I’m not a Bush supporter, but I’ll tell you what I think anyway. Unless the OP is willing to discuss in detail what, if anything Bush should have, done but did not, during the period in question, there is no debate here.
The only thing Bush should have done, IMO, was interrupt the reading and get on the horn ASAP to figure out what was going on. Sure, the kids would be disappointed that the President didn’t finish reading “The Hungry Little Caterpillar” with them, but it was clearly a crisis, and the POTUS should be on top of it.
But aside from that, I don’t buy into any of this conspiracy theory nonsense. If anything, the 25-minute wait just shows how out of the loop George is; he probably sat still because he believed it was something his handlers could take care of.
On top of what?
I ask again: What could he have done except watch TV and put his thumb up his butt like the rest of us? He wouldn’t have known any more about what was going on than we did.
And even if he did, what did you want? Did you want him to launch an immediate airstrike on Afghanistan right then and there? Did you want him to put the fires out and reweld the structural steel of the towers? Did you want him to put on a cape and fly up to the top of the towers and save everyone from their impending doom? What do you think he could have done?
Just once, can you take your hatred of the man and put it aside and use some common sense? There was NOTHING he could have done. By leaving 25 minutes early he would have had exactly 25 more minutes of inactivity and helplessness than he already did. Big whoop.
Hmm…the Clinton doll is a penny less than the Bush doll.
I never said he did. And I never expected him to.
But part of the responsibility of being President is to be the President – that is, when the fit hits the shan, when the airplanes are hitting the towers, when the bombs are dropping, the guy’s got to be at the front of the line, coordinating resources, gathering information, and generally doing whatever needs to be done to find out what’s going on. If nothing else, a leader has to lead – and sitting in a classroom reading to second-graders ain’t it.
Just once, can you take your head out of wherever you’ve stuck it and read what I actually wrote? I mean, geez, it’s not like I jumped on Reeder’s conspiracy bandwagon or anything.
Agreed, but I don’t think anyone (at least anyone that high up, including Dr. Rice) knew quite that early that the shan had been fitted upon. So I think at that time “don’t be panicky” was the proper response.
Personal anecdote time. I was in the area of the Trade Center when the first plane hit. Close enough that I couldn’t see the first plane or the damage to the exterior of the building. I was a couple blocks away when the second plane hit – that one I saw coming in, and I saw the impact.
Know what I did? I went to work. It really hadn’t occurred to me then just how bad this thing would be. I honestly thought the stock market was going to open in a half hour, that FDNY would put out the fire, etc. I even told a guy on the street who was panicking to “take it easy.” Yes, even though I thought the second plane was a passenger jet (though, in my mind’s eye, it was and is a USAirways 737 – so much for the value of eyewitness testimony)
As to “what I think” about the OP: I think that you are the very first beneficiary of Ed’s new no-mods-pitting rule.
Wanna take the President to task about something? There’s an excellent article in the Journal today about how Bush’s penchant for secrecy is preventing the 9-11 inquiry board from doing its job. That’s reprehensible, and IMO impeachable – nail him for that.
I have to agree that taking 25 minutes to not jump into anything seems appropriate.
I have a couple of questions.
Firstly, I remember reading in articles which criticized his behavior on 9/11 that the President is the only person authorized to send military aircraft in to shoot down a civilian plane. (I don’t remember where I saw it, so can’t vouch for its veracity.) Does anyone know if this is true, and if it is, do you think that the time he spent reading should have been used in considering this option?
Secondly, shouldn’t the Secret Service have moved the President once it became apparent what was happening? (It seems like it took an awfully long time for him to be moved.) After all, the school was near an airport, and at first, they didn’t know for sure which flights had been hijacked, and from where. Also, I’m pretty sure that it wouldn’t have been hard for a would-be assassin to find out in advance where Bush would be that day.
It seems to me that if anyone dropped the ball on this one, it was the Secret Service. As dissapointed as the children might have been, the safety of our Commander in Chief should be paramount. It’s just my opinion, but Bush should have been moved as soon as they knew that planes had been hijacked. I’d much rather the Service was overly-cautious when it comes to the President’s safety.
What, the president of the USA can’t order a plane shot down? You think he has to use his fists?
This is such a crock of shit. Until the first plane crashed into the trade center, it’s reasonable to assume that no-one concieved the real danger. But once it had happened, You don’t think that an engaged president couldn’t demand that his people find out what happened and get an answer within minutes?
Air Traffic control in Boston knew that there were 2 planes that had deviated significantly from their flight plans and turned off their transponders. They also knew what planes. The people on the ground in NY may have been under the impression that it was a personal aircraft that crashed into the first tower. But Air Traffic control knew better, and Bush could have known better too if he had bothered to try and find out.
