Speed of collapse

The very speed of the building collapse, the same or very nearly the same as a free falling bowling ball, is said to be evidence that it was purposefully demolished with explosives. Think about it. These were buildings made of 240 steel perimeter columns and 47 steel core columns (the core is not a "hollow shaft" as claimed in the Commission Report), extensively cross-braced.

Physicist Stephen Jones has done a lot of work on this subject and has a good article on the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth site. I use a scaled-down version of his image here (without permission, yell at me if necessary) because it's so great as an aid to visualization. On the left, picture the free fall of the top floors. Wheeee, all the way down. On the right, there's some 300,000 tons of concrete and steel in the way. We're expected to believe they'd fall about the same speed without explosives.

If any of these steel columns or cross beams or any of the enormous amount of concrete had put up any resistance whatsoever, the collapse ought to have taken rather much longer. But all of that concrete turned instantly to very fine powder. All of that steel broke instantly into regular-sized chunks. Yes, each floor had a lot of weight dropped onto it, but let's not underestimate the strength of this dual perimeter-core steel support system.

And I'm not even talking about Building 7!

Source: Griffin, p. 18-20, ae911truth.org, and many others

Suppose the concrete floors all collapsed under the weight, perhaps that part is plausible. Wouldn't some of the steel columns, with extreme vertical integrity, have been left standing? Some of them? One of them? In one of the towers?

This seems extremely suspicious to me, to the point I believe the proponents of the official story must be having a good laugh at the fact that anyone is buying their story that it wasn't a controlled demolition.

Bottom line, me, I give it: