Rick Reuben wrote:

NerblyBear wrote: two of the 10 hijackers

So, is it your theory that no hijackers were involved? Then how do you explain the flight recordings? How do you explain the flight manifests? How do you explain the phone calls from relatives?

from 9/11 myths.com wrote:It’s difficult to destroy DNA. Essentially you need a complete cremation, turn even bones to ash, and that doesn’t happen easily. Use Google to search for references to "Crematorium" and you'll find items like this.

New crematoriums, constructed on or after August 30, 1989, must have at least a 1.0 second interval at which the temperature reaches 1800°F. And, the operating temperature must never go below 1600° F
http://www.ees.ufl.edu/homepp/cywu/ENV4 ... ations.htm

In a cremation, the casket or container is placed in a chamber, where the temperature is raised to approximately 1000° C (1832° F). After approximately 90 minutes, all organic matter is consumed by heat or evaporation.
http://www.mountpleasantgroupofcemeteri ... mation.asp

So it’s recommended to take 90 minutes at a constant 1800 degrees F to cremate a body. Fire persisted for many hours at the Pentagon, but with that temperature all around the passengers bodies? Or did the fire move on elsewhere?.

We can perhaps get some clues from sites that discuss the WTC fires (see http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/ ... ions_2.htm). Here they talk about temperatures typically reaching 1432° F (800° C), with occasional higher values for very brief periods of time. Given that these fires weren’t lasting for anything like 90 minutes in the same place, though, it seems unlikely that you’d see complete cremation. This would still have made identification difficult, but there’s no reason to believe DNA testing wouldn’t be possible. Read this account of a tunnel fire in Austria, November 2000:

Austrian officials said most of the 66 bodies so far recovered were so badly burned, the remains would require DNA testing and that it would take at least three days to get the results of each test...

The intensity of the fire left the bodies badly charred and even tattoos and scars could no longer be seen, chief forensic pathologist Edith Tutsch-Bauer said...

The tunnel scene was a melted morass filled with bodies. Major Franz Lang, the officer in charge of the rescue operations, said the rescue teams were having "to cut out, to dissect, each victim."

Bodies and remains were stuck among parts of the melted train, ski clothes, boots and other equipment. The floor of the train melted, in temperatures estimated at over 1,000 degrees centigrade.
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/euro ... a.fire.02/

1,000 degrees centigrade is enough to cremate bodies, but there’s no suggestion here that that happened, and it appears DNA identification was at least believed to be possible.

DNA appears to have survived, then, in temperatures high enough to melt the floor of the train, and if the same fire had occurred in a plane then the damage would have been even worse: aluminium has a melting point of 1220° F (660° C).

Rick Reuben wrote:

ue wrote:Does it not even occur to you why the conspiracy crowd refuses to submit their findings to credible scientific journals for peer review?

That's a common lie/ error, often made by dopes like you.

All the papers published here are available for peer review, and many have been peer reviewed:

http://www.journalof911studies.com/

Flaneur wrote:I really mean, in fields like engineering and science, the peer review process, as I assume Unblinking Eye did in his last post.

Rick Reuben wrote:Most elevators did not travel the length of the buildings either, which makes the claims that 'fireballs traveled to the lobbies from the impact zones and blew out the windows' extremely laughable

9/11myths.com wrote:Like the Concourse Level, elevator lobbies throughout the building were particularly affected,38 likely by excess jet fuel ignited by the crash pouring down the elevator shafts.39 While only 3 percent (n=11) of the survivors reported seeing fireballs in their immediate area at the time of the airplane impact, the observations from the face-to-face interviews show the extreme nature of these events:

A survivor from a floor in the 80s: “The entire corridor became an inferno outside our front door. Smoke began to enter our office. There was also debris falling. ... The fire on the corridor was at least 10 ft high, and it ran the … good length of the corridor. Then I saw a fireball come down the elevator shaft and blew the elevator doors. The fireball came right at me; it was a really bright color.”
Interview 1000055 (NIST 2004)

A survivor from a floor in the 40s: “I saw the elevator in front me had flames coming out from it. The elevator was closed but the flames came from the front where the doors meet and on the sides. They reached about a foot and a half, with the flames standing from the floor to the ceiling. I saw a chandelier shaking; it was really moving. The corridor was dim. I also heard people screaming from the [nearby] floor. I felt the
heat on my face and I thought that my eyebrows were going to get burned. Black smoke starting filling the corridor, it got really dense really fast.”

