GWB on 9/11 - Cool Under Fire

[rdean]

According to the right, there were only two choices possible. Just two.

1. Sit and stare.

2. Run from room screaming with hands flapping at broken wrists hitting three students, four desks and two CIA agents on the way out.

That's it. Those are the only two choices.

 

[StashMan]

An inexperienced, batshit crazy idiot - let's take Joe Biden, for example - would have freaked out -

According to Reuters, Bush says his apparent non-reaction was intentional: "I didn't want to rattle the kids."

Bush explains 9/11 classroom scene: Didn't want to rattle the kids

Let's get a few things straight.

FIRST of all, Bush was NOT under fire. He was safe in a classroom while NYC, the pentagon, and Americans a thousand miles away were under fire.

Secondly, the idea that Bush had to continue sitting there in order to project calm, is preposterous. Bush could have simply stood up, excused himself, and then walked out of the classroom in order to perform his duties as commander-in-chief.

Thirdly, not wanting "to rattle the kids" should NOT have been Bush's first thought or his primary concern. I can assure you, president Bush, and every other person who is living that the kids would have forgotten any momentary emotional hiccup soon enough because kids get excited about everything and they have extremely short attention spans.

Fourth, Bush did not project confidence by flying to a bunker somewhere in the midwest and releasing a grainy video where he looked nervous, uncertain, and clueless.

Fifth, Bush is an idiot. America is under attack and he's worrying about "rattling the kids?" That's just plain stupid.

First of all, did you see the special on tv where they had some of the kids interviewed that had been in that classroom then? They ALL said they were glad he did what he did...they knew something was wrong, but he kept them from freaking out...
Second, when America is attacked, the plan is to get the president to a safe location...a location that is specifically meant for an occasion like this. The same thing would be done with Obama!

You completely clueless!!

First off I am not going to go into the truth of 9-11 because you just can't speak to idiots and expect them to understand.

I will play along with this scenario though. The twin towers hit, the pentagon hit, and the president would of been considered a target. So, by sitting there as he did, the only thing that was accomplished was putting all of those kids in jeopardy.

 

[Caroljo]

Let's get a few things straight.

FIRST of all, Bush was NOT under fire. He was safe in a classroom while NYC, the pentagon, and Americans a thousand miles away were under fire.

Secondly, the idea that Bush had to continue sitting there in order to project calm, is preposterous. Bush could have simply stood up, excused himself, and then walked out of the classroom in order to perform his duties as commander-in-chief.

Thirdly, not wanting "to rattle the kids" should NOT have been Bush's first thought or his primary concern. I can assure you, president Bush, and every other person who is living that the kids would have forgotten any momentary emotional hiccup soon enough because kids get excited about everything and they have extremely short attention spans.

Fourth, Bush did not project confidence by flying to a bunker somewhere in the midwest and releasing a grainy video where he looked nervous, uncertain, and clueless.

Fifth, Bush is an idiot. America is under attack and he's worrying about "rattling the kids?" That's just plain stupid.

First of all, did you see the special on tv where they had some of the kids interviewed that had been in that classroom then? They ALL said they were glad he did what he did...they knew something was wrong, but he kept them from freaking out...
Second, when America is attacked, the plan is to get the president to a safe location...a location that is specifically meant for an occasion like this. The same thing would be done with Obama!

You completely clueless!!

First off I am not going to go into the truth of 9-11 because you just can't speak to idiots and expect them to understand.

I will play along with this scenario though. The twin towers hit, the pentagon hit, and the president would of been considered a target. So, by sitting there as he did, the only thing that was accomplished was putting all of those kids in jeopardy.

Now you're really stretching it....there's nothing proving they knew where the president was at that time. The white house was a target too, not the elementary school in Florida!
Besides, how much could Bush have done in the 2 or 3 minutes it took him to finish the story to the kids then leave?? You're just stretching it all out of proportion and it makes no sense at all!

 

[smalltime]

According to the right, there were only two choices possible. Just two.

1. Sit and stare.

2. Run from room screaming with hands flapping at broken wrists hitting three students, four desks and two CIA agents on the way out.

That's it. Those are the only two choices.

I do not speak for the "right", I speak for me.

I am simply proposing a reason for the lag time here.

Am I the ONLY person who REMEMBERS that day, and how it all happened in a fog?

Could it be that he was taking a moment to contemplate the situation? Where better to do it than in a room full of the future citizens of your country.....

