Sunday, December 15, 2013

An Honest Difference of Opinion



Prof. Jim Fetzer invited me as a guest to his internet radio program, Real Deal, to discuss my recent presentation at the DC 9/11 Truth Conference, “The Pentagon 757.” In it, I argue a Boeing 757 could very well have struck the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, although under very different circumstances from those posed in the official story. In my supposition, a group of technically competent planners set up a high-speed impact of a 757 into a hardened wall of the Pentagon. They did so to produce a crash scene unlike any previous airplane crash scene. I can’t offer a reason for carrying out such a spectacle, other than to bring a great deal of confusion to the day’s overall treachery.

My supposition is based on what can be inferred about the cr. 2000 state-of-art in analysis of high-speed airplane impacts into hardened walls. Also, my supposition assumes use of automated aircraft control available by government insiders shortly before 2001.

Our sharp differences of opinion were, I think, quite interesting, in that we both strongly believe the official explanations are completely false. Narrowing in on the specific question, did a Boeing 757 crash into the Pentagon?, Fetzer holds strongly the mainstream 9/11 Truther belief — NO.
In stark contrast, I believe the evidence available to the public is consistent with a 757 crash, and thus, the answer should be a tentative YES. I’m not insisting a 757 did crash, but rather, the evidence that one didn’t crash needs to be very persuasive to overcome that pointing to a 757 impact.
 
Fetzer’s first argument against my supposition was that aerodynamic forces would prevent a high-speed airplane flying that close to the ground. He backed up his opinion with that of a number of commercial pilots, who say it is impossible to fly that close to the ground because of what’s called ground effect. My response is that pilots make that case under the assumption the plane would have been flown by a pilot (according to the official story), and configured as a commercial airliner (again, assuming the official narrative). My supposition is that the plane would have been rigged in advance to make close-to-ground flight possible, and that it was not flown by a pilot, but rather by an automated control system. The rigging might have included center-of-gravity control through use of ballast, which could have included water tanks within the cabin, with pumps to transfer water between tanks.

A second area of dispute was the applicability of a F-4 Phantom fighter rocket-sled crash into a massive solid concrete block conducted by Sandia. Fetzer argued it had no applicability, whatsoever. saying the weights of the two airplanes were so different, there would simply be no relationship between the two. Fetzer furthermore argued that the F-4 was filled with water, which would make it completely unrelated to an airplane filled with aviation fuel. I countered, saying the water was used in the F-4 test to simulate the weight and fluidity of aviation fuel. The overall F-4 test was used to validate the analysis tools, so these tools could be applied with confidence to other airplane-impact situations. Although, we Truthers don’t have the ability to use these tools to model a 757 impact into the hardened Pentagon wall, my guess is that the planners did their analysis in advance, assuring themselves the crash after effects would be roughly what they desired.

The third area of discussion involved the lack of debris on the lawn. Fetzer maintained the lack of debris was evidence a 757 couldn’t have hit. I argued the lack of debris is what should be expected, based on the results of the Sandia F-4 test. Fetzer then did, what I consider to be an “appeal to authority,” by bringing up the opinion of General Albert "Bert" Stubblebine. General Stubblebine is featured on a widely viewed YouTube video stating a 757 couldn’t have hit the Pentagon, because there were no aircraft remains to be seen. My response is, although I greatly respect General Stubblebine, he is not aware of what the validated airplane-impact analysis tools would predict, and therefore, he is “wrong” on this matter.

The last area of discussion caught me by surprise. Fetzer showed a photo of the collapse of the Pentagon structure that occurred some time later, taking down a section of the Pentagon to the south of the alleged impact point. We both agreed that section was probably brought down on purpose. Fetzer concluded, the appearance of the Pentagon prior to bringing it down was apparently “not what the authorities desired.” Therefore, they must have brought it down to make the building appear more like a major impact had occurred. I agreed. However, that put my logic in a bind. Whereas I had been arguing the planners probably achieved the result they wished to achieve, this later “adjustment” suggests they fell short of their objectives.

Oh, if we could only know what the planners had planned.

9 comments:

Dwain Deets said...

