Fun with Flash
Valued-reader Sven writes:
Hey John-
I found this well made flash video that I’m not sure what to make of. I suppose it’s easily filed in the “looney conspiracy theory” category, but I was wondering what you thought of this:
My take is this: Cecil Adams said the following in his response to a question about Area 51:
For years the military didn’t acknowledge the existence of the Groom Lake facility, and even now it speaks only vaguely of “testing … technologies and systems” there. This of course made Area 51 the perfect place for UFO buffs to store hypothetical alien spacecraft.
I think there’s something similar at work here. The fact that this happened at the Pentagon meant that there was more than the usual degree of government secrecy about what took place. Given the resulting large areas of terra incognita on our perceptual map, it was inevitable that people would fill those areas with monsters.
Yeah, I think it’s completely possible that the reality of Flight 77 is completely different from the government storyline. Similarly, I think it’s completely possible that a US fighter plane shot down Flight 93, even as the heroic passengers aboard it were struggling with the terrorists. Possible, but not likely.
But the world is filled with unlikely things that nevertheless turn out to be true. Is this story one of them? I really don’t know, and don’t expect I ever will. But I applaud the impulse that leads people to question the conventional wisdom. Even when it makes them sound like raving nutjobs.
Completely coincidentally (or is it a coincidence???), valued commenter Tom Buckner just contributed a link to yet another wacky piece of Flash: The terrible secret of space. Apparently it’s been around forever, but I never saw it before.
At first I thought it was merely kind of odd, if fun, but about halfway through I suddenly got what was going on, at which point I became much more impressed.
September 5th, 2004 at 6:19 pm
Thank you for your compliment. Funny, I just saw the Pentagon piece just the other night. I think some of the most innovative stuff going right now is Flash animation being made on home computers by punks who will never make a dime from it. Terrible Secret of Space is pretty intense. Funny, hah, hah, shiver.
I can’t parse the Pentagon story. I have read a Pentagon witness saying he smelled jet fuel there, NOT explosives. But the animation has some remarkable points. Why have we not seen other camera views if they exist? Why is the lawn undamaged? If we are to believe the plane hit just above the ground level, why have we seen no obvious wreckage such as wheels or engines?
The delay of an hour before interception by fighter aircraft is very, very fishy. Intercepts were common before. When Bush friend and champion golfer Payne Stewart’s plane lost cabin pressure and flew off course filled with dead people, it was met and followed for quite a while by fighter jets.
This is something I have given thought before. Five years ago I wrote a book similar to Checkpoint, in which a 9-11 sort of attack is attempted against a political convention filled with crypto-fascists. It’s called Blues For Robots, and I’m trying to convert it to PDF and turn it loose on the web (or put it on a website, if I find a good host). I got the idea from looking at the hole that 747 made in Lockerbie. It’s a big crater, like a football field.
This possibility was known long before that. Did you know that a liberal Dem from Philly tried to jack a jet and fly it into the White House during Watergate? He lost a gunfight on the ground, never got into the air. It was Page One news for a single day, then was knocked into the memory hole by the Saturday Night Massacre.
Oh, almost forgot the point of the story: in my book, the guy takes a plane out of LAX intending to turn it around and go after a building in the same city so that air defense only has about five minutes to respond. I never DREAMED an attacker would have the luxury of an hour without getting intercepted. I was trying to write a believable story. Who the hell would believe an hour of flying time while the F-16s sat idle and the President read a book about a pet goat?
September 6th, 2004 at 7:56 am
Here is an easy answer for you, I saw this flash a while back and asked many about it as well. First ask yourself this, have you ever camped and thrown an aluminum can in the fire? What happened to that can did it withstand the heat, or did it simply burn away? You answer should be there was no can when we were done with the fire. That would be the un-educated mans explanation to what happened to all that plane. Also here is a good source on what happened to that plane, and note that these people have pictures of plane wreckage on the lawn….yet the people who made the flash with such incredible pictures just somehow missed these with the plane parts there on the lawn?? =\
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/pentagon.htm
September 6th, 2004 at 1:30 pm
Thanks Patrick. The flash video of the pentagon raised more questions than it did answers, and your link provided those. It’s much easier for my brain to process that a hijacked plan crashed into the pentagon than anything else.
I enjoyed “the Terrible Secret of Space” as well, which I interpreted as a sad commentary on our current political climate. Thanks.
September 14th, 2004 at 11:37 am
I do believe most of this stuff but only one thing. I’ve heard from other people that BUSH blew up that part of the building his self so he can attack Iraq… but is there any evidence that there was any death at that time? Like really that would be a smart plane for him… but that’s what I think and probably thousands of more.
Also I think that Iraq shot a missle that was “hidden” says Bush at the Pentagon… what do you think about these ideas?