Cranius wrote:

galanter wrote:When the U2's hit London

Say again?

Bono and friends.

"U2 travelled to London for its first shows outside of Ireland, but failed to get much attention from foreign audiences and critics."

FBI TOLD BY BUSH TO BACK OFF BIN LADENS

FBI agents have testified that Bush 43 ordered the bureau to relax their surveillance of the Bin
Laden family members living in the United States. According to BBC Newsnight of November
6, 2001, the FBI “was told to back off bin Laden family.” The program said it had been told by a
highly placed source in a US intelligence agency there had always been “constraints” on
investigating Saudis, but under President George Bush these had become much worse. After the
2000 elections, the intelligence agencies were told to “back off” from investigating the bin Laden
family and the Saudi royals. BBC2’s Newsnight also said that it had secret documents from the
FBI investigation into the terrorist attacks which showed that despite claims that Osama bin
Laden was the black sheep of the family, at least two other US-based members were suspected of
having links with a possible terrorist organization. The BBC report was based on a secret FBI
document numbered 199I WF213589 and emanating out of the FBI’s Washington field office.
One of the organizations that the FBI was supposedly ordered to ignore was the “Saudi-funded
World Association of Moslem Youth (WAMY), a suspected terrorist organization.” WAMY’s
accounts were frozen by Pakistan after 9/11, and India “claimed that this group was linked to an
organization involved in bombing in Kashmir.”(Times of India, November 8, 2001) Whatever
the specifics, this is the familiar pattern of police agencies finding reasons for not rolling up the
financial infrastructure required to keep their indispensable patsies in the field, at least until the
big hit has been accomplished.

Just after 9/11, FBI agents swooped down on the Boston suburb where around twenty
wealthy relatives of Bin Laden lived, and questioned them at a condominium complex in
Charlestown. Agents even visited nightclubs to collect credit cards of younger members
of the family. Bin Laden’s younger brother Mohammed, who was said to have moved
back to Saudi Arabia with his wife and children several years before, owned a tenbedroom
mansion in nearby Wayland. Another younger brother, Abdullah, was a 1994
graduate of Harvard Law School. But, despite the official US story demonizing their
maverick half-brother, the plutocratic Bin Ladens had nothing to fear. Soon reports began
circulating widely that the Bush regime organized special flights out of the US for
members of the Bin Laden family and some other wealthy Saudis. Craig Unger and
others have told the story of these special flights which whisked the Bin Ladens and other
Saudis out of the US during a time when civil aviation was still suspended. The 9/11
commission denies that these took place between Tuesday and Sunday, that is to say
during the days when all US commercial aviation was grounded. The Tampa Tribune
carried a story about a Lear Jet which took off from Tampa on September 13 and flew to
Lexington, Kentucky with Saudi plutocrats on board. The plane started from a private
hanger at Raytheon Airport Services in Tampa. It is possible that this Lear Jet was rented
from Wally Hilliard, the man who financed Rudi Dekkers’ Huffman Aviation in nearby
Venice, Florida, where Atta and Shehhi took flight lessons. (Hopsicker, Mad Cow
Morning News 11)

In Afghanistan and Iraq, the US forces constantly imitated the Israeli practice of simply
seizing family members of accused terrorists and holding them as hostages. If these
illegal methods are good enough for the little people, and if Bin Laden was the heart and
soul of world terrorism, why were the opulent Bin Ladens not simply declared enemy
combatants and hustled off to Guantanamo for a round of sleep deprivation and other
torture, until the family disgorged the fugitive sheikh? US methods, although they are
certainly brutal and illegal, are not consistent.

Quite apart from these flights, the US State Department has long functioned as al Qaeda’s virtual
in-house travel agency. The former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah from 1987 to
1989, Michael Springman, told BBC Newsnight in the fall of 2001: “In Saudi Arabia I was
repeatedly ordered by high-level State Department officials to issue visas to unqualified
applicants - people who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I complained
there. I complained here in Washington ... and I was ignored.” He added: “What I was doing was
giving visas to terrorists, recruited by the CIA and Osama bin Laden to come back to the United
States for training to be used in the war in Afghanistan against the then Soviets.”