 

[StashMan]

First of all, did you see the special on tv where they had some of the kids interviewed that had been in that classroom then? They ALL said they were glad he did what he did...they knew something was wrong, but he kept them from freaking out...
Second, when America is attacked, the plan is to get the president to a safe location...a location that is specifically meant for an occasion like this. The same thing would be done with Obama!

You completely clueless!!

First off I am not going to go into the truth of 9-11 because you just can't speak to idiots and expect them to understand.

I will play along with this scenario though. The twin towers hit, the pentagon hit, and the president would of been considered a target. So, by sitting there as he did, the only thing that was accomplished was putting all of those kids in jeopardy.

Now you're really stretching it....there's nothing proving they knew where the president was at that time. The white house was a target too, not the elementary school in Florida!
Besides, how much could Bush have done in the 2 or 3 minutes it took him to finish the story to the kids then leave?? You're just stretching it all out of proportion and it makes no sense at all!

It wasn't 2 or 3 minutes is was over 10 if I remember correctly.

Now after saying that, no matter how you slice it it was the secrets services job to grab the president and take him to safety. This was not done. The president in a situation like that has NO choice in the matter at all, and the rules were not followed.

Worldandnation: Of fact, fiction: Bush on 9/11

 

[rightwinger]

Let's get a few things straight.

FIRST of all, Bush was NOT under fire. He was safe in a classroom while NYC, the pentagon, and Americans a thousand miles away were under fire.

Secondly, the idea that Bush had to continue sitting there in order to project calm, is preposterous. Bush could have simply stood up, excused himself, and then walked out of the classroom in order to perform his duties as commander-in-chief.

Thirdly, not wanting "to rattle the kids" should NOT have been Bush's first thought or his primary concern. I can assure you, president Bush, and every other person who is living that the kids would have forgotten any momentary emotional hiccup soon enough because kids get excited about everything and they have extremely short attention spans.

Fourth, Bush did not project confidence by flying to a bunker somewhere in the midwest and releasing a grainy video where he looked nervous, uncertain, and clueless.

Fifth, Bush is an idiot. America is under attack and he's worrying about "rattling the kids?" That's just plain stupid.

No...you go to a secure phone and find out what the heck is going on

Kind of act like you are the one in charge?

First of all, did you see the special on tv where they had some of the kids interviewed that had been in that classroom then? They ALL said they were glad he did what he did...they knew something was wrong, but he kept them from freaking out...
Second, when America is attacked, the plan is to get the president to a safe location...a location that is specifically meant for an occasion like this. The same thing would be done with Obama!

You completely clueless!!

First off I am not going to go into the truth of 9-11 because you just can't speak to idiots and expect them to understand.

I will play along with this scenario though. The twin towers hit, the pentagon hit, and the president would of been considered a target. So, by sitting there as he did, the only thing that was accomplished was putting all of those kids in jeopardy.

No....you go to a secure phone and find out what is going on...

kind of act like you are the one in charge?

 

[whitehall]

Look how Clinton handled the first attack on the WTC. He all but laughed it off and turned around and attacked Waco Texas with tanks and poison gas. How did he handle the incineration of 80 people? He hid for a couple of days and waited for big dumb Janet to take the heat and when the heat didn't come he emerged and took "responsibility".

 

[smalltime]

Look how Clinton handled the first attack on the WTC. He all but laughed it off and turned around and attacked Waco Texas with tanks and poison gas. How did he handle the incineration of 80 people? He hid for a couple of days and waited for big dumb Janet to take the heat and when the heat didn't come he emerged and took "responsibility".

As much as I hate to do this........
Waco was started under the administration of George H.W. Bush.

Clinton and his minions were cannon foder in that deal. But the Wacos DID have lots of illegal weapons and munitions......just the facts.

The Mighty Metallica was used for the defence of the country.....that's the shining light of that fiasco.

Throw the fuckin' horns!

 

[eots]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCtb9nlV_20]‪Bush Saw The First Plane Hit! Advanced Knowledge of 9/11?‬‏ - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Peter Dow]

For 60 years the United States sought stability at the expense of democracy in supporting authoritarian regimes, but we should have known better. ​

By Condoleezza Rice​

WASHINGTON - APRIL 8, 2004: National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice testifies during a hearing April 8, 2004 before the 9/11 Commission on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Rice defended the Bush administration's anti-terror policy.

