This photo of a power transformer on fire is relevant to our earlier discussion of WTC7, which was constructed over ten power transformers and which housed plenty of diesel fuel caches. I occasionally hear from folks who seem to think that transformer oil and diesel fuel have remarkable flame-retardant properties. If you pop over to the website from which I cribbed the above image (it's about the dangers of placing transformers offshore in Nantucket Sound), you'll read these words:"Some transformer fires burn so hot, it can take up to 12 hours to extinguish."
By the way, I do know that soldiers in Vietnam set small amounts of C4 on fire to use as portable stoves. I also know that some rather nasty accidents occurred. I don't think that many Vietnam vets would want to spend much time in a furiously burning building filled with plastic explosives.
12 comments:
As an electrician, I can tell you that x-frmr oil does burn, just get the ambient air around the oil hot enough and put a spark to it...poof
Flo
Joseph, while your efforts are valiant in this regard, NO FORENSIC EVIDENCE will ever convince those whose agenda is to absolve neofascism, Islamist or otherwise of responsibility for wanton acts of mass murder.
"9/11 Truth" is a breeding ground for far-rightists, "new age" cultists and otherwise unhinged conspiracists. Reasonable people can debate the degree of prior warnings state-intel agencies had before 9/11--a lot, by all accounts. But the calculated move to shift responsibility from the mass murder of 3,000 human beings by state-connected, drug-trafficking far-right Islamists (the Afghan-Arab database, al-Qaeda) to a small cabal of "elitists" grouped around the neoconservatives (read "jews") follows a well-known pattern to other far-right inflicted acts of terror.
The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah building comes to mind. Despite numerous warnings by FBI/ATF moles inside the Nazi-linked "militia" and Christian Identity cults across the country, the state (read FBI) rather than acting on credible warnings did nothing! The result: neo-Nazis (that's right, plural, not singular, I reject the McVeigh as "lone-nut" scenario) parked 4,000 lbs of explosives beneath a daycare center and detonated it.
But I'm not writing here to argue this or that particular hypothesis of OKC but to comment on the similar reactions spewed forth by right-wing demagogues ("paging Alex Jones!").
OKC: the state bombed their own building with "pre-positioned" explosives to "discredit" the so-called "Patriot Movement" (Militia spokespeople, National Vanguard, Christian rightists, John Birchers)
9/11: "pre-positioned" explosives brought the Towers down (multiple sources, you know who you are!)
OKC: No ATF/FBI agents were injured or killed, since they had "prior warning".
9/11: No "Jews" died in the Towers, since they had "prior warning". (Tell THAT to the Jersey Girls!)
On and on...
Wrap yourselves around this: Bush & Co. would have invaded Afghanistan and Iraq whether or not 9/11 took place. 9/11 was pretext, a convenient excuse for carrying out an aggressive capitalist agenda that existed as early as 1992! Remember the Feith/Perle/Wolfowitz scheme to wage preemptive war under Bush 1?
The state protects its own -- in Pakistan, in Saudi Arabia, in Langley. Those are the avenues that any credible "Truth Movement" should be exploring. The rest, as they say, is "a wilderness of mirrors."
that damned war..
I'm over 60 & the Armed Forces say I'm too old to track down terrorist. (You can't be older than 42 to join the military.) They've got the who thing backwards. Instead of sending 18 year olds off to fight, they ought to take us old guys. You shouldn't be able to join the military unit until you're at least 35.
Researchers say 18 year olds think about sex every 10 seconds. Old guys only think about sex a couple times a day, leaving us with more than 28,000 additional seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy.
Young guys haven't lived long enough to be cranky, & the cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier. If we can't kill the enemy we'll complain them into submission. "My back hurts! I'm hungry. Where's the remote?"
An 18 year old hasn't had a legal beer yet & you shouldn't go to war until you're at least old enough to drink.
The average old guy, on the other hand, has consumed 126,000 gallons of beer, & a juant through the desert heat with a beer & M-60 would do wonders for the old belly.
(Note there are 24 hours in a day & 24 bottles in a case...another convenient way to measure time!)
An 18 year old doesn't like to get up before 10 a.m. Old guys always get up early to go to the bathroom.
If captured, we wouldn't spill the beans because we'd forget where we put them. In fact, name, rank, & serial number would be a real brain teaser.
Boot camp would be easier for old guys. We're use to getting yelled & screamed at, & we like soft food.
We've also developed an appreciation for guns. We like them almost better than naps.
They could lighten up on the obstacle course, however, I've been in combat & didn't see a single 20-foot wall with rope hanging over the side, nor did I ever do pushups after completing basic training. I can hear the drill sergeant now, "Get down & give me...er, one."
