Hasn’t it been made clear that things DIDN’T happen as they should? That the FAA and the military were NOT communicating as they should in the early moments of 9/11? And if they had been communicating, perhaps the second wave of hits wouldn’t have happened? And who is over both the FAA and the military? They guy reading about goats?
If I might make a suggestion, I really think you should vote for Bush. Your mindset is much more suited for his side of the fence.
No, this has not been made clear at all. Can you perhaps point to the portion of the 9-11 commission report you are citing?
And while you at it, instead of giving vague inuendos, perhaps you could simply answer my original quesiton and point out the orders that Bush would have given in your ideal universe. Note, you need to reference the information he had at the time. No assuming he knew it was an attack before 9:05 as you did in your last attempt to answer this question.
You can suggest that. I would rather try to find out facts and political stands in the months leading up to November. I’ve wasted about enough time over something that I consider to be trivial at best (the 7 minutes).
Now this is something I agree with. In fact, it’s the point I’ve been trying (and failing) to get across.
That’s certainly clear now, sir. But these problems should have been fixed long before the incident. Like, say, in the administrations of Reagan, Bush I or Clinton.
Of course, how would we have known there was a deficiency? Sometimes these things only become apparent in a crisis.
And how would Bush’s playing phone mediator on that day have helped any?
You’re not answering these very legitimate questions I’m asking you, which deal fundamentally with the way the government works. I have a little insight here, having worked for the Department of the Navy, as an enlisted sailor and a defense contractor, for about eleven years now.
And you folks have the nerve to accuse me of not knowing how the government works. 
[Moderator Hat ON]
Braintree, do NOT call your fellow posters “putz[es]” in Great Debates.
[Moderator Hat OFF]
I’m fairly certain Squink’s link was a different camera than the one Moore had footage from in Fahrenheit 9/11. I’m not sure, though. In any case, Moore had the film footage, not an mpeg thereof; everything is much, much clearer in his version, and I encourage seeing the film, even if you’ll disagree with most of it. I know there were many things I thought were silly (such as harping on the “blacked-out name” in Bush’s Guard records, since, well, the Privacy Act says they have to black out that name). The great thing about Moore is we expect him to be full of crap, so at least some of us look into the facts behind what he says, and others are glad to point out any errors to the people who don’t look. But footage itself doesn’t lie; it shows what it shows. If you take Moore’s interpretations with a huge grain of salt, the film is still damning, in my eyes at least.
As for the thread, I’m bowing out. To me, the President seeming to not want to know what was going on–unlike everyone else I’ve ever talked to about 9/11–is troublesome. But it’s not troublesome enough for me to stay for a 6th or 7th page, and, in any case, I don’t think those pages will convince anyone to agree with my opinion if they aren’t there already.
Happy to oblige.
Page 20: Boston Center did not follow the protoco in seeking military assistance through the prescribed chain of command. … The center also tried to contact a former alert site in Atlantic City, unaware that it had been phased out. At 8:37:52, Boston Center reached NEADS. This was the first notification received by the military- at any level- that American 11 had been hijacked.
Page 21 In summary, NEADS received notice of the hijacking nine minutes before it struck the North Tower. That nine minutes’ noticve before impact was the most the military would receive of any of the four hijackings.
Page 23 The first indication that the NORAD air defenders had of the second hijacked aircraft, United 175, came in a phone call from New York Center to NEADS at 9:03. The notice came at about the time the plane was hitting the South Tower.
Page 30 NEADS first received a call about United 93 from the military liaison at Cleveland Center at 10:07… Unaware that the aircraft had already crashed, Cleveland passed to NEADS the aircraft’s last known latitude and longitude. NEADS was never able to locate United 93 on radar because it was already on the ground.
It seems clear that the military did not have adequate notice to respond to the events. By the time it learned of United 93, it had crashed. It was never notified that American 77 was hijacked (page 34), it was notified at 9:34 that the plane had been lost, then told minutes later that it was 6 miles southwest of the White House.
Nobody expected Bush to have supernatural powers to forsee the events. As news of the first impact reached him, it might be reasonable to have him send an aide to find out what was going on and make a few phone calls. But at the second impact, it was no longer appropriate to remain in the classroom. As the report says on p 31: “The defense of US airspace on 9/11 was not conducted in accord with pre-existing training and protocols. It was improvised by civilians who had never handled a hijacked aircraft that attempted to disapear, and by a military unprepared for the transformation of commercial aircraft into weapons of mass destruction.” It was NOT a matter of people merely doing their jobs, they were dealing with an unprecedented situation. Had Bush done nothing more than get himself to his limo and get himself up to speed on the situation on the way to Air Force One, it would have been understandable. But to be completely idle the critical first seven minutes of the crisis is what a lot of us have a problem with.
I saw it on whatreallyhappened.com. Seems like years ago now.
I have one last thing. My apologies to BobLibDem for my dialog mockup. That was unnecessary and cheapens my point of view. I asked for things that he should have been doing and you actually came up with some answers. I don’t happen to agree, but that’s completely besides the point. Fair enough? 
Not to hijack this discussion, but is this correct? Because I read through the document, and that was the only other name they blacked out, out of dozens of other names listed. And I thought the point Moore was making is that it was the Administration who blacked that out, because it wasn’t blacked out when the document was released before that.
Oh! He said he was projecting calm? I thought he said he was projecting clams - I figured he must have eaten seafood earlier in the day.
Historians already see it just the way you ought to: it was a photo opportunity in support of his mother’s flagship program, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. I’m certain you remember, but before September 11, 2001, presidents spent an assload of time in front of cameras propping up their social programs. At that time in 2001, No Child Left Behind was so new, the photo op at Booker would literally have inaugurated the plan.
