President Bush should have reacted differently (7 minutes)

[Shallah Kali]

http://www.ledger-dispatch.com/opinion/opinionview.asp?c=120849

It’s a riveting tale but some may think the president had more pressing matters. The world knew at that moment that the United States was the victim of a vicious and unprovoked assault. What nobody knew for sure was the scope. Was it conventional or nuclear? Who were the aggressors? Was there more on the way?

The responsibility to react to such a crisis is in the hands of one man, the President of the United States. That is why an individual follows him at all times with the “football” containing the launch codes for nuclear retaliation.

But for nearly seven minutes the president did nothing except read along with the children. In the meantime two other aircraft were on course to destroy the Pentagon and either the White House or the Capitol. The decision to shoot down civilian aircraft is also in the hands of the Commander in Chief.

The official White House line, repeated by the president in his unsworn testimony before the commission and faithfully parroted by Mr. Watson, Fox News, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and GOP.com, is that the president didn’t want to scare the children. How about saving their lives? Has this been an attack by the much-vaunted weapons of mass destruction then seconds, let alone minutes, could have made the difference between life and death for perhaps millions of Americans.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. didn’t want to scare the children

Has anyone realized what a pathetic excuse this was for sitting there like a deer in the headlights?? 30 children vs potentially thousands upon thousands of American citizens. Someone please do the math and tell me I am wrong.

[MsUnderstood]

2. I'm gonna parrot Micheal Moore

Micheal Moore said that as the most know person in the world, the president has a HUGE target on him.

By staying in a classroom with these kids, he put their lives in danger. When our country was attacked, Bush huddled in a classroom. It is like a man holding up his kid as a sheild when being shot at.

What if the target was Bush? Those kids would be dead. Sitting in the classroom was an act of cowardice. He put a bullseye on everyone in that room.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. He put a bullseye on everyone in that room.

Woah.... didn't think about that....

Now he has put a bullseye on many many more than that. I have never heard it said that a lack of cruise missiles and cluster bombs cause terrorist activity.

What I have heard is the the lack of human rights, floundering economies, injustice, and the like have had a hand in creating terrorist minded people.

For example... we prop up the Saudi king/prince thingy... and they have over 25% unemployment. That has created hatred for the people who support such a regime... while the people suffer at the hand of that regime. If they wanted to start democracy in the ME, they should have started in the country that produced and funded the terrorists who hit us on 911. Anything less is/was a mistake that this twit will just have to live with for the rest of his life.

[KC21304]

4. I think a bigger point is, knowing what Bush SHOULD have

known if he was reading his PDBs, after word of the first plane hitting the WTC reached him and his advisors, he never should have been allowed to go into the class room. Didn't anyone think that maybe they should stay away from that situation until they found out about the first plane ?

[Catfight]

5. Bush stayed for more photo's after the second plane and after he

was out of sight of the children. This from a man who couldn't even deduce that the August PDB said, "Al Queda determined to attack within the US, possibly using domestic airplanes," Two twin towers are hit and on fire, Ari says "we're under attack," and Bush decides it's more picture time!

[louis-t]

7. I don't think it was Ari

Andrew Card?

[Lisa]

6. why didn't he issue orders to ground East Coast flights?

Apparently that was left to Norm Mineta, the Transportation Secretary. Knowing what he knew, Bush should have had some plan of "what to do if this turns out to be an attack" in mind, even if he decided to go ahead with the classroom visit. (Didn't Reagan have to issue some kind of strategic orders during a photo-op at a bakery once?)

If he'd acted right away, maybe Flight 93 could have been saved. (That's what the widow of one of the pilots thinks.)

"Mrs. Homer’s soft voice curdles when she describes his reaction: "I can’t get over what Bush said when he was called about the first plane hitting the tower: ‘That’s some bad pilot.’ Why did people on the street assume right away it was a terrorist hijacking, but our President didn’t know? Why did it take so long to ground all civilian aircraft? In the time between when my husband’s plane took off and when the second plane hit in New York <9:02 a.m.>, they could have turned back to airfield.""


http://www.williambowles.info/911/bush_awol.html

[MsUnderstood]

8. What is sad is that the 'bad pilot' line is a lie

Bush did not see the first plane hit before he entered the classroom--in fact no one had footage of that event on TV at that time.

He had certainly heard about it though, but The little pet goat was so compeling. . .

[Lisa]

9. the fact that he thought people would LIKE to hear him make stuff up ...

... laughing and joking about 9/11 at those town hall events -- that's even creepier than if he really HAD thought of such an inappropriate quip during that crisis.

As you say, MsUnderstood. It was all stuff he constructed later. He could claim he'd thought of any number of heroic-sounding quotes, yet he picked that one. Pretty revealing.