9-11/anomalies/debate

About

This page is for collecting and answering objections to the ideas that:

• there are substantial anomalies surrounding the events of 9/11, and
• that these anomalies have not been (and need to be) properly investigated.

The majority of objections take the form of straw man attacks on imagined positions not generally endorsed by those who question the official story; the imagined positions most popularly targeted for criticism are documented here.

List of Objections

• In a major disaster, it's perfectly normal for evidence to be destroyed or ignored; non-explanations and ignoring of significant evidence are standard operating procedure. ([1])
  • Um, yeah... and that makes it okay? How is this not an argument in favor of a proper investigation?
  • If someone conceals or removes evidence from a crime scene, that is itself a crime. Shouldn't that be investigated?
• If there were a conspiracy, government inaction given foreknowledge of the attacks seems orders of magnitude more likely than any sort of controlled demolition, even for WTC7. ([2])
  • What is the reasoning by which you determined this unlikeliness?
  • How does "seeming (un)likely" validate or invalidate a line of argument? How "likely" does it "seem" that:
    • ...groups of foreign hijackers would succeed in taking control of 4 different planes using only box-cutters and piloting 3 of them into targets in two of the most heavily-guarded airspaces in the world, without even an attempt at interception?
    • ...no heads would roll as a consequence of this security failure?
    • ...the plane flown into the Pentagon would execute a difficult hairpin turn in order to fly into the most heavily-protected side of the building?
    • ...no less than three steel-framed buildings would completely collapse from fire and mechanical damage, for the first time in history, all on the same day?
    • ...they would not just fall to the ground towards the side most heavily damaged but instead seemingly explode straight downward and outward into microscopic dust particles, leaving almost nothing (aside from the steel girders) larger than a finger, long after the impacts and when the fires were clearly dying down?
    • ...anyone would try to claim that this was totally what you would expect to happen, even though the buildings were designed to handle such an impact?
    • ...this would result in pools of molten steel, when jet fuel doesn't burn hot enough to melt steel?