The Most Dangerous President.

[CitizenRob]

On September 11, 2001 there were four hijacked airplanes. Bush was warned on Aug 6th (one month and 5 days) of attacks in a report titled, "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In Us" which detailed training for hijacking airplanes. On the morning of September 11th I'm sure he was aware that there was more than one hijacked airplane, even if he didn't know the exact number. Once the first plane hit the WTC, if he had any brain at all, it should have clicked that the other hijacked aircraft were headed for buildings as well and that he needed to do something, anything!

The information was there, and should have been obvious to Bush. Certianly after the SECOND plane hit a building, and there were still two more planes in the air, the pattern should have been obvious. The third plane should never have reached the Pentagon 35 minutes later. I'll excuse the first plane not making a patttern, but the second plane, that makes a pattern, and 35 minutes is enough time to scramble fighers.

Really though, how much of a pattern does it make? The people on the fourth plane figured out the pattern before Bush did, and downed the plane themselves. Without the CIA, or the FBI, or the FAA, or NORAD to tell them, they knew the pattern, and downed that plane. Bush the incompetent meanwhile was at Booker Elementry listening to children read, having been informed of the hijacked planes and that two had already hit their targets.

8:46 am Flight United 11 Hits WTC 1
9:03 am Flight United 175 Hits WTC 2 (17 Min After WTC1)
9:38 am Flight AA 77 hits Pentagon (52 Min After WTC1, 35 Min WTC2)
10:06am Flight United 93 Crashed By Passengers. (1:20 After WTC1)

Scrambled fighter flight time from nearest Air Force base to Washington DC: 10 minutes.

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[knowbody0]

1. one day all these truths will be told

we lay in wait of the too terrible to know facts while the exploitation of fear rewinds over and over.

[nyhuskyfan]

2. It's worse than that...

When he was told the first plane had hit the WTC, he thought it was a bad pilot and went ahead with a photo op. The warnings he had received didn't even register in his brain. Even if it turned out it was just some dope in a single-engine Cessna that killed himself and that's it, wouldn't you want to prepare for the worst at that point until you know otherwise? The intelligence agencies have said that the system was blinking red, so wouldn't you want more information?

I wrote this once before, but the second-graders in that Florida classroom could have given him some pointers on how to play "connect the dots".

[CitizenRob]

3. Hmmm...

Perhaps the teachers of America should take it upon themselves to educate the president on "connecting the dots" whenever he uses their under funded classrooms for a photo-op.

[Danocrat]

4. Wouldn't he

have already received reports of four highjacked planes prior to the first plane hitting the WTC?

[nyhuskyfan]

6. Maybe, maybe not...

If Bush had demanded thorough organization in the wake of all the intelligence warnings he had been getting about a possible terrorist attack, then yes, he should have found out about the hijacking before 8:46. But he never seemed to caere much -- so I'm not sure that info would have gotten to him very quickly, and nobody seemed prepared that entire day. The Clinton administration, by contrast, had daily meetings in the buildup to the Millennium, and everyone was on high alert amongst national security personnel. Had a plane been hijacked on December 31, 1999 (or in the weeks before), I'm convinced that information would have gotten through to Clinton or Sandy Berger within minutes.

I just don't think the Bush administration was all that worried about anything. It had been at least 15 years since a plane had been hijacked in this country, so that should have sent alarm bells all the way to the top and we should have prepared for the worst. News of the hijacking got to the FAA and NORAD by 8:30 or so, but they were on tape not knowing what the procedure should be, even after the first planes had hit. "Do we have orders to shoot the plane down?" "Ah. Gee. I don't know. And everyone just left the room." "Well, someone is going to have to make a decision on that in the next 10 minutes."

I can just picture a true president receiving an August 6 PDB and telling everyone on his cabinet, as well as the FBI and CIA, that everyone HAS to be on the same page with crisis management. You never know, if we had some people taking this seriously, then maybe we have planes scrambled within minutes of the planes being hijacked -- just in case, and even if the first plane managed to get through, there's no way the second tower gets hit, because everyone has the appropriate shoot-down orders and the FAA is telling the military that a plane is off course and heading for NYC.

I mean, even if it was a tiny propellor plane flying into the WTC - it could have been loaded with explosives. Until you know what's going on for sure, you prepare for the worst. That's what any security organization should do. Does the fire department get an alarm and say, "Ah, it's probably just some drunk idiot pulling the alarm as a prank." Of course not. They mobilize, and if it is a false alarm, then they breathe a sigh of relief and then evaluate their own performance -- was there anything that we could have done to save some time or to get more firefighters on the scene more quickly. If you prepared for the worst on September 11, and it turned out to be a false alarm, you could then evaluate -- it took us 20 minutes to scramble jets, we have to figure out how to do it sooner. Figuring its nothing important and not looking into it further is the worst thing you can do.

[Wright Patman]

7. There was a huge simulation

drill going on that day. Lots of people thought this was part of the simulation. One person who has never come clean in all this is Cheney.

If Saddam had to prove he had no WMDs, we can also say that Cheney needs to prove he was not in on 9-11 and knew damned well this was no drill.

[autorank]

5. Welcome to DU! Great post. About sums it all up as well as I've heard.