Stephen Gloor

The Rodent is Gone.

Finally the coal mining government is gone.  Guess I will have to starting whinging about Kevin 07 now.

Not sorry to see Howard gone at all.  I think that he firmly set Australia on the path to the 1950s in the year 1996.

What Does 60% Reduction of Greenhouse Gases Mean?

Labor is committed to a policy to reduce greenhouse gases by 60% by 2050.  This seems simple but what does it actually mean.  After getting pretty badly burnt on Bolty's blog after a stupid maths mistake that I had the misfortune to post before thinking about it I have been thinking about what it actually means to reduce greenhouse emissions by 60%.  BTW Just when you want Bolty to censor a post he doesn't.

First of all I read the policy wrong.  When I first heard of it and before I read it properly I thought that Labor had committed to reduce greenhouse emissions TO 60% of 2000 levels by 2050.  Note the word TO.  This to me means the following:

Assume 2000 levels are 20 units of GHG

Target would be 20 X 0.6 = 12 Units

Therefore Labor is committing Australia to a target of ensuring that emissions in 2050 are 12 Units of GHG.

So far so good however that is not the policy as was pointed out to me in Bolty's blog.  The policy states in the document "National carbon capture mapping and infrastructure plan":

Cutting Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent on 2000 levels by 2050

Note the work BY which is the critical difference from what I thought was a sensible thing.  To illustrate:

Assume 2000 levels are 20 Units of GHG

Target would be 20 - (20*.6) = 8 Units - a much smaller target

So Labor is committing Australia to ensure that GHG emissions in 2050 are 8 Units which is a pretty big ask.  Now the final wrinkle in this is that the wording of Labor's statements is not consistent - here is another document "New Directions for Australia's Coal Industry" that contains :

To mitigate the consequences of climate change, Federal Labor is committed to reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by 2050, and leading international efforts to reduce global emissions.

Notice the difference here.  No mention of 2000 levels at all so what does this mean?

Lets assume that that present emissions (2007) are 30 units and growing at about 1.5% per year.  In 2050 which is 43 years away these emissions should have doubled to 60 units.  Now does this policy, without the 2000 level caveat, mean now that the target is cutting emissions by 60% of the projected emissions of 2050 which would be:

Target is 60 - (60 *.6) = 24 Units

Or do we assume that the previous policy statement is partly correct so the target is:

60 (2050 emissions) - 12 (60% of 2000 emissions) = 48 Units

This would be reducing the emissions in 2050 by 60% of the 2000 emissions which were 20 units (60% of 20 is 12).

Now 48 Units of GHG is a lot higher and more easily achievable target and could be claimed to be what the Labor Party was talking about all along.  Although my maths was a bit challenged in the blog exchange the Labor policy is, I think, deliberately vauge so they can weasel out of it later.  I would like to see them set a policy in stone and stick to it.  I am also really worried that in their desire to be elected they are emphasising Clean Coal too much.  It is going to be a noose around their necks after the election.

Luckiest Polititian Alive - Kevin Rudd

I have been completely shattered this week by the revelations that Kevin Rudd was stupid enough to meet with the criminal Brian Bourke, former premier of Western Australia.  Says a lot for our system that this man managed to become premier.

Anyway I thought that Rudd had thrown away the Labor Party's best chance of winning the next election and enacting some policies that need enacting including rejoining the world community and signing the Kyoto Treaty.  Just when I thought all was lost it and Mr Howard and Costello would go in for the kill it seems that lame duck Senator Campbell also met with Mr Bourke neatly eliminating the threat.  Howard and Costello can now not persue it as they then would be putting Campbell in the shit up to his eyeballs.

Truly Mr Rudd you must be the luckiest man alive to get out of this one. 

The Real 6 Stages of a Project

The 6 Stages of a Project

1. Enthusiasm
2. Depression
3. Panic
4. Search for the Guilty
5. Punishment of the Innocent
6. Rewards for the Non-Participants

I have finally found the true flow path of projects.  I defy anyone that has been in charge or participating in a major project to find an error in this.  Mind you I am a bit bitter at the moment as I have been retrenched from the very good job I have had for the last 4 years - bugger.

Anyway I am giving this presentation to the Transport committee of the local branch of the Labor Party next Thursday.  Tell me what you think.

Download v2g_presentation.pdf

A Note for the Coal Mining Government

Perhaps our coal mining government should take note of this coal mining government:

After months of negotiations, politicians and leaders from the coal industry reached a breakthrough Sunday night. Government subsidies -- not jobs -- are to be cut back drastically and may be history as early as 2018.

