Aces High!
Ron Paul made the mistake of saying something sensible about terrorism during yesterday evening’s Republican debate, and Ooo! it made the WingNet vewwy vewwy angwy!
A.O. Spades makes like Bruno Ganz in ‘Downfall‘ — i.e., channels the furor:
Ron Paul: 9/11 A Retaliation For Clinton’s 1998 Bombing Of Iraq
-AceFuck Ron Paul.
If I ever see this cocksucker in person, I’ll take a swing at him.
Giuliani called him out and invited him to withdraw the remark. He refused.
Brave maverick?
It’s pretty easy to vote against everything when you’ve decided to not actually be part of an actual working, governing majority.
The minority party always has the most fun because it gets to do nothing but posture. Ron Paul has made a career of being a minority party of one.
Fucking useless anti-American crank. He’s a Truther and he belongs in his own circle of lunatic Hell with the rest of them.
Above: A. O. Spades In Repose, With Wild Goose (2007)
When Ace says he’s planning to take a swing, we can only imagine some kind of playground rampage, because the notion of punching Ron Paul (or any other adult person) contradicts everything we’ve come to know and love about him.
Mise en scene: Somebody pops a paper sack in the movie theatre, and Ace is under his seat with popcorn and Jolly Joes in his hair, scanning for Jihadis. Anger darkens his brow. Later, with a single squashed Raisinet adhered to his sleeve, Ace pounds forth a 2,000-word blog post about shooting liberals with a tactical firearm of specified manufacture, for their traitorous enabling of the Jihadis who will, it is certain, one day attack us with big loud bangy noises in places such as movie theatres.
Repeat this in regular cycles, interspersed with lots of posts gleaned from Fark.com and News of the Weird, as well as a bunch of uh, other stuff.
Basically, the only thing Ace is likely to punch is the remote buttons whilst switching back and forth between Future Weapons and women’s kick-boxing. We love him so!
But the anger here is interesting. What Ron Paul said was this: “[Terrorists] attack us because we’ve been over there. We’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. … We’ve been in the Middle East. Right now, we’re building an embassy in Iraq that is bigger than the Vatican. We’re building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting.”
It’s interesting that the term ‘truther’ (as seen in Ace’s response) is starting to be used as a pejorative by the extreme right not only toward anyone who questions the official narrative of 9-11 (which the right has become near-hysterically defensive in maintaining, whatever the merits of its critics or their arguments), but also toward those who question the official fables of the War on Terror — the ones which posit Osama Bin Laden and other radical Islamists as reasonless fiends outside of all recent history and precedent, who ‘hate our freedoms’ and ‘want to conquer the world’ (or ‘want to kill the Jews,’ according to the specific flavor of paranoia on offer).
The notion that Bin Laden came from somewhere, that he has a history and antecedents parallel to ours and engaged with our own American policies; that he possesses motives and is capable of rational choices, is intolerable to the WingNet. It makes them scream and wave their fists, because as absolutists, they’re unable to perform basic moral triage, and can’t distinguish insight into an enemy’s behavior from sympathy for his cause.
Bob Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba has much to say about this (and we have much to say about Altemeyer’s work, which has been a skeleton key to many otherwise-hermetic practices on the right).
But for the time being, here’s the former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit, Michael Scheuer, from a Slate article that John at Crooks & Liars excerpted yesterday. It’s worth repeating in mind of the right’s recurring tantrums about ‘truthers’ and ‘anti-American cranks’:
Osama Doesn’t Hate Our Freedom: The fundamental flaw in our thinking about Bin Laden is that “Muslims hate and attack us for what we are and think, rather than what we do.” Muslims are bothered by our modernity, democracy, and sexuality, but they are rarely spurred to action unless American forces encroach on their lands. It’s American foreign policy that enrages Osama and al-Qaida, not American culture and society.
How is the United States threatening Muslim lands? The post-9/11 crackdowns on Muslim charities have effectively ended tithing, which is one of the five pillars of Islam; our casual denunciations of “jihad” sneer at a central tenet of the Muslim faith. America supports corrupt anti-Muslim governments in Uzbekistan and China, “apostate” governments in the Middle East, and the new Christian state of East Timor. And, above all, it continues to house occupying forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In several videotaped messages since 9/11 bin Laden gave very different, specific reasons for the attack, to wit: the U.S.-led embargo of humanitarian aid to Iraq in the 1990s following Gulf War I (in hopes that starving, illness-crazed Iraqis would arise to overthrow Saddam Hussein), later replaced with a corrupt and equally ineffective U.N. food-and-medicine-for-oil program, which together were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children; America’s unwavering Israel-first Middle-East foreign policy which has so often ignored the rights of Palestinians and which contributes to so much instability in the region, and the continued, growing presence of U.S. military bases in the Middle East, specifically in Saudi Arabia, the holiest lands in Islam.
