On 9/11, WTC 7 was brought down by a controlled demolition.

I would like the audience to take note how many claims my opponent brings up during his opening statement after I asked him to limit them to three. Not to mention how he try's to poison the well right off the bat with his attempt to discredit NIST. First of all I don't need to reference the NIST report in this debate since like you said the report for WTC7 has not been released yet. I should not be wasting the audiences time defending John Goss' statement since it is off topic. However I will point out that I see no problem with his quote "I haven't seen any evidence of molten steel, at the towers". Seems factual to me. Have you seen the evidence? If so provide it. If you are using the "evidence" in the video then I will address those: a) Molten material dripping from the tower - Could be and is most likely aluminum. b)Equipment claw carrying red hot material - If this was molten how could it be picked up? The temperature needed to cause the steel to glow red is much less than what it takes to make it molten. c)Firefighters saying that they saw molten steel - This could be molten aluminum, have you or any other "9/11 researcher" asked them if they can tell the difference by just looking at it? Also, since they witnessed this do they have questions as to the cause of the collapses? Are they shocked that the temperatures could have been hot enough to melt steel? Given this I see no problem with Goss' quote. Also the speaker in that video says "theres video of it", where is this video of molten steel at ground zero? < > Are you asking for an incomplete investigation? If it were released in 2004 I wonder if you would have claimed that it was rushed. If you would like an explanation for the length of the investigation read number 14 here - http://wtc.nist.gov... Claim #1 < > < > No controlled demolition expert uses the term "pull it" do describe a building implosion. The only context that "pull" is used is when demolishing smaller buildings, where construction crews attach long cables to pre-weaken a structure with bulldozers etc. The fact that you think Silverstein admitted to ordering the demolition of WTC7 on national television is laughable. A multi-million dollar insurance scam is foiled by Mr. Silverstein making a slip of the tongue. Here is a clarification by his spokesperson: "In the afternoon of September 11, Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Center. The Commander told Mr. Silverstein that there were several firefighters in the building working to contain the fires. Mr. Silverstein expressed his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building." Here is a quote from one of those firefighters: "They told us to get out of there because they were worried about 7 World Trade Center, which is right behind it, coming down.... I just remember it was tremendous, tremendous fires going on. Finally they pulled us out...They pulled us out of there and then they regrouped everybody on Vesey Street, between the water and West Street." - Richard Banaciski And some more quotes describing the severity of 7 and the evacuation order. "I ordered the evacuation of an area sufficient around to protect our members, so we had to give up some rescue operations that were going on at the time and back the people away far enough so that if 7 World Trade did collapse, we [wouldn't] lose any more people." - Chief Daniel Nigro "there was concern that 7 World Trade Center might have been both impacted by the collapsing tower and had several fires in it and there was a concern that it might collapse." - Chief Cruthers "So we go there and on the north and east side of 7 it didn't look like there was any damage at all, but then you looked on the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors. Debris was falling down on the building and it didn't look good..... eventually they pulled back too. Then we received an order from Fellini, we're going to make a move on 7. That was the first time really my stomach tightened up because the building didn't look good....Then this other officer I'm standing next to said, that building doesn't look straight. So I'm standing there. I'm looking at the building. It didn't look right, but, well, we'll go in, we'll see...... We headed toward 7. And just around we were about a hundred yards away and Butch Brandies came running up. He said forget it, nobody's going into 7, there's creaking, there are noises coming out of there, so we just stopped." - Captain Chris Boyle < > Non sequitur. Claim #2< > Did he? Give me a source. He did however sign a 99-year lease on the entire WTC complex 6 weeks before. What you might be interested to know is that he was forced to take a $3.5 billion insurance policy to get this done. He originally only wanted to insure it for $1.5 billion but his lenders would not go lower than 3.5. I think your confusion is that he wanted $7.1 billion in insurance claims after 9/11 because he tried to argue that the attacks were two separate occurrences which should pay $3.5b each. Claim #3< > I will agree that the north wall took 7 seconds to collapse but the entire building took anywhere between 13 - 18 seconds. If you are watching misleading videos like this - http://www.youtube.com... I could see how you might think its only 7 seconds. However if you watch a video that includes the entire collapse - http://www.youtube.com... it is at least 13 seconds. <> No, the Windsor building was not made out of the same materials. Reinforced concrete was used in the core and under the 17th floor. The part that was similar to WTC7 was the steel around the core and upper floors past the 17th floor. It just so happens that that part of the building collapsed in 2 and a half hours. I think this example helps my side of the argument tremendously. I don't have to prove that the building fell due to structural damage and the subsequent fires that resulted. The theory of controlled demolition has no merit. Alternate explanation should always be considered, however when there is no supporting evidence for them they should be scrapped. There are no signs of a controlled demolition at WTC7. No loud explosions which are heard in any building implosion, the building did not fall neatly into a pile as my opponent might have you believe, and there were no evidence of explosives found at the scene after the collapse. With all of this considered you would also ask yourself, if you are a critical thinking person: "what would the motive be for destroying building 7"? I'll ask my opponent to respond to my rebuttals rather than bringing up new claims. He can either concede that I am correct or refute me on each point.