The man whose name is used as a synonym for point by point debunking of poorly formed arguments and hair brained ideas has decided to go the extra mile and destroy what little intellectual credibility he might have had. From The Independent:

But – here we go. I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It’s not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon? Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled? Why did flight 93’s debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field? Again, I’m not talking about the crazed “research” of David Icke’s Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster – which should send any sane man back to reading the telephone directory.

I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C – would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.) What about the third tower – the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salmon Brothers Building) – which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it? The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC 7. Two prominent American professors of mechanical engineering – very definitely not in the “raver” bracket – are now legally challenging the terms of reference of this final report on the grounds that it could be “fraudulent or deceptive”.

Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard “explosions” in the towers – which could well have been the beams cracking – are easy to dismiss. Less so the report that the body of a female air crew member was found in a Manhattan street with her hands bound. OK, so let’s claim that was just hearsay reporting at the time, just as the CIA’s list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were – and still are – very much alive and living in the Middle East, was an initial intelligence error.

But what about the weird letter allegedly written by Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian hijacker-murderer with the spooky face, whose “Islamic” advice to his gruesome comrades – released by the CIA – mystified every Muslim friend I know in the Middle East? Atta mentioned his family – which no Muslim, however ill-taught, would be likely to include in such a prayer. He reminds his comrades-in-murder to say the first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder – let alone expect the text of the “Fajr” prayer to be included in Atta’s letter.

Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist.

Either Mr. Fisk doesn’t know what a conspiracy theorist is, or he had some serious misgiving before publication about admitting to his gullibility and desire to believe the worst about Bush, America and indeed western civilization.

The most glaringly obvious fact that anyone will glean from Fisk’s newest screed is that he in fact is a conspiracy theorist. He has cobbled together questions for which there are certainly answers (The steel beams collapsed due to be heated by aviation fuel which caused them to lose their elasticity, the so-called “zipper effect”) with odd facts that are largely irrelevant (like whether his Muslim friends would have written a suicide note the way Mohamed Atta did) to form a “question” which when vocalized would sound something like “Why did Bush and the Jews kill all those people on 9-11?”

I don’t know if Fisk literally believes that there are or are not unanswered questions about September 11th, but I suppose he could be like many anti-American “intellectuals” willing to buy into the most outrageous nonsense because it “proves” that we Americans are violent, dumb and a threat to the world that should be carpet bombed out of existence. But as a supposed journalist, I would assume that Fisk could easily have answered the questions he raises himself with a little, well, investigative journalism.

It’s almost as if he’s happy to have the questions unanswered, because it serves his purposes better than actually finding out what the truth is.

In that respect he’s no different than any other conspiracy theorist. The only real difference is he is presented by The Independent as being more respectable and trust worthy than the raving lunatics who usually spout off such nonsense. But clearly he really isn’t.

Captain’s Quarters fisks Mr. Fisk’s article which ironically enough is easily rebuked, point by point.