"My God! This is a terrorist attack!" I had just received word that a second plane had plunged into the World Trade Center in New York. Thirty minutes later I would learn that another plane had hit the Pentagon.

"You have to go to the bunker, now!" the Secret Service agent yelled at me. "There are planes flying into buildings all over Washington. The White House has got to be next."

As I was almost lifted off my feet and pushed toward the safety of the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, I stopped to call President George Bush.

"You can't come back here," I said.

"I'm coming back," he replied.

"Stay where you are," I answered, raising my voice in a way that I had never done and would never do again to the President of the United States. "We, I mean, the United States is under attack."

Watch this video on YouTube, -
"9/11: Condoleezza Rice in the White House. Crisis controlled."
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMp4jcGUbvc]9/11: Condoleezza Rice in the White House. Crisis controlled. - YouTube[/ame]
The For Freedom Forums

For those of us in office on that day, it is as if time was suspended. For us and for the victims' families, every day since then has been Sept 12.

Our sense of what constituted security and what it takes to protect the country had been irrevocably altered. The United States, the most militarily and economically powerful country on Earth, had experienced a devastating attack. And it had been carried out by a stateless band of extremists, operating from the territory of what was at the time a failed state, Afghanistan.

In the months after the attack, we reflected again and again on the deeper causes. What could provoke the hatred that led people to fly air planes into buildings on that bright September day?

Ten years later, it is clear that 9/11 made encouraging democracy and supporting political institutions a global necessity.

In 2002, a group of Arab scholars at the United Nations issued the Arab Human Development Report, identifying three gaps - respect for human freedom, women's empowerment and access to knowledge - that are holding back the progress of millions of people. And these gaps do even more harm: They cause the hopelessness that in turn creates a vacuum into which extremism and hatred flow.

This is the link between what happened on 9/11 and the urgency of democratic reform throughout the Middle East. For 60 years, the US sought stability at the expense of democracy in supporting authoritarian regimes. But we should have known better.

If people have no way to hold their governments accountable through peaceful change, they will do so violently.

There is a reason that extremists are the most organised political forces in the Middle East today. Authoritarians did not permit politics in the public square and thus "politics" went instead into the radical mosques and madrassas.

Now decent political forces - those that will defend women's rights and religious and ethnic tolerance - will need the time to organise themselves to fill the void. Authoritarianism is simply unsustainable. As difficult as the journey to democracy may be, it is the only pathway to true stability.

Watch this video on the CNN website
Condoleezza Rice on the killing of Osama Bin Laden.
Video: 'I always thought we would get him,' Rice says – Anderson Cooper 360 - CNN.com Blogs

FREEDOM CANNOT BE DENIED

The killing of Osama bin Laden just a few months before the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and the eruption of the Arab Spring in the same year bring together the lessons of that devastating day. Extremism will wither as people gain legitimate means to control their future. I do not believe that extremism will win when the public square allows the open debate of ideas.

Political institutions will come into being - weak at first but ultimately necessary to define the relationship between the authority of the state and the rights of the individual.

In Baghdad and Kabul, citizens are trying to use their new democratic institutions to secure better lives as free men and women. That road is long but at least they are on their way with constitutions that define the relationships between those who govern and those who consent to be governed.

The people who are experiencing glimpses of freedom in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and across the Middle East have just begun to build the institutions that will secure their liberties. And in some places, dictators are fighting to hold back the day when they will fall. Freedom can be delayed but not denied.

Since 9/11, we have come to understand that no country can secure itself in isolation and that helping failed states heal is no longer simply a matter of largesse - it is now a necessity.

Consequently the US has pursued a foreign policy that is as practical as it is compassionate and transformative: We encourage economic and social development, we promote the empowerment and protection of the vulnerable, and we strive for a civilised and ultimately more peaceful world.

These ideals transcend political parties and form the basic core values for which American democracy stands and those that we, as American citizens, represent.

In the days to come, those who perished on 9/11 will be honoured by family and friends and fellow citizens and sympathetic people around the world. The lives lost can never be regained - leaving grieving parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters who will never quite be whole again.

But perhaps there is some comfort for them - for all of us - in knowing that there was far greater meaning in the horrors of that day. Because of the fortitude of the United States, 9/11 is not a day that reminds us of defeat or vulnerability or a global power's supposed decline.

