Artful Dodger: Your first point is that you "watched a number of videos of the fires of surrounding buildings." It is true, buildings close to WTC 7 had bigger fires than it did. Why didn't they collapse also? But you argue that "It's structure was weakened by a number of contributing factors." Nevertheless, how did those factors cause it to collapse with the speed it did, and in the way it did? You say it wasn't "simultaneous." The phrase here ought to be "virtually simultaneous." In other words, no resistance is met with anywhere, at any point in the collapse, by any portion of the building. Only if the columns are simultaneously severed, would this seem to be possible.

"Anyone can come up with a series of questions about any event and word those questions in such a way as they draw a suspicious eye."

True perhaps, but the questions I asked seem fairly forthcoming, non-manipulative, to me. Are they suggestive? In one sense, yes. They point out strange anomalies. But these are anomalies that must be addressed. And couched within the questions are true statements of fact. For example, it is a fact that the 9/11 Commission ignored WTC-7 in its report. Why? Do you consider that an invalid, or immaterial, question? I submit that none of my questions "are on the order of "When did you quit beating your wife." "

As to Silverstein's statement, how could the phrase "pull it" (a recognized term for using explosives to demolish a building by "pulling" out its supporting columns) be construed as saying, "the building is going to collapse"? Was the building going to "pull" itself? Or was the decision made to have the building pull itself down?

The case of WTC-7 really is "only a small part of a much larger picture." So the other side of what you say about this is also true, which is that, even if 9/11-Truthers are wrong about bldg. 7, this doesn't invalidate their arguments in other areas. However, my conviction at this point, is that they are correct here also.

Yes, the firefighters established a perimeter. They knew it was going to fall. They were told it would fall. Yet NIST itself cannot explain why it fell, and admits as much. I'm glad you saw this bit of evidence, that everyone knew a fall was immanent.

These are only some preliminary remarks. I will look at your websites. I will also provide some links for you. Perhaps together we can at least learn more about the collapse of WTC-7 than anyone else on Brainking! :o)

Artful Dodger: You should check out his website. As I said, I admire his consistency, and I also agree with a tremendous amount of what he has to say.

Artful Dodger: Every website has a point to make, pro or con. Each one tries to present itself as a voice of balance & reason. Sometimes it is hard listening to the other side.

Thanks for the links. I'll look into it. It might take me more than two hours to look, not to mention gather materials of my own, if necessary. :o)

The Usurper:Well, I'll try to find the one I spend the most time on.  Here's one I quickly looked at:

http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/2006/06/wtc-7.html

I read this entire thing

I've seen many others but these are the ones I found in my history.  I also read some proconspiracy sites as well. But to be honest, they seem to try to lead one down the path to their conclusion and that turns me off. 

Artful Dodger: Ron Paul is an old-time conservative. Strip the government bare! But I admire his consistency, because he recognizes that corporations are the biggest recipients of government handouts (and therefore evade true market competition), and that the government's agenda abroad is anti-democratic & imperialistic.

Artful Dodger: Fair enough. What are your sources, so that I can examine them myself, be proven wrong or else prepare an intelligent rebuttal?

The Usurper:Isn't he a Texas Republican?  I rather like him too.  Huckabee is my fav.  The smart ones never get elected.  Only the smooth talkers. (with the exception of Regan.  A great American President!)

Czuch:Where the heck have you been?  I've had to fight off the libs all by myself!  And I had protect you in your absence!  ;)

The Usurper:I just watched a number of videos of the fires of surrounding buildings, read the quotes of the firemen, and watch the building collapse.  I can honestly say, that I didn't see anything that makes me wonder why that building fell.  I saw many things that made me wonder how on earth it was still standing.

Subject: Questions to ask...
1. If Larry Silverstein admitted WTC 7 was "pulled"
(i.e., demolished), why did this confession not make it into the 9/11 Commission Report?

First, you are not asking a question here.  You are drawing a conclusion.  You can't know for certain what he meant by "pulled."  I heard a firefighter use that same terminology.  And Silverstein didn't make the decision to "pull it."  The fire chief said they couldn't save it.  It was an inferno (I saw the fires) and had HUGE holes in it.  That building was doomed and everyone knew it.  The press knew it.  They were waiting for it to fall and it didn't just freefall.  It took over 13 seconds to fall.  You could see where it started and it collasped in on itself.  They've analyzed that fall and it's consistent with the official story.  The debri field is consistent with the offical story.  And the testimony of the firefighters, both writtin and those caught on tape, are consistent with the offical story.  From what I've read (in the last two hours) and seen on various sites including youtube, that building had been hit by one of the towers and seriously weakened.  The firefighters were pulled out and they established a safety parimeter.  That is a fact of the record.  I don't know, it just isn't as convincing when you look at all the facts.

