- Opinion
- 27 Jan 09
In the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks, a growing number, including respected foreign correspondent Robert Fisk, are starting to ask uncomfortable questions about September 11 and the War on Terror it provoked.
On the morning of September 11th, 2001 the world watched in horror as two hijacked aircraft slammed into the World Trade Center.
Within two hours, the buildings collapsed with the loss of 2,823 lives including the aircraft passengers. Many of the dead were Irish-American.
Because of this one event, the United States, alongside Britain, launched a global ‘War on Terror’ to stamp out the Islamic fundamentalists blamed for the atrocity.
The official 9/11 Commission Report later concluded that the heat generated by burning aircraft fuel melted the steel central support columns in the World Trade Center buildings, which caused the floors to collapse and pancake down on one another.
However, a growing number of people no longer accept the official 9/11 story and believe that the atrocity was an act of Synthetic Terrorism, which was designed to terrify the western world into surrendering their civil liberties in the name of protecting its citizens from a nebulous enemy.
Since 2001 oil-rich Iraq was invaded on the basis of a discredited intelligence dossier, which claimed that the country was a fundamentalist threat and harbouring weapons of mass destruction. Complete lies. Afghanistan was also invaded.
Closer to home, the centuries old civil liberties of the USA and the UK have been systematically dismantled in the name of the ‘War on Terror.’
The terror, according to the official narrative, are hordes of homicidal Muslim fanatics out to destroy our free and Western way of life.
However, the uniform-wearing security agency zealots in both countries would appear to have done more damage to our freedom and democracy than any number of bearded glassy eyed Arabs – real or imagined – could have ever hoped to achieve.
Fortunately, the tide has begun to turn with more and more people waking up to the possibility that the 9/11 inspired War on Terror is possibly the greatest and most murderous hoax that has ever been perpetuated upon the Western World.
In 2007 one of America’s most revered scientists, Lynn Margulis, of the National Academy of Science, called for a new investigation into the whole 9/11 affair.
In a stinging attack, the scientist who was presented by President Bill Clinton with the National Medal of Science, America’s highest honour for scientific achievement, said:
“I suggest that those of us aware and concerned demand that the glaringly erroneous official account of 9/11 be dismissed as a fraud and a new, thorough, and impartial investigation take place.”
The 9/11 Commission Report which lent legitimacy to the ‘War on Terror’ ignored the key testimony of firemen and police officers who reported multiple explosions in the twin towers hours before they were hit by the hijacked aircraft.
Other disturbing questions were also largely ignored, such as why World Trade Center 7, which was 47 floors tall and wasn’t hit by any aircraft, or damaged by falling masonry, mysteriously collapsed.
As for the collapse of the twin towers, independent forensic investigators point out that kerosene-based jet fuel, paper and other combustibles, which are normally found in an office, cannot generate the heat required to melt steel. The maximum temperature that can be reached by jet-fuel burning in air is 850 degrees Centigrade.
In stark contrast, the melting point of construction steel is 1,500 degrees centigrade. High explosives, on the other hand, can generate enough heat to literally vaporise steel.
Another smoking gun are the steel central support columns of the towers which were embedded into the bedrock 70 feet below the surface. Over a month after the disaster, pools of molten steel were discovered by contractors when they were removing the debris.
Irish-American Peter Tully, President of Tully Construction, who was awarded the contract of removing the debris from the site, told the USA media at the time that he saw pools of “literally molten steel” at the World Trade Center. Molten steel was also found at WTC7.
Despite numerous eyewitness reports by firemen of explosions in the towers, the government engineers involved in the Federal Emergency Management Agency engineering assessment of the WTC collapse, ignored advice to test the rubble for traces of explosives.
Robert Fisk, the respected correspondent has now added his authoritative voice to the growing band who question the official story. In an interview published in The Independent (UK) last September he said:
“I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official 9/11 narrative. I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true for example that kerosene (aircraft fuel) burns at 820 centigrade, how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting point is supposed to be 1,480c – would snap through at the same time? What about the third tower which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint. Why did it fall so neatly to the ground when no aircraft had hit it?”
“Two prominent American professors of mechanical engineering are now legally challenging the terms of reference of this final report on the grounds that it could be “fraudulent and deceptive.”
“I am not a conspiracy theorist. But like everyone else, I would like to know the full 9/11 story, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic War on Terror,” added Robert Fisk.
However, Norman Slack, a Dublin-based forensic scientist who specialises in fires, believes that the burning aircraft explanation for the collapse of the towers is plausible:
“You are looking at a 150 ton aircraft releasing a phenomenal amount of energy on impact, buildings are not designed for that, they could not withstand it. Once the support columns are misaligned they can’t handle the load.”
“At 700 degrees centigrade, steel glows a cherry red. At around 1,000 centigrade the steel softens and glows an orange colour, at that point it has no mechanical strength and down she goes. The fire protection on the steel was not as good as it should have been either,” adds Norman Slack.
With regard to the collapse of the nearby WTC7 building, Norman Slack speculates:
“It could have been the vibrations in the ground caused by the thousands of tons of falling rubble, it would have shaken the guts out of everything around it.”
However, Norman Slack is adamant that burning aircraft fuel cannot melt construction steel:
“Oh no not at all, it would just soften it.”
9/11 sceptics, who include over hundreds of reputable scientists, military people and Hollywood star’s such as Charlie Sheen and Rosie O’Donnell, believe that the buildings were ultimately brought down by controlled explosives secreted in the basements of the towers.
Intriguingly, two mini-earthquakes were recorded on Manhattan island by seismographs at Columbia University, New York on the morning of September 11th.
The seismic data recorded a 2.1 magnitude earthquake 10 seconds before the collapse of the South Tower at 9.59 am, and a 2.3 earthquake just seconds before the collapse of the North Tower twenty nine minutes later.
The seismic data ties in neatly with the testimony of 9/11 hero, William Rodriguez, a humble janitor of Peurto Rican descent who helped to save hundreds of lives.
He reported a huge explosion in the basement of the North Tower just seconds before a jet airliner slammed into the upper floors of the building. William Rodriguez, who has interviewed on several local TV stations helped to rescue 15 people trapped in the basement, some of whom were severely burnt.
Although deeply traumatized, William Rodriguez, who was the master key holder to the North Tower escape stairwells, later risked his own life to help firemen as they ascended the burning tower by opening all the locked escape doors on each floor. A move which saved the lives of hundreds of trapped people.
Long after the events of 9/11, it turned out that none of the infamous hijackers’ names appeared on the airline passenger manifests. Incredibly, the BBC later tracked several of them down. Elsewhere, Bin Laden – the so called mastermind – is no longer featured on the FBI’s most wanted list in connection with 9/11.
Eight years on, the single key event, the September 11th atrocity that transformed America and Britain – two of the world’s oldest functioning democracies – into quasi Police States, is thankfully starting to unravel.
The former President of Italy and one-time Prime Minister, Francesco Cossiga, in a recent interview with Corriere della Sera (11/30/07) had this to say on the subject of 9/11:
“All of the democratic areas of America and of Europe – with the Italian centre left in the forefront – now know full well that the disastrous attack was planned and executed by the American CIA and Mossad… to falsely incriminate Arabic countries and to persuade the Western Powers to intervene in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
In a similar vein, the former German Minister for Justice, Horst Ehmke, is on record as saying:
“Terrorists could not have carried out such an operation with four hijacked planes without the support of a Secret Service.” (Guardian 7/22/04).