The Looniest of
All 9-11 Conspiracy Theories
Astute observers of history are aware that for every notable event
there will usually be at least one, often several wild conspiracy theories
which spring up around it. 'The CIA killed Hendrix', 'The Pope had John Lennon murdered',
'Hitler was half Werewolf', 'Space aliens replaced Nixon with a clone' etc, etc. The bigger the event, the more ridiculous and
more numerous are the fanciful rantings which
circulate in relation to it.
So it’s hardly surprising that the events of September 11th, 2001
have spawned their fair share of these ludicrous fairy tales. And as always, there is -- sadly -- a small
but gullible percentage of the population eager to lap up these tall tales,
regardless of facts or rational analysis.
One of the wilder stories circulating about September 11th -- and one that has
attracted something of a cult following amongst conspiracy buffs -- is that it
was carried out by nineteen fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil
genius named Osama bin Laden, with no apparent motivation other than that they
'hate our freedoms.'
Never a group of people to be bothered by facts, the perpetrators of this
cartoon fantasy have constructed an elaborately woven web of delusions and
unsubstantiated hearsay in order to promote this garbage across the internet
and the media to the extent that a number of otherwise rational people have
actually fallen under its spell.
Normally I don't even bother debunking this kind of junk, but the effect that
this paranoid myth is beginning to have requires a little rational analysis, in
order to consign it to the same rubbish bin as all such silly conspiracy
theories.
These crackpots even contend that the extremist Bush regime was caught unawares
by the attacks, had no hand in organizing them, and actually would have stopped
them if it had been able. Blindly ignoring
the stand down of the U.S. Air Force, the insider trading on airline stocks --
linked to the CIA -- the complicit behavior of Bush on the morning of the
attacks, the controlled demolition of the WTC, the firing of a missile into the
Pentagon and a host of other documented proofs that the Bush regime was behind
the attacks, the conspiracy theorists stick doggedly to a silly story about
nineteen Arab hijackers somehow managing to commandeer four planes
simultaneously and fly them around U.S. airspace for nearly two hours, crashing
them into important buildings, without the U.S. intelligence services having
any idea that it was coming, and without the Air Force knowing what to do.
The huge difficulties with such a stupid story force them to invent even more
preposterous stories to distract from its core silliness, and thus the tale has
escalated into a mythic fantasy of truly gargantuan proportions.
It's difficult to apply rational analysis to such unmitigated stupidity, but
that is the task which I take on in this article. However, it should be noted that one of the
curious characteristics of conspiracy theorists is that they effortlessly
change their so called evidence in response to each aspect which is debunked. As soon as one delusion is unmasked, they
simply invent another to replace it, and deny that the first ever existed. Eventually, when they have turned full circle
through this endlessly changing fantasy fog, they then re-invent the original
delusion and deny that you ever debunked it, thus beginning the circle once
more. This technique is known as 'the
fruit loop' and saves the conspiracy theorist from ever having to see any of
their ideas through to their (il)logical
conclusions.
According to the practitioners of the fruit loop, nineteen Arabs took over four
planes by subduing the passengers and crew through the use of guns, knives, box
cutters and gas, and then used electronic guidance systems which they had
smuggled on board to fly the planes to their targets.
The suspension of disbelief required for this outrageous concoction is only for
the hard core conspiracy theorist. For a
start, they conveniently skip over the awkward fact that there weren't any
Arabs on the planes. If there were, one
must speculate that they somehow got on board without being filmed by any of
the security cameras and without being registered on the passenger lists. But the curly question of how they are
supposed to have got on board is all too mundane for the exciting world of the
conspiracy theorist. With vague
mumblings that they must have been using false ID -- but never specifying which
IDs they are alleged to have used, or how these were traced to their real
identities -- they quickly bypass this problem, to relate exciting and sinister
tales about how some of the fictitious fiends were actually searched before
boarding because they looked suspicious.
However, as inevitably happens with any web of lies, this simply paints
them into an even more difficult corner.
How are they supposed to have got on board with all that stuff if they
were searched? And if they used gas in a
confined space, they would have been affected themselves unless they also had
masks in their luggage.
