefully examined and detailed studies performed for years to determine the causes of this unique event. Nope. The remains were hauled away and melted down as quickly as possible. The steel was sold to scrap metal vendors and most of it was soon on ships bound for asia.

Anyway, the total collapse of the building into its own footprint in a completely symmetrical manner from asymmetrical fire damage is completely implausible.