Andrea Fry
Ms. Cox
Argumentative Essay
8 November 2018
9/11 Conspiracy Debunked
The terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11th, 2001 definitely spark controversy and have been the subject of a variety of different conspiracy theories. The conspiracy theories range from the attacks being caused by George Bush to them never even happening. Events that transpired on that very day resulted in 2,753 Americans losing their lives. Even those who were not in The Pentagon or The Twin Towers when they were attacked or near the attempted White House attacks were affected by the disastrous events. Millions of people were in mourning due to the loss of friends and family members and of course there were countless individuals who suffered from post-traumatic shock syndrome and other various mental illnesses that had developed due to the fact that they had witnessed the most horrifying thing fathomable and lost so many collogues. The people of the United States were in complete and udder shock and their world was turned upside down. Their homes and jobs no longer were safe and familiar, people had to constantly worry about not only their lives but also the lives of their loved ones. Children had to start going through terrifying drills at school due to the fear that the schools would be where the next attack would take place. There are groups people that believe that the acts of 9/11 were carried out by the United States government and not the terrorists which is absolutely not true. The thought that the entity created to protect our nation and the people in it would be the cause of such tragedy is absolutely absurd. The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, were most certainly carried out by Osama Bin Laden and a group of Al Queda terrorists. According to CNN, on December 13, 2001 Osama Bin Laden even directly released a video claiming responsibility for the attacks on the Pentagon, the Twin Towers, and the attempted attack on the White House.
Thousands of different media and news outlets such as; CNN, ABC News, The Atlantic, etc. While some conspiracy theorists say that these news outlets were paid off by the government to provide the public with false information, that is simply not true. Through millions of eyewitness testimonies and several different angles of footage captured of the attack, we can conclude that the information being given out to the public regarding the terrorist attacks on 9/11 was indeed accurate. With such a massive amount of people being directly affected by such a catastrophic event, it would be impossible for anyone to be able to pull off such a large-scale scheme. It is impossible to refute the millions of testimonies given by bystanders that were on the streets of New York City during the attack. For that large of a number of people to all have the same story unless it was the truth, would be highly improbable. Most government schemes result in having someone leak secret information to the public, like Edward Snowden for example. The fact that the event took place over seventeen years ago and no government official or discerned government employee has said anything to the effect of 9/11 being an “inside job” further shows that this theory is not only ridiculous, but also highly inaccurate.
People making the conspiracy claims, also tend to direct their thoughts towards George Bush as the person to blame for the events and that it was his fault. This is highly inaccurate. During the terrorist attacks, George Bush was reading to a group of children at Emma E. Booker elementary school. The school was all the way in Sarasota, Florida, making it impossible for him to directly have any effect on the events that took place that day. Looking at photos of George Bush when he first found out about the attack, you can see the complete look of despair. His face was as red as Santa’s hat from trying to hold back tears, the lines in his forehead creased deeper than the Arkansas river with worry, and the tears welling up in his eyes to imagine the tragedy that just took place on our homeland. He was just as shaken up as the millions of Americans that had just found out this heart wrenching news. Millions of Americans still have that empty pit in their stomach as they think about the thousands of lost lives from that day. Millions of people are affected every day by this event. People missed out on so many moments with their loved ones because their loved ones died in this disaster. Imagine how many children were paralyzed with fear as they were told to get under their desks at school and had to face the reality that there was a large chance they would never see their mother, father, aunt, uncle, and whomever again. The feeling that their stomach was in knots and tears streaming down their face, feeling hopeless and lost. That feeling of freight and uncertainty is still carried with a vast amount of people because we never know when another terrifying event like this will take place. The crushing weight of that anxiety haunts millions across the country every day. When those negative feelings are so strong, you can’t hide them even if you tried. That is how we know that George Bush was not a ring leader for these terroristic attacks. The complete and udder sense of gloom waving not only the people of America but also of our leader at the time. One would have to be a complete monster to have anything to do with these attacks and from the emotion written clear as day across his face, you can tell he didn’t know anything about it.
There is another theory that conspiracy theorists would argue is that the hijackers were simply “fall guys” for this operation and that they were specifically chosen to feed off of xenophobia of the American people. They also might go on to try and claim that the hijackers were simply a victim of circumstance which is inaccurate. The hijackers involved in the attacks on September 11th, had obtained a visa to attend a flight school in Arizona, where according to F.A.I.R., they later moved on to schools in California and North Virginia. They went through all the trouble of filing legally for all of their visas to ensure that they would have enough time to plan everything and to draw the least amount of suspicion possible. Attending the flight school, gave the hijackers adequate time to plan such a large terrorist attack. Planning an event that large and to be able to attack both the Pentagon and the Twin Towers in the same day, would take an immense amount of time. They had three entire years to plan while in the United States which, was sufficient for them to plan the event down to the last detail. According to ABC News, there was an FBI informant at their last flight school. This informant had already relayed massages back to the FBI headquarters about his suspicions of the students’ terroristic intentions long before the terrorist attacks had commenced.
The way that the Twin Towers came crashing down to the ground is often a key topic of a variety of different conspiracies. People claim that the Towers fell down in a manner that lines up with the ways that a controlled demolition expert would go about destroying the buildings. They claim that the towers falling in a diagonal manner is evidence of this theory. However, the building only fell at an angle because the papers and files inside of the buildings had been ignited and therefore burned down the flooring on the inside of the buildings and half of the building had ignited first making it fall at a slightly quicker rate.
