9/11 was an inside job and the official 9/11 Commission Report does not explain what really happened

A. Warnings My opponent makes the case for me: "It became such a rich threat environment" - the fact of the matter is that the United States receives so many threats they have to prioritize to determine which ones are ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE. As I showed in the previous round, none of the intelligence they received was of high enough quality to constitute using valuable resources. Simply because someone made a mistake does NOT indicate that 9/11 was an inside job. B. Hijackers. My opponent's source claims the following men are alive. This is simply false. Waleed M. Alshehri - Mistaken Identity (Waleed A. Alshehri is a living Saudi airline pilot) Wail M. Alshehri - Saudi misinformation (A man with the same name was reported to the LA times. Wail's father states that he has been missing since about 10 months before 9/11). Abdulaziz Alomari - Mistaken Identity (Abdul Rahman Alomari is a Saudi pilot. Another Abdul Aziz Alomari is a Saudi student). Mohand Alshehri - Saudi misinformation (They gave the same information for Mohand, Mohald, Mohamd, and Mohammed Alsheri). Salem Alhazmi - Mistaken Identity (Salem I.A. Alhazmi owns a petrochemical complex in Saudi Arabia). Saeed Alghamdi - Mistaken Identity (Saeed Al-Ghamdi is a living Saudi airline pilot). Ahmed Alnami - Mistaken Identity (Ahmed Al-Nam (not Ahmed ABDULLAH) is a living supervisor with Saudi Airlines). Details on all these dead people available here: http://www.911myths.com... C. Bin Laden With confessions of those who PLANNED the attack stating that Bin Laden was involved, the status of the tape is irrelevant, as it could have come from an imposter, yet still be correct concerning Bin Laden's involvement. However, the two points my opponent raises about the tape - that it shows a "fat" Bin Laden, gold rings, and that he writes with the wrong hand. The video is in black and white - therefore, the identification of the rings as gold (which Muslims don't wear) instead of silver (which they DO) is impossible. Furthermore, if you watch the movie "The Paladin of Jihad" on Osama Bin Laden, you will see him writing with his right hand (http://video.google.com...). Oh - and the "fat" bin Laden?? Again - PLEASE do elementary research. The location of the world where the video was shot uses PAL format (576 lines). The West uses NTSC format (480 lines). So when the PAL bin Laden is squashed into NTSC format, he appears fatter. If you revert the NTSC images to PAL, the individual looks.... exactly like bin Laden. D. Pentagon I'll handle the sand issue first since it's the easiest... it's very common to spread sand and gravel down before moving heavy equipment like the kind used to clear debris and reconstruct the Pentagon. You also ask about the sliver green and red paint - well red is out since it's an AA color... but the interior of the plane would have paint of many different colors. I'd be surprised to not find paints of other colors than red and silver. Ok - lets do some critical thinking. What happens to an airframe when it runs into a reinforced concrete wall? It shatters - as evidenced by this video of an F-14 (far sturdier than a 757) hitting a concrete wall (http://whatreallyhappened.com...). As noted in that video, and as common sense would suggest, the majority of the damage came from the dense portions of the aircraft like the engines and cockpit module. So after the airframe shattered, you have the dense parts of the airplane and a bunch of fuel crash into the building, causing the explosion we see, and the roughly airframe+wing shaped hole clearly visible in this picture (http://911research.wtc7.net...). And the no debris on the lawn? Perhaps you haven't seen this photo with thousands of pieces of the shattered airframe ALL OVER the lawn: (http://www.911myths.com...). E. Shanksville My opponent asserts that there is no similarity in the crash sites to other plane crashes. This is simply false. AA Flight 585 (Boeing 737-200) crash in 1991 (http://netdet.ninjasquad.org...) AA Flight 93 (Boeing 757-222) crash in 2001 (http://netdet.ninjasquad.org...) Looks REALLY similar to me. F. WTC 1, 2, 7 My opponent offers no argument here, yet complains about the title "conspiracy nut" as though it has anything to do with the incoherence of his claims. He then punts to his previous argument, despite the fact that I have already refuted the pancake argument for 1 & 2 WTC, and provided a perfectly reasonable explanation of WTC7's collapse. G. NORAD The fact that NORAD was engaged in war games that it has run EVERY YEAR in no way indicates that 9/11 was an inside job. Furthermore, the 9/11 Commission Report indicates that "According to General Eberhart, "it took about 30 seconds" to make the adjustment to the real-world situation" due to the fact that there were extra personnel on station paying extra attention to the war game. The NORAD timeline still shows a response time of 12 mins - a fact my opponent didn't dispute. 12 mins from notice of a threat to jets in the air sounds pretty fast to me. H. 9/11 Commission Yes indeed, grab your stopwatches and go watch as many videos that start BEFORE the penthouse collapse as you wish. All the photos in my opponent's link show the collapse ALREADY UNDER WAY. The penthouse is symmetrical - look in all the photos and you will see an asymmetrical penthouse. The collapse began in the left penthouse. This video is not of the entire collapse, but from the time the penthouse begins to fall to the end of the video is about 12 seconds (http://www.youtube.com...) !!! The list of questions does NOT come from the victims' families - it comes from the Family Steering Committee... which only has 12 members, according to their "Members" page on their website. So where did these questions really come from? The 3000+ families that lost someone, or these 12 people?? Let's think about that... I'm sure there is an equal number of respected and academic people that believe the 9/11 commission. Your ad populum fallacy is inadmissible here. Besides - people collect lists of respected people that believe stupid things, like Young Earth Creationism - nobody collects lists of people that believe the truth about an issue. I. Terrorism. I'm still confused by my opponent's argument here. He basically asserts that since false flag operations exist, this must be one of them. Surely even the most plebeian reader can see the error in that position. This is still a red herring argument - it's completely irrelevant.