Jim Fetzer sent me an email shortly after reading this blog, and asked that I post it here. I quote:

"Thanks, Dwain. A good effort to compose a balanced summary. I think the key to my dissent re the Sandia crash applying to the Pentagon has more to do with the materials of which they are made, where the F-4 appears to have been made out of some kind of composite material, while the 757 was made out of aluminum. I think that there are more differences than similarities between them and that the kind of blowing apart into lots of tiny parts at Sandia is not remotely what we should expect of a Boeing 757, where there should have been a massive pile of aluminum debris, wings and tail--given that you take this to have been a plane with no pilots or passengers--where not even the engines were recovered, even though they are virtually indestructible. My citation of Gen. Stubbelbine was indeed an appeal to authority, but it was non-fallacious. Falalcious appears occur when someone who is not an expert in an area is cited as though they were. Stubbelbine is of course an expert on this matter, where his conclusions must carry special weight.

"Since I recently addressed the four crash sites and how it appears to me each of them was fabricated or faked, albeit in different ways, I would appreciate it if you could post this note and a link to "The Complete Midwest 9/11 Truth Conference", Part 2, which is archived at http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/10/03/the-complete-midwest-911-truth-conference-parts-1-2-and-3/

thejumblies said...

@Jim Fetzer
If a plane travelling at high speed crashes into, and breaks through, a wall, then the debris is going to be almost entirely at the other side of the wall. In the case of the Pentagon this means inside the building. If the remaining structure then collapses on that debris and it burns for a considerable time then there will be even more destruction caused to that debris. The amount of debris of the plane in the Pentagon can only be assessed by going into the building and recovering the debris and I have never seen any account by anyone ever saying that the didn't recover debris from the plane. I have never seen any one of the people who had to go in and clear out the debris from the Pentagon say that they didn't recover the engines or the undercarriage or all the other large heavy pieces of the plane. There are photos of an engine core and engine casings and undercarriage members - engine parts which in the inimitable way of the 911 truth movement they managed to mis-identify as en engine from a missile or from an A3 Skywarrior, anything other than what it actually is. This includes General Stubblebine. Here he is presented not with some satellite photo taken from 100 miles up but a close-up detailed photo of an engine core of an RB211-535 and he is unable to identify it. He is supposed to be an expert on analysing photos and he spectacularly fails to do a simple identification of an engine. The man has been mislead by a specious, distorted presentation of evidence by the so-called 'truth' movement. I have heard him explain how assessing evidence involves not just one piece of evidence but many pieces and then he says he saw a photograph- and based his conclusions on that. Never mind all the other evidence just base conclusions on one piece of evidence. This photo of course being a photo of the 'small hole' at the Pentagon (all the other damage covered up by spray from a fire truck) . The man is retired and is of advanced years so I don't really blame him for being mislead, since he is of the generation that when they saw a documentary with a voice-over presenting people with information, they would have assumed that what they were getting was accurate information and that evidence was not being distorted and manipulated deliberately or otherwise to create a version of events at odds with a rational assessment of that evidence. He didn't realise he was now watching 'documentaries' by the 911 truth movement which start with the un-written premise that 'we are being deceived' which allows any inconvenient evidence to be dismissed as a deception, with the added bonus that this then means we are being deceived.

Dwain Deets said...

In response to thejumblies,

1. The width between the outer edges of the A-3 engine cores is only about 1/2 the width of the hole spanning what had been exterior columns 10 thru 18 on the first floor. Whereas, the equivalent width between the 757 engine core extremities is approximately the full width of the hole.

2. The 757/767 series had advanced automation avionics in test aircraft by 2001. The A-3 Skywarrior was a much earlier vintage aircraft. Unlikely advanced automation avionics was developed for such an aircraft.

3. I prefer dismissing all photos of aircraft parts. Once the authorities established a pattern of hiding most of the aircraft rubble (if there were any), then I think we need to be suspicious if any photos of specific parts that “leaked” through.

For these reasons, I think a 757 is a stronger possibility.

thejumblies said...

@Dwain Deets
Can I say I don't think that there is any chance whatever that there was an A3 Skywarrior or a missile or anything else other than a Boeing 757.
You said:
" I prefer dismissing all photos of aircraft parts. Once the authorities established a pattern of hiding most of the aircraft rubble (if there were any), then I think we need to be suspicious if any photos of specific parts that “leaked” through."
Where did the authorities try to hide debris from the Pentagon? I just don't understand that statement. If you are saying the debris was planted why would it be hidden? Why would they hide debris that they had planted? The purpose of planting something is for it to be seen. Do you think if the debris was planted that it would not be from a 757? If a Boeing 757 crashed into the Pentagon then the debris would be from that 757. If a 757 didn’t crash into the Pentagon but there was some elaborate plan to make people think that one had crashed then the debris would be from a 757. The only thing that wouldn’t make sense would be that the debris at the Pentagon on 911 wasn’t from a Boeing 757 or that it would be hidden in either case. Where was anyone hiding it? This is actually the kind of thing I was referring to when I talked about the 911 truth movement having this pre-conceived idea that there is a deception going on. If you start with that idea then you will find there is a deception going on , for the simple reason that it gives a green light to therefore pick and choose evidence to declare false. This is false , that is staged, this person is lying, those people are lying. It’s easy. You can create any picture of a past event by simply erasing evidence that doesn’t fit with that picture, by just declaring it false. It doesn’t have to make sense that it would be false or that people would lie or that they would fake evidence, it just has to be declared false. 911 truth people will even if required accuse one another of lying, faking , spreading dis-information etc. –you have seen that yourself – in order to maintain their theories, because the theories must be maintained because they have uncovered a big deception.

