MORE CONSPIRACY THEORY INSANITY.....
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (March 1) - Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was arrested Saturday in Pakistan, a senior official told The Associated Press.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said Mohammed was one of three men arrested in a 3 a.m. raid in Rawalpindi, a city near Islamabad.
A U.S. official said both U.S. and Pakistani agents were involved in the operation.
Mohammed, 37, is one of the FBI's most-wanted terror suspects, and the U.S. government had offered up to $25 million for information leading to his capture.
U.S. officials have described him as a key al-Qaida lieutenant and the organizer of the terror mission that sent hijacked passenger jets crashing into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, killing more than 3,000 people.
Mohammed, a Kuwait-born Pakistani national, has been linked to last April's bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia. At least 19 tourists, mostly Germans, were killed.
He has also been charged in connection with plots in the Philippines to bomb trans-Pacific airliners and crash a plane into CIA headquarters. Those were broken up in 1995.
Mohammed is the uncle of convicted 1993 World Trade Center conspirator Ramzi Yousef, a senior Kuwaiti official has said.
Mohammed's older brother also is a member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network and another brother died in Pakistan when a bomb he was making exploded.
Another man of Middle Eastern origin was arrested in Saturday's raid but has not been identified. The third man was a Pakistani, identified as Abdul Qadoos.
Interior Ministry spokesman Iftikar Ahmad said Qadoos was linked to a terrorist organization but refused to identify it. He added that Qadoos had trained in Afghanistan.
A Pakistani religious group said Qadoos has no links to al-Qaida or any other terrorist group. Qadoos is a member of the group, Jamaat-e-Islami.
At a news conference in Rawalpindi Saturday, two local leaders of the group said the FBI conducted the raid and carried out the arrest.
In Washington, the FBI refused to confirm Mohammed was arrested or say whether the bureau was involved.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has said a small number of FBI agents are in Pakistan but only to provide intelligence on al-Qaida or Taliban fugitives from neighboring Afghanistan.
However, Pakistani police and intelligence officials say FBI agents have been involved in nearly every important terror arrest in Pakistan.
The Pakistani government says it has handed over more than 420 al-Qaida and Taliban suspects to U.S. custody.
03/01/03 15:19 EST
================
I'm all for the following report - see below. I hope we can STOP trying to spread these fantastically insane conspiracy theories!!
DEBUNKING CONSPIRACY THEORISTS
PARANOID FANTASIES ABOUT SEPT 11 DISTRACT FROM THE REAL ISSUES
by Gerard Holmgren debunker@hotmail.com
Copyright Gerard Holmgren. Jan 9 2003.
This work may be freely copied and distributed without permisiion as long as
it not for commercial use. Please include the author's name, the web address
where you found it and the copyright notice.
Astute observers of history are aware that for every notable event there
will usually be at least one ,often several wild conspiracy theories which
spring up around it. "The CIA killed Hendrix" " The Pope had John Lennon
murdered ", "Hitler was half Werewolf", "Space aliens replaced Nixon with a
clone" etc,etc. The bigger the event, the more ridiculous and more numerous
are the fanciful rantings which circulate in relation to it.
So its hardly surprising that the events of Sept 11 2001 have spawned their
fair share of these ludicrous fairy tales. And as always, there is - sadly -
a small but gullible percentage of the population eager to lap up these tall
tales, regardless of facts or rational analysis.
One of the wilder stories circulating about Sept 11, and one that has
attracted something of a cult following amongst conspiracy buffs is that it
was carried out by 19 fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil
genius named Osama bin Laden, with no apparent motivation other than that
they "hate our freedoms."
Never a group of people to be bothered by facts, the perpetrators of this
cartoon fantasy have constructed an elaborately woven web of delusions and
unsubstantiated hearsay in order to promote this garbage across the internet
and the media to the extent that a number of otherwise rational people have
actually fallen under its spell.