BUSH 41 WORKS FOR BIN LADENS VIA CARLYLE GROUP

The business cooperation of the Bush and Bin Laden families did not stop with Arbusto.
A few weeks after 9/11, readers of the Wall Street Journal were more than mildly
surprised to learn that the 41st president of the United States, George H.W. Bush, the
father of the current tenant of the White House, was in effect an paid part-time employee
of the Saudi Bin Laden Group, the Bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia, through
the intermediary of the Carlyle Group, an international investment and consulting firm, in
which the Bin Ladens invested. There had been at least two documented meetings of
Bush 41 with the Bin Laden business clan, and in reality there had doubtless been more
on social occasion and the like. Other top Republicans were also associated with the
Carlyle group, such as former Secretary of State James A. Baker, Bush 43’s lawyer
during the 2000 stolen election, and Iran-contra heavy Frank Carlucci, a former Secretary
of Defense. Also working with Carlyle were Reagan Treasury official Richard Darman,
and Bush 41’s White House chief of staff, John Sununu. The Journal story repeated the
cover story that Osama bin Laden had supposedly been “disowned” by his family, which
was running a multi-billion dollar business in Saudi Arabia and was a major investor in
the senior Bush’s firm. Other reports have questioned, though, whether members of his
Saudi family have truly cut off Osama bin Laden. It was also reported that the FBI had
subpoenaed the Bin Laden family business’s bank records. (Wall Street Journal,
September 27, 2001; Judicial Watch, September 28, 2001))

Almost everything about Osama Bin Laden remains uncertain, down to the question of whether
he is dead or alive, free or in captivity, and whether he is one person or a group of
Doppelgängers. But there is no doubt that CIA, MI-6, and their satellites have showed a
remarkable loyalty to Bin Laden, building him up and lionizing him at every opportunity. These
agencies do this because they need to establish the credibility of their patsy. Because of his
notorious track record as a CIA asset, Bin Laden needs all the public relations assistance the
agency can give him. In the days after 9/11, a large demonstration was held against terrorism by
the middle classes of Teheran, Iran, and one of the most prominent signs read “Bin Laden = CIA
agent.”

One of Bin Laden’s flacks is none other than Bernard Lewis of the Institute for Advanced
Study in Princeton, New Jersey, the author of the operational US-UK-Israel long-term
strategic plan for the dismemberment and Balkanization of the Arab and Islamic states of
the Middle east and of the “arc of crisis” which we see in action in Iraq and elsewhere
today. Lewis bent over backward to establish the Islamic legitimacy and bona fides of
Bin Laden in an interview given about two months after 9/11.

BERNARD LEWIS: BIN LADEN’S FLACK

Lewis argued that bin Laden’s brand of Islamic terrorism was completely consistent with
classical Islam, which is committed to the subjugation of the infidels to Islamic law. Lewis
documented Bin Laden’s place in the great tradition of the Moslem world by citing the passage
in Bin Laden’s recent videotape in which he spoke of “humiliation and disgrace ... for more than
80 years,” a reference to the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire by Britain and France after
1918. Lewis located Bin Laden in the tradition of jihad, “bequeathed to Moslems by the
Prophet.” In principle, Lewis went on, the world was divided into two houses: the House of
Islam, in which a Moslem government ruled and Moslem law prevailed, and the House of War,
meaning the rest of the world, which was still inhabited and, more important, ruled by infidels.

Between the two, there was to be a perpetual state of war until the entire world either embraced
Islam or submitted to the rule of the Moslem state. Among all the different “infidels” ruling the
House of War, according to Lewis, Christianity was singled out as “their primary rival in the
struggle for world domination.” In a masterpiece of Geschichtskletscherei, Lewis cited slogans
painted on the walls of the Dome of the Rock from the 7th Century assailing Christianity. Next,
Lewis asserted that the evolution of modern Islamic terrorism, specifically al-Qaeda terrorism,
had a long history within Islam, dating to the Assassins of the 11-13th Centuries. He also
identified Saudi Arabia and Egypt as the two regimes singled out by the Islamic jihadists for
their corruption by modernism. He concluded ominously: “For Osama bin Laden, 2001 marks
the resumption of the war for the religious dominance of the world that began in the 7th
Century.... If Bin Laden can persuade the world of Islam to accept his views and his leadership,
then a long and bigger struggle lies ahead, and not only for America. Sooner or later, al-Qaeda
and related groups will clash with the other neighbors of Islam--Russia, China, India--who may
prove less squeamish than the Americans in using their power against Moslems and their
sanctities. If Bin Laden is correct in his calculations and succeeds in his war, then a dark future
awaits the world, especially the part of it that embraces Islam.” (New Yorker, November 19,
2001)

nihil.

