Deconstructing the Decontructionists, Part I

Okay, this one is just for you, and you know who you are. Since I've been on a conspiracy theory kick lately, you're right. Why not go after the biggest one of them all? Really, though, there needs to be a category for "Outrageous Stupidity," because this topic just doesn't fit anywhere else.

I can already hear some groaning going on, while there are others asking "Umm . . . what the hell is he ranting about now?" Okay, kiddies, hang on to your shorts because I'm about to dive into the shallow end of the gene pool and take on the 9/11 conspiracy. And, no, a self-respecting curmudgeon never takes a day off.

When I wrote about the conspiracy theory surrounding the loss of USS Scorpion the other day, I mentioned how incredibly insensitive, unfair and painful it was for the families of that lost crew. The same thing applies to 9/11 conspiracy theories, except on a truly epic scale.

Let's not make any mistakes about it: 9/11 happened because an unstable man with delusions of grandeur thought God was whispering in his ear and told him to do it. I'm sure that Osama bin Laden likes puppy dogs, long walks on the beach in a gentle rain, and sipping hot cocoa on a chilly night. He also happens to believe that he has a divine mandate to exterminate anyone who doesn't share his peculiar view of Islam, but that is a subject for another time.

Once again, conspiracies depend on everyone involved keeping their mouths shut about it in order to succeed. The more people you involve in the conspiracy, the less likely it becomes to remain a secret. After a certain critical mass is reached, it is virtually guaranteed that the conspiracy will no longer remain a secret. In the case of 9/11, those who are pushing the conspiracy theories are talking about it involving a cast in the tens of thousands. They would have us believe that the virtually the entire US Government was behind it. The very same Government who's individual departments can't keep a secret for any length of time is now capable of keeping its collective mouth shut for eight years?

Do you really believe that if someone who was politically opposed to George Bush had credible information that the US Government was behind 9/11, they'd just sit on it?

Anyway, let's take a look at the conspiracy claims themselves, and see what we discover.

Cl.. That a group of amateurs with no professional flight experience, armed with box cutters, could not possibly take over four commercial aircraft, navigate them across several hundred miles of unfamiliar terrain and then accurately fly three out of the four into buildings. Such an operation could only be accomplished by highly-trained, skilled and experienced pilots. Obviously, then, any evidence implicating the 19 accused hijackers is an obvious plant.

Well, no. None of the men flying those aircraft had to accomplish the three most difficult tasks any pilot faces: taking off, flying in inclement weather, and landing. It really doesn't take all that much skill to maintain level flight and, as far as navigation, all they had to do was be able to read a compass and programme a GPS receiver.

Commercial pilots don't actually "fly" the aircraft. Once it reaches its cruising altitude, that mundane task is turned over to the autopilot; the crew just monitors the flight controls and instruments, ready to step in if there is a problem. The only time the flight crew is guaranteed to have control of the aircraft is during take off and landing.

So with the hijackers. Thanks to GPS, the aircraft would have already known where it was. All they had to do, in order to reach their targets, was enter the GPS coordinates of those targets into the aircraft's navigation system, and it would then proceed to those coordinates. The only time they had to be in manual control of the aircraft was during the terminal run.

Furthermore, the men who flow those aircraft after they were hijacked were, indeed, certified pilots. They had all acquired pilots' licenses, which is a matter of record at the flight schools they attended. Nor were there targets either hiding or moving; they were, after all, rather large buildings. In point of fact, the black box recovered from Flight 77 shows that the hijacker flying the aircraft programmed the GPS coordinates for Reagan International Airport and then, once there, manually flew the aircraft into the Pentagon, five miles away. Also, ATC records and even witness statements from the doomed souls on board the aircraft testify to the lack of flying skill displayed by the hijackers. They speak of erratic maneuvering in the last minutes of those flights, of sharp turns and of people getting air-sick from the violent maneuvers.

Cl.. The aircraft that hit the South Tower of the World Trade Centre - Flight 175 - was not a Boeing 767-200ER as claimed. Photographs of the aircraft just before impact show a "pod" underneath the fuselage, at the base of the starboard wing. Since no such object is found on a stock 767-200ER, the aircraft that hit the building was either a military aircraft - a tanker, is the claim - or a 767 that had been modified to carry some sort of ordnance. Therefore, 9/11 was a "false flag" operation sanctioned by President Bush and carried out by the US Government.

Again, no, and the explanation for the mysterious "pod" lies in simple physics. When it impacted the building, the aircraft was in a sharp bank. Had it been in level flight, it would have only hit approximately four floors of the building, but we know it was banking because it took out approximately nine floors. As a result, photographs of the aircraft taken from below and to the side are distorted. The starboard wing would appear to be longer and differently proprotioned than the port wing. You can accomplish the same effect by standing under a windmill and taking a photo of the arms as they turn above you.

That said, there is, indeed, something there. What the photo the conspiracy theororists claim shows some sort of weapon is, in fact, the fairing for the starboard landing gear, a pronounced "bulge" on the skin of the aircraft. Furthermore, thousands of people at the WTC that day watched, horrified, as the aircraft flew over them and into the building. Not one of those people has ever come forward to say that they saw a "weapon" on it.