3. Why did NIST not address at all the prima facie evidence of explosives,

Because there is no evidence for explosives.  That's why. 


6. How could a building, any building, collapsing as a result of fire damage, fail at every point simultaneously,

It didn't.  It collapsed in on itself and the collapse began at the penthouse.  You can see it happening.  Also, the building had a 20 story hole in it.  The fires were raging and the heat was unbearable (testimony of firefighters).  It's structure was weakened by a number of contributing factors.  NOT JUST FIRE. 


Anyone can come up with a series of questions about any event and word those questions in such a way as they draw a suspicious eye.  You call Silversteins "pull it" a confession.  That's clearly worded to bias the question and is a bit disengenuious.  Some of your questions are on the order of "When did you quit beating your wife."  Worded in your question (some of them) are hints at the answer. 

I'm totally unconvinced.  There are certain things I cann't get past.  Even before reading your questions, questions of my own were formulated and those call into question this whole theory of yours.  And reading your questions don't help.  They read like  conclusions and to me that is a sticky point.

Even if I could be convinced to be skeptable on WTC7, that building's collasp alone does not account for the events of 911.  If WTC7 was the only thing under consideration, I might be more skeptable about the "offical" story.  But it's only a small part of a much larger picture.  The conspiracy view just doens't read consistency to me.  It reads more like radicalism and science fiction with alot of James Bond mixed in.

Czuch: Not worth my time to waste it pointing out self-evident truths about your posts. To try to convince YOU? lol Hardly...

Czuch: If I asked you what is on the dark side of the moon, or what is the price of eggs in China, you'd respond with.....

"My point is, I want less government. You want more!"

If I point out that your position is inconsistent, i.e., you want more of some kinds of government, you ignore that and say:

"You just want more government, and I want less!"

When I tell you that Ron Paul was my preferred candidate, you say....

"What a liberal! it is LESS government we need, not MORE!"

So then I ask you to explain further what you mean, i.e., do you mean less handouts to the poor, or less handouts to big business? do you mean smaller governmental departments, including the Dept. of Defense?

Your answer....

"See what I mean? You're a liberal who wants more government, I'm a conservative who wants less!"

(sigh....)

The Usurper:


Not worth your time time to defend the fact that you hate our government, yet still support its newly found support for socialism?

The Usurper: LOL... its not worth your time to prove your comments against me???

The Usurper: No thanks. Not worth the time.

Czuch: No thanks. Not worth the time.

hey everyone... the government sucks, now lets give them more of our money and rely on them even more than we do....

The Usurper: I could provide a list of things I've directly asked him, or points I've made directly to him, that he ignored, while at the same time trying to trivialize my position by distorting it



sure go ahead... be my guest....

The Usurper: I already dont like much our governments involvement in our lives, and i would like to see less, not more in our future, having said that, I dont believe a lick of what is said about the 9/11 conspiracy, and if I was like you, I would want them out of my life even more that I already do

There are a thousand things I haven't even touched upon here. A forum like this is naturally limited. Only one or two strands of the cable supporting my position have even been discussed....

The Usurper: All I am saying is that you believe the US government is complicit in 9/11 including congress and Obama now and everyone else... but you also support a liberal agenda that includes socializing everything (socializing means making the government more responsible for everything)

Dont you see any kind of contradiction here?

1. If Larry Silverstein admitted WTC 7 was "pulled" (i.e., demolished), why did this confession not make it into the 9/11 Commission Report?
2. Why did the 9/11 Commission, supposedly leaving no stone unturned, fail to even mention the collapse of a 47-story building in NYC on 9/11?
3. Why did NIST not address at all the prima facie evidence of explosives, and instead simply endeavor to come up with an alternate, less likely theory, based on fire?
4. Why was eye-witness testimony about molten metal beneath WTC-7 (and also beneath the Towers), entirely ignored?
5. Why was firefighter testimony not even read into the record, much less written into the final report?
6. How could a building, any building, collapsing as a result of fire damage, fail at every point simultaneously, so as to produce no resistance in its downward plummet, precisely in the manner controlled demolition is carefully wired to accomplish?
7. What amount of energy does it take to pulverize a whole skyscraper-full of concrete? Can gravity alone supply this energy?
8. Why was WTC-7 wreckage withheld from examination? This was widely protested by leading publications, including that of the Firefighter's association. One never removes forensic evidence from a crime scene. Yet this evidence was immediately sold to the Far East for scrap metal, etc.
9. Why, nevertheless, was sulphate discovered in the dust, an ingredient added to explosives to make them burn hotter?

