"greatest domestic tragedy to ever befall this nation."
Might be better as "this generation". Considering:
Genocide against the Native Americans,
Slavery and the Slave Trade,
Civil War,
Lynchings from the 1880s to 1960s
Other might include:
Indifference to the Aids Epidemic
Tobacco Deaths
Prison Population/Drug Violence
And even the hundreds of thousands of death from automobile accidents, which could have easily been made safer decades ago.
As terrible a tragedy the 9-11 attacks were, it can be argued that each of these was or continues to be is a greater domestic tragedy.
Yes, the De Mott article is excellent even if a little long. A lot of good stuff comes out of Harpers. For years, I have looked forward to Lewis Lapham's monthly column and wonder why I don't see him quoted more often here. Perhaps because "Notebook" is not often available on the web.
Once again, I feel that Eagar's explanation, which takes in account both the engineering and the physics is more than adequate. You, apparently, have more respect for Underwriter's Lab that I do. When it comes down to it, I'll go with the experts from MIT. Eagar's discussion reads like one of scientific discovery while Ryan's looks to be a diatribe from a frustrated engineer. I don't trust him as an objective source and am disappointed that he doesn't offer an alternative. Perhaps he didn't feel qualified to do so. Let me say, once again, that Eagar's paper does NOT assume the steel smelting level of temperatures that Ryan is most animated about.
One of the reasons I trust Eagar is a shared experience. As you and I have discussed before, too much of the conspiracy crowd argument is based on the sophistic assumption that the way the buildings fell is a strong indication that they were blown up. Based on my background, I had a similar realization as Eagar did "Well, I once asked demolition experts, "How do you get it to implode and not fall outward?" They said, "Oh, it's really how you time and place the explosives." I always accepted that answer, until the World Trade Center, when I thought about it myself. And that's not the correct answer. The correct answer is, there's no other way for them to go but down. They're too big. With anything that massive -- each of the World Trade Center towers weighed half a million tons -- there's nothing that can exert a big enough force to push it sideways.
" pbs.org.
And I am sure that you know that I know of the various blog quality links that can be produced that try to refute his assumptions. I'm just not buying all the polemical nonsense at sites like plaguepuppy.net
To me the 9-11 attacks fit an expected pattern and are best explained to be as exactly what they appeared: A diabolically brilliant low-tech exploitation of our lax security network and pre 9-11 hijacking policy.
Of course you know that this doesn't mean I accept the Bush administration’s theories on the size or nature of the terrorist network that was responsible for the attack, just like I never believed them about the Iraq 9-11 connection or the great WMD deception. I've now read through transcript of "the Power of Nightmares" that you and others have linked here informationclearinghouse.info . This might be the best film on government's exploitation of the terrorist boogeyman that I've seen since Terry Gilliam's "Brazil". |
