9/11 by Madeleine Fougerousse

On September 11, 2001 2,996 people were killed in the terrorist attacks against America “9/11 death statistics”. The Twin Towers, Pentagon, World Trade Center and all the people inside those buildings felt the wrath of the Islamic terrorists that calm Tuesday morning. Such a worldwide terror caused some conspiracies to arise:

1.      Did President Bush have a hand in what happened?

2.      Did Al-Qaeda high jack the airplanes?

3.      Aluminum planes can’t penetrate steel, did something else created the collapse?

Let’s explore these conspiracies and find out what really happened on September 11, 2001.

George W. Bush, blue eyes, brown hair which is graying, 6ft tall and weighs just over 192 pounds was the 43 president of the United States (Bijijoo). He was in office through a terrifying event, the 9-11 attacks, and he initiated war on Iraq in 2003. George W. Bush followed in the footsteps of his father when he became president. Before he was in office, he was the governor of Texas and a very head strong businessman (Gregg).  During his younger years, he acted out quite a bit and got very involved with alcohol, it wasn’t until he met his wife that he quit, joined the church, and became a born again Christian (Wead).

            During Bush’s first term, the election process wasn’t as simple as it should have been. On Election Day, a late-night news channel declared one the winner and then later declared the other the winner. The next morning it was brought to the light that the ballots in Florida were not working properly. It took over a month to recount and look through all votes showing that Bush had won. Although he did in fact win, Al Gore had over 543,000 popular votes than Bush causing his first moments of being president very difficult (McBride). In the first couple years of presidency, Bush was presiding the United States with a huge gap between the governments (McBride).

            In Bush’s presidency two major events that happened were September 11, 2001, and the initiated war on Iraq. On September 11, 2001, a terrorist group named Al Qaeda high jacked four U.S airliners and flew three of them into major landmarks in New York (9-11 Attacks). The country was shaken and President Bush assured the American people that everything was going to be alright and that as President of the country he would not let that happen again. As a retaliation, Bush announced that he was going to initiate a war against Iraq so that they would never mess with our country again (Initiating Power).

            George W. Bush had a very difficult presidency from the very beginning with the election going rogue to the terrorist attacks and having to initiate war. All in all, he handled it so well. His actions he took against certain things didn’t lead to worse, and he made some wise decisions.

Since September 11, 2001, there have been many conspiracies that have arose. Some of which being Bush had a hand in it, Al Qaeda high jacked the planes or even that the aluminum planes could not penetrate steel buildings so something else had to have happened.

The best theory that has come out of this has to be that George W. Bush carefully articulated each plane, each bomb, and each building that was hit that day to his advantage in uniting the American people around his presidency. The first conspiracy stated was just that, Bush had a hand in the 9-11 attacks. He was closely associated with Osama Bin Laden and his family and in a way had a good connection to any disaster that he could think up. George W. Bush kept to himself and didn’t do a very good job of informing the United States when he got word of something that could possibly hurt America. On August 6, 2001 Bush received a letter from Bin Laden titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” (Greenberg). The letter stated that “Bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. [He] implied… his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the lighting to America”” (Greenberg). After receiving this letter George W Bush brushed off the idea of the bombings actually taking place and took no action toward any of it. Bush stated he “[knew] Al Qaeda was dangerous” and it was known that this alarming document was not followed by a National Security Council meeting (Greenberg). Bush was quite sneaky and didn’t have a great reputation after the country found out actually how close he was to Bin Laden.

The second conspiracy was that Al Qaeda high jacked the four planes that were used as weapons to kill the 2,996 people on September 11. Out of the four planes that day only three reached their destination and one crashed in a field on its’ way to the White House. Two hit the Twin Towers and one hit the Pentagon. Each of the four planes were taken over by a few men from the terrorist group Al Qaeda, in all there were 19 men. Each group of men consisted of one main hijacker and three of four “muscle hijackers”, which were trained to take down the pilot and the crew members. Fifteen of the members were from Saudi Arabia and the rest from either United Arab Emirates, Egypt or Lebanon. Most of them well in their late 20s (Federal Bureau of Investigation).