Conspiracy theorists would then go on to claim that “jet fuel doesn’t melt steel beams” and that the molten metal from the beams was a result of thermite. While it may be true that jet fuel does not melt steel beams, it is not actually the jet fuel that caused the steel beams to be destroyed. There were thousands of pounds of lumber used in the creation of the Twin Towers as well as, millions of documents stored throughout the buildings. The combustion caused by the jet fuel caused these documents and materials to be engulfed in flames, being a key contributor to the explosion in the terrorist attacks. According to the University of Michigan’s Environment, Health, and Safety department, steel is not a combustible metal. That proves that the jet fuel’s effect on the steel beams didn’t cause them to break however, the combustion resulting from the jet fuel in combination with the sparks from the collision and the countless materials did. Thermite was not the cause of the molten metal present in the rubble after the destruction either, that was also a result of the combustion of mass amounts of paperwork. The combustion also resulted in a variety of different debris flying outwards towards near-by buildings and the people in surrounding areas. This was yet another way that the combustion of the Twin Towers, resulting from the collision of the planes mixed with the combustion of the papers endangered the lives of not only those in the building but also those in the surrounding areas. According to BBC News, the Twin Towers had completely crashed to the ground in only ten seconds. From a physics perspective, in order for the Twin Towers to collapse at such a high velocity, there would have to be a lack of flooring between the levels of the building. The fact that the flooring of the building was gone, farther proves that the levels would have had to be burned down from all of the paperwork being ignited in the towers.
Theorists then go on to attempt to claim that there was never any actual evidence of the planes hitting the towers. Which can completely be disregarded, due to the immense amount of both footage and photographs of the Twin Towers being attacked by the planes that the hijackers flew into the buildings. There are also photographs of the planes’ parts that were broken off and the remaining plane frames in the rubble where the towers had fallen and surrounding areas where they landed, that had been shared on every news outlet in the United States of America from CNN to ABC and many more. The planes that were reported missing from the flight school that the hijackers had been attending to give themselves more planning time had indeed been the planes identified in the wreckage. It is impossible to refute the enormous amounts of evidence piled up in front explicitly of our faces and it not only ties both the hijackers that attended the flight school to the scene of the crime but also proves where the planes had come from and that they were indeed used to harm thousands of innocent people in an act of terrorism against this county and the people in it.
Due to the debunking of all of these conspiracy theories, we can conclude that the events that took place on September 11, 2001 are indeed a result of nothing more than a terroristic effort against The United States of America and the people that it holds. The conspiracy theories about the events that transpired on 9/11 are nothing more that, theories and they hold no actual merit in this case. These horrific events were carried out by Osama Bin Laden and his followers in a terrorist organization called Al Qaeda. The events of this day have and will impact many different generations of people all across the country and even beyond our borders. Even those abroad, were haunted by the tragedy that they had been shown that happened here and could have very well been in their homes at any given time. The memory of those who were lost on that day will live on in the hearts of each and every person in this country and at the ground zero memorial. The people of the United States will never forget the gut wrenching feeling they had on that day and carry through the rest of their lives. We see the affect it still has on every single person in this country, in the memorial for the people whose lives were lost at ground zero. Every day, millions of people visit the memorial and everyone you see, even children are quiet. They stand there with a haunted look in their eyes and tears streaming down their face. Reflecting on the horror that the victims were in, only moments before their demise. The only sound in the room being the last voicemails the victims sent their families and the 911 calls that had been made to report the incident, their voices fearful and trembling. Their voices cracking ever so slightly, as their tears forced them to gasp for breath. The voices of people who knew they might not be able to see their loved ones again and that their child might grow up without a parent, just calling to say “I love you” one last time. The sheer terror rings through their voice in those last moments, the weight of it all feeling like it was to last for an enternity. The haunting feelings of those affected by this horrific event echo throughout the room. For a lot of people, that voicemail is the only memory they have left. That fearful message completely overpowering all of the happier memories they previously had, like a tsunami washing over their brain. Knowing that their loved one was in such an awful and terrifying situation and knowing that there was nothing you could have said or done that would ever have the power to change the situation but, wanting so very desperately to try to help in any way possible. You can’t go to the memorial and not feel touched by the chilling messages and hearing their feelings of hope dwindling. You will forever carry their haunting words with you and it will impact you no matter who you are and what you are going though in your life. When you leave, you carry a piece of these people with you and I don’t think you will ever lose that. Those haunting messages will forever be engraved in your mind and their memory will be in your heart. You will leave knowing how the tragedy that took place on September 11, 2001 effects each and every person’s life, even if you did not think very much about it before. We now honor those who lost their lives or their family members and friends on September 11, through Patriot Day. Many people use this day to either go to the memorial and remember those lost or simply take a moment of silence to reflect on the horrific incident. The emotional side of the tragedy is what truly makes us understand that this was no “inside job”, this was the work of people who pledged their lives to hating America and everyone in it. This was work of terrorists who knew that they wanted the people of the United States of America to be hurt both physically and emotionally as well as, suffer in their remaining hours and had no regrets or feelings of remorse in regard to their actions.