And that said and understood, why is Bin Laden running free, nearly six years after 9-11?
His hair is very Liberace
I think we can all agree that Ron Paul would tear Ace a new one with his own trachea.
The “they hate us for our freedoms and air conditioning” thing is kind of akin to supporting that claim that the Cuban Missile Crisis found it’s catalyst in salsa dancing gone wrong.
“And that said and understood, why is Bin Laden running free, nearly six years after 9-11?”
Duh. Because Clinton didn’t kill him. Obviously. No other explanation needs to be reviewed at all on that. STOP THINKING!!
If I ever see this cocksucker in person, I’ll take a swing at him.
Leaving aside the obvious homophobic content of Mr. Ace’s insult there, if I were to run into Mr. HQ, I’d certainly be tempted to “take a swing at him.” But I suspect his whimpering would just make me feel sorry for him.
Truther?
Chreebus.
If they’re going to pretend to tar the left with that crap, then the deal is off, they get Fred Phelps.
I guess it just pisses them off that the one thing you can’t say is that the Cheney Admin is incapable of such…. sorry Nietzsche, evil.
Is that really him? I was just reading a some of Ace’s more hypermasculine posts, the stuff about liberal wusses not being able to get girls. He clearly meant to create the impression that only cockslapping superpatriots like him ever score. Funny, he doesn’t really look like a ladykiller to me.
From the content of his posts I was expecting someone, I don’t know, a little more…butch? He looks like a really sensitive guy, actually. Thoughtful, too. You know, that I’m starting to get the impression that Ace is a, um…what’s that faggy word I’m looking for? Oh, yeah, poseur.
I think it’s safe to say that Ace predicts he will never actually meet Ron Paul in person.
I don’t understand the “truther” bit. Isn’t knowing the truth and understanding it an admirable thing, something to strive for.
But more importantly, I think we ought to take up a collection and get this guy laid. It would be for the good of all.
Donna:
I don’t know if it would be for the good of the lady he laid with, frankly. He seems to have such a foul attitude toward women.
The ‘truther’ bit is really odd, I agree. It’s probably some kind of slang that means something specific to right-wingers now, or some kind of reference to a group that existed, that he thinks was nuts. But it does sound like he’s dissing people for being truthful when he says it.
These manly macho guys sure seem to be afraid of a whole lot of non-scary things, don’t they?
You mean Ace isn’t a death dealing commando super ninja afterall.
I am shocked.
If Ace and Lee Trevino got into a lightsaber fight, who do you think would win?
Here’s what I don’t get about all this hypermasculine silliness(it’s early and I’m still not thru my first cup of coffee so bear with me):
If one is a manly man,heterosexual in every way,why then is what other MEN think of you more important than anything else? Seems to me if a man is 100 percent hetero then what women think of him would be far more important. It also might make actually finding and keeping a girlfriend lots easier. All this Boy’s Club stuff and “male bonding” which keeps women out or only allowed in as accessories seems alot like “methinks he doth protesteth too much”.
Help me with this guys,because I don’t get it.
The “Truther” slur is in reference to the “9/11 Truth” people, who were tolerated within the progressive-left crowd simply because they disliked Bush, and nobody had done any actual research to point out they were idiots. Eventually, however, most of the famous smart people did the legwork (Chomsky, Cockburn, et. al.) and pointed out they were full of shit. (For that the smarty-pants types were/are denounced as “Left Gatekeepers”… because the Nation gets some money from the Ford Foundation.)
For me, it was actually listening to the incoherent, Limbaugh-esque “throw whatever accusations you can think up against the wall and hope something sticks” approach in Loose Change that turned me off to their nonsense.
Unfortunately, James Cape, nobody has done any such research to-date, at least not any research that will stick to the wall. However, your explanation for the reference is correct and the reason for the psychotic over-reaction from the Reich is that their casus belli falls to pieces as soon as it becomes clear to anyone, at least anyone with a functioning brain, that a bunch of student pilots of Arabic origin, most of whom could not fulfill the requirements for the commercial flight examination in a single-engine Cessna, most certainly could not have executed the flight maneuvers we saw on 9-11. And from that point on, there is no evidence of any kind which supports the official conspiracy theory. Sorry, James, but that’s just the way it is.
