1) NIST's best evidence, the actual physical pieces of steel structure that they analyzed, says that the temperatures didn't get hot enough to cause any kind of collapse.

2) NIST's best guesstimate model says that the temperatures didn't get hot enough to cause any kind of collapse.

3) NIST's worst case, reverse-engineered, combustible overloaded model says that the temperatures may have gotten hot enough to cause an initial collapse, but doesn't explain how this initial structural failure then triggered the total structural collapse of both WTC-1 & WTC-2 including the entire cores of both buildings.

4) NIST didn't even attempt to explain WTC-7's collapse.

Right, everybody?

http://ftrsummary.blogspot.com/2005_03_22_...

SANDER HICKS: Glass said, "The only information that the terrorists -- the guys ever talked about -- was just the World Trade Center. They didn't ever say anything to me or to Dick, to my knowledge, that airplanes were going to be used. The State Department guy told me that. In other words, I called up and I bluffed him. I called up and I don't know what they knew that I knew. I just knew that America was going to be attacked. I didn't know if it was going to be the World Trade Center or what it was going to be. These people had talked about purchasing these weapons to use against us."

Later Glass stated that the State Department contact said, "Musharaf just took over and our position is that they're a nuclear power and they've been flexing their nuclear muscles with India and we are trying to prevent a nuclear catastrophe. And we know about the threat, the terrorist threat, from Al Qaeda and Bin Laden flying airplanes into the World Trade Center. And Musharaf has guaranteed us -- because it's his ISI behind it -- that he can stop it if we support him publicly. Look, Randy, we know you're a straight guy so we're going to give you some information. You cannot do two things: You cannot go to the media under any circumstance. This is -- we're playing in a nuclear minefield now. Secondly, you can't tell the agents that you're working with now because they're cut out of the loop. They know nothing."

...

RANDY GLASS: When I called the State Department, I said to them, "Listen, I already know about the World Trade Center." So they assumed that I knew more than I did. And I didn't. I didn't know anything about airplanes. But ... I just said what I knew. I said, "Look. Listen, I know the World Trade Center is going to be attacked." And then this guy said to me, "Randy, listen, you cannot mention any of these things, especially airplanes being used to fly into the World Trade Center." And when he said that I almost fell off of my fucking chair. I mean, you have no idea.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context...

FBI Director Mueller personally awards Marion (Spike) Bowman with a presidential citation and cash bonus of approximately 25 percent of his salary. Bowman, head of the FBI's National Security Law Unit and the person who refused to seek a special warrant for a search of Zacarias Moussaoui's belongings before the 9/11 attacks, is among nine recipients of bureau awards for "exceptional performance." The award comes shortly after a 9/11 Congressional Inquiry report saying Bowman's unit gave Minneapolis FBI agents "inexcusably confused and inaccurate information" that was "patently false." Bowman's unit also blocked an urgent request by FBI agents to begin searching for Khalid Almihdhar after his name was put on a watch list. In early 2000, the FBI acknowledged serious blunders in surveillance Bowman's unit conducted during sensitive terrorism and espionage investigations, including agents who illegally videotaped suspects, intercepted e-mails without court permission, and recorded the wrong phone conversations.

FBI Supervisory special agent Michael Maltbie, who removed information from the Minnesota FBI's application to get the search warrant for Moussaoui, is promoted to field supervisor.

David Frasca, head of the FBI's Radical Fundamentalist Unit, is "still at headquarters," Grassley notes. Frasca received the Phoenix memo warning al-Qaeda terrorists could use flight schools inside the US, and then a few weeks later he received the request for Moussaoui's search warrant. "The Phoenix memo was buried; the Moussaoui warrant request was denied." Even after 9/11, Frasca continued to " up roadblocks" in the Moussaoui case.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MOO2...

So now the Bush Administration claims Moussaoui is the 20th hijacker. Yet Special Agent Dave Frasca who downplayed all reports of impending terrorist plots (the Phoenix Memo, French Intelligence Reports, the Moussaoui case, etc.) gets to maintain his highly placed position as does his unit Chief Superior. Furthermore, those FBI leaders who did the most stonewalling occupied "critical positions in the FBI SIOC Command Center post September 11." Rowley is particularly upset that Dave Frasca "actually received a promotion some months afterwards." (Rowley Report p. 5)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11...

