9/11 was an inside job

1) The FEMA metallurgy report.The analysis performed on the WTC steel by Professor Jonathan Barnett proves that it was attacked by some form of munition, since it was riddled with holes and had been severely eroded/melted by something containing high concentrations of sulfur."The severe corrosion and subsequent erosion of samples 1 and 2 are a very unusual event. No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified."http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_apc.pdf"A one-inch column has been reduced to half-inch thickness. Its edges--which are curled like a paper scroll--have been thinned to almost razor sharpness. Gaping holes--some larger than a silver dollar--let light shine through a formerly solid steel flange. This Swiss cheese appearance shocked all of the fire-wise professors, who expected to see distortion and bending--but not holes."https://www.wpi.edu/News/Transformations/2002Spring/steel.html

2) The hijackers' VISA applications should have been rejected by the state department.Investigating the attacks, political journal National Review obtained copies of the VISA applications for 15 of the 19 named hijackers, and in the process found that all 15 should have been refused entry."A new report accuses the State Department of staggering lapses in its visa program that gave Sept. 11 hijackers entry into the United States.The political journal National Review obtained the visa applications for 15 of the 19 hijackers — and evidence that all of them should have been denied entry to the country."http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=130051&page=1#.UM_4YG9RWWw

3) Niaz Naik's admission.The former Pakistani foreign secretary claims he was told by top-level American officials at a UN meeting in July 2001, that military action would be taken against Afghanistan by October."Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October."http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1550366.stm

4) Military grade munitions.Professor Niels Harrit published a peer-reviewed article in 2009 proving the existence of high-energy thermite residue in four out of four WTC samples.http://benthamopen.com/tocpj/articles/V002/7TOCPJ.pdf

5) The bin Laden "confession tape" is a demonstrable fraud."Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University's religious studies' department and the foremost Bin Laden expert, argues that the increasingly secular language in the video and audio tapes of Osama (his earliest ones are littered with references to God and the Prophet Mohammed) are inconsistent with his strict Islamic religion, Wahhabism.He notes that, on one video, Bin Laden wears golden rings on his fingers, an adornment banned among Wahhabi followers."http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1212851/Has-Osama-Bin-Laden-dead-seven-years--U-S-Britain-covering-continue-war-terror.htmlMany thanks to whoever posted this rather sardonic entry to Urban Dictionary:-Urban dictionary: Magic Video Tape.This is the VHS tape that was miraculously found by US troops in Afghanistan which contained an alleged confession by Osama bin Laden to be the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. He previously denied involvement so it was fortuitous that this tape was found in a country the size of Texas. The man in the video tape does not really look like bin Laden but the media has failed to point this out.http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=magic+video+tape

6) Israeli intelligence were literally caught celebrating.Bizarre, but true. Also bizarre is that they were arrested, passed to the FBI, interrogated for several months, failed and/or refused multiple lie detector tests, then were spontaneously released by Michael Chertoff."THERE was ruin and terror in Manhattan, but, over the Hudson River in New Jersey, a handful of men were dancing.As the World Trade Centre burned and crumpled, the five men celebrated and filmed the worst atrocity ever committed on American soil as it played out before their eyes.Who do you think they were? Palestinians? Saudis? Iraqis, even? Al-Qaeda, surely? Wrong on all counts. They were Israelis - and at least two of them were Israeli intelligence agents, working for Mossad, the equivalent of MI6 or the CIA." http://www.heraldscotland.com/five-israelis-were-seen-filming-as-jet-liners-ploughed-into-the-twin-towers-on-september-11-2001-1.829220

7) Basic Newtonian mechanics.Gravity gets stronger the closer to the ground you get, which necessarily means resistance to gravity also gets stronger the closer to the ground you get. This explains why, when we want stuff to fall down vertically, we attack it at the bottom and not the top. Flying a plane into the 93rd floor of a 110 floor building cannot and will not cause the entire structure to fall down vertically, simply because the 17 floors directly above point of impact are still at rest on a force fully capable of resisting their own weight. A local failure at point of impact should have resulted in the damaged chunk sliding off the building and falling to the path of least resistance. In sum, the only way to reconcile physics with what actually happened to the WTC buildings is explosives.