Help me with this guys,because I don’t get it.
Yeah, I don’t really get that stuff either. I can understand some men wanting to have only men around at certain times, just like some women only want to have women around at certain times. But for Ace, it seems like “Boy’s night out” never ends. It seems to suggest that his masculinity actually feels fragile to him.
It’s not a Cessna, it’s a 757, they fly themselves. The pilots are there in case something goes wrong. If you wanted a conspiracy angle it would be that they bothered with flight lessons at all. You could teach a monkey to do it with just the autopilot controls.
For the record: I like smart men. I like men who are confident enough in themselves that they don’t have to treat women like an alien species. I like men who understand that women have had the rough end of the pineapple for many centuries, and that said pineappleing continues to some extent today.
I like men who get passionate (in the sense of they care a lot, not in the sense of getting rudey-nudey) about the poor and downtrodden. I like men who think about what they’re told, instead of just believing without question. I like men who can use logic.
I like men who don’t have to sneer at anyone who has compassion. I like men who aren’t afraid of gays, feminists, Islamexicommiefascists, or the Toilet Bunyip. I really like men who can make me laugh.
Men who satisfy all of the above criteria are really very very welcome Chez Qetesh. Sadly, poor Ace wouldn’t be allowed within a hundred miles of the place. If he ever looks like moseying down south, I plan to spray frypan non-stick stuff all over the runways so that the planes just skid straight off into the ocean.
Thank you for listening.
But apropos of Ron Paul, didn’t someone say just yesterday(ish) that the crowd at LGF was going all gooey about him? Perhaps Ace is out of goosestep with his fellows…?
#
Col. Klink said,
May 17, 2007 at 12:23
If Ace and Lee Trevino got into a lightsaber fight, who do you think would win?
We need some more context before deciding, Colonel. For instance, does this fight take place at a wedding?
That Ace of Spades and his boyos are a laff riot. Note that, in the context of talking about how vastly superior the studly conservative male of the species is to his wussy liberal counterpart in wooing the ladies, the conversation quickly devolves to an exchange of quotes from the Lord of the Rings.
No, really, we’re not gay, we’re MANLY.
Yeah, that’ll make the women-folk quiver with anticipation. Nothin’ like tossin’ around a few LOTR riffs to make ’em drop trou and get after it. It always frustrated me as a liberal when some good-looking conservative guy with a beard, a medieval sword and a ridiculous costume got the girl I had been working for an entire evening. Just thinking about it makes me saaaaaad.
Heh.
These guys haven’t gotten laid since the Reagan Administration. If ever.
If Ace and Lee Trevino got into a lightsaber fight, who do you think would win?
WAY too much innuendo there. I’m not sure how you’d decide the winner in a “lightsaber” fight between Darth Tacitus and Ace Cockslapper, and I’m not sure I want to…
What, are you saying women don’t like my Frodo Baggins costume? Get outta town!
Help me with this guys, because I don’t get it.
I don’t have a simple answer to the riddle of guys like Ace/Trevino/Goldstein, etc., but I can tell you that your assumption is only partly correct. It matters a great deal, vis-a-vis a man’s relations with women, what other men think about him. A man’s position in the male pecking order is a major determinant of how he will will rate with women. Not the sole determinant, of course, as it also matters how he comes across to women. But having male friends, being a “player” in the male hierarchy matters a great deal in this regard. Males are struggling for this kind of dominance at a very young age, even before they have any clear ideas about adult sexual relations.
And it continues into adult life, if the antics of the “more-macho-than-thou” wingers are anything to go by. Somewhere, I think during the discussion about “300,” somebody here suggested that the wingers suffer from an overidealized version of masculinity. Guys like Ace know they don’t measure up, hence the anger, taunts, self-aggrandizment, etc.
I would suspect that American history has a lot to do with it as well, given our frontier/imperial heritage. And don’t forget our sports-addled culture. And the seemingly instinctive American revulsion against all things “gay.” Like I said, no easy answers. You might start with a good book on evolutionary psychology (I’m sure one must have been written by now).
And I’d be disappointed (and more than a little surprised) if Ron Paul was a hit at LGF. I heard a radio interview with him a while back, and he struck me as a very decent and thoughtful man (probably too much so to survive very far into the Rethug primaries). It especially impressed me that he became a flight surgeon during Vietnam because he didn’t want to kill anybody. As opposed to George, Dick, etc. who opted out because they didn’t want to die.
