The Looniest Of All 9-11 Conspiracy Theories
Written by Gerard Holmgren
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 its 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 organising
them, and actually would have stopped them if it had been
able. Blindly ignoring the stand down of the US 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 US airspace for nearly two hours, crashing
them into important buildings, without the US 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 preposturous 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)ogical 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 boxcutter, 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 boxcutter 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 sceptic 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 its 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 favourite 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 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 boxcutters 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, its not clear why they would have decided to risk
blowing their cover to US 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 realise 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
vapourizing the plane? This is a little difficult even for the
conspiracy theorist, who at this point decides that its 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 Celcius has suddenly taken
on the qualities of a ferociously explosive demolition agent,
vapourising 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 vapourise a plane. And then there's about fifty
tons of aluminium to be accounted for. In excess of 15lbs 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 vapourised into nothing
from an exploding fuel load, the conspiracy theorist relies
upon Hollywood images, where the effects are 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 backflip.
"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 vapourised into nothing. "But not big planes,
with that much fuel", they shriek in hysterical denial. Or
that much metal to vapourise.
"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
vapourise 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
its 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 vapourisation 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 veritcal 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, its 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, vapourising 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 vapourise 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 vapourised. And
never again will I take Kerosene lamps out camping. One moment
you're there innocently holding the lamp - the next - kapow!
Vapourised into nothing along with 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 its
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
vapourised everything in the street, except for my passport."
"You see Sir, the schoolbus 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 vapourise 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 vapourised 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 inbetween. 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 foot 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 endeavour.
Conspiracy theorists fly into a curious panic whenever the
Pentagon missile is mentioned. They nervously maintain that
the plane was vapourised by it's 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 backflip 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.
--
?The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is
to be ruled by evil men.? - Platon
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