"...the perpetrators of this cartoon fantasy have
constructed an elaborately woven web of delusions and unsubstantiated hearsay
in order to promote this garbage across the internet and the media to the
extent that a number of otherwise rational people have actually fallen under
its spell..."
Debunking
Conspiracy Theorists
Paranoid
Fantasies About 911 Detract From Real Issues
By Gerard Holmgren
c. 2003 Gerard Holmgren
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This work may
be freely-copied and distributed without permisiion as long as it not for
commercial use. Please include the author's name, the web address where you
found it and the copyright notice. Astute
observers of history are aware that for every notable event there will
usually be at least one ,often several wild conspiracy theories which spring
up around it. "The CIA killed Hendrix" " The Pope had John
Lennon murdered ", "Hitler was half Werewolf", "Space
aliens replaced Nixon with a clone" etc,etc. The bigger the event, the
more ridiculous and more numerous are the fanciful rantings which circulate
in relation to it. So its hardly
surprising that the events of One of the
wilder stories circulating about Sept 11, and one that has attracted
something of a cult following amongst conspiracy buffs is that it was carried
out by 19 fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil genius named
Osama bin Laden, with no apparent motivation other than that they "hate
our freedoms." Never a group
of people to be bothered by facts, the perpetrators of this cartoon fantasy
have constructed an elaborately woven web of delusions and unsubstantiated
hearsay in order to promote this garbage across the internet and the media to
the extent that a number of otherwise rational people have actually fallen
under its spell. Normally I
don't even bother debunking this kind of junk, but the effect that this
paranoid myth is beginning to have requires a little rational analysis, in
order to consign it to the same rubbish bin as all such silly conspiracy
theories. These crackpots
even contend that the extremist Bush regime was caught unawares by the
attacks, had no hand in organizing them, and actually would have stopped them
if it had been able. Blindly ignoring the stand down of the US air-force, the
insider trading on airline stocks - linked to the CIA, the complicit behavior
of Bush on the morning of the attacks, the controlled demolition of the WTC,
the firing of a missile into the Pentagon and a host of other documented
proofs that the Bush regime was behind the attacks, the conspiracy theorists
stick doggedly to a silly story about 19 Arab hijackers somehow managing to
commandeer 4 planes simultaneously and fly them around US airspace for nearly
2 hours ,crashing them into important buildings, without the US intelligence
services having any idea that it was coming, and without the Air Force
knowing what to do. The huge
difficulties with such a stupid story force them to invent even more
preposturous stories to distract from its core silliness, and thus the tale
has escalated into a mythic fantasy of truly gargantuan proportions. It's difficult
to apply rational analysis to such unmitigated stupidity, but that is the
task which I take on in this article. However, it should be noted that one of
the curious characteristics of conspiracy theorists is that they effortlessly
change their so called evidence in response to each aspect which is debunked.
As soon as one delusion is unmasked, they simply invent another to replace
it, and deny that the first ever existed. Eventually, when they have turned
full circle through this endlessly changing fantasy fog , they then re-invent
the original delusion and deny that you ever debunked it, thus beginning the
circle once more. This technique is known as "the fruit loop" and
saves the conspiracy theorist from ever having to see any of their ideas
through to their (ill)logical conclusions. According to
the practitioners of the fruit loop, 19 Arabs took over the 4 planes by
subduing the passengers and crew through the use of guns,knives,box cutters
and gas, and then used electronic guidance systems which they had smuggled on
board to fly the planes to their targets. The suspension
of disbelief required for this outrageous concoction is only for the hard
core conspiracy theorist. For a start, they conveniently skip over the
awkward fact that there weren't any Arabs on the planes. If there were, one
must speculate that they somehow got on board without being filmed by any of
the security cameras and without being registered on the passenger lists. But
the curly question of how they are supposed to have got on board is all too
mundane for the exciting world of the conspiracy theorist. With vague
mumblings that they must have been using false ID ( but never specifying
which IDs they are alleged to have used, or how these were traced to their
real identities), they quickly bypass this problem, to relate exciting and
sinister tales about how some of the fictitious fiends were actually searched
before boarding because they looked suspicious. However, as inevitably
happens with any web of lies, this simply paints them into an even more
difficult corner. How are they supposed to have got on board with all that
