The Great Thermite Debate...

[William Seger]

223. As predicted, you ignored most of what I said

... and the small part you did respond to wasn't worth waiting for. I'm ignorant of a great many things but you're not telling me anything I didn't already know about the BAPT investigation. What you're really doing is giving another good example of how conspiracists detract attention from real problems in their relentless pursuit of validating their fantasies.

> Three weeks after the event ASCE visited the site and collected data. Does this not suggest that they were excluded from the site for those three weeks, during which time the crime scene was substantially corrupted?

Who was trying to keep the engineers away from the site so they wouldn't discover the evidence of a controlled demolition? That must have been Rudolph Giuliani. Who decided who would be safe to do the cleanup and haul away all that evidence? That would be NYC's Department of Design and Construction. Who was on the site finding that evidence and having it hauled away to the scrap yard? That would be four separate contracting companies, directed by four FDNY chiefs in four sectors. Now, here's my question to you, for which I don't have an answer: After the completely insane BushCo perps concocted this batshit crazy hoax, who had to go out and get all those people on board with covering up this mass murder? Not a problem for conspiracists; conspiracies are as big as they need to be, and the perps never worry about someone ruining their day by going to the media instead of cooperating, before the plot even gets off the ground, or spilling the beans afterwards.

But then, many dozens of independent investigators did get onsite and in the landfills long before all of the supposed evidence could be destroyed, didn't they. Good thing the perps got to them, too, huh.

You quote-mined Astaneh-Asl's oral statement to the Science Committee, but here is the complete answer to a question in a letter from the Committee that he put in his prepared statement:

Question: Please describe the impediments that you encountered during the investigation of the collapse of the WTC buildings, such as the loss of material from the WTC site and any effects of such impediments on your work.

I wish I had more time to inspect steel structure and save more pieces before the steel was recycled. However, given the fact that other teams such as NIST, SEAONY and FEMA-BPAT have also done inspection and have collected the perishable data, it seems to me that collectively we may have been able to collect sufficient data. The main impediments to my work were and still are:

1. Not having a copy of the engineering drawings and design and construction documents.
2. Not having copies of the photographs and videotapes that various agencies might have taken during and immediately after the collapse.

Such data has already been made available to ASCE Building Performance Assessment Team. If those are also available to us, we will be able to proceed further with our research. Figure 5 shows an example of analysis of performance of generic steel high-rise structure subjected to the impact of a 747 jetliner and the ensuing fire. The example demonstrates the power of advanced technology developed in aerospace and mechanical engineering that can be brought to bear on this problem. We plan to use the drawings and the data and the software used in the example to build a computer based realistic model of the World Trade Center towers and analyze their response to simulated impact of the 767 planes that crashed into them on 9/11 and the ensuing fire.

Getting to one of the serious questions that conspiracists detract from, Astaneh-Asl and many others were deeply concerned about knowing as much as possible about the collapses in case there were building code changes that might mitigate that sort of disaster in the future. As I'm sure you know by now, Astaneh-Asl is completely hostile to controlled demolition theories -- and in fact, I defy you to find a single investigator who isn't -- and I note that you didn't even attempt to support your disingenuous claim that any of the investigators "found their investigation hijacked by FEMA." However, as a result of testimony by Astaneh-Asl and others at the Science Committee, there is now a law on the books that requires allowing investigators access to disaster sites and all available information such as blueprints. Yes, Crowley was right, conspiracists are having a field day with the way the early days of the cleanup were handled, but that doesn't mean that controlled demolition theories aren't idiotic.

> They found steel that the NYT characterized as partially "Vaporized" and "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation"--a mystery that has never been explained, by the way, but which has shown in empirical studies by Jonathan Cole to be consistent with a sulfidation attack by sulfur-enhanced thermite.

In the first place, you're trying to have it both ways again. Unless you're claiming that the materials scientists were just too fookin' stupid to recognize steel that was melted by thermite, then please explain why it was the "deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation." Seems to me that either it was melted steel or it was a mystery; please make up your mind. As for your claim that it "consistent with a sulfidation attack by sulfur-enhanced thermite", that is unadultered horseshit and you ought to be ashamed of yourself for dumping it on the board again. As you well know by now, the materials scientists were able to determine that it was a eutectic "erosion" that happened a temperature of about 1000 degrees C, so there was absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to steel melted by thermite. After reading through your debate with AtheistCrusader, I have no intention of engaging in dozens of exchanges with you in a futile attempt to get you to acknowledge what "melted" does and doesn't mean, so keep your head in whatever dark, warm place it is on that subject -- just please spare me the bullshit about trying to solve mysteries.