How Not to Critique 9-11 Truth and Francis O'Neill

"The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments." - Friedrich Nietzsche

The article How Not to Critique Judy Wood by Dr David A. Hughes has all the hallmarks of disinformation. Aside from making untenable and/or nonsensical claims while purporting to refute Francis O’Neill’s recent critical analysis of Wood in particular (and disinformation in general), Hughes reveals a surprising lack of familiarity, not only with Wood’s claims, but with the facts in general.

HUGHES: "O’Neill’s critique is intellectually outdated, with most of its key sources dating back to 2006-7, four to five years before Where Did The Towers Go? was published (e.g., Jones, 2006; Legge, 2006; Jenkins, 2007; Gourley, 2007), In that respect, it is 17-18 years behind the curve."

Right from the start we can see this is about using Francis O’Neill’s article as a vehicle to attack 9-11 Truth.

HUGHES: "First, O’Neill claims, without any reference or citation, that, according to Wood, the Twin Towers were “turned to dust by an energy weapon.” Yet, in her book, which supersedes her earlier work and should be the primary reference point of any serious critique, Wood (2011) does not make any hard claims regarding what exactly destroyed the Twin Towers. Instead, she presents evidence and asks the reader to look at it with their own eyes, rather than outsourcing their thinking to others, as O’Neill has done with his second-hand criticisms."

O’Neill does not require a citation because it is Wood’s central proposition. She invented the word dustification to describe the pulverization of steel. Attributing the destruction of the towers to a weapon she cannot name, that we do not even know exists, Wood cannot so much as describe a hypothetical scenario for the use of this imaginary DEW weapon, nor the mechanism by which the process of dustification would occur. She uses low resolution video of 'the spire' to show how it turned to dust. This (and all the rest of it) make anything else she might say on the topic less than worthless.

HUGHES: "According to O’Neill, Wood’s claim that the Twin Towers were “dustified” is “refuted by the presence of thousands of tons of structural steel in the debris field.” Yet, Wood never claimed that everything had been “dustified.”"

She repeatedly says exactly that. (That Hughes is unaware of this is in line with the rest of his analysis). Something easily refuted by the fact that there was no missing steel. It was weighed by the ton going in, and was sold by the ton as scrap a mere 11 days after their destruction. [100k metric tons in each tower and 40k metric tons in WTC7]

HUGHES: "Remember, the debris pile was immediately close to ground level"

What remained in the footprints of the towers was smoldering steel, concrete and debris-filled pits with underground fires. Fires that burned at wildly excessive temperatures that could not be put out for over three months [100 days to be exact]. It was so hot, steel and concrete melted.

HUGHES: "In seeking to provide answers, O’Neill turns to outdated sources such as Legge (2006) and Jenkins (2007)."

Fact-based forensic evidence does not change. Neither does cogent analysis of it. Peer-reviewed literature remains valid until it is successfully challenged.

HUGHES: "O’Neill appeals to the width of the debris field to account for its very low height, even though this implies that most material from the Twin Towers (“the vast majority” in fact) did not fall straight into the basements after all, thus undermining his previous point."

Because this is precisely what happened.

Skyscrapers are designed to have as much empty space in them as possible. The Towers accomplished this to a greater degree than any skyscrapers before them, due to their revolutionary tube-n tube design. The design has been the standard in skyscraper construction since.

HUGHES: "O’Neill turns to an interview with Wood conducted by Greg Jenkins on January 10, 2007. He makes no mention of the highly unusual nature of the interview, which Andrew Johnson (2011, pp. 41-47) plausibly describes as an “ambush” intended to discredit Wood using nefarious tactics."

Nefarious ambush How? where? He doesn’t say. Meanwhile, that is literally the opposite of what happened. Wood sat down for a planned interview and took us through her hypothesis in as compelling a way as she possibly could. Just listen to her. Jenkins never interrupts or pressures her in any way. She could have said anything. And she did, which is the problem. She went with: "Did you ever put foil in a microwave?" & "We didnt think it was necessary to do that [run any numbers], we just looked at the pictures.”

HUGHES: "The dust generated by the destruction of the Twin Towers did not fall neatly within a 600 foot radius of the Twin Towers, as Jenkins and O’Neill want us to believe. Rather, it escaped everywhere:"

Given that (correct me if I am wrong) neither O'Neill nor Jenkins make such a claim this is an obvious straw man.

HUGHES: "As Wood (2011, pp. 380-81) points out, the pile continued to fume for months, with bogus stories about “molten metal” being used to claim that the “fumes” (i.e., evidence of ongoing molecular dissociation) were in fact steam"

Obviously, [given the temperatures of the fires] there was also some steam. One of by-products of the thermitic reaction is aluminum oxide given off as white smoke. White smoke poured from these pits for months.

We are fortunate to not have to guess about (at least some) of what was in the air:
Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials

HUGHES: ". . .the evidence supports Wood’s contention that the Twin Towers were mostly turned to dust, large amounts of which blew away in the wind before settling in different thicknesses over an immeasurably large area."

It does not support that by any stretch. Yes, most of the buildings’ contents were pulverized, including most of the concrete. What remained were primarily the most robust elements, like the structural steel. We know there was no missing steel because we know how much was used in the constructions and we know much was sold as scrap following their destruction. So the claim that there was hundreds of tons of missing steel does not even qualify as a hypothesis, because it does not explain observations.

