Did guilty party know the towers would fall?

218Beekeep

Well,did they know the towers would crumble the way they did?Or did it just work out to be even better(for them) than they expected? From what I understand,bin Laden comes from a family,who`s fortune is from the construction industry!

ysacres

on TV today they said the Bin Laden family had an insurance policy on the twins. Anybody else catch that.??

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Ruger-Remington-RULE THE ROOST

admin

Actually, European and US investigators think he sold short on the stock of a reinsurance company that had reinsured an insurance company that was an insurer of the the towers. The short selling was done only a few days before the attach. For those unfamiliar with short selling, it is basically placing a bet that a stock will decline in value. You borrow shares from your broker, sell them at the current market value, and then pay the broker back by purchasing shares at some point in the future when the share price drops. It will be interesting to see how this investigation turns out. If he did substantial short-selling that would be pretty strong evidence of his personal involvement in the attacks.[This message has been edited by admin (edited 09-16-2001).]

DaRoosta

From what I heard, and it makes sense, that the construction of the towers was built with the major support structure on the outside walls. That's how they were able to build so high; they were built so they could lean up to 2-degrees without crumbling or toppling. The planes broke that outside support structure and it basically made it implode. All that extra jet fuel didn't help, either. Once the top stories started to fall inward and downward, it was kind of a domino effect with the stories below it. Too much weight coming straight down from the top. As far as Bin Ladin knowing about the construction of the building, I don't have a clue. They're saying they had been planning it for years, so my guess is they had a good idea about the construction of all the buildings they were targetting. Crashing a 767 into anything is going to do some damage. Tragic.

stanman

Of course they knew!An incredible amount of technical expertise went into this operation.Anyone care to speculate about the number of Arab students attending our best engineering schools??

DaRoosta

It doesn't hurt that Osama Bin Laden's brother, from what I hear, is one of the major financial contributors to Harvard. I doubt that will be the case after all this shakes out.

njretcop

I honestly feel that they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams...sadly

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Guns don't kill people, it's the bullets.. stupidI am the NRA, the KABA, the 2ampd..njretcop@copmail.com[This message has been edited by njretcop (edited 09-16-2001).]

Rembrandt

I don't think they expected the towers to collapse. The Arab world is scared....Arafat knows he won't be able to get any releif funds for the Palestinians for years to come after this. The rest of the Arab world has now been marked as "Terrorists", and will be for the next 20 years. This will affect their business interests and image in the world community for years to come. Arabs in my community won't come out of their homes and are laying low. One gal that works with my wife is terrified to come to work. The Arab world has two choices, either turn over the terrorists to us and save their bacon from our wrath, or piss off the extreme radicals in their own country and face their internal wrath....which do they have more to loose?

TLynn

They most likely knew that the towers would collapse.Look at it this way - both planes were full of fuel having been in the air for not much more than an hour and scheduled to fly clear across our country. So we're talking roughly 10,000 lbs of fuel for the one aircraft that hit the 1st tower and 13,000 to 14,000 lbs of fuel on the plane that hit the second tower.In accidents (though I know this was not an accident) planes that shear off their wings and break their fuel supply open to oxygen usually go up in a ball of fire so they definitely knew that would be the most likely result.Next massive quantities of that fuel would most likely of gone down the elevator shafts - in fact it's almost a given - thus creating more fire since it was most likely ignited by that time.Those buildings withstood the massive hit they took which they were designed to do but steel can and does become jelly or liquified at extreme high temperatures. At that point the structure started to collapse down upon itself. And as each of the higher stories collapsed it brought too much weight to bear on the floor below it which in turn collapsed. Thus we got the implosion.They knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what would happen - they just didn't realize that the buildings were so well built that it would take that long to make them come down.Damn straight they're scared and I sure hope they stay scared right up until the time they die at the hands of this nation.

Rembrandt

Hind sight is always more informative. The reason I don't believe they knew the towers would collapse is the same reason the fire fighters and Police didn't think so either...why else would they all park the fire fighting equipment that close endangering all the rescue workers. All the fire fighters I know receive training in structual and building design. If they had suspected this might happen they would have kept a wider distance. Structual engineers had reinforced the buildings following the previous bomb attack. I'm not sure the engineering community has ever researched the effects of a fire this larger on buildings this high. If they had that information, it would have been known to the fire fighters....especially in NY where they are trained to fight high rise fires. No doubt building codes will be reviewed.

TLynn

Rembrandt, what I wrote before was a condensed version from a structural engineer who explained it quite well on another board in several posts.Steel cannot withstand massive heat - no metal is designed to do so. All the structural part that holds it up is on the outside corners - the 2nd plane clipped a corner which is why it went first if I recall (it was more weakened). Once you start having weight fall on the floor below you reach a point where it's not going to hold that weight - it can't because it wasn't designed to. Therefore each floor collapsing on the floor below it compounds the problem and since by this point the steel structure is already weakened because of the intense heat it just finally all goes.Now maybe the structural engineers didn't realize this (probably because they didn't consider a huge plane hitting their towers or the intense fires that would result) but I have no doubt the military engineers knew for a fact what would happen.All it would take is for someone to have asked the question what if? for anyone to figure out this scenario. What if's are used in all militaries even terrorist type.

Josey1

In the original attack on the WTC in 1993 that POS Yousef (the guy we sentenced to 240 years for actually doing the bombing)told the FBI that he planned to topple one tower into the other,destroying both

steve45

According to the archetect the towers were designed to take a hit by a 707. But I doubt that they expected the plane to be accelerated into the target and fully loaded with fuel. Archetect said they hit them in the weakest place, the middle. The second tower struck went down first because it was hit closer to the middle than the first. Im sure the terrorists expected the towers to come down with the truck bomb last time so Id say the terrorists used the biggest planes they could get and hoped for the best, which turned out to be the worst for us.

jltrent

I believe I heard on the news that some of the highjackers were trained in this country recently in Structural Engineering. Probably there was as least one section dealing with what goes up must come down when dealing with the laws of gravity when the top part of gravitational pull is more than what the bottom will sustain. I sure do feel for those poor people that were in there and all the firefighters and police officers who went into those building to do their jobs and then have them to fall on them. I guess they thought what happen wouldn't or couldn't happen. Surely they have had training in this though.

in2b8u

Yes they knew! Remember when they tried to blow it up from the bottom? They figured out that you have to get above the super structure to do the damage. In reality you would have a very hard time building a bomb that big. Why not attack form above with a bomb that you dont have to build, just steal.

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If guns cause crime, all mine are defective.