1) oops. I obviously meant V2 not U2.

clocker bob,

2) The "strawmen" were not strawmen. They were silly taunts. Let's be clear about this.

3) You don't know me. Don't presume to tell me what I can and cannot be rational and objective about. I'll extend you the same courtesy.

4) I used to believe there was a second shooter in Dallas. I don't anymore. It's not as much fun, but it's the banal truth of the matter.

5) I'll get back to this after I do a little more research.

I think Bob is accusing you of a lack of objectivity because you don't seem to be applying the same reason filter at the official story as you are at the conspiracies.

I agree with what you say about much of the conspiracies, the evidence being, often, no evidence at all or only circumstancial or full of inconsistencies etc, etc

But these things apply to the official story too.

You do seem to have just accepted the official theory and given that the official theory has been peddled by the alternative prime suspects there is reason for suspicion.
Not derision.

Does the withholding of evidence, obstruction of official investigation not concern you at all?

Or is it just that you think an act of war has been committed so there doesn't need to be any evidence.

I presume you are aware that many wars, or escalations of wars have been justified by faked or self inflicted 'terrorist' acts.

THE LANGLEY BIN LADEN FAN CLUB

The most comprehensive document of Bin Ladenolatry so far produced comes from the bowels
of the CIA, the work place of Anonymous, the author of Imperial Hubris. This book can only be
interpreted as a semi-official compendium of CIA doctrine on today’s world. Anonymous is sure
that Bin Laden will be able to strike the US again, and this time most likely with a weapon of
mass destruction, but he still offers the erratic millionaire praise without stint:

Viewed from any angle, Osama Bin Laden is a great man, one who smashed the
expected unfolding of universal post-Cold War peace.

The New York and
Washington attacks, Andrew Bacevich and Sebastian Mallaby wrote in the Wilson
Quarterly, “revealed that the pilgrimage to perfection was far from over,” though
“not for a moment did they cause American political leaders to question the
project’s feasibility.” Post-11 September, Dr. Bruce Hoffman also offered an
acute judgment of Bin Laden’s impact. “Whatever else,” Hoffman wrote, “Bin
Laden is one of the few persons who can argue that they changed the course of
history.”…All told, Bin Laden in certainly the most popular anti-American leader
in the world today. His name is legend from Houston to Zanzibar to Jakarta, and
his face and sayings are emblazoned on T-shirts, CDs, audio and videotapes,
posters, photographs, cigarette lighters, and stationery across the earth.
“Afghanistan’s children,” Daniel Bergener wrote in the New York Times
Magazine in July 2003, “suck on Bin Laden candies, sugary balls in wrappers
showing the leader’s face, his pointed finger and the tip of a rocket.” So too with
his name: “one of the most common names for newborn males is Osama,” James
Kitfield reported in the National Journal in November 2002. “Even among those
who publicly denounce his terrorist methods, the namings indicate the nearly
mythical status the Islamic world has bestowed on Osama Bin Laden.”
(Anonymous 104-105)

Our anonymous CIA agent waxes positively indignant about those in Saudi Arabia and
around the world who impugn Bin Laden’s world-historical genius. He is especially upset
about certain Saudis who have worked closely with Bin Laden in the past, and who find it
impossible to believe that he is now functioning as the evil demiurge of the twenty-first
century. Anonymous detects a “theme of Bin Laden’s limited mental and leadership
abilities” which has been spread by “a number of Saudi officials and writers. Their intent
seems simple enough: to prove that Bin Laden is intellectually incapable of managing al
Qaeda and designing its operations.” (Anonymous 107) As an example of this line,
Anonymous quotes an account given by Saudi Prince Mahmoud bin Abdel Aziz to the
US press. The Prince recalled
that night a decade ago when Osama Bin Laden attended an
evening salon to describe his exploits fighting in
Afghanistan….[The prince] remembers young Osama floundering
when guests questioned him about the interpretation of religious
texts. “Finally, I had to signal with my hands for them to stop it,”
said the prince. “He really is quite a simple man.” (Anonymous
108)