Actually, the running part is kind of a waste. I've never seen anyone ever outrun a bullet.
An 18 year old has his whole life ahead of him.
He's still learning to shave, to carry on a conversation, & to wear pants without the top of his butt sticking out.
He hasn't figured out that a pierced tongue catches food particles, & that a 400-watt speaker in the back seat of a Honda can rupture an eardrum, & that a baseball cap has a brim to shade the eyes, not the back of his head.
These are all reasons to keep our kids at home to learn a little more about life before sending them off in harm's way.
Let us old guys track down those dirty, rotten terrorists who attacked us on September 11. The last thing an enemy would want to see right now is a couple of million old geezers with attitudes.
"They've got the who thing backwards. Instead of sending 18 year olds off to fight, they ought to take us old guys. You shouldn't be able to join the military unit until you're at least 35."
Agreed. Nobody should be sent off to war unless he's old enough to be president.
Anyway, Joe, I'm no expert, but I think one of the advantages of diesel (over gasoline) is that it's very difficult to burn except in aerosol form. Of course, who's to say how it would behave in the presence of exploding electrical transformers?
Tom:
If you were around during the OKC bombing aftermath, you may recall the certainty with which, yes, the usual suspect national security experts 'identified' the culprits as Arabs from the Middle East. Whether Tim McVeigh had accomplices (I think he did, out of the Aryan Nation stronghold at Elohim City, headed by the FBI informant German national Strassmeier) or not, neither he nor they were from the Middle East, nor were they Arabs or Islamacists of any stripe.
As for no 'Jews' dying at Ground Zero in the towers, Cantor Fitzgerald among many other firms employed a full floor or more of employees of which most, I think, were Jewish, and died over the course of the event. HOWEVER, the number of ISRAELIS killed there WAS almost zero, amounting to one above that null result (1 Israeli visitor that day died, but no Israelis who worked in the complex, whereas the Jerusalem Post said some 4,000 Israelis were thought there and were missing for a while, per concerned family inquiries with the Israeli government). Somehow, someway, W evidently was provided with wrong information, and told the nation that 130 Israelis had perished there, a 13,000% overstatement that was never corrected for the nation's edification.
...sofla
Whether Tim McVeigh had accomplices (I think he did, out of the Aryan Nation stronghold at Elohim City, headed by the FBI informant German national Strassmeier) or not, neither he nor they were from the Middle East, nor were they Arabs or Islamacists of any stripe.
Soflah, I leave it to others better qualified than me to assess all of this, but Patrick Briley (also here)argues otherwise:
....another man directly involved in the OKC bombing, the black Muslim, Mujahid Abdulqadir Menepta (aka Melvin Lattimore). A US citizen from St Louis, Lattimore has long standing direct ties to Hamas, AlFuqra and AlQaeda terror organizations.
Lattimore was involved in the 1993 WTC, 1995 OKC and 9/11 attacks. According to Federal trial testimony in November 2001 by BATF agent Jerry Whitney, Lattimore was named one day after the OKC bombing to the FBI (by an official FBI informant) as a participant in the OKC bombing. In the same trial proceeding it was also revealed that Lattimore's credit card was used to buy bomb-making materials for the 1993 WTC bombing.
Four eyewitnesses at the Travelers Aid in OKC near the bombed Murrah building told the FBI in 1995 that Lattimore came to the Travelers Aid with McVeigh's Mercury Marquise and FBI/DEA informant James Rosencrans the day before the OKC bombing. Six different FBI agents tried to brow beat the four witnesses into changing their stories over a six-month period. The FBI agents took few notes and wrote no FBI 302 interview reports nor used an FBI sketch artist Jean Boylin who was in town and available. The Director of the Travelers Aid, Gloria Smith, sent Attorney General Ashcroft and DOJ Inspector Genera, Glenn Fine, (acknowledged receipt) two letters about this incident in the summer of 2001 and they were presented to Ashcroft in his residence in August 2001. The Dallas Fox News bureau chief, Russ Cosby, has said that investigators have learned that McVeigh was with Lattimore in several locations in OKC near the time of the OKC bombing.
The mastermind of the 1993 WTC, 1995 OKC and 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, sent 9/11 "wannabe" hijacker Zacharias Moussaoui to live with Lattimore in Norman while Moussaoui attended the Norman OK Airman flight school. 9/11 hijackers Atta, AlShehhi and AlHazmi were seen with Lattimore at his Norman apartment according to FBI documents. Lattimore drove to Minnesota in August 2001 just before 9/11 and tried to bail Moussaoui out of jail. This information was known to prosecutors but was avoided in being revealed at Moussaoui's recent trial. The FBI and DOJ prosecuted Lattimore in November 2001 for having a firearm under a previous felony conviction (stockpiling explosives in his St Louis apartment). Lattimore only served 18 months even though BATF testimony at the trial linked Lattimore directly to the 1993 WTC and OKC bombings.
