Linoleum, you crack me up. Do you read your own posts?
The simple answer is - Bush had no reaction for 7 minutes. None. Zero. He had no details to be thinking about, plans to be forming, he had nothing. But there he sat for 7 minutes. And from the timeline, he didn’t have much in the way of thoughts for the minutes following his time with the kids.
And yes I am familiar with the timeframe of events, and one thing that comes up is all these agencies looked around for guidance, can we shoot down passenger planes? What should we do? Where should we go? All were in a state of confusion. They were looking for a leader, and of course we know, that can’t have anything to do with the head of our country, because he really doesn’t do anything. Right?
Ben, I am not saying kerry would do this or that, as I said in my previous posts, no one knows what someone of action would have done or could have accomplished. But it is real simple, a little baseball analogy for Bush. You can never know what you will do at the bottom of the ninth with the baseloaded in the 7th game of the world series, if when it is your time to bat in that situation, you just sit on the bench and don’t even get up. All we know is what you didn’t do, because all you did was nothing. Bush didn’t even attempt to take action or get information. He did nothing. He sat on the bench until someone else told him - look idiot the game is about to be over, time to get up and lets leave.
What is, A rise in the emigration rate of the United States?
Alex: Judges?
What is, An example of the continually problematic nature of the American political process?
Alex: Right!
As for Bush’s inactivity on early morning Dial 911 day, I’d actually prefer if he sat there and read to children ALL DAY EVERY DAY. Cheney, Ashcroft, Rove, and Rumsfeld should join him. Call it Community Service… they obviously aren’t providing much of a service to the American Community right now.
Think about it. Would the United States be in a better or worse position if we had NO top leadership during the Bush Administration’s tenure?
For someone as incapable as Bush, isn’t inactivity BETTER than any alternative?
However, running on some kind of assumption that Bush is a reasonable president, it would have been good for him to take earlier action, but a Puppet President can’t do much in four years, much less seven minutes, and the idea that everyone was WAITING on the President to provide intelligence, or even orders is more ludicrous than anything Bush and Co. has done.
Lieber Gott im Himmel, you just depress me. I read my posts, I think about my posts. I don’t understand how you can say what you are saying if you’d given the matter an ounce of thought much less any research.
You assert that the ‘7 minutes’ could have made a difference in stopping Flight 77 from hitting the Pentagon. I find that utterly ridiculous and I will explain why.
First. Read this. I really shouldn’t have to say anything beyond that, but I know better by now.
The specifics of Flight 77:
The infamous “America’s under attack” whisper occured somwhere between 9:05 and 9:07. Remember that time window.
The FAA - Losing Flight 77
Flight 77 didn’t begin to deviate from its flight plan until 8:54. At 8:56 it disappeared off Indianapolis radar. The controller responsible for Flight 77 had noted the turn to the southwest and the disappearance from radar. With no knowledge of events in New York, the controller and the local response was the assumption of catastrophic failure and a crash. The mini-timeline:
8:56 - Flight 77 disappears from radar
9:00 - Indianapolis FAA Center notifies agencies of possible crash
9:08 - Langley AFB S&R contacted
9:09 - Regional FAA center notified by Indianapolis of possible Flight 77 crash
9:20 - Indianapolis Center becomes aware of highjacking reports
9:24 - FAA Operations Center notified by Regional FAA Center of possible Flight 77 crash
9:25 - FAA Command and Operations Center aware of WTC hits, Flight 77 loss, order “nationwide ground stop”
In short, due to the structure, communication lag and tight focus, the FAA at a central command level didn’t become aware of the possibility of a Flight 77 hijack until 9:24 or 9:25.
NORAD and Langley - Air Force response
The first warning to NORAD about a flight inbound to Washington was at 9:21. This warning had nothing to do with Flight 77. Through some misunderstanding someone at the Boston FAA center thought Flight 11 and had turned towards Washington. The response was prompt.
The Mission Crew Commander at NEADS issued an order at 9:23: “Okay … scramble Langley. Head them towards the Washington area.” That order was processed and transmitted to Langley Air Force Base at 9:24, and radar data show the Langley fighters were airborne at 9:30.
The fighters from Langley were vectored in a manner to intercept Flight 11, supposedly heading southbound from New York. Needless to say, they were not on an bearing useful to intercept Flight 77, not that the FAA knew where Flight 77 was. At that time the Air Force did not even know about Flight 77. NORAD only finds out incidentially at 9:34. As we’ll discover later, not only were the fighters not on a useful vector to Flight 77, they were on a useless vector period.