stuff if they were searched ? And if they used gas in a confined space, they
would have been affected themselves unless they also had masks in their
luggage. "Excuse me
sir, why do you have a boxcutter, a gun, a container of gas, a gas mask and
an electronic guidance unit in your luggage?" "A present
for your grandmother? Very well sir, on you get." "Very
strange", thinks the security officer. "That's the fourth Arabic
man without an Arabic name who just got on board with a knife, gun or
boxcutter and gas mask. And why does that security camera keep flicking off
every time one these characters shows up? Must be one of those days I
guess..." Asking any of
these basic questions to a conspiracy theorist is likely to cause a sudden
leap to the claim that we know that they were on board because they left a
credit card trail for the tickets they had purchased and cars they had
rented. So if they used credit cards that identified them, how does that
reconcile with the claim that they used false IDs to get on to the plane? But
by this time ,the fruit loop is in full swing, as the conspiracy theorist
tries to stay one jump ahead of this annoying and awkward rational
analysis.They will allege that the hijackers' passports were found at the
crash scenes. "So there!" they exalt triumphantly, their fanatical
faces lighting up with that deranged look of one who has just a revelation of
questionable sanity. Hmm? So they
got on board with false IDs but took their real passports with them? However,
by this time the fruit loop has been completely circumnavigated,and the
conspiracy theorist exclaims impatiently, "Who said anything about false
IDs? We know what seats they were sitting in! Their presence is well
documented!" And so the whole loop starts again. "Well, why aren't
they on the passenger lists?" "You
numbskull! They assumed the identities of other passengers!" And so
on... Finally, out of
sheer fascination with this circular method of creative delusion , the
rational sceptic will allow them to get away with this loop, in order to move
on to the next question, and see what further delights await us in the
unraveling of this marvelously stupid story.
"Uh, how
come their passports survived fiery crashes that completely incinerated the
planes and all the passengers? " The answer of course is that its just
one of those strange co-incidences, those little quirks of fate that do
happen from time to time. You know, like the same person winning the lottery
four weeks in a row. The odds are astronomical, but these things do happen... This is another
favourite deductive method of the conspiracy theorist. The
"improbability drive" , in which they decide upon a conclusion
without any evidence whatsoever to support it, and then continually speculate
a series of wildly improbable events and unbelievable co-incidences to
support it, shrugging off the implausibility of each event with the vague
assertion that sometimes the impossible happens (just about all the time in
their world). There is a principle called "Occam's razor" which
suggests that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the simplest
explanation is most likely to be correct. Conspiracy theorists hate Occam's razor. Having for the
sake of amusement, allowed them to get away with with the silly story of the
19 invisible Arabs, we move on to the question of how they are supposed to
have taken over the planes. Hijacking a
plane is not an easy thing to do. Hijacking it without the pilot being able
to alert ground control is near impossible. The pilot has only to punch in a
four digit code to alert ground control to a hijacking. Unconcerned with the
awkward question of plausibility, the conspiracy buffs maintain that on that
Sept 11, the invisible hijackers took over the plane by the rather crude
method of threatening people with boxcutters and knives, and spraying gas
(after they had attached their masks, obviously), but somehow took control of
the plane without the crew first getting a chance to punch in the hijacking
code. Not just on one plane, but on all four. At this point in the tale, the
conspiracy theorist is again forced to call upon the services of the
improbability drive. So now that our
incredibly lucky hijackers have taken control of the planes, all four pilots
fly them with breath taking skill and certainty to their fiery end, all four
pilots unflinching in their steely resolve for a swift meeting with Allah.
Apart from their psychotic hatred of "our freedoms" , it was their
fanatical devotion to Islam which enabled them to summon up the iron will to
do this. Which is strange, because according to another piece of hearsay
peddled by the conspiracy buffs, these guys actually went out drinking and womanizing
the night before their great martyrdom, even leaving their Korans in the bar
-really impeccable Islamic behavior - and then got up at 5am the next morning
to pull off the greatest covert operation in history. This also requires us
to believe that they were even clear headed enough to learn how to fly the
huge planes by reading flight manuals in Arabic in the car on the way to the
airport. We know this because they supposedly left the flight manuals there
for us to find. It gets better.
