The seven minutes

[Shallah Kali]

http://www.hibbingmn.com/placed/index.php?sect_rank=4&story_id=179856

Quote
The President maintains that he is a war leader, effectively protecting America from terrorism. False and non-specific terrorist warnings notwithstanding, one looks at Iraq, and discovers that, for terrorists, that land has become a target-rich environment. Worse, neither the coalition forces nor the Iraqi interim government are in control there – witness 700 Iraqi civilians killed in July alone. Then one notes that, in terms of an active search, American vengeance for that insidious attack has all but been abandoned in favor of a war in Iraq, a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11. Thus, there is a shaking of the head to Bush’s assertion.

But, in more practical terms, some visualize the captain of the Oklahoma waiting for twelve minutes or more to react as bombs are raining down on Pearl Harbor and very dangerous torpedoes are cruising toward battleships. Is there a difference between that captain and the President? Only in scope. The captain is tasked with protecting his ship. The President is tasked with protecting our great nation.

[obelus]

1. What did Andrew Card say?

Andrew Card reportedly leaned into the President's ear and said, "The nation is under attack". The President had no way of discerning at that moment whether this was a missile attack, an invasion by Canada, or an attack on The Nation magazine by armed pundits. He made a decision, easy to second guess, to sit perfectly still. His press secretary scrawled the words "NO QUESTIONS!" on a notebook and held it up from the back of the room. Perhaps Ari was worried the children in the room would begin to question the President on his reading comprehension, who knows?

Much later, the 9/11 Commission detailed how after the President had finally disembarked from the school and boarded AF1 there were problems with the linking the President to the secure conference call established by the White House with NORAD, SAC, the FAA, and the Pentagon. This is troubling in that the entire upper cabin of AF1 is devoted to a secure communications post that, presumably, has awesome secure communications capabilities -- only not that day.

It is perfectly reasonable for the layman to assume, given the evidence supplied by the commission's report and the media accounts from that day, that the President was not effectively considered "in-the-loop" during this national emergency. Cheney, Rice, Hughes, Clarke, and Rumsfeld were calling the shots as had been rehearsed. It was not incumbent on the President to raise our DefCon status, monitor events, or even ascertain the nature and signature of the event because the President is a moron.

[MISSDem]

2. In other words, all jokes aside, Bush is really not in charge.

That is troubling. Cheney, et al are running things?

[newyawker99]

3. Hi obelus!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[zoeb]

4. Awol again!!! n/t

[Miss Authoritiva]

6. Equally appalling as Bush's non-reaction to Card's "the nation is

under attack" was Rumsfeld's nonchalance after the second jet hit the WTC. He didn't even end or interrupt the daily briefing session he was in at the time at the Pentagon. If the Pentagon itself hadn't been hit, he'd probably still be sitting there bloviating on known knowns and unknown knowns.

Not to begrudge Rumsfeld his charitable acts, he should not have stopped to help carry the injured on stretchers. He was the Secretary of Defense, after all, and his physical being and his powers in the chain of command were needed elsewhere. I still find it incredible that none of the career military people around him didn't have the presence of mind to tell him that his bony ass was needed elsewhere.

It is amusing to note, however, that Lynne Cheney got herself to the White House bunkers right real quick.

[NV1962]

5. 7 mins of panic followed by 20 mins in a photo-op; there's a leader! (n/t)