IX / XI

IX / XI, Part III: Rudy Redux

9/11, or IX / XI as our imperial Roman forebears would have it, is the most fertile ground for conspiracy theory in American history. 9/11 is the four dimensional chess to the JFK assassination's tic-tac-toe.

The phrase "conspiracy theory" has assumed a largely negative connotation in our discourse, but it is the most fitting verbiage imaginable for 9/11, even if one is predisposed to believe every element of the government's version of events.

Why? Because even if the official story is true, it is the story of a massive conspiracy orchestrated by men in caves, men in European universities, men in American flights schools, and men in our government who were apparently too stupid to realize they were facilitating the evildoers' desgins. Men like Rudy Giuliani. America's mayor. Thank God he isn't litterally America's mayor, because if he was, America would be fucked.

Those who feel that the massive, transnational conspiracy that was 9/11 was carried out by conspirators other than those named by our government focus on many inconsistencies in the official version of events. Among these points of interest, two stand out especially.

Firstly, the idea that a terrorist, with pilots' bodies at his feet and with their blood on the controls of their comandeered jumbo jet could fly that plane at 500 miles an hour a few dozen feet off the ground into a six-story building is simply unbelievable. Photographs of the Pentagon after the "plane crash" show a small hole, a pristine lawn, and intact automobiles ringing the building. This is an issue of common sense, perhaps best covered in another blog.

The second issue, and the one that relates to Rudy Giuliani, is this: before 9/11, no steel-framed building had ever collapsed due to a fire. Ever. That day, it happened three times. Detaching yourself from the emotions of that day, what do you think are the odds of that happening?

There are many who feel that the WTC towers were imploded. They point to the speed of the collapses, which occured at near free-fall speed, as if there were nothing holding them up. They point to multiple reports of suviving firemen and reporters of explosions at the base of the buildings. They point to the seismic shocks registered of the Richter scale immediately before the collapses. They point to the other steel structures that have survived hotter, larger fires for longer periods of time.

Despite all of these intriguing questions, however, we can always attibute the collapses to the unprecedented violence visited upon those buildings. Fair enough. The problem, however, is WTC 7, the third building to collapse that day. This was the first steel building to ever collapse due to fire that had not first been struck by an airplane. It fell even quicker and neater than the towers. Why?

Prior to looking into Giuliani's actions prior to 9/11, I felt that the collapse of WTC 7 was the ultimate wrench in the gears of the official story. This was the one element that had never been adequately explained. I still feel that it is possible that that building was intentionally imploded. However, I also now know that Rudy Giuliani was so incompetent that he actually may have been responsible for rewriting the history of structural engineering.

During the 1990's, Giuliani decided to build his emergency response headquarters in WTC 7. The primary crises he foresaw were nature-related; the possibility of a terrorist attack was not referenced as a rationale for the center. Obviously, Giuliani wasn't thinking about terrorism, because if he was, he probably wouldn't have ordered his emergency response center to be built inside the biggest terrorist target in the United States. Right?

Why was Giuliani leading from the street on 9/11, giving oral orders and using runners and local media to communicate? Partly because the man undoubtedly has balls. But more to the point, it was because his multi-million dollar command center was in the shadow of the crumbling towers. That's right, and it bears repeating, Rudy Giuliani acutally built his emergency response center at the World Trade Center.

Not only did he put his headquarters in the only complex which had already been attacked by Islamist terrorist who vowed to return, he also set up shop in an area where the fire codes of New York City did not apply. The city's fire code says that no fuel tank larger than 275 gallons can be placed above ground. Giuliani ordered a 6,000 gallon tank installed above ground in his command center.

So, not only did he put his headquarters in the place most likely to be attacked, he knowingly ordered it to be filled with fuel reserves in a manner that would never have been allowed anywhere in New York City (The WTC was under the jurisdiction of the Port Authority, allowing for the loophole).

These were public buildings, with tens thousands of civilians filtering in and out daily. And Rudy Giuliani made a bomb out of them. The towers themselves were also exempt from city fire codes. Hundreds died behind locked doors and in elevators on 9/11. Had the codes been met, those doors and elevators could have been automatically opened from the ground.

This is relevant because Giuliani is running for president on a platform of, you guessed it, competence and foresight. He is only in such a position because of his conduct on 9/11. Therefore, that conduct needs to be seen for what it was. This man ignored the threat, even though the first WTC attack in '93 should have served as a wake-up call. He was so oblivious that he put all his emergency eggs in the one basket most likely to be blown up. He then filled that basket with thousands of gallons of fuel, exploiting a fire safety loophole and increasing the number of dead on 9/11.

That's right, more people died on 9/11 than needed too because of Rudy Giuliani. So while the collapse of WTC 7, as well as the towers, still seem very suspicious, they must be seen in the light of an inconceivable incompetence, an incompetence so profound that it may have altered the laws of physics.

Those buildings collapsed because Rudy Giuliani allowed them to avoid fire codes even after they had been bombed and because Rudy Giuliani filled them with fuel tanks for his emergency response center which was rendered unusable seconds into the emergency. For all the confusion over how those buildings could have collapsed, a look at Giuliani's decision making makes me feel that he might as well have imploded those buildings himself. In a way, he did.

Rudy Giuliani is to be commended for not running for his life on 9/11. The commendation must end there.