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On 9/11, President Bush addressed the country not in the morning from the school in Sarasota but later in the day from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. The standard protocol for dealing with an attack on the country and a danger to the President is to get him to safety and to secure communications facilities as soon as possible.

In keeping with that protocol and for the sake of safety and communications, Bush ought to have immediately been hustled out of the classroom and into the Presidential limousine, which is heavily armored and has superb communications facilities. The limousine would have then been driven to Air Force One, which would have promptly taken off.

This procedure was followed on 9/11 -- but not immediately. Instead, Bush continued with the scheduled class PR event. In the absence of communications with and directions from President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other officials made critical decisions, such as grounding all air traffic, ordering any errant flights to be shot down, and permitting bin Laden family members -- potential witnesses and intelligence assets -- to leave the country immediately on specially chartered jets that were exempt from the grounding order.

I am with you on nuking the authors of the 9/11 attack. There were plenty of fingerprints that suggest the involvement of the Saudi and Pakistani intelligence agencies. Key information on this point continues to be withheld from the public.