Dwain Deets said...

Setting self-imposed rules for which evidence to include is difficult for a situation where the authorities have possibly manipulated some or all evidence. One must avoid selecting only evidence which supports one's favored hypothesis.

I have taken the approach of selecting what I consider a minimal set. The set includes the ASCE Pentagon Building Performance Report findings pertaining to the exterior west-facing wall. Additionally, photos of damage and rubble to the west of the Pentagon.

I find even this self-imposed restriction leaves open a vulnerability. For example, the photo of the west-facing Pentagon exterior wall prior to the collapse is of crucial value to my analysis. I accept it as reliable partly because it is contained in the ASCE Pentagon Building Performance Report (Fig. 3.9). In the report, credit for this photo is given to Steve Riskus. However, Riskus is one who should be viewed with considerable caution — several times over in fact. For one, he claims to have witnessed AA77 crash into the building.

Photos of engine parts inside the Pentagon have another layer of unreliability. Besides the possibility of nefarious motives inspiring those taking the photos, we don’t know if these parts are truly remains of a Pentagon crash event, or if they were placed among the rubble as part of a disinfo endeavor. I am choosing to leave engine-part photos out of this analysis.

thejumblies said...

@Dwain Deets
I think if you read what you have said here you will see just what I mentioned in my previous post. The idea that there is some big deception going on, leading to the dismissal of evidence that doesn't conform to a favoured hypothesis.
You say "One must avoid selecting only evidence which supports one's favored hypothesis."
and then you say " In the report, credit for this photo is given to Steve Riskus. However, Riskus is one who should be viewed with considerable caution — several times over in fact. For one, he claims to have witnessed AA77 crash into the building."
Steve Riskus says a plane crashed into the building so he should be viewed with considerable caution. If that isn't a prejudicial judgement of evidence then I don't know what is. I would have to presume that therefore any other person who says a plane crashed into the Pentagon is not to be trusted either because they say a plane crashed into the Pentagon. All of the eyewitness evidence saying a plane crashed into the Pentagon can now be set aside and not addressed. All the evidence of what was in the building afterwards can be set aside and not addressed. This is exactly what you said should be avoided i.e. selecting only evidence which supports a favoured hypothesis.
The point is that it is those in the 911 truth movement who have this luxury of dismissing evidence since the 'truth' is basically that 'the official story' is a lie. Anything that contradicts the official story therefore assumes almost automatic credibility.

Dwain Deets said...

Riskus said, "I watched the American Airlines 757 airplane crash into the Pentagon." I'm taking that as a more suspicious statement than had he said "I saw the plane crash into the Pentagon."

This more suspicious statement should have more weight in evaluating his "eye witness" credentials. Whereas, it should have less weight regarding his "photo witness" credentials.

Were this being brought to a jury, Riskus would be brought in to testify regarding the photo. I would think chain of custody would be the main concern.

thejumblies said...

@Dwain Deets
I can only say that you are just confirming what I said about prejudicial assessment of evidence. I really think you should be more self-aware about this and try not to fall into the trap of circular logic and prejudice that the 911 truth movement jumped into with both feet.

Dwain Deets said...

Okay, thejumlies,
I reread your initial post, where I now am more clear on your argument in favor of interpreting engine remain photos as consistent with an RB211-535, which in turn would favor a B-757 as the airplane type.

On the one hand, I was giving my reasons for not including photos of airplane parts because of the uncertainties with chain of custody. As you point out, I was being inconsistent when I didn’t apply the same ground rules to the photo of the Pentagon exterior wall taken by Riskus.

At this point, I will accept as valid the engine-remains photo submitted by the FBI in the Zacarias Moussaoui trial in 2006. The argument for connecting this photo to an RB211-535 is made to my satisfaction at http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/conspiracy/q0265.shtml