Normally I don't even bother debunking this kind of junk, but the effect
that this paranoid myth is beginning to have requires a little rational
analysis, in order to consign it to the same rubbish bin as all such silly
conspiracy theories.
These crackpots even contend that the extremist Bush
regime was caught unawares by the attacks, had no hand in organizing them,
and actually would have stopped them if it had been able. Blindly ignoring
the stand down of the US air-force, the insider trading on airline stocks -
linked to the CIA, the complicit behavior of Bush on the morning of the
attacks, the controlled demolition of the WTC, the firing of a missile into
the Pentagon and a host of other documented proofs that the Bush regime was
behind the attacks, the conspiracy theorists stick doggedly to a silly story
about 19 Arab hijackers somehow managing to commandeer 4 planes
simultaneously and fly them around US airspace for nearly 2 hours ,crashing
them into important buildings, without the US intelligence services having
any idea that it was coming, and without the Air Force knowing what to do.
The huge difficulties with such a stupid story force them to invent even
more preposturous stories to distract from its core silliness, and thus the
tale has escalated into a mythic fantasy of truly gargantuan proportions.
It's difficult to apply rational analysis to such unmitigated stupidity, but
that is the task which I take on in this article. However, it should be
noted that one of the curious characteristics of conspiracy theorists is
that they effortlessly change their so called evidence in response to each
aspect which is debunked. As soon as one delusion is unmasked, they simply
invent another to replace it, and deny that the first ever existed.
Eventually, when they have turned full circle through this endlessly
changing fantasy fog , they then re-invent the original delusion and deny
that you ever debunked it, thus beginning the circle once more. This
technique is known as "the fruit loop" and saves the conspiracy theorist
from ever having to see any of their ideas through to their (ill)logical
conclusions.
According to the practitioners of the fruit loop, 19 Arabs took over the 4
planes by subduing the passengers and crew through the use of
guns,knives,box cutters and gas, and then used electronic guidance systems
which they had smuggled on board to fly the planes to their targets.
The suspension of disbelief required for this outrageous concoction is only
for the hard core conspiracy theorist. For a start, they conveniently skip
over the awkward fact that there weren't any Arabs on the planes. If there
were, one must speculate that they somehow got on board without being filmed
by any of the security cameras and without being registered on the passenger
lists. But the curly question of how they are supposed to have got on board
is all too mundane for the exciting world of the conspiracy theorist. With
vague mumblings that they must have been using false ID ( but never
specifying which IDs they are alleged to have used, or how these were traced
to their real identities), they quickly bypass this problem, to relate
exciting and sinister tales about how some of the fictitious fiends were
actually searched before boarding because they looked suspicious. However,
as inevitably happens with any web of lies, this simply paints them into an
even more difficult corner. How are they supposed to have got on board with
all that stuff if they were searched ? And if they used gas in a confined
space, they would have been affected themselves unless they also had masks
in their luggage.
"Excuse me sir, why do you have a boxcutter, a gun, a container of gas, a
gas mask and an electronic guidance unit in your luggage?"
"A present for your grandmother? Very well sir, on you get."
"Very strange", thinks the security officer. "That's the fourth Arabic man
without an Arabic name who just got on board with a knife, gun or boxcutter
and gas mask. And why does that security camera keep flicking off every time
one these characters shows up? Must be one of those days I guess..."
Asking any of these basic questions to a conspiracy theorist is likely to
cause a sudden leap to the claim that we know that they were on board
because they left a credit card trail for the tickets they had purchased and
cars they had rented. So if they used credit cards that identified them, how
does that reconcile with the claim that they used false IDs to get on to the
plane? But by this time ,the fruit loop is in full swing, as the conspiracy
theorist tries to stay one jump ahead of this annoying and awkward rational
analysis.They will allege that the hijackers' passports were found at the
crash scenes. "So there!" they exalt triumphantly, their fanatical faces
lighting up with that deranged look of one who has just a revelation of
questionable sanity.
