Ae911

[Stavros]

I have a question for anyone who might know: Which tower was damaged by the bomb in '93?'

The car park under the North Tower.

[hippifried]

Thanks. That fits my scenario. North tower was the 2nd collapse, & already had structural damage at the foundation.

[Stavros]

It is quite well documented that many active hi-jackers and bombers have studied engineering, including OBL in his early days; doesn't mean they are experts, but it does mean they have some familiarity with engineering and science concepts.

[hippifried]

I really doubt that the collapsing towers were part of the master plan.

[Stavros]

I think that is fair, the point would be that they dont just dream up a target and then work towards it, but make finer calculations, although against that the bombings in London on the underground would be severe in any circumstance. Maybe they thought before 1993 the towers would fall sideways obliterating a lot of the district around the WTC. Apparently in the material seen so far from OBL's lair, they were targeting the railroad network.

[trish]

I heard a Morning Edition report (NPR) one day this week which reported that some of the plotters of the 9/11(including Bin Laden) attack were of the opinion that the burning gasoline would weaken the towers at the floor of impact and above causing a collapse of the upper segment. They did not think the towers would fall over sideways and with good reason: the planes simply could not impart enough sideways momentum to overcome the tremendous inertia of the towers. It is that inertia (i.e. mass) that brought it straight down upon itself. It may be the plotters hoped the top segment would slide down one side of the tower (the side that was initially penetrated) and scatter once it hit the ground...but the report I heard did not address that issue.

[Stavros]

Intersting point, Trish, as it does suggest a degree of research either before 1993 but certainly after that failure. But why the WTC? And why New York? Is there some potency to the phallic structures of the WTC that seeped into the unconscious of the plotters? New York is the financial centre of the USA, it has a large Jewish and a large liberal community too, so it has political resonance; it has the Statue of Liberty, it was the portal through which millions of immigrants entered America. Again, the targeting of the Pentagon and the White House (presumably the prefigured destination of United 93) speak for themselves. But if they wanted to inflict maximum loss of life, there are other ways of doing it. I guess its the need to be 'spectacular', rather than 'merely efficient' in the dispensation of mass murder. Maybe if these people spent their student years reading poetry none of this would have happened...

[trish]

Rachel Maddow (God forbid anyone listen to her opinion) claimed in a recent show that a perusal of Bin Laden's tapes over years shows an obsession with finances. He calculated the cost of the 9/11 mission and the cost incurred by the United States and measured the success of the mission by the difference. His tapes and missives demonstrate that he always measured success and failure in financial terms. The WTC were symbolic of the economic strength of the U.S. and perhaps more importantly their destruction would seriously interrupt and damage the U.S. economy. I tend to agree with Maddow on this point. Bin Laden learned from the U.S. itself, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, just how to bleed the green from an empire's veins by keeping it occupied with expensive military engagements that have no promise of any payoff. Bush fell right into al Quaeda's trap, and there we remain to this day.

[hippifried]

Both attacks on the WTC were acts of terrorism. As far as achieving the stated goals of the terrorists, terrorism has a 100% failure rate. But when you look at it as terrorism for its own sake, these were highly successful attacks. The nation was terrified. The world was terrified. We're still acting like we're terrified, & it's been a decade. It's not about maximum kill per incident. It's about random unpredictability. It's about having people looking over their shouder, & suspecting their neighbors. It's about creating an irrational fear of a religion that nobody but its adherents seems to understand. It's about us spending ourselves into oblivion chasing our tails, trying to prevent the last attack. You know, the one that already happened. There's no rationality on either side of the terrorism.