Weapons of mass destruction? And then came new Big Lies to support the earlier Big Lies: that we were "winning" the war on terror. How many times were we reassured that all those lives and all those dollars were not being pissed away for nothing? How many times were we reassured that we were rebuilding the countries that hadn't needed rebuilding until we attacked them? How many times were we told of the miraculous training of the Iraqi and Afghan armies? They even invented a new word that I never learned in the classes I took in military history at West Point, a word to describe the magic bullet that was going to win both wars: the surge.
If only we sent 10, or 20, or 30, or 50, more troops, we could win the mythical war on terror. The army of Iraq just went away. The "surge," each and every one of them, was a lie. The Afghan army was a lie. It didn't even bother surrendering to the Taliban. It just went … poof. The Afghan "government" was a lie. It too went poof. The Iraqi government is a lie. Everything we have done to win the war on terror for two decades, 20 long years, has been a lie. We wasted trillions of dollars that could have been spent to, I don't know, feed hungry children in Arkansas?
Pay for health care for poor families? Send kids to college? Reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and save our planet? The biggest Big Lie of them all was that it had meaning, that we accomplished something, that we somehow won the war on terror. This building - containing offices of the CIA, the Department of Defense, and the Office of Emergency Management - collapsed hours after the Twin Towers without being hit by a plane or directly targeted.
But in , a three-year investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded it had collapsed because of intense and uncontrolled fires - lasting for nearly seven hours - started by debris from the fall of the nearby North Tower. But in , the Plasco tower in the Iranian capital, Tehran, became the second.
The fact the collapse of 7 World Trade Center was announced in a live report by BBC News correspondent Jane Stanley - while it was still visibly standing behind her - has been cited by conspiracy theorists as evidence major media organisations were part of the inside-job plot.
The Reuters news agency had mistakenly reported the collapse of the building, which was also picked up by CNN, just before the live report. Some online conspiracy theories suggest US missiles were fired at the Pentagon, as part of a government plot, and the hole left in the building was too small to have been caused by a passenger plane.
But a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers told Popular Mechanics magazine the size and shape of the hole was due to one wing of the Boeing hitting the ground and the other being severed on impact with the building. Meanwhile, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers tried to take control of the plane from the hijackers.
Online theories claim it was shot down by a white business jet flying into a nearby airport. But these were in her letters and this is what I sent to her.
So I sent it to her because it was hard for her to imagine but not that hard because she had lived, she grew up in Holland which was an occupied country, and in an odd way my parents, more than any of my friends or anyone else I knew, actually understood what I felt like that day. Billy: So she made these little Post-it notes showing different things. They get much more sort of somber after that. What would your inclination be now? If at first it was they were fake.
What would you say now? So question 1: who is in the photo? Austin Sansone. Is the photo real? So that brings us to the question 3: why did they take the picture? Billy: You told me that this was one of your earliest memories.
Can you tell me about that? What do you remember about the photo itself? I remember the context leading up to it, essentially. It was the first day of pre-K, or nursery school, for me. I was sitting in our living room. Austin: It was Dragon Tales. I remember Cyberchase was a favorite in kindergarten onwards.
Susan: So anyway, it was his first day of pre-K and they phase the children in. Dragon Tales dialoge plays "I wish, I wish with all my heart to fly with dragons". Austin: I remember my mother running over and grabbing the clicker and being immediately furious that my television for the morning was being canceled. What can you tell us about the situation? Austin: I remember her switching to the news and I remember the building on the television and then her telling me I had to get my shoes on.
Sean Murtagh: I can see flames now coming out the side of the building and smoke continues to billow. Billy: So you were able to see it on television, right then.
Susan: Yes. It came back and there is that decision of whether to watch it or not on television that every parent probably had to make that day, and I turned it off, went outside, grabbed my camera…. Went outside to see what it was. Only responding vehicles are coming in, and it seems really big. Bigger than usual. And honestly until you got out there, it was kind of hard to just really see it to be honest. Or voyeuristic, or something? Regina: Exactly.
And it was like there was this rush and then people thought it was over. There were all kinds of sirens. It was terrible, but it seemed like the worst was over and people would be saved and everyone had been told to leave and people are walking. You can see in the first photo people are walking.
Some of them are carrying folders. Like a horrible, horrible fire drill. Austin: Which is something that was, I think, always questioned by people online — is the fact that no one was running. We were probably 11, 12 blocks north of the towers at the time? Maybe more. Susan: It was odd, because people were fairly calm there was, it was odd. No question. There was a sort of lull after it happened — people trying to collect their thoughts, figure out what was going on.
Susan: We started to head back and I took another picture here. Television: A huge explosion now raining debris on all of us. We better get out of the way! Billy: They decided to leave and they took a photo as they were crossing the median and she has the time stamp on it and two minutes later is when the towers collapsed. Susan: Anyway, we had to go, of course, back inside to see it on TV. Do you guys have any guesses for this one, by the way?
John: He looks like a pretty happy kid with these bright yellow binoculars. Billy: Yeah, and also I think it was very personal. But again, they just felt too strange to her. Susan: There was a call for photographs afterwards and there was a gallery in SoHo, they were looking for interesting photographs. It just seemed opportunistic. Billy: She was just kind of worried about exploiting the situation. She obviously knows the power an image can have, working in film, and that was too much the process.
Billy: Well interesting you ask. That runs into the Pentagon? Before the internet, conspiracy theorists relied on books, pamphlets and the occasional late night television show to espouse their beliefs. Now, they can swap theories on message boards like Reddit, post videos on YouTube, and win over new converts on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
Thousands of videos focus on conspiracy theories. False claims about the attacks often come up at the National Sept. Such instances are an opportunity to talk about the facts of what did happen, and the many investigations that followed, according to Megan Jones, senior director of educational programs at the memorial.
Bogus claims about the Sept.
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