MALARKEY!

malarkey, n. Slang. Exaggerated or foolish talk, usually intended to deceive

As it's St. Paddy's Day and I'll soon be boiling my corned beef and cabbage (with carrots, potatoes, and onions) there's probably no better time to deal with the distracting and inane malarkey of that malevolent leprechaun, Fintan Dunne.

Most recently and most regrettably, Dunne has exerted his underwhelming knowledge of basic physics, deployed his Fort Apache array of straw men on the battlements, and cheerfully ignored all salient facts that do not agree with his revised theory of How The Twin Towers Came Down--a hypothesis which bears more than a passing resemblance to an early draft of the NIST report. As such, he merits an F in 8th grade science, an A in basket-weaving, and a B+ in tap-dancing.

First of all, forget about WTC 7. Dunne doesn't know how it was done, so ignore it. Sure, it looks like a controlled demolition and it fell at about free-fall speed--but that's just impossible. And when Dan Rather said it reminded him of a controlled demolition, pay him no heed because he was told to say that by the powers that be. Rather was instructed to plant the notion that explosives were used (as was Peter Jennings).

(Dunne is particularly adept at picking out fakes like Rather and Jennings. In fact, he's managed to prove that everybody is a fake except for Fintan Dunne. Imagine that.)

Dunne also believes that if explosives were used and the perpetrators wanted to cover it up they wouldn't bring in Controlled Demolition Inc., especially given their role in the cover-up of the OKC bombing. This from a guy that said the anomalies in the Nick Berg beheading video were placed there deliberately to bust the chops of the people that get it. Dunne could also add the naming of the disaster scene "Ground Zero" and the "terrorist hate your for your freedoms" line while they passed the Patriot Act. Controlled Demolition's presence on the scene was a show of arrogance and a necessity.

When Dunne attempts to explain the collapse of the towers he reveals just how stunningly ignorant he is--and how crafty. Before he serves up his plate of warmed over pancake theory (with rancid butter and adulterated syrup), he defines the opposition to his irrefutable logic as espousing thermite/thermate, cutter charges, or space beams. He pooh-poohs pyroclastic flow. And he completely ignores other credible theories (such as the deployment of tactical mini-nukes) to explain how the buildings disintegrated from the top down and pulverized themselves to dust following the path of maximal resistance.

He asserts (contrary to supposed popular belief) that there was plenty of steel lying about for NIST and others to examine--and so why didn't NIST (or others) find signatures of explosives? Well, NIST never felt the need to analyze the steel for signs of explosives, being in the employ of the perpetrators and otherwise following the Official Story: planes brought down the buildings, and explosives (of whatever sort) did not compute.

When confronted with the long-lasting molten steel, Dunne responds with an explanation that would have made Guinness come out my nose: friction! Apparently, in Dunne's physical universe, there was such friction when the towers came down (in less than 15 seconds through the path of maximal resistance) that the resulting heat melted steel and caused it to stay molten for three months. (By the same token, if I put on corduroy pants and walked around the block three times I'd burst into flames.)

And those lovely squibs: Fintan says they were just air being forced out of windows as the floors pancaked. The forced-air hypothesis also explains how steel beams were ejected hundreds of feet. The air, Dunne claims, was being compressed so that it escaped at something like six hundred miles per hour--enough to throw around girders like Tinkertoys. Uh-huh.

Dunne also conveniently forgets (or never knew) the difference between "heat" and "temperature." He avers that the steel got so hot (as a result of the jet-fuel and office fires) that it began to distort and buckle within 20 minutes. Forgetting for the moment that steel conducts heat and would have distributed it through the steel framework of the buildings, 20 minutes isn't long enough to bake a pizza. But while there was some heat from the fires, the actual temperature wouldn't have been high enough to compromise the steel.

Fintan Dunne is an occasionally-charming rogue who has obviously played tonsil-hockey with the Blarney Stone. With this series on the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, it's clear he's jumped whatever shark may dwell in the Irish Sea. Not that he's as tender and savory as the corned beef we'll enjoy today--if you stick a fork in him you'll find he's Dunne.