This week a wealth of new evidence of how the FBI bungled the Moussaoui investigation became so Pythonesque in its absurdity that even the victims' families were roaring with laughter. Into the witness box stepped Harry Samit, the FBI agent who arrested Moussaoui. He was called by the prosecution but became the star witness of the defence.

He said that he warned his supervisors more than 70 times that Moussaoui was an al-Qaeda operative who might be plotting to hijack an airplane and fly it into a building. He said that he was regularly thwarted by two superiors, David Frasca and Michael Maltbie, from obtaining a warrant to search Moussaoui's flat. He accused the men of being criminally negligent. Mr. Maltbie told him that getting a warrant, which could be troublesome, might harm his -- Maltbie's -- career prospects. Mr. Maltbie has since been promoted.

On Tuesday Ed MacMahon, Moussaoui's defence laywer, cross-examined Michael Rolince, of the FBI. He was there to defend the bureau, but his answers brought down the house. Mr. Rolince was forced to concede that he had never seen an April 2001 intelligence briefing paper warning that bin Laden was preparing to mount an attack, even though he had signed it. Mr. MacMahon then introduced an April 13, 2001, FBI communication, approved by Mr. Rolince, giving warning about bin Laden's threat inside the US. Mr Rolince said that he had not approved it.

"Is it possible for a document to say you approved it if you have not approved it?" the judge asked.

"Absolutely," he replied. With that, the jury, the press benches, the victims' families and the press gallery erupted in laughter.

Real science proceeds from the best available evidence. Take the theory of cometary formation, for example. Before the Stardust mission returned samples from Comet Wild 2, scientists didn't have access to any direct physical evidence of cometary composition, so they therefore were forced to rely on far less direct evidence and computer models. But what has happened to their long cherished theories after getting actual physical evidence from just one comet?

NASA's Stardust Findings May Alter View of Comet Formation ( http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/news/status/0... )

Now compare actual science to what NIST did when they "explained" the WTC collapses. NIST's only report that discusses the hard physical evidence of the WTC towers' collapses ( http://wtc.nist.gov/NISTNCSTAR1-3.pdf ) admits that:

1) no WTC-7 steel was recovered or analyzed,

2) no testing for explosives (or sulfidation or other residue of any kind) was performed by NIST and the only metal tested extensively by metallurgists (by FEMA) revealed strange signs of sulfidation of unknown origin,

3) only 12 total core columns were carefully analyzed for high temperature exposure from WTC-1, WTC-2 & WTC-7 combined and none showed exposure to temperatures in excess of 250 C, and

4) of 170 examined areas on the perimeter column panels, only three showed exposure to temperatures in excess of 250 C (and for one of these three forensic evidence indicated that the high temperature exposure occurred AFTER the collapse).

NIST had (or should have had) access to all the physical evidence any scientist could ever hope for just sitting on the ground in Manhattan waiting to be analyzed. But instead of carefully examining this potential goldmine of actual physical structural collapse data, NIST chose to look at just 0.25% of it even cursorily. And of the 0.25% NIST examined, about one percent of this tiny fraction (that's less than 1/40,000 of the total collapsed WTC metal) showed any signs of being heated in excess of 250 C for any period longer than fleeting seconds.

Meanwhile, NIST invented a bunch of speculative and physically unsupported theories about how the towers fell that required significant portions of the WTC towers' steel structure to be heated for significant periods of time well in excess of what even the most heated physical evidence they examined actually demonstrated. Basically, NIST ignored their best evidence -- the actual physical remains of the collapsed towers -- in favor of a bunch of comparatively pseudoscientific postulation.

Now compare what these NIST "scientists" did to what NASA's real scientists are doing in the case of cometary formation. It's as if NASA scientists randomly sampled 2000 different comets -- 99% of which showed signs of being formed close to the sun -- yet still clung to their old unsupported computer models that basically POSTULATED that the vast majority comets were formed in the outer reaches of the solar system.

In summary, everything NIST concluded about the collapse of the WTC towers is contradicted by the best available evidence, and nothing they concluded is supported by even a shred of hard, physical evidence. Facing such a dilemma, any real scientists would have had only three choices: revise their speculative theories to match the small portion of retrieved and analyzed physical evidence, extend their survey of the relevant physical evidence until they found at least some hard, physical support for their speculations, or admit their complete ignorance of the WTC collapse phenomena while advocating much more rigorous additional future research. Instead, NIST simply dismissed the best available scientific evidence in favor of complicated speculative models which they fed a bunch of physically unsupported guesstimates that, at best, cannot be disproven (simply because they didn't survey enough physical evidence to disprove them).