It especially impressed me that he became a flight surgeon during Vietnam because he didn’t want to kill anybody.
Not to mention that, as a flight surgeon, he was doing something useful and necessary. Unlike Bush, Cheney, et. al.
Hey! I think I recognize that guy. When he’s sober, isn’t he down at South Station handing out free Metro’s?
On a slightly more serious note. I was reading through the comments at the Reason blog and the Libertarians are not happy with this trashing of Ron Paul. I’ve never understood the alliance between Libertarians and Republicans, I guess they believed the smaller government rhetoric despite the obvious authoritarian tendencies. Well, the last 6 years have proved that was all a lie, so the split with the right was already underway. Now the gleeful humiliation of their only elected hero?
There may be something to Kos’s thesis that Libertarians natural home is with civil liberties loving Democrats but even if they do not come over, I think they are definitely no longer active members of the GOP base. Their numbers may not be huge, maybe 3-5% but that would have been enough to swing either 2000 or 2004.
So keep bashing A.O., the death spiral of the Right continues.
Ed Marshall sez: “it’s a 757, they fly themselves.”
stonehinge, licensed pilot and professional engineer, sez: “ludicrous.”
But what does any of that have to do with that old-fashioned Spartan wrestling which so obviously titillates the likes of A. O. Spades and friends. Clearly, the boy just needs a good rogering every now and then.
Poseur? Indeed!
The funny thing is that before 9/11 made isolationism unfashionable, Ron Paul was every wingnut hawk’s mancrush.
Ah, but Gavin, the WingNet will allow discussions of motive — but only when the terrorists are Nice Right Wing White Boys.
Remember how, in the immediate aftermath of Oklahoma City, Rush and the other hate-radio jocks — this was pre-FOX — were all for shooting down and stringing up the Evil (and Brown-Skinned) Muslim Jihadists that they were SURE had done this heinous deed?
Remember their all suddenly doing a 180 when it was revealed that the perps were white-supremacist militia members?
Suddenly, Rush and his gang all went touchy-feely on us. Suddenly, understanding the perps’ motives became important: “Waco! Ruby Ridge! Clinton’s affairs! Why, they’d be enough to drive any red-blooded white man to kill!” (Or better yet, claiming that the Evil Clintons actually bombed the Murrah Building and then set up the Nice White Boys to take the fall for it.)
Nice art.
I would have put a large goose turd on the left shoulder, but that’s because I’m less of a surrealist and more of a literalist.
let’s learn more about Ron Paul!
The Republican Party’s 12th Commandment:
Thou shall not ruin our propaganda by telling the truth.
Ron Paul must now suffer the consequences for saying, “It’s our foreign policy, stupid.”
That guy looks tuff-with-two-effs. What is it with the pasty bloggers and their goatees. Are they too lazy and shiftless to shave like a decent person.
“…most certainly could not have executed the flight maneuvers we saw on 9-11. ”
Did you see that stunt that pilot pulled? Its almost like he doesn’t care if he lives or dies! What a maniac!
speaking of which, did you read jonah goldberg’s column in yesterday LA times, where he cherry picks only the democrat’s answer to a single question in a poll, and uses it as a springboard for an entire speculative rant that “Democrats are paranoid crazies?”
I kid you not – the question is (or HE SAYS it is – this is the only “factoid” in the entire column) “Do you think Bush knew about 9/11 before it happened?”
Some 39% of Democrats, he claims, answered “Yes” so conflating that with the “Don’t Knows” he concludes that Democrats are crazy.
He doesn’t tell us in his column how Republicans answered, or how any other sector of the population answered, and he doesn’t quote any other questions so it is unclear what the context of the question is.
If you want someone to be scared of you, it’s best not to look like a poor man’s George Lucas.
ifthethunder–
“We need some more context before deciding, Colonel. For instance, does this fight take place at a wedding?”
a) Doesn’t it always?
b) Thank you. I’ve had my Vitamin L Laff Quota for the day.
According to the LGF comments sections, the collective general opinion of the Footballers is that Ron Paul is a lunatic. CJ posted an online poll to see who the ‘ballers thought won the Republican debates. Ron Paul got a lot of votes, so CJ concluded that the poll was being unfairly skewed by the KKKos KKKids, since no true lizardoid would vote for Paul.
What is it with the pasty bloggers and their goatees.
The goatee is the first refuge of the man with a doughy jawline.
