<p>Tenure is in quotes because they don’t grant tenure- I guess that makes sense for a religious university for a religion that doesn’t have seminarians, but this professor did have seniority.
<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060911/11conspiracy.htm?s_cid=rss:site1[/url]”>http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060911/11conspiracy.htm?s_cid=rss:site1</a></p>
<p>His conspiracy theory is that Bush administration officials blew up the World Trade Center to spark a Middle East War? I may blame Bush for a lot of things, but this one seems a little far fetched!</p>
<p>Many of the protesters in New York this week and the week of the 9/11 remembrances believe that. Sincerely believe it and will make a case for it quite eloquently. It’s like entering an alternate universe.</p>
<p>As if BYU weren’t enough of an alternate universe!</p>
<p>ZM, the problem is that Bush has done so many incredibly whacked out things that some folks don’t see the border between reality and fantasy just because Bush, ah, really pushed the boundaries.</p>
<p>TheDad I think that’s a stretch, I really do. I can’t imagine how a serious person would think that Bush would kill 3000 Americans. If nothing else, what would be his motive?</p>
<p>I am not going to say that the conspiracy theorists have any validity
-(
or at least while I admit I haven’t investigated it- what remains of my common sense tells me that I dont’ have to read it, to disagree with it 
)</p>
<p>If a prof has tenure, there usually has to be some pretty strong reasons to sanction them right?
I just don’t know, if this tangent this professor is going off on, is reason enough to pull a prof out of his courses.
Northwestern is used as an example of a school who didnt’ punish a prof who spoke out denying the Holocaust, because it wasn’t relevant to his field.
The competency of the physics prof isnt being questioned, not re physics anyway.UsNews suggests a “certain govt involvment” in teh FBI and CIA that is behind the ouster.</p>
<p>EK, maybe the BYU administration thinks that he is “going wacky.”</p>
<p>Zoos, I am not a conspiracy theorist either, but several things about 9/11 just don’t add up. There should be some valid and lucid responses to the many incongruities, which the 9/11 Commission did not answer.</p>
<p>Problem is, the conspiracy theorists sound like nuts, and then real answers are never explored, but simply dismissed.</p>
<p>The 9-11 commission- why hasn’t it gone into phase two? that to me is a conspiracy, the administration not doing what it said it would do to get more answers</p>
<p>Allmusic, (I’m not hating and destroying you here!) what things don’t add up? I’m really asking this because I’d like to hear the POV of a rational person with those questions. Someone that I take seriously. This is not a rhetorical question.</p>
<p>CGM, I ask you the same question as I asked Allmusic. (Not rhetorical, again). What questions would you like answered that haven’t been? Since I’m in New YOrk, this issue is so fraught that maybe I really am missing something that I’m not hearing because I don’t listen to people screaming on street corners. That is literal, as well. Week two of mega-protests. Working in Times Square it’s impossible to walk outside without being shouted at or otherwise accosted.</p>
<p>Zoos, for me, I am most troubled by the absence of fighter jets which should have been scrambled to bring down the hijacked airliners. That just makes not an iota of sense. Even before 9/11, jets were scrambled when there was even an inkling of trouble in the sky. And there was plenty of chance to do so, in the time between A11 and Shanksville. Why were two more planes allowed to be hijacked to their targets? And the third?</p>
<p>I am also troubled by incongruities between photographic evidence of damage to the Pentagon grounds building. I’m not saying there wasn’t a plane, like the conspiracy theorists, but I am troubled by the evidence, or lack thereof.</p>
<p>Also the collapse of building #7, which didn’t then, and doesn’t to this day, make any sense. It had no plane hit, had minimal damage, and yet it pancaked onto itself. I found that more that just a little puzzling.</p>
<p>Allmusic, thanks for responding as you did. Those questions actually do make sense. May I ask another (same drill, asking not attacking). What motive do you think that Bush would have had for causing the attacks?</p>
<p>I don’t really know about the fighter jets, but it always struck me as panic and incompetence in some blend.</p>
