Friday, October 26, 2012

"9/11 Truth" Contradictions

"9/11 Truthers" would like us to believe a multitude of contradictory claims from their movement.

This is an edited compilation of examples of these contradictions put forward by the good folk at the James Randi Educational Foundation Forum's 9/11 Conspiracy Theories sub-forum, in a thread entitled "9/11 Conspiracy Contradictions and Inconsistencies":



NORAD stood down; Flight 93 was shot down.

Damning evidence of there being charges inside the towers is the numerous reports of explosions; Thermite (a non-explosive) reactions were used to weaken the steel beams.

The towers fell neatly within their own footprints, indicating controlled demolition; Heavy steel columns from the towers landed as far away as 600 feet, indicating controlled demolition.

9/11 enabled the US to invade Afghanistan so they could build a pipeline; Al Qaeda and the Taliban are puppets of the CIA/ISI (why the need to invade?).

The fact of controlled demolition is obvious from watching videos; The collapse was designed to not look like controlled demolition.

The announcement to tenants of WTC 2 that it was safe to remain in or go back to their offices was intended to maximize casualties; The fact that the first building was hit before 9:00 AM was intended to minimize casualties.

Firefighters and police officers were given a gag order not to talk about what they experienced in the towers on 9-11; Many firefighters and police officers have conducted interviews about what they went through.

Flight attendant Betty Ong should not be believed because she sounded too calm in her telephone call; Flight attendant Madeline Sweeney should not be believed because she did not sound calm enough in her telephone call.

Firefighters should be believed when they say that they heard explosions in the twin towers; Firefighters should not be believed when they say that they saw massive damage and fires on multiple floors in WTC7. 

It wouldn't be difficult for the government to keep a massive conspiracy like this completely secret; Conspiracy theorists have discovered the truth.

The conspirators were evil geniuses and faked the phone calls; The conspirators faked phone calls that were impossible at the time.

The Flight Data Recorders (FDRs) from the WTC were never found, the FBI made them disappear; The FDRs from the Pentagon and Shanksville, were found, the FBI planted them.

The east penthouse of WTC7 collapsed 8 seconds before the rest of the building, and this is a sign of controlled demolition; All of the supports failed at the same time, and this is a sign of controlled demolition.

The Pentagon FDR indicated a flyover; The Pentagon FDR was faked.

Steven Jones - credible when talking about thermite; Not credible, when talking about Pentagon (he believes a plane hit it).

Bush - credible when talking about New World Order stuff; Not credible when talking about 9/11.

Osama Bin Laden - credible when denying the attacks; Not credible when claiming responsibility of the attacks.

Eyewitness – credible when saying they saw no plane parts; Not credible when they say they saw a plane hit the Pentagon.

Flight 11 being caught on film is suspicious; Flight 77 not being caught on film is suspicious.

The evidence was whisked away before anyone could perform any investigation; Steven Jones has taken samples which show evidence of nanothermite.

The FDNY predicting 7's collapse is suspicious; The FDNY was not in on it.

The mainstream media (MSM) were in on it (e.g. the BBC reporting the WTC 7 collapse 20 minutes early and "blowing the script”); The MSM reported some of the hijackers were still alive after 9/11 (the BBC again).

Bin Laden worked for the CIA; The CIA used a “fake” Bin Laden in the video.

Everybody’s asleep; Everybody’s waking up.

The debunkers disrespect the victims’ families, but the families who said they spoke to their loved ones on the planes are too stupid to recognise faked voices.

The government-funded investigations were corrupt; We need a new government-funded investigation.

Cheney ordered that the Pentagon plane not be shot down; There was no Pentagon plane.

Hani Hanjour couldn’t have made the difficult manoeuvres in the Pentagon plane; There was no Pentagon plane.

Silverstein told an FDNY official to “pull it”; Silverstein never spoke to an FDNY official.

A firefighter said WTC 7’s going to "blow" so he had advance knowledge of the inside job; The firefighters weren’t part of the inside job.

WTC 7 must have been a controlled demolition because it wasn't hit by a plane; WTC1 & WTC2 were hit by planes and were controlled demolitions.

Thermite/thermate/nanotherm*te was used in order to disguise the demolitions by avoiding the sound of explosives; People heard explosives.


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The last words go to Poetry Hound, who contributed the most examples of contradictions:

Who was behind 9/11? It was the Bush Administration! No wait! It was a rogue group of government officials! No wait! It was the NWO! No wait! It was the Jews! No wait! It was Halliburton and other defence contractors! No wait! It was the Vatican! No wait! It was the Illuminati! Aw, hell, it was all of ‘em!

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3 comments:

Dave Thomas said...

There were high explosives, because beams were tossed 500 to 600 feet. Thermite was used to quietly cut the beams, because high explosives would have been too loud.

Lenoxus said...

A lot of these aren't quite contradictions so much as "The conspirators tried their damnedest to make it flawless, but we truthers have found the flaws that slipped through." This covers the fourth and ninth ones. Most of these are very good, though.

I'm aware of at least one accusation of self-contradiction that truthers throw against debunkers. It goes like this:

"You think that a controlled demolition would have required hundreds of explosives, planted by dozens of paid-off workers, and the explosives would have been powerful enough to produce very loud booms. Yet you also say that in reality the towers were brought down without any explosives at all!"

I hope the problem with that argument is self-evident, but if not: The truthers have failed to specify the actual degree to which the planes helped cause the collapse. Their rhetoric suggests the planes' effect was minimal; they usually talk about the buildings as coming down "exactly" like a controlled demolition, as if each floor went down ONLY because of explosives on that floor. They also like to imply that the planes were more of a "cover" for the demolition work. Hence, debunkers point out the amount of material that would require; per much of truther logic, you can't rely on a plane to do any of the work.

However, if you are positing that the conspirators only planted as many explosives as needed, then we accept this as entirely plausible, because the number needed was zero.

By failing to specify the percentage of damage attributable to one thing or the other, truthers can easily shift the goalposts; it's a bit like how IDists can take advantage of their own failure to specify the designer.

BVH said...

This list would be better cited with contradictions from the same source. That's one way to know an org is pulling a fast one.

That said, you do have some good ones here:

9/11 enabled the US to invade Afghanistan so they could build a pipeline; Al Qaeda and the Taliban are puppets of the CIA/ISI (why the need to invade?).

You should add something about the idea they've uncovered this conspiracy by dangerous shady people....yet are somehow perfectly at ease published their phone numbers and in some cases, addresses.