Originally Posted By ecdc I spent part of my week off re-watching Ric Burns's excellent documentary series on New York City. I had not seen the final episode on the Twin Towers and 9/11, produced after the rest of the series as a follow-up, until today. It's hard to believe it's been 9 years, and harder still to watch the images and feel the heat rise in your face and mingle with the tears you still try and blink back. Burns is to be complimented, IMO, for his choice of showing the terrible footage, instead of attempting to go a different route. No matter how hard one tries, the power of those images - the explosions, the falling bodies, the collapsing steel - cannot be replicated any other way. I'm still so angry. And today I was even angrier. The documentary closes on a positive note of American resilience and our banding together as a nation to rise up. It's hard to feel that way today. It's hard to know that Sarah Palin gives speeches about the "real Americans" and those don't include the people who lost their lives if they didn't share her politics or religion, since they lived in fancy old New York. It's hard to know that next year, on the 10th anniversary, there will probably be "alternative" memorials organized by tea partiers to protest what they will insist is our Muslim President's secret support of the terrorists. How, after that terrible day and the unity that we shared, did it come to this? I want to be hopeful but I'm finding it very difficult to do so.
Originally Posted By Longhorn12 >How, after that terrible day and the unity that we shared, did it come to this? I want to be hopeful but I'm finding it very difficult to do so.< It came to that because instead of being used as a symbol of perseverance and unity it became a symbol for war mongering. I still don't trust the "given" story.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan How, after that terrible day and the unity that we shared, did it come to this?<< Because some people, unwittingly it seems, allow themselves to do exactly what those terroists hoped they'd do -- get paranoid, turn America into an us vs. them country. Cynical, greedy phonies have used 9/11 again and again. The hysteria about the "Ground Zero Mosque" is exactly the kind of thing the terrorists were after -- things that make people throw out hard won liberties and ideals we say we cherish, all in the name of "security." It is very depressing.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 I'm just glad it's on a Saturday this year. It's the one day of the year I'm still (after 9 years) a bit unnerved about taking the subway, worried someone will try to "mark" the anniversary. I mean, I still do it - but I breathe just a little easier after I get out in Manhattan, and then again in the evening in Brooklyn.
Originally Posted By Longhorn12 > >>Explain.<< No, please don't. < Just for you Mawnck I will. I used to be on the Bush did it bandwagon, but I'm a little less crazy now. You have to understand that the way I found out about it was a very weird. It was first period with our ex-military teacher decided randomly that today would be a good day to listen to NPR for the first part of class. He had never done this before with any class... and sure enough he turns it on and we are under attack. I'm not saying he knew it was going to happen or that the government set it up. It was just a very strange coincidence. If they could set up a massive sabotage of planes and all of that why is it so hard to believe that they also infiltrated the building to add explosives?
Originally Posted By ecdc >>If they could set up a massive sabotage of planes and all of that why is it so hard to believe that they also infiltrated the building to add explosives?<< Can't argue with that circular logic.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>I'm not saying he knew it was going to happen or that the government set it up. It was just a very strange coincidence.<< If you're in a room with 22 other people, what do you think the odds are that two of you share the same birthday? It's 50%. Strange coincidences usually aren't all that strange. We overestimate the odds of something happening all the time. It was a coincidence, not all that strange of one, and it proves nothing. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_Problem" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B..._Problem</a>
Originally Posted By Longhorn12 I don't believe the story, and think there is more to it, and you don't believe what I think. I am fine with this. You should be as well. They said explain it and so I did. >Can't argue with that circular logic.< Once again explaining my opinion, and not trying to argue who is right or wrong. >Strange coincidences usually aren't all that strange. We overestimate the odds of something happening all the time. It was a coincidence, not all that strange of one, and it proves nothing.< Can I get a quote of me saying it proves something? It was just one of the reasons why I latched onto the story, because it was weird for me.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>I don't believe the story, and think there is more to it, and you don't believe what I think. I am fine with this. You should be as well. They said explain it and so I did.<< We're not discussing what the ending of Inception meant. You can cry opinion all you like, but opinions should be based on facts. If I say it's my opinion that the sun revolves around the earth, I'm wrong, opinion or not. We have facts and evidence that proves conclusively that 9/11 wasn't an inside job.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder Wow. I'm on the bandwagon of "we're all doomed" if reasonable people can think like this.
Originally Posted By Mr X I believe that the administration might have been aware that *something* might happen, and yet didn't pay much attention to the writing on the wall. Am I wrong to feel that way? As far as the Longhorn "theory" is concerned, it seems to me it has been disproven many times over.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Am I wrong to feel that way?<< Nope. All the evidence points that way. But there's a huge difference, especially here, between incompetence and malice. I think Bush dropped the ball. I think many, many bad things about the Bush administration. I do not believe for one milli-second they wanted 3,000 innocent Americans to perish, symbols of American finance to crumble, etc. That kind of demonization from truthers is no better than the demonization of Obama from tea baggers.
Originally Posted By ecdc What I also find so grating about the truthers is this American ability to focus on fake conspiracy theories and ignore real ones. We have actual evidence of actual lies and deception by the administration around the Iraq war. But a lot of people don't seem to care and others are more interested in nonsense than fact.
Originally Posted By ecdc <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/nyregion/05zero.html" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09...ero.html</a> On a more positive note to all this, here's a nice article on the rapid construction that should have things completed by the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
Originally Posted By Labuda Great news in that article, and David Dunlap is an amazingly talented writer; I really feel like he drew me in to the site. *happy shudder* This one bit did bum me out, though - good thing there was much happiness following it: Today, it is difficult to imagine what would stop them (though, given the site’s tortured history, the possibility shouldn’t be completely dismissed).
Originally Posted By mawnck >>I'm on the bandwagon of "we're all doomed" if reasonable people can think like this.<<< By definition, they can't. But you've picked the correct bandwagon anyway. Here's your trombone. >>If they could set up a massive sabotage of planes and all of that why is it so hard to believe that they also infiltrated the building to add explosives?<< The same reason it's so hard to believe that cars run on voodoo. It's been proven otherwise. While I realize that multi-sentence explanations are too elitist for most Tea Partiers and Truthers, I will nevertheless refer you to this 10-minute slide show (with audio) in which the head of the NIST investigation explains, in excruciating detail, what caused the twin towers to collapse. The only explosive was jet fuel. The images are, of course, disturbing: <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/sund-flash.html" target="_blank">http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/w...ash.html</a> The cliff notes version is that the impact of the planes dislodged the spray-on fireproofing on the support beams, and at the same time ignited everything flammable on the floors that were hit (IE the regular stuff in the offices). The continuously burning fires eventually warped the beams to the point that they tore the outside support structure. Once that was gone the weight of the floors above finally could not be supported, and gravity did the rest. One tower went down faster than the other because it had more combustible material stored in a small area (creating a longer-burning, more intense fire) and because the plane destroyed a more vulnerable pattern of internal supports.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>While I realize that multi-sentence explanations are too elitist for most Tea Partiers and Truthers<< That's just it, isn't it? It's so easy to make a one-line declaration that sounds informative or impressive; combating those one-liners in a substantive way takes time and patient explanation, something very few people are willing to listen to.
