Oh, I almost forgot.

>>Pericles then attempts to imply that David Chandler has no credibility because:
1. Once he made the mistake of multiplying by 2 where he should have divided by 2 and publicly admitted having done so; and
2. He once found persuasive a movie made by someone who happened to be a Holocaust denier.
I don't consider that these require further comment.<<

Well you wouldn't, would you.

By your standards, anyone who confuses multiplication and division is a credible mathematician.

By your standards, anyone who finds the arguments made by a fruit-loop neo-nazi who denies historical facts is a credible source of inspiration.

This goes a long way towards explaining your ready acceptance of any passing theory that supports your prejudice against anything that represents what Cartman would call "authoriteh".

Have a great day.

Pericles obfuscates, "Given that you're still floundering around 'instantaneous' '2.25 seconds' or 'gradual', I have nothing to work on."

No-one's floundering but you.

You're the one who introduced the highly implausible hypothesis that the structural strength in all 8 floors was lost in one millisecond (or what most people would consider 'instantaneously').

I am not the one who is attempting to deny the video evidence (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSyqfM-Rgy0) that WTC 7 fell at free-fall speed for 2.25 seconds.

Whether you choose to believe that the strength was all lost at the very outset or progressively floor by floor throughout that interval, you have failed to explain how that could have been caused by fire alone.

Pericles asks, "You are suggesting this was a military operation? Or an 'intelligence' operation?"

Most likely both. Obviously the destruction of a building goes beyond what is strictly considered 'intelligence'.

What is your point?

Pericles asked, "How many tonnes were needed?"

As many as it took.

Pericles further asks, "How did they get into the building?"

See my previous post.

Pericles asks, "Do you have even the vaguest notion of basic building security?"

Anyone who has entered tall buildings on numerous occasions, as I have, would have some idea. What is your point?

Pericles wrote, "Your idea that this was all accomplished by a mysterious bunch of lift engineers, who were also saboteurs, ..."

That is seems a plausible scenario to me. Why can't saboteurs be trained to also be lift engineers or vice versa?

Pericles continued, "... the whole thing covered by bogus security guards, ..."

Not necessarily bogus. Why shouldn't it have been possible for personnel, either willing to to turn a blind or to actively collaborate, to have been selected?

Pericles, "... is very much the stuff of action movie scripts."

Some "action movie scripts" are based upon real world events.

Pericles wrote, "No-one noticed. At all."

How do you know, Pericles?

So, nothing new here, daggett.

Just the same old "if I saw it in Die Hard, it can be done" routine.

>>Pericles wrote, "No-one noticed. At all." How do you know, Pericles?<<

Oh come on, daggett.

If somebody even thought they might have noticed something - even if they were in Yamhill, Oregon at the time - you would have told us by now.

>>You're the one who introduced the highly implausible hypothesis that the structural strength in all 8 floors was lost in one millisecond<<

Correction: this is entirely your fabrication.

Let me quote you.

>>Does this mean that you have already explained how fire alone caused WTC 7 to lose all its structural strength in those 8 floors in 2.25 seconds<<

I merely pointed out that it would have already, over a period of some time, been in the process of losing strength. Therefore, in the millisecond before its collapse, it would still - by definition - have had sufficient structural integrity to keep the floors supported.

But only just. A millisecond later the fire destroyed this last teensy vestige of support and down she came.

A child of eight could grasp the principle here.

Here's a f'rinstance. If you were to hang on to a windowsill above a fifty metre drop, the "structural integrity" of your fingers would be sufficient to keep you hanging there for a while.

(I'm quite enjoying the images this conjures up. Aren't you?).

But after a finite amount of time, you'd lose your grip.

One millisecond before you fell, you would be safe. If someone had pulled you back through the window at that point, you'd be safe. But one millisecond later, the structural integrity of your fingernails would be sufficiently reduced and cause you to fall.

One key point I notice that you very carefully avoided, by the way.

In your scenario, a combination of army and "intelligence" operatives conspire to murder thousands of fellow-Americans.

Do you have any precedent for such brutality in history of the the US?

How unfortunate for NIST that Pericles was not able to suggest to them some years ago a man hanging by one finger as an analogy for fire inside WTC 7 being able to destroy all at once, right across the length and breadth of WTC 7 on 8 floors all the structural strength in all those supporting steel columns.

