An American Airlines 757 jetliner supposedly crashed into the outer ring of the Pentagon, boring a fuselage-size hole between the first and second floor. The wings reportedly folded inward, and vanished along with the rest of the plane inside the building, except for a bit of crumpled tail allegedly found on the lawn. The outer wall collapsed within an hour.
Such a scenario requires 2.8 gigajoules of kinetic energy, plus the energy released by the jet fuel fire.
I wanted to show you one of two photos by Dan Lopez, which shows light poles and a highway sign intact in front of the impact area. Because the plane was said by the government to be flying at first-floor level, those poles should have been clipped had the plane traveled "through" the viewpoint of the camera.
Lopez's photos aren't easy to reproduce. You can see one at Steve Warran's
site. I tried to transfer from his blogspot site, but no go. http://stevenwarran.blogspot.com/2008/09/91-photographers-working-at-pentagon-on.html
By the way, Warran compiled a very useful group of photographers who had taken pictures of the Pentagon 9/11 site. Unfortunately, a number of links to the photographs have been disabled. And, I was unable to reproduce official
U.S. military photos that had been released to the general public.
In order to deal with the intact poles, it appears that the government settled on a flight path that brings the jetliner in at a sharp angle to the exterior wall. So the jet crashed through that wall and struck an interior wall structure running from front to rear.
If you'll look at the photos below, you'll see that the partition wall is gone and floors are shown. Some office equipment and a few other items show. But no entangled jetliner gear is hanging from the structure.
So I suppose we'll have to assume that the aircraft virtually vaporized. But even so, that would simply have converted more energy into explosive blast energy. So one would expect that the mangled mass of debris ricocheting off one wall and perhaps two would have, aside from blowing a hole in the first ring's back wall, shot ejecta out the windows, including the ring's rear windows.
Some debris is shown on the front lawn, including the suspicious bit of tail. So we would expect more debris to have blown through the rear windows, having much more momentum in that direction.
[Also, the partition wall that is missing isn't likely to have contained the mass of the incoming jetliner and simply dropped later. Debris should have sprayed into those floors shown exposed in the photo below. Possibly the plane approached from the opposite angle -- though I think not -- but no jet debris at all on those floors remains implausible.]
However, if you'll look at the photos below, you can see part of the exterior wall of the next ring -- and it shows no blast scarring, no gouges. The window pane frames are fine. One of the photos shows a dark area that might be taken for scorch marks, until you notice a similar dark area in front of the building. These appear to be artefacts of the lighting.
I realize that the Pentagon structure was reinforced, but it is unlikely that such a collision didn't eject debris through the first ring's back windows that sprayed onto the second ring's outer wall.
Now there were military photographers taking pictures from helicopters soon
after the impact, and some were approved for release to the public by Pentagon officials. Among those apparently withheld are those that give good views of the courtyard between the struck ring and the next one over. I've seen a photo of a man standing on the roof of that ring looking toward the damage area. That's exactly the viewpoint that military photographers would have used during their documenting and forensic work.
So we don't get to see the debris pattern in the courtyard. Was it asymmetrical, in accord with a ricocheting mass?
And we don't get to see the remainder of the second ring wall glimpsed from across the Pentagon lawn. Is the unseen part scarred with blast damage and scorch marks?
Also, quite a few other relevant photos are still being withheld, including numerous shots of the inside of the building. A few "interior" photos were released at the Moussoui trial, but they are of a type that could have been taken anywhere. And despite the images of burned corpses, these images aren't necessarily of jetliner passenger remains.
The photographic evidence, what there is of it, appears to point to a small missile, a Predator-style drone or a planted bomb.
I have only touched on some obvious points here. There are many more problems with the government story.