Oh, and–
Re: the male wingers’ obsesh with being Real Men, etc., this connects to their use of the Maturity Trope when talking about the left, “society,” etc. They love to draw deeply on their meerschaums and ask each other, “Is America a Mature Society?” Then they conclude, more in sorrow than in anger, that it isn’t. Because it makes them feel mature to do so.
And, of course, to dismiss those who disagree with them as “childish,” “juvenile,” etc.
They have to. Each of them is imprisoned in the solitary confinement cell of his Ruggedly Individualized self, where the ideal they must live up to (and, you know…pretty much do, mostly, if they do say so themselves) is a cross between a cartoon Daddy (who, by def., isn’t a fag) and a cartoon Hero (whose behavior isn’t affected by his emotions).
No wonder they’re so transparent and ridiculous. They bravely embody a type that was a parody of itself a hundred years ago. And doesn’t it all look like it begins with sexual anxiety? that the types of men who gravitate to this way of being start out with father (and, therefore, mother, and sex) issues? Yes, it does, but our time is up.
“…most certainly could not have executed the flight maneuvers we saw on 9-11. �
Which flight maneuvers would that be? Turning the planes? Aiming them at tall buildings? Or plowing them into the ground?
Ahhh. Another tough guy on the intert00bz. Don’t these people realize how stupid and flacid they sound? You can’t be considered rough n tough if you make threats against somebody on the web instead of to their face in person.
Ace reminds me of this guy I saw in a bar in Tempe a while back. He was making all sorts of insulting remarks about a friend of mine. When my friend asked him to shut up, the guy threatened him. My friend grabbed him by the hair and bashed his face against the bar three or four times. The guy, sobbing and bleeding from the nose and a cut lip, started saying he was gonna SUE! Everybody in the place was laughing at him, ’cause he was only tough as long as no actual violence occured. If you can’t back up your words, probably oughta swallow ’em…
mikey
They love to draw deeply on their meerschaums and ask each other, “Is America a Mature Society?�
Bah! Meerschaums come from Turkey these days, which is a nation both highly Islamic and yet committed to secularism, two big wingnut no-nos. And anyway, pipesmoking is far too much effort for these scumbums. They just torch up a big ol’ stogie that shows everyone within a mile who has the ego, and was laboriously handmade by po’ foreign folk to boot.
And as one G. Carlin opined, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes it’s a big brown dick.”
Yes, “truther” is now a pejorative, made up completely by the insaneosphere, out of the soup of insults they could have used. In other words, someone who tells the truth is now an enemy. The 9-11 Truth movement invites a little mockery; but applying that “truther” insult to everything you don’t agree with, well…. that’s letting your slip show a little bit.
If Ace and Lee Trevino got into a lightsaber fight, who do you think would win?
Star Wars Kid would jump in and off both of those spaz cases simultaneously.
With his little plastic job.
As a van Dyke sportin’ lad (look it up, you Lazy Friggin’ Hippies), I must take offense at the insinuation that those of with neatly trimmed facial hair are doughy. But not in a “evil S,N for using the Giant Sammich and fat joke” way.
I hear about this Ron Paul fella and this guy is who pops into my head. It makes me giggle.
I’m with ya, ironicname. Except it’s this image for me. And then I go back and read the first sentence of Ace’s post and it all starts to fall into place . . .
If Ace and Lee Trevino got into a lightsaber fight, who do you think would win?
Hope they don’t cross swords.
If you want someone to be scared of you, it’s best not to look like a poor man’s George Lucas.
George Lucas?! He wishes. More like Silent Bob.
SM,
Awesome. I think you knocked ol’ Sean right out. Ace would have a problem – she would totally kick his ass – or if they did get it on we’d be forced to comment on Ace’s future posts about the
gloriesunattractiveness of summer sausage and super balls.at my college, not only would being conservative not get you laid, but faking an interest in feminism was KEY to scoring. keep a Betty Friedan tract around by the bedside and you had a shot. But Andrea Dworkin? Naomi Wolf? or, best of all, Susan Faludi? with laying conveniently nearby, possibly looking dogeared, you were in her pants so fast that hopefully she wouldn’t ask too many questions *
*look, IIRC some of us actually read these books, but i’m just sayin’.
Sadly No!: I’m what counts out here. Not your fuckin’ dreaming about cocksuckers or your fuckin’ wingnut blog. And what the fuck are you doin’ on teh internets anyhow?
Ace Cumstein: What are you…
Sadly No!: You know I get calls from back home every fuckin’ day? They think that you went batshit.