By this time the Command Center had advised local controllers to be looking for an unaccounted plane headed towards Washington. Dulles picked up a track at 9:32 and notified Reagan Airport. A C-130H cargo plane had just taken off and was diverted, able to make a visual identification of Flight 77 identifying it was a 757 and attempted to follow. Also about this time, at 9:36, FAA Boston passed along updated information on its plane headed to Washington (although not identified as Flight 77).
“Latest report. Aircraft VFR [Visual Flight Rules] six miles southeast of the White House. … Six, southwest. Six, southwest of the White House, deviating away.”
This is the ‘oh shit’ moment. Between 9:34 and 9:36 the combination of information that Flight 77 was missing and presumed hijacked and the unidentified plane was right on top of D.C. hit NORAD. Unfortunately, the fighters scrambled from Langley were nowhere close.
This startling news prompted the Mission Crew Commander at NEADS to take immediate control of the airspace to clear a flight path for the Langley fighters: “Okay, we’re going to turn it … crank it up. … Run them to the White House.” He then discovered, to his surprise, that the Langley fighters were not headed north toward the Baltimore area as instructed, but east over the ocean. “I don’t care how many windows you break,” he said. “Damn it… Okay. Push them back.”
The Langley fighters were heading east, not north, for three reasons. First, unlike a normal scramble order, this order did not include a distance to the target, or the target’s location. Second, a “generic” flight plan incorrectly led the Langley fighters to believe they were ordered to fly due east (090) for 60 miles. The purpose of the generic flight plan was to quickly get the aircraft airborne and out of local airspace. Third, the lead pilot and local FAA controller incorrectly assumed the flight plan instruction to go “090 for 60” was newer guidance that superseded the original scramble order.
After the 9:36 call to NEADS about the unidentified aircraft a few miles from the White House, the Langley fighters were ordered to Washington, DC. Controllers at NEADS located an unknown primary radar track, but “it kind of faded” over Washington. The time was 9:38. The Pentagon had been struck by American 77 at 9:37:46. The Langley fighters were approximately 150 miles away.
In short, the Air Force had 14 minutes between the first warning of a plane approaching Washington and Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon. Unfortunately, that warning resulted in the fighters being scrambled in the wrong place.
Assuming that warning didn’t happen, the first indication the Air Force at NORAD would have had regarding Flight 77 was at 9:36, less than two minutes before Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. Langley would have just gotten the word to scramble as the plane hit.
Even in a theoretical world where the fighters took off at 9:30 with a decent vector towards Flight 77 and knowledge of the plane, they never could have acquired the plane, much less intercepted, much less shot it down before it hit the Pentagon. It’s always amusing looking at the moonbat website 9/11 timelines with commentary like why fighters were traveling at ‘14.3% of their top speed’, with the top speed given for cruising at 45,000 feet with afterburner. Not that they bother to look up top speed or fuel consumption using afterburner near sea level. Much less having to acquire a specific plane with no transponder in what was not yet a cleared airspace.
Now back to Bush. Given the details, how could Bush have known anything about a plane headed to Washington before about 9:30, just minutes before Flight 77 hit the Pentagon? At 9:30 Bush was giving the following speech at Booker Elementary School.
What actions could Bush have ordered that weren’t already being taken? The first fighters were scrambled at 8:52 in response to Flight 11 and Flight 175. Needless to say, it was already too late for the WTC. But by the time Bush learned of the first crash (anywhere from 8:50-9:00), the scramble order had already been given and the planes were already in the air. The realization of what was actually going on couldn’t hit home until the second plane hit the WTC at 9:03.
In sum, the protocols in place on 9/11 for the FAA and NORAD to respond to a hijacking presumed that:
(1) the hijacked aircraft would be readily identifiable and would not attempt to disappear;
(2) there would be time to address the problem through the appropriate FAA and NORAD chains of command; and
(3) the hijacking would take the traditional form, not a suicide hijacking designed to convert the aircraft into a guided missile.
On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen. What ensued was the hurried attempt to create an improvised defense by officials who had never encountered or trained against the situation they faced.
Thanks for proving my point yet again. The president had 30+ minutes to react. Really 15 minutes to give what he does time to be put into motion. He spends half that sitting and reading.