I should have said there were no genuine Arabs or Islamacists involved who were not agents provocateur, double agents, or manipulated by US governmental agents.
Yes, we can point to an Ali Muhammed, or a Blind Sheik Rahman, but they are/were assets and pawns of US national security agencies.
...sofla
...sofla writes:
"As for no 'Jews' dying at Ground Zero in the towers, Cantor Fitzgerald among many other firms employed a full floor or more of employees of which most, I think, were Jewish, and died over the course of the event. HOWEVER, the number of ISRAELIS killed there WAS almost zero, amounting to one above that null result (1 Israeli visitor that day died, but no Israelis who worked in the complex, whereas the Jerusalem Post said some 4,000 Israelis were thought there and were missing for a while, per concerned family inquiries with the Israeli government)."
I have to dispute your statistics. According to Wikipedia's "Non-American casualties of the September 11, 2001 attacks," 5 Israeli citizens were killed in the WTC attack. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-American_casualties_of_the_September_11%2C_2001_attacks
In other words, 5 times the number of Israelis were killed than your asserted.
My point was not the number of Israeli's killed that day, but the propensity of neofascist conspiracy-mongers to tout so-called "prior warnings" sent to Israelis (I used the word "Jews") by "Mossad" and/or other "Zionist" agencies.
Does Mossad and other organs of Israeli state repression do horrible, even monstrous things, including assassinations, bombings, "false flag" operations (a much abused phrase), etc. Of course they do! One would have to be deaf, dumb and willfully blind to ignore such criminal actions against the Palestinian people in occupied Palestine.
However, my point was to lambast 9/11 cultists for their dodgy, even anti-semitic claims that "Mossad did 9/11."
There is circumstantial evidence, however, that Mossad MAY have been running an intelligence operation inside the US prior to 9/11. The case of the "Israeli art students" comes to mind. See: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=_israeli_art_students_
They may also have been connected to organized crime or both. We just don't know. There is also the strange case of Urban Moving Systems: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=_israeli_art_students_
And then, there were multiple warnings from Israeli and other intelligence to US officials, see: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&complete_911_timeline_key_events=complete_911_timeline_key_warnings
AGAIN: 9/11 cultists take a grain of sand to build sandcastles. The killers were linked to the Afghan-Arab database al-Qaeda. Multiple US intelligence agencies and the Pentagon have employed al-Qaeda before, during and AFTER the 9/11 attacks: Seymour Hersh's research in The New Yorker re: covert ops against Iran, in Lebanon, etc. The US had multiple prior warnings on the impending 9/11 attacks and DID NOTHING. In fact, they did worse than nothing, they impeded criminal investigations: Collen Rowley and Zacarias Mossaoui come to mind. After the attacks, the USG impeded the investigations into said attacks.
Was 9/11 "a inside job"? Not that I can tell from the available data. Did the USG act to PROTECT intelligence assets and/or ongoing intelligence operations? Now there's the crux of the matter-yes!
I'll go out on a limb and assert that SOME 9/11 cultists are engaged in a similar operation. How else does one explain taking money from Adnan Khashoggi via his cut-out John Gray to pay for 9/11 "Truth Conferences"? (!)
IslamistsForPeace writes, citing Patrick Briley:
"....another man directly involved in the OKC bombing, the black Muslim, Mujahid Abdulqadir Menepta (aka Melvin Lattimore). A US citizen from St Louis, Lattimore has long standing direct ties to Hamas, AlFuqra and AlQaeda terror organizations."
I must admit, I don't have much information on Lattimore, but most of what I've researched on OKC has very little to do with the Middle East and much to do with Middle America.
There is a great deal of speculation whether or not McVeigh accomplice Terry Nichols met al-Qaeda operative Ramzi Yousef during a trip to the Philippines prior to the OKC bombing. This has not been proven but deserves further research. JM Berger at IntelWire.com has put together an impressive series of articles that MIGHT link Nichols to both Yousef and Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
My earlier point was that in the wake of OKC, neofascists linked OKC to "an inside job" by the feds themselves. I failed to mention: the Neocons, Steven Emerson prominently among them, attempted to link OKC to "Arabs" and the Middle East.
