I really wish the 9/11 Commission report was believable so I didn't have to puzzle over all this.
Although it would be more than necessary to provide the neocons with their casus belli, it seems evident that the plan required that both Towers and WTC7 be destroyed. If that was going to be accomplished with internal demolitions anyway, it seems like a more reliable means of providing the cover story would have been to have just one guy drive a tractor-trailer full of high explosives into the plaza and set it off. Most witnesses would be killed, blinded, or dazed.
hijacked airplanes cruising into skyscrapers = way more memorable, striking, terrifying than trucks that blow up.
another thing - right after 9/11, a Canadian general from NORAD told his own nation (at some speech the week after - anyone have it? Jag?) He told them that HE had ordered the shootdown of a plane in Penn because the American generals were powerless to do so.
Whether this is true, or if we did it ourselves, or if the official story is true that the heroes on board did it - we have to wonder - was that plane heading to WTC7? was the missile strike required to take out the basement (remeber bombs had taken out 1/2's basements, so that Flight 93 hitting it would cause it to collapse like the others?
I don't know. I do believe that the disorganized way it was brought down (media reporting it's collapse on cue at 4:54 even though it didn't fall til 26 minutes later) shows SOMETHING went wrong that day.
Whatever that object is, it is independent from the planes, and it sure looks like a missile, and if it had not clipped that building, it would have hit WTC7 right in the base, front and center.