HUGHES: "Again, if the dust clouds “scorched” cars, why did they not do the same to people?"

It did! People who were close and in the wrong place were roasted alive by it. I saw pictures of one woman, her legs scorched black. I had never seen a burn that looked like that. Here's another victim who didnt make it: WTC Burn Victim Loses Weeks Long Struggle. The article claims she was "doused with jet fuel". The problem is that she had escaped the building and was trying to catch a bus. They claim she was burned by (by falling burning jet fuel, some 45 mins later). She was far from the only one.

HUGHES: What has caused the bus to degrade in this fashion over the course of a few hours? Evidently, there was something very strange going on in this particular location that cannot be explained through conventional vehicle fires.

The bottom image was shot much later. We can see the street has been washed down, with much of the dust, along with smaller debris & vehicles, have been removed. This would have been done using a bulldozer to remove the upper lighter parts of the bus, so it could safely be loaded onto a flatbed truck and carted away.

That Hughes analyzed these two photographs and concluded, not only that they were taken hours apart on the same day, but that they provide evidence of Wood’s directed energy hypothesis is on par with the level of his overall analysis.

HUGHES: "O’Neill claims “That some paper did not burn is true as it was blown out of the towers by the plane impacts and subsequent explosions.” He fails to explain, however, how “thermitic reactions” and “explosions” and “molten metal” managed to destroy two 110-storey buildings and “toast” nearby cars without burning large amounts of paper. "

He does explain it: "It was blown out of the towers by the plane impacts and subsequent explosions" Which is exactly what happened. That is how organic processes work: some people were burned and others were not, some cars were burned, others were not. Some paper was burned and others not.

HUGHES: "Nor does he seek to explain Wood’s observation that all but one of the 45,000 metal filing cabinets containing the large majority of that paper vanished without trace while huge amounts of paper survived."

Things in the real world don’t vanish. The filing cabinets were obviously destroyed by the incredible levels of explosive energy they were subjected to.

HUGHES: "Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory records that the dust clouds were “without the high temperatures common in volcanic flows.”

Tell that to the people burned alive by it.

HUGHES: "This is one of many testimonies regarding explosions in the towers before they were destroyed. But even if explosives were used to prepare the towers for destruction, this is not the same as claiming that “nanothermite” was then used to blow up the towers. Any burns injuries sustained from being present around those explosions are not evidence that the towers were destroyed at extremely high temperatures."

It is not known that thermite was used for the explosive component of the destruction of the twin towers, only that it was most likely used to pre-weaken the structures. [See: molten steel pouring from the south tower] It has been speculated on that it may have been used for both, because thermite can also be engineered as a high explosive. What is important is that we know it was used. It explains a number of the anomalies seen at Ground Zero, like the excessive temperatures, the white smoke, the 100 day fires (i.e., thermite continues to burn, even underwater because it provides its own oxygen).

HUGHES: "But Wood does not “deny” anything. Rather, she addresses the evidence head on and debunks claims of high temperatures."

There is no debunking facts that are demonstrably true. Here are a few of the numerous sources that prove excessive temperatures at the all three sites:

The image above comes from the FEMA 403 [May 2002] Building Performance Study (BPAT) Appendix C: A Limited Metallurgical Examination which states: 'Evidence of a severe high-temperature corrosion attack on the steel, including oxidation and sulfidation with subsequent intragranular melting, was readily visible in the near-surface microstructure. A liquid eutectic mixture* containing primarily iron, oxygen, and sulfur formed during this hot corrosion attack on the steel. This sulfur-rich liquid penetrated preferentially down grain boundaries of the steel, severely weakening the beam.' ... 'The thinning of the steel occurred by a high-temperature corrosion due to a combination of oxidation and sulfidation. Heating of the steel into a hot corrosive environment that liquefied the steel. The severe corrosion and subsequent erosion are a very unusual event. No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified.'

A eutectic (in this case sulfur) is a mixture or alloy whose composition results in the lowest possible melting point in order to extend the period of time the steel remains in a molten state. The lead on the paper later stated: “..fire and the structural damage . . . would not explain steel members in the debris pile that appear to have been partly evaporated in extraordinarily high temperatures.” -Dr. Jonathan Barnett, Professor of Fire Protection Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Surface temperatures were recorded on a daily basis by Bechtel for the ASSE, who were in charge of safety at Ground Zero. This trade publication documented surface temperatures as high as 2800F many days after 9/11 ‘The debris pile at Ground Zero was always tremendously hot. Thermal measurements taken by helicopter each day showed underground temperatures ranging from 400ºF to more than 2,800ºF.”

We also have thermal images taken by the USGS https://www.911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/rubblefires.html which documented wildly excessive temperatures even weeks later.

One more well-documented fact Hughes is unaware of (read: more likely, denies despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary). Misdirection is a numbers game. People only have so much time. If you can get them to expend their energy refuting nonsense, not only do you waste their time, but the process itself perpetuates the notion that there is some controversy. The 911 Revisionist bot is guaranteed to leave the first comment (a wall of text & links).

I’ll stop here. At a certain point it feels absurd to continue.