Hmm? So they got on board with false IDs but took their real passports with
them? However, by this time the fruit loop has been completely
circumnavigated,and the conspiracy theorist exclaims impatiently, "Who said
anything about false IDs? We know what seats they were sitting in! Their
presence is well documented!" And so the whole loop starts again. "Well, why
aren't they on the passenger lists?"
"You numbskull! They assumed the identities of other passengers!" And so
on...
Finally, out of sheer fascination with this circular method of creative
delusion , the rational sceptic will allow them to get away with this loop,
in order to move on to the next question, and see what further delights
await us in the unraveling of this marvelously stupid story.
"Uh, how come their passports survived fiery crashes that completely
incinerated the planes and all the passengers? " The answer of course is
that its just one of those strange co-incidences, those little quirks of
fate that do happen from time to time. You know, like the same person
winning the lottery four weeks in a row. The odds are astronomical, but
these things do happen...
This is another favourite deductive method of the conspiracy theorist. The
"improbability drive" , in which they decide upon a conclusion without any
evidence whatsoever to support it, and then continually speculate a series
of wildly improbable events and unbelievable co-incidences to support it,
shrugging off the implausibility of each event with the vague assertion that
sometimes the impossible happens (just about all the time in their world).
There is a principle called "Occam's razor" which suggests that in the
absence of evidence to the contrary, the simplest explanation is most likely
to be correct. Conspiracy theorists hate Occam's razor.
Having for the sake of amusement, allowed them to get away with with the
silly story of the 19 invisible Arabs, we move on to the question of how
they are supposed to have taken over the planes.
Hijacking a plane is not an easy thing to do. Hijacking it without the pilot
being able to alert ground control is near impossible. The pilot has only to
punch in a four digit code to alert ground control to a hijacking.
Unconcerned with the awkward question of plausibility, the conspiracy buffs
maintain that on that Sept 11, the invisible hijackers took over the plane
by the rather crude method of threatening people with boxcutters and knives,
and spraying gas (after they had attached their masks, obviously), but
somehow took control of the plane without the crew first getting a chance to
punch in the hijacking code. Not just on one plane, but on all four. At this
point in the tale, the conspiracy theorist is again forced to call upon the
services of the improbability drive.
So now that our incredibly lucky hijackers have taken control of the planes,
all four pilots fly them with breath taking skill and certainty to their
fiery end, all four pilots unflinching in their steely resolve for a swift
meeting with Allah. Apart from their psychotic hatred of "our freedoms" , it
was their fanatical devotion to Islam which enabled them to summon up the
iron will to do this. Which is strange, because according to another piece
of hearsay peddled by the conspiracy buffs, these guys actually went out
drinking and womanizing the night before their great martyrdom, even leaving
their Korans in the bar -really impeccable Islamic behavior - and then got
up at 5am the next morning to pull off the greatest covert operation in
history. This also requires us to believe that they were even clear headed
enough to learn how to fly the huge planes by reading flight manuals in
Arabic in the car on the way to the airport. We know this because they
supposedly left the flight manuals there for us to find.
It gets better. Their practical training had allegedly been limited to
Cessnas and flight simulators, but this was no barrier to the unflinching
certainty with which they took over the planes and skillfully guided them to
their doom. If they are supposed to have done their flight training with
these tools, which would be available just about anywhere in the world, its
not clear why they would have decided to risk blowing their cover to US
intelligence services by doing the training in Florida, rather than
somewhere in the Middle East, but such reasoning is foreign to the foggy
world of the conspiracy theorist , too trapped in the constant rotation of
the mental fruit loop to make their unsubstantiated fabrications seem even
semi-believable.
Having triumphantly established a circular delusion in support of the
mythical Arabs, the conspiracy theorist now confronts the difficult question
of why there's nothing left of the planes. Anybody who has seen the
endlessly replayed footage of the second plane going into the WTC will
realize that the plane was packed with explosives. Planes do not and cannot
blow up into nothing in that manner when they crash.