Interview 1000109 (NIST 2004)
A survivor in the basement: “I saw a big bright orange color coming through the basement with the smoke ... A fire ball came shooting out of the basement door.”
Interview 100760 (NIST 2004)
http://wtc.nist.gov/NISTNCSTAR1-7.pdf

Mark Roberts compiled this collection of accounts as further evidence.

One argument against the jet fuel theory is based around this NIST quote:

There were seven freight elevators, only one of which served all floors.
wtc.nist.gov/NISTNCSTAR1-1.pdf

It’s then suggested that the account of the operator of Car 50 (Arturo Griffiths), which ran the full length of the building, proves there was no explosion in this lift shaft. And therefore, as no other lifts “served all floors”, jet fuel could not have reached the basement via elevator shafts.

The obvious weakness with this argument is its attempt to say that, if an elevator doesn’t “serve all floors”, then the shaft could not provide a path for jet fuel to reach the basement. NIST tell us that Car #49, for instance, served basement floors 1-5, and floors 41-74. But then what? Is it safe to assume that a lift servicing no floors higher than 74 is effectively hermetically sealed at that point? Or could there still be a path the fuel might have taken? We’d suggest you’d need a close look at the building blueprints (and perhaps talk to engineers familiar with the WTC) to tell that for sure.

What’s more, the Car 50 referred to here is not the only elevator that travelled from the basement to the impact area:

In addition to the passenger elevators, there were seven freight elevators in each tower; most served a particular zone, while Car 50 served every floor.

• Car #5: B1-5, 7, 9-40, 44
• Car #6: B1-5, 44, 75, 77-107
• Car #17: B1-1, 41, 43-78
• Car #48: B1-7, 9-40
• Car #49: B1-5, 41-74
• Car #50: B6-108
• Car #99: 107-11016
http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/NISTNCSTAR1-7.pdf

As you can see, Car 6 may have left out many floors, but it still travelled almost the full length of the building. And keep in mind that was the case for most of the elevator shafts. The WTC used a “stacked” system where, while most elevators may only have visited a portion of the floors, the shaft itself extended the full length of the building. So there would be one elevator dealing with the bottom third, another the middle third, another the top, all within the same shaft.

And there may be another conduit available in the utility shafts. NIST wrote that “fuel flowed across the floors and down elevator and utility shafts” in connection with fires on the upper floors, but how far down did they go? You’d imagine right to the bottom if they’re containing things like telephone or electrical cables, pipes and so on, but we can’t say for sure whether they offered an unrestricted route, or not. It remains another possibility to consider, though.

Rick Reuben wrote:

NerblyBear wrote: The NORAD scrambler jets did not get the thumbs up to go shoot down the planes until too late because the FAA was confused and was not properly prepared for the attack.

So they successfully intercepted 63 airliners in the previous 18 months, and then the procedures fell apart all four times on 9/11?

NORAD reports that 63 successful intercepts took place in 2001 prior to 9/11, and the average intercept time is less than 20 minutes.

9/11myths.com wrote:In the decade before 9/11, NORAD intercepted only one civilian plane over North America: golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet

Prior to 9/11, all other NORAD interceptions were limited to offshore Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ). "Until 9/11 there was no domestic ADIZ,"...

So what Popular Mechanics are saying is that there was one intercept of a “civilian plane over North America” in the decade before 9/11, because all other intercepts were offshore. There’s no direct contradiction with the Douglas Martin quote, as he doesn’t say whether the intercepts were offshore or over the continental US.

It’s not just Popular Mechanics saying this, either. The October 2005 edition of “Plane & Pilot” magazine essentially did the same:

Terms like Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) and temporary flight restriction (TFR) quickly came into widespread use among the general-aviation pilot group. Those terms had been around for years. Military fighters and the ADIZ protected American coasts from intrusions by Russian Bear Bombers throughout the Cold War. TFRs were used for presidential security and other extraordinary events. But they weren’t part of a pilot’s everyday life. You didn’t get intercepted and forced down if you flew through a TFR.

