Posted on 09/20/2003 12:39:19 PM PDT by Pokey78
September 11 is often said to be the defining moment in the Bush presidency, even of modern history. How strange, therefore, that Bush's behavior that morning--along with that of his Administration--is almost never examined in any detail. This is all the more incredible when one considers the fact that 9/11 is among the most exhaustively chronicled days in human history and Bush among its most heavily covered individuals. No less odd has been the media's willingness to let the many inconsistencies in White House stories pass unexamined. They seem content instead to let Showtime tell the story, Leni Riefenstahl-style.
That fateful morning, Bush was visiting the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota. The moment he learned of the attacks is a matter of deep dispute. CIA chief George Tenet was informed of the first crash almost immediately and is reported to have remarked to his breakfast companion, former Senator David Boren, "You know, this has bin Laden's fingerprints all over it." But the President's aides maintain that he was not told about the attack for more than fifteen minutes, well after viewers saw the first building engulfed in smoke on CNN, and even after he interrupted his schedule to take a call from Condoleezza Rice upon leaving his limousine, after the first crash took place.
The various accounts offered by the White House are almost all inconsistent with one another. On December 4, 2001, Bush was asked, "How did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack?" Bush replied, "I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower--the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident. But I was whisked off there. I didn't have much time to think about it." Bush repeated the same story on January 5, 2002, stating, "First of all, when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on. And you know, I thought it was pilot error, and I was amazed that anybody could make such a terrible mistake...."
This is false. Nobody saw the jetliner crash into the first tower on television until a videotape surfaced a day later. What's more, Bush's memory not only contradicts every media report of that morning, it also contradicts what he said on the day of the attack. In his speech to the nation that evening, Bush said, "Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government's emergency response plans." Again, this statement has never been satisfactorily explained. No one besides Bush has ever spoken of these "emergency plans," and the mere idea of their implementation is contradicted by Bush's claim that at the time, he believed the crash to have been a case of pilot error.
Other contradictions abound. Bush told an interviewer that Chief of Staff Andrew Card had been the first person to let him know of the crash. Card was saying, Bush explained, "'Here's what you're going to be doing: You're going to meet so-and-so, such-and-such.' Then Andy Card said, 'By the way, an aircraft flew into the World Trade Center.'" Ari Fleischer repeated this story, claiming that Card had told Bush about the crash "as the President finished shaking hands in a hallway of school officials." But other sources, including Bob Woodward's allegedly authoritative account, have Karl Rove telling Bush the news.
What we do know is that Bush continued to read to the children and pose for the cameras long after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon, the White House, the Secret Service and Canada's Strategic Command were all aware that three jetliners had been hijacked. The President's entourage hung around a full fifty minutes after CNN broadcast the news of the first crash. Half an hour after the first plane hit, Bush told the children, "Hoo! These are great readers. Very impressive! Thank you all so very much for showing me your reading skills. I bet they practice, too. Don't you? Reading more than they watch TV? Anybody do that? Read more than you watch TV? [Hands go up] Oh that's great! Very good. Very important to practice! Thanks for having me. I'm very impressed."
White House staff members claimed that Bush remained with the children so as not to "upset" or "alarm" them. This is a truly bewildering excuse. If the country was under attack, Bush might be forgiven for upsetting a few schoolkids. If the President's life was in danger, then so was the life of every little child in that room. At the time, fighter jets had been dispatched to defend New York City. But according to one of the fighter pilots, it would have done no good to catch up to one of the hijacked planes before it landed in a murderous explosion at the next population center. The only person with the authority to order the plane to be shot down, noted the pilot, was the President, who was still reading to schoolchildren.
The panic motif runs through the rest of the President's actions that day. While the presidential motorcade did finally head for the airport, Bush is alleged to have spoken on the phone to Cheney and ordered all flights nationwide grounded. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has also tried to take credit for the order, but according to Slate, this too is false, though "FAA officials had begged [the reporter] to maintain the fiction." In fact, according to USA Today, it was FAA administrator Ben Sliney who issued the order. Amazingly, Air Force One took off with no military protection. It remained unprotected in the sky for more than an hour, though Florida is filled with Air Force bases just minutes away with planes that are supposed to be on twenty-four-hour alert.
Bush's aides later offered, and retracted, the excuse that he spent the day flying around the country because of threats to Air Force One believed to have been received at the White House. What nobody has ever explained is this: If you think Air Force One is to be attacked, why go up in Air Force One?
I don't have the answers to these questions. But why is no one asking them?
BINGO!!
Yes it is .. I believe it is that frence film producer that had the video of the plane flying into the building and that didn't appear until after 9/11
For CNN or any other news station to have gotten this on TV as it happened .. they would have had to have known the plane was hijack and was going to slam into the WTC
I don't know about the timing of the tape's release, but it is true that the first plane crash was not shown live on TV.
However, it is beyond any doubt that Bush was simply making an inadvertent error in his words, the same kind that any of us would be "caught in" several times if we had a camera trained on us for several hours' worth of interviews. Bush obviously meant to say something along the lines of, "I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw where the airplane hit the tower..." Instead he said, "I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower..." BFD. Alterman's just trying to gin up a conspiracy theory because of his pathological Bush Hatred.
Let the bastard seethe. Two words, Eric: November 2004. If you think you felt pain after Florida 2000, Alter Boy ... if you saw The End of the World in the 2002 elections, just you wait. You ain't seen NOTHIN' yet.
I, for one, appreciate this post. I like to read what the enemy is writing, as opposed to sticking my head in the sand and exposing myself only to conservative thought.
I think a number of liberals suspect that GWB knew of the attack before it happened, maybe even signed off on it. According to their convoluted thinking, Bush needed a war, and his friends the Saudis delivered it for him. I know it sounds ridiculous, but liberals think that way. I know. I was one once.
Therefore, they'd like more investigation into how GWB spent that day. For example, why go up in Air Force One if it was a target? Did GWB know that AFO wasn't going to be attacked because he was in on the conspiracy? Hmmmmmm?
These folks live in the Twilight Zone. It's no wonder they believed in Clinton.
While it's quite rare for a President to go against the recommendations of the Secret Service (and Bush obviously did not on 9/11), I don't think a President is legally bound to follow their orders.
I agree.
Because they're dumb.
Easy: Because different people will always interpret the same event differently in their own minds, remember it differently, and tell their stories differently. Any event - ANY - that is "analyzed" into the ground like 9/11 has been will always come out as a big mess, simply because there are so many people talking to so many other people, most of whom were only privy to tiny pieces of the overall story in the first place ... so discrepancies are GUARANTEED.
You could pick any major league baseball game from yesterday at random, start "digging for the truth" as to why team A won and team B lost, and end up with a story that has so many twists and turns that it would end up looking like the JFK assassination. Take every player into a room by himself and ask the same questions of each of them. You'll probably get 20 different explanations as to what happened, and well over half of them probably wouldn't mesh 100% with what the TV cameras caught on tape live as it happened.
Human brains are imperfect. That's really all the explanation you need as to why we'll never get a perfectly straight story.
I won't argue with that!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.