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9/11: twenty years later — 80 Comments

  1. Unfortunately one of the best documentaries (really a dramatization starring Harvey Keitel), The Path to 9/11, was successfully suppressed by the Clintons because it made them look bad. I don’t know if it’s even possible to find it now. Keitel plays John O’Neil, the FBI counterterrorism expert who was obsessed with tracking down Al Qaeda conspirators back in 1999-2000. He was stymied and smeared by the incompetent hacks in the CIA and FBI (though he didn’t help himself by having a mess of a personal life), ended up retiring from the FBI in 2001 and took a job as head of security at the WTC, where he perished on 9/11.

  2. Remember reports are Sundowner originally wanted to surrender today, someone talked him out of it, or he couldn’t wait for that plan.

  3. Here is another video that is very hard to watch– H/T to Gerard Van der Leun, who posted it earlier today. It’s about the people trapped in the Twin Towers on 9/11: “They had two choices: burn, or leap and end it all.”

    YouTube has predictably flagged the video as offensive to some members of its “community,” but at least it allows people to proceed to watching it:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9QN3AkydYY&ab_channel=kounterfeet

  4. George W Bush buried any lingering respect for him. Directly comparing those Americans he finds deplorable to 9/11 Terrorists.

    Bush arrived this morning with Kamala

    “George W. Bush, on 9/11, warns of “violence that gathers within.”

    Says domestic extremists and those abroad share a “disregard for human life” and a “determination to defile national symbols.”

    “They are children of the same foul spirit, and it is our… duty to confront them.”

    https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/george-bush-speaks-at-9-11-ceremony/

  5. Geoffrey Britain:

    Are you sure he wasn’t referring obliquely to BLM and Antifa? Aren’t they the ones “defiling national symbols”? I read that his remarks were somewhat ambiguous in that regard.

  6. Neo, I hope sometime soon that Bush will clarify his remarks. If he doesn’t, I suppose I’ll know what to think.

  7. @ skip > “he couldn’t wait for that plan.”

    Once Biden extended the withdrawal date to 9/11, the Taliban said he had broken Trump’s deal for May 1, and would have to suffer the consequences. Biden then moved the date to Aug 31 claiming “speed is safety” — which it obviously wasn’t.

    Our forces still in-country and available nearby could have made the Taliban pound sand until we were properly finished with the evacuation, even despite having dumped Bagram in early July, which was either imbecilic or malevolent.

    I’m leaning toward the latter for his handlers, and both for Joe himself.

    https://www.factcheck.org/2021/08/timeline-of-u-s-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/

  8. At times like this when Angst runs high I like to remember the words of Jeff Bridges character in Starman.: “Shall I tell you what I find beautiful about you? You are at your very best when things are worst.”

    Many years ago in a discussion on Neo’s site with Kolnai I noted that our ancestors came to this country under arduous circumstances, many with only the clothes on their back in search for a new life. The insurmountable courage they displayed continues in us. I literally believe that it is in our DNA. Those lacking that courage stayed behind.

    Now, perhaps things still need to get worse before people take Jefferson’s thoughts about watering the tree of liberty to heart, but I remain guardedly optimistic that these current tragedies and travesties will not end the remarkable social experiment that is the USA.

    IMO today should serve as a reminder of what we do stand for as a country as we work to keep the faith in troubling times.

  9. Here is my take…

    Al Quaida won. They did so in a number of subtle ways…

    1. They forced the whole world to implement stonger and more costly security measures for air travel. From a cost benefit analysis, we would have been better off not implementing any stricter security, but that is what “terror” does. It makes us respond irrationally. The economic cost has been very high.

    2. They forced the U.S. to implement laws that infringed upon our freedoms and they made it possible for Americans to accept their loss of freedoms as necessary protection.

    Little by little, they are forcing the West to abandon their ideals and liberalism (classic sense) and become more like them.

    And now, the U.S. is declining, economically and morally and in global retreat.

    So, yeah… they won.

  10. neo,

    I’m sure and I wish I wasn’t. Bush never spoke out forcefully on the Antifa and BLM riots. Nor were any of the cities they attacked “national symbols” and no, Confederate statues don’t count. Nor did he protest the defacing of the Washington statue in Portland(?).

    Whereas the Capitol building is one of our “national symbols”.

    I’ll make no more excuses for a man who’s repeatedly proven that he can’t see the forest for the trees.

    Nor has he ever admitted to his profound errors in judgement or acknowledged his mistakes. My Dad always said, “Son, it takes a big man to admit to his mistakes.” I’ve found that to be true.

    George W. Bush has proven himself to be a small man, who’s spent his life trying to live up to his father’s expectations.

  11. Roy Nathanson,

    No, they didn’t win, they didn’t defeat us. We surrendered by not fighting to win and by letting the American traitorous left sabotage this war.

    But it ain’t over yet. All they’ve done is raise the possibility of Wretchard’s third conjecture coming to pass.

    We could have easily won and could still do so in just a day, if we had agreed that Islam itself is the source of Jihadist terrorism and declared that every terrorist attack will carry the consequence of the loss of one of Islam’s ‘holy’ sites. Plus, amend the Constitution to require the policy that the day America suffers a nuclear terrorist attack is the day Mecca ceases to exist.

    A nation can’t win a war in which it refuses to identify the nature of its enemy.

    But the democrats not only don’t want to win, they’re determined we lose because the fundamental transformation of America requires its destruction. Only then can a ‘better’ world emerge.

    “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.” George Soros

  12. Only a few years after 9/11, I visited an old industrial facility which had been restored to operating condition. One of the machines was an Attrition Mill…it consists of two steel disks, rotating at high speed in opposite directions and crushing the substance to be milled between them. It struck me then that America,…and western civilization in general…are caught in a gigantic attrition mill, with one rotating disk being the Islamofascist enemy and the other disk representing certain tendencies within our own societies…most notably, the focus on group identities, the growing hostility toward free speech, and the sharp decline of civilizational-self confidence. The *combination* of these two things is much more harmful that either of them would be by itself.

    It is now pretty clear that the two ‘disks’ have a lot in common, most significantly, their anti-Enlightenment attitudes.

  13. @Jimmy – the same storyline was portrayed in a Hulu series called “The Looming Tower”. It goes through the entire process by which John O’Neill was trying to break through the bureaucratic red tape to track down Al Queda. Rather than Harvey Keitel, he’s played by Jeff Daniels. Really well done.