Their practical training had allegedly been limited to Cessnas and flight
simulators, but this was no barrier to the unflinching certainty with which
they took over the planes and skillfully guided them to their doom. If they
are supposed to have done their flight training with these tools, which would
be available just about anywhere in the world, its not clear why they would
have decided to risk blowing their cover to US intelligence services by doing
the training in Florida, rather than somewhere in the Middle East, but such
reasoning is foreign to the foggy world of the conspiracy theorist , too
trapped in the constant rotation of the mental fruit loop to make their
unsubstantiated fabrications seem even semi-believable. Having
triumphantly established a circular delusion in support of the mythical
Arabs, the conspiracy theorist now confronts the difficult question of why
there's nothing left of the planes. Anybody who has seen the endlessly
replayed footage of the second plane going into the WTC will realize that the
plane was packed with explosives. Planes do not and cannot blow up into
nothing in that manner when they crash. Did the
mythical Arabs also haul a huge heap of explosives on board, and mange to
deploy them in such a manner that they went off in the exact instant of the
crash, completely vapourizing the plane? This is a little difficult even for
the conspiracy theorist, who at this point decides that its easier to invent
new laws of physics in order to keep the delusion rolling along. There weren't
any explosives. It wasn't an inside job. The plane blew up into nothing from
its exploding fuel load! Remarkable! Sluggishly combustible jet fuel which is
basically kerosine,and which burns at a maximum temperature of around 800 C
has suddenly taken on the qualities of a ferociously explosive demolition
agent, vapourizing 65 tons of aircraft into a puff of smoke. Never mind that
a plane of that size contains around 15 tons of steel and titanium, of which
even the melting points are about double that of the maximum combustion
temperature of kerosine - let alone the boiling point - which is what would
be required to vapourize a plane. And then there's about 50 tons of aluminium
to be accounted for. In excess of 15lbs of metal for each gallon of kerosine. For the conspiracy
theorist, such inconvenient facts are vaguely dismissed as "mumbo
jumbo". This convenient little phrase is their answer to just about
anything factual or logical. Like a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of a hat,
they suddenly become fanatically insistent about the devastating explosive
qualities of kerosine, something hitherto completely unknown to science, but
just discovered by them, this very minute. Blissfully ignoring the fact that
never before or since in aviation history has a plane vapourized into nothing
from an exploding fuel load, the conspiracy theorist relies upon Hollywood
images, where the effects are are always larger than life, and certainly
larger than the intellects of these cretins.
"Its a
well known fact that planes blow up into nothing on impact." they state
with pompous certainty. "Watch any Bruce Willis movie." "Care to
provide any documented examples? If it's a well known fact, then presumably
this well known fact springs from some kind of documentation - other than
Bruce Willis movies ?" At this point
the mad but cunning eyes of the conspiracy theorist will narrow as they sense
the corner that they have backed themselves into, and plan their escape by
means of another stunning backflip. "Ah, but
planes have never crashed into buildings before, so there's no way of
telling." they counter with a sly grin.
Well, actually
planes have crashed into buildings before and since, and not vapourized into
nothing. "But not
big planes, with that much fuel ", they shriek in hysterical denial. Or that much
metal to vapourize. "Yes but
not hijacked planes!" "Are you
suggesting that whether the crash is deliberate or accidental affects the
combustion qualities of the fuel?" "Now
you're just being silly". Although
collisions with buildings are rare, planes frequently crash into mountains,
streets, other aircraft, nosedive into the ground,or have bombs planted
aboard them, and don't vapourize into nothing. What's so special about a
tower that's mostly glass? But by now, the conspiracy theorist has once again
sailed happily around the fruit loop. "Its a well documented fact that
planes explode into nothing on impact."
Effortlessly
weaving back and forth between the position that its a "well known
fact" and that "its never happened before, so we have nothing to
compare it to", the conspiracy theorist has now convinced themselves (
if not too many other people) that the WTC plane was not loaded with
explosives, and that the instant vapourization of the plane in a massive
fireball was the same as any other plane crash you might care to mention.
