And said as much on Larry King’s show.
Now, the second tower was hit at 9:03 AM, and the Pentagon was hit at 9:43 AM. That makes forty minutes Kerry sat around, not thinking, while our country was being attacked.
Kinda puts that measley seven minutes in perspective, huh? Especially given Kerry’s reputation as a man of action.
I’d love to see how forty monutes of Democratic senatorial naval gazing would look in a documentary. Wouldn’t that be fascinating?
Ah…What exactly are you expecting a Senator to do? As I recall, Kerry was not commander-in-chief yet at that point. Do you think he should have just overridden the chain-of-command and said, “This is Senator Kerry and I am taking charge of the U.S. military here”?
I mean, how desperate for distraction are you guys these days?
that still gives him less time not thinking than Bush, by about 14,000,000,eh?
How so? Is there some rule that turns over leadership of the free world to John Kerry in time of crisis? -That is, other than an election victory or a supreme court decision?
I’d like to see that.
I spent a good hour watching the tube myself.
Should I feel remorse for not having assumed leadership of the United States during the terror? Of course not. It’s the leader’s responsibility to lead during times of tribulation. Too bad George wasn’t up to the task.
Good lord…you folks on the Right should be careful. You’re going to get some nasty splinters if you keep digging around hoping there’s a false bottom on this barrel.
Oh yeah…And, just as a point-of-fact (in addition to your OP making no sense on the face of it), when Kerry says that he watched the second plane go into the building, it is not entirely clear to me if he means that he saw it in real time. If you asked me, I would say that I saw lots of things that day, but the fact of the matter is that I didn’t know what was going on until sometime after 10am and much of what I “saw” was footage that was not live.
This bit of nonsense is being promoted by the Bush campaign.
What’s the debate here? How close we are to the bottom of the barrel?
As a Senator, what exactly could he do in that time, much less that day. Until the Patriot Act came up, there was little if anything a Senator could do in the WAT.
I don’t think for one second that John Kerry should have gone and taken control of anything. That’s not the point here.
I’m surprised, first of all, that Kerry would admit, after all the flak thrown Bush’s way on this issue, that on September 11th he engaged in behavior that was demonstratively less decisive.
Also, our country has many leaders, at the federal, state, and local level. Lotsa of them were engaged on September 11th, making the decisions necessary to respond to the crisis. I was working on a federal installation in the middle of Washington, DC on that day, so I got to experience some of these decisions firsthand.
John Kerry is one of only 100 senators, and he holds important committee positions relevant to the fight, especially of Foreign Relations. I find it disturbing that on a day that demanded at a bare minimum rapid acquaintance with the facts at hand, Kerry instead spent forty minutes sitting stunned, by his own admission.
– (Just shakin’ my head.) –
Seeing as hoe Michael Moore was the one who promoted that 7 minute revelation in the first place, and I don’t recall Kerry mentioning it once, it seems to be another example of a misdirected attack by the Bush administration against another enemy they don’t like, ignoring, once again, the real culprits resposible.
Howcum Moore got less than a 2 month head start?
Decisive about WHAT? Kerry was one of 100 senators, none of whom could conceivably do anything effective in regards to the attacks, other than evacuating. Which they did. What decisions is he supposed to have made in those 40 minutes. He wasn’t the Commander-in-Chief. He wasn’t the head of the CIA or FBI. He wasn’t a military commander at the time in any capacity. He wasn’t a firefighter or rescue worker. He was a legislator, a position that isn’t SUPPOSED to take rapid action on ANYTHING. And he was a legislator, furthermore, in the more deliberative legislative body, the Senate.
I’m not sure what you expected Kerry to do that day, Mr. Moto. Hop on a motorcycle and attempt to direct rescue efforts at the Pentagon? Hop a plane and help drag bodies out of Ground Zero? Organize a Senate posse to round up American Muslims in DC to prevent any further attacks that day? What do you expect him to have done in those 40 minutes?
Hell, it took me an hour to actually make myself believe it really happened that morning.
Well, you might excuse us if we are still trying to struggle with what exactly the point is here!
But the Senate is a deliberative body. They study things, hold hearings, and pass laws. He was involved in other Senate business that day. What, did you think he should immediately interrupt it and schedule hearings on “What the hell is going on?”
Maybe you need to read a primer about the different branches of government before wasting our time.
What I think we’ve discovered is that your real point is that you don’t have a point except to demonstrate your inability to understand distinctions in people’s job functions.
Before the right congratulates on a “clever” talking point, remember: day in and day out, they told themselves and everybody, that the 7 minutes was not a big deal, bringing up this 40 minute -apple to orange- comparison shows to me, that their words were pure horseshit, and they did really took the criticism to hearth.