<p>As far as 7 WTC, I used to work there and don’t find it at all odd (this is a personal opinion only). That area is all landfill (some going back to the 1700s) and extremely low-lying, so it would make sense to me that the vibrations of the collapse and the heat generated by the fires (which burned for months) could and would have brought down that building.</p>
<p>I am not in any way disrespecting or attacking your views. I’m genuinely interested in a discourse with you.</p>
<p>The jets were scrambled but not close enough to intercept the hijacked planes in time.</p>
<p>Allmusic: It is not at all surprising that B7 went down. There is/was a huge insurance dispute over whether or not the two planes are “one event” or “two events” for the purposes of insurance - lower total payout for one event. The insurance company’s investigators figured out that even if ONLY ONE plane hit (i.e. one hijacking), BOTH towers would have come down. The shock waves were incredible - 110 stories tall, acres wide, crashing down. It would have been enough to destabilise Tower 2 and many of the surrounding buildings.</p>
<p>That’s an insurance company, not the government. Sure, they have an interest in the result, but they aren’t part of a huge conspiracy.</p>
<p>As for other things - I can only beg people to remember the morning of 11 September. I thought that my roommate got her facts wrong - I told her that it was a “War of the Worlds” thing, until she dragged me in front of the TV. She saw the second one hit, had run out and told us. I remember calling my parents and telling them, and they were like - “Um, what? Planes? World Trade Center? Aries, speak English, please.” </p>
<p>Planes travel at about 400 mph. Did they even have time to get jets up in the air in time? They didn’t have a flight path, they didn’t get responses from the cockpit - and they are supposed to get jets up in the air and guess where these planes were going? They came out of Logan and were headed for California, not NYC. </p>
<p>I also think that a lot of people very conveniently forget that the 9/11 scheme was proposed in 1996 by Muhammud Atta - which was 4 years in, 4 years left of Clinton.</p>
<p>AM, Popular Mechanics looked into these claims and did a credible job of answering them:
</p>
<p>
<a href=“http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html?page=1&c=y[/url]”>http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html?page=1&c=y</a></p>
<p>wow, good thing for Popular Mechanics…</p>
<p>FF, how do you respond to the wargames going on, coincidentally, that morning?</p>
<p>"From the moment Generals Myers, Eberhart, and Arnold were sworn in to testify, they continually stated that NORAD’s “military posture on 9/11, by law, by policy and in practice was focused on responding to external threats, threats originating outside of our borders” (a quotation from General Myers sworn testimony).</p>
<p>But NORAD was not simply running “an exercise against the former Soviet Union” on 9/11, as Commissioner Roemer’s question insinuated. That was only one of the multiple war games running that morning, titled NORTHERN VIGILANCE, which was simulating an air attack coming out of Russia. To insinuate, as Commissioner Roemer did, that this was the only exercise that morning lends credence to the three Generals’ false claim that NORAD’s only mission was to protect against external threats. </p>
<p>The multiple war games running on 9/11 also included (but were not limited to) VIGILANT GUARDIAN, which involved hijacking scenarios over the continental United States. None of the war games was ever referenced by name at any time during the hearings. The details of these exercises are the Achilles’ heel of the “external threat” mantra parroted by all three generals, and these details seem to be classified."</p>
<p>and</p>
<p>"NORAD was unusually prepared on 9/11, because it was conducting a week-long semiannual exercise called Vigilant Guardian. </p>
<p>On 9/11, North American Aerospace Defense Command’s (Norad) Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) was fully staffed, its key officers and enlisted supervisors already manning the operations center “battle cab.” [Aviation Week]</p>
<p>COLONEL ROBERT MARR, US AIR FORCE: We had the fighters with a little more gas on board. A few more weapons on board. […] We had 14 aircraft on alert, seven sites, two aircraft at each site. [ABC News]</p>
<p>That’s a ratio of 3.5 ‘hot’ fighter jets per hijacked airliner.</p>
<p>AM, I’m not sure what this claim is supposed to be. I spend as much time thinking about a 9/11 conspiracy as I do about Big Foot or Nessie. They all are about equally likely.</p>