Bush stole the kids lunch money before he took off.
For those of us lacking a time machine, how will his performance be on 9/11/11 ?? He’ll lose control of his inner voice and scream the name of his 22 year old intern whilst Laura is giving him a quick rub? He’ll stand stock still in the kitchen, wide-eyed and bereft because he cannot figure out what the “frappé” button means on the smoothie maker? He’ll briskly walk past his SS guard, saluting and saying for the 209th time, " You’re doing a great job, Curtis " even though he’s been told dozens of times that the SS agent is named Earvin? He’ll struggle with his urge to use his new telescope to look into the apartments of those around his hotel, and the struggle will be centered around the fact that his name is not “Tom”, and yet he has the urge to peep?
Me, I can’t wait to find out how his performance is on that date. I’m guessing he’ll ride the coattails of America’s Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, and will thrust himself into the spotlight at the expense of surviving victims, families and veterans.
Because, of course, we’re nothing without him.
:rolleyes:
What a sad and destructive piece of meat he is.
Even that, I would think, is an action. I wouldn’t expect your first action to be going out to do something about it - but honestly i’d find the police telling you it’s been stolen, and immediately you just go and finish off whatever you were doing, to be kind of odd too, really. Your immediate action, or at least my immediate reaction, would be to ask questions. Perhaps after finding out some pertinent information, you might quickly go and finish off whatever you were doing, and then set out to do something. But “finding out more” is the normal, responsible immediate response.
I mean, even if all that Bush was told right then was “A plane has flown into one of the towers.” - no necessary suggestion of terrorism, no knowledge of the other planes - I would think a reasonable reaction would be “This is important enough that I need to know more.”
But he did know that he needed to ‘know more’. That is obvious to even to a retarded man (not saying Bush is retarded, I don’t think he is). It’s just a matter of knowing that needing to ‘know more’ doesn’t mean you need to ‘know more’ this very instant. It can wait 7 minutes.
There. I said it. I’ve always wanted to say it, but stifled myself. It is not the end of the world for the man to sit there, his mind racing for a few moments before he decided how to proceed.
He also could have been whispered “A second plane just hit the WTC. Information is still coming in. As soon as I have it, I’ll debrief you.”
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He’ll briskly walk past his SS guard, saluting and saying for the 209th time, " You’re doing a great job, Curtis " even though he’s been told dozens of times that the SS agent is named Earvin?
[/QUOTE]
The first time I saw SS, there, I read it as “Schutzstaffel”. 
Of course not, but since he’s a republican he is evil and therefore anything he does that a democrat disagrees with is evil and besides he likes to kill brown people for the fun of it.
Let’s look at President Bush’s actions after Andy Card informs the President:
9:14 a.m.
The President goes a into classroom with a telephone and a television. The President speaks with the Vice President, the Governor of New York, and the FBI Director.
9:29 a.m.
The President addresses the nation.
9:35 a.m.
The President departs from Emma E. Booker Elementary School.
Meanwhile:
9:13 a.m.
F-15s from Otis Air National Guard Base are ordered into the air.
9:25 a.m.
A video teleconference is set up in the White House Situation Room. The video teleconference includes the CIA, the FBI, the FAA, the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Justice.
9:37 a.m.
Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon.
From George W. Bush’s memoir, Decision Points:
Emphasis mine.
While President Bush was “getting on TV”, an important video teleconference was being set up. While President Bush was leaving the elementary school, a Boeing 757 was crashing into the Pentagon. Talk about juxtaposition. Why give a brief speech from Emma E. Booker Elementary School when you will be giving a prime time address from the White House? Why depart from the elementary school at 9:35 a.m. when you should have departed from the elementary school at 9:05 a.m., after Andy Card informs you of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center and of the possibility of other planes being hijacked? What’s 7 minutes when the Pentagon is less than 34 minutes from being attacked? What’s 7 minutes on September 11, 2001?
You forgot to mention that he raped them, first. You’re turning into a Bush Apologist. Right-wing freak!
What, you didn’t think of the Sicherheitsdienst? Fucking Nazi!
You have to have had your head buried in the sand or have bought the “no one could have anticipated” business hook line and sinker to even remotely consider that it shouldn’t have been the obvious conclusion that there was a major terrorist event underway at the moment that second plane hit.
I was in my car heading somewhere when I heard about the first plane, and the second one was reported as I was pulling into the driveway. I went to the right conclusion instantly, and by the time I walked into the building so had EVERYONE that I spoke to there.
In the larger context I don’t give a shit what Bush did on that day. But I do agree with virtually everything that Der Trihs says about him, minus the “he must have been jumping for joy to see Muslims/New Yorkers dead” sort of pointless mind reading. It is a massive failure of our media and our society that things like the Project for the New American Century are so unknown. This was a group who called openly for greater American military domination in the world, and one of their biggest bugbears was Saddam Hussein. In 1998 they sent a letter to then-President Clinton, in which they argued that the threat of weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was so great that military intervention must be begun in the near term, with the goal of removing Hussein from power. Here is a representative paragraph:
You may recognize many of the signatories from Bush’s administration: Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Peter W. Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, William Schneider, Jr., Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Robert B. Zoellick. Dick Cheney was a founding member of PNAC.
The desire to take down Saddam Hussein’s regime, as well as the surface rationale (weapons of mass destruction) were already well in place among this group of people before George Bush ever gained the Presidency or 9/11 ever happened.
That nobody seems to know this save the lunatic fringe of the left wing (bitter snark right there), or is able to hand-wave it away as some crazy conspiracy theory if they do, is a crying shame.