Here we have a rich misfit and fanatic who cannot hold his own in theological debates,
which should supposedly be his strongest suit. In Anonymous’ view, “the most common
form of the Saudis’ defamation of Bin Laden is done by having his friends in the
kingdom describe him as a gentle, amiable, and relatively unintelligent man.”
(Anonymous 108)

But the yelping detractors of Bin Laden do not stop here. According to
Anonymous: “A final side to the effort in the Moslem and Western worlds to denigrate
Bin Laden’s brains and talents lies in the studied attempt to depict Bin Laden as a
simpleton who is directed by that evil terrorist genius Ayman al-Zawahiri, former chief of
Egyptian Islamic Jihad and now Bin Laden’s deputy in al Qaeda. ‘My knowledge of Bin
Laden makes me unable to conceive what is happening now,’ said Dr. Abdullah al
Muayyad, a former director general of the Saudi finance ministry who worked with Bin
Laden during the Afghan jihad.’” (Anonymous 107) Like a good CIA agent, Anonymous
tries to make his readers think that the Saudis are passing the buck to the nefarious
Egyptians, but this is hogwash. Zawahiri, once again, was a key part of the Sadat
assassination, and afterwards was protected by London. The world needs to remember
Sadat’s widow, Jehan Sadat, recalling in a television interview after 9/11 that Zawahiri, a
murderer of her husband, had lived in London for years after that crime, while extradition
to Egypt was always refused by the UK. The guess here would be that Zawahiri is a
double agent working for MI-6, while Bin Laden is indeed a fanatical, deluded patsy and
dupe; at any rate, if this is Bin Laden’s mentality, it would make him the ideal type for
the role he is presently carrying out.

Anonymous devotes a lyrically fulsome passage to evoking Bin Laden’s status as a
beloved figure among the Moslems; the Moslem love for Osama, he argues, is
love not so much for Osama Bin Laden the person – although there is
much of that – but love for his defense of the faith, the life he lives, the
heroic example he sets, and the similarity of that example to other heroes
in the pantheon of Islamic history. (Anonymous 124)

Anonymous concludes this paean to his hero Bin Laden by favorably comparing the
psychotic sheikh to Abraham Lincoln. This is all coming, we recall, from a high-level
CIA officer, one of the founding members of the “Manson family,” as the original CIA
Bin Laden station called itself. If Arabs and Moslems can be convinced that Bin Laden is
really their leader, and not a creature of the CIA, then they will never accomplish the
modernizing reforms which the progressive nationalists promised. They will spend their
time fighting among themselves in the name of re-creating the caliphate. They will be
unable to make alliances against the Anglo-Americans with Europe, with the Orthodox,
the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Confucians, the atheists, or anybody else; they will selfisolate
themselves in endless backwardness. Bin Laden’s mass line is, after, all, that it is
the duty of every Moslem to kill infidels wherever they are found. If applied literally, this
would even cut off all scientific and commercial exchanges in a kind of murderous selfembargo.
All these factors will make the Moslem ummah ever so much easier to divide
and defeat. No wonder the CIA is so proud of having made Bin Laden a folk hero of the
Moslem world, with the help of the 9/11 attacks which the unstable dreamer could never
have carried out by himself: literally billions of dollars of publicity for the Saudi misfit
have paid off in one of the greatest psychological warfare operations of all time. Any
cause that chooses Bin Laden or some similar figure as its leader, we may be certain, is
damning itself to a lonely and ignominious defeat at the hands of the laughing CIA
kuffar.

Even more notable are the support service which the CIA and it minions continue to provide Bin
Laden. Here the evidence is fragmentary but persistent and finally overwhelming. According to
CBS News, “the night before the September 11 terrorist attack, Osama bin Laden was in
Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later
pledged its backing for the US war on terror in Afghanistan….Bin Laden was spirited into a
military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment. (Barry Peterson, “Hospital Worker:
I Saw Osama,” CBS News, January 29, 2002: www.cbsnews.com) Before we criticize Pakistan,
though, we should realize that the ISI in this case was probably acting on US instructions, as it
generally does.

So belief in a JFK conspiracy is the litmus test to determine if one is objective enough to see the real truth behind the 9/11 attack?

That's more helpful than, say, understanding physics?

