Reply #1: Oh come on!

[sgsmith]

I think it's pretty accurate to state that nearly no one in the United States, outside of military personnel, has actually seen a missile in flight. On the other hand, I bet 99%+ have seen a commercial airliner in flight. Most of the witnesses describe an airplane and not missile. And some people are so unable to describe what they've seen that they use the wrong words.

(And don't get all prissy on me. We're not talking about missiles like the nuclear missiles in silos or rockets out of Cape Kennedy. We're talking about winged flying machines. Like a tomahawk cruise missile or similiar missile launched from a fighter aircraft.)

About your descriptions on the the tower impacts. Simple physics should show that the planes wouldn't just stop in mid flight upon hitting a building. The kinetic energy would require that the planes continue forward, although they would slow rapidly, as they are resisted by the steel exterior and interior columns. Plus the fact that ignition of the fuel would take time to occur. First the fuel has to atomize enough to ignite and then the fuel has to be consumed. Neither of these are instantaneous activities.

The videos look like crap because they're extremelly compressed, either at the source or in the process of making available on the web. I have seen very little video that's of a file size that indicates anything close to full resolution. It would be interesting to get a non-web copy of some of the CNN footage of the second plane impacting the WTC. Also, most of the camera views are very far away from the action. That's due to several reasons. The fact that the towers were so high makes getting a good close up view hard to get. It's easier to get a distant view. Also, a lot of the network feeds were probably taken by cameras located in midtown, where the next highest buildings are. None of the video was taken at a distance that we're used to seeing on TV. Just look at how close cameras are located to the subjects in a studio. Christ - some of the photos argued about were taken from either NJ or Brooklyn. The Hudson is over a mile wide. Even the Brooklyn end of the Battery Tunnel is over a mile away from the WTC site.

Elsewhere in the 911 forum I linked to two high resolution still photos of the second plane. If you look at those, the detail of the UA plane is pretty amazing. But those two files are 18 MB apiece.

The planes didn't leave perfect impacts like you're saying. They match the general outline of the aircraft (approximate wing span, approximate fuselage diameter, approximate engine locations). They certainly don't make the approximate shape of a cruise missile, or anything other than an B-767 type of aircraft.

Tell me, what makes a particular piece of airplane part "look planted". Hell, everything can be said to be "planted". The engine pictured on the NY street doesn't look any more planted than the street sign next to it. Except for the fact that you expect a street sign and don't expect an engine there. Without finding detailed technical documents that probably aren't available on the web, it looks like the central core of a high bypass engine. Doesn't make it so, but it looks like one.

You know, everyone throws out these "high tech" holograms / faked videos lines of thought. But the simplest "high tech" theory is never mentioned. That the hijackers knew enough about the autopilot that they were able to program in a GPS Latitude / Longitude coordinate for either tower. And then activate the autopilot and let the machine fly you straight into the building. A person with little or no english skills and little or no flying ability can be taught to program an autopilot. After all, the equipment is made to be easily used with a little training.

Now, I'm not saying that the entire official explanation is the way things went down. I think it's nearly criminal that the FAA and military took so long to respond. And I'd love to see more camera footage of the Pentagram crash. Even if it doesn't show much. But it's taken so long for any of this information to come out that the conspiracy folks will never accept the evidence, if for no other reason that it took time to come out. I sure wish that the NTSB could release an accident investigtion on the PA crash.