In fact, as the President sat in the classroom that morning, the workbooks containing the phonics-style exercise “The Pet Goat” had just been ripped from their shrink-wrap.
He was there at Booker to place the final bricks in a crucial stanchion of his social platform, and in a way, attacking the President for not leaving the school, is more than a little contradictory. President Bush has been accused, left and right, of abandoning important social issues in favor of his war on terror. It’s almost laughable that people would assail him, this one time, for doing just the opposite.
But then, since the act was signed into law in 2002, I have the benefit of hindsight. As do you, Equipoise. Your statement
reflects this hindsight, something neither you, he, nor I were privy to before the towers fell.
Tell me, all partisanship aside, do you remember what President Clinton had been up to on the morning that the Murrah Federal Building was destroyed? Do you recall the timeline of his reaction?
To pervert: de link’s just fine for me. It’s from a Telegraph story from December 16, 2001, titled Revealed: what really went on during Bush’s ‘missing hours’. Does take a while to load, though, and check your cookie settings.
It is a commander’s job to command. In an emergency a commander’s responsibility is to find out as much as he can about what’s going on so he can act on that information, if possible. That may include deciding that people are doing fine without his help but he has to know that first. And he can’t know that without first finding out what the facts are. Information also consists of finding out how much is not know. If, later, it turns out that getting good information was difficult that is completely beside the point. A commander who does not at least try to take control of a situation is, by definition, derelict of duty. Therefore, George Bush was derelict of duty.
There is nothing complicated about this except for people who simply refuse to face reality because it’s too threatening for them.
As Senator, if John Kerry had tried to take control and make decisions by himself that would have constituted a blatant usurption of authority. It was not his place to make decisions as he is but one member of one-half of a bicameral legislative body. He, therefore, had the luxury of indulging in his personal reaction to the tragedy which is a luxury an active commander, such as President Bush, does not. That too is simple, though apparantly not simple enough for certian parties whose political animosities seem to have outrun what one would hope is their natural level of intelligence.
I think some people here really need to accept the obvious reality that President Bush is a howling incompetent and that, yes, Republicans can be huge, self-rightous fuck-ups too. That self-delusion and dishonesty are not exclusively liberal characteristics — although it is a nice fantasy.
Isn’t it?
Hey, I don’t take anything personally. I’ve got pretty thick skin. Some say too thick, but that’s another story.
Thank you very much. Your post was very well researched and documented. Let me just respond to your conclusions.
Well, this was done as far as we know. He had a conversation with his National Security people before entering the classroom. Presumably this included comments to the effect “Keep me informed”, or “Keep on top of this”. We do know that many of these people did in fact, keep on top of the situation to the best of their abilities.
It was also too late to have done any of the things you mentioned as things he could have done. Personally, I entirely understand the argument the he should have excused himself. I simply find it silly to attribute any sort of wrong doing to the decision not to for those few minutes.
You do realize, don’t you , that notification of the President or acting on any orders he might give was not part of said protocol. They are not saying that the president’s actions or inaction in any way caused this failure of protocol. They were saying that the protocol itself was not sufficiently robust, imaginative, or up to date for the situation these people found themselves in.
Absolutely. And let me paus here to give a big “Ata Boy” to all those people who did perform their duties, if not their job descriptions, so well that day. Some of the things in that report are absolutely inspiring.
But you see, this is where you fall down again. Those first seven minutes were not critical except in some omnipotent actor sense. Bush could not have revamped, republished, retrained, and communicated a new protocol in those seven minutes without some miraculous power. Simply moving to his limo, BTW, would have reduced his ability ot communicate. Some of the stuff he needs was in the school.
Thank you. I jsut got a page not found the first time I tried it it works now. It does seem to contain some errors, though. Some of the stuff in the 9-11 commission report contradicts it. I did not like the way he juxtaposed the position of President Bush with the position of the hijacked aircraft. It made it seem like Bush was at a resort while the hijacking was happening. Possibly true, but hardly relevant.
Very good reading though. Thanks.
'Cause you know, all of the other Senators were milling around like a disturbed ant-hill, all taking powerful and decisive actions that helped the situation.
:dubious:
JOhn.
Utterly irrelevant. The point is, President Bush did not try to take control of the situation. That is his duty as commander in chief when the nation is under attack. He failed it. A commander is supposed to take control even if that means making the decision to let things stand and to let people go about their business. And it could mean staying at the school because there’s better communication. But, before he can make that decision, he first has to know what’s going on. What a commander is not supposed to do is squander ten potentially precious minutes by sitting on his ass and then schmoozing when he knows our people are being mass slaughtered. This is true even if it later shown that nothing could be done. There’s really nothing the least bit difficult to understand here. The only difficulty is some people’s insistance on confusing themselves and trying to confuse others.
It seems pretty clear that too many Republicans are far more loyal to their desire to hold on to power than they are to their country. This sort of incompetent negligence exhibited by the President is totally unacceptable and they should know it. It endangers all of us.
Apparently Republicans are only kidding about national security being important to them. It seems that their real prioirty is using it as a political cudgel and getting on that good ol’ military-industrial-complex gravy train (you know, like Dick Cheney and Halliburton). When it comes to actually keeping Americans alive they’d rather see the President read “My Pet Goat” or start a war on the basis of lies.
My, what a bunch of patriots.
By the way, I’m still waiting for Mr. Moto to explain what it was Kerry was supposed to have done that required immediate attention. Aren’t we all?
I already linked to the previous discussion back in March. It linked to the Memory Hole video. As I noted there I had stumbled across the video a while before. BTW, here’s a 9/11 timeline that Apos found.