Ace Cumstein: I’m only on teh internets because I gotta be able to hang around the wingnutosphere. You understand that. You know that. Come on.
Sadly No!: Your fuckin’ ass. You could have done the Gun Counter Gomer job without goin’ on teh internets. You wanted to go on teh internets.
Ace Cumstein: Yeah, I did want to go on teh internets. That way I have a forum. I can fight back. I’m known. They know they can’t fuck around with me like they could if I was an unknown. That’s right.
Sadly No!: You’re makin’ a big fuckin’ spectacle of yourself.
What the shit? Where do they get that? What’s next, “truth-chucker”?
Truther. Sounds like a compliment to me. Kind of like “LIBERAL.”
Lee Trevino. Are you kidding me? The man was money with the flat blade.
As far as flying a 757, anyone familiar with ‘Flight Simulator’ can keep the plane airborne and pointed in the right direction. Remember, it was their unwillingness to learn how to land the planes that caused the teachers in Florida and Arizona to contact the FBI in the summer of 2001.
You guys hit the nail exactly on the head. These guys literally cannot distinguish between “I understand why Bin Laden did what he did” and “I *agree* with what he did.”
In their minds, not being naive is the same as being the enemy.
Let me repeat that: understanding the world we live in makes you the bad guy.
I must take offense at the insinuation that those of with neatly trimmed facial hair are doughy.
I suppose it is debatable thelogos but I notice you have not threatened a major political figure with violence. That is the problem with this country everybody wants to spread democracy without the pain or expense of waxing. Well freedom isn’t free
Followers of the Jay Cantor thread might note also that OSHA forbids facial hair if conditions prevent a good face seal for a respirator (standard 1910.134(g)(1)). I do not know what sort of sexual perversion “face seal” refers to I will ask Ace he is in with the chix. neway sadly Van Burens or skullies in Congress are not the Solution and so if I see John Edwards’ $2m Freedom Beard I will post on my blog: we need to pack his hippie butt all the way back to Drop City and also: eff him man EFF HIM
Um… “Buno” Ganz, Gav?
Heh. OTOH, someone who gets passionate about the downtrodden and the poor in the “rudey-nudey” fashion would be pretty interesting, too…
…in a freakshow sorta way.
Hmph.
[types an ‘r’]
So much for the spelling-based community.
[…] Bonus points to Ace for sneering at the Kos diarist for perhaps believing an unspecified conspiracy theory possibly relating to the JFK assassination — thus demonstrating (not at all defensively) that he, Ace, is a feet-on-the-ground kind of guy who doesn’t fall for any of that wacky conspiracy stuff. We believe you, Pichka. […]
They can fly themselves, but not into buildings. There is an autopilot that will keep the plane flying straight & level. You can also program a course that it will follow. You can even program the plane to land at a pre-progammed destination. However, I’m pretty sure the 83rd floor of the WTC was not one of the pre-programmed destinations.
The only plane that plowed into the ground was the one the passengers tried to take control of. The other three planes were not only aimed at buildings, they hit the buildings.
Modern flight simulators are pretty good, even PC-based ones like MS Flight Simulator. I’m not surprised that, after a small amount of training, someone would be able to get a plane into a position where they could aim it at a tall building. Hitting it squarely with the fuselage is more impressive. I would think you’d be more likely to clip it with a wing, especially plane #2 which hit the tower in the middle of a banked turn. But maybe the turn was a desperate attempt to avoid missing the tower entirely. Maybe the pilots were just lucky. That is a simpler explanation that the various conspiracy theories. Even so, it is remarkable how accurate they were.
The Pentagon, however, is not a tall buildling. It is only about 5 stories high. A 757 is 2 or 3 stories high. Moreover, a surveillance camera caught shot a of the plane just before it hit, and the plane was on a very flat trajectory. Maybe that pilot was lucky too. Maybe he came in too low, realized his mistake, and pulled up just enough to avoid burying the plane in the Pentagon parking lot, but not so much that he either lost airspeed or hit the Pentagon with a glancing blow in the undercarriage. Or maybe that pilot was more than a flight-school dropout. I have too little experience at flying planes into buildings to really know.
Please note that I am not a “truther”. I accept the official explanation for the 9/11 attacks. While there are some anomalies about the attacks, especially at the Pentagon, I believe that chance and the unreliability of eye witnesses are sufficient to account for the anomalies. On the other hand, if it were to come out that there was more to the attacks than we’ve been told, I wouldn’t be very surprised.
[…] We’ve seen this side of Ace before. […]