Round and round the fruit. loop... But the hurdles
which confront the conspiracy theorist are many, and they are now forced to
implement even more creative uses for the newly discovered shockingly destructive
qualities of kerosine. They have to explain how the Arabs also engineered the
elegant veritcal collapse of both the WTC towers, and for this awkward fact
the easiest counter is to simply deny that it was a controlled demolition,
and claim that the buildings collapsed from fire caused by the burning
kerosine. For this, its
necessary to sweep aside the second law of thermodynamics and propose
kerosine which is not only impossibly destructive, but also recycles itself
for a second burning in violation of the law of degradation of energy. You
see, it not only consumed itself in a sudden catastrophic fireball ,
vapourizing a 65 ton plane into nothing, but then came back for a second go,
burning at 2000C for another hour at the impact point, melting the skyscraper's
steel like butter. And while it was doing all this it also poured down the
elevator shafts, starting fires all through the building. When I was at
school there was a little thing called the entropy law which suggests that a
given portion of fuel can only burn once, something which is readily
observable in the real world, even for those who didn't make it to junior
high school science. But this is no problem for the conspiracy theorist.
Gleefully, they claim that a few thousand gallons of kerosine is enough to : completely
vapourize a 65 ton aircraft : have enough
left over to burn ferociously enough for over an hour at the impact point to
melt steel ( melting point about double the maximum combustion temperature of
the fuel ) : still have
enough left over to pour down the elevator shafts and start similarly
destructive fires all through the building. This kerosine
really is remarkable stuff! How chilling to realize that those kerosine
heaters we had in the house when I was a kid were deadly bombs, just waiting
to go off. One false move and the entire street might have been vapourized.
And never again will I take kerosine lamps out camping. One moment you're
there innocently holding the lamp - the next - kapow! Vapourized into nothing
along with with the rest of the camp site, and still leaving enough of the
deadly stuff to start a massive forest fire.
These whackos
are actually claiming that the raging inferno allegedly created by the
miraculously recycling, and impossibly hot burning kerosine melted or at
least softened the steel supports of the skyscraper. Oblivious to the fact
that the smoke coming from the WTC was black, which indicates an oxygen
starved fire -therefore, not particularly hot, they trumpet an alleged
temperature in the building of 2000 C , without a shred of evidence to
support this curious suspension of the laws of physics. Not content
with this ludicrous garbage, they then contend that as the steel frames
softened, they came straight down instead of buckling and twisting and falling
sideways. Since they're
already re-engineered the combustion qualities of jet fuel, violated the
second law of thermodynamics, and re-defined the structural properties of
steel, why let a little thing like the laws of gravity get in the way? The tower fell
in a time almost identical to that of a free falling object, dropped from
that height, meaning that its physically impossible for it to have collapsed
by the method of the top floors smashing through the lower floors. But
according to the conspiracy theorists, the laws of gravity were temporarily
suspended on the morning of Sept 11. It appears that the evil psychic power
of those dreadful Arabs knew no bounds. Even after they were dead, they were
able, by the power of their evil spirits, to force down the tower at a speed
physically impossible under the laws of gravity, had it been meeting any
resistance from fireproofed steel structures originally designed to resist
many tons of hurricane force wind as well as the impact of a Boeing passenger
jet straying off course. Clearly, these
conspiracy nuts never did their science homework at school, but did become
extremely adept at inventing tall tales for why. "Muslim
terrorists stole my notes, sir" "No miss,
the kerosine heater blew up and vapourized everything in the street, except
for my passport." "You see
sir, the schoolbus was hijacked by Arabs who destroyed my homework because
they hate our freedoms." Or perhaps they
misunderstood the term "creative science" and mistakenly thought
that coming up with such rubbish was in fact, their science homework. The ferocious
heat generated by this ghastly kerosine was, according to the conspiracy
theorists, the reason why so many of the WTC victims can't be identified. DNA
is destroyed by heat. (Although 2000 C isn't really required, 100C will
generally do the job.) This is quite remarkable, because according to the
conspiracy theorist, the nature of DNA suddenly changes if you go to a
different city. That's right!