Did the mythical Arabs also haul a huge heap of explosives on board, and
mange to deploy them in such a manner that they went off in the exact
instant of the crash, completely vapourizing the plane? This is a little
difficult even for the conspiracy theorist, who at this point decides that
its easier to invent new laws of physics in order to keep the delusion
rolling along.
There weren't any explosives. It wasn't an inside job. The plane blew up
into nothing from its exploding fuel load! Remarkable! Sluggishly
combustible jet fuel which is basically kerosine,and which burns at a
maximum temperature of around 800 C has suddenly taken on the qualities of a
ferociously explosive demolition agent, vapourizing 65 tons of aircraft into
a puff of smoke. Never mind that a plane of that size contains around 15
tons of steel and titanium, of which even the melting points are about
double that of the maximum combustion temperature of kerosine - let alone
the boiling point - which is what would be required to vapourize a plane.
And then there's about 50 tons of aluminium to be accounted for. In excess
of 15lbs of metal for each gallon of kerosine.
For the conspiracy theorist, such inconvenient facts are vaguely dismissed
as "mumbo jumbo". This convenient little phrase is their answer to just
about anything factual or logical. Like a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of a
hat, they suddenly become fanatically insistent about the devastating
explosive qualities of kerosine, something hitherto completely unknown to
science, but just discovered by them, this very minute. Blissfully ignoring
the fact that never before or since in aviation history has a plane
vapourized into nothing from an exploding fuel load, the conspiracy theorist
relies upon Hollywood images, where the effects are are always larger than
life, and certainly larger than the intellects of these cretins.
"Its a well known fact that planes blow up into nothing on impact." they
state with pompous certainty. "Watch any Bruce Willis movie."
"Care to provide any documented examples? If it's a well known fact, then
presumably this well known fact springs from some kind of documentation -
other than Bruce Willis movies ?"
At this point the mad but cunning eyes of the conspiracy theorist will
narrow as they sense the corner that they have backed themselves into, and
plan their escape by means of another stunning backflip.
"Ah, but planes have never crashed into buildings before, so there's no way
of telling." they counter with a sly grin.
Well, actually planes have crashed into buildings before and since, and not
vapourized into nothing.
"But not big planes, with that much fuel ", they shriek in hysterical
denial.
Or that much metal to vapourize.
"Yes but not hijacked planes!"
"Are you suggesting that whether the crash is deliberate or accidental
affects the combustion qualities of the fuel?"
"Now you're just being silly".
Although collisions with buildings are rare, planes frequently crash into
mountains, streets, other aircraft, nosedive into the ground,or have bombs
planted aboard them, and don't vapourize into nothing. What's so special
about a tower that's mostly glass? But by now, the conspiracy theorist has
once again sailed happily around the fruit loop. "Its a well documented fact
that planes explode into nothing on impact."
Effortlessly weaving back and forth between the position that its a "well
known fact" and that "its never happened before, so we have nothing to
compare it to", the conspiracy theorist has now convinced themselves ( if
not too many other people) that the WTC plane was not loaded with
explosives, and that the instant vapourization of the plane in a massive
fireball was the same as any other plane crash you might care to mention.
Round and round the fruit. loop...
But the hurdles which confront the conspiracy theorist are many, and they
are now forced to implement even more creative uses for the newly discovered
shockingly destructive qualities of kerosine. They have to explain how the
Arabs also engineered the elegant veritcal collapse of both the WTC towers,
and for this awkward fact the easiest counter is to simply deny that it was
a controlled demolition, and claim that the buildings collapsed from fire
caused by the burning kerosine.