LE FIGARO: BIN LADEN TREATED AT AMERICAN HOSPITAL, JULY 2001

On October 31, 2001, Le Figaro, the leading French conservative newspaper, published a front
page story about medical treatment received by Bin Laden in Dubai in the summer before 9/11.

This remarkable revelation came in an article by Alexandra Richard entitled “La CIA a rencontré
Ben Laden à Dubaï en juillet,” (The CIA met Bin Laden in Dubai in July). At around the same
time, similar facts were reported by Agence France Presse and Radio France International, the
French external broadcasting service. The AFP dispatch read in part:

Bin Laden Underwent Treatment in July at Dubai American Hospital

Osama bin Laden underwent treatment in July at the American Hospital in
Dubai where he met a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official,
French daily Le Figaro and Radio France International reported. Quoting
“a witness, a professional partner of the administrative management of the
hospital,” they said the man suspected by the United States of being
behind the September 11 terrorist attacks had arrived in Dubai on July 4
by air from Quetta, Pakistan. He was immediately taken to the hospital for
kidney treatment. He left the establishment on July 14, Le Figaro said.
During his stay, the daily said, the local CIA representative was seen
going into bin Laden’s room and “a few days later, the CIA man boasted
to some friends of having visited the Saudi-born millionaire.”

Quoting “an authoritative source,” Le Figaro and the radio station said the
CIA representative had been recalled to Washington on July 15. Bin
Laden has been sought by the United States for terrorism since the
bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. But his
CIA links go back before that to the fight against Soviet forces in
Afghanistan.

Le Figaro said bin Laden was accompanied in Dubai by his personal
physician and close collaborator, who could be the Egyptian Ayman al-
Zawahiri, as well as bodyguards and an Algerian nurse. He was admitted
to the urology department of Doctor Terry Callaway, who specializes in
kidney stones and male infertility. Telephoned several times, the doctor
declined to answer questions. Several sources had reported that bin Laden
had a serious kidney infection. He had a mobile dialysis machine sent to
his Kandahar hideout in Afghanistan in the first half of 2000, according to
“authoritative sources” quoted by Le Figaro and RFI. (AFP, Wednesday
October 31, 2001, 2:04 PM)

The CIA was quick to deny these embarrassing facts reported by real investigative journalists,
who apparently still exist in France. A spokeswoman at CIA Langley, VA headquarters
described the Le Figaro article as “complete and utter nonsense. It’s nonsense, it’s absurd, it’s
ridiculous, it’s not true.” The CIA said it intended to protest to Le Figaro. The American
Hospital in Dubai denied that Bin Laden had been a patient. (The Scotsman, November 1, 2001)
But the French author Richard LaBevière countered that Osama Bin Laden had been working for
the CIA since 1979, a fact which was generally accepted in Europe. (October 31, 2001)

Radio
France International stuck to its guns and followed up on its story with further details about Bin
Laden’s CIA handler and case officer, Larry Mitchell:

“The local representative of the CIA who
visited Osama Bin Laden last July 12 at the American Hospital in Dubai is called Larry Mitchell.
If his visiting card specifies that he is a “consular agent,” everyone in Dubai knows, especially in
the small expatriate community, that he is working under cover. To say it openly, Larry Mitchell
belongs to the ‘big house’, otherwise known as the CIA. He himself does not hide it.” RFI went
on: “An expert in the Arab world and especially in the Arabian peninsula, Larry Mitchell is a
colorful personality who livens up the somewhat drab evenings of the expatriates of Dubai. One
of his friends likes to say that his natural exuberance often gets into classified matters. That is
perhaps one of the reasons why he was called back to the United States last July 15. About
twenty days after the September 11 attacks, in a statement dated October 5, the CIA dismissed as
baseless rumors the story that the agency had had contacts with Bin Laden and his group in the
past, especially at the time of the war against the USSR in Afghanistan. It happens that this
communiqué of the CIA is in complete contradiction with the earlier official statements of
several representatives of the US administration itself.” (http://www.rfi.fr/1 novembre 2001)