Germany cannot afford long-term subsidies for the coal industry, Economics Minister Michael Glos told public broadcaster ZDF on Monday.

 

"It's much better to take those economic resources and invest them in more modern, renewable energies," he added.

 

After extensive negotiations, the premiers of North Rhine-Westphalia and Saarland, two of Germany's particularly coal-rich regions, and representatives of the coal union and the mining conglomerate agreed Sunday on a plan to phase out German coal subsidies.

How can we afford it if the German economy cannot?  Here are some of the subsidies that the coal industry receives:

THE GREAT COAL SWINDLE: Selling it to South East Asia
There is growing community resistance in Australia to new coal-fired power stations, as
people call for cleaner and climate-friendly renewable energy alternatives there. Yet, in
2002, as many as eight Gigawatts of new coal-fired power stations are planned in Asia,
mostly in Japan, Korea and Taiwan but also Thailand and the Philippines. This growth is
expected to boost coal imports by 20 million tonnes and will increase greenhouse gas
emissions enormously.xii
Asia is a very important market for Australian steaming coal. In 2000, steaming coal
exports to Asia formed over 90% or nearly AUD$3.4 billion worth of the 8.7 billion
tonnes of total coal exported by Australia.

This chart shows the projected increase in Australian coal imports to 2010 in South East
Asia. Coal consumption in South East Asia is forecast to rise annually by 9.5%, on
average. Consequently coal imports to these countries are expected to rise by 14% per
year to 30 million tonnes in 2010, with total coal consumption totaling 75 million tonnes.xiii
Note the unprecedented increases expected over this 18-year period in the Philippines
of 3767% , and over 250% in Malaysia, China, Korea and Hong Kong.xiv These sales are
dependent on the success of the coal industry embedding itself in these countries’
economies, but in countries like the Philippines resistance is growing.
The Australian government is trying to force these sales to Asia by providing various
subsidies – using taxpayers’ money – to coal corporations. Subsidies, and aid, should go
instead to support climate-friendly renewable energy. Some forms of ‘corporate welfare’
include:
WB
Australia contributes to the World Bank, supposedly for poverty alleviation. Yet the World
Bank has been a primary funder of fossil fuel projects, notably coal. For example in
1998, over $1.3 billion was invested in four major coal burners in China, which will
eventually release more than 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s
atmosphere. From 1993-1998, the World Bank’s US$4 billion worth of investments in
coal-fired power plants emitted 7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, and its US$2 billion
worth of investment in coal extraction will emit a further 6 billion tonnes of carbon
dioxide.xv

ADB
The Asian Development Bank’s (ADB), another multilateral financial institution that
Australian taxpayers support, is reported to have loaned US$5 billion to companies
promoting coal-fired power capacity and coal mining development from 1994 to 2000.xvi
Its recent records show that the ADB’s energy portfolio has favoured fossil-fuel projects
over renewable sources greatly: In 1995, the ADB lent US$444 million for coal-firedpower stations but provided no finance for renewables. In 1996, ADB spent US$742
million on coal projects, and $278 on renewables and demand side management.xvii
AusAID
The Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) has been a major form of
the government’s financial support to coal use in South East Asia. From 1994-96,
AusAID spent $20.78 million on coal projects, in contrast with $2.3 million on renewables
and energy efficiency. A number of projects have been critical in opening up markets for
Australian coal and coal technology.xviii Increasing emphasis by AusAID was given to
coal related projects and electricity distribution from the mid-1990s.xix
EFIC
Financing and insuring coal and energy development continues to be of specific interest
to Australia’s export credit agency, the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation. In
1996, $15.5 million was invested into coal-fired power stations and supporting
infrastructure. In 1997, this amount was $27 million (12% of EFIC’s investments for that
year), and it was $17.5 million in 1998. Most of these projects were in China or other
Asian nations.xx

Industry-Government Collaboration
There are a variety of other forms of industry assistance provided by the government,
through industry-government alliances, grant programs, tax exemptions, research and
development, geological exploration, technical databases and management services.

So instead of exporting clean technologies we are making the Asia Pacific more dirty by subsidising cheap and dirty coal.  This is while our clean industries are moving overseas.

On Thursday David Mills will board an airliner and fly to the United States to help build something that will exploit the clean and limitless energy source - solar power - that can replace our addiction to energy heroin, which is what oil and coal have become.