  14. Neo, I have to respectfully disagree. Bush meant Trump supporters, not BLM/Antifa. His past actions and speech lead one to that conclusion. I will not give him the benefit of doubt.

  15. This evening while we were preparing out meal we watched the movie ‘The Alamo’ movie 2003 and it was a perfect match for 9-11 today. We live 35 miles NW of the Alamo and if folks have to make a stand it will probably be here in Texas which has been a pivotal state over a number of years..

    “Just Saying”

  16. Former President Bush wants it both ways. He wants to be loved by lefties who will interpret his remarks one way and people on the right who he thinks will give him the benefit of the doubt and interpret his remarks a different way. There’s a problem with his remarks regardless of how they are interpreted. Domestic terrorists, whether they’re SDS, Antifa, or the folks who walked into the Capital should never be treated in the same way as foreign terrorists are. It’s revolting to think that a former President of these United States doesn’t see the difference between these 2 groups.

  17. I really liked Bush and I used to hunt deer about a mile West of his place in Texas, what a damn disappointment that this man once more is a weasel dick.
    That’s all.

  18. Sorry, the Weenus Report has come in and Bush is full bore Weenus, what a sorry ass thing for a man who claimed he was a Texan.

  19. If I were speaking to Jacob right now,
    I would say, I’ve always loved the story of your ladder,
    with the angels going up and down,
    Once, when I was a child, I even dreamed I saw it.
    I was in a field, and the clouds parted, and there it was.
    And it looked like a long crowded highway,
    the red lights were the angels going up
    and the white lights were the angels going down.
    But it was only a dream.

    But last week, I wasn’t dreaming, and I saw it.
    I saw your ladder, its silver poles, and rungs of glass,
    and I saw the angels falling down, and they were so fast, fleeting,
    and they were so beautiful … and terrible.
    and I saw in a cloud of white and gray,
    thousands of angels going up, up, up…

    And if I could, I would ask Jacob
    if he wishes he could forget the vision of his ladder,
    the way I wish I could forget mine.

    (Zoe Klein)

  20. I’m sure and I wish I wasn’t. Bush never spoke out forcefully on the Antifa and BLM riots. Nor were any of the cities they attacked “national symbols” and no, Confederate statues don’t count. Nor did he protest the defacing of the Washington statue in Portland(?).

    Whereas the Capitol building is one of our “national symbols”.

    I’ll make no more excuses for a man who’s repeatedly proven that he can’t see the forest for the trees.

    Geoffrey Britain:

    I regret to say that’s where I come down too. I got to like Bush in the 2000s partly because he was hated so deeply by the left. Turns out that’s not enough.

  21. Neo: “This is the saddest anniversary of that date in the twenty years since the event itself. Saddest by far, and angriest as well.”

    Thank you Neo – those words are so true – it is by far the saddest. And I am among those who are very angry. I know that I have shared my 9-11 story here before; but, it does seem like just yesterday to me, not 20 years ago. Here goes . . .

    I was working in midtown at the time. One of the few in my office who lived in New Jersey as most of my co-workers lived in New York, either in the outer boroughs or on Long Island. So, I was one of the last to leave my office knowing that there would be no way to get across the Hudson River any time soon with everything shut down. (For those of you not aware, everything in Manhattan was shut down in case there was a second terrorist attack such as on the subway, bus, commuter train, or in a tunnel or on a bridge. I have since learned that this is a common tactic that terrorists in Israel use. Have a main attack followed by a second to catch people as they run from the first attack or to get first responders) I wandered around Manhattan for a couple of hours feeling like it was a surreal movie with all the streets empty. There were no cars, buses or taxis. Only the occasional emergency vehicle. I actually walked down the middle of 5th Avenue!

    As I walked through an empty Times Square I wondered about the tourists; these people from out of town, what they must be thinking in a strange city with no familiar bearings to help them. Oh, how frightened they must be! Most likely holed up in their hotels. I remember walking past a somewhat older gentleman who was dressed like an Amish (most likely a Mennonite) who looked stunned. We locked eyes. I, to this day, regret not stopping and asking if he was okay or if there was something I could do to help him.

    And like a moth drawn to a flame – I eventually made it down to Canal Street in Chinatown (only about a dozen blocks north of the World Trade Center). There were police tape and barricades that clearly mark going further south as a no go zone – but, there was no one there. Just the locals who lived in Chinatown. I could have walked closer to ground zero; but, the ash, like large snowflakes, falling on my shoulders warned me not to. Looking South from Canal one would normally have seen the WTC towers and other buildings; but, on that day the only thing visible south of Canal was a grey-white haze like one sees on a winter’s day when there is a snow storm in the distance. We know it wasn’t snow.

    So I wandered west and somewhat south until I came across the scene where firefighters were trying (but seemingly giving up) to put out the fire that was consuming WTC 7. One of the first responders (Really, I was so stunned that to this day I don’t recall if he was a fireman or policeman) started yelling that everyone had to leave the area as the building was about to come down. “Leave, NOW” he shouted. That snapped me out of my daze and I knew that I had to get out of Manhattan.

    So, I headed north with the clear intention of getting to Penn Station where NJ Transit trains leave New York. By this time I had gotten so used to walking down the middle of the street that I almost got hit by a taxi on 7th Avenue a couple of blocks from Penn Station. When I finally arrived at Penn Station I entered through one of the doors that leads to the main Amtrak waiting area. It was crowded, more than it has ever been; but, it was eerily quiet. I looked up at the departure board and could only see everything was on “stand by” thinking that I will be there for a long time. Then almost instantly the train that I wanted flipped to show the track number. Good Heavens! The track was on the other side of the huge waiting area. In normal times I would have said there is no way that I would ever get through this crowd and I would wait to catch the next train. However, I said it will be this way all evening I had better try. So, I started to push my way through the crowd and surprisingly people let me through! I was, even more surprisingly, one of the first on the train so much that I got a seat.

    Very quickly the train filled up to standing room only. It was then the conductor came on the PA and announced that this train would run as a local, not an express. He continued (and I can still hear his voice): “We can expect this train to be at full capacity, so, please make as much room as possible for everyone to get on.” Then his voice strained and cracked: “we all know what happened today; so just thank God that you are alive.” His announcement and the strain in his voice as he was fighting back tears is something I will never forget. It is etched in my memory.
    On the ride home as we stopped at the elevated Rahway Station which is about 30 miles south of Manhattan as the crow flies I could see a plume of smoke. It looked like it was just down the block; but, in reality it was from the WTC.

