Thanks very much for this, Chris. I'm always interested to read
debunking of debunkers. I'm disappointed to find it pretty far from
convincing, however. That doesn't mean I find every claim of the
conspiracy theorists credible, either, of course. Focusing just on the
evidence that I could see first-hand:
1. I was astonished to see the WTC towers collapsing so _uniformly_. I
would not expect the pancaking process this article describes to proceed
with such perfect regularity and symmetry, but rather to lurch and
tumble. That's especially the case since the South Tower was clipped
only on one corner (and most of the fuel exploded outside the building).
The fact that the South Tower was hit 20 (?) minutes later than the
North Tower and collapsed 45 (?) minutes sooner is an additional
anomaly. I think controlled demolition is consistent with the Towers
having been hit by the commercial aircraft. If the Towers had toppled,
they could have killed dozens of times as many people, depending on the
direction they fell. I find it _plausible_ that the buildings would
have been wired for that purpose after the 1993 bombs in the basement of
the WTC. There is a photo showing the top 200' of the South Tower
starting to topple, at the point of impact on the corner. I think it
could be seen as a justifiable decision to bring the Tower down in a
controlled way at that point, rather than risking its falling over and
killing perhaps 100,000. The North Tower was in no such danger, having
taken a centered hit; I could only conjecture that it was then taken
down in a similar manner to avoid raising questions about the collapse
of the South Tower.
2. I was similarly astonished, in the two-page photo of the Pentagon in
_Newsweek_, at the total absence of a plane, as well as at the mild
damage to the building. Snopes' original version had the plane
"vaporizing" on contact with the building (after first hitting the
ground to dampen its momentum--without, however, damaging the lawn);
_Popular Mechanics_ says the plane "flowed" into the building more like
a liquid! The conspiracy theorists, I have to say, are much better at
making up theories than these debunkers are; this stuff makes the
debunkers look really desperate. The article says a wing was sheared
off, but doesn't attempt to explain what happened to the wing. The
scrap of metal in the photo has been said (by conspiracy theorists) not
to match any part of an American Airlines 757, and the style of
lettering, with rounded corners, indeed does not match what I remember
of AA planes.
I hope it goes without saying that I don't see either acceptance or
rejection of the official accounts as entailed by libertarianism, though
libertarianism should presumably prompt us to some skepticism. I'm
still open to being convinced that the official accounts are correct,
but it will take more than this.