What is disturbing about this Australian success story is that Mills and his company, Solar Heat and Power Pty Ltd, are moving to America, where one US investor has just put $42 million into the company. "We are relocating the headquarters of our company in the USA," Mills told me.

"We will be a global company and are planning a number of large solar plants overseas. Some of the largest investors and power companies in the USA have realised that solar thermal power is a probable replacement for coal, nuclear and oil. They believe this will be very big business and power companies are willing to provide the large amount of initial equity to get the industry moving."

His departure is the latest variation on a depressing local theme. "No one here is listening to him," Michael Mobbs told me. Mobbs is an environmental lawyer best known for building the most sustainable, energy-efficient urban home in Australia, his famous "Chippendale house".

Given Australia is the No. 1 nation in the world in terms of available land and available hours of sunlight to develop solar energy, given Australia once led the world in solar energy research, given our appalling level of greenhouse emissions, and given one of the most advanced companies in the field of solar thermal energy is Australian, you might think this would be the place to build an industrial-scale solar power plant. But no.

Imagine if we did not have a coal mining government and we subsidised David Mills to export clean solar power with Canadian (used to be Australian) Vanadium flow batteries coupled with Wind Turbines manufactured in Australia by Vestas.  However ALL these clean technologies have gone offshore and and are now generating jobs and money for someone else. 

Good one Howard - what a litany of abject failure, lack of imagination and nose in the trough pork barreling.

One again a hat tip to Peak Energy for the David Mills Story.

The New War in Iraq

I do occasionally write about the war in Iraq so I could not pass up this article where a visionary American general is writing the Armies Counterinsurgency Field Manual.  He writes that Mistake 1 is:

FM 3-24. Mistake No. 1, the manual instructs, is to "overemphasize killing and capturing the enemy rather than securing and engaging the populace." That pretty well describes what the Army has done in Iraq since the first improvised explosive devices began detonating.

Which is really just the British and then Australian successful Hearts and Minds approach that actually works.  The article concludes with the saddest funniest thing I have read for a long time:

Even Petraeus's own strategy may have been overrun by events. "It's ironic," says one of the drafters of Petraeus's new counterinsurgency manual, who declined to be identified because he did not wish to irk his superiors. "We've finished the counterinsurgency manual just as Iraq looks like it's heading for civil war. We don't have a doctrine for that."

Short Memories - Must have a ...

In the immortal words of Midnight Oil "Short memories - Must have a short memory ..." the coal mining government is bleating about the carbon tax that the just about everyone in the universe is demanding, even business groups.  Read this report.

The parliamentary secretary for the Environment, Greg Hunt, says the Federal Opposition's plan to tackle climate change would deliver a massive increase in petrol prices and heating costs.

Mr Hunt says Labor is effectively proposing a carbon tax that would hit those who could least afford it, including low income earners and pensioners.

Oh how compassinate the liberals truly are - they really care about low income earners and pensioners.

          HELLO - what about the G S T !!!!!!!!

Here they are all high and mighty panning Labor for proposing a new tax when they introduced the GST and impacted the same people.  It was only intervention by the minor parties that got the damned GST monkey off food. However by contrast to the GST most people in Australia agree with the Labor position as this report shows:

A new opinion poll commissioned by a coalition of green groups has found 86 per cent of voters think the Federal Government should be doing more to tackle climate change.

The Newspoll has found 75 per cent of voters want the Government to sign the Kyoto protocol, while 80 per cent think big polluters should pay a tax on their emissions.

It also found 92 per cent of Australians do not believe the Government is doing enough to encourage clean technologies.

It seems that Australians are seeing the writing on the wall and want to do something.  Buusiness want to do something as evidenced by this report in the Economist:

As for climate change, most business leaders who talk to The Economist say now that they think that some sort of global carbon tax or price is inevitable before long. They would prefer to have politicians decide sooner, rather than later, what system there will be for calculating it, if only to give a less uncertain context in which to make investments. A shift to a low carbon economy will also offer big rewards for the inventors of the products which that economy needs. Profiting from this is the rationale for GE’s “ecomagination” strategy.

So everyone want action on climate change except the coal mining Howard Government that does not want to betray it real roots - the mining industry that pays the bills as he said here:

Mr Howard has told Parliament he will never support Australia becoming part of the Kyoto protocol in its current form.

"I as Prime Minister am not going to take decisions that will put at risk the jobs and the investments associated with the natural advantages that this country enjoys," Mr Howard said.

"Others may, others may choose to do that, but while I am Prime Minister of this country I am not going to betray the natural advantages that this country has.