    Although this is all etched in my memory I do recall at the time it seemed like a surreal b-movie. It was the next morning when I drove to my train station (I was always on the 5:00 am train) things became “real” for me. The parking lot was usually empty with me being the first or second car to arrive. But, the morning of Sept 12 – I just had to count them – there were 26 cars scattered around the lot.

    26!

    That meant that 26 of my fellow commuters did not come home the night before. Fellow commuters that I may have shared a nod with in the morning, or a quick smile on a Friday afternoon (TGIF), honestly they were people I didn’t know; but they were not with their loved ones on the night of that frightful day. Over the next few days and a couple of weeks those scattered cars in the morning became less and less. Only one was still there over a month later. It was finally towed away.

    Over the next few months I was always scanning the commuter crowd in the morning or, especially, in the afternoon looking for familiar faces. They were not people who I knew personally; but they were familiar faces that I had seen on a regular basis. While most were probably okay, there are many faces that I was never to see again. Maybe they are okay and just their job was gone or moved. But, there are many that I will never know about.

    In 2005, I remember going into lower Manhattan for a job interview. I took PATH into Lower Manhattan from Newark, NJ. One of its main stations was under the WTC. I used to love taking visitors into Lower Manhattan via PATH as there was always something exciting about taking the PATH to arrive in lower Manhattan under the World Trade Center. As you rode up the massive bank of escalators with the crowds you would come into the hustle and bustle of the underground plaza with its stores and restaurants. (I cannot even count the number of times that I had stopped at Sbarros to grab a quick slice or two and then just people watch through its large windows as the crowd hustled by!)

    But in 2005 the WTC PATH station, which was closed after 9-11, was re-opened and instead of the station being underground the PATH train came out of the Hudson River tunnel into the wide open pit where the towers once stood. And although the sun was shining and the weather was nice the arrival felt empty.

    Empty – that’s the only word I can think of to describe arriving at a station that was once so busy, so teeming with people that there was a need to have that massive bank of escalators (most set going up for the morning rush-hour or set coming down for the evening rush hour) and you often felt that there were still not enough escalators! Now, instead of coming up the escalator and onto the plaza you are simply coming out of a huge hole in the ground. There were a few groups of tourists standing around looking through the chain link fence at the giant hole, perhaps taking pictures, looking at their maps, not really showing disrespect or anything, but just being tourists. On arriving I felt that sense of emptiness, knowing that there used to be two tall towers, cities-unto-themselves, with thousands of people working above the station – that are now gone.

    While Lower Manhattan has been rebuilt and the new PATH station is nice. Parts of the original WTC “footprint” can still be found. If anyone ever finds themselves in the PATH station in the new WTC, when you enter from the Oculus side go to the farthest away escalators and go down to the train platform (usually it is for trains to/from Newark). There you will find an inlay on the platform marking part of the original footprint. You will also find part of the platform is see-through showing the foundation from the original WTC underneath.

    And this, THIS, is why I am so angry with Biden and his supporters. ”9-11 Never Forget” just doesn’t seem to have any meaning to them. For Biden to have turned a WHOLE country over to a known group of terrorists is unthinkable and unforgivable. Looking at the news reports now which seem to emphasize how the Taliban is “more sophisticated” and “stronger” than they were 20 years ago. I am angry because we were lucky that on 9-11 it was “only planes used as missiles” and not nuclear or biological weapons. We know the Taliban are stronger and more supported than they were 20 years ago. I fear it is only a matter of time before the worst that we cannot even imagine will happen. Blood is on the hands of Biden and those who supported him. The blood of innocent people in Afghanistan and future terrorist victims.

    (Sorry, Neo, for the long post!)

  22. Jimmy on September 11, 2021, at 3:46 pm:

    YouTube (free)

    The Path to 9 11 Part 1 Aired once by ABC on 9 10 2006
    The Path to 9 11 Part 2 Aired once by ABC on 9 11 2006

  23. charles:

    No need whatsoever to apologize. Thank you for your comment.

    I am so angry at Biden, Blinken, Milley, and all the rest that I really find it difficult to express. I will only say this: I feel that they are traitors, and I don’t use that term lightly. To blatantly lie, to callously throw away 20 years of blood, sweat, and tears, to leave the Taliban in much better shape than before, to betray our allies and friends and military and every single American, and then to lie about it again and act as though it’s a great thing, is more traitorous and audacious than I would have thought possible even for this terrible crew. It is actually sadistic, among other things.

  24. Charles – thank you for sharing your experience in the midst of the 911 attack and after. Very moving and heart wrenching. And that is what we need to be feeling today. I am also outraged by Bush. He was never much. But this today is unforgivable.

  25. @ Walther > “And if I could, I would ask Jacob
    if he wishes he could forget the vision of his ladder,
    the way I wish I could forget mine.”
    (Zoe Klein)

    That was beautiful, and sad, and insightful, and all the things a good poem should be.
    Do you have a link to the author?
    DDG turned up some references to a Rabbi Klein who writes, but none to that particular poem.

  26. Neo. WRT your last.
    What frightens me is the fact that this crew got there at the same time in conjunction with the Taliban and other groups getting more organized and with more stable support systems (Pakistan).
    You can’t get that high without making it through every day so well that you are promoted over other competent guys. There are a thousand ways your progress can be stymied. During the Viet Nam war, being assigned to NATO meant no combat command time for better or worse on your record. Safer, though, of course. Then when the war wound down, it was said, the Reduction in Force targeted Viet Nam experience, since that was snooping and pooping, like a year-long patrol and the NATO experience was likely to be conventional combined arms combat of unimaginable intensity and tempo.
    That’s just an example of how a career can be handicapped by circumstance. You have to have a unit which has fewer than average screwups assigned to it.
    You have to handle contingencies which may be a surprise if you’re running a training battalion.
    Should go without saying that you have to be good when it counts, no matter the issue.
    And if you’re in the Balkans and the bad guys shoot at the other side of the perimeter, nobody can say you and your unit performed well under fire.
    There are any number of ways a promotion sequence to the highest can be short-circuited even for highly competent officers. Just luck.
    So these guys looked good all the way up. Had no bad luck. And did well enough to be promoted over other competent guys.
    And now this.,,,
    I guess there are two conclusions. One is that they cannot have thought they were doing the competent thing; must have known this was going to collapse, right down to the smallest detail of perimeter security. The other is they had something helping them along the way.
    I wish I could post in huge, flaming, bold font. Nobody who’s up for PFC is dumb enough to have done this on the presumption it would work.

