On Aug 24, 1:55 pm, Tim Smith <reply_in_gr...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> NIST has released their report on the collapse of WTC 7. The cause:
[snip description of why the building fell]
> This is backed by extensive simulations, which took months on a cluster.
> The cluster was probably a bunch of Linux boxes.
Probably.
Osama Bin Ladin was no dummy. He is an engineer with a solid
background in construction. The Bin Ladin family has a huge
contruction empire with projects in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and a number
of other major companies. Osama would have known quite a bit about
the stresses on buildings like the WTC towers, and would have
understood that several thousand pounds of diesel fuel, enough for a
transcontinental flight in a large jet, would be enough to stress the
steel enough to trigger a collapse.
When the planes hit the WTC, I was surprised that it took as long as
it did to fall, and that it fell as "neatly" as it did.
> What will our conspiracy nuts (most of our UK posters plus Mark Bilk)
> make of this? One the one hand, they used Linux, so must be right. On
> the other hand, they completely demolish the conspiracy theories, so
> can't be right.
It seems like more of the "conspiracy" for those who point that way,
would be along the lines of the movie "under seige". In effect,
allowing a terrorist attack would allow the executive branch declare
martial law, and perhaps convince congress to pass laws that nullified
many constitutional rights.
What points to conspiracy is that the Patriot Act was out and passed
so quickly, and had such a sweeping impact. It would seem that nobody
read the legislation before they passed it, according to Michael
Moore.
Even more suspicious was that the plane that went down in Pennsylvania
was supposed to target the Congress building, and no fighter jets were
sent to intercept it. Had it not been for the passengers rushing the
cockpit, they final plane might have killed as many as 100
congressmen, mostly democrats.
According to Condeliza Rice, she did send the president a report that
attacks of this type were being planned, and that the president had
not responded to the reccomendations.
The problem is that the same thing happened to Bill Clinton in 1993,
when he was warned by his career intelligence officers that a bombing
of the WTC was possible, he didn't take any dramatic actions to
improve security or better monitor the suspected terrorists. More
likely, he didn't approve the "black budget" used to fund these types
of operations and so during that period resources and operations were
cut back under both the Clinton and Bush administrations early months.
Clearly, whether or not the Bush/Chaney administration had done
everything they could to prevent such an attack, they had put a great
deal of thought and planning into how to respond if or when such an
attack was carried out successfully.
The problem with real conspiracies, is that the conspiracy theorists
are almost always fed the information that leads them away from the
true conspirators. The American public is not generally aware of the
tension and friction between the FBI, CIA, NSA, DOJ, and DOD. Until
9/11 there was a legal barrier to passing information between the
departments. The CIA could use unusual means to prevent an enemy
attack, but they couldn't pass the information to the FBI because it
would poison any criminal investigations, possibly wiping out the
entire evidence chain due to "poison fruit" rulings.
The creation of the Department of Homeland Security, along with
provisions of the Patriot Act that permitted the transfer of much more
information were something much more interesting to conspiracy
theorists.
Linux, OSS, and UNIX are very importent elements of several
intelligence analysis systems, but it's a bit difficult to even
describe their functions. Those who know also have clearance and know
the penalties for disclosure, and those who don't have clearance and
don't know the penalties, probably don't know anything.
> <http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_qa_082108.html>
> --Tim Smith
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