"I'm not going to betray those associated with the resource industry."

So we can all fry but Howard will not betray the resource industry.  Do you need any more evidence that this Government truly deserves the title of the Coal Mining Government????

Mind you it is rapidly becoming the uranium mining government.  In an almost unbelievable display of graft the Nuclear inquiry is set to cost millions:

Officials from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet have told a parliamentary estimates committee that the Government's nuclear inquiry will cost "a few million dollars".

Former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski is leading the inquiry, and is expected to report by the end of the year.

Labor senators questioned officials on how much the study will cost.

Officials told the hearing that the inquiry members took an overseas study trip costing $200,000, and that the total cost would be a few million dollars.

Seems that the government can supply money for Ziggys new house OK but it cannot support the solar PV rebate scheme.  Which one does more for the environment????

 

Just Had to Share This

Hmmmmmmmmmmm!!!

Hungarian Prime Minister Caught Lying

Now if only we could get near our lying rodent with a secret tape recorder.  I am sure we could get something like this:

According to CNN, the turmoil exploded Sunday, when state radio aired an audiotape of Prime Minister Gyurcsany telling members of his ruling Socialist Party that his government had lied about the state of the country's economy throughout its two years in office, saying, "We lied throughout the past one and a half or two years. We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening and also at night."

Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom says the admission has become a "moral crisis," made worse only by the fact that Prime Minister Gyurcsany has refused to step down despite the violence on the street.

 

A Champion of Free Speech and Democracy

Andrew Bolt is a champion of democracy that is plain from his writings.  I have noticed some posters have had some comments not posted and/or edited.

In this post he is denigrating people who question the events surrounding 9/11.  Let me be clear I am not with the flying saucer or alien people or really the demolition crowd or military drones theories.  I just have a few questions that I would like answered.  A standard tactic of the right is to lump the flying saucer people with people like me to try and ridicule my sort of questions.  I think it is possible to question the events of 9/11 and not necessarily be in the tin hat brigade.  Anyway here are some of my questions that despite all the research I have done I cannot answer:

1.  Why were the planes not intercepted?  Following standard ATC procedures should have had a fighter on the wing of each plane within 30 minutes.  46 minutes elapsed between the missed radio call, which normally triggers an intercept, of Flight 11 and the time it hit the tower.

2.  Why did President Bush still attend a school function when planes were crashing into buildings?

3.  Why was General Myers in a meeting that could not be disturbed while the whole thing was going on?

4.  How did a pilot who was refused the hire of a plane because of his poor flying skills do a 270° diving turn that would have taxed the utmost the skills of an experienced airline pilot, hold an airliner on the deck at 500mph to crash into the only reinforced part of the Pentagon.

5.  Why has no clear picture of the plane crashing into the Pentagon been released?  All the films from all the surveillance cameras that had a view of the crash were confiscated on the morning and never returned and/or released.

Now I posted these questions on the thread that Andrew posted - lets see if they come up or will they be deleted like the last lot.

Update: It made it and got this reponse:

“From my research...” Why start your ludicrous post with such a misleading statement? Can’t you go haunt some crackpot site instead - the League of Rights one, maybe, or an Islamist hangout, or even Anonymous Lefty’s? They really go for such stuff."

I wrote a comment back:

So anyone that questions anything about 9/11 is automatically a crackpot and an enemy of the USA????

I notice that you did not attempt to answer anything just hurled abuse.  Again if it is such crackpot nonsense then a jounalist of your standing should have no trouble dealing with it.

Are you or anyone else going to attempt to answer the questions or are you just not going to post this reply and leave it at what you want it to be????

 

Update #2
I have to be fair Mr Bolt has posted all my comment so far - lets see if he posts this one:

Dave L - "Could you please provide your reference that says the military needs to send out fighter/interceptors in responce to any radio communication breakdown? That seems highly excessive to me."

