Quote:
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Originally Posted by roachboy
.....earlier in here, i think host noted that the ineptness and internal inconsistencies of the various reports on this topic were in themselves problematic--the process "stinks"---the problem with this is that it seems to make of the question of why the wtc buildings collapsed a kind of device for delegitimating the administration's entire "war on terror" etc.---now to be clear i think that the "war on terror" was illegitimate from the beginning, its motives transparent, its inconsistencies with the material world obvious simply because it was based on so little and could not have been otherwise.
that said:
a. could someone who has been engaged in tracking this issue explain to me exactly why the question of how the wtc buildings collapsed is the focus of the thread? in other words, what exactly do you see as at stake here, in this particular dimension of the retro-narrative?
another way of asking the same basic question:
based on this, what scenario do you think better explains not just the building collapse, but the events themselves? i understand that this would be a speculative exercise, but i am curious about the logic that extends the implications of the events at the center of the thread beyond themselves.
anyone?
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I think that what is at stake is the reliability of the official "narrative". The weakest point in the official "story" is the collapse of WTC 7. It was not hit by an jumbo airliner,laden with jet fuel, travelling at 500 plus mph. It was 47 stories tall, there is documentation provided above as to it's superior structural strength, it is the only structure of it's construct to collapse at a near "free fall" rate....or to collapse at all....as a result of persistant structural fire.
There was a reported interest and urgency, after the collapse, to pinpoint why it collapsed. There is much evidence that it's collapse was predicted and expected, after the twin towers collapsed, but almost now real evidence as to why this was expected, especially since such a collapse was, and is, unprecedented.
That's about all we know, and now, we wait. WTC 7 also housed NYC CIA, FBI, and Secret Service offices, and there were reports that the SEC office in the building housed incriminating evidence that ongoing stock market abuse investigations and prosecutions depended on.
It seemed that there was and is indifference in aggressively investigating why WTC 7 collapsed. There is the added curiousity that the Popular Mechanics magazine analysis of the WTC 7 collapse, intended to debunk the speculation resulting from the initial and incomplete FEMA examination and report of the collapse, turned out to have as it's lead author, a fact not disclosed when Popular Mechanics published it's "findings", one Benjamin Chertoff, cousin of DHS head, Michael Chertoff.
I think we are nearing the time when we can conclude that the government has no credible explanation as to how and why WTC 7 collapsed. When we get there, either by NIST further postponing or by walking away from it's "report", we will see what happens next. I think that the 9/11 attack is too big an event for the current news media balckout to be justified. I think the problem for the news media is that they do not know how to report the NIST delays and revisions.
Bush era apologists will always be there to disparage even reasonable and measured discussions like this one. This is unprecedented, the event and the indifferent and oft delayed investigation. It should have been handled as any other criminal investigation, but with much more intensity and diligence, but, so should the response to it have been handled.
We are left, for now, to share observations of interest:
"City officials" moved incredibly quickly, under the circumstances....during the time when the debris at the WTC site was still handled gingerly, as rescue hopes died hard, and only after many days....no steel was recovered from WTC 7,
Quote:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...sq=scrap+yards
September 29, 2001
A NATION CHALLENGED: THE SITE; Engineers Seek to Test Steel Before It Is Melted for Reuse
By JAMES GLANZ AND KENNETH CHANG
The huge steel columns and beams of the World Trade Center are being hauled off to be melted and recycled before engineers can inspect the twisted metal, which they say could hold important clues on how to build safer skyscrapers in the future.
The city has signed a contract that allows two New Jersey firms to recycle the estimated 310,000 tons of steel from the trade center site, including some 90,000 tons from each tower.
Kenneth Holden, commissioner of the department of design and construction, <h3>said the deal would help to recoup at least a tiny part of the original value of the towers and to dispose of the wreckage in an environmentally responsible way. He could not provide an estimate for the value of the steel.</h3> Ultimately the money would probably go to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the buildings.
But some engineers, including a team assembled by the American Society of Civil Engineers, say that examination of the steel could allow them to piece together the precise chain of events that led to the collapse of the buildings.
''If we don't collect the unbelievably valuable data, it will be a second tragedy,'' said Dr. Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, professor of structural engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and a member of the engineering society's team. Dr. Astaneh-Asl is also the recipient of one of eight grants awarded yesterday by the National Science Foundation to investigate the disaster.
Commissioner Holden said that while agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the office of the city medical examiner did inspect the steel for crime scene clues and human remains, no engineering examinations were taking place.
Mr. Holden said that while he would probably not object to allowing engineers to perform such examinations, his first priority was clearing the site so that human remains might be recovered.
''Our focus right now is moving steel out to see if we can find bodies alive or dead,'' Mr. Holden said.
Some of the steel is already being cut up for recycling at the two firms that were awarded contracts: Hugo Neu Schnitzer East in Jersey City and Metal Management of Newark.