For this, its necessary to sweep aside the second law of thermodynamics and
propose kerosine which is not only impossibly destructive, but also recycles
itself for a second burning in violation of the law of degradation of
energy. You see, it not only consumed itself in a sudden catastrophic
fireball , vapourizing a 65 ton plane into nothing, but then came back for a
second go, burning at 2000C for another hour at the impact point, melting
the skyscraper's steel like butter. And while it was doing all this it also
poured down the elevator shafts, starting fires all through the building.
When I was at school there was a little thing called the entropy law which
suggests that a given portion of fuel can only burn once, something which is
readily observable in the real world, even for those who didn't make it to
junior high school science. But this is no problem for the conspiracy
theorist. Gleefully, they claim that a few thousand gallons of kerosine is
enough to
: completely vapourize a 65 ton aircraft
: have enough left over to burn ferociously enough for over an hour at the
impact point to melt steel ( melting point about double the maximum
combustion temperature of the fuel )
: still have enough left over to pour down the elevator shafts and start
similarly destructive fires all through the building.
This kerosine really is remarkable stuff! How chilling to realize that those
kerosine heaters we had in the house when I was a kid were deadly bombs,
just waiting to go off. One false move and the entire street might have been
vapourized. And never again will I take kerosine lamps out camping. One
moment you're there innocently holding the lamp - the next - kapow!
Vapourized into nothing along with with the rest of the camp site, and still
leaving enough of the deadly stuff to start a massive forest fire.
These whackos are actually claiming that the raging inferno allegedly
created by the miraculously recycling, and impossibly hot burning kerosine
melted or at least softened the steel supports of the skyscraper. Oblivious
to the fact that the smoke coming from the WTC was black, which indicates an
oxygen starved fire -therefore, not particularly hot, they trumpet an
alleged temperature in the building of 2000 C , without a shred of evidence
to support this curious suspension of the laws of physics.
Not content with this ludicrous garbage, they then contend that as the steel
frames softened, they came straight down instead of buckling and twisting
and falling sideways.
Since they're already re-engineered the combustion qualities of jet fuel,
violated the second law of thermodynamics, and re-defined the structural
properties of steel, why let a little thing like the laws of gravity get in
the way?
The tower fell in a time almost identical to that of a free falling object,
dropped from that height, meaning that its physically impossible for it to
have collapsed by the method of the top floors smashing through the lower
floors. But according to the conspiracy theorists, the laws of gravity were
temporarily suspended on the morning of Sept 11. It appears that the evil
psychic power of those dreadful Arabs knew no bounds. Even after they were
dead, they were able, by the power of their evil spirits, to force down the
tower at a speed physically impossible under the laws of gravity, had it
been meeting any resistance from fireproofed steel structures originally
designed to resist many tons of hurricane force wind as well as the impact
of a Boeing passenger jet straying off course.
Clearly, these conspiracy nuts never did their science homework at school,
but did become extremely adept at inventing tall tales for why.
"Muslim terrorists stole my notes, sir"
"No miss, the kerosine heater blew up and vapourized everything in the
street, except for my passport."
"You see sir, the schoolbus was hijacked by Arabs who destroyed my homework
because they hate our freedoms."
Or perhaps they misunderstood the term "creative science" and mistakenly
thought that coming up with such rubbish was in fact, their science
homework.
The ferocious heat generated by this ghastly kerosine was, according to the
conspiracy theorists, the reason why so many of the WTC victims can't be
identified. DNA is destroyed by heat. (Although 2000 C isn't really
required, 100C will generally do the job.) This is quite remarkable, because
according to the conspiracy theorist, the nature of DNA suddenly changes if
you go to a different city.
That's right! If you are killed by an Arab terrorist in NY, your DNA will be
destroyed by such temperatures. But if you are killed by an Arab terrorist
in Washington DC, your DNA will be so robust that it can survive
temperatures which completely vapourize a 65 ton aircraft.
