* emptywheel thinks there'll be pardons all round - in every case.
* digby:
"This is not an abstract argument anymore. It's not just about what might happen if we slide down the slippery slope and somebody really bad takes power and uses these powers to do bad things. The people in power right now are doing bad things and lying about it, as Michael Luttig, one of their own, found out personally. They are the reason the Bill of Rights were written in the first place.* newsweek:
Look for Karl Rove and his band of media sycophants to start agitating for the Democrats to lay off this issue again because it will make them look weak on terrorism. Everyone needs to start asking themselves why Karl would be warning Democrats not to do something that he believes will