''We thought they were going to be held for at least a while until we could get to them,'' said Dr. W. Gene Corley, senior vice president of Construction Technologies Laboratories in Skokie, Ill., and the leader of a 12-member team from the civil engineering society that would like to study the wreckage. ''If they're recycling all of it, that would make it more difficult.''
Dr. Corley said it was most important to set aside the parts of buildings that were near the spots where the airplanes slammed into them . click to show
How the girders bent could tell the engineers which part of the buildings failed first. Microscopic analysis of the steel could tell them how hot the fires burned. Taken together, such information could yield insights on how to construct buildings that are more resistant to attack.
''These failures occurred very quickly, and some of the evidence for this is contained in those columns and beams,'' said Dr. Richard J. Fragaszy, program director in civil and mechanical systems at the National Science Foundation.
The two recycling firms said that they would be willing to accommodate the inspections if they could be done quickly, but that they were not aware of the project.
''If they want representative samples, I think that's fine,'' said Bob Kelman, senior vice president and general manager of Hugo Neu Schnitzer. ''We'd be happy to assist.''
The trade center steel has attracted interest in other quarters. Yesterday Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik confirmed a report in The New York Post that investigators were looking into accusations that organized crime figures, in the confusion after the attack, had carted away as much as 250 tons of scrap metal to yards in New Jersey and on Long Island. Mr. Kerik said the metal had been recovered. In any case, such small amounts of steel are unlikely to have a significant impact on the recycling operation or on any engineering inspections, should they eventually take place.
James A. Rossberg, director of the civil engineering society's Structural Engineering Institute, said he had tried to contact the city this week about the possibility of doing the inspections.
But Mr. Holden said he had not received that request. In the aftermath of the attack, phone lines running to the city's command center near ground zero were often not working properly and city officials had to deal with more immediate crises. Mr. Rossberg said he faxed the request again yesterday.
''We're trying not to be intrusive, certainly,'' he said, adding that there were ''a number of issues that are taking much greater priority.''
Still, some engineers said that the analysis effort should not hamper recovery work and that if it were not undertaken soon, important information would be destroyed.
Late yesterday, Mr. Holden said that the request from the society had finally reached him. ''I just got handed a letter literally 60 seconds ago,'' Mr. Holden said at 5:40 p.m. He said he would consider the request over the weekend. |
NIST reported that "no steel was recovered from WTC 7".... I linked the quote from a NIST web page, in my last post.
I'm just a guy...I have more modest means and less resources at my beck and call, than NIST, or City of NY and other federal agencies. On 9/11, I lived "uptown" in Manhattan.
Less than two months later, I was able to do a short term sublet of an apartment near ground zero....no one who had a choice, wanted to live there. This was my front window view....of the river and WTC debris on it's way in a NY Sani Dept. barge, to Freshkills Land Fill on Staten Island:
<center><img src="http://home.comcast.net/~qvc/index/4001119b.JPG"><br><img src="http://home.comcast.net/~qvc/4001119.JPG"><br><img src="http://home.comcast.net/~qvc/index/4001119a.JPG"></center>
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...and this was the rear view, from the roof of the apartment building:
<center><img src="http://home.comcast.net/~qvc/index/MVC-006F.JPG"><"><br><img src="http://home.comcast.net/~qvc/index/mvc-009f.jpg"></center>
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....the point being....it didn't take deep pockets to get a "presence" near ground zero, and I took all of the above pictures in mid-november, 2001, more than 45 days after the above article was published in the NY Times. I think the photos support a contention that the Sept. 29 NY Times article was a "wake up" call, for serious investigators to answer a call to gather structural evidence at the WTC site. My photos show that there was still much debris available, if anyone wanted to look, even 45 days after the report of the rush to remove and melt the evidence, allegedly to recover a relatively tiny amount of money from the scrap salvage proceeds.
I've documented that there was available transport, the dock where the barges received WTC debris was 3 blocks from ground zero, a straightline on West Way, no turns for trucks, except to turn in to unload under a huge rail mounted marine crane. It is known that there was unlimited storage for the structural steel debris at the destination of the transport barges, Freshkills landfill on Staten Island. It was also much less costly and cumbersome to take the steel out via barge, than via truck, over surrounding vehicle bridges to scrap yards, in less than 30 ton individual truck loads, than on the high capacity barges.
I am saying that NIST doesn't have steel samples, cannot make a timely determination, and the structural steel was immediately "disappeared", because it seems that is the way that TPTB wanted things to turn out.
Where we are today, with the non-status of the WTC 7 collapse investigation
is the result of official decisions taken six years ago. <h3>It is for each of us to decide, if some of the official story of what happened on 9/11, say a portion of the story as large as how and why WTC 7 collapsed, and why the investigation of the collapse was so inadequate, that the entire official account will become increasingly less accepted. It follows that the justification for endless war on terror is also increasingly inadequate to sustain the commitment to it.