Another Prof. Joins 9/11 Skepticism Club.

7. The Case of 9/11

…In the case of 9/11, however, we are vastly more fortunate. As a consequence of inquiries by Nafeez Ahmed (2002), Thierry Meyssan (2002), Paul Thompson (2004), Michael Ruppert (2004), and David Ray Griffin (2004, 2005), among others, we already know that the official account of 9/11 cannot possibly be correct. That account contends that 19 Arabs, with feeble ability to pilot aircraft, hijacked four airliners and then executed demanding maneuvers in order to impact the World Trade Center and the Pentagon; that the damage created by their impact combined with the heat from burning jet fuel brought down WTC1 and WTC2; that WTC7 was the first building in history to be brought down by fire alone; and that the Pentagon was struck by United Flight 77, which was a Boeing 757. The basic problem with this "conspiracy theory", as in the case of JFK, is that its truth would violate laws of physics and engineering that cannot be transgressed…

…Most Americans may not realize that no steel-structure high-rise building has ever collapsed from fire in the history of civil engineering, either before or after 9/11. If we assume that those fires have occurred in a wide variety of buildings under a broad range of conditions, that evidence suggests that these buildings do not have a propensity to collapsed as an effect of fire. That makes an alternative explanation, especially the use of powerful explosives in a controlled demolition, a hypothesis that must be taken seriously. Indeed, there appear to be at least ten features of the collapse of the Twin Towers that are expectable effects of controlled demolitions but not from fires following aircraft impacts. They include that the buildings fell about the rate of free fall; that they both collapsed virtually straight down (and into their own "footprints"); that almost all the concrete was turned into very fine dust; that the collapses were complete, leaving virtually no steel support columns standing; that photographic records of their collapse relect "demolition waves" occurring just ahead of the collapsing floors; that most of the beams and columns fell in sections of 30' to 40' in length; that firemen reported hearing sequences of explosions as they took place; that seismological events were recorded immediately prior to collapse; and that pools of molten metal were observed in the subbasements for weeks after…

8. 9/11: The Pentagon

…Unofficial variations on the official account include that the Boeing 757 first hit the ground and then bounced into the building, that the plane's engines plowed across the lawn before it entered the building, or that its right wing-tip hit and caused it to "cartwheel" into the Pentagon. None of these accounts is remotely consistent with the smooth, green, and unblemished lawn. It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that the Secretary of Defense had the lawn resurfaced as though it had been damaged during the attack. Photographs of the lawn were taken immediately after the attack that demonstrate it was not damaged at all. Anyone who only viewed the lawn after its reconstruction, however, would be more likely to accept the official account. And it is of more than passing interest that far more damage could have been caused by less demanding maneuvers if the plane had been crashed through the roof of the building as opposed to hitting a newly reconstructed wing that was largely bereft of personnel and records—as though the "terrorists" wanted to inflict minimal damage.

Had a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon, it would have left massive debris from the wings, the fuselage, the engines, the seats, the luggage, the bodies, and the tail. Take a look at photographs taken shortly after the impact before the upper floors fell, however, and you will observe none of the above: no wings, no engines, no seats, no luggage, no bodies, no tail. It does not require rocket science—or even the calculation of any probabilities—to recognize that something that large cannot possibly have fit through an opening that small and left no remnants in the form of wings sheered off, debris scattered about, and so on. One piece of fuselage alleged to have come from the plane appears to have been planted evidence, which was moved around and photographed in more than one location. But if massive debris from the fuselage, wings, engines, seats, luggage, bodies, and tail were not present at the scene, the scene cannot have been of the crash of a 757. The argument involved is about as simple as they come.

The principle of logic involved is known as modus tollens, which states that, if p then q, but not q, then not p. If q must be true when p is true, but q is not true, then p is not true, either. This is an elementary rule of deductive reasoning, employment of which is fundamental to scientific investigations. If you want to test an hypothesis, deduce what must be true if that hypothesis is true and attempt to ascertain whether those consequences are true. If they are not true, then the hypothesis is false. Q.E.D. If a Boeing 757 had hit the Pentagon, as the government has alleged, it would have left debris of specific kinds and quantities. Photographs and measurements show no debris of those kinds and quantities. As long as these photographs are authentic and those measurements are correct—which concerns the quality of the evidence for not q and appears to be rather difficult to dispute—then no Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon.

9. What really happened?

The remnants of the single engine found inside offer clues as to what actually hit the Pentagon. Boeing 757s are powered by two Pratt & Whitney turbofan engines, with front-rotor elements about 42" in diameter and high-pressure rear stages that are less than 21" in diameter. The part found was less than 24" in diameter and, it turns out, actually matches, not the turbofan engine, but the front-hub assembly of the front compressor for the JT8D turbojet engine used in the A-3 Sky Warrior jet fighter. Since cruise missiles have a 20" diameter, moreover, they appear to be too small to accommodate this component. It follows that the Pentagon was not hit by a Boeing 757 or by a cruise missile but, given this evidence, was probably struck by an A-3 Sky Warrior instead. The available relevant evidence is not even consistent with the government's official account, which deserves to be rejected. Its likelihood given the evidence is actually null, while the alternative A-3 hypothesis makes the relevant evidence highly probable and has high likelihood as a clearly preferable explanation.

This conjecture, which the evidence suggests, receives additional support from other sources. Two civilian defense contract employees, for example, have reported that A-3 Sky Warriors were covertly retrofitted with remote control systems and missile-firing systems at the Ft. Collins-Loveland Municipal Airport, a small civilian airport in Colorado, during the months prior to 9/11. According to information they supplied, "separate military contractors—working independently at different times—retrofitted Douglas A-3 Sky Warriors with updated missiles, Raytheon's Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote control systems, new engines and fire control systems, transponders, and radio-radar-navigation systems—a total makeover—seemingly for an operation more important than their use as a simple missile testing platform for defense contractor Hughes-Raytheon." These reports substantiate the alternative.

If a small fighter jet rather than a Boeing 757 had hit the Pentagon, that would tend to explain the small impact point, the lack of massive external debris, and a hole in the inner ring of the building, which the fragile nose of a Boeing 757 could not have created. It would also suggest why parts of a plane were carried off by servicemen, since they might have made the identification of the aircraft by type apparent and falsified the official account. A small fighter also accommodates the report from Danielle O'Brien, an air traffic controller, who said of the aircraft that hit, "Its speed, maneuverability, the way that it turned, we all thought in the radar room—all of us experienced air traffic controllers—that it was a military plane". Nothing moves or maneuvers more like a military plane, such as a jet fighter, than a military plane or a jet fighter, which could also explain how it was able to penetrate some of the most strongly defended air space in the world—by emitting a friendly transponder signal...