  27. Former President Bush wants it both ways. He wants to be loved by lefties who will interpret his remarks one way and people on the right who he thinks will give him the benefit of the doubt and interpret his remarks a different way.

    He can clarify or the interpretation offered by Jack Pobosiec and Occupy Democrats alike is canonical. And if that’s the deal, he should be dead to us. He dozed through the IRS scandals, dozed through the FBI / CIA scandals of 2016-19, dozed through the vertiginous decline in ballot security, dozed through the Fauxi malicious clown show, dozed through the BLM / Antifa riots. But he’s incensed that a bunch of rowdies inconvenience members of Congress for four hours (and not incensed that people have been sitting in DC jails for months on mickey-mouse charges). He tells us who he meant or we assume who he meant. And if he meant who we can wager he meant, forget it. His mug should never again appear at any Republican gathering or at any ceremonial incorporating Republican officials.

    While we’re at it, let’s bring former Presidents and other current and quondam federal employees back to Earth.

    a. A contract or agreement across state lines to provide honoraria cannot offer more than (1) a per diem for travel lodging and meals calculated according to formulae for which BEA provided date are arguments and (2) a fee for the appearance calculated according to a formula which has as arguments the nominal compensation per worker in the economy and the revenue stream in the most completed year of the corporation offering the honorarium. Some gargantuan institution like Ohio State University might be able to offer $20,000 or $25,000 at current nominal income levels.

    b. Federal employee retirement programs are of the defined contribution sort, full stop. Former Presidents get a retirement purse financed by withholdings from their statutory compensation.

    c. Former officials get squat for donating their ‘papers’; their papers are limited to diaries, commonplace books, schedules, and notes written in their own hand and nothing else. Every other document is government property to be superintended by the National Archives and Records Service.

    d. A modular presidential records center is to be constructed around Kansas City. There will be a module for each president and a new one constructed each time one of those bozos leaves office. The modules will be connected by a concourse. Into those modules will go archival material of interest to scholars, properly catalogued. The content of this nature housed at presidential libraries will be transferred to the modules. What remains of the presidential libraries will be deeded to the county governments in which they sit to be disposed of at the discretion of said county governments. We never again construct another presidential library.

    e. Former presidents get a couple of secretaries (on the budget of the President’s office) to answer their mail. That’s it.

    f. Security details for former presidents, their minor children, and their spouses are withdrawn 12 years after they leave office. The Nixons had no detail after 1986 and Jackie Onassis shlepped around Manhattan for 19 years with no detail public or private. Henry Kissinger paid out of pocket for the heavies protecting his wife from the Lyndon LaRouche cult. Recall what Michael Kinsley said a generation ago, “The brutal truth of the matter is that even if Lady Bird Johnson’s life were in danger, the functioning of democracy would not be impaired”. It’s time for the Carters to hire people out of pocket to carry their luggage. Mitt Romney has to talk to disgruntled voters in airports, and so should George W Bush.

    g. Quondam employees of the United State government are banned for a term of years from sitting on corporate boards, working for any employer which was a contractor to the agency which employed them, and working for a registered lobby. As a rule, the duration of the ban after you leave office is equal to the total time to date you’ve been employed by the federal government. For former Presidents and former members of Congress, the ban endures for a lifetime. Current employees are banned from moonlighting unless they are p/t employees.

  28. Whew. I was worried that there would be another attack on us somewhere. I still can’t believe that the 9-11 connection was ignored nine years ago at Benghazi.

    Yesterday I was numb about the 20th anniversary. Partly it’s memory fading. But this year it was on the heels of the horrifying self-inflicted debacle a month ago in Afghanistan.

    All that blood and treasure not just wasted, but burned in a bonfire warming the hearts of jihadists everywhere.

    Meanwhile Democrats continue their real war — on the rest of Americans who don’t want their country “fundamentally transformed.” That’s the war Democrats care about.

  29. It would appear that “W” has placed his bets solidly on the “number” he believes will emerge victorious.

    And one wonders whether he is in possession of some “insider information”.

    (Or perhaps—ideologically—that he’s, somehow, been totally convinced by the formidable “Biden” propaganda machine; and/or—financially—that he has (a la Michael Bloomberg) some very good pecuniary reason for his decision, though this last would seem to be the most bizarre of all.)

  30. Neo:

    “I am so angry at Biden, Blinken, Milley, and all the rest that I really find it difficult to express. I will only say this: I feel that they are traitors, and I don’t use that term lightly.”

    These are exactly my sentiments. I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around this horrible new reality in which we are living. I’ve made many changes in my life to adjust to this new reality but there have still been times when I thought I was overreacting and things will get back to normal.

    The Afghanistan fiasco and Biden’s demonic glee in seeking to punish the unvaccinated were jarring reminders that things have indeed changed in a profound way. Things will get worse before they get better.

    I thank you for being one of the few places I can go to take some comfort in knowing I am not alone in my feelings.

  31. Neo expresses my own anger very well. I was furious over the 2020 election “results,” and now I am beyond furious at what has been openly unleashed on our country, and on the world.

  32. Back in 2003 the late blogger Steven Den Beste wrote a response to a reader in Tehran who had reproached him for thinking the unthinkable about a nuclear war with the Muslim world. Den Beste replied:
    _________________________________________

    If my nation was made up of the kind of monsters who “debate final solutions” and feel no qualms about “mass murder”, you’d already be dead, because Tehran would have been converted to a glowing crater about 12 hours after the collapse of the WTC towers.

    How long before the cost in blood is too great? It’s already too great. It was too great after the first person died on September 11, 2001. But that’s when the war started. My people are not monsters; we didn’t want this war. If you want to look for monsters, look no further than al Qaeda and ask them about mass murder, and ask them why they started the war.

    If you learn nothing else about America, learn this and imprint it on your brain in glowing colors: we will never surrender. There are many ways this war can end. That’s not one of them.

    https://sdb.dotclue.org/cd_log_entries/2003/12/AletterfromTehran.shtml

  33. In 2003 we still lived in the vivid memory of the smoking, burning, falling Towers. It was grim, but we were resolute to take the fight to the enemy. And we did.