8) Dick Cheney likely gave a direct order not to shoot down flight 77.The testimony of Norman Mineta before the 9/11 commission seems to suggest Cheney was kept aware of the path of flight 77 as it approached the Pentagon, and that he repeated an order not to shoot it down.MR. HAMILTON: We thank you for that. I wanted to focus just a moment on the Presidential Emergency Operating Center. You were there for a good part of the day. I think you were there with the vice president. And when you had that order given, I think it was by the president, that authorized the shooting down of commercial aircraft that were suspected to be controlled by terrorists, were you there when that order was given?MR. MINETA: No, I was not. I was made aware of it during the time that the airplane coming into the Pentagon. There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, "The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out." And when it got down to, "The plane is 10 miles out," the young man also said to the vice president, "Do the orders still stand?" And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary!!?http://911research.wtc7.net/disinfo/alibis/cheney.html

9) Who gained?Massive corporate contracts in a region which for the last 60 years had been pretty much off-limits to America because of the Cold War and the counter-influence of the Soviet Union.Most of Israel's enemies taken out of action and replaced with pro-US governments.PNAC gets its "New Pearl Harbor" event.A global narrative of terrorism, at a price of invasive domestic security to keep the people in line and aggressive foreign policy to export American culture.Iran gets strangled as its anti-American allies in the region are slowly picked off one by one. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya. Suddenly it is not Israel which is isolated and without support in the region: it is Iran.

10) Many strange deaths.I'll just give a single example, but there are many others (Danny Jowenko, Barry Jennings etc...):-"A pilot who wrote a conspiracy theory book about 9/11 is dead after he shot his two teenage children and family dog before turning the gun on himself.Micalia Phillips, 14, and her 17-year-old brother Alex, were also found dead at the home inside the gated Forrest Meadows community.The former airline pilot's controversial conspiracy book The Big Bamboozle: 9/11 and the War on Terror was released last year.While he was writing it, Marshall believed that his life was in danger because of the allegations involved.According to Santa Barbara View, during the editing and pre-marketing process of Marshall’s book, he expressed some degree of paranoia because the nonfiction work accused the George W. Bush administration of being in cahoots with the Saudi intelligence community in training the hijackers who died in the planes used in the attacks."http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2275258/Phillip-Marshall-Forme r-airline-pilot-conspiracy-theorist-shot-dead-teenage-children-dog-tur ning-gun-himself.htmlNow here it gets particularly interesting.Investigative Reporter Finds Holes In Official Finding Of Murder-Suicide In California Death of 9/11 Author.The 9/11 author who was found dead in his California home earlier this month was right-handed, but authorities determined that he shot himself in the left side of the head, a prominent investigative journalist reports.The bodies of Phillip Marshall, his two children, and the family dog were found on February 2, and officials quickly determined it was a murder-suicide. But the Washington, D.C.-based Wayne Madsen Report (WMR) has found evidence that contradicts the official finding. WMR reports that Marshall might have possessed something in his Murphys, California, home that prompted someone to commit murder. Also, the community in Calaveras County is pushing for the sheriff's office to conduct a more thorough investigation. http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/investigative-reporter-finds-holes-in.html

I thank Pro for this debate. I believe that 9/11 was not a inside job. If I prevent Pro from proving 9/11 was an inside job, I win. When I say "inside job", I mean that the American Government had a direct hand in bring down the WTC, planned them, carried it out and then covered up any evidence. I believe this should be a fair definition. Also Pro copied and pasted from here: https://anton-dion.blogspot.com/2016/07/10-solid-facts-about-911-that-cannot-be.html. So make that of you will.

Reading through his round, I have come across a hand full of broken links. And more are untrustworthy. But no matter. Here, I will list my cross examination of Pro's list.

