There is something that has always bothered me about the 9/11 attacks

[Taem]

I have no idea why I dignify your foolishness with a reply.

Occhi, believe it or not, I appreciate your candor, and your reply. I can always count on you to make me think about what I am saying before posting - and after.

I know there was an explosion at the base of the towers which caused the towers to fall.

By this statement I know that you are an idiot.

Yes, are correct. I opened my big mouth stating something as factual when in fact I was making a hypothesis based on conjecture. Emphasis mine; I see my mistake.

No, you didn't see explosions, you saw a building that was 90% air collapse because a 25 story apartment block fell on top of the rest of it. There were about 25 stories above the impact site. The steel beams and the building withstood the impact magnificently. Awesome engineering.

As the fire burned, the steel beams that made up the three dimensional lattice slowly got hot, hot enough to slightly change their mechanical properties. The tensile strength began to decrease,

EDUCATE YOURSELF ON STRESS STRAIN GRAPHS VERSUS TEMPERATURE FOR STEEL

Many of the vertical steel members buckled in an event called PLASTIC DEFORMATION. (What was once ductile is now brittle)

That plastic deformation was caused by heat and load, together, among other things.

When the main members failed, due to the thermal environment changing dramatically the load bearing capability of the steel beams -- a number of them already having failed at impatc, and the fire resistant coating no longer protecting the steal from THERMAL STRESS -- they embarked upon a clever little event that we engineers call

CATASTROPHIC FAILURE.

I understand what the 9/11 commission report said - I did read it.

[...]
It all hit ground from great height. So did some of the people who either jumped, or hadn't yet burned to death. And please don't start with any crap about 'greater than freefall speed' it will just make you look sillier.

What I was saying was I heard the explosion while watching live footage of the event before the first tower fell. So did the reporters, camera crew, and random people in the shot who all ducked when the explosion went off. I also saw the smoke rising from the bottom of the tower after this explosion. I never felt that any of this had been adequately explained by any investigation commission, however Deebee and Pete gave me an answer that I can live with.

MEAT, you are being an utter fool. You are falling prey to liars and charlatans, idiots like Griffin and Jones and Fetzer and Avery. You know DAMNED WELL who I am talking about, if you are spouting this despicable crap.

Occhi, I'll state it again, I know what I saw and heard - there is no point of contention here for me with that. It may surprise you to know that I do not read up on conspiracy theories about 9/11, so forgive me for not knowing who those men you mentioned are - I have no interest to read up on conspiracy theories. But this misunderstanding is all my fault because I should have excluded my opinion on why I thought that what I had seen and heard may have been omitted from the final report, and just posted the facts of what I saw and heard instead. I also should have excluded mention of the other web site I saw in which someone made the Twin Towers model topple over in a unique way, because this is someone elses theory, one that I used to support my claims which, as you pointed out Occhi, was foolish.

So to summarize, based solely on the facts of what I saw and heard, I felt no investigation team did justice to explain what I had witnessed, however the reply from Deebee and Pete have help to put my mind at ease.

[...]
An alum of my university, and a fellow Navy pilot, was murdered that day, in cold blood, along with too many others, at the Pentagon, while he flew his passengers and the complete scum who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 into that massive building.

I am sorry for your loss. I too am still angry at what these terrorists did. Please don't allow my inquiry to diminish your own experience in any way.

If you want to call me foolish, fine - the way I posed my initial response was foolish and I regret that. If I had stuck with the facts I knew instead of including theories, then this post might of been different. I'm not attacking you or calling the commission reporters liars - I felt that I had an authentic misunderstanding of the events that needed clarification.

also contend that AA 77 didn't actually hit the Pentagon, or that a missile did, or about six other wrong and often contradictory lies about an A-3 Skywarrior were "what really happened." They got Rosie O'Donnel to sell their soap, and now they have you. Way to leap into the ditch with a pig.

In the last part of my first post, I made the mistake of mentioning my opinion and because my opinion was not based on any fact, this seems to have caused a bit of confusion. I never meant to talk about conspiracies and I apologize for the misunderstanding this has caused. I only wanted to talk about what I saw and heard as fact and what that could have meant. I feel better about that now.

Head over to NIST, they have a web site, and read their freakin' report. Yes, it has big words, and isn't just a few Twitter lines long, but it's fascinating reading and remarkable as an example of forensic investigation.

Thanks.