Responses To Email From “Truthers”

After writing my Proving The 9/11 Conspiracists Wrong column for Townhall last week (it finished just outside the top 10 for the week), as you’d expect, I received a lot of email from deranged truthers who insist that 9/11 was an inside job.

So, I thought it might be interesting to post some excerpts from some of the email I received, along with a response. Enjoy!

(Name Withheld)

Mr. Hawkins,

“Thanks from one employee of the Joint Chiefs Of Staff.

Please keep repeating this stuff, anywhere and everywhere you can.

Anytime I meet a “truther” I always invite them to take a walk around the
Pentagon with me so I can illustrate all the various mistakes in “Loose Change”, but nobody ever seems to take me up on it. Wonder why….”

Good question!

From brisa@*********

“Every American has to decide whether to trust this government and corporate
controlled news media or whether to apply some critical thinking skills in the evaluation of widely disseminated information concerning the 911 atrocity.”

One of the things I find strange about truthers is that they will not believe a single thing said by the mainstream media, but they will take as absolute gospel the sort of information that they find on nutty conspiracy websites. I mean, I have a healthy distrust of the government and the media as well, but I’d have no trouble trusting the New York Times or even Bill Clinton over Alex Jones, Jeff Rinse, or Dylan Avery. You might as well be getting your information from a homeless guy standing on the corner with a sign that says, “The end is nigh,” as one of these conspiracy freaks.

rmack322@****

My son ***** was murdered at the WTC on 9/11/01. I went to 95% of 9/11
Commission hearings and 75% of questions I personally had about that day were not answered. Ben Veniste stated that “this is not an investigation but merely an exposition”. Those clowns were not looking for the truth but wanted only to maintain the status quo. I just hope you never have to suffer through the loss of a child and then go through more agony because your local officials refuse to investigate.

I’m very, genuinely sorry for your loss, but your son’s death was investigated extensively by numerous federal agencies. Now maybe you didn’t get the answers you wanted to hear for whatever reason, but the answers are as good as any crime victim gets. You know the names of the hijackers who are responsible for your son’s death, you know they’re dead, you know who was behind the attack, and you know what happened that day. I’m not sure how much more you can reasonably ask for at this point.

rhgusn@******

How can you explain the collapse of WTC building 7 and its manner of collapse? …Why did Silverman say that a decision was made to “pull” building 7? How long does it take to rig a building with explosives to “pull” it?

There was no explosion or controlled demolition used to bring down WTC7. The phrase “pull it,” which was used by Larry Silverstein has nothing to do with controlled demolition, despite what you’ve heard on the conspiracy nut websites. However, the phrase “pull” is used by firefighters when they talk about leaving a dangerous structure. That’s what Silverstein was talking about.

So, why did WTC7 collapse? It was damaged by debris from the North Tower falling and that, combined with long burning fires that weakened the building’s structure, brought it down. Incidentally, those explanations are right out of Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the Facts. You may want to read that sometime.

You may also want to ask yourself a rather obvious question: Al-Qaeda has used explosives before in an attempt to take down the WTC. If the government was behind the whole thing, why would they need airplanes AND explosives? I mean certainly, if they had time to rig the whole building with explosives, they could have just as easily driven several truck bombs into the buildings and taken the building down that way. That would have made things much simpler, wouldn’t it? But, I suppose they had to fly the planes in to throw people off the scene — and they would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for a bunch of tinfoil hat wearing fruit loops on the internet who probably think that the Illuminati and the Jews are duking it out to rule the world.

casazaza@****

I have yet to hear one cogent, logical explanation from the US government about key issues concerning the 9/11 tragedy, like WTC 7 and its mystery collapse, like molten metal found under all 3 sites….

You have half the conspiracy theorists, like Rosie O’Donnell, claiming that fire won’t melt steel, and the other half of conspiracy theorists, complaining like this guy, that melted steel was found.

Long story short, again from the Popular Mechanics book, initially, the fire was hot enough to weaken the steel, but not melt it. This, combined with the damage done to the buildings, brought down the WTC. However, the fires burned under the rubble for months and in those confined spaces, the fires got hot enough to melt steel. That’s why molten steel was found under the rubble.

But again, what have we just done? Spent a lot of time talking about irrelevant details while ignoring the big picture because a bunch of ignorant kooks are inclined to believe that thousands and thousands of government officials, firemen, bureaucrats, demolition experts, reporters, etc., etc., are all conspiring together to hide from the American people that 9/11 was caused by explosives. Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Bush administration didn’t/couldn’t even fake finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, much less pull off a scheme this complicated. Moreover, we have highly classified national security programs being leaked into the papers every day. But yet and still, let’s get together a bunch of loons on the internet, who know nothing about demolition, to contradict hundreds of experts on the subject who almost unanimously agree that planes knocked down the buildings.

The facts overwhelmingly, undeniably, indicate that a bunch of Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked some planes and flew them into buildings and if you don’t buy into that, well it means that you’re probably either ignorant, really stupid, a nut, or someone with such terrible judgment that you shouldn’t be allowed around sharp objects. Sorry if that dose of reality is too much for you, but someone needs to tell the “truthers” the ugly truth.

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