Yes indeed, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Selectively picked from the THOUSANDS of pages of testimony. Have you read it all? All 498 files available on the NYT site?
And it's not even just cherry picking which of the 498 reports to show, it's just showing the sentences, or even fragments of sentences, that support the idea of there being explosive charges.
For example, you quote:
External Quote:
At that point a debate began to rage because the perception was that the building looked like it
had been taken out with charges...
But here's that in context:
[EX=http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110295.PDF]
At that point there was a lot of confusion.
There was heavy ash in the air and on the ground. We
made our way over towards the river. At that point
there were a lot of guys cut up, some broken bones, a
lot of civilians getting on the ferries. We helped
some of the civilians get on the ferries.
At that point a debate began to rage because
the perception was that the building looked like it had
been taken out with charges.
We had really no concept
of the damage on the east side of 2 World Trade Center
at that point, and at that point many people had felt
that possibly explosives had taken out 2 World Trade,
and officers were gathering companies together and the
officers were debating whether or not to go immediately
back in or to see what was going to happen with 1 World
Trade at that point. The debate ended pretty quickly
because 1 World Trade came down.[/EX]
So you note that people thought charges had been used. But omit the context that it was during a time of "great confusion", and that they had "no concept" of the full extent of the damage.
Please, do read through the actual full transcripts. Don't just rely on cherry picked quotes. Load up the full text, and search for "bomb" and "explosion". Lots of people heard explosions, lots of people thought there might have been bombs. But see what the actual context is. Don't cherry pick.
[EX=http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110215.PDF] Visibly from where we were standing, I
estimate that I probably saw about a hundred people
jumping to their death. Some looked like they were in
pairs, but most of them were singly, free falling, to
such a degree that they were doing tumblesalts in the
air and forcibly landing to the ground, or very
impactly landing on top of that glass canopy, which
seemed to be like almost like individual skylights that
were -- they were breaking through.
Very noticeably
you could hear them like pounding, almost like a bomb
going off, a small bomb, like paum, paum. And so there
was a lot of glass breaking and a lot of hearts being
shattered by watching that thing.[/EX]
The individual transcripts are available here:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packag...12_WTC_GRAPHIC/met_WTC_histories_full_01.html
I've combined them all into one large pdf file here (right click and save, too big for browser viewing):
https://www.metabunk.org/files/911 NYT ORAL HISTORY COMBINED.PDF
And a more manageable 7MB text file here:
https://www.metabunk.org/files/911 NYT ORAL HISTORY COMBINED.txt