However, the primary suspects were connected to the Christian Identity Elohim City compound and the bank-robbing Aryan Republican Army. There is still (nearly 13 years later!) much speculation regarding the role played by German national Andreas Strassmeir. Was he a provocateuer/mole/FBI-BND asset? Possibly. Did he train the McVeigh gang? Probably. Was he part of an on-going FBI investigation into the so-called "Patriot movement"? Seems likely, too. Was he all of the above-a Nazi and an informant? That too is possible. Check out Berger's "Patcon" file on Intelwire.com. Was Strassmeir linked to the Morris Dees' SPLC? We don't know, but according to the late OKC investigative reporter, JD Cash, SPLC did have a mole inside Elohim City, separate from Carol Howe, the ATF's mole.
You might want to check out my 1997 piece published in the Toronto-based (now defunct) antifascist publication Antifa Forum: "Case Closed? Fascist Networks and the Oklahoma City Bombing, http://www.etext.org/Politics/Arm.The.Spirit/Antifa/Research/strassmeir.oklahoma
sofla writes:
"Yes, we can point to an Ali Muhammed, or a Blind Sheik Rahman, but they are/were assets and pawns of US national security agencies."
I'd have to dispute this assertion. The best documented evidence we have, Peter Lance's "Triple Cross" is that Ali Mohamed was not merely an intelligence asset and pawn of US security agencies, but an al-Qaeda mole acting as a triple agent: for al-Qaeda, the FBI, the CIA and probably also for Pakistan's ISI.
Reality isn't as always as simple as we'd like it to be. Mohamed was all of these things simultaneously. Just because he trained al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan for use by Pakistan's ISI in Kashmir, and by ISI/CIA/MI6 destabilization operations in Bosnia/Kosovo/Chechnya, doesn't negate the proposition that the Arab-Afghan database al- Qaeda also possesses, and acts upon, their own agenda! Assets "go off the reservation," this is the meaning of "blowback."
What about today? Does the US continue to utilize dodgy assets to advance so-called "national Security interests"? The evidence is yes! In Lebanon the US unleashed Fatah al-Intifada, a Sunni jihadi group with ties to al-Qaeda to attack the Shiite Hezbollah. Who suffered? The Palestinian refugees butchered by the Lebanese Army in the Nahar al-Bared camp. Similarly, the US has utilized the Baluchi salaffist Jundullah terror organization to attack Iran.
The US played with fire before, during and after 9/11...and got burned!
I'm convinced that the vast majority, if not all of the visible proponents of "CD Theory" are whatever perjorative term you want to label them with.
I have BEEN convinced for years that the idea of "CD" is a dead-end, as far as pushing any investigation, or building "proof". I have therefore felt the entire topic not worthy of attention, almost since it happened.
But, what if it was true? What if the worst and greatest potential damage from exposure of "inside involvement" was the use of controlled demolition to bring down the buildings? How would the perpetrators behave (assuming they are an extension of the same type of people who killed JFK.) Well, I would assume their first act would be to make sure all of the physical evidence was carted off and melted down and quickly as possible. They would work to head off or delay or limit any investigation into the crime, and they would make sure to get out in front of the argument by making sure the most visible and "successful" purveyors of that fact were complete nutcases. They might actually "plant" some, but more likely, they'd arrange for support and attention to be provided, and "assist" organizing of the story in such a way that would make the easiest to knock down the "leaders".
Yes, I remain of the opinion that purveyors of "CD Theory" are the dispicable bottom feeders of the "dissident underground" if they are even a part of it. I remain convinced that true or false, it will be impossible to force this case open and toward justice by trying to prove "CD". I remain firmly convinced that "CD" is not worthy of serious discussion. AND I remain completely convinced that the concept may have been employed in some way on 911.
That said, both arguments in favor, and efforts to discredit these bozos are a distraction from the real work to be done. As such, any attention given to it detracts from effort that could be more productively directed toward actions that could produce real impact.
There. I've had my say.
Gosh, if WTC7 was such a powerful "bomb ready to go off" as you put it, I think it rather peculiar that the NY State Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and DEC was able to recover approximately 20,000 gallons from two intact 11,600-gallon underground fuel oil storage tanks.
http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch5.pdf
Interestingly, concerning the amount of WTC7 diesel fuel,Fire Protection Engineering Magazine said:
"A total of 91,000 liters of diesel fuel was stored below grade to supply the (WTC7) generators."
http://fpemag.com/archives/article.asp?issue_id=14&i=183&p=2
That converts to 24,040 gallons, of which around 20,000 was recovered after the collapse, according to FEMA.
Odd to think that in Cannon's WTC7world, where diesel fuel and transformer oil explode readily and with devastating effect, that somehow the vast majority of the stored diesel fuel failed to burn at all, much less explode, and was in fact recovered after the disaster, safe in it's storage tanks.
Post a Comment