"Excuse me sir, why do you have a box cutter, a gun, a container of gas, a
gas mask and an electronic guidance unit in your luggage?"
"A present for your grandmother? Very
well sir, on you get."
"Very strange", thinks the security officer, "that's the fourth
Arabic man without an Arabic name who just got on board with a knife, gun or
box cutter and gas mask ... and why does
that security camera keep flicking off every time one these characters shows up? Must be one of those days I guess ...."
Asking any of these basic questions to a conspiracy theorist is likely to cause
a sudden leap to the claim that we know that they were on board because they
left a credit card trail for the tickets they had purchased and cars they had
rented. So if they used credit cards
that identified them, how does that reconcile with the claim that they used
false IDs to get on to the plane? But by
this time, the fruit loop is in full swing, as the conspiracy theorist tries to
stay one jump ahead of this annoying and awkward rational analysis. They will allege that the hijackers'
passports were found at the crash scenes.
"So there!” They exalt
triumphantly, their fanatical faces lighting up with that deranged look of one
who has just a revelation of questionable sanity.
Hmm? So they
got on board with false IDs but took their real passports with them? However, by this time the fruit loop has been
completely circumnavigated, and the conspiracy theorist exclaims impatiently,
"who said anything about false IDs?
We know what seats they were sitting in!
Their presence is well documented!”
And so the whole loop starts again.
"Well, why aren't they on the passenger lists?" "You numbskull! They
assumed the identities of other passengers!”
And so on ....
Finally, out of sheer fascination with this circular method of creative
delusion, the rational skeptic will allow them to get away with this loop, in
order to move on to the next question, and see what further delights await us
in the unraveling of this marvelously stupid story.
"Uh, how come their passports survived fiery crashes that completely
incinerated the planes and all the passengers?
"The answer of course is that it’s just one of those strange
coincidences, those little quirks of fate that do happen from time to time. You know, like the same person winning the
lottery four weeks in a row. The odds
are astronomical, but these things do happen.
This is another favorite deductive method of the conspiracy theorist. The 'improbability drive', in which they
decide upon a conclusion without any evidence whatsoever to support it, and then
continually speculate a series of wildly improbable events and unbelievable
co-incidences to support it, shrugging off the implausibility of each event
with the vague assertion that sometimes the impossible happens -- just about
all the time in their world. There is a
principle called 'Occam's razor' which suggests that in the absence of evidence
to the contrary, the simplest explanation is most likely to be correct. Conspiracy theorists hate Occam's razor.
Having for the sake of amusement, allowed them to get away with the silly story
of the nineteen invisible Arabs, we move on to the question of how they are
supposed to have taken over the planes.
Hijacking a plane is not an easy thing to do.
Hijacking it without the pilot being able to alert ground control is
near impossible. The pilot has only to
punch in a four digit code to alert ground control to a hijacking. Unconcerned with the awkward question of
plausibility, the conspiracy buffs maintain that on that September 11th, the
invisible hijackers took over the plane by the rather crude method of
threatening people with box cutters and knives, and spraying gas -- after they
had attached their masks, obviously -- but somehow took control of the plane
without the crew first getting a chance to punch in the hijacking code. Not just on one plane, but on all four. At this point in the tale, the conspiracy
theorist is again forced to call upon the services of the improbability drive.
So now that our incredibly lucky hijackers have taken control of the planes,
all four pilots fly them with breath taking skill and certainty to their fiery
end, all four pilots unflinching in their steely resolve for a swift meeting
with Allah. Apart from their psychotic
hatred of 'our freedoms', it was their fanatical devotion to Islam which
enabled them to summon up the iron will to do this. Which is strange, because according to
another piece of hearsay peddled by the conspiracy buffs, these guys actually
went out drinking and womanizing the night before their great martyrdom, even
leaving their Korans in the bar -- really impeccable Islamic behavior -- and
then got up at 5 o'clock the next morning to pull off the greatest covert
operation in history. This also requires
us to believe that they were even clear headed enough to learn how to fly the
huge planes by reading flight manuals in Arabic in the car on the way to the
airport. We know this because they
supposedly left the flight manuals there for us to find.
