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-- The fall of Iraq - a conspiracy theory
Posted by DrUg_Tit0 on May-11-2003 22:35:
The fall of Iraq - a conspiracy theory
I just came upon an interesting article in the newspapers. Basically what it says is that the americans and Saddam made a deal after the US forces invaded. In exchange for his future safety, Saddam agreed to give up on the defense of Iraq, and especially Baghdad and the surrounding areas. It does sound like a conspiracy theory except for one thing. Baghdad fell with almost no resistance whatsoever. In a town of 5 million, if a stiff resistance were to have taken place, it would take weeks to conquer it. But it fell within days without much street fighting. The several hundred soldiers in Umm Quasr were harder to defeat than thousands of elite troops which were supposed to guard Baghdad. It's just hard to believe that the forces guarding Baghdad were so disorganized or low on morale to allow for such a quick failure in their lines of defence. All I can say is that, regardless of the truthfulness of those US-Saddam deal assumptions, prior to the fall of Baghdad something very odd has happened behind the scenes.
Posted by JohnSmith on May-12-2003 01:03:
hmm.. interesting theory, it's certainly plausible.
Posted by malek on May-12-2003 01:49:
its not a conspiracy, he's a thug and basically just bailed... also nobody wanted to fight for him... but if the US stays long enough, people will fight back for real.
Posted by rizo on May-12-2003 05:29:
| quote: |
Originally posted by ahlamalek
its not a conspiracy, he's a thug and basically just bailed... also nobody wanted to fight for him... but if the US stays long enough, people will fight back for real. |
is that way saddams son took off with billions of dollars from Baghdads bank... i think he had to use 3 trucks, why hasnt he or the trucks been found?
Posted by rizo on May-12-2003 07:34:
should really make a new thread for this, but heres an another conspiracy theory for the conspircy theory krew http://whatreallyhappened.com/wtc7.html 
Posted by occrider on May-12-2003 22:36:
| quote: |
Originally posted by rizen
is that way saddams son took off with billions of dollars from Baghdads bank... i think he had to use 3 trucks, why hasnt he or the trucks been found?
|
Because he stole this money before the war even started, and he is hiding very very well.
Siigghhh ... ok I'm going to shoot myself. Ok even Snopes isn't posting a counter-argument to something as ridiculous as this. Two minutes of internet searching however, have yielded sufficient answers to refute this silliness. As for why somebody would choose to take the opinion of some dumbnut webmaster with the technical expertise of watching the WTC collapse on tv over the opinions of millions of infinetely more qualified civil/structural engineers on this planet is a mystery that even God himself probably can't answer.
The Structural System:
Yamasaki and engineers John Skilling and Les Robertson worked closely, and the relationship between the towers� design and structure is clear. Faced with the difficulties of building to unprecedented heights, the engineers employed an innovative structural model: a rigid "hollow tube" of closely spaced steel columns with floor trusses extending across to a central core. The columns, finished with a silver-colored aluminum alloy, were 18 3/4" wide and set only 22" apart, making the towers appear from afar to have no windows at all.
Also unique to the engineering design were its core and elevator system. The twin towers were the first supertall buildings designed without any masonry. Worried that the intense air pressure created by the buildings� high speed elevators might buckle conventional shafts, engineers designed a solution using a drywall system fixed to the reinforced steel core. For the elevators, to serve 110 stories with a traditional configuration would have required half the area of the lower stories be used for shaftways. Otis Elevators developed an express and local system, whereby passengers would change at "sky lobbies" on the 44th and 78th floors, halving the number of shaftways.
The structural system, deriving from the I.B.M. Building in Seattle, is impressively simple. The 208-foot wide facade is, in effect, a prefabricated steel lattice, with columns on 39-inch centers acting as wind bracing to resist all overturning forces; the central core takes only the gravity loads of the building. A very light, economical structure results by keeping the wind bracing in the most efficient place, the outside surface of the building, thus not transferring the forces through the floor membrane to the core, as in most curtain-wall structures. Office spaces will have no interior columns. In the upper floors there is as much as 40,000 square feet of office space per floor. The floor construction is of prefabricated trussed steel, only 33 inches in depth, that spans the full 60 feet to the core, and also acts as a diaphragm to stiffen the outside wall against lateral buckling forces from wind-load pressures."