That would have certainly saved them an enormous amount of trouble, time and expense.

Pericles wrote, "A child of eight could grasp the principle here."

You might be right there, Pericles.

But I think, by the time that child reached, the age of, say 15, that child's understanding of how the world works would have improved somewhat.

---

Pericles, what did I ever write that could possibly construed as remotely equivalent to saying "if I saw it in Die Hard, it can be done"?

Pericles wrote, "Do you have any precedent for such brutality in history of the the US?"

This is likely arguing that there can never be a first time. Perhaps there has never been brutality on this scale, but there have been plenty of instances of brutality by the US military against US citizens before 2001.

---

I will deal with the other nonsense and evasions later.

Your persistence in misunderstanding a simple concept does you enormous credit, daggett. Clinging to your brain-dead theories in the face of such simple explanations takes considerable courage, that's for sure.

>>How unfortunate for NIST that Pericles was not able to suggest to them some years ago a man hanging by one finger as an analogy for fire inside WTC 7 being able to destroy all at once, right across the length and breadth of WTC 7 on 8 floors all the structural strength in all those supporting steel columns.<<

To lack a basic awareness that fire does not destroy anything "all at once" is, frankly, breathtaking in a mature adult. My only excuse for you would be that you are so wrapped up in this explosion idea, that you fail to see even the most obvious of alternatives.

But you really cannot have it both ways, daggett.

>>But I think, by the time that child reached, the age of, say 15, that child's understanding of how the world works would have improved somewhat.<<

The same, I suggest, should apply to your own perception of what is, and is not, realistic in this busy world of ours. By the age of fifteeen, that child's awareness of the difference between what he sees on the screen in Die Hard, and what actually happens in the real world - an "understanding of how the world works", in your own words - should be fairly well developed.

Sadly, yours has yet to reach this level.

>>Pericles, what did I ever write that could possibly construed as remotely equivalent to saying "if I saw it in Die Hard, it can be done"?<<

Your "elevator mechanics planted hundreds of tonnes of explosives" scenario, for a start. There's more, of course. But that's where it all comes together.

>>Perhaps there has never been brutality on this scale, but there have been plenty of instances of brutality by the US military against US citizens before 2001.<<

Ok, forget about the scale for a moment. Try "the deliberate, premeditated murder of a number of innocent US citizens"

Any offers?

Pericles wrote, "Ok, forget about the scale for a moment. Try 'the deliberate, premeditated murder of a number of innocent US citizens'"

Pericles, if the US military had been found guilty of the premeditated murder of a large number of their own citizens it would have resulted in a political upheaval.

So, in all likelihood, they would have concealed their tracks very well if that had occurred.

So, I don't see how the absence of a proven example automatically disproves the hypothesis that 9/11 was perpetrated by the US military.

Nevertheless, it appears likely that the Oklohama City bombing could have been one example, because the power of the blast seems much too great to have been caused by the fertilizer bomb allegedly placed there by Timothy McVeigh (but I have mislaid that particular article for now).

Immediately after the 9/11 attack, Condoleezza Rice lied to the First Responders that it was safe to breathe in the toxic dust around the WTC causing hundreds to since die (http://rt.com/Top_News/2009-08-24/nyc-firemen.html) and ruining the health of thousands more.

How is that different from premeditated murder?

At the Kent State University in May 1970 National Guardsmen murdered four anti-war protestors.

In 1914, National Guardsmen murdered 20 people including children in a premeditated attack on a camp of striking miners in Ludlow Colorado (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_massacre).

In 1962, the US Joint Chiefs of staff planned to launch terrorist attacks including assassinations on mainland US and hijackings (whether real or staged) in Operation Northwoods, but were overruled by President Kennedy.

In the 1960's four of the most effective, charismatic and incorruptible leaders in US history -- JFK, Malcolm X, MLK and RFK -- were almost certainly murdered by Intelligence Agencies and the US military. In the case of MLK, as I wrote earlier, a jury in a civil trial in 1999 found that the US army, including sniper teams, had participated in a conspiracy to murder Martin Luther King.

So, I would suggest there is abundant evidence that US political and military leaders are capable of deliberately killing their own citizens.

(tobecontinued)