Finally, it would be obvious even to a blind man if a civilian aircraft had been modified to carry ordnance, either externally or internally. First of all, especially if it were externally-mounted, you would need some way to carry it. Second, you would need some way of arming it once you reached the target. Third, in order to cause the damage pattern that was seen, you would need some way of releasing it. All of that involves a lot of wiring and metalwork, not to mention the fact that no one at the airport the flight originated from has ever come forward to say that they saw a weapon attached to the aircraft.

Cl.. This one is related to the one above, and also involves Flight 175. According to the theory, a "witness" called in to FoxNews shortly after the aircraft hit the building and said that he did not see any windows on the sides of the aircraft. Therefore, that aircraft could not have possibly been a commercial airliner, and must have been a military aircraft. Again, we are thus back to a "false flag" operation carried out by the US Government.

Really, there are only two things to say about this claim. First, the "witness" was more than two miles southeast of the WTC when he saw the aircraft, and he also goes on to state that he never saw the plane hit the tower, only heard the explosion. It is true that he told the producers of a 9/11 conspiracy film that he didn't see any windows on the aircraft - which he wouldn't have, he was too far away - but he also told them that he doesn't believe that the aircraft was anything other than a civilian airliner.

Second, aircraft wreckage recovered from the site of the South Tower include sections that have - surprise - windows in them. Furthermore, we know those window sections came from the aircraft that hit the South Tower because investigators, while reviewing ABC footage of the impact, where able to visually track some of those sections as they tore through the building and then fell from the sky.

Cl.. That the US military was ordered to "stand down" on 9/11, and that the Air Force failed to scramble any fighters from any bases within range of the hijacked aircraft. Specifically, the conspiracy theororists point to Andrews Air Force Base, where they claim that there are two squadrons of fighters. The conclusion is thus that the military was ordered to do nothing on 9/11.

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that I'm no fan of the Air Farce. But the reality was, 2001 was not the height of the Cold War. After 1991 and the end of the Cold War, the number of Air Force squadrons dedicated to continental air defence was sharply reduced - the so-called "peace dividend." On 9/11, there were exactly fourteen fighters on alert in the continental United States.

Military aircraft were, in fact, scrambled in response to the hijackings, but it wouldn't have made any difference if the entire USAF had taken to the skies. At that time, the air defence system wasn't set up to track or deal with threats from inside the United States, but threats from outside the nation. If the FAA wanted military assistance in dealing with a hijacking, the process literally consisted of someone having to pick up a phone and calling, and then only after the issue had ascended through the multiple layers of the FAA bureaucracy.

Furthermore, what, exactly, would a military aircraft have done in order to prevent 9/11? There would have only been two options for a fighter pilot: escort the hijacked aircraft, or shoot it down. There isn't anything else that could or can be done, and only the President can order the shooting down of a civilian aircraft. The horror of a jetliner hitting the WTC was bad enough; how much more damage and death would there have been had a fighter shot down an airliner over Manhattan? Aircraft just don't disappear when you fire a missile into them or pepper them with cannon shots. The wreckage has to come down somewhere, you know.

Oh, and by the way . . . there aren't any fighters based at Andrews Air Force Base.

Cl.. In 1945, the Empire State Building was hit by a USAAF B-25 bomber that had gotten lost in the fog, yet the building did not collapse. Therefore, the WTC should not have collapsed in 2001 when hit by a 767, especially since the towers were designed to withstand the impact of being hit by a jetliner.

First of all, the WTC towers were not built the same way as the Empire State Building. The latter is a traditional steel-girder and masonry "box." In other words, if you look at the construction of the Empire State Building, it is essentially a series of small steel boxes stacked together to form one large box. The WTC towers were not built the same way. Whereas the Empire State Building could be described as a "box," the WTC towers could be described as a "tube." In the former, all the little boxes combined to give the building its structural integrity and strength. In the WTC towers, you had a central "core," then the open floor plan, and then the skin of the buildings. That skin was connected to the core by the floor trusses, and that's what gave the towers their structural integrity. Compromise those connections, and the towers lose their integrity, which is exactly what happened on 9/11.

In a traditional "box" building, if you compromise any individual "box," the loads will shift relatively harmlessly to the surrounding, uncompromised "boxes." In effect, every structural member is connected to every other structural member. That allows the building to shrug off, as it were, a significant amount of damage. But in a building where that doesn't exist, such as the WTC towers, that can't happen. The skin of the towers provided structural support and integrity to the buildings because it was tied to the central core through the truss floors. If you severe those truss connections, the structural loads that were being borne by that section of the building have to shift to the adjacent, uncompromised sections. If enough of those connections are compromised, structural integrity will fail and gravity takes over.

Architects and the people who pay for large construction projects love trusses because they are relatively light and cheap when compared to the traditional steel-girder box. But is is no accident that firemen have a saying: "Never trust a truss."

Second, a B-25 is not a 767. The former is far smaller and lighter than the latter, and will thus cause far less damage when it impacts something. Further, while it is true that the WTC towers were designed to withstand the impact of a commercial airliner, what the engineers had in mind was a 707, the largest commercial aircraft in existence when the WTC was built. Again, a 707 is a smaller aircraft than a 767. Nor were the engineers envisioning an aircraft that would be deliberately flown into the buildings at high speed with a full fuel load. A firecracker is going to make less of a "Bang!" than a hand grenade.