Posted on 07/29/2011 2:21:29 AM PDT by markomalley
George W Bush says his blank reaction to the first news of the Sept 11 attacks while US president was a conscious decision to project an aura of calm in a crisis.
In a rare interview with the National Geographic Channel, Mr Bush reflected on what was going through his mind when he was informed that a second passenger jet had hit New York's World Trade Center.
Mr Bush was visiting a Florida classroom at the time, and the incident - which was caught by television cameras - has often been used by critics to ridicule his apparently dazed response to the attack
"My first reaction was anger. Who the hell would do that to America? Then I immediately focused on the children, and the contrast between the attack and the innocence of children," Mr Bush said.
Mr Bush said he could see journalists at the back of the classroom getting the news on their own cellphones "and it was like watching a silent movie."
Mr Bush said he quickly realised that a lot of people beyond the room would be watching for his reaction.
"So I made the decision not to jump up immediately and leave the classroom. I didn't want to rattle the kids. I wanted to project a sense of calm," he said of his decision to remain seated and silent.
"I had been in enough crises to know that the first thing a leader has to do is to project calm," he added.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Well the visible pros, the commentators and govenment officials that were there say that you were/ are wrong.
Oh, did Churchill stay in London every day during WWII? Did he walk the streets during bombings? The attacks had just started, the White House was a target, the Pentagon was hit. No, you don’t tell the president to go stand under a falling jetliner. Protecting your top leaders is a priority and I can assure you Churchill was protected. getting the president killed in the first few hours of a surprise attack is not bravery. There was no “whiff of cowardice” about GWB.
Still witht he invisible pros again. Everyone I know that has actually met the man says the exact opposite.
Disagree.
Guy comes from a large family and has kids of his own. He’s a dad first. I know I am regardless of my other job.
Not sure how long he remained at the school, but the pause gave the secret service time to get him set up.
The fact is, there’s not a thing he could have done to prevent a single attack from occuring that wasn’t already underway.
The other thing an executive realizes is that being on the job means that instead of subordinates carrying out the plan, they are trying to keep the boss informed.
People will monday morning QB his actions to a fare thee well, and the fact is he made it through the day without being killed, and we eventually took the battle to the enemy in a decisive and effective way.
I’ve got no complaints. Unless W had a cape and could fly around the earth very, very fast and reverse time to save the two towers, those towers were coming down.
I don’t mean that GW would actually appear visibly “rattled” (facial expressions etc.), I mean that any precipitous departure no matter how smoothly conducted would have been portrayed by the scumbags as “oh look Pres. Bush was rattled or panicked by the news.”
It was a no-win proposition, stay or go, so far as the Michael Moore type of propaganda war goes.
So far as the substance, I continue to be mystified that you actually believe that in those 7 minutes the country needed a POTUS to be on the phone with the people you listed. In those 7 minutes the first priority for people not in a position to act instantaneously was to gather all kinds of info on what was happening. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al needed staff people to gather a bare minimum of info before there was any point in Pres. Bush getting on the phone with anyone.
Furthermore, based upon all prior history and knowledge before 9/11, there was no conceivable reason for any POTUS to be making such calls in the first 3-8 minutes of learning of a terrorist attack. You are indeed engaging in the “anachronism” of assuming that Bush knew instantly many things that were only known after those first minutes.
Even now it would be extremely rare circumstances which would require a POTUS to be barking any orders in the first few minutes — an adequate flow of info has to come in to the staff of the President (whoever it may be) before there is any reasonable point to getting on the phone with the officials you list.
Never before in history (before 9/11) was it even conceivable that a POTUS needed to be responding to the first minutes of a non-nuclear event. Everything you are saying is based upon the anachronism of knowing what we learned in the hours, days, months after those first minutes.
I am judging what it was reasonable for a POTUS to think, say and do as of around 9 am EST on 9/11/2001. Any POTUS would expect staff to gather a bit of data on what was happening before he would even conceive of getting on the phone to all those other officials.
Sure, if Bush had stayed in that room an hour we’d have the same view of this (unless the children were ushered out for some remote communications to be set up for the President). But continuing his reading for 7 min. in order to maintain a sense of calm and measured behavior in the crisis?? No, his behavior was certainly within the range of reasonable, sensible responses.
I like what other people said better
You miss the point: that the Bushes tend to be regarded as arrogant. That is not refuted by saying that one of the Bushes can be affable in personal meetings.
To say that there was nothing more that Bush could have done on 9/11 by leaving the class event early is at best a retrospective justification for highly questionable inaction at a moment of national crisis. Bush deserved criticism -- but not of the malign nature that the Left and the Democrats fastened upon him.
When Bush was told of the second crash into the WTC on 9/11 he could not have known that the attack was, so to speak, only terrorism and not part of a larger conventional or nuclear attack on the country. Indeed, history shows that terrorist attacks often precede military attacks or they may create vulnerabilities that invite military attacks.
ever hear of protocol?
You are so full of BS its unreal.
So, protocol says that when the country is attacked, the President must continue with his ongoing event without interruption? I have heard many defenses of Bush’s conduct that day, but “protocol made him do it” is new.
So you are of the school that if some GOP person did not do this or that that the Dims and the mediots would leave them alone or give them good PR and press. Boy are you dreaming.
Had Bush not looked however you imagined he looked since you apparently take all you keys from the Dims and mediots and spent less time with the kids, I am sure you would be on here lamenting that Bush looked panicky that day. This is because the Dims and the mediots would have told you so for years and you brother likely would have mentioned that the very night of 911.
So I guess you want a cave on the debt ceiling because we all know that if the GOP members of Congress cave, they will be much better press from the mediots and the Dims would not trash them to the press either, right. Boy was a dream world you live in.
Bush has always said he did not wish to alarm the school kids.
Old news.
Note to self: Stop feeding the trolls.
Who told you that the President’s life has to be put in jeopardy during terror attacks? Since when does a modern President need to be at the White House to conduct affairs?
Now you switched from his not returning to Washington. He defended the country and kicked ass. Sorry you are fixated on the first 8 minutes. Vote for Obama Mondale Carter McCain next time.
Do you have a source for that?
8:46:26: Flight 11 crashes at roughly 466 mph (790km/h or 219m/s or 425 knots) into the north face of the North Tower (1 WTC) of the World Trade Center, between floors 93 and 99. (Many early accounts gave times between 8:45 and 8:50). The aircraft enters the tower mostly intact. It plows to the building core, severing all three gypsum-encased stairwells, dragging combustibles with it. A powerful shock wave travels down to the ground and up again. The combustibles and the remnants of the aircraft are ignited by the burning fuel. As the building lacks a traditional full cage frame and depends almost entirely on the strength of a narrow structural core running up the center, fire at the center of the impact zone is in a position to compromise the integrity of all internal columns. People below the severed stairwells start to evacuate—no one above the impact zone is able to do so.
8:55: President George W. Bush is at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida as part of a scheduled visit to promote education when presidential advisor Karl Rove, who is with Bush, informs him that a small twin-engine plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. Before entering the classroom, the President speaks to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who is at the White House. She first tells him it was a twin-engine aircraft—and then a commercial aircraft—that had struck the World Trade Center, adding “that’s all we know right now, Mr. President.”[6]
From Wiki
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