Sure - Payne Stewart's plane:
"At 0933:38 EDT (6 minutes and 20 seconds after N47BA acknowledged the previous
clearance), the controller instructed N47BA to change radio frequencies and contact another
Jacksonville ARTCC controller. The controller received no response from N47BA. The controller
called the flight five more times over the next 4 1/2 minutes but received no response.
About 0952 CDT,7 a USAF F-16 test pilot from the 40th Flight Test Squadron at Eglin Air
Force Base (AFB), Florida, was vectored to within 8 nm of N47BA.8 About 0954 CDT, at a range of
2,000 feet from the accident airplane and an altitude of about 46,400 feet,9 the test pilot made
two radio calls to N47BA but did not receive a response."
from the NTSB accident report.  Interception is a normal procudure as you can see from this manual:
http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/AIM/Chap5/aim0506.html.

and some more:
" The jet fighters at NORAD's disposal could respond very quickly: According to the US Air Force website, F-15s can go from "scramble order" to 29,000 feet in only 2.5 minutes, after which they can fly over 1800 miles per hour.50 Therefore--according to General Ralph Eberhart, the head of NORAD---after the FAA senses that something is wrong, "it takes about one minute" for it to contact NORAD, after which, according to a spokesperson, NORAD can scramble fighter jets "within a matter of minutes to anywhere in the United States."51 These statements were, to be sure, made after 9/11, so we might suspect that they reflect a post-9/11 speed-up in procedures. But an Air Traffic Control document put out in 1998 warned pilots that any airplanes persisting in unusual behavior "will likely find two [jet fighters] on their tail within 10 or so minutes."52

If these procedures had been carried out on the morning of 9/11, AA Flight 11 and UA Flight 175 would have been intercepted before they could have reached Manhattan, and AA Flight 77 would have been intercepted long before it could have reached the Pentagon.

Such interceptions are routine, being carried out about 100 times a year. A month after 9/11, the Calgary Herald reported that in the year 2000, NORAD had scrambled fighters 129 times. Do these scrambles regularly result in interceptions? Just a few days after 9/11, Major Mike Snyder, a NORAD spokesperson, told the Boston Globe that "[NORAD's] fighters routinely intercept aircraft."53 Why did such interceptions not occur on 9/11? "

"2)He did leave. He left after 20 minutes. What do you think he should’ve done? Gone ballistic and screamt in front of some kindergardeners."

"Two accounts explicitly state Bush was told while in the motorcade. “The President was on Highway 301, just north of Main Street ... [when] he received the news that a plane had crashed in New York City.” [Sarasota Magazine, 11/01] (See adjacent map for the location where he is told.) Another account states, “Bush was driving to the school in a motorcade when the phone rang. An airline accident appeared to have happened. He pressed on with his visit.” [Observer, 9/16/01]
The first media reports of Flight 11’s crash into the World Trade Center began around 8:48, two minutes after the crash happened. [New York Times, 9/15/01] CNN broke into its regular programming at that time [CNN, 9/11/01], though other networks, such as ABC, took a few more minutes to begin reporting. [ABC, 9/14/02] So within minutes, millions were aware of the story, yet Bush supposedly remained unaware for about another ten minutes."

How did the Secret Service know that this was not an assignation attempt.  Why did they not protect the president as soon as they knew of the hijackings??

"Most modern passenger airlines have advanced electronic and hydraulic aids"

However from the records from the aircraft the autopilot was turned off 7 minutes before it hit and was never turned on again.  Page 7 of the NTSB report states that the autopilot was turned off at 9:29 at at 7000ft.  So he did it without the autopilot - seemed he got really good all of a sudden.
http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB196/doc02.pdf

"Surveilance cameras don’t provide continuous stream footage. Ie: they run at much slower frames per second than video cameras? Why you ask? The human eye is best at identifying movement and the slower frame rates help operators notice suspicious movements. Now factor in an aircraft moving at around 800 km/h - 222.2 metres per second"

Even if this was the case would all the cameras around the pentagon and there were about 10 of them, be sychronised?  Surely one of them no matter how slow it was would have captured the moment.  Also if none of them captured it why not release the film back to the owners?????

"I kindly ask you all to shut up. Its very frustrating to try explain to people who have no knowledge, what takes years to teach those of us who do have the relevant expertise, the reality from the fantasy."

Sure I will shut up however you have not demonstrated much knowledge or expertise.  I have some small knowledge of military aircraft and ATC prodecures from being in the RAAF for 8 years and working on electronics in operational ATC towers.  Some of the people that wonder why the planes were not intercepted are experts and it mystifies them.

For my daughters high school presentation night we were lucky enough to be addressed by a Australian hero firefighter who volunteered with his own money to travel to New York and help out with the rescue operation after 9/11.  He became lifelong friends with some of the New York FireFighters and some of them travelled here to Perth for R&R.  His story was inspirational.

We owe it to people like this to find out the truth of 9/11.  If all the conspiracy theories are a whole load of shit then fantastic - I would be the first to acknowledge this.  This would be for all the ordinary people that died and that risked their lives and died trying to save people.  Remember always that the firefighters got thousands of people out through their heroism and sacrifice.