It gets better. Their practical training
had allegedly been limited to Cessnas and flight
simulators, but this was no barrier to the unflinching certainty with which
they took over the planes and skillfully guided them to their doom. If they are supposed to have done their
flight training with these tools, which would be available just about anywhere
in the world, it’s not clear why they would have decided to risk blowing their
cover to U.S. intelligence services by doing the training in Florida, rather
than somewhere in the Middle East, but such reasoning is foreign to the foggy
world of the conspiracy theorist, too trapped in the constant rotation of the
mental fruit loop to make their unsubstantiated fabrications seem even
semi-believable.
Having triumphantly established a circular delusion in support of the mythical
Arabs, the conspiracy theorist now confronts the difficult question of why
there's nothing left of the planes. Anybody
who has seen the endlessly replayed footage of the second plane going into the
WTC will realize that the plane was packed with explosives. Planes do not and cannot blow up into nothing
in that manner when they crash.
Did the mythical Arabs also haul a huge heap of explosives on board, and mange
to deploy them in such a manner that they went off in the exact instant of the
crash, completely vaporizing the plane? This
is a little difficult even for the conspiracy theorist, who at this point
decides that it’s easier to invent new laws of physics in order to keep the
delusion rolling along.
There weren't any explosives. It wasn't
an inside job. The plane blew up into
nothing from its exploding fuel load! Remarkable, quite remarkable. Sluggishly combustible jet fuel which is
basically Kerosene, and which burns at a maximum temperature of around 800
degrees Celsius has suddenly taken on the qualities of a ferociously explosive
demolition agent, vaporizing sixty-five tons of aircraft into a puff of smoke. Never mind that a plane of that size contains
around fifteen tons of steel and titanium, of which even the melting points are
about double that of the maximum combustion temperature of Kerosene -- let
alone the boiling point -- which is what would be required to vaporize a plane. And then there's about fifty tons of aluminum
to be accounted for. In
excess of 15 lbs of metal for each gallon of Kerosene.
For the conspiracy theorist, such inconvenient facts are vaguely dismissed as
'mumbo jumbo'. This convenient little
phrase is their answer to just about anything factual or logical. Like a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of a
hat, they suddenly become fanatically insistent about the devastating explosive
qualities of Kerosene, something hitherto completely unknown to science, but
just discovered by them, this very minute.
Blissfully ignoring the fact that never before or since in aviation
history has a plane vaporized into nothing from an exploding fuel load, the
conspiracy theorist relies upon Hollywood images, where the effects are always
larger than life, and certainly larger than the intellects of these cretins.
"Its a well known fact that planes blow up into
nothing on impact", they state with pompous certainty, "watch any
Bruce Willis movie."
"Care to provide any documented examples?
If it's a well known fact, then presumably this well known fact springs
from some kind of documentation -- other than Bruce Willis movies?"
At this point the mad but cunning eyes of the conspiracy theorist will narrow
as they sense the corner that they have backed themselves into, and plan their
escape by means of another stunning back flip.
"Ah, but planes have never crashed into buildings before, so there's no
way of telling," they counter with a sly grin. Well, actually planes have crashed into
buildings before and since, and not vaporized into nothing. "But not big planes, with that much
fuel", they shriek in hysterical denial.
Or that much metal to vaporize.
"Yes but not hijacked planes!” "Are
you suggesting that whether the crash is deliberate or accidental affects the
combustion qualities of the fuel?" "Now you're just being silly."
Although collisions with buildings are rare, planes frequently crash into
mountains, streets, other aircraft, nosedive into the ground, or have bombs
planted aboard them, and don't vaporize into nothing. What's so special about a tower that's mostly
glass? But by now, the conspiracy
theorist has once again sailed happily around the fruit loop. "It's a well documented fact that planes
explode into nothing on impact."
Effortlessly weaving back and forth between the position that it’s a "well
known fact" and that "its never happened before, so we have nothing
to compare it to", the conspiracy theorist has now convinced themselves --
if not too many other people -- that the WTC plane was not loaded with
explosives, and that the instant vaporization of the plane in a massive
fireball was the same as any other plane crash you might care to mention. Round and round the fruit
loop.
But the hurdles which confront the conspiracy theorist are many, and they are
now forced to implement even more creative uses for the newly discovered
shockingly destructive qualities of Kerosene.