These are all reasonable questions, and all have answers. None of the answers, so far, exonerate the U.S. government from culpability in the 9/11 attacks. The fact that most of these pertinent questions have been completely ignored, as if they didn't exist, is further evidence of duplicity on the part of the U.S. government.

Artful Dodger: Correction on the NIST quote. It should read..."has only a low probability of occurrence."

Artful Dodger: In a case like WTC 7, one cannot avoid examining the opinions, in detail, of the so-called experts themselves. An opinion written by a scientist does not therefore make it scientific. Some are scientists-for-hire, who prostitute themselves. The government surely has the means of providing this kind of "expert opinion," if it is in its interest to do so. So again, one cannot avoid research, and using his/her own judgment.

The collapse of WTC 7 displays all the signs of controlled demolition. It collapsed into its own footprint. It fell at nearly freefall speed. "Squibs" can be seen shooting from lower floors. It imploded, i.e., the middle fell first, and the walls caved inward.

On the other hand, there is no evidence that the building was a raging inferno, as claimed. Quite the contrary. It hadn't even been hit by a plane. Add to this, the historical truth that every building collapsing this way, before & since, has done so as a result of controlled demolition, and never as a result of fire. Controlled demolition also pulverizes the concrete, whereas fire never has, in any other case. Nor does fuel fire, or other common fires, create molten, liquid steel, which was found weeks later still running beneath WTC 7. But explosives do burn hot enough to do this.

Scientific experiments, in trying to get buildings to collapse by fire, have shown they do not. Even NIST admits its experimental attempts failed to produce a collapse. NIST also admits its theory about WTC 7's collapse has "only a low probability of success."

But there is more evidence. Fireman testify they were told it was going to collapse before it did. Silverstein, the building's owner, basically admitted on camera the building was brought down by demolition. All of these facts are available to those who research the issue. In short, a broad examination of evidence provides enough information for a rational conclusion on this question. The many different "opinions" of experts, can rightly be seen then as a smokescreen designed to cause confusion, or better, to convince idle observers who do not look into the matter for themselves, but take expert opinion as gospel.

Artful Dodger: "apparently because you've done all the thinking for us or something like that"

Having studied an event like 9/11 as I have (and I still continually study it), it is hard to come online, to a place where others haven't looked into it as I have, nor seen the materials I have seen, and know where to begin.

To me, it is an urgent issue. It is the pretext for an imperial agenda which has moved the American people to action; and, if my position on 9/11 is correct, it is the event which exposes the wickedness in high places as no other.

It is not my intention to do anyone's thinking for them. I've done a lot of research that I attempt to share. Again, it is hard to know where, or how, to begin. I will admit that I opted for the "shock treatment" approach here. I stated my conclusion, without indicating the research I'd done that led me to it. I do try to present evidence, a little at a time, that hopefully will catch someone's attention. I also recommend books & websites of those who have done more research than I, or who can otherwise explain things better than I....be more thorough, etc. All books are not equal, and all websites are not equal. But there are some extremely good ones, in both categories.

It is never easy to get across unwelcome news, no matter what approach one takes. What the Old Testament prophets had to say was not very pleasing to many Israelites, for an example. They were the Chosen people and Israel-Judah the Chosen nation(s). Many of us have felt the same way about America today.

So, please believe me when I say that, while my convictions are strong, I nevertheless desire that you and others look carefully into the matter for yourselves. It is the only possible way to firmly develop your own convictions, whatever they turn out to be. The question is monumental. And my honest opinion is that, no one can examine this evidence & conclude that the government's account of 9/11 is not fabricated, or that it is not complicit, unless some a priori assumption stands in the way of his/her reasoning powers. Yet that is only my opinion, and I am ever open to debate.

The Usurper: Now on to your 911 ideas.  The only area where I am even slightly interested is in the question of building 7 and how it collapsed.   It indeed does look (to an untrained eye) that it was brought down by explosives (much like we've seen on TV when witnessing an expert demolition.

But just because it appears that way to me, doesn't mean that it must have been that way.  Circumstantial evidence aside, what hard evidence do they have that the building was brought down by explosives?  I think the answer to that is none.  It's just a gathering of circumstantial evidence and speculation that fuels the theory.  If there were truly a "smoking gun" then you'd have something.  But now all you seem to have is a good debate. 

When all is said and done, I arrive at this:  even the experts can't agree on this one.  And if they can't agree, then an art teacher and part time musician from small town USA isn't going to figure it out either. 

Artful Dodger: Thank you for pointing out the flaw in my reasoning, on the point in question. We all stand in need of a little "adjustment" from others, now and then. :o)

The Usurper:
I may faint.  Now I can't use it against you anymore! 

