We all know what it is. It's when you've got a vast quantity of information and choose just one or two items from that vast quantity to make a point that's usually extremely misguided. Here are some examples:

- Someone films an entire documentary about 9/11 and the events of that day. At one point, some dude mentions that he wants to "pull" WTC 7. The rest of the documentary be damned, this is the only thing that matters!

- A report is written about the outdated technology of the military and how the infrastructure needs to be revamped. One sentence in this lengthy report says that a change could come about more quickly if there were some sort of "new pearl harbor" event. The rest of the report be damned, this sentence is all that matters!

- Rumsfeld gives a speech about the terrible accounting practices at the Pentagon. At one point, he points out that over the last couple decades, up to 2.3 billion dollars haven't been accounted for. For some really stupid reason, people think that he stole all of it in one year when the Pentagon's budget was 1/10th that amount, but nevertheless, it is taken out of context. The rest of the speech be damned, this is all that matters!

- A Pentagon eyewitness says he saw something that he would describe as a "cruise missile with wings". People neglect to mention that what he said was "I saw an AMERICAN AIRLINES JET, it was like a cruise missile with wings". But that pesky first part of the quote isn't important, is it?

- Page 56 of the 9/11 Commission Report says something strange. Therefore, the entire report is a bunch of baloney. Come on, try and tell me with a straight face that you haven't made an argument like that before.

- A firefighter mentions two pockets of fire on a particular level. At no point does he ever say or imply that these are the only fires in the building, and research shows that the floor he mentions (the 78th floor, I believe) is actually a few floors below the impact point and well below where the primary fires were burning. Nevertheless, the quote is taken out of context and elevated to "this is the only fire in the building" status.

This is just a small sample of the cherrypicking and general dishonesty practiced by members of the truth movement. Does anyone want to step up and apologize for any one of these?

IMO it's a 567 page waste of time.

The money trail was deemed insignificant. The funding of the deaths of 3,000 Americans is insignificant says it all.

It was 2.3 TRILLION dollars and it was announced on september 10th 2001, 1 day before the attacks, there was no more convenient a time to bury bad news than september 10th.

1 trillion = 1000 billion, you've underscored it by a factor of 1000, some later reports are putting the figure at around 7 trillion. nobody with any intelligence is claiming "rumsfeld stole it".

Dov Zakheim was Pentagon Comptroller from Feburary 2001 to May 2004 in charge of managing the pentagons money.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_pden...105/ai_20380725

Dov Zakheim CEO of a company System Planning Corporation (SPC) 1987-2001. SPC manufactures electronic devices for planes called Flight Termination Systems (FTS) designed to electronically take remote control of around 20 planes simultaneously from the ground and fly them anywhere required, the system has a range of some hundreds of miles, capable of electronically hijacking the hijackers.
http://www.sysplan.com/Radar/FTS
http://www.sysplan.com/Radar/CTS

Tridata Corporation (a subsidiary of Dov's System Planning Corporation) oversaw the investigation of the 1993 wtc bombing of the wtc which would have given System planning Corporation access to wtc blueprints and security information.
http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/downloads/pdf/publ.../tr-076-508.pdf

Dov Zakheim, dual israeli/us citizen and a signatory to the PNAC document Rebuilding Americas defences which mentions a "new pearl harbour" in order to double defence spending and implement an imperial agenda and take control of the middle east.

Dov Zakheim moved from the pentagon to become vice president for Booz Allen Hamilton
http://www.boozallen.com/home
Booz Allen Hamilton is a client of the Blessed Relief Foundation. In October 2001, the US treasury department named Blessed Relief as a front for providing funds to Bin Laden.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1610214.stm

the pentagons civilian accountancy team "Resource Services Washington" would have access to budget records of the missing trillions, the team and its offices took a direct hit from flight 77 in a largely unoccupied pentagon wedge which had just had rennovations works completed.

"A month or two earlier, though, Resource Services Washington had moved across the outer e-ring, from Corridor Six to Corridor Four of the Pentagon. "I thought they were still in Corridor Seven and Six," she said. "I knew it had hit in Corridor Four, but I didn't know they had moved."
http://www.al.com/news/huntsvilletimes/ind...ll=1&thispage=2

"One Army office in the Pentagon lost 34 of its 65 employees in the attack. Most of those killed in the office, called Resource Services Washington, were civilian accountants, bookkeepers and budget analysts. They were at their desks when American Airlines Flight 77 struck the building."
http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011216pentagonp4.asp

move along, nothing to see.

What do you think Rumsfeld meant in his speech and do you think over 2 trillion dollars was stolen from the Department of the Defense?

you are correct he accidently put in billion instead of trillion.