If you are killed by an Arab terrorist in NY, your DNA will be destroyed by
such temperatures. But if you are killed by an Arab terrorist in Washington
DC, your DNA will be so robust that it can survive temperatures which
completely vapourize a 65 ton aircraft. You see, these
loonies have somehow concocted the idea that the missile which hit the
pentagon was not a missile at all, but one of the hijacked planes. And to
prove this unlikely premise, they point to a propaganda statement from the
Bush regime, which rather stupidly claims that all but one of the people
aboard the plane were identified from the site by DNA testing, even though
nothing remains of the plane. The plane was vapourized by the fuel tank
explosion maintain these space loonies, but the people inside it were all but
one identified by DNA testing. So there we
have it. The qualities of DNA are different, depending upon which city you're
in, or perhaps depending upon which fairy story you're trying to sell at any
particular time. This concoction
about one of the hijacked planes hitting the Pentagon really is a howler. For
those not familiar with the layout of the Pentagon, it consists of 5 rings of
building, each with a space inbetween. Each ring of building is about 30 to
35 ft deep, with a similar amount of open space between it and the next ring.
The object which penetrated the Pentagon went in at about a 45 degree angle,
punching a neat circular hole of about a 12 ft diameter through three rings (
six walls).A little later a section of wall about 65 ft wide collapsed in the
outer ring. Since the plane which the conspiracy theorists claim to be
responsible for the impact had a wing span of 125 ft and a length of 155 ft,
and there was no wreckage of the plane, either inside or outside the
building, and the lawns outside were still smooth and green enough to play
golf on, this crazy delusion is clearly physically impossible. But hey, we've
already disregarded the combustion qualities of jet fuel, the normal
properties of common building materials, the properties of DNA, the laws of gravity
and the second law of thermodynamics, so what the hell - why not throw in a
little spatial impossibility as well ? I would have thought that the
observation that a solid object cannot pass through another solid object
without leaving a hole at least as big as itself is reasonably sound science.
But to the conspiracy theorist, this is "mumbo jumbo". It conflicts
with the delusion that they're hooked on, so it "must be wrong"
although trying to get then to explain exactly how it could be wrong is a futile
endeavour. Conspiracy
theorists fly into a curious panic whenever the Pentagon missile is
mentioned.They nervously maintain that the plane was vapourized by it's
exploding fuel load and point to the WTC crash as evidence of this behavior.
(That's a wonderful fruit loop.) Like an insect which has just been sprayed,
running back and forth in its last mad death throes, they first argue that
the reason the hole is so small is that plane never entered the wall, having
blown up outside, and then suddenly backflip to explain the 250 ft deep
missile hole by saying that the plane disappeared all the way into the
building, and then blew up inside the building (even though the building
shows no sign of such damage). As for what happened to the wings - here's where
they get really creative. The wings snapped off and folded into the fuselage
which then carried them into the building, which then closed up behind the
plane like a piece of meat. When it suits
them, they'll also claim that the plane slid in on its belly, (ignoring the
undamaged lawn) while at the same time citing alleged witnesses to the plane
diving steeply into the building from an "irrecoverable angle." How
they reconcile these two scenarios as being compatible is truly a study in
stupidity. Once they get
desperate enough, you can be sure that the UFO conspiracy stuff will make an
appearance. The Arabs are in league with the Martians. Space aliens snatched
the remains of the Pentagon plane and fixed most of the hole in the wall,
just to confuse people. They gave the Arabs invisibility pills to help get
them onto the planes. Little green men were seen were seen talking to Bin
Laden a few weeks prior to the attacks. As the nation
gears up to impeach the traitor Bush, and stop his perpetual oil war, it's
not helpful to have these idiots distracting from the process by spreading
silly conspiracy theories about mythical Arabs, stories which do nothing but
play into the hands of the extremist Bush regime. At a less
serious time, we might tolerate such crackpots with amused detachment, but
they need to understand that the treachery that was perpetrated on Sept 11,
and the subsequent war crimes committed in "retaliation" are far
too serious for us to allow such frivolous self indulgence to go unchallenged. Those who are
truly addicted to conspiracy delusions should find a more appropriate outlet
for their paranoia. Its time to
stop loony conspiracy theories about Sept 11.
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