At least Kerry was interested enough in the situation to turn on a friggin TV instead of reading My Pet Goat. :rolleyes:
Let’s use a little logic here.
President Bush more than any other person is the one who needed to devote his full and immediate attention to the situation. The Constitution invests command of the armed forces on to one person, not Congress. It does this for a reason. Congress is a deliberative body and can not make time critical minute by minute decisions.
When you have hijacked airplanes in the air flying towards vital targets, and you are the only one who has the authority to shoot those airplanes down, every minute, nay, every second counts.
Senator Kerry could not order planes shot down. Bush could.
Whether it would have made a difference in this particular instance if Bush had immediately excused himself from the room is largely irrelevant. Given the information he had at the time he should have acted like a leader and walked out. Without giving him the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, he was derelict in his duty to his country.
Oh, I get it. It’s not what he did that surprises you, but the fact that he admits it. I can understand that. You see, sometimes (not often, but sometimes) politicians will tell the truth about what they did. I can see how that would be confusing, given the current President’s inability to admit that he has made mistakes.
So should he have called a committee meeting? It’s still not clear to me what he should have done.
However, it’s very clear that, were he Commander-in-Chief, and had he been told “A second plane hit the other tower, and America’s under attack,” he should have done something, such as telling those people he was Commanding-in-Chief what they should do about the attack. Or, as Kerry put it himself (according to Michael Moore, at least), “Had I been reading to children and had my top aide whispered in my ear, ‘America is under attack,’ I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something that he needed to attend to.”
Also, he did not “spend 40 minutes sitting stunned, by his own admission.” He might have done so, but that’s not what he said. He said that he “shortly thereafter sat down at the table and then we just realized nobody could think.” Perhaps in the time before “shortly thereafter” they found out enough facts to determine there was nothing they could do. I don’t know, but neither do you.
On preview, a whole mess of people pointed out the same things, but this one is worthy of a pile-on. It’s just so ridiculous.
Oh, I guess I have something to add. Are any other liberals feeling a bit more hopeful, if this really is something the Pubs are going to focus on? I mean, wow. Only someone who feels defeated could try to use this as an attack, right?
Why is this even in GD? What is the debate?
I imagine that Mr. Moto thought this was a very clever “gotcha” when he posted it but it still is not a debate. At best it’s a tepid Pit thread without a valid point.
So tell us, Moto what was John Kerry supposed to do, considering it was not his job to do anything about it?
Guess what, I didn’t do anything either. I guess that means I don’t have a right to rip Bush, huh?
That’s the GOP defense of Bush’s inaction? That Kerry didn’t do – well something, we don’t know what – that morning?
I understand that Newt and Hannity and Zell Miller slept in that morning. And Clarence Thomas was seen camping in his flame colored RV in Wyoming – bastard!!!
I also understand the Elucidator was getting a hummer from Glenn Close at the very moment flight 93 went down! The outrage!!!
I also hear that none of these folks were in charge of the executive branch and the military on that morning.
Right?
Personally I’m undecided that GWB could have done anything effective in 7 minutes that day, but deciding to not even try seems less than impressive.
You pacifist Demowusses. A real man would’ve armed himself to the teeth and SWAM to Afghanstan to catch Bin Laden personally.
Are you serious? Wow. I feel better than ever about Kerry’s chances.
Shit, I was asleep! I didn’t wake up until 9:32, a few minutes before the Pentagon crash. I was practically aiding and abetting the terrorists.
Mr. Moto, not only is this staggeringly irrelevant, but Kerry was not the one who was responsible for informing the nation and dealing with the crisis. And we do have him on record saying he was trying to think. Bush was decisively, steadily reading to schoolchildren after being told the country was under attack. :rolleyes:
Submitted that too soon…
Before the right self-congratulates on a “clever” talking point, remember: day in and day out, they told themselves and everybody, that the 7 minutes was not a big deal. Bringing up this 40 minute -apple to orange- comparison shows to me, that their words were pure horseshit, and they did really took the criticism to heart.
Well, to step out of the pile on for 7 minutes or so 
, here is the goat, no, not Bush! The infamous Pet Goat book!:
The seven minutes is only good evidence with context. What did the president know? How was the information delivered? How did he previously react to similar shocks? What was he thinking?
I’m torn between interpretations of Bush’s actions. Moore presents a portrait of Bush as a straw man. A dummy with a “I’m a Republican” sign on it. He is not so much a man in Moore’s view as a symbol of the enemy. In presenting this image the seven minutes is an effective tool. It is meaningless for serious political debate unless someone has all of the pieces of context. I doubt anybody besides Bush does.
Kerry’s reactions to September 11th matters only as far as your spin can carry it. For honest people the explanation of the reactions, the floundering for words, and the shared pauses in remembering are all that matter.