It is a day that rallies us, in tragedy and in victory, to declare that freedom will prevail. Many of us have been blessed with God's gift of freedom. It is our responsibility and our work never to tire until it is universally enjoyed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TODAYonline | Commentary | Why democracy prevails

Condoleezza Rice was Secretary of State from 2005 to 2008. She was national security adviser from 2001 to 2005. She is a professor of political economy at the graduate school of business at Stanford University, in Palo Alto, California; a senior fellow on public policy at the Hoover Institution there; and a professor of political science at the university. Her book, to be published on Nov 1, is No Higher Honor.

No Higher Honor by Condoleezza Rice - Book - eBook - Audiobook - Random House

On Sept 11, 2001, Ms Rice was in her West Wing office at the White House when she learned from one of her aides about the attack on the World Trade Center.



Rice for President Yahoo Group

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rice-for-president : Rice for President

 

[westwall]

Look how Clinton handled the first attack on the WTC. He all but laughed it off and turned around and attacked Waco Texas with tanks and poison gas. How did he handle the incineration of 80 people? He hid for a couple of days and waited for big dumb Janet to take the heat and when the heat didn't come he emerged and took "responsibility".

As much as I hate to do this........
Waco was started under the administration of George H.W. Bush.

Clinton and his minions were cannon foder in that deal. But the Wacos DID have lots of illegal weapons and munitions......just the facts.

The Mighty Metallica was used for the defence of the country.....that's the shining light of that fiasco.

Throw the fuckin' horns!

You are correct on all but the weapons part. They had no illegal weapons at all. The original Search Warrant (of which I have a copy) specified all sorts of things to include cardboard tubes (purpose unspecified) furniture sets and machine parts etc. Nothing specified in the original warrant was illegal. When the raid occured there was still nothing illegal on the premises as far as can be determined.

Koresh was a loon. His followers were loons but 26 children were burned to death to make a point. That is an outrage.

 

[geauxtohell]

Paralyzed with fear =/= Cool.

I mean, seriously, is anyone buying this shit. He could have said: "Children, excuse me, I have some important business to attend too." and excused himself.

Whatever, the history has already been re-written over the last decade. Now we went into Iraq to spread freedom and not for WMD or a security threat.

I guess it's foolish to expect these goofs to start beign truthful now.

 

[rightwinger]

For the most part, I was very proud of President Bush in the days after 9-11. He was cool, directed and helped heal a nation that was in shock. Without a doubt, it was his finest hour. His speech at ground zero brought tears to my eyes as I looked at the smoldering ruins. I, like most Americans gave President Bush my complete support to do what needed to be done
I fully supported his decision to invade Afghanistan and chase AlQaida and there Taliban supporters. I was enthusiastic about reports of cornering Bin Laden in Tora Bora and looked forward to his capture/killing. I was horribly disappointed when I learned he had escaped into the mountains
I immediately questioned the wisdom of diverting forces from Afghanistan and attacking Iraq who I knew was not directly involved in 9-11 and had not been a threat to anyone since 1991 but I figured President Bush must have data that I was not privy to
Once he invaded Iraq, it became clear that he did not have anything worth invading over. The resulting civil war and 4000 deaths made it clear this was a strategic blunder that had nothing to do with the war on terrorism. I was embarrassed that my country would openly engage in torture and even brag about it.
All told, a once promising presidency turned into the worst president in US History

 

[Toome]

I don't see any real value in what-iffing this. Bush did what he did in the days immediately after the attacks, and that turned out to be a pretty good move. Would Al Gore have acted differently? Of course, he would, but in the end, I think there wouldn't be much of a difference. Would he have panicked? I don't think so. As an experienced US Senator, he would have been either familiar with the contingencies that go into effect or would have known that there's a plan on the shelf somewhere for something like this. Obama? I'm not so sure because he was a relatively junior Senator without a lot of inside-the-beltway experience, but I think his advisors would have kept him on track. I think he would still hold his own.

In all cases, they would have had to endure the cross-country ride until the situation was under control. Secret Service weenies are stubborn that way. And I credit Gore and Obama with having the smarts to figure out, as Bush did, that by the end of the day, it was important for Americans to see the President speaking words of consolation and determination from the Oval Office instead of a bunker at an undisclosed location.

The significant differences would have been the long term policies that resulted as of the 9/11 attacks. But I think in the days, weeks or even couple of months right after the attacks, Gore and Obama's actions would have been pretty much along the same lines as Bush. While there are some significant differences in political philosophy, I think all American presidents are pretty much the same when it comes to taking action against something as provocative and horrific as the 9/11 attacks.