9-11/anomalies
Overview
A number of irregularities have been pointed out regarding the events of the 9/11 attacks, mainly along the lines of objections to the official story as given by the 9/11 Commission. Unfortunately, although many of these are reasonable, a number of very unlikely scenarios have also been suggested and widely circulated, causing many people to overlook the more reasonable objections to the official story.
At this point, the basic facts are not yet clear enough to begin trying to piece together any kind of coherent picture of what, if any, common cause (e.g. conspiracies) might be behind the various irregularities; once each item has been more thoroughly investigated and can reasonably be judged as either "reasonable" or "dismissable", we can start trying to piece together a larger picture.
The List
Reasonable Objections
- The demolition-like collapse of WTC1, WTC2, and especially WTC7 (which was not hit by any aircraft or significant debris)
- Why did the man in the video of Osama bin Laden taking credit for the attacks look utterly unlike him (except superficially)?
Dismissable Theories
- The Pentagon was hit by a missile, not an airplane
- There is evidence that the Pennsylvania plane was in fact shot down, rather than the passengers having seized control (note that this would indicate an arguably proper response to the situation, i.e. something along the lines of the military scrambling jets to intercept, the aircraft not responding to hails, and the military deciding – given circumstances in DC and NYC – to shoot down a hijacked civilian airliner over sparsely inhabited territory rather than risk its use as yet a third missile... but if so, why hide the true story?) 2006-08-03 addendum: the Vanity Fair article sheds considerable light on what probably happened, without directly addressing the issue of why the physical evidence suggests a shoot-down. (Possibly that resemblance is because of the difference between this crash and all prior crashes: whoever was in charge was trying to crash, and hence may have aimed the plane more or less straight down.)
Borderline Objections
- The alleged pilots of the aircraft in each case were abysmal at flying, based on the testimony of their flying instructors (rebuttal: the twin towers made an easy target; no significant skill required. I've seen rebuttals of this rebuttal elsewhere; must find sources.)