Letters to the Editor
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even funnier
Gene says he's never mentioned the concept of accident reconstruction. Maybe not the concept, per se, but his gripe with me is that I won't refute the following:
"I laid out a very simple scenario: missle blows up part of large, fast-moving, wide-body airliner. Pieces of airplane scatter over large area of Pennsylvania. Even if the plane were traveling low (say, a few hundred feet above the ground) at the lowest airspeed to stay aloft (around 150 knots), there would be a tremendously large field of devastation"
Gene, if I'm not mistaken - that above counts as a (counterfactual) accident reconstruction. Since neither of us are certified engineers or have enough information about the crash, your argument centers on what is nothing more than idle speculation. I have answered you. Loud and clear. Stop playing at being an engineer.
And no, I haven't unraveled in the face of criticism - I have just given up with my attempt to persuade people who are impervious to logic. I've systematically debunked all the points about missing armaments, and presented points about the success of coverups, and the pattern of military engagements of civilians. None of my contentions has been adequately addressed without recourse to hyperbole or ad hominem attacks, neither of which is an effective strategy to make any sense. Having realized that it is a lost cause to try and reason with people like you, I have given up. Now that there is no stake in it for me to appear credible or reasonable, I have finally allowed my emotions to enter this discussion. Honeywell, on the other hand is a hysterical turbine of emotions who has no business voicing an opinion.
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Presidential Order
In no way do I want to join any dogpile against Jason, but just to clarify regarding the Presidential order to shoot down hijacked planes, Richard Clarke's book, Against All Enemies, has that happening on page 8.
Richard Clarke was the counterterrorism expert running the crisis management session from the White House during the morning of 9/11, and later broke with Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld because he believed Saddam Hussein's Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and saw the Iraq War as a dangerous diversion from the more urgent war against terrorism and Osama bin Laden.
On page 8 of his book, he speaks to a Major Fenzel at the PEOC (Presidential Emergency Operations Center, a bunker in the White House, where Vice President Cheney and Condoleezza Rice were stationed during the disaster), who relayed the President's authorization "to shoot down hostile aircraft."
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let's talk real logic
Gene, if I'm not mistaken - that above counts as a (counterfactual) accident reconstruction. Since neither of us are certified engineers or have enough information about the crash, your argument centers on what is nothing more than idle speculation.
Walt, please give it up. You just get sillier by the minute. But since you several times reference logic, let's look at your arguments logically.
Your above statement is what referred to in logic textbooks at the genetic fallacy, a variation on the ad hominem argument. Rather than attack the facts, you attack the source. (An ad hominem attacks the person.) You say I'm not an engineer. Actually, you have no way of knowing that, but your guess is right. But while it might take an engineer to put the pieces together, literally and figuratively, it does not take an engineer to ask a few very common-sense questions.
I am a journalist and a mililtary veteran, and I know quite well how both professions work. I know that it's impossible for the military to cover up a conspiracy of the size and type your allege, and I speak from many years' experience in uniform. Since you put so much stock in a person's background and experience, trust me on this. Just as I noted with your example of TWA #800's allegedly being shot down by a Navy ship (a frigate, I believe), I noted that upwards of 30 people would have to know about it, since the missile launch comes from the ship's CIC. (Note, also, that we have a real-world proof of my line of reasoning when a Navy ship accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf in 1988 or '89. The CIC records and witnesses were too numerous for anyone to try to put a false spin on the story.)
I also know that if a plane had scattered all over the Pennsylvania countryside, every journalist within 50 miles would have been all over the story on on the scene with cameras and tape recorders. (Everyone wants a scoop!)
Second, I've seen what an air-to-air missile does to a plane in flight. You've probably seen it too if you watch, say, History Channel, or Discover Channel, or any movie that uses any kind of actual footage of a missile strike on a fighter plane, to wit, the plane disintegrates in flight.
For the fourth or fifth time, Walt, if a relatively small fighter plane breaks into pieces upon being struck by a missile, what would happen to a large aircraft 10 or 12 times the size of a fighter? Where's the wreckage scattered across Pennsylvania, Walt? Simple question! Where are the witnesses who saw the wreckage rain from the sky and had it land on their fields and trees? As I noted before, you put great stock in witnesses who said they heard a midair explosion but didn't see it. Don't you think there would be witnesses to a wide-body airliner falling in pieces from the sky? It's not like this crash occured in Outer Mongolia.
Oh, wait, the U.S. gov't anticipated eventually shooting down a large passenger plane, so all that actual gun-camera footage was faked years ago to set up 9/11.
Yeah, that's the ticket!
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Right
During my first trip to Europe in the early '80s co-workers and friends there teased me about classic American gullibility. Having lived through two great wars on their own turf in one century, they taught me how to read the news between the lines.
Over a decade later, on a cross-country flight I sat next to a senior TWA pilot. Nearing our destination I dared to ask him what he thought about Flight 800. To my surprise he revealed that he was selected to work with the FBI and CIA on the investigation, that the investigation was the most demoralizeing experience of his life, that it was only a short time before it was readily apparent that the goal of the investigation was to controvert the truth and not uncover it. All his life long beliefs about "America" were radically altered. His sadness was tangible.
I will not see United 93 for the simple reason that I do not believe it reflects i) what happened or 2) the necessary inquiry into what may have happened. I do not want to see a film that relies on the "package" sold to us.