Today, things are different. There’s an ADIZ that surrounds Washington, D.C. In the four years after 9/11, it was violated over 1,000 times. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has scrambled fighters for intercepts within U.S. borders over 1,600 times. In the year previous to 9/11, NORAD intercepted airplanes in the ADIZ only 67 times, none of which occurred within the U.S. borders.
http://www.planeandpilotmag.com/content ... g_tfr.html

Rick Reuben wrote:I wonder why Warmowski never posts any more.

warmowski, april 2006 wrote:Ah, tinfoil. Dare I risk the shiny helmet of shame?

Having eyes, ears and a television, I must, but only by asking a very fair question.

I think it is fair and far from enfoilment to ask why and how WTC 7 was demolished on purpose by its owner.

We should base this question on no other observation that the building's owner went on television (2002, PBS, "America Rebuilds") and plainly stated he and FDNY demolished WTC 7 on purpose.

Larry Silverstein, the putative owner of WTC 7 said of it "we...made that decision to pull and watched the building collapse" ("pull" is demolition parlance for implosive demolition.)

I saw and heard him say this myself. Why here, give it a try.

So nobody else wants to know why he said that or how it was done?

-r

9/11myths.com wrote:Problem #1, Larry Silverstein is not a demolition contractor, neither was the fire department chief, so why should we assume they’d be using slang demolition terms?

Problem #2, Silverstein says "they made that decision to pull", for instance -- the Fire Department. If "pull" means "demolish", then he's saying the Fire Department may not have decided to bring the building down if they couldn't contain the fire, but because it was beyond them, they decided to blow it up. Does this make sense? Not in the slightest.

Problem #3, Silverstein is suggesting that the decision to demolish the building was optional. It might not have happened. Does this fit with the idea of a convenient insurance scam? No, not at all.

Problem #4, why would the Fire Department willingly agree to engage in a multi-million dollar insurance fraud?

Problem #5, and since when do Fire Departments blow up buildings anyway?

Problem #6, and if it's so obvious that WTC7 was demolished, then why are the insurance companies not suing Silverstein for fraud?

Problem #7, and why would Silverstein admit this on television?

You could argue that this is just Silverstein’s cover story, he didn’t really mean all that, he wasn’t speaking to the Fire Department, but then the situation is becoming even more complicated. What are we supposed to believe: that he accidentally let slip the truth in “pull it”, while lying elsewhere? What is the basis for picking out two words in this account as reliable, and dismissing most of the others?

We prefer a simpler solution. And if "pull it" means "pull people away from the building", then the problems certainly fall away. This decision to pull really is optional, for instance (they could decide to try and fight it, or not). And it's a decision that could, and would be made by the Fire Department. With this interpretation we don't have to pick out some words, or throw any others away, and the answer actually makes sense.

This also happens to be Silverstein’s explanation:

On September 9, 2005, Mr. Dara McQuillan, a spokesman for Silverstein Properties, issued the following statement on this issue:

Seven World Trade Center collapsed at 5:20 p.m. on September 11, 2001, after burning for seven hours. There were no casualties, thanks to the heroism of the Fire Department and the work of Silverstein Properties employees who evacuated tenants from the building.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) conducted a thorough investigation of the collapse of all the World Trade Center buildings. The FEMA report concluded that the collapse of Seven World Trade Center was a direct result of fires triggered by debris from the collapse of WTC Tower 1.

In the afternoon of September 11, Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Center. The Commander told Mr. Silverstein that there were several firefighters in the building working to contain the fires. Mr. Silverstein expressed his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building.

Later in the day, the Fire Commander ordered his firefighters out of the building and at 5:20 p.m. the building collapsed. No lives were lost at Seven World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

As noted above, when Mr. Silverstein was recounting these events for a television documentary he stated, “I said, you know, we've had such terrible loss of life. Maybe the smartest thing to do is to pull it.” Mr. McQuillan has stated that by “it,” Mr. Silverstein meant the contingent of firefighters remaining in the building.
http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2 ... 41966.html