Are you honestly trying to say that if the president of the USA or one of this cabinet had called the tower in Boston or NYC they wouldn’t have told him what they knew? Are you honestly suggesting that they would not give him more cooperation and information than they would give Joe Random?
This is assuming, of course, that we believe him when he says that he didn’t know it was a commercial aircraft that hit the first tower until later. Personally, I don’t believe him. I think his staff would have made a few calls and known the tail number of that aircraft before they ever bothered to interrupt his reading assignment.
If Bush hadn’t gone on to spend 25 minutes just sitting and reading rather than makeing himself informed of the situation he just might have possibly been able to give orders to destroy the 2nd plane before it destroyed the 2nd tower. It’s even more likely that he could have saved the Pentagon.
You and I had no choice but to sit on our thumbs watching the destruction unfold. But Bush could have changed the outcome if he had acted early.
And what about SAC/NORAD? Would they have been oblivous to what was happening? Or would they have been tracking the civlian aircraft all along and known that they had some planes not going where they were supposed to go?
The notion that Bush could have done nothing and would have been no better informed than the average CNN viewer during that critical first 30 min to 1 hour strikes me as ludicrous.
In the same vein: I went back to bed less than an hour after a 7.6 earthquake hit. It knocked me out of a chair and killed the power … but it was my first 'quake, so I had nothing to compare it to, and I didn’t want to panic. I didn’t have anything concrete and constructive to do, so I went to sleep. It was only after several hours that I understood – and by then, people had already died in the fifteen-story building that collapsed a few blocks from my house, and I had lost my chance to help. To this day I feel a sense of guilt and am amazed how I could not immediately recognize what had happened.
I’m glad Reeder and Tejota weren’t around…
9:05 minus 8:55 equals 10 minutes. Is that enough time to assign pilots to fighter, start the fighters, clear for take off, locate the target, travel to the target, and destroy within a 10 minute window? I didn’t think the nation was on high alert until afterwards.
I think any concerned, non apathetic person, let alone the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, once he heard that a second airplane hit, would rush to a TV. The fact that he instead shrugged it off and read “Timmy the hungry caterpiller” to school children for several minutes more is not the type of attitude I want in a President.
No, I don’t give a damn whether it would have made a difference or not. At that point he didn’t know whether it would make a difference. He should have been out there being a Leader.
Yes, but you weren’t Chief of Emergency Services for the city that you were living in. (I hope!).
The President of the United States should be held to a slightly different standard. That doesn’t mean that he has to call for any specific act during the 25 minutes in question – but it would seem to me that there were things that he could have been doing that were more important than listening to 2nd graders read The Pet Goat. Like going into an adjacent classroom and establishing real time communications with Rice and others in Washington, Norad, etc., rather than have Andrew Card whisper in your ear every now and then, while still apparently focusing on the goat story [memo to self: must check out that book – maybe it’s as good as The Very Hungry Caterpillar].
I’m not saying that he should have taken any drastic actions, or made a public statement, but he should have excused himself from the kids and KEPT INFORMED. Then, if the situation arose that a crucial decision had to be made (like shooting down a civilian airliner), Andy Card would not have had to wait until the next chapter break in the all-important goat story.
Those aren’t the minutes in question. Supposedly, Andy Card told GWB about the 2nd WTC plane at 9:05 (at that point it was very clear that the US was under attack). However, GWB stayed for ~25 minutes after that listening to The Pet Goat. And the issue isn’t whether GWB should have commanded a successful operation to intercept the 2nd WTC plane – it’s whether POTUS should hang with 2nd graders when it is known that the US is under attack. He didn’t know that there were only two planes attacking the US that day.
And because he didn’t, he should have assumed a massive attack force? Bush was being kept informed. I just don’t think information was coming in nearly as fast as you think it was. Granted, reporters were making a lot of speculation, but how would that have helped Bush? He doesn’t need speculation, he needs facts, and facts require a bit of investigation. IMO, what could have been done in that time was being done. What else could gained by panicing a group of schoolkids?
I don’t like Bush at all, but I read these threads and think that the only action Bush could take that would not draw criticism from Reeder would be suicide.
I have to agree, this is one weak effort. Reeder needs to chill or … well perhaps we need an ideological other for december.
Funny. I thought I recalled there being third and fourth planes. The WTC and all the deaths were bad…but they weren’t the only ones.
If he’d used that time…would he have managed to stop the plane that hit the Pentagon? Of course, if he had, the Reeders of the world would be condemning the Shrub for “murdering American innocents”.
Anyways, Reeder is just getting more and more feeble, isn’t he?
-Joe