A poster in another thread made a reasonably good point that I wanted to address separately. If you were intending to demolish the towers with
explosives, why not simply have a 'terrorist' bomb the towers?
Let's see what I can do to approach this from a few different angles, tell me what you think guys..
First of all, the quantity of explosive used would have to be very large to achieve demolition - perhaps in the order of a truck full of explosives
being driven straight into the center support columns. A smaller bomb such as those used by suicide bombers would be unlikely to do more than
superficial damage, ie, blowing windows out, destroying furnishings, maybe causing fire, but a fire which could be fought, and yes, killing people,
but ultimately not demolishing the building.
This "terrorist" would have to make it through security with their bomb of whatever size - remember, the terrorists in the official version of the
story used only box cutters, no guns or other "red flag" security items (at least at that time, we all know that's vastly different now).
I can't find any details on what the security system of the building was like, but I assume at minimum there were identity checks, metal detectors,
guards, etc, especially after the 93 bombing of the same building. So let's assume that for a terrorist to sneak into the building and plant
explosives would require collusion of some sort by security. Preplanning for a progressive collapse sort of event would require even more collusion,
essentially an inside job of some kind.
Secondly.
A major part of 9/11 was use of the planes - according to
this 1980 study by Boeing, 1 in
3 americans were either anxious or afraid to fly, with almost 50% of those citing fear as the primary reason.
That's an awful lot of fear or anxiety. I'm not sure why planes cause such fear - they're far safer than cars, but yet even viewing a car crash
generally does not make people afraid to enter cars or to drive. Indeed, I don't know of many people who are afraid of cars even AFTER accidents..
Yet planes, which are statistically proven to be far safer are still a major source of anxiety, many people simply avoiding flying because they want
to avoid the emotions they suffer from.
Obviously yes, bombs are something people fear, but not on the same primal level as they fear planes - since most people are aware subconsciously that
the odds of them getting blown up are probably pretty low.
A big part, I think, of the plane -building equation, too, is that (a) it can be filmed to start with, since tourists are often filming buildings in
NY.. (b) the second impact was also filmed, and once the impacts had happened, the cameras remained trained upon the buildings, while people watched
them collapse live.. Would this necessarily have been the case with bomb blasts? The psychological effect on the average American, I believe, was far
greater than it would have been..
I think this is a major part of the reasoning behind using planes, and not simply bombs.. Plausible deniability + maximum psychological and emotional
impact.
[edit on 3-5-2007 by Inannamute]