Jamie Granados Essays - September 11 Attacks, Filmed Deaths

Jamie Granados 11 "C" Investigation The word trade center The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001, as a result of being struck by two jet airliners hijacked by 10 terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda, during the September 11 attacks.[1] Two of the four hijacked airliners crashed into the Twin Towers, one into the North Tower (1 World Trade Center) and the other into the South Tower (2 World Trade Center).[2] The collapse of the Twin Towers destroyed the rest of the complex, and debris from the collapsing towers severely damaged or destroyed more than a dozen other adjacent and nearby structures. The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 am, less than an hour after being hit by the second hijacked airliner, and at 10:28 am the North Tower collapsed. Later that day, 7 World Trade Center collapsed at 5:21 pm from fires that had started when the North Tower collapsed. As a result of the attacks to the towers, a total of 2,763 people died. Of the people who died in the towers, 2,192 were civilians, 343 were firefighters, and 71 law enforcement officers. Aboard the two airplanes, 147 civilians and 10 hijackers also died. Immediately following the attacks, a building performance study (BPS) team of engineering specialists was formed by the Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers (SEI/ASCE) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The BPS team issued its report in May 2002, finding that the aircraft impacts caused "extensive structural damage, including localized collapse" and that the resulting fires "further weakened the steel-framed structures, eventually leading to total collapse". They also presented recommendations for more detailed engineering studies of the disaster. The BPS team investigation was later followed by a more detailed investigation conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which also consulted outside engineering entities. This investigation was completed in September 2005. The NIST investigators did not find anything substandard in the design of the WTC towers, noting that the severity of the attacks and the magnitude of the destruction was beyond anything experienced in U.S. cities in the past. Al Qaeda emerged out of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s. As the Soviets prepared to withdraw, Osama Bin Laden and a few of his close associates high on their perceived victory over the mighty Soviet Union decided to capitalize on the network they had built to take jihad global. Bin Laden's vision was to create a vanguard of elite fighters who could lead the global jihad project and bring together the hundreds of small jihadist groups struggling, often feebly, against their own regimes under a single umbrella. The Islamic State began as an Iraqi organization, and this legacy shapes the movement today. Jihadist groups proliferated in Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion, and many eventually coalesced around Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian jihadist who spent time in Afghanistan in the 1990s and again in 2001. Though Bin Laden gave Zarqawi seed money to start his organization, Zarqawi at first refused to swear loyalty to and join Al Qaeda, as he shared only some of Bin Laden's goals and wanted to remain independent. Both are radical jihadists groups whose origins lie in the "Jalalabad School" of Jihadist thought. ISIS was founded by Abu Musab Al Zarqawi who originally showed up in Iraq and setup an Al Qaeda franchise there during the American occupation of the country. However, he was so extreme, particularly in his hatred for Shia Muslims that Al Qaeda all but disavowed him. This was because his brutal actions in Iraq disgusted even hardcore jihadists. While both groups tend to share much in terms of their hatred for those they consider deviants, crusaders etc., Al Qaeda was traditionally not interested in establishing a caliphate but more focused on attacking the US and its "taghut" Muslim allies. In contrast, ISIS seeks to re-establish the caliphate and become the only legitimate Islamic state in the world. They also, at least in their propaganda, wish to fulfill certain Islamic prophecies dealing with the end of times by engaging Western forces in Syria (specifically the plane of Dabiq). In terms of ideology, arguably, ISIS relies heavily on the concept of takfirism (the doctrine of declaring