Why Did It Collapse?
Tim Wilkinson, Lecturer in Civil Engineering
The structural integrity of the World Trade Center depends on the closely spaced columns around the perimeter. Lightweight steel trusses span between the central elevator core and the perimeter columns on each floor. These trusses support the concrete slab of each floor and tie the perimeter columns to the core, preventing the columns from buckling outwards.
After the initial plane impacts, it appeared to most observers that the structure had been severely damaged, but not necessarily fatally.
It appears likely that the impact of the plane crash destroyed a significant number of perimeter columns on several floors of the building, severely weakening the entire system. Initially this was not enough to cause collapse.
However, as fire raged in the upper floors, the heat would have been gradually affecting the behaviour of the remaining material. As the planes had only recently taken off, the fire would have been initially fuelled by large volumes of jet fuel, creating potentially enormously high temperatures. The strength of the steel drops markedly with prolonged exposure to fire, while the elastic modulus of the steel reduces (stiffness drops), increasing deflections.
Modern structures are designed to resist fire for a specific length of time. Safety features such as fire retarding materials and sprinkler systems help to contain fires, help extinguish flames, or prevent steel from being exposed to excessively high temperatures. This gives occupants time to escape and allow fire fighters to extinguish blazes, before the building is catastrophically damaged.
It is possible that the blaze, started by jet fuel and then engulfing the contents of the offices, in a highly confined area, generated fire conditions significantly more severe than those anticipated in a typical office fire. These conditions may have overcome the building's fire defences considerably faster than expected.
Eventually, the loss of strength and stiffness of the materials resulting from the fire, combined with the initial impact damage, would have caused a failure of the truss system supporting a floor, or the remaining perimeter columns, or even the internal core, or some combination. Failure of the flooring system would have subsequently allowed the perimeter columns to buckle outwards. Regardless of which of these possibilities actually occurred, it would have resulted in the complete collapse of at least one complete storey at the level of impact.
Once one storey collapsed all floors above would have begun to fall. The huge mass of falling structure would gain momentum, crushing the structurally intact floors below, resulting in catastrophic failure of the entire structure.
The only evidence so far are photographs and television footage. Whether failure was initiated at the perimeter columns or the core is unknown. The extent to which the internal parts were damaged during the collision may be evident in the rubble if any forensic investigation is conducted. Since the mass of the combined towers is close to 1000000 tons, finding evidence will be an enormous task.
This photograph shows the south tower just as it is collapsing. It is evident that the building is falling over to the left. The North Tower collapsed directly downwards, on top of itself. The same mechanism of failure, the combination of impact and subsequent fire damage, is the likely cause of failure of both towers. However, it is possible that a storey on only one side of the South Tower initially collapsed, resulting in the "skewed" failure of the entire tower.
The gigantic impact forces caused by the huge mass of the falling structure landing on the floors below travelled down the columns like a shockwave faster than the entire structure fell. The clouds of debris coming from the tower, several storeys below the huge falling mass, probably result from the sudden and almost explosive failure of each floor, caused by the "shockwave".
Notice the tower is NOT collapsing straight down but is actually tilting to one side. This is the short summary of what happened. If you are truly adament in proving that this is a government conspiracy please refute the full fema report on the collapse:
http://www.fema.gov/library/wtcstudy.shtm
Posted by LiquidX on May-13-2003 01:54:
I once read about this conspiracy theories of 9/11. Like there was this Jewish company in which 3,000 of the workers ( jewish ) didn't show up to work that day. Also that the plane that hit the pentagon, you could see this small spot compare to that huge plane, that was actually burning. Mmmm just posting what I read.
Posted by occrider on May-13-2003 02:06:
| quote: |
Originally posted by LiquidX
I once read about this conspiracy theories of 9/11. Like there was this Jewish company in which 3,000 of the workers ( jewish ) didn't show up to work that day. Also that the plane that hit the pentagon, you could see this small spot compare to that huge plane, that was actually burning. Mmmm just posting what I read. |
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/israel.htm
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/pentagon.htm
My life has been made so much easier by this website.
Posted by LiquidX on May-13-2003 02:24:
hehehehe
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