Sound familiar, global warming advocates?

Florida's 2000 "Felonious" Voter Rolls: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Able Danger: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Zacharias Moussaoui: They Knew It or They Blew It.
9/11: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Flight 93: They Knew it or They Blew It.
The Bin Laden Family's 9/12-9/14 Exit Flights: They Knew It or They Blew It.
The WTC Asbestos/Heavy Metal Cover Up: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Uncaught Anthrax Murderer: They Knew It or They Blew It.
The Patriot Act's Excesses: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Total Information Awareness: They Knew It or They Blew It.
The CAPPS II Terrorist-Helping "No Fly" List: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Poindexter's Assassination "Futures" Market: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Fraud-o-Matic Voting Machines: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Osama's Tora Bora Escape: They Knew It or They Blew It.
US & Iraqi Depleted Uranium Exposure: They Knew it or They Blew it.
No Iraqi Yellowcake: They Knew It or They Blew It.
No Other Iraqi WMDs: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Curveball vs. Hussein's Foreign Minister: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Cheney's Millions of Profit in Halliburton Options: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Poppy Bush's Carlyle Group War Profiteering: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Outing CIA Agent Valerie Plame: They Knew It or They Blew It.
The 9/11 Omission: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Ignoring the 9/11 Omission's Recommendations: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Iraqi Precious Historic Artifact Looting: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Iraq UN Bombing: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Nick Berg's Beheading: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Medicare PharmCorp Plundering: They Knew It or They Blew It.
US's Biggest Export = Jobs: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Enron (& other corporate insider) Scams: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Hedge/Mutual Fund Scams: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Energy Policy Written By Enron, et al: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Record Federal Government Growth: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Homeland Security Pork Barrel: They Knew It or They Blew It
False Unemployment Data: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Gitmo Abuses: They Knew It or They Blew It.
"Iraqi Oil Will Pay For War": They Knew It or They Blew It.
"Bring It On": They Knew It or They Blew It.
Repube Staffers Stealing 1000s of Confidential Memos From Dem PCs: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Cutting Veterans Benefits: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Destroying Reservists' Morale and Retainment Percentage: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Iraqi Prison Torture: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Iraqi Oil Fund Payola-rama: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Iraqi Reporter Murders: They Knew It or They Blew It.
$330,000 a Month to Chalabi: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Where's Osama?: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Border Insecurity: They Knew It or They Blew It.
IRS Auditing Only Anti-Bush Churches: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Paid For & Planted Iraqi "News Reports": They Knew It or They Blew It.
HHS Scully Scandal: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Bush's Flag Desecration: He Knew It or He Blew It.
US Soldier Body & Vehicle Armor Scandals: They Knew It or They Blew It.
EPA's Child Mercury Danger Suppression: They Knew It or They Blew It.
EPA Letting Industries Write Own Regulations: They Knew It or They Blew It.
"No Global Warming" Pseudoscience: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Refusal To Release Documents to Congress, Courts or 9/11 Commission: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Wildly Misunderestimated Iraq War & Medicare Bill Costs: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Four Rounds of Surplus/Budget Busting Tax Breaks for Corps & the Rich: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Countless Bullshit Terra Alerts: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Gannongate: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Arrests For Wearing Anti-Bush Shirts: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Afghan Opium Production Now Through The Roof: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Wage Stagnation: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Bankruptcy "Reform" Bill: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Dollar Losing Value: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Rummy's Avian Flu Scare-mongering Profiteering: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Florida's 2004 Race-based Voter Purge "Mistake": They Knew It or They Blew It.
Pre-Election Florida FEMA Payola Bribe-o-rama: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Ohio Coingate: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Medicare Insurance Boondoggle Debacle: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Jack Abramoff's Pay to Play Felonies: They Knew It or They Blew It.
No Big Oil Public Land Royalties: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Iraqi Mosque Bombings: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Iraqi Civil War: They Knew It or They Blew It.
Zacharias Moussaoui's Trial: They Knew It or They Blew It.

Just how often are you willing to accept limitless incompetence as an excuse without getting just a tad suspicious?

