I'm not asking anybody to believe what I believe about what happened and I'm not going to be so arrogant as to say I know for a fact who was behind it. But, I do know that there have been too many people surrounding the "official" investigation that either already have sketchy political motives (Henry Kissinger, for one) OR have acted suspiciously. Not only that, but a number of former CIA and FBI agents have come forward to say the whole thing stinks.
I do listen to "professors and such" and there are certainly plenty of them that don't agree with the official version of events.
I posted the thing about NIST mainly to show that what most people think they know about 9/11, they don't really know. Ask most people and they'll say the fires melted the steel and that caused the buildings to collapse, but that's not true. Most people that I've spoken with had no idea there was a third building that collapsed, WTC7. They're just clueless like "third building? huh??". What has also been rejected by NIST is the "pancake theory" of collapse and neither FEMA nor NIST can even come close to explaining WTC7.
To comment on the impact being a factor in their collapse, both FEMA and NIST also admitted that the buildings were designed with the impact of a commercial jet in mind. They were constructed to withstand such an impact. These buildings were over-engineered to withstand a lot of things and should not have collapsed in the manner they did.
Not only that, but NIST also did experiments concerning the fires in the WTC.
NIST: "The initial jet fuel fires themselves lasted ast most a few minutes"... "At any given location, the duration of [air, not steel] temperatures near 1,000 degrees Celsius was about 15 min to 20 min. The rest of the time, the calculated temperatures were near 500 degrees Celsius or below."
There is also the destruction of the evidence at the crime scene, whereupon thousands upon thousands of tons of steel from the buildings were shipped to foreign countries to be recycled. Don't we have steel refineries/steel mills in the US?
@Mattsaysfooey: There are a number of people who believe the Reichstag building in Germany was set on fire by Hermann Goering, because of an affidavit during the Nuremburg trial in which General Franz Halder stated that he heard Hermann Goering speaking with Adolf Hitler and joking about setting fire to the building. Goering was read the affidavit during the trial and basically said it was ridiculous. Whether the affidavit of Franz Halder can be considered "proof", I'm not sure. But, whether Marinus van der Lubbe started the fire or not is to be disputed and he has since been fully pardoned by Germany. Some say he was mentally retarded, others say that's a lie.
The King of France also seized upon the rumors about the Knights Templar and had them all executed as a means to erase the debt that he had built up with them. He accused them of heresy, end of problem. It also ended the Catholic church's problem with the Templars, since they were slowly becoming just as rich and just as powerful.
I'm not trying to offend anyone about this, but heads of state have had thousands and thousands killed throughout the centuries for personal and political motives and blamed it on others. In light of the suspicious behavior of a number of US officials before/during/after the attacks, I believe a new investigation is certainly warranted. Not only that, but Henry Kissinger, of all people, was initially appointed head of the 9/11 Commission (which would not have existed at all had it not been for the families of the victims calling for an investigation in the first place). Not only that but BOTH President Bush AND Vice President Cheney did not testify under oath before the 9/11 Commission. Others who testified before the commission such as Condoleeza Rice did so under oath, so why was an exception made for both Bush and Cheney and why were they allowed to speak together instead of separately, like others called to testify? If they had nothing to hide, like they said, they should have spoken publicly at a hearing instead of privately and speaking under oath should have been required, as the attacks were obviously a matter of national security.
I agree with you, Matt, that the motive was certainly there for certain high level officials to conspire to have those attacks carried out, not only for personal and financial reasons, but also to bring about the Patriot Act and other attacks on civil liberties in the US. Whether the Reichstag was actually burned down by Hermann Goering is irrelevant; it was used to pass the Enabling Act and given as the reason for the "Reichstag Fire Decree", which removed most civil rights of German citizens, including freedom of opinion, habeas corpus, freedom of the press, freedom to organize and assemble, and removed the privacy of postal, telephonic, and telegraphic communications. Additionally, the need for a warrant to search a person's property was also made unnecessary. The Reichstag Fire Decree effectively suspended the Constitution of the German Reich "until further notice".
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