But if there is even a single grain of truth somewhere in the thousands of possible loads of rubbish that are the conspiracy theories it hints that there are people sicker and more evil than even bin Laden or Saddam Hussein.

And that is all I am going to say on the subject.

Update 3 - He did publish my final comment - looks like he does now publish all the comments that are posted - Good on him

Final Post

Dave L - "Now you’re saying “a USAF F-16 test pilot from the 40th Flight Test Squadron at Eglin Air
Force Base (AFB), Florida, was vectored to within 8 nm of N47BA.8 About 0954 CDT, at a range of
2,000 feet from the accident airplane and an altitude of about 46,400 feet,9 the test pilot made
two radio calls to N47BA but did not receive a response.”
So which is it Ender? Is it only intercepted when you argue with me? Your story is changing just how Conspiracy theories do."

No this was Payne Stewart's plane a year before.  It missed 2 radio calls because the pilots were dead.  As it was in the American Midwest far from air force bases it took an hour for a figher to be vectored to an intercept to see what was going on.

The area that the WTC planes were flying is one of the most dense air traffic areas in the world.  It also is serviced by NEADS (a section of NORAD) with at least 10 bases with ready to launch fighters.  Both the fighters and NEADS have primary radar which does not depend on cooperative returns (SSR).

ANY deviation from Flight Level or course is a potentially dangerous situation in such a heavily trafficked area where seperation is small.  This is why it is normally treated so seriously.  Planes wander off course for many reasons including equipment failure and/or pilot error in which case it is standard ATC procedure to send a plane to investigate what is going on.  This is what an interception is.  It does not imply in any way, shape, or form that the plane is to be shot down it is simply a safety thing to prevent the off course or non responding plane from colliding with other planes.  The standard precedure, used many times before, is a plane is given maybe 1 minute to respond whereupon the controller has to contact a superior.  After 5 or 8 minutes NEADS is contacted by hotline and a fighter is scrambled to find the errant plane and try to contact it.  The repsonse to the missed radio calls on 9/11 should have resulted, if normal ATC procedure had been followed with a fighter on the wings of the planes in 20 minutes or so.  This would have been plenty of time for descisions to be made.  Only gross incompetance on the part of the FAA can explain the 20 minute delay in contacting NEADS.  More gross incompetance can then explain the further 20 minute delay in scrambling fighters and then from a distant base, about the time the first tower was hit.  Still more gross incompetance can only explain why the 2 fighters scrambled were not vectored to intercept the second plane before it hit the tower instead of being told to orbit well away from the flight path of the second plane.  This level of grossly negligent behavior from all levels of the FAA and Air Force when they are normally quite competant is the spawning ground for doubt.
The bottom line is that if the Air Force (NORAD) and FAA had worked together as they had many times before 9/11 would not have happened as all the planes would have been shot down well short of their targets.  Mind you this would have been enough of a tragedy in itself.

BTW I never said I was an air force pilot - I worked in the ATC control towers on the electronics.  I observed many many hours of military and civilian ATC procedures doing my job.

I will only respond to one more of your rebuttals:
"And like I said before, to fly an aircraft into a skyscraper isn’t a difficult task."

Have you ever flown a plane?  For an experienced pilot to hit a skyscraper at 500 mph would be difficult.  Consider a being .25 degrees off course 2 seconds out would be a miss.  Remember also that the air over a city is very bumpy and constant course corrections would be required to hit the towers.

For the pentagon plane consider this scenerio.  I am a scared and desperate terrorist just having taken over a plane by killing people.  I was refused the hire of a plane a week or so before because my flying skills were so poor.  OK so I am flying toward the Pentagon and I am so in charge I turn the autopilot off.  Approaching the target from the north instead of just diving the plane in from 7000 feet in a straight dive I risk all and overfly the pentagon, do a very tight diving right hand turn losing 7000 feet in the process, fly for 500 m at zero feet clipping some light poles and nearly crashing short to hit the Pentagon low down in the only reinforced part of it!!!!!!!  Come on mate - this is again where the conspiracy theories are born.  It is just not possible for a low time pilot to do this even with all the flying aids, first time and without rehersals or a second try.

Think about it yourself and read a bit more.  I am sure the 99% of the wilder conspiracy theories are loads of crap however for me there is enough doubt in the official stories that rely on normally competant people suddenly not following procedures and being totally negligent.  I just does not hold together - 9/11 should never have happened.