    To the anti-neocons who take the side of Code Pink and insist with their usual churlish manners that no good came of the War on Terror, Powerline has a strong post enumerating its successes:
    _____________________________________________

    My view is that we won the first 20 years of the long war on terror. Sure, we made many mistakes, as always happens in difficult wars. But there hasn’t been an attack on our homeland of anything remotely like 9/11’s scale in 20 years.

    Few predicted this on 9/12, and the fact that the grim predictions of that time didn’t come true isn’t down to luck. It’s due largely to the war on terror.

    [More at link]

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/09/the-war-on-terror-not-bad-for-government-work.php
    _____________________________________________

    But now it’s 18 years past when Den Beste wrote. The America of his convictions has turned over almost a generation. We are deeply divided and roughly half the country and all its current top leadership have few qualms about surrendering to radical Islam.

  34. Kate:

    The worst part of the 2020 election is that the results were manipulated — not necessarily unlawfully, but at the very least in an up-to-now new manner — by social media platforms, super-wealthy individuals and political activists. See the Time magazine report for elucidation on this point.

    It just doesn’t feel right that individual voters didn’t make the call on the Biden/Trump contest. It is the classic example of banana republic electoral chicanery.

    I, too, share your fury at the results of the election. And at the fact that our “elites” expect us to shut up and take it.

  35. Learned, via Instapundit, what some of the blue check marks are saying about Bush’s speech:

    Keith Olbermann: “And there it is. Even George W. Bush now recognizes Trump, his supporters and those who directly participated in the 1/6 coup attempt are terrorists — as surely as the 9/11 ones were. I’ll say it again: Trump damaged America in a way Bin Laden only dreamed of.”

    Jennifer Rubin: “In perhaps the most important words spoken in his political career, Bush in his remarks at the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 drew a straight line between the 9/11 terrorists and the 1/6 terrorists.”

  36. The Path to 9/11, was successfully suppressed by the Clintons because it made them look bad.

    There’s one used copy for sale on Amazon. The libraries of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana have a number of critiques of it, but not the DVD itself.

  37. George W. Bush and Hunter Biden – an alcoholic and a crack-head now engaged in Art Therapy.

    Do you have any evidence that George W Bush has touched liquor in 35 years?

  38. @ Art Deco: “Do you have any evidence that George W Bush has touched liquor in 35 years?”

    According to Alcoholics Anonymous scripture (that is, the so-called Big Book), once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, though a nondrinking alcoholic is called a “recovered” alcoholic. Another tenet of AA dogma is that if someone has stopped drinking, but without having performed the dozen rituals associated with the AA sacraments (that is, AA’s 12-step regimen), that person is probably on what AA calls a “dry drunk.”

  39. Learned, via Instapundit, what some of the blue check marks are saying about Bush’s speech:

    Nancy B.:

    And that settles that.

    I noticed that Bush 43 had not a thing to say during Obama’s administration. I figured it was a principled position, the Prime Directive for Past Presidents not to interfere, which I regretted but could sorta support.

    But then Bush kept popping up to kneecap Trump. Principles out. It was either personal vindictiveness over Trump’s demolition of Jeb! and/or Bush at bottom is a Country Club Conservative.

  40. But then Bush kept popping up to kneecap Trump.

    Again, all of the former presidents should have called attention to the use of the IRS, the FBI, and the CIA against the political opposition, as well as the decline in ballot security.

    BTW, Bush collects boatloads of money in speaking fees. He has to make certain disclosures in re invitations received from certain sorts of institutions, so their is a partial picture. It’s just that he appears at confidential fora and evidently says nothing that people care to leak.

  41. According to Alcoholics Anonymous scripture (that is, the so-called Big Book), once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, though a nondrinking alcoholic is called a “recovered” alcoholic. Another tenet of AA dogma is that if someone has stopped drinking, but without having performed the dozen rituals associated with the AA sacraments (that is, AA’s 12-step regimen), that person is probably on what AA calls a “dry drunk.”

    So what?

  42. Art Deco:

    So what’s your point?

    Obama did plenty of things Bush should have called out, but didn’t. I say that’s the difference which makes the difference here.

    But as usual, your MO is just to say no then act superior.

  43. When I read the actual text of Bush’s speech, it didn’t seem as though he was talking about Jan 6 at all. However, at this point, unless he clarifies that he was not, we can assume either that he was or that for some strange reason he doesn’t mind people thinking he was even if he wasn’t.

  44. Bush, who I did not support in the 2000 primaries, is dead to me. In 2000, McCain for all his faults seemed a better choice to me. He was not in 2008.

    An excellent book on 9/11 is “Touching History,” by Lynn Spenser. The Amazon price is ridiculous. I usually buy used books at abebooks.com

  45. So what’s your point?

    1. Bush wasn’t silent. He was hoovering up speaking fees from trade associations but contributing nothing to the commonweal.

    2. Carter and both Bushes should have been calling attention to gross procedural misconduct. We have rules and courtesies in this country to regulate political conflict and competition. They could take a pass on commenting on substantive policy. Not siccing the IRS on the opposition.

  46. Just now reading Van der Leun’s “The Wind in the Heights” posted today. I was in France, and watched the video, having come into the hotel after the towers had fallen. I thought there would be 20,000 dead, and his article begins with the NY Post headline, “10,000 feared dead.” It was nearly miraculous, and a testimony to the work of the fire and police personnel and the grit of New Yorkers who evacuated, that the death toll was not that large.

  47. Art Deco:

    What’s your point about my point? You didn’t address it at first and you’re not addressing it now. Totally not to my surprise.

    My point is that Bush did not call out Obama during his presidency, but he did call out Trump. Which means that the issue is not what Trump did, but Bush’s opposition to Trump.

    Your response, as usual, was to contradict me, then bring up irrelevant issues about Trump and now about Bush’s “hoovering.”

    But my point, again, is not whatever dodgy things Trump may have done, but to note that Bush did not speak up against Obama, but he does against Trump. Therefore, Bush isn’t an even-handed critic and IMO has a special animosity towards Trump and his supporters.

    That’s the concern of the Bush thread in this topic.

  48. Per Byron York, in his speech President Bush “praised the courage of Americans who volunteered for the armed forces in the years that followed [9/11]”
    Per Julie Kelly in a tweet yesterday, “After 9/11, Ashli Babbitt asked her mom to sign a waiver so she could enroll in the military at age 17. After graduation in 2003, she went into the Air Force. She had 8 tours overseas including Afghanistan.