They have to explain how the Arabs also engineered the elegant vertical
collapse of both the WTC towers, and for this awkward fact the easiest counter
is to simply deny that it was a controlled demolition, and claim that the
buildings collapsed from fire caused by the burning Kerosene.
For this, it’s necessary to sweep aside the second law of thermodynamics and
propose Kerosene which is not only impossibly destructive, but also recycles
itself for a second burning in violation of the law of degradation of energy. You see, it not only consumed itself in a
sudden catastrophic fireball , vaporizing a sixty-five ton plane into nothing,
but then came back for a second go, burning at 2000 degrees centigrade for
another hour at the impact point, melting the skyscraper's steel like butter. And while it was doing all this it also
poured down the elevator shafts, starting fires all through the building. When I was at school there was a little thing
called the entropy law which suggests that a given portion of fuel can only
burn once, something which is readily observable in the real world, even for
those who didn't make it to junior high school science. But this is no problem for the conspiracy
theorist. Gleefully, they claim that a
few thousand gallons of Kerosene is enough to:
- Completely vaporize a sixty-five ton aircraft
- Have enough left over to burn ferociously enough for over an hour at the
impact point to melt steel -- melting point about double the maximum combustion
temperature of the fuel
- Still have enough left over to pour down the elevator shafts and start
similarly destructive fires all through the building
This Kerosene really is remarkable stuff!
How chilling to realize that those Kerosene heaters we had in the house
when I was a kid were deadly bombs, just waiting to go off. One false move and the entire street might
have been vaporized. And never again
will I take Kerosene lamps out camping. One
moment you're there innocently holding the lamp -- the next -- kapow! vaporized into nothing along with the rest of the camp site,
and still leaving enough of the deadly stuff to start a massive forest fire.
These whackos are actually claiming that the raging
inferno allegedly created by the miraculously recycling, and impossibly hot
burning Kerosene melted or at least softened the steel supports of the
skyscraper. Oblivious to the fact that
the black smoke coming from the WTC indicates an oxygen starved fire --
therefore not particularly hot -- they trumpet an alleged temperature in the
building of 2000 degrees centigrade, without a shred of evidence to support
this curious suspension of the laws of physics.
Not content with this ludicrous garbage, they then contend that as the steel
frames softened, they came straight down instead of buckling and twisting and
falling sideways.
Since they're already re-engineered the combustion qualities of jet fuel,
violated the second law of thermodynamics, and redefined the structural
properties of steel, why let a little thing like the laws of gravity get in the
way?
The tower fell in a time almost identical to that of a free falling object,
dropped from that height, meaning that it’s physically impossible for it to
have collapsed by the method of the top floors smashing through the lower
floors. But according to the conspiracy
theorists, the laws of gravity were temporarily suspended on the morning of
September 11th. It appears that the evil
psychic power of those dreadful Arabs knew no bounds. Even after they were dead, they were able, by
the power of their evil spirits, to force down the tower at a speed physically
impossible under the laws of gravity, had it been meeting any resistance from fireproofed
steel structures originally designed to resist many tons of hurricane force
wind as well as the impact of a Boeing passenger jet straying off course.
Clearly, these conspiracy nuts never did their science homework at school, but
did become extremely adept at inventing tall tales for why. "Muslim terrorists
stole my notes, Sir." "No Miss, the Kerosene heater blew up
and vaporized everything in the street, except for my passport." "You
see, Sir, the school bus was hijacked by Arabs who destroyed my homework
because they hate our freedoms."
Or perhaps they misunderstood the term 'creative science' and mistakenly
thought that coming up with such rubbish was in fact, their science homework.
The ferocious heat generated by this ghastly Kerosene was, according to the
conspiracy theorists, the reason why so many of the WTC victims can't be
identified. DNA is destroyed by heat --
although 2000 degrees centigrade isn't really required, 100 degrees centigrade
will generally do the job. This is quite
remarkable, because according to the conspiracy theorist, the nature of DNA
suddenly changes if you go to a different city.
That's right, if you are killed by an Arab terrorist in New York, your DNA will
be destroyed by such temperatures. But
if you are killed by an Arab terrorist in Washington, your DNA will be so
robust that it can survive temperatures which completely vaporize a sixty-five
ton aircraft.