Florida White Collar Vote Counting Riot: They Staged It.
Supreme Court Decision: Supremely Bad Law
Reclassification of Reagan's & Bush I's Papers (which were to be released): They Railroaded It.
Gutting the Freedom of Information Act: They Railroaded It.
Fighter Jets Sold to Pakistan on a Saturday: They Railroaded It.
First Amendment Zones: They Railroaded It.
Gutting Pollution Regulations: They Railroaded It.
Dissing the Kyoto Treaty: They Railroaded It.
Enemy Combatant Legal Limbo: They Railroaded It.
Torture Rendition: They Railroaded It.
The "Dirty Bomber" vs. the 9/11 Families For Truth Gathering CSPAN Misdirection: They Staged It.
The California "Energy Crisis": They Staged, Gamed, Bilked and Arnied it.
Saddam Statue Celebration: They Staged It.
Mission Accomplished: They Staged It.
The Gropinator Recall: They Staged It.
The Plastic Turkey Thanksgiving Drop: They Staged It.
Saving Private Lynch: They Staged It.
Halliburton Handouts: They Bilked It.
Gas Gouging: They Bilked It.
Appointing Negroponte and Bolton: They Railroaded Them In.
Pat Tillman's Death: They Lied About Him and His Death, Then Covered It Up.
The 2004 Election: They Rigged It.
Illegal Unwarranted Domestic Wiretapping: They Hid It & Lied About It, Then Screamed It Was Legal Anyway.
Downing Street Memos: They Knew It AND They Blew It.
Terry Schiavo: They Knew It AND They Blew It.
Cindy Sheehan: They Knew It AND They Blew It.
Hurricane Katrina: They Knew It AND They Blew It.
UAE Port Scandal: They Knew It AND They Blew It.

Once again, I ask, why should anyone ever believe anything these guys say?

In July 2001, at the G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, US President George W. Bush was himself the suspected target of a terrorist plot to crash a hijacked commercial plane into a building. "Italian officials took the reports seriously enough to prompt extraordinary precautions during the July summit of the Group of 8 nations, including closing the airspace over Genoa and stationing anti-aircraft guns at the city's airport." (LA Times, 9/27/01, http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2001/l... )

Given that Bush himself was a suspected target of a "hijacked plane bomb" terrorist attack in July 2001, how can the Bush administration possibly explain the fact that Bush kept reading The Pet Goat in a widely publicized, previously scheduled public appearance in Sarasota, FL (only 5 miles from the Sarasota International Airport and 40 miles from the Tampa International Airport) for at least 9 minutes and then remained at the school for a press conference more than 30 minutes AFTER it had become obvious to him and everyone else over 10 years old with access to breaking news that the US was dealing with a coordinated attack of suicidal terrorist hijackers? From 9/12/01 AP reports (for example, http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,... ): "In Florida, Bush was reading to children in a classroom at 9:05 a.m. when his chief of staff, Andrew Card, whispered into his ear. The president briefly turned somber before he resumed reading. He addressed the tragedy about a half-hour later."

Didn't it cross anybody's mind in the entire Bush entourage that the grammar school might be the terrorists' next target and that they just might want to get Bush and ALL OF THE LITTLE KIDS he was reading with out of harm's way? If not, why not? Remember that just two months before, Bush himself had been one of the suspected targets of just such a terrorist plot. Is there no one in the entire Bush administration intelligence/Secret Service entourage with a three digit IQ?

The simplest explanation for this bizarre reaction to the very real potential of toddler mass murder is administration foreknowledge at the highest levels. Bravado doesn't make sense as an explanation because Bush would have been taking a bunch of little kids with him in any potential attack. Stunned inaction doesn't make much sense either because the primary mission of the entire Secret Service is to ensure the President's safety. There are only two obvious choices here: on 9/11 the Bush administration was either criminally incompetent or just plain criminal.

If you haven't read Mistrel Boy's classic yet, you owe it to yourself and your country to do so:

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004...

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.p...

Sheen: ... The thing I can't get out of my mind is that if there is a problem with building 7 then there is a problem with the whole thing…just the fact that the entire event is so shrouded in secrecy…Everybody is now familiar with the famous Andrew Card/Bush ear whisper at the elementary school, that whole incident is problematic to me. It was broadcast three days in advance -- his schedule. So conservatively, if that event was broadcast live, how many people in the state of Florida knew where he was at that specific point in time? If he was being informed -- the second plane hit, America was being attacked -- isn't he then putting everyone in his immediate circle at a great risk? It seems to me upon the revelation of that news that the secret service would grab the president and remove him as of he were on fire from that room.

