Resolved: The Government Was behind the 9/11 attacks

Thank you for clarifying your position.I would like to start the debate by challenging my opponent's proposal of what I need to prove to win the debate.My opponent wants me to prove that the US Government doe not have a motive to fake the attacks and that the US Government is not willing to harm its own citizens or to fake a terrorist attack on the US.These points have nothing to do with the question of weather or not the US Government was behind the 9/11 attacks.Even if the US Government or individuals within the US Government might have had a motive or might have been willing to fake an attack, it does not mean that it actually did. There are thousands if not millions of people in the US who might have had an interest in an attack happening, from stockholders of defense-companies to real estate investors. This of course does not mean they were responsible for the attacks. My opponent opens the debate by arguing that the Twin Towers could not have collapsed the way reported in the NIST report, and goes on speculating on how the structural integrity of the towers which got hit by two planes, weighing some 18,000 pounds each, carrying an estimated 18,000 gallons of fuel and flying at a speed of over 500 Mph could have not been compromised.All of these point make absolutely no sense and show my opponent's lack of basic understanding of the laws of physics and of structural engineering. Arguments such as "as the steel sags two things will happen: the columns, as they shorten, will become wider,which is obvious; and the inherent strength of the steel will increase, which is not obvious" are just plain wrong and apparently the intellectual property of somebody who lacks the rudimentary skills to properly analyze the impact of the planes on a complex structure such as the World Trade Center.My opponent also just copied and pasted most of his talking points from the "journalof911studies.com", which apart from being an unreliable source, is bad conduct, as we are supposed to articulate our own lines of argumentation.All of those conspiracy theories have been closely scrutinized and debunked in the past. There is no doubt whatsoever that the damage inflicted to the towers was enough to cause their collapse. [1]It is also interesting to notice, that the second tower to get hit was the first one to fall, because the second plane hit the tower at a lower point that the first, which caused bigger structural damages.My opponent speculates on a variety of things but clearly fails to provide an alternative for what caused the towers to fall, because if it wasn't the two big planes filled with fuel and flying at 500 Mph it must have been something else, and in his last point argues that "all observations are in accord with the use of explosives in a timed sequence".Now the idea that the collapse of the Towers has been caused by a controlled demolition has been a favorite hypothesis of conspiracy theorist for years. It has of course been debunked as well, but the interesting fact is that a controlled demolition actually looks nothing like the collapse of the twin towers. http://www.youtube.com...Most of the times when the conspiracy theorists show a video of a controlled demolition, they take the sound out because the amount of noise that the explosions create, as heard in the video I posted, have not been heard during the collapse of the twin towers. So as long as there is no evidence that the US government created a new type of dynamite that explodes silently, this argument remains a myth.By examining the footage of the controlled demolition further, it is also clear to see that while in the controlled demolition the base of the building is the first one to fall, followed by the top, in the case of the Twin Towers the top of the buildings collapsed first, and dragged the rest of the structure to the ground.In his next point my opponent went on speculating about the reasons that the US government might have had in organizing the attacks and mentions the Patriot Act.Even though I am against the Patriot Act and wish that the 112th Congress would repealed it a few weeks ago, arguing that the Patriot Act was the reason why the US Government attacked itself is ridiculous. The PAtriot Act was a consequence of the attacks, not a cause.Furthermore, Dick Cheney, who was Vice President during the attacks, did indeed make money at Halliburton, however he left the company years before 9/11 and Halliburton was not the only company that ended up working as a contractor in Iraq.By this logic, every Executive of a company that got a contract in Iraq following the US led invasion might have had something to do with 9/11 because they gained from it. It makes a nice conspiracy theory, but it is a bad argument.My opponent also speculates that the motive to attack Iraq was '18 trillion dollars of oil, oil that we get for a cheaper price than the rest of the world. There's a reason why our cars are smaller than those in Europe, because oil costs less in America!"Apart the fact that even after the war Iraqi oil is still Iraqi oil and that we are actually not taking it from them for free, oil is bought on the international market. Buying oil in the US is NOT cheaper than buying it in Germany, Switzerland, Thailand or China.The difference is the price of Gasoline, mostly because European countries have high taxes, in some cases around 70% on gasoline, while the US has just a standard sales tax.My opponent has shown no new, credible, not-already-debunked argument in favor of his conspiracy theory and has shown a lack of understanding of several subjects that are relevant to this debate, including basic physics and geo-politics.None of the sources he cited are credible and some documents don't even support his theory but are just posted because their content has not been clearly understood by my opponent and other conspiracy theorists. [1]http://www.popularmechanics.com...