It is thus clear that the CIA was providing vital support services to Bin Laden long after he had
allegedly turned into the world’s leading anti-American monster. The reality is that Bin Laden
and al Qaeda have never stopped serving the CIA strategic agenda, whatever that happened to
be. As Thierry Meyssan writes, “In reality, the CIA continued to have recourse to Osama Bin
Laden’s services against Russian influence as it had done against the Soviets. You don’t change
a winning team. The ‘Arab Legion’ of Al Qaeda was used, in 1999, to support the Kosovar
rebels against the dictatorship in Belgrade. It was also operational in Chechenya, at least until
November 2001, as was attested to by the New York Times. (Michael Wines, December 9, 2001)

The alleged hostility of Bin Laden against the United States permitted Washington to deny
responsibility for these dirty operations.” (Meyssan 2002 106-7)

In a discussion of the impact of the anonymous Imperial Hubris CIA tract during the summer of
2004, the Washington Post provided a succinct summary of al Qaeda’s strategic services to the
CIA: “Al Qaeda’s camps were staffed by veteran fighters who trained insurgents who fought and
trained others to fight, not only against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, but also against
national armies in Indian Kashmir, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Eritrea, Yemen, Saudi Arabia,
Algeria, Tajikistan, Egypt, Bosnia, western China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Macedonia, Kosovo, and
the Philippines.” (Review of Anonymous, Imperial Hubris, Washington Post, July 11, 2004)

Notice that all these states were or are targets of US destabilization. And even this list is far from
complete; it leaves out Libya, for example.
The Iranian press also noted the strange affinities of al Qaeda for figures who were
clearly still on the US payroll. While panning the 9/11 commission report, the Teheran
Times observed that none other than KSM, “Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, the reported
mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was a longtime associate of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a leader
of the Afghan Northern Alliance and current ally of the US-backed Afghans president,
Hamid Karzai.” (Teheran Times, July 27, 2004)

Earwicker wrote:I think Bob is accusing you of a lack of objectivity because you don't seem to be applying the same reason filter at the official story as you are at the conspiracies.

I agree with what you say about much of the conspiracies, the evidence being, often, no evidence at all or only circumstancial or full of inconsistencies etc, etc

But these things apply to the official story too.

You do seem to have just accepted the official theory and given that the official theory has been peddled by the alternative prime suspects there is reason for suspicion. Not derision.

Does the withholding of evidence, obstruction of official investigation not concern you at all?

Or is it just that you think an act of war has been committed so there doesn't need to be any evidence.

I presume you are aware that many wars, or escalations of wars have been justified by faked or self inflicted 'terrorist' acts.

Yes, wars have been started with lies. That doesn't mean that everything that has ever been said in support of a war is a lie.

I think in a case like this it's a mistake to take human decisions, selfish motivations, bureaucratic disputes, and political conflicts, and from that try to infer something about how the very physical process of buildings being collapsed was achieved. The best evidence is not fuzzy speculation about people, it's the physical event itself.

Can I safely assume that there is no disagreement that each tower was indeed struck by a large aircraft nearly full of fuel? If so, the question is then could that be solely responsible for the subsequent damage.

So I'm looking here at the arguments regarding physical processes, and I'm just not seeing *anything* that rules out, or is even marginally inconsistent with, the damage being done solely by the 2 jets hitting the towers.

Further I've not seen any plausible account of how the buildings could have been prepared for demolition, a massive undertaking, without anyone noticing.

I'd be happy to apply the same skepticism towards the physical processes involved in the 2 planes being solely responsible for the towers collapse. One counter-argument is that the building should have collapsed and slid down the central beams likes records on a tall spindle turntable, leaving 47 steel beams rising straight up, without horizontal support, some 1360 feet into the air. Since that didn't happen, the reasoning goes, thermite explosives must have been used to take them down.

This argument is simply out of touch with physical reality. Ever noticed that radio towers are either structured like tall pyramids, or are poles with high tension cables from the top to the ground also forming a tall pyramid shape? Would they go to that trouble if they could simply build a freestanding steel beam shooting straight up from the ground?

Looking at it another way, does it seem reasonable that these massive buildings could fall down, take the all of the horizontally connecting structure with them, and not apply any shearing force to the vertical members, and leave them standing afterward?

The fact that 47 girders going straight up some 1360 feet into the air were not left behind is not evidence that thermite explosives were used. It's explained by the fact that (1) a huge building can't simply slide down the vertical members and leave them standing and (2) even if you built a freestanding 1360 ft tall steel girder it would quickly fall down of its own accord.

I'm willing to be open minded. I'm not willing to let my brain fall out in the process.