You will see from some of my earlier posts that I was the ad hominem king and it did not go over well for me!  lol

Artful Dodger: After a quick shower, I see your point better, and it is a good one. It is more appropriate to say, "you are not seriously debating the issues," which stick to the argument, than to say, "you are not a serious debator," which accuses the person. I stand corrected.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

article here

The Usurper:Unless the topic is old news and they've "been there, done that."  In that case, what's the interest in going over a battle already fought?

The Usurper:You are missing the point.  Maybe Czuch doesn't acknowledge your points because he doesn't agree with any of them.  That's a possibility. 

That's beside the point of my post to you.  Challenging a person's debating tactics seems legitimate to me.  So if someone twists what you say, then it's right that you should set them straight.  When people do twist things, they are often building up straw men arguments and those are easily to point out. 

But to say that the other isn't a serious debater addresses the person and not the argument.  Also your statement as to his use of logic is questionable as well (on the same grounds). 

I only point this out because  when you first came on here, you stood on the fact that you were all about a "gentlemanly" debate.  Others commended you for not throwing insults.  Now you are throwing insults (and have in other posts as well) and I can't help but wonder, where are those critical voices now?  And why the change in you?  Is it a sign of frustration?

For the most part, when I read your posts (on 911) I don't get the impression that you want us to consider your points and come to our own conclusion; but you want to tell us what we should think (apparently because you've done all the thinking for us or something like that).

Artful Dodger: Ok, but my point is that, if someone does these things, it is evident they are not seriously debating issues.

If I think Czuch, or you, or anyone else, has made a good point, I acknowledge that. I've noticed you also acknowledge points I make, sometimes. But apparently no point I've ever made, about anything, has Czuch found worthy of acknowledgment. Maybe that's the way he really feels about every statement I've made. Or maybe he feels it is unmanly to acknowledge an opponent in debate. I don't know for sure, but I suspect it is the latter.

Artful Dodger: I don't believe my criticism of Czuch is ad hominem, because it is true that he does ignore challenging points and he does misrepresent the positions of others. If you like, I could provide a list of things I've directly asked him, or points I've made directly to him, that he ignored, while at the same time trying to trivialize my position by distorting it. And I, for my part, always try to answer him honestly. I may miss something, but never intentionally so.

Nevertheless, I will do my best not to focus on his methods, and try instead to the keep the facts, questions, and challenging of assumptions coming.

As to 9/11, over the last year and a half I've read many books & many articles both on & offline, and I've watched many videos/dvds, short & long. My conviction on the matter did not spring up over night. I expect no one to take my word for anything. But I do believe that truth has its own power. I might present a piece of evidence here that gets someone to thinking...."can that be right?" or, "that's a good point, I hadn't thought of it." If so, it doesn't mean they believe me on my word. But they may pick up another piece of information somewhere else. Eventually, they may decide the question merits serious personal inquiry. And only this serious inquiry, which they themselves initiate, ought to convince them one way or the other.

anastasia: You are right, that wouldn't be difficult at all. It is a prime example of how politicians "perform" for the public, while ignoring the obvious & going about their business of representing the money-lenders who bought them, not the voters who voted for them.

awwwwwwwww.......aint love grand :)

The Usurper:You aren't a serious debater. You don't seriously stand on "logic" in your so-called counterpoints.

I thought you were against ad hominem arguments.  I also thought you were the one that called for letting the arguments speak for themselves. 

BTW, having evidence is meaningless if it's not credible or acceptable.  In a trial, lawyers are always trying to discredit the other's submitted evidence.  Some evidence stands up to close scrutiny, some does not.  So simply claiming you provided "evidence" isn't enough.  It has to take us some where.  And spare me the repeat; I know the evidence takes you somewhere.  But it's got to do more than that.  How long have you looked into this 911 stuff?  If a long time, then why do you expect people to "take your word for it" and accept everything you say on face value?

If you've only looked at it a short time, that is worse.  That simply shows that you fall for something without really checking into it in a deep and meaningful way.

Keep the facts coming.  Keep the questions coming.  Challenge assumptions.  But don't do the very thing you have criticized in others:  "to the man" attacks. 

Pedro Martínez: I don't drink much these days, but I do admit that Budweiser was my beer of choice back in my party days. I know American beers don't compare to European ones, or so I've heard. Like Tuesday, I haven't really tried any. My brother says American beer is not in the same league with German.

Tuesday: :o)

Czuch: At least you are consistent. Ignore the questions/comments that challenge your worldview, especially the ones providing evidence...i.e., all those points I make that you can't answer. Instead, misrepresent something I have said, juxtapose it with something else I have said so as to seemingly provide a valid contradiction, etc. You aren't a serious debater. You don't seriously stand on "logic" in your so-called counterpoints. I still enjoy your posts, since they often provide me a "pretext" for discussing things that do matter, and that others will understand. :o)