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7 Questions about 9-11
By Jim Fetzer
As a former Marine Corps officer (1962-66), who spent his 35-year career offering courses in logic, critical thinking, and scientific reasoning to college students, it troubles me when my government appears to be lying to the American people. On this 4th of July, therefore, I want to share with you some of the questions that have arisen in my mind about the events of 9/11, which have been used to justify wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at enormous cost in lives lost and resources expended. I don’t claim to have all of the answers, but here are some of my questions—seven for the 4th of July!
(1) The early explosions
In their study, “Seismic Proof: 9/11 was an inside job”, Gordon Ross and Craig Furlong (one an engineer, one a numerical analyst) present evidence that there were enormous explosions in the subbasements of both of the Twin Towers prior to the impacts of any planes on those buildings. They used extremely reliable data from a geological laboratory run by Columbia University and radar and FAA data to come to the conclusion that those explosions occurred 14 and 17 seconds before those planes hit the towers:
My first question, therefore, is how were those 19 Islamic terrorists able to arrange these explosions, which drained the water from sprinkler systems that would have otherwise extinguished the rather modest office fires that remained after the jet fuel was consumed in those spectacular fireballs? I have given this a lot of thought and I can’t figure out how they did that.
(2) The impossible entry
We have all seen the footage of Flight 175 hitting the South Tower, which is the only reasonably distinct video coverage we have of any of the four plane crashes. There are plenty of copies of the Michael Hezarkhani video, which was taken more or less from the side, and still others of the Evan Fairbanks video, which was taken looking straight up the side of the South Tower. I have been puzzled, when I have taken a closer look, the plane actually enters the buildings without crumpling, without losing its wings or tail, and with no bodies, seats, or luggage falling to the ground. Here’s what I mean:
The problem I have is that, as a student of physics in high school and college, I learned that the impact of a moving plane impacting with a stationary building should create the same effects as those of a moving building impacting with a stationary plane. We would not expect a car crashing into an enormous tree to disappear into the tree. My question is, absent the suspension of the laws of physics on 9/11, how could this occur?
(3) The sizing problem
Perhaps because of my military background, I have found the Pentagon attack of special interest. The Department of Defense originally released five frames instead of any of the more than eighty (80) videos that would have captured exactly what happened. Although three of those videos have subsequently been released, none of them shows more about the crash than those original five, four of which show the spectacular fireball, the other the somewhat obscure image just above the gate mechanism that is conveniently labeled “plane”. It looked too small to me. So I asked a friend of mine—who is better at these things than am I—if he could size the image of a Boeing 757 to the tail shown in the frame that the Pentagon had released:
Imagine my surprise when it turned out that Flight 77 should have been more than twice the size of the plane in the Pentagon’s own frame. So my third question is, why isn’t the plane in the image the size of a Boeing 757?
(4) The lack of debris
Although many Americans are unaware, the hit point on the Pentagon is on the ground floor. There is a hole about 10’ high and 16-17’ wide, which is surrounded by a chain-link fence, two enormous spools of cable and a pair of cars, where there are unbroken windows beside and above the opening. What we do not see is an enormous pile of aluminum debris, broken wings or the tail, bodies, seats or luggage. Remarkably, not even the engines were recovered from the crash site—although a part of a compressor, which was too small to have come from a 757 and too large for a cruise missile—was later reported to have been found. Even more striking to me, however, is this photo of the civilian lime-green fire-trucks as they extinguish the fires:
Since these fire trucks arrived after the crash and spent fifteen minutes or so putting it out, I have been struck by the clear, green, unblemished Pentagon lawn. It looks so smooth, I expect Tiger to appear with his caddy to practice his game. My question, therefore, is, why is there no debris on the lawn?
(5) The planted fuselage
Later, of course, debris would start showing up. Since there was none even as the fire trucks were extinguishing the fires, it has to have come from somewhere. It would have been difficult to have had officers and enlisted men carry pieces of debris out onto the lawn without being observed, so it has occurred to me that perhaps it was dropped from a C-130, which was circling the Pentagon that morning. That’s my best guess. I am open to other possibilities, but I haven’t been able to think of real alternatives. One piece of debris has been used to cement the case for the crash of Flight 77:
One of the oddities about this debris is that it shows no signs of having been exposed to those fireballs and includes a piece of vine. Another student of the Pentagon, James Hanson, a newspaper reporter who earned his law degree from the University of Michigan College of Law, has traced that debris to an American Airlines 757 that crashed in a rain forest above Cali, Columbia in 1995. “It was the kind of slow-speed crash that would have torn off paneling in this fashion, with no fires, leaving them largely intact.” My question is, how did this piece of fuselage wind up on the Pentagon lawn?
(6) The dumpster fires
As though that were not disturbing enough, I was also puzzled why, later in the day, when rumors were circulating that the Capitol might be next and the members of Congress rushed out onto the steps of the building, when they looked across the Potomac, they witnesses billowing black clouds of smoke. That struck me as rather odd, since the lime green fire trucks had put out the modest fires long ago. When I took a closer look, I discovered that these black clouds of smoke were not coming from the Pentagon itself but from a series of enormous dumpsters in front of the building. See what I mean:
When I was still living in Duluth before my retirement in June of 2006, another student of the Pentagon came by and showed me forty-four (44) more frames of the same thing, where you could actually see light between the dumpsters and the building. So my question is, why was it necessary to fake fires coming from the Pentagon if a plane had actually crashed there?
(7) The absence of interest
Since I have been unable to discover the answers to questions like these—where I actually have many more—it has dumbfounded me that nearly ten years after the fact, the mass media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN has shown no interest at all in addressing them. Here are three examples of why it seems to me these questions should be burning issues in every major media outlet in this country, where we are confronted only by silence:
(a) Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, the Co-Chairs of the 9/11 Commission, have long since published WITHOUT PRECEDENT: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION (2006), in which they explain their frustration at the lack of cooperation from the administration, citing especially the fact that the Pentagon provided three different accounts of the events of 9/11, not a very reassuring indication that they got everything right. And this report is not from a “conspiracy theorist” but from the co-chairs of the 9/11 inquiry.
(b) A former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in three administrations, Dr. Steve Pieczenik, has revealed not only that Osama bin Laden actually died on or about 15 December 2001 (as David Ray Griffin, OSAMA BIN LADEN: DEAD OR ALIVE (2009) explained), but that he had been told by a high-ranking general that 9/11 was a “fαℓѕє fℓαg” attack, which was done by the government in order to arouse the American people to support wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq. And this guy earned his Ph.D. at MIT.
(c) And Alan Sabrosky, who earned his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan and is a graduate of the US Army War College, has explained that 9/11 was conceived by neo-cons in and out of the Department of Defense who wanted to advance the proposals of Project for the New American Century by taking advantage of the demise of the Soviet Union to expand the power of the sole remaining superpower by creating an empire around the world, but worried that Americans would not support those wars absent “a new Pearl Harbor”.
Now I cannot claim to know for certain that what we are being told by Lee Hamilton, Thomas Kean, Steve Pieczenik, and Alan Sabrosky is true. I can tell you that it is consistent with my own research and that of others with whom I have been in collaboration since founding Scholars for 9/11 Truth. In case you may think that I am one of those “conspiracy theorists” myself — where I have done a lot of research on JFK as well as on 9/11 — just ask yourself whether my six questions deserve answers and why the American media has been ignoring them in the land of the free and home of the brave!
Jim Fetzer is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth and maintains a blog about issues of public interest at
http://jamesfetzer.blogspot.com.
http://www.bobtuskin.com/2011/07/05/inside-job-seven-questions-about-911/
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