I am a 9/11 truther. I believe that the so-called terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers and Pentagon on September 11th, 2001 were secretly ordered and carried out by the United States government as part of a false flag operation to stir up popular outrage against their enemies abroad so that the evil George W Bush could work his will upon the world. Recently, I took an introductory Political Science class. The swarmy professor who teaches the course mocked me in the middle of class for mentioning my truther beliefs and I have resolved to get back at him by gathering and laying out a detailed case proving I’m right and by extension my intellectual superiority to my professor. I will know I have succeeded at proving my hypothesis when the overwhelming weight of my proof forces my teacher to publicly concede the point and then break down sobbing in shame as my classmates rise as one to give me a standing ovation.
There are a lot of other savvy 9/11 truthers like me who are clued in to the conspiracy. Because of that there is a lot of evidence floating around to build my slam dunk case with. But trying to dump all of it on my professor at once would be difficult, and there’s no reason not to focus on the best evidence there is. Therefore, to test and prove my hypothesis I will focus on showing that not only are there good reasons to think that the Bush administration was complicit in the 9/11 attacks but also that it would be physically impossible for the official version of events to actually have happened. And so with my bong lit and firmly clenched in my mouth I opened my browser and went to the website of my all-time favorite investigative journalist: Alex Jones.
While looking through my man Jones’s website I found an article quoting a letter from a representative of the company that certified the steel girders and other components used in the World Trade Center’s construction. I grinned so wide that I nearly dropped my joint, certain that I had found my slam dunk. The official government version of what happened on 9/11 says that after the planes struck the World Trade Center the towers collapsed due to the fires fueled by the planes’ own burning jet fuel. But because of my advanced scientific knowledge I know that even regular steel won’t melt until heated to nearly 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, much less the high quality steel used to make the beams that provided the World Trade Center towers’ structural integrity (Ryan, 2004, para. 5). Obviously if it was physically impossible for the alleged plane crashes to cause fires hot enough to do what the government said happened it follows that the government’s version is a pack of lies intended to keep the American sheeple from figuring out the real mechanism. There are only so many reasons why our fictitious government would want to hide the truth about something like this, and none of them were good. The expert quoted speculates that most of the deaths on 9/11 were due to building code and safety violations, but with my superior intellect I quickly decided it was a missile or something. The idea that an American construction company publicly traded on the free market and answerable to stockholders would cut corner when it comes safety is laughable.
At this point my hypothesis seemed vindicated. But to truly prove it (and wipe the smirk off my teacher’s face) I need peer-reviewed evidence corroborating it. Otherwise he might have the gall to suggest that Jones just invented the expert and his conclusions or something like that. So I decide to humor the Man’s requirements for qualifications and dug up a recognized metallurgy journal with a special article devoted to that very subject. I smirked again as the first paragraph said that some of the popular opinions about how the collapse happened were incorrect, with the first example being that the flames in question could not melt steel. Jet fuel simply does not burn hot enough to melt steel beams. But just as I was about to declare victory and print my findings up to fling onto my teacher’s desk like a gauntlet I noticed that the article went on to say that softened steel wasn’t the only damage caused by the high temperatures. That threw me; the article had just said the fire couldn’t melt steel, so what was this about it being softened? A bit later I read that steel loses half its strength and integrity at as little as 650 degrees Celsius, because “structural steel begins to soften around 425° C and loses about half its strength at 650° C” (Eager & Musso, 2001, p.9). I kept reading until I reached the article’s conclusion that while the fire fed by the jet’s fuel couldn’t possibly burn hot enough to melt steel, it was hot enough to weaken the towers’ steel supports. That in turn would have caused floor after floor to fall in a domino effect, with each one being hit by increasing force. And with that new information my hypothesis about secret missiles and a government cover-up was as dead as a flower girl at an Afghan wedding.
My conspiracy theories had been proven wrong by the almighty scientific method. The official explanation for the World Trade Center’s collapse provided by the government investigation into its causes was physically possible. The article closed with an admonition to a practice scientific thinking and be diligent in separating truth from fiction. These were wise words; words of truth that seared me like ignited jet fuel. I took that advice to heart as my entire worldview caved in around me, and resolved to get a haircut the very next day before abasing myself before the wisdom of teacher and swearing to always respect the knowledge and wisdom of my betters in the future.
References
Eager, T and Musso, C. (2001, December). Why Did The World Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering, and Speculation. JOM: Member Journal of The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, 53 (12), pp.8-11. Retrieved from http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html
Ryan, K. (2004, November 5). WTC Construction Certifiers Say Towers Should Have Easily Withstood Jet Fuel Temperatures. Alex Jones’ Prison Planet. Retrieved from http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2004/121104easilywithstood.htm