You see, these loonies have somehow concocted the idea that the missile
which hit the pentagon was not a missile at all, but one of the hijacked
planes. And to prove this unlikely premise, they point to a propaganda
statement from the Bush regime, which rather stupidly claims that all but
one of the people aboard the plane were identified from the site by DNA
testing, even though nothing remains of the plane. The plane was vapourized
by the fuel tank explosion maintain these space loonies, but the people
inside it were all but one identified by DNA testing.
So there we have it. The qualities of DNA are different, depending upon
which city you're in, or perhaps depending upon which fairy story you're
trying to sell at any particular time.
This concoction about one of the hijacked planes hitting the Pentagon really
is a howler. For those not familiar with the layout of the Pentagon, it
consists of 5 rings of building, each with a space inbetween. Each ring of
building is about 30 to 35 ft deep, with a similar amount of open space
between it and the next ring. The object which penetrated the Pentagon went
in at about a 45 degree angle, punching a neat circular hole of about a 12
ft diameter through three rings ( six walls).A little later a section of
wall about 65 ft wide collapsed in the outer ring. Since the plane which the
conspiracy theorists claim to be responsible for the impact had a wing span
of 125 ft and a length of 155 ft, and there was no wreckage of the plane,
either inside or outside the building, and the lawns outside were still
smooth and green enough to play golf on, this crazy delusion is clearly
physically impossible.
But hey, we've already disregarded the combustion qualities of jet fuel, the
normal properties of common building materials, the properties of DNA, the
laws of gravity and the second law of thermodynamics, so what the hell - why
not throw in a little spatial impossibility as well ? I would have thought
that the observation that a solid object cannot pass through another solid
object without leaving a hole at least as big as itself is reasonably sound
science. But to the conspiracy theorist, this is "mumbo jumbo". It conflicts
with the delusion that they're hooked on, so it "must be wrong" although
trying to get them to explain exactly how it could be wrong is a futile
endeavour.
Conspiracy theorists fly into a curious panic whenever the Pentagon missile
is mentioned.They nervously maintain that the plane was vapourized by it's
exploding fuel load and point to the WTC crash as evidence of this behavior.
(That's a wonderful fruit loop.) Like an insect which has just been sprayed,
running back and forth in its last mad death throes, they first argue that
the reason the hole is so small is that the plane never entered the wall,
having blown up outside, and then suddenly backflip to explain the 250 ft
deep missile hole by saying that the plane disappeared all the way into the
building, and then blew up inside the building (even though the building
shows no sign of such damage). As for what happened to the wings - here's
where they get really creative. The wings snapped off and folded into the
fuselage which then carried them into the building, which then closed up
behind the plane like a piece of meat.
When it suits them, they'll also claim that the plane slid in on its belly,
(ignoring the undamaged lawn) while at the same time citing alleged
witnesses to the plane diving steeply into the building from an
"irrecoverable angle." How they reconcile these two scenarios as being
compatible is truly a study in stupidity.
Once they get desperate enough, you can be sure that the UFO conspiracy
stuff will make an appearance. The Arabs are in league with the Martians.
Space aliens snatched the remains of the Pentagon plane and fixed most of
the hole in the wall, just to confuse people. They gave the Arabs
invisibility pills to help get them onto the planes. Little green men were
seen talking to Bin Laden a few weeks prior to the attacks.
As the nation gears up to impeach the traitor Bush, and stop his perpetual
oil war, it's not helpful to have these idiots distracting from the process
by spreading silly conspiracy theories about mythical Arabs, stories which
do nothing but play into the hands of the extremist Bush regime.
At a less serious time, we might tolerate such crackpots with amused
detachment, but they need to understand that the treachery that was
perpetrated on Sept 11, and the subsequent war crimes committed in
"retaliation" are far too serious for us to allow such frivolous self
indulgence to go unchallenged.
Those who are truly addicted to conspiracy delusions should find a more
appropriate outlet for their paranoia.
Its time to stop loony conspiracy theories about Sept 11.
==============
119293!! |