    Today her former commander in chief compared her to a 9/11 terrorist.”

  49. The world that the WWII and immediate generations inherited, knew, and lived in, in continuity with our past–the breadth and depth of knowledge, religion, philosophy, and custom which led to, justified, and supported it, it’s world-view, morality, and resulting assumptions, expectations, behavior, and social structure–are swiftly being dismantled, are vanishing, and are being replaced in more recent generations by a radically and globally different world—a new “atmosphere.”

    It appears that–almost without exception–each and every one us—a rapidly dwindling cohort–thought that “eternal vigilance,” and that immediate, constant, total, vehement, and unflinching defense of every major and minor element of that world–and in every possible sphere of life–was not necessary, because the underlying ideas and world-view, morality, expectations, and behavior–so solid and self-evident to us—were so self-evident and solid that they were unassailable, and really needed no defending.

    As the overwhelming and almost total success of the Left’s post WWII Gramscian “Long March through our institutions and culture” has demonstrated, our complacent and waning elder generations were horribly and fatally wrong.

    And I would guess that the world—the “atmosphere”–the mind-set and attendant knowledge and values which made for that earlier world, once lost, will not be able to be recovered/reconstituted in anything like the fullness of their old forms.

    “We can’t go home again.”

  50. What’s your point about my point?

    My point is perfectly plain, has been stated twice, and requires no further elaboration. Your emotional neuralgia is something about which I can do nothing.

  51. @Eva Marie:

    The Bushes are corrupt Scum and Filth. They had me fooled back in the day. Probably had you fooled too.

    But no longer.

  52. So I didn’t know this: According to the Atlantic, “At the White House, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice called Bush, who was in Florida. They discussed the [first] crash [into one of the Twin Towers] and agreed it was strange. But Rice proceeded with her 9 a.m. staff meeting, as previously scheduled, and Bush went into a classroom at the Emma E. Booker Elementary School to promote his No Child Left Behind education agenda.”
    So President Bush found out about a plane crashing into one of the Twin Towers and went into a classroom to talk to kids?!?! It was ONLY after the second plane crashed into the second tower that he cut his visit short.
    I find this so bizarre.

  53. Art Deco:

    Ah. No substantive response. Entirely predictable. Because there is none available.

    And I am sure I can do nothing about your obliviousness either.

  54. Charles,

    Thank you for your story (@ 12L06 AM above). It is the poignant experience and impressions of people who were in Manhattan at that time which make the 9/11 anniversaries realities for those of us who are distant.

  55. Eva Marie:

    I was up and online at Free Republic at the time. When the first plane hit no one could figure out what was happening. Pilot error? Pilots disabled/sick? Mechanical failure? It was just too weird. When the second one hit then and only then it became clear this was enemy action. I then woke my wife up and said “We’re at war but I don’t know with who yet.”

  56. geoffb: there had already been a proven terrorist attack on the WTC in 1993. C Rice was the National Security advisor in 2001. At a minimum: loss of life, damage to the structure, deaths on the plane. And GWB decides that he needs to go ahead and talk to some kids in elementary school? And C Rice, for that colossal misjudgment, what happens to her? She becomes Sec of State.

  57. And by the way geoffb, did you turn off your computer after the first plane hit and go about your daily routine or did you stay on line trying to make sense of things? And you weren’t on the NSC or the President. You showed more interest than they did.

  58. geoffb —

    As soon as I heard about the second plane I said to myself “oh sh*t, it’s Al Qaeda, isn’t it?”

    I was on a bus passing downtown Seattle just then, and knowing about the simultaneous attacks on Kenya and Tanzania just a few years before, I looked out the window half expecting to see a jetliner dive out of the approach pattern right over downtown and crash into the Columbia Tower.

  59. I’m sorry to post about this again but geoffb’s comment made me look at the White House actions on 9/11 differently. You hear that a plane has hit one of the most iconic buildings in the USA in one of the most densely populated cities in the US. Maybe it was pilot error or a mechanical problem but you’re the NSA. You’ve seen the video. You know there are going to be tremendous casualties. So you call the President and then you go to your scheduled meeting? And GWB. He hears that a plane has hit the WTC. The reason he’s at this school is to show his human side. To show he cares. So he hears a plane has gone down for who knows what reason. Obviously tragic loss of life and he decides to go ahead and talk to some kids as if nothing happened?

  60. @ Neo > “When I read the actual text of Bush’s speech, it didn’t seem as though he was talking about Jan 6 at all. However, at this point, unless he clarifies that he was not, we can assume either that he was or that for some strange reason he doesn’t mind people thinking he was even if he wasn’t.”

    As Geoffrey said above, “defiling national symbols” pretty much points to the Capitol protestors, although Bush’s PR flacks have tried to make it seem more ambiguous, as you noted earlier.

    https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/bushs-911-remarks-domestic-extremism-not-exclusive-january-6-riot

    Speaking at the Flight 93 memorial, Bush compared violent extremists in the U.S. and foreign extremists.

    “There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and those at home,” Bush said on Saturday at the memorial in Pennsylvania. “But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit and it is our duty to confront them.”

    Just the News asked a spokesperson for Bush if he was referring to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol with his remarks.

    “Those comments were certainly inclusive of but definitely not exclusive to January 6; rather all forms of extremism — attacks on schools and synagogues, on Blacks and Asians, etc,” the spokesperson said. “All forms of domestic extremism.”

    Lot of things missing in that “etc” that should have been given a name.

    However, my first impression was that he was referring to the January Sixers, for the same reasons huxley & Geoffrey gave, plus the “disdain for pluralism” which almost certainly refers to the skepticism about the 2020 election.

    And the Democrats agree.
    https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2021/09/11/george-w-bushs-speech-was-so-good-that-occupy-democrats-is-asking-you-to-retweet-if-you-agree-with-him/

    Bush didn’t mention January 6, but a lot of people certainly inferred that’s what he was talking about when he mentioned “defiling national symbols.” Occupy Democrats certainly took that away and urged followers to retweet if they agreed with Bush:

    Regardless of what he says he meant, he’s now stuck with what both sides thought he meant.

  61. @ huxley > “I was worried that there would be another attack on us somewhere.”