Do you think the death of 35 accountants in the Pentagon would stop the search into 2 trillion dollars missing? Do you think all of the accounting records all also disappeared in the pentagon?

Hey, you know what's an even better way to "bury the bad news"?

DON'T EVEN BRING IT UP!!!!!!!!!!

But that's just it - in addition to being evil genuises, the government leaders are also bumbling idiots.

Is this like saying WTC7 was demolished to destroy evidence of illegal financial activity?

The practice of cherry picking has evolved into such a standard operating procedure that it is now the norm rather than the exception.

Since everybody does it, nobody is guilty.

It does not shift the prictice into being "right" or moral, but it makes it acceptable.

In the context of 9/11 Commission, the contortion of logic to fit the "truther" argument on many fronts is borderline disgusting.

Each and every time I see someone attempt to make the argument that the four hi-jacked aircraft are not the four aircraft that crashed that day, it burys the entire movement just a bit further.

Debunkers never cherry pick. :rolleyes:

I think the point is that debunkers don't need to cherrypick to present their case. Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, are ONLY presented with cherry-picked statements and evidence. :)

Ahhhh but that's why the latest theory have them as bumbling idiots who are pawns being used by the REAL perps.

http://z10.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_F...post&p=14603909

Let's face it, it doesn't matter how easily you debunk one silly claim there'll always be someone detached from reality and with enough time on their hands to dream up an even sillier claim to take it's place.

Um, what else in that documentary matters and why? That isn't "cherrypicking", that is seperating what is relevent from what is not.

Who says the rest of the report be damned? That sounds like a strawman on your part, not cherrypicking on our part.

The rest of the speech is largely irrelevent but here, it is YOU that is "cherrypicking" . People don't simply site Rumseld. Another strawman.

This applies to pretty much NO ONE that I associate with. Seems like you are cherrypicking here...

What?

I don't know anyone who states those were the only fires in the building. If they do, that is silly. The point is the fires were containable.

Nope. Seems to me you are just cherrypicking and creating strawmen. :)

we don't blame "the government" and you know it.

you skeptics simply refuse to believe that insiders in our government are linked to insiders (very intimately) of other governments and organizations, such as Al-Qieda.

We blame this association of leaders and intelligence agencies, not "the government".

so you would like a 500 page book about how the conspiracy was carried out? I could name a dozen of them.

i concur

I would settle for a single post of 500 words or less with a summary of how the conspiracy was carried out.


To address the cherry-picking issue:

Name a few key facts which, in your belief, support the conspiracy theory.

Roxdog you say

No the point is that two particular isolated pockets of fire were containable but this qoute is used all of the time to insinuate the entire fire was small and you know it is used this way

you are "reverse cherry-picking" since you fail to notify the reader that there are no contradictory statements made in the 9/11 oral histories given by the firefighters... there aren't any statements saying "There were two isolated pockets of fire on 78, but on 80 there is a raging inferno"...

no mention of a raging inferno, whatsoever.


oh, and jakeb, I believe that 8bit gave you more than 500 words on his theory, which is absolutely undebunkable. But please do try.

"Raging inferno" is a subjective description. The fact is, the building was on fire.

What we know from photos/videos is that there were large fires burning in both towers up until the moment they collapsed. We don't need a firefighter to point those out for us.

Isolated pockets of fire on one floor do not negate the video evidence of the fires on other floors.

nor does it confirm fires greater with a rating higher than "isolated pockets" on any other floors...

the assumptions of the "skeptic" are usually slanted to one side... as demonstrated above.

you are so obviously jakeb... I don't care what you say.

Are we now debating whether the building was on fire?

One would conclude from the smoke that it was.

Another shovel full of dirt gets thrown on the "truther" argument with every post a "truther" makes.

Lets review what is still in question to some people:

Question: Whether planes hit the buildings or not?

Answer: Video evidence confirms that they did. Including the Pentagon. Whether the surveilance video reveals a plane or not, the fireball is precisely what was witnessed in New York thus eliminating the silly notion of it being a missile that struck the Pentagon on the September morning.

Question: Whether the buildings were demolished by controlled demolition?

Answer: No. Fact: Wiring a building for controlled demolition would require tons of explosives, precisely placed on the building's skeleton. Keep in mind the building's skeleton is not exposed in the case of the world trade center and other office buildings. Placing the charges would have required sawing through walls, flooring, pipes, conduit, and ceiling panels. None of this could be done out of sight of employees or visitors. The wiring alone running the span of 110 stories would be obvious as it ran cascading down to the lower floors.

Question: Whether the buildings were on fire?

Answer: Please tell me you aren't asking such a dumb question.

