Are You Intellectually Retarded If You Believe The Bush Administration's Version Of The 9/11 Attacks

Pro is now contesting the definition of retard that I provided in round 1. His protests are meaningless; however, since he did not have any qualms with it in round two. His real problem is that the resolution is so easily defeated. He attempts to fall back on a figurative interpretation of "intellectually retarded", but this should have been stated in round 1 or round 2. His attempts change the resolution have failed.Defense of my Arguments1. Actually what someone believes never makes them retarded. Retarded is a medical term used to describe someone that is mentally handicapped. The widespread medical stance is that an IQ below 79 is considered mentally handicapped. Since mine is above 79, I am not mentally handicapped/retarded.Straight A's and B's in a non special ed class are virtually impossible for a mentally handicapped person. The fact that I'm not in special education classes also attest to the fact that I am not mentally handicapped.Debating in this manner on this site, requires at least average cognitive faculties, which I am demonstrating right now. I'm also not sure which doctor told you that not understanding the laws of physics makes someone mentally handicapped, but it's not true."YOU ARE USING A FALSE CLINICAL DEFINITION OF MENTAL RETARDATION, WHEREAS I CLEARLY USED THE TERM "INTELLECTUAL RETARD" FIGURATIVELY TO EXPRESS THE STUPIDITY IT TAKES TO BELIEVE SUCH NONSENSE. PLEASE LEARN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FIGURATIVE AND LITERAL SPEECH."My opponent did not protest the definition given in round two, and never stated that the resolution should be taken as figurative, so this can be ignored.My opponent accuses me of straw manning him by defining "retard" as mentally handicapped. It is a fair definition that comes from Oxford English Dictionaries and he never protested it in round 2.My opponent's problems with the definition of retard are much to late to be taken seriously. Clearly he realized he was not in a winning situation and has attempted to shift the goalposts. Unfortunately I gave a fair definition in round 1 that Pro did not protest in round 2. He never claimed the resolution was "figurative" in his rules, so it was fair to interpret the definition as literal.9/11 CommissionMy opponent claims the 9/11 commission contradicts itself and the timeline but gives no actual evidence.The Air Defense Stand Down Theory is easily refuted."On 9/11 there were only 14 fighter jets on alert in the contiguous 48 states. No computer network or alarm automatically alerted the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) of missing planes. "They [civilian Air Traffic Control, or ATC] had to pick up the phone and literally dial us," says Maj. Douglas Martin, public affairs officer for NORAD. Boston Center, one of 22 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regional ATC facilities, called NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) three times: at 8:37 am EST to inform NEADS that Flight 11 was hijacked; at 9:21 am to inform the agency, mistakenly, that Flight 11 was headed for Washington (the plane had hit the North Tower 35 minutes earlier); and at 9:41 am to (erroneously) identify Delta Air Lines Flight 1989 from Boston as a possible hijacking. The New York ATC called NEADS at 9:03 am to report that United Flight 175 had been hijacked"the same time the plane slammed into the South Tower. Within minutes of that first call from Boston Center, NEADS scrambled two F-15s from Otis Air Force Base in Falmouth, Mass., and three F-16s from Langley Air National Guard Base in Hampton, Va. None of the fighters got anywhere near the pirated planes. Why couldn't ATC find the hijacked flights? When the hijackers turned off the planes' transponders, which broadcast identifying signals, ATC had to search 4500 identical radar blips crisscrossing some of the country's busiest air corridors. And NORAD's sophisticated radar? It ringed the continent, looking outward for threats, not inward. "It was like a doughnut," Martin says. "There was no coverage in the middle." Pre-9/11, flights originating in the States were not seen as threats and NORAD wasn't prepared to track them." [1]No stand down order was given by Cheney.FBI's PENTTBOM InvestigationHere is the full quote- "The hijackers also apparently left no paper trail. In our investigation, we have not yet uncovered a single piece of paper "" either here in the U.S. or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere "" that mentioned any aspect of the September 11th plot. As best we can determine, the actual hijackers had no computers, no laptops, no storage media of any kind. They used hundreds of different pay phones and cell phones, often with prepaid calling cards that are extremely difficult to trace. And they made sure that all the money sent to them to fund their attacks was wired in small amounts to avoid detection." [2] This was in 2002. They have actually found an evidence about the plot by now [3][4][5]. Another problem with this theory is how ridiculously easy it would have been for any people involved in the "conspiracy" to make fake documents. This theory is absurd. My opponent continues to make unsupported claims with an enormous lack of evidence. My opponent claims there is a "mountain of evidence" but has failed to produce it. My opponent tries to claim mechanics and engineers are all conspiracy theorists which is a blatant lie." The reports from government investigations " the 9/11 Commission Report (which incorporated intelligence information from the earlier FBI investigation (PENTTBOM) and the Joint Inquiry of 2002), and the studies into building performance carried out by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Investigations by non-government organizations that support the accepted account " such as those by the National Fire Protection Association, and by scientists of Purdue University and NorthWestern University. Articles supporting these facts and theories appearing in magazines such as Popular Mechanics, The Scientific American, and Time. Similar articles in news media throughout the world, including The Times of India, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the BBC Le Monde, Deutsche Welle, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), and The Chosen Ilbo of South Korea. U.S. President Barack Obama's June 2009 speech to the Muslim world where he said "I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: al-Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day." These sources concluded that al-Qaeda crashed United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 11 into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and crashed American Airlines Flight 97 into the Pentagon. The impact and resulting fires caused the collapse of the Twin Towers and the destruction and damage of other buildings in the World Trade Center complex. The Pentagon was severely damaged by the impact of the airliner and the resulting fire. The hijackers also crashed a fourth plane into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after the passengers and flight crew attempted to regain control of the aircraft." [6]"The hosts of "The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe" (the "SGU") have spoken repeatedly about the absurdity of 9/11 conspiracy theories. In addition to critiquing the theories using the same or similar arguments as the above, the "SGU" hosts say that, like most conspiracy theories, this one collapses under its own weight and contradicts itself. In order for the 9/11 conspiracy theories to be correct, the U.S. government would not only have to orchestrate the claimed false flag operation regarding the airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center, but they would also have to orchestrate a superfluous controlled demolition and cover their tracks so flawlessly that it becomes indistinguishable to physicists from the "official story," yet the plan would have to be flawed enough so that "losers in their mothers' basement" will discover the conspiracy."[6]"Michael Shermer, writing in Scientific American, said: "The mistaken belief that a handful of unexplained anomalies can undermine a well-established theory lies at the heart of all conspiratorial thinking. All the evidence for a 9/11 conspiracy falls under the rubric of this fallacy. Such notions are easily refuted by noting that scientific theories are not built on single facts alone but on a convergence of evidence assembled from multiple lines of inquiry."[6]To make baseless accusations like this one is to trivialize one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the USA, and it is not only wrong, but downright disgraceful. The resolution has been defeated in multiple ways, all of them sufficient by themselves. The only way to vote is Con. [1] http://www.popularmechanics.com...[2] http://www.fbi.gov...[3] http://www.9-11commission.gov...[4] http://news.bbc.co.uk...[5] http://en.wikipedia.org...[6] http://en.wikipedia.org...