What if the president stands up, first thing he says to the staff - scramble all military jets to protect potential targets? What happens then? You are just breaking down the timeline of a country in confusion with no clear leader. You are saying exactly what i am saying, with no clear leadership, the only thing that could happen, happened.
It seems to me that even if Bush had shown strong leadership, in such a short time frame, with such confused information, it would have been near to impossible to stop the completion of the attacks. Didn’t cheney order the fighters to shoot down the airliners? and that order didn’t get transmitted to them. So even if Bush had known exactly what to do and sprang into action from the first moment, chances are the outcome would have been very similar. (I gather that’s what chet is saying).
That said, as the tribal soverenty clip shows bush has trouble with thinking on his feet (whether or not he knows something about the issue, he definitely had no idea how to communicate it), and so the strong leadership that may (but probably wouldn’t) have helped stop the flight 77 attack, wasn’t there.
It’s too bad that we don’ tknow how a good leader would have handled it.
He could have read to those kids for 60 minutes. Wouldn’t have made a difference becuase the president doesn’t operate in that low level minute-to-minute management capacity. He has people (known collectively as the US Military and the US Government) to do that stuff.
I know in my work if I’m dealing with an crashed/dead server that needs to be brought back ASAP and the clock is ticking and the pressure is on then the WORST thing that can happen is “helpful” managers calling every 30 seconds looking for info or offering suggestions. Sometimes the absolutely best thing a high level person can do in an emergency is shut up, sit down quietly, and let the appropriate low level people do the jobs they are trained to do.
I think Chet, and I know it’s unlike him, might be overstating the case a bit. However I really do think it does speak to character.
The United States of America has just been attacked. You are The President. And your response is:
A) Excuse yourself and get yourself setup, pronto, in a situation where you can if not manage, at least oversee, the response.
B) Excuse yourself to at least go watch news coverage and commentary to figure out part of what’s going on at least (like most of us regular type citizens did).
C) Sit there for seven minutes. Try this at home folks. Turn off the radio and the TV. Put a clock right in front of your face. Wait for seven minutes to pass. Now. Imagine yourself, not even as President, on 9.11. You’ve just been told that two planes have hit the twin towers. What’s your gut reaction? You kinda want to find out what’s going on, right? Imagine that it was somehow your responsibility to keep that building and those people safe? That you’d sworn an oath to protect them? Now what do you do?
See what I’m getting at? This incident tells you plenty about the man in charge that wasn’t scripted by his handlers, advisors and make-up artists.
And everyone’s using hindsight - hey, it’s not that bad, there wasn’t much he could have done anyway! We didn’t know that at the time, of course, so it’s a bit rich as an excuse.
Jason- It’s not hindsight, it’s the way the government works. Unless you think there was a real chance we would’ve needed to deploy nukes, there’s nothing he could do. All the important decisions were made much, much lower than he was.
Alls I’m saying is that in 7 minutes I don’t think there was much he could have done to change the outcome, even if he was super-leader. You’re absolutely right that what he DID do wasn’t a good start to dealing with the problem that we ended up with. And if it had been worse, maybe those seven minutes would have made the difference between thousands of more people dying. Who knows? I certainly think that the reaction that he had was really not a good one as was pointed out before that everyone else in the country turned on the tv or radio and started getting as much info as they could.
Well shit, if that’s suddenly relevant, I feel really bad, because I didn’t do anything for an hour after I heard about the first plane… and I didn’t even hear about the rest of it until an hour after it happened!
“I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something that he needed to attend to. And I would have attended to it."
-Kerry, when asked how he would have addressed news of the attacks on 9./11
extarbags- That’s in response to the claims that Bush waiting wasn’t actually damaging but was a damning indictment of his character. Kerry did nothing for a lot longer.
It’s not hindsight or an excuse, it’s just how complex organizations work. The people on top cannot make fast interventions into complex problems unless prepared researed procedures exist to follow. If they try it without the procedures, they waste tons of time trying to explain to people at successively lower levels of the organization just what out-of-the-ordinary thing they expect them to be doing. My contention is that the President of the United States has at the very least a multiple hour response window for any emergency short of suprise invasion of the U.S or nuclear war.
When Bush got told that two planes had hit the towers in NY, he quite probably knew that the whole situations except the cleanup would be played out before he had accurate and complete information about what was going on. From my understanding of events his only mistake was a PR one, but Bush has never been good at PR so that’s hardly surprise.
