Thank God we're not Russia

"Allen" wrote in message news:JwoXc.6420$k%

That must have been a heck of an explosion if it was seen by witnesses on
television networks worldwide!

Cute!

By the logic in this thread, the FAA should not have admitted that there was
evidence of airplanes hitting the Pentagon and the WTC towers on 9/11 until
they investigated it themselves, because they didn't have physical evidence
that the events had happened.
I mean, all we knew on 9/11 was that four airliners had disappeared and,
well, eyewitnesses and media sources that reported it live are unreliable
for investigation purposes.

So I hope you all didn't watch CNN on 9/11 and believe your eyes.
Otherwise, you'd be jumping the conclusions like I'm being accused of doing.
-c

"Corky Scott" wrote in message

An additional data point: to date, no terrorist organization has
claimed responsibility for the crashes. It would be extremely unusual
for a terrorist group to have managed to bring about this very
difficult feat of downing two airliners nearly simultaneously, and not
claim to have done so.

It would be extremely unusual for it to be anything but terrorism in the
first place, but I agree with you. Do you know offhand how long it took
before anybody claimed the Lockerbie explosion?

I figure we're only days away from the conspiracy theories. The
Russians/Americans/Aliens shot 'em down, etc. BTW, ABCNews has an updated
article: http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040826_890.html

-c

gatt wrote:

Either that, or the value of multiple human eye witnesses in Russia (and
this forum, apparently) means nothing.

Witnesses are a terribly unreliable source of information. Many of the
quotes that made it into the newspapers for a local mid-air were in
complete disagreement with (1) the wreckage and (2) the RADAR "tape".

There was the lack of evidence of any fire combined with reports of "flaming
planes falling from the sky", the rather boring track of each aircraft on
RADAR as combined with "pilots fooling around at tree-top level", and so
on.

- Andrew

gatt wrote:


I disgree. Eyewitnesses are exactly how each and every one of us
understands
9/11. Was your viewing of the planes crashing into the WTCs "worthless"?
Unless you saw it happen yourself (in which case your opinion would be
"worthless") the imagery you think of when you think of the WTC attacks is
based on eyewitnesses.

If it were only witnesses that reported those attacks, we'd not believe in
the attacks. Think this through for a moment, and you'll see the
reasoning. Consider if there were no physical evidence...

It's the same as several witnesses reporting a crash in the Hudson a while
back. The witnesses all saw pretty much the same thing, and there was no
"connection" between the witnesses.

Yet they were all wrong. It was a flight checking on migratory birds, or
some such thing, and they'd flown rather low past the GW bridge. No crash.
No problem at all, in fact.

No evidence of problem either; just some witnesses.

- Andrew

"gatt" wrote in message
...

"Allen" wrote in message news:JwoXc.6420$k%

That must have been a heck of an explosion if it was seen by witnesses
on
television networks worldwide!

Cute!

By the logic in this thread, the FAA should not have admitted that there
was
evidence of airplanes hitting the Pentagon and the WTC towers on 9/11
until
they investigated it themselves, because they didn't have physical
evidence
that the events had happened.
I mean, all we knew on 9/11 was that four airliners had disappeared and,
well, eyewitnesses and media sources that reported it live are unreliable
for investigation purposes.

So I hope you all didn't watch CNN on 9/11 and believe your eyes.
Otherwise, you'd be jumping the conclusions like I'm being accused of
doing.
-c

Shortly after 9/11 (November 12th) there was another airliner crash on
departure, American Airlines Flight 587. A lot of witnesses saw explosions
on that flight also but it was the vertical stab that had failed from pilot
inputs to the rudder.

"Andrew Gideon" wrote in message

Witnesses are a terribly unreliable source of information. Many of the
quotes that made it into the newspapers for a local mid-air were in
complete disagreement ...

In that case, then, we should have disbelieved the attacks of 9/11 until the
NTSB investigation reports came out. I mean...how did we even know the
planes crashed at all until the government investigators told us it was
acceptable to think such a thing?

At some point you have to start trusting witnesses in terms of EVIDENCE, at
least, if not as fact.
-c

"Andrew Gideon" wrote in message

It's the same as several witnesses reporting a crash in the Hudson a while
back. The witnesses all saw pretty much the same thing, and there was no
"connection" between the witnesses.
.... No evidence of problem either; just some witnesses.

Well, in that case there's no point in believing the Russian jets crashed at
all. The investigation results aren't complete so at the notion that the
airplanes crashed is all hypothetical and speculative.

I mean, how do we know it just wasn't two flocks of birds?
No..wait...swamp gas. Meteorites! Yeah, that's it. Can't speculate though
until the Russian government -- the same folks that brought you the Kursk
submarine fiasco, which might just a rumor too as far as we should be
concerned since we only heard about it on the media -- says otherwise.

So two UFOs were seen crashing in Russia this week and two jetliners are
missing. Better wait until the investigation results to confirm that it
wasn't migratory birds.

-c

On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 12:52:26 -0700, "gatt"
wrote:

In that case, then, we should have disbelieved the attacks of 9/11 until the
NTSB investigation reports came out. I mean...how did we even know the
planes crashed at all until the government investigators told us it was
acceptable to think such a thing?

K'mon Gatt, you're getting to be kind of out there with this line. No
one is claiming there were no crashes, they're just saying wait a bit
for the evidence that the crashes were due to explosions. They got
the flight data recorders, perhaps there will be evidence enough from
them to tell.

As to the WTC, again k'mon. You know as well as everyone else that
the eye witness reports were backed up by extraordinary video footage
of the airplanes smacking into the buildings and exploding in a huge
fireball. Within hours the CIA and FBI had leads on the hijackers.

Three buildings hit, four airliners down, all flights within the US
grounded within hours... there's no comparison to what happened in
Russia. It may well be that terrorists managed to plant bombs in the
airliners and blow them up in flight. But aside from "witnesses"
there is no other evidence yet to say that. Be patient, there's no
reason for it not to come out.

Corky Scott

Corky Scott wrote:

They got
the flight data recorders, perhaps there will be evidence enough from
them to tell.

NPR news this afternoon stated that the recorders contained nothing to indicate the
cause of the crashes. That seems awful fast work to me, though -- it usually takes
months for the NTSB to complete work with all the recorders of a typical airliner
crash. Perhaps they were referring to only the cockpit data recorders.

Yury? Do you know how many recorders the Tupolevs usually have?

George Patterson
If you want to know God's opinion of money, just look at the people
he gives it to.

"gatt" wrote in message ...
"Ace Pilot" wrote in message

Aren't you a journalist, gatt?

Where's my rec.aviation.piloting paycheck?

So, you can't apply your knowledge of journalism unless you get paid
for it??? Wow. I truly hope the same rules don't apply to your
recreational flying...

where the reporter reports the facts instead of jumping to conclusions and
actually gives
investigators the time needed to investigate all the possibilities.

The facts are witnesses reported explosions and the Russian officials say
there's no evidence of explosions.

Actually, the facts pertaining to the article you quoted are that the
media reported witnesses heard explosions, as well as other events -
reported by the media. There was nothing in the news article
indicating what FSB officials had found out at that point, or were
even aware of, other than two aircraft had crashed. Are you suggesting
that FSB officials should just take media reports at face value
without independent confirmation?