This Condi Rice thing confuses me.Follow

After an aide contacted the FAA I imagine he would have been informed immediately that at least 1 other plane was already headed for the other tower.
1 if not 2 of the other Passenger Jets had already shut off their transponders by the time Mr. Bush went into that school room. An aide talking on a phone could not possibly pass that information along to the President while he was sitting in front of Live National TV cameras and a class room of children.

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I would just like to hear George Bush explain why he thought continuing with a 'read along' was the best use of his time after learning about a Passenger Jet flying into one of the World Trade Center Towers?

I explained a little above your post. He could have been getting information as it came in.

By the way, that person who comes in is Andrew Card and he tells Mr. Bush "We are under attack" then moves out of the cameras again. Then the 'read along' continues for another 5 minutes or so.

Smash, please How is cancelling a 'read along' a Panic reaction?

You never did answer that question.

Eh? Actually, I usually find it's the folks on the left who most often argue a position based on rhetoric and innuendo instead of facts and logic. To me, the following are very similar arguments:

"GWB was sitting aroung talking to schoolkids when he should have been protecting our nation from terrorist!" (ignoring that he couldn't have done anything at that time anywa)

"GWB has increased the budget to record levels!" (igoring that every year is a record budget)

"GWB has lowered taxes on the rich while taking away from the poor" (ignoring that those same tax changes help anyone who invests, not just the rich)

"GWB has caused the worst recession in 20 years!" (ignoring that the economy was diving before he took office)

"9/11 is all GWB's fault. He should have known something was going to happen!" (ignoring that all the "clues" leading up to 9/11 occured during Clinton's administration and that he'd hardly had time in office to make any significant changes in foreign policy before 9/11 occured).


See. To me, the rhetoric is all the same. A good sound bite is all that's needed. I don't see a "difference" at all. I see yet another person sitting firmly on the left, arguing a position based purely on some pretty vague and unrealistic expectations and a whole lot of finger pointing...


EDIT: Actually, there is a difference. It's that for once, you're actually on the side that's thinking rationally and logically about the issue. Feels nice for a change doesn't it? ;)

Edited, Wed Mar 31 20:41:39 2004 by gbaji

Correct. Because, as a partisan hack, you are unable to diffrentiate between anything that originates from what you'd consider "the enemy". Regardless of what's actually said, all you can hear is the same fantasy strawmen you'd like to argue against.

QED, you're a partisan hack. Thanks for proving it beyond any possible doubt for me.

Could either of you point out any inaccurate information I have posted?

Instead I see personal attacks?

You haven't posted any information at all really to be innacurate. You've asked a lot of rehtorical questions that are idiotic, but questions by definition can't be inaccurate.

For example:

Are you mentally handicapped to the point where the beatings you recieved on the small yellow bus drove you walk around with a cattle prod up your *** at all times?

Isn't inaccurate or insulting as it's a question.

How can you tell that any random airliner, headed south towards NYC, is taking aim at a specific target? Remeber, there are three major airports within spitting distance. Air traffic routinely flies down the Hudson River corridor. There really was no way to infer from the available information that another airliner was going to hit. You already stated that an aide did in fact talk to Bush during the classroom reading.



So Bush was being informed through the proper protocols. What then? Should Bush himself jump into an F/A-18 and personally fly up the coast, looking for hijacked airliners to shoot down? Do you think Bush was the only one notified? Hell, Bush wasn't even the first one notified. I would think the Secretary of Defense and/or the National Guard would have been in a better position for immediate reaction. Do you think that Bush is the one who has to tell them to react?

Again. What could he have done about it. Also, remember that with a planes transponder off, they don't *know* where it's going.

Again. There are whole agencies that have proceedures that they follow in the event of a hijacking, or loss of transponder signal with a plane. They followed those proceedures. The problem was not that the president wasn't sitting over their shoulders shouting directions (which is exactly the kind of micromanaging that a president should *not* be doing). The problem is that the proceedures for dealing with those events were not designed to prevent the sort of attack that happened on 9/11.

Second guessing after the fact is just that. Second guessing. You weren't there. You don't know what the "correct" proceedures are. How then can you critisize what was done?



You have a riduclous expectation of the role of the president in such events. He's a busy man. He can't drop everything he's doing every time a plan crashes, or some people die, or something "bad" happens. His job is to set policy. It's other people's jobs to follow that policy.



Again. You are really really really overstating the significance of that "chatter". As several people have already tried to tell you, the US has that sort of "chatter" going on all the time. In the midst of that, the president's job is to run the country, not sit in a situation room 24 hours a day on the off chance that the one in 10,000 "threats" that actualy ends up being something happens at any given moment.

You're reading way to much into the "climate" of the day.




Um... Could you repeat that? What's the "one reason" again. I missed it. There's "certain power" only the president can order? What are you talking about?

Are you talking about shooting down a passenger jet over NYC? Look. Even if the president had been in a situation room before the first plane hit the first tower. And even if he'd instantly been given the flight controller info via NORAD at the first moment a tranponder was shut down. And if at the moment the first plane crashed into the firt WTC tower he had scrambled some jets to shoot down the other two, there is very little chance that would have worked.

First off. There's just no way he would have ordered that. Certainly, the 15 minutes or so he'd have been given to make that decision would not have been sufficient. You're asking a president to instruct his military to fire on a civilian plane because it *might* be used as a weapon. If he'd done that, you'd probably be the first one second guessing the decision and yelling for his impeachment.

Look. You think that today, because you know what happened when the planes arrived at their final destinations. If there had been enough time to make that assessment, give the order, and shoot down the planes, you would *not* know for sure if a second plane was going to hit that tower. You'd only have vague information about one plane hitting a tower, and lost contact and transponder signals from 2 (or 3) others, and those other planes getting shot down by our own military. You'd most likely be arguing that maybe the other planes had a malfunction. You'd see articles charting the courses of the planes and insisting that they weren't heading for the towers or the pentagon, but were just circling back to one airport or another after having some sort of electical short on board.

Can you honestly say you wouldn't be condemning that action? That's the only *possible* action that could have been taken that would have required the president's decision.

Gbaji, could you possibly provide quotes from anywhere that support what you say happened and what the procedures are? You seem to have a great deal of knowledge of this topic. Please?



As for the rest of it? You brought every single political word...

You also seem to fancy yourself a mind reader.

Ok, look, you clearly aren't intrested in open debate about this. Here's a website where you can reinforce your views in an echo chamber of happy conspiracy nuts who will tell you the US intentionally didn't scramble fighters to intercept any of the planes (except the Pentagon plane which they'll tell you was shot down)

http://www.cooperativeresearch.net/timeline/main/dayof911.html

The consensus is that any human in the same situation would likely have acted the same way. I think the salient point here is to remember that no one went to Bush that morning and said "Hey, I think those whacky ay-rabs is gonna try and rustle some of our herd o steel eagles and crash one into one of them big giant grain silos in New York"

That and Andrew card held up a big hand written note reading "Don't Say Anything Yet" as Bush read to the kids.