    The temptation may have been strong, but there were two factors working to tamp it down, IMO:
    (1) the Taliban were just as surprised as we were at their sudden gift from the Biden team, and didn’t have any spare time to devote to planning an attack over here because they were busy killing Americans over there;

    (2) if they had already made plans for an attack directly on the US homeland on the 20th anniversary, they realized that would cause a massive push to throw the Democrats out immediately and send the bombers back to Afghanistan, whereas they didn’t really need another symbol of American weakness right now.

    A “lone wolf” attack would have been possible, I suppose, and we are lucky there weren’t any of them stupid enough to make one, for reason (2).

  62. Caroline Glick gives an impassioned view of history that brought up elements I hadn’t thought of before.

    https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/313362

    We have a tendency to forget that two historical events occurred in early September 2001. No one needs to be reminded of the jihadist attacks on Sept. 11 that killed nearly 3,000 people in a single morning. The other event, that tends to be overlooked, was the United Nations Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, which concluded four days before the attacks.

    With 20 years of hindsight, and in light of America’s catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan last month, it suddenly seems clear that the Durban Conference changed the course of history as much if not more than the Islamic terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. It was the legacy of Durban, more than Sept. 11, that brought the free world to its present perilous juncture. Today a humiliated free world faces triumphant forces of jihad, far more powerful than they were on Sept. 10, 2001. It faces a rapidly rising China. Above all else, it faces internal upheavals and cleavages within its own ranks.

    A political war directed against the United States specifically was launched at Durban in parallel to the anti-Semitic onslaught. Its foundational assumption was that the United States was born in the sin of racism with black African slavery, and that nothing can ever expiate the sin. Racism, not liberty, was declared to be America’s true foundation. The Civil War, in which half a million Americans died to free the slaves, didn’t change a thing. Neither did the Civil Rights Movement, which ended institutional and legal discrimination against blacks and other minorities.

    It wasn’t the governments of Africa, or Iran or Russia or China that spearheaded the war against America at Durban. It was launched by American citizens. Led by Rev. Jesse Jackson, hundreds of black American radicals descended on Durban. They were joined by hundreds of activists from leftist extremist groups.

    When the Bush administration walked out of the Durban conference in the middle, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and his advisers dismissed the importance of the events by castigating the activists at the conference as radical fringe elements bereft of any significant constituency back home. Their dismissiveness certainly seemed reasonable four days later.

    But as it turned out, even before the dust had settled on the ruins of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the “radical fringe” began throwing its weight around. And that weight was considerable. Indeed within a few short years, its influence had become decisive.

    The “fringe” activists who opened the war against America at Durban in 2001 seized the reins of government in 2008 when Jesse Jackson’s disciple Barack Obama won the presidency. Today, the same political organizers and their successors control the Democrat Party and Biden, who won the Democratic presidential nomination and the White House with their support.

    By rights, the Americans were supposed to respond to Sept. 11 with an unrelenting war to victory against the forces of jihadist terror and the regimes that supported them. But undermined from the outset by the war their countrymen declared against them at Durban, two decades on, the Taliban has won and America is led by men and women who think that the American radicals at Durban had justice on their side.

    This is not the end of the story. The incandescent anger of most Americans—including a large percentage of Democrats—express towards Biden and his team for their humiliating and strategically disastrous failure in Afghanistan is a source of hope that the minority fringe at Durban will return to its rightful place at the margins of American society. That America will go back to being the land of the free and the home of the brave. But for now, as we gaze back 20 years, it was Durban, not Sept. 11, that changed the course of America and through it, the course of history.

  63. Since we’ve been discussing those vile spirits who share a “disregard for human life” and a “determination to defile national symbols,” let’s look at what they are actually being charged with.

    https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2021/09/12/six-capitol-cops-face-disciplinary-action-for-january-6-including-taking-selfies-with-insurrectionists-n1477953

    As Democrats lizard people like Nancy Pelosi struggle to prove January 6 was a violent attempt by “white supremacists” to topple the government, rather than the selfie opportunity it really was, more bad news has been reported. Six Capitol cops have been hit with “disciplinary actions” for their handling of the day’s events. Thirty-eight cops were investigated. Some cops were seen high-fiving Trumpsters and taking selfies with them. One was seen wearing a MAGA hat and directing protestors around the building. Six of them were suspended with pay in January.

    FACT-O-RAMA! Some Capitol cops are in trouble for being cordial to Trump fans, but Lt. Michael Byrd was exonerated, twice, for shooting and killing unarmed Ashli Babbitt.

    Almost three weeks ago, members of the FBI quietly admitted they’ve found very little evidence that the mostly peaceful January 6 protests were part of a broad plan to attack the Capitol. That doesn’t help Nancy Pelosi’s cause at all. Also, there has been no indication anyone planned to rape AOC.

    “Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,” said a former senior law enforcement official with inside knowledge of the investigation. “Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”

    Almost 600 people have been arrested for entering the Capitol, including a 69-year-old woman who walked in as a Capitol police officer held the door for her. Photographic evidence from inside the Capitol shows “insurrectionist” Lois McNicoll seditiously snapping selfies.

    The Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) investigated 38 Capitol cops and has decided to take disciplinary action against six for violations of the code of conduct.

    Three officers were nailed for “conduct unbecoming.” One was hit with failure to comply with directives, one for improper remarks, and another for improper dissemination of information.

    “The U.S. Attorney’s Office did not find sufficient evidence that any of the officers committed a crime,” and the accused will face administrative action, the department said.

    The timing of this information being released is due, in part, to prosecutors sharing the reports with many of the 600-plus defendants charged for their involvement in the Capitol melee. Defendants have been pushing to see these reports, arguing that they believed the police had given them permission to enter the building and, in some cases, had even encouraged them to protest. There is video showing officers standing idly by as protestors meander through the Capitol.

    How vile.

  64. huxley:

    I agree about Bush. He kept what I assumed was a dignified (although I think misplaced) silence about Obama, but somehow found his voice to speak against Trump. I think that’s reprehensible. But I also think it has to do with the very personal and long-lasting animus Trump had displayed towards Bush and the Bush family, some of it very vicious stuff. Please see this post I wrote on the subject.

  65. Eva Marie:

    I find Bush’s behavior very plausible. He was told to wait for further information and instructions:

    Upon arriving at the Sarasota, Florida school, the president was informed of the first plane crash into One World Trade Center, though he was briefed that it was probably just a small propeller plane. While President Bush sat in Kay Daniels’ classroom, and her students read “The Pet Goat”, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card interrupted the president to whisper in his ear: “A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.”