Interviewer: It's funny Jeb Bush declared Marshall Law three days before that and that was kept just a little bit quiet…he wouldn't say why and Bush wouldn't say why…carrier attack groups were ready to attack…that was incredibly convenient to have your whole military stacked up and ready to go ...

Sheen: Yes, because strategies don't go together overnight for a major invasion, they are very well calculated and very well planned, at least in this government…in a statement that Bush made following, "What did you think when the first plane hit?" and he said he was watching it like everyone else.

I guess that’s one of the perks of being president, you get access to TV channels that don’t exist in the known universe. It might led me to believe that he’d seen similar images in some type of rehearsal as it were…It's inconvenient that firearms were taken from pilots…It's right in there with June or July '01 when after 46 years Cheney changed the authorization for the shoot-down orders. Again, I'm not on your show to say who did it or why, because I don't have those answers. But it would seem to me based on what we've all seen -- those images that are emblazoned on our minds forever -- I don’t have experience in avionics or high-rise mechanics -- but it looked like the majority of jet fuel upon impact exploded. So I have a hard time believing that a fireball traveled down the elevator over 1,100 feet and still had the explosive energy to destroy the lobby like it was described.

It's actually a surprisingly rational discussion, IMHO ...

Actual Dubya quote from this morning's presser:

Imagine an enemy that says: We will kill innocent people because we're trying to encourage people to be free.

From: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/...

Freeper in mid-froth:

You really love Iraq dont you? I bet you are flying an Iraqi flag outside your home as we speak. If you hate America so bad, why do you continue to suck off her like a new born baby? Why dont you not just move to your paradise the middle east so you can protest with more wimps like your self? (sic)

The rejoinder:

OK. You got me. I obviously must hate America and love Saddam Hussein because I don't condone our military employing cruel and unusual punishment in a widespread manner. You, on the other hand, certainly prove your obvious love for America by your complete disregard for the 8th Amendment of our Bill of Rights. In addition, you obviously celebrate our 220 year history of freedom of expression when you prescribe exile for political dissenters.

Freeper's final frothing:

Did these same people that you are crying over not torture their own people! Its ok for them to do it, right. I bet 220 years ago our forefathers did not envision a bunch of cowards trying to underhand every thing they sought to build with this country. Spare me the torture crap, spitdog. You could care less about them people. Its sad that you put your political beleifs before an 18 year old soldier out there doing what he "volunteered" to do. You may hate America but why the soldiers? (sic)

The awesome power of the Thread Killer:

Why do YOU hate our soldiers so much that you want to see thousands of them die in an unwinnable mission to "free" a bunch of infighting Muslims on the other side of the planet?

Freeper discussing Jessica Simpson's recent Dubya diss:

If President Bush invited you to the White House would you attend? Or would you make a symbolic statement and decline? Personally, I don't care who the President is, I'd go.

Thread killing reply:

How about if he invited you to go to Iraq? What if he threw in some "money for college" in the deal?

The reason that many (spineless) Democratic Congressional "leaders" are afraid of calling out BushCo on their obviously and completely illegal wiretapping of millions of innocent Americans is because our country is populated with a tragically large percentage of nut-case voters like you who think that it's a GREAT idea to throw away a 220 year tradition of rule of law, checks and balances, habeas corpus and prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment as long as the supreme figurehead of their cult of personality assures them that although almost all of his Constitution-trashing is being done in secret and none of it is subject to a whit of oversight, it is only being done to the wicked whiches of the Middle East -- a crew of ragtag enemies of such awesome power that only complete and total blind trust in a single fearless leader unconstrained by any other branch of government can ever hope to overcome their diabolical stratagems.

Basically, your fascination with Bush and fear of a few thousand ill-equipped Muslim fanatics is such that you'd readily trade our revered Republic for a monarchy, just as long as your favored monarch says that he's only abusing the privilege when it comes to torturing, imprisoning and illegally spying on US citizens with some sort of possible/potential association with any possible/potential Muslim fanatics.

I mean, you do consider yourselves conservatives, don't you? What in the world does Bush have going for him that has somehow turned you small government conservatives into Big Brother worshiping totalitarians -- insanely proud that you supposedly have "nothing to hide" to any possible/potential figures authority (think: Hillary, Howard or Russ, oh my!) and blithely naive about any and every historical abuse of unconstrained centralized power?