Did Waterboarding lead to the death of Osama?

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Each failed support places more strain on adjacent supports, causing them to fail faster. Eventually, it reaches the point of catastrophic failure.

Are you advancing the pancake theory, DD?

because a close reading of the NIST report shows that the agency assumed from the beginning that the Boeing 767 impacts and subsequent fires were responsible for the collapse of the twin towers.

The report also assumes that planes hit the towers and it assumes the towers collapsed. I suppose those didn't occur.

As noted–––and I must emphasize it again–––no steel-frame skyscraper had ever collapsed before 9/11, nor has any since.

McCain says torture did not lead to bin Laden
'This is a moral debate. It is about who we are,' says Ariz. Republican, former POW
/ AP
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. speaks at the 41st Washington Conference on the Americas on Wednesday at the State Department in Washington.msnbc.com staff and news service reports msnbc.com staff and news service reports
updated 21 minutes ago 2011-05-12T16:50:04
+-WASHINGTON — Waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques were not a factor in tracking down Osama bin Laden, a leading Republican senator insisted Thursday.

Sen. John McCain, who spent 5½ years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, also rejected the argument that any form of torture is critical to U.S. success in the fight against terrorism.

In an impassioned speech on the Senate floor, the Arizona Republican said former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and others who supported those kind of measures were wrong to claim that waterboarding al-Qaida's No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, provided information that led to bin Laden's compound in Pakistan.


..McCain spoke with an unrivaled record on the issue. He's the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee who consistently challenged the Bush administration and Vice President Dick Cheney on the use of torture and a man who endured brutal treatment during the Vietnam War.

He said he asked CIA Director Leon Panetta for the facts, and that the hunt for bin Laden did not begin with fresh information for Mohammed. In fact, the name of bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, came from a detainee held in another country.

"Not only did the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not provide us with key leads on bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed, it actually produced false and misleading information," McCain said. He called on Mukasey and others to correct their misstatements.

You are making a lot of assumptions that are false.

1. Buildings have to meet fire codes. Furnishings often don't.

You also don't include damage to the center support structure.

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You are making a lot of assumptions that are false.

1. Buildings have to meet fire codes. Furnishings often don't.

Modern office furniture is required to meet strict flame-resistant standards. It is unlikely that any items in the typical office spaces contained any unusually combustible materials. As NIST noted, “visits to showrooms indicated that, while there was a broad range of prices and appearances, the cubicles were
fundamentally similar.” (NCSTAR 1-5 p50, para4)

The ASTM E119 tests showed that the WTC floor trusses should have easily withstood the fires they experienced on 9/11.

Even if we assume that the plane impacts severed or damaged a number of columns in the impact zone, and even if we also assume that the fires weakened a number of other nearby columns, the majority of columns in the buildings and even on the affected floors were still at full strength at the moment of collapse.

“With so much misinformation being fed into such an essential public debate as this one, I asked the Director of Central Intelligence, Leon Panetta, for the facts. And I received the following information:

“The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. We did not first learn from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed the real name of bin Laden’s courier, or his alias, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti — the man who ultimately enabled us to find bin Laden. The first mention of the name Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, as well as a description of him as an important member of Al-Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country. The United States did not conduct this detainee’s interrogation, nor did we render him to that country for the purpose of interrogation. We did not learn Abu Ahmed’s real name or alias as a result of waterboarding or any ‘enhanced interrogation technique’ used on a detainee in U.S. custody. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts, or an accurate description of his role in Al-Qaeda.

“In fact, not only did the use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not provide us with key leads on bin Laden’s courier, Abu Ahmed; it actually produced false and misleading information. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed specifically told his interrogators that Abu Ahmed had moved to Peshawar, got married, and ceased his role as an Al-Qaeda facilitator — which was not true, as we now know. All we learned about Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti through the use of waterboarding and other ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ against Khalid Sheik Mohammed was the confirmation of the already known fact that the courier existed and used an alias.

“I have sought further information from the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and they confirm for me that, in fact, the best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee — information describing Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti’s real role in Al-Qaeda and his true relationship to Osama bin Laden — was obtained through standard, non-coercive means, not through any ‘enhanced interrogation technique.’

“In short, it was not torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees that got us the major leads that ultimately enabled our intelligence community to find Osama bin Laden. I hope former Attorney General Mukasey will correct his misstatement. It’s important that he do so because we are again engaged in this important debate, with much at stake for America’s security and reputation. Each side should make its own case, but do so without making up its own facts.

They were the STANDARD combustible materials found in office furnishings. I never said anything was unusually combustible. Flame resistant does NOT mean non-combustible. The standard for furnishings doesn't test for putting them in a fire fueled by jet fuel.

Do you know what the office furnishings requirement is? Obviously not.
Furnishings are NOT just desks and chairs. Chairs and desks don't meet the same requirements as the building does which is what I stated. It uses a different code. Cubicles have to meet a code as well but they are NOT the sum total of office furnishings.

Now you are just throwing **** out there hoping no one will notice.

If someone says the collapse was caused by the weakening of the floor joists then arguments that the columns weren't weakened by the fire are meaningless.

This makes no sense.
The areas that didn't fail at the beginning of the collapse have no bearing on the cause of the collapse. Because 90% of the beams in the building were not affected by the airplane doesn't change the fact that some of them were. It is those that failed that caused the collapse.