    Afterwards, the children continued to read and President Bush sat while—as described by The Wall Street Journal—”trying to keep under tight control.” Despite the president’s efforts, students knew something was wrong; they later said that the president’s face became red and serious, and his expression was “flabbergasted, shocked, [and] horrified”.

    According to Bill Sammon’s book Fighting Back, Bush’s gaze flitted about the room—the children, the press, the floor, his staff—while his mind raced about everything he did not yet know. After receiving cue-card advice from his press secretary, Ari Fleischer (“DON’T SAY ANYTHING YET”), the “notoriously punctual” president lingered in the classroom after the reading exercise was finished: he adamantly did not want to give an appearance of panic. After chatting with the students and their teacher, Bush deflected a Trade Center-related question from a reporter, and began to learn about the magnitude of the attacks…

    The commander-in-chief’s supporters argued that there was nothing for Bush to do but wait for more information while not alarming the pupils. On his own behalf, Bush said that “his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis. The national press corps was standing behind the children in the classroom; he saw their phones and pagers start to ring. The president felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening.” Booker Elementary Principal Tose-Rigell supported the president’s reactions at her school—”I don’t think anyone could have handled it better. What would it have served if [Bush] had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?”—as did Daniels’ students, who later said that Bush’s actions were the right ones.

  66. Ah. No substantive response.

    You’ve received multiple responses, none of which you understood.

  67. As has been frequently noted, just about the end of WW II, a B25 medium bomber crashed into the Empire State Building.
    What did the president do about it? Could do about i? Should do about it?
    An entire world war’s worth of paranoia could have been applied to the case. Some nazi sympathizer got hold of a B25….

    No reason for the national government to start running in circles to presatisfy the inevitable complaints from people who need a hobby or something. Bush and Rice acted correctly wrt the first strike.

  68. Neo–

    I agree completely that Bush acted correctly upon learning about the second plane. But, of course, he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t: as it was he was vilified for supposedly not taking it seriously, but if he’d run out of the room he’d have been vilified for panicking.

  69. You’ve received multiple responses, none of which you understood.

    Art Deco:

    Fine. Then make your argument specific and substantive. It should be easy.

    But of course, you can’t, so you insult me and leave the field declaring victory.

    Somehow I’m not persuaded.

  70. Richard Aubrey:

    Good point.

    I was long familiar with that Empire State crash, because a good friend of my mother’s was one of the people in the building that day who was killed by it.

  71. @ Neo & Bryan – I agree with the school principal. ”I don’t think anyone could have handled it better. What would it have served if [Bush] had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?”—

    ..and it was reprehensible of the Democrats and media to chastise him for it.
    Imagine the alternative headlines for Clinton, Obama, or now Biden, also in either case: they would have been 180 degrees different.

    Pfui.

  72. The question isn’t whether or not Bush should have ran out of the classroom, it’s whether he should have entered the classroom in the first place. Before he went in he was informed that a plane had hit one of the WTC towers. At that point he should have cancelled the event.
    A plane hitting the Empire State Building is not an equivalent event. If 8 years prior Nazis had bombed the foundation of the Empire State Building what do you think would have been the first conclusion made in 1945?
    In hindsight, President Bush made the wrong decision. His political instincts (as with his speech on Saturday) are often off kilter.

  73. @ Eva Marie – I had never heard that, but you are right.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20181203035817/https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bush-learns-of-attack-on-world-trade-center

    On the morning of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush is en route to a visit with schoolchildren in Florida when he receives word that a passenger jet had just crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City. Within an hour of this first report, Bush was reading along with children in a classroom when he was informed that a second airliner had crashed into a second tower.

    Earlier that morning, Bush had received a scheduled security briefing and learned that there was a heightened but non-specific threat of a terrorist attack that day. Warned but undeterred, he continued with a pre-arranged trip to visit Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, to promote a new education bill. On the way from his hotel to the school, aides passed word to the president’s car in the motorcade that a passenger jet had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 am EST. Bush initially thought, as he later told a reporter, that the crash was the result of a terrible accident or pilot error. Bush arrived at the school shortly after the initial report and was waiting in an empty classroom at Booker Elementary with his Secret Service detail when the earliest news footage of the first plane crashing into the tower played on the school’s television screens. Just moments before the second plane hit, Bush was whisked into the classroom where he proceeded to meet with a group of first graders.

    Video cameras were filming Bush’s school visit when White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card slipped into the room at 9:06 a.m. and whispered in the president’s ear that the World Trade Center had been hit by a second airplane and that the nation was under attack by an unknown entity. Bush appeared momentarily stricken, yet maintained his composure and continued to listen to the children read aloud for an additional eight to nine minutes. Bush explained in a White House press conference a week later that his reaction that fateful morning was one of slowly comprehending shock: “I’m sitting in the midst of a classroom with little kids, listening to a children’s story and I realize I’m the Commander in Chief and the country has just come under attack.” At the end of the story, Bush commended the children on their reading skills and encouraged them to continue to read more and to watch less television. He then posed for photos with the children, their teacher and school administrators. Under bright lights, while cameras clicked and whirred, a reporter could be heard asking the president if he was aware of the attacks. Not wishing to frighten the children, Bush replied tersely, “I’ll talk about it later.”

    After the photo opportunity, Bush was escorted into an empty classroom, where he watched updated news reports of the attacks and consulted with Vice President Dick Cheney and New York Governor George Pataki by phone. Still on the school grounds at 9:29 a.m., Bush made his first of several live announcements that day regarding the unfolding tragedy. Secret Service agents then rushed Bush to Air Force One, which was waiting on the tarmac at Sarasota’s airport. On his way to the airport, Bush heard about a third attack, this time on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

    Once aboard Air Force One, the plane’s pilot flew in circles at cruising altitude while Bush and Vice President Cheney discussed via phone where the president would be safest. The presidential plane stopped briefly at an air base in Louisiana before proceeding to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. Bush did not remain away from the capital for long: by 6:42 p.m., he was back in Washington.

    Obviously that was one of my unknown unknowns.
    That also demonstrates how much our opinions are based on only selected portions of the facts (and some people have selected portions of fantasy).

    Bonus video: Bush reaction to 9/11 (Full Classroom Footage)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suB5wNSNBjs

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