9/11 provided no additional rationale to attack Iraq. Ties to al Quada were tenuous at best, where they weren’t fabricated. Even the supposed reason why these people wanted Saddam Hussein taken down so very badly (WMD) had ultimately to be fabricated. And as a result of that fabrication, those lies to fit a pre-existing desire for greater American military hegemony in the world, hundreds of thousands of people died.
And that’s not supposed to be evil? Not supposed to be deserving of the greatest level of condemnation anyone can muster? Fuck that noise.
The Fuhrer’s bodyguard came from the Shutzstaffel, yes?
The Sicherheitsdeinst looks like it dealt with counter-intelligence and other field work.
Like all other things Nazi, it’s confusing to me, as there appears to be confusing overlap between these (and other) organisations.
Short answer: “Shutzstaffel” is the page that came up when I searched for “SS” on wiki.
So… is there ANY news that could ever reach a US president that is in fact so time-critical, so needing-of-immediate-response, that sitting and reading to schoolchildren for 7 minutes would in fact NOT be a reasonable response?
I mean, to me the level of priority goes:
(1) Nuclear missiles have been launched at us
(2) Aliens have landed
(3) We’re in the midst of the largest terrorist attack on our country’s soil in history
To repeat myself for the umpteenth time, the question is not, in hindsight, whether 7 minutes of the president’s time (and as other’s have pointed out, it’s not just the 7 minutes of reading, it’s also the additional time spent hanging around and the school) ended up mattering; it’s whether it was clear at the time that those minutes of the president’s time could not possibly have mattered. In other words, did Bush do what he did because his massive hyperawareness of the situation and all its implications let him do a lightning fast calculation which resulted in him immediately and correctly deducing that in fact there were as of yet no useful actions or meaningful decisions for him to make; or did he do what he did because was incurious and used to being led around by the nose?
Which would make a better parody of my position if Republicans didn’t have a history of fighting against government funded school lunches. “Hungry kids learn better!” They are that petty.
To wit: Within a day of the attacks, Richard Clarke was asked by Vice President Cheney to find the connections between Iraq and the 9-11 attacks. Clarke was WTF?–Saddam & OBL hated each other. When I first heard it publicly from Cheney, I didn’t believe him. And Cheney kept ranting about the connection for years. The one day he announced there wasn’t a connection after all.
9-11 changed the talk of invading Iraq to the execution of that very deed. For Iraq, that day changed their lives forever just as much as it changed Americas.
I think some of the poster’s feelings about Bush need to step back and look at past “World’s Craziest Presidential Crisis Videos.” Read up on what happens during the first few minutes of the following: 1) Reagan’s attempted assassination, 2) Kennedy’s assassination, and 3) the attack on Pearl Harbor. From what I’ve read, the “fog of war” along with the fear of the unknown seldom result in cool, calm, and decisive actions in the first few minutes…
I would suggest that if you *don’t know *whether you need to know more instantly or whether it is safe to wait for a while, then it’s a good idea to err on the side of caution. If there’s a possibility that it can wait 7 minutes, and a possibility that it cannot wait 7 minutes - I would say that it would be a far wiser plan to to assume that it cannot. Worst case scenario; you’re wrong, and have put off what you were doing for no reason. Best case; you’re right, and your quick reaction to inform yourself lends aid to your endeavours.
Not knowing whether you need to know now or then is not an excuse for picking then.
If you’re the President of the United States - it might well be.
It’s not correct to suggest that there’s nothing productive Bush could have done if he had not delayed. I’ll agree that it’s likely nothing would have changed, through no fault of his own, but there was a reasonable possibility that he might have made a difference.
Set aside the argument that he should have interrupted his itinerary when the first plane struck. He was informed of the second plane at 9:05, and sat there for 7 minutes.
Meanwhile, it isn’t until 9:16 that a United Airlines controller starts sending out warnings to planes. At 9:21 United starts warning crews to secure cockpit doors. At 9:23, Flight 93 receives the message, and is confused, asking for confirmation. At 9:27 the terrorists attack on Flight 93, and at 9:28, the terrorists take over the cockpit.
It’s possible that Bush, had he acted quicker, might have accelerated the process of getting warnings out to planes. The crew on Flight 93 might have gotten their first message earlier, and been able to confirm it and do what they needed to do before 9:27.
This works as sound bite but fails in real life. Look; I realize Jack Bauer sometimes holds the nation in his grasp with a matter of sheer moments to act, but the real world doesn’t work that way.
MaxTheVool, I think the suggestion that the President is incurious about an attack on home soil is outrageous and just too silly to consider.
Hentor, I don’t doubt that there are moves Bush could have made. I just believe it is reasonable to assume that every president ever, when faced with a huge event like this, sacrifices some precious moments before springing into action.
Considering how badly he acts when he has time to think, I really don’t want to see him spring into action. Except for clearing brush. He’s good at that, gotta hand it to him.
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But I do agree with virtually everything that Der Trihs says about him, minus the “he must have been jumping for joy to see Muslims/New Yorkers dead” sort of pointless mind reading. [/QUOTE]
So do I. And I can’t help noticing that very few of the righties posting here are making any effort to refute DT’s opinion that Bush (the guy who as a boy enjoyed stuffing firecrackers up frog’s asses and blowing them up, and went on to amuse himself as a fratboy by branding, personally, the bare butts of pledges with a hot iron, who mocked a woman he was about to execute), isn’t a sadistic psychopath.
Instead it’s all third grade insults like “There’s drool running down your chin” and “Nobody likes you”.
Keep it up, Der. There are more of us on your side than the tightyrightys like to think.