"The Pet Goat" is an exercise in a reading book.

[JackRiddler]

Reading Mastery II by Siegfried Engelmann, a collection of SRA drills, has "The Pet Goat" on p. 153.

If there is something significant in that, it's that it showcases the Bush education philosophy: drill'em. No Child Left Behind actually tells us a lot about the sort who would entertain a 9/11: those who think the people (children too) are stupid sheep for shearing, and should stay that way. I find it very appropriate that it was arranged for Bush to be pretending to love little black children on the day his regime received the enabling event for its long-planned, fully intended global war of aggression.

The lesson in the classroom, with its stupefying repetition and sing-song authoritarianism of the teacher, is almost as scary as Bush's guilty-as-hell reaction to the three-second message whispered into his ear from Andy Card -- supposedly, "A second plane has hit the Towers. America is under attack."

There is a reason why people once understood this as a smoking gun, before they started looking for phantom proofs. Play that video. See how long Card is at Bush's ear. Try saying those words in the alloted time. Try whispering them in an understandable fashion.

The content of this sentence happens to be the minimum Card could possibly deliver and still be informing Bush of what was happening. ("America is under attack" would not specify what had happened, and it would make Bush look even more ridiculous in retrospect, yet that was initially what Card claimed he had said. He later added that he prefaced it with, "A second plane has hit the Towers.")

Yet Bush sits there, obediently waiting for further instructions, doing nothing and receiving no further word for 7 minutes -- and he is still in the classroom 13 minutes later, shaking hands, having received no briefing in the interim. How is this plausible? "America is under attack" and he doesn't even ask for clarification? He just absorbs the "second plane" thing on the spot, understands it, and proceeds to look "somber"? This is someone who was just learning what was happening at 9:05, after the second hit? This was someone who thought the first hit was an accident? Bullshit!

This was someone who was actually in charge of anything at any point in his administration? Double bullshit!

But far greater as a smoking gun is the entire period from first hit (8:46, when the motorcade was on its way to school) to leaving the school (9:34, 50 minutes). The plane hits the WTC, the popolous entourage learn about it while they are already on the road, and they go ahead with a photo op? By then it was known that the plane had been hijacked at 8:20, and this information was circulating to the military. As they arrived at the school, a reporter asked Bush, "do you know what's happening in New York?" and received an affirmative. According to Bush, he thought: "That's one lousy pilot." No one in his large entourage knew any different, or thought to inform the supposed chief executive?

And then the second hit, and they keep the photo op going - no Secret Service reaction, no reaction from the entourage members of the White House Military Office (WHMO)?

America is under attack, but screw these children: We're staying put right here, so that everyone in the world knows where the president is right now. And then more planes are known to be hijacked, but Bush delivers a LIVE TELEVISED statement at 9:31? Six minutes before the Pentagon is going to be hit?

Again, it is impossible that Card whispered that many words to Bush clearly in the time it actually happened. There was time enough for something like: "The game is on." Or: "Sit tight for a few minutes" (because our schedule has run into unexpected delays).

Yes, he looks stupid sitting tight. But it was safe to assume that the majority of people would merely see the president looking concerned as he dealt with little children, and that the regime would thus be covered on the "Where was Bush" question that would have been inevitably asked (as though it mattered) if he hadn't been on live TV during the attacks. Let the "conspiracy theorists" ask where were Rumsfeld, Myers (who?), Winfield, Eberhard, Mies, the FAA... and let It was safe to assume that only a suspicious minority would want to see the obvious abdication of presence by the ostensible chain of command.