In 1996 a flight school in New York had Abdul Hakim Murad, an Arab pilot in training, there to learn to fly planes. He was later convicted when his plans of bombing a dozen United States airlines over the pacific and then finishing with a suicide crash into CIA headquarters was found out. Later on Murad spoke about how he intended on going to flight school to become a commercial pilot but was recruited by Ramzi Ahmed Yousef to become a suicide bomber. Yousef was a Bin Laden operative who also plotted the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (Dwyer, Branigin).

 The bombings of the Al Qaeda terrorist group rooted way beneath the September 11 attacks. The leader, Osama Bin Laden, and each member of the group that day had been training for this moment for a much longer time than anyone would have ever thought. Looking back at history and how this all came about, there was definitely ways that this could have been identified and stopped much sooner than it did.

The third and final theory would be that the aluminum planes had no chance of penetrating the steel buildings, so there had to have been an explosion planted either in the plane or in each of the buildings. In the World Trade Center the way that the foundation is built is there are 5 inches of thick concrete poured around 22 gauge steel plates (911 Planes Hoax). Towards the core of the building, the concrete and steel get increasingly thicker (911 Planes Hoax). For the planes to be able to penetrate the entire building, enough to have it collapse all at one time straight towards the ground, would be impossible (911 Planes Hoax). Aluminum planes have aluminum wings, which are hollow enough to bend and break at the impact of a bird in the sky… the idea that the wings cleanly sliced through the building is in fact a crazy one (911 Planes Hoax). Each plane was carrying around 20,000 gallons of flight fuel that day and so the impact of the plane triggered the 10,000 gallons of fuel left to explode helping the plane reach its maximum destruction on each building. The only explanation for the planes being able to destroy that much of a building would have to be the jet fuel exploding.

Out of the three conspiracy theories that have been mentioned, the one that is the best solution is that Al Qaeda hijacked the airplanes on September 11, 2001. There is much evidence to support that years ago members of the group or men recruited by Bin Laden came to the United States to enroll in flight school and become very familiar with the commercial planes used every day. In addition to Al Qaeda orchestrating such a devastation, President George W. Bush didn’t make it any easier for himself when word got out that he had received a letter coming straight from Bin Laden stating that there was going to be a takeover of American planes and Bush chose to keep it to himself and not warn anyone about it. Although the best conspiracy is Al Queda, the close second is Bush having a hand in the terrorist attacks on 9-11.

In a recent survey taken the question was asked “Did George W Bush do 9-11?” The responses as followed:

Yes - Tom, Steve, Jim, Sam and Natalie

No – Jennifer, Stacey, Monica, Shane, Melissa, Tonia, Gerald, Lori, Bri, Kate,

  Mackenzie, Annemarie, Amy, Ryan, Kim, Perry, Megan, Bill, Amanda and Elita

Out of twenty people asked there was five that responded “Yes” and fifteen that responded “No”. What was noticed about the people being asked was that the ones who responded “Yes” were more of the 21^st century age and the ones who responded “No” were a lot older.

The September 11, 2001 attacks is still one of the greatest American terrorist attacks we’ve had (BBC, 2016). The attacks created three conspiracies:

4.      Did President Bush have a hand in what happened?

5.      Did Al-Qaeda high jack the airplanes?

6.      Aluminum planes can’t penetrate steel, did something else created the collapse?

Although there is evidence that Al-Qaeda was the terrorist group taking over the planes that day and that Bush had a family connection to Bin Laden, the question of “Did Bush have a hand in it?” is still unanswered.

Works Cited

"Donald Trump Says CIA Warned George W. Bush of Sept. 11 Attacks." @politifact. N.p., 2015. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.
Dwyer, Timothy, and William Branigin. "FBI Knew Al-Qaeda Pilots Training in the U.S." The Washington Post. WP Company, 07 Mar. 2006. Web. 06 Dec. 2016.
"George W. Bush with Ham." Presidentialham.com. Bijijoo, n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2016.
Gregg, Gary L., II. "Miller Center." George W. Bush: Life Before the Presidency-Miller Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2016.
History.com Staff. "9/11 Attacks." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2010. Web. 06 Dec.      2016.
"Investigating Power." Investigating Power. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2016.
McBride, Alex. "Bush v. Gore (2000)." PBS. PBS, Dec. 2006. Web. 06 Dec. 2016.
Wead, Doug. "The Spirituality of George W. Bush." PBS. PBS, Apr. 2004. Web. 06 Dec. 2016
"9/11 PLANES HOAX." 9/11 PLANES HOAX. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2016.