You see, these loonies have somehow concocted the idea that the missile which
hit the pentagon was not a missile at all, but one of the hijacked planes. And to prove this unlikely premise, they
point to a propaganda statement from the Bush regime, which rather stupidly
claims that all but one of the people aboard the plane were identified from the
site by DNA testing, even though nothing remains of the plane. The plane was vaporized by the fuel tank
explosion, maintain these space loonies, but the people inside it were all but
one identified by DNA testing.
So there we have it. The qualities of
DNA are different, depending upon which city you're in, or perhaps depending
upon which fairy story you're trying to sell at any particular time.
This concoction about one of the hijacked planes hitting the Pentagon really is
a howler. For those not familiar with
the layout of the Pentagon, it consists of 5 rings of building, each with a
space in between. Each ring of building
is about 30-35 feet deep, with a similar amount of open space between it and
the next ring. The object which
penetrated the Pentagon went in at about a 45 degree angle, punching a neat
circular hole of about a 12 foot diameter through three rings -- six walls. A little later a section of wall about 65-feet
wide collapsed in the outer ring. Since
the plane which the conspiracy theorists claim to be responsible for the impact
had a wing span of 125 feet and a length of 155 feet, and there was no wreckage
of the plane, either inside or outside the building, and the lawns outside were
still smooth and green enough to play golf on, this crazy delusion is clearly
physically impossible.
But hey, we've already disregarded the combustion qualities of jet fuel, the
normal properties of common building materials, the properties of DNA, the laws
of gravity and the second law of thermodynamics, so what the hell -- why not
throw in a little spatial impossibility as well? I would have thought that the observation
that a solid object cannot pass through another solid object without leaving a
hole at least as big as itself is reasonably sound science. But to the conspiracy theorist, this is
'mumbo jumbo'. It conflicts with the
delusion that they're hooked on, so it 'must be wrong' although trying to get
them to explain exactly how it could be wrong is a futile endeavor.
Conspiracy theorists fly into a curious panic whenever the Pentagon missile is
mentioned. They nervously maintain that
the plane was vaporized by its exploding fuel load, and point to the WTC crash
as evidence of this behavior. That's a
wonderful fruit loop. Like an insect
which has just been sprayed, running back and forth in its last mad death
throes, they first argue that the reason the hole is so small is that the plane
never entered the wall, having blown up outside, and then suddenly back flip to
explain the 250 foot deep missile hole by saying that the plane disappeared all
the way into the building, and then blew up inside the building -- even though
the building shows no sign of such damage.
As for what happened to the wings -- here's where they get really creative. The wings snapped off and folded into the
fuselage which then carried them into the building, which then closed up behind
the plane like a piece of meat.
When it suits them, they'll also claim that the plane slid in on its belly --
ignoring the undamaged lawn -- while at the same time citing alleged witnesses
to the plane diving steeply into the building from an 'irrecoverable angle.'
How they reconcile these two scenarios as being compatible is truly a study in
stupidity.
Once they get desperate enough, you can be sure that the UFO conspiracy stuff
will make an appearance. The Arabs are
in league with the Martians. Space
aliens snatched the remains of the Pentagon plane and fixed most of the hole in
the wall, just to confuse people. They
gave the Arabs invisibility pills to help get them onto the planes. Little green men were seen talking to Bin
Laden a few weeks prior to the attacks.
As America gears up to impeach the traitor Bush, and stop his perpetual oil
war, it's not helpful to have these idiots distracting from the process by
spreading silly conspiracy theories about mythical Arabs, stories which do
nothing but play into the hands of the extremist Bush regime.
At a less serious time, we might tolerate such crackpots with amused detachment,
but they need to understand that the treachery that was perpetrated on
September 11th, and the subsequent war crimes committed in 'retaliation' are
far too serious for us to allow such frivolous self indulgence to go
unchallenged.
Those who are truly addicted to conspiracy delusions should find a more
appropriate outlet for their paranoia.
Its time to stop loony conspiracy theories about September
11th.
[Edited for American Standard English by Paul
Andrew Mitchell, Private Attorney General.]