Question: Was Flight 93 shot down?

Answer: We don't know and perhaps will never know. Cockpit recordings suggest otherwise. None of the phone calls mentioned approaching jets which would almost assuredly get a visual before firing their ordinance. It could have been a SAM operation however there aren't many SAM batteries roving around the Amish country nowadays. No visual of SAMs being launched from the ground were reported but that doesn't mean anything. Additionally, if SAMs were deployed or jets were scrambled, it would seem as though the monied assets would be protected prior to the Pennsylvania countryside.

Question: Were the phone calls faked?

Answer: No. Of all of the "truther" arguments, this is the one that is simultaneously digusting as well as flat out dis-tasteful. If the other arguments pour shovel fulls of dirt upon the the goal of the "truthers", this argument drops a front end loader of dirt atop the argument. To take the argument apart piece by piece, lets first consider why the phone calls would be faked. What possible purpose could it serve? Absolutely none. The alleged conspirators did not need voice confirmation of middle-eastern men hi-jacking the planes since there was ample airport/passport footage. The persons who appear to be hi-jackers were on watch lists so it would be a very small jump between them being on the list and them being on the planes and the planes being hi-jacked. Secondly, the array of phone call recepients indicate that there was no logical pre-thought given to whom the calls would be placed. We have operators, mothers, wives, husbands, airline supervisory people. Surely there would be a well placed call by one of the many military veterans to one of their confidants with a cold forensic analysis of the enemies spelling out what they had, what they were doing. Thirdly, they would have reported viscous actions beyond belief by men who were destined to die and could care less about their captors/passengers/hostages. Lastly, the fact that the phone calls exist show that they were not faked. Since there was no upside to the conspirators to have them...it would stand to reason to most that they should not exist. Easily, given cell phones and the air phones being cockpit controlled, it would be easy to have no phone calls at all. Since there were obviously no survivors to lodge protests, it didn't matter what happened on the flights.

Question: How could you have melted metal since fuel doesn't burn that hot?

Answer: It depends on the metal. It is seldom brought up that beneath the buildings were several automobiles if the 1993 bombings were any indication. Cars are most usually made from alloys and have any number of acids and chemicals inside their engines. If (and it's a big "if") fuel ran down the shafts to the basement, you have fires burning next to cars who have gas tanks, alloy bodies, and any number of hundreds of different combinations of metals in the basement aside from the structural steel. It is a very small jump in logic to think that any of these could melt if heated to the proper temperature.

All of the "truther" arguments listed above are easily disproven. Disproven not by endless links to YouTube videos, anti-truther sites (and there are plenty), or using previous posts by other attendants as proof but it is simply disproven by soberly looking at the data. For example: Missiles do not carry much fuel normally so the thousands of cubic feet of fireball in Virginia easily dyspel the mythic missile. The fuel they do carry is no where near the volume of the 10,000 gallons present in New York...so the fireball tells the tale in this case. Besides, if a plane didn't bring down the light poles, what did?

What isn't disproven is how a passport lands in tact on the ground given the awesome fireball above. What isn't disproven is how 4 jets can fly around the interior of the world's greatest military super power unimpeded and nobody lose their job. If the "truthers" would stick to the obvious problems presented by these facts and demand answers about these things, they would get some traction. Debating whether buildings are burning when there is 1,000 feet of smoke trialing off from them is flat out stupid and I think, in the heart of the jerk who posted it, they realize it. Or at least I hope they do.

There was no "reverse cherry picking" . I have never claimed that quote meant there were or were not bigger fires on other floors. The point here is that quote is used by the truth movement to imply something that it clearly does not imply.

Were there any firefighters who made it to the higher floors to report on the status of the fires above?

Palmer made it to 78 six minutes before the collapse, but I'm not aware of anyone making it to a higher floor. He made it to 78 and found numerous people dead and seriously injured, plus a couple of fires, so I think that explains why he didn't make it higher.

And probably explains why there are no reports of the intensity of the fire burning above him.
Just because no firefighters made it higher does not prove or disprove if the fire above were much more than a couple of isolated pockets.
I would like to see interviews with the firefighters in charge of organizing the effort that day and see how many of them would claim the fires were anything other than severe.
I doubt if you will find Dr Griffin , the guys from Loose Change or any of the other big players in the truth movement using their time or money to do that.

I love you guys with your "cherry picking" as if the entire MSM and our beloved government have not been doing that from the start.

You see all we have to do is prove that only one of the events most likely didn't happen the way we have been told. I think we have done that. Now we have to get past the MSM so the average person will become will to look at this stuff and make up their own minds without being bombarded with insults.