1) Pro says that the FEMA metallurgy report says that it was attacked by some form of munition. Pro gave a broken link (though this was a result of the typo, and it was the same report that I found) , but I believe I found it on my own. Nothing in that report suggested the WTC was brought down by bombs, or whatever. Pro claims that because it was odd shaped it must have been a bomb, but this is speculation. 

2) This is just government incompetence. What does this entail? That a low level government worker was on in the conspiracy?   

3) American/Taliban relations were strained, but this does not indicate 9/11 was an inside job. From the source given: 

America had every reason to react against Al Qaeda, for example: the 1993 WTC bombing, or the general acts of aggression.

4) Another broken link. Thermite was something I expected when I accepted this debate. A charge is loud [1] and the WTC fell relatively quietly. From my source: 

Also, Pro's source is dubious at best. I am sorry for the wikipedia source, but it appears [2] that only one study found thermite, no one else did, and the study itself is dubious at best. And even if we take this source as truth, thermite is not very effective at demolition at the scale Pro is suggesting. Thermite burns slowly, and doesn't explode. Further research makes it apparent that Pro's study is bogus. If you look up his study, it appears Jones isn't qualified at all in this subject and that Jones never been to the WTC. He basically received some samples that were said to be from the WTC. The editor of the journal Pro's study was published in resigned as a result of the study being published. Harrit, among others, co-wrote that study. Again, to my knowledge, no other study, or paper, or any reputable expert came to the same conclusion as that study. 

Also, it is obvious the WTC collapsed top down. Any video should sufficient in proving that. So what does that mean? Well, normally, we don't demolish building top to bottom. It is always bottom to top, so the bottom is destroyed, then makes its way to the top. However, the WTC collapsed in the opposite way.  

5) bin Laden's tapes.

Pro claims that the tapes are fake, and that bin Laden had no connection to the attacks, however, the mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, behind the attacks himself said that bin Laden supported. Nothing contradicts this as what happened. There is also the whole "fatty" bin Laden thing, but with some research, its a video quality issue. The Middle East uses PAL (576 lines) format, while America uses NTSC (480 lines). When you convert the NTSC video/pictures to PAL, the issue disappears.

6) I believe I can disregard this as anti-Semitic non-sense. It also appears to be a urban myth. And I assume Pro is referring to celebrations held in America.

7) Pro seems to think that the Twin Towers could survive having 17 floors crash into the floors under them, it could not, and that's why the WTC collapsed. Due to how the Twin Towers were designed, when the planes crashed into the towers and damaged the support beams and various over structural damage, plus the explosions caused by plane fuel that weakened the towers even further. The idea that the 17 floors would fall off is absurd, although the tower did tilt when it collapsed. In short, heat happened. We all know the "steel beams" meme. To get my point across, grab a stick of butter and warm it up. If you ever did baking before, you'll know that butter can be very soft if it warms up. The same concept applies to steel. Steel on the WTC didn't need to melt, just warm up. After that, gravity did it job.  

8) A lot things here. Pro says that Cheney ordered the stand down, however, Cheney arrived at the PEOC at around 9:58, after the Pentagon was hit[4]. The 9/11 Commission agrees[5]. You can Ctrl + f "9:58" to find it. This is, again, after the Pentagon was hit.

9) Certainly not oil prices after 9/11. or stock prices. There is also all the various other expenses like lost of life and damage to NYC itself. Oil prices, for example spiked up in price.

10) Evidence suggests that Marshall killed his family [6]. As detailed in the article, there is no evidence that any bodies were moved, indicating an altered crime scene. Marshall also left some threatening voice mails and was apparently bipolar. Other evidence suggests Marshall killed his family, like how his children had alcohol in their systems.

[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/design/a3544/4278927/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center_controlled_demolition_conspiracy_theories

[3] http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/11/23/the_long_strange_history_of_the_9_11_celebrations_meme.html

[4] http://www.911myths.com/index.php?title=Norman_Mineta#Cheney_at_the_PEOC

[5] https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf

[6] https://www.uniondemocrat.com/csp/mediapool/sites/UnionDemocrat/LocalNews/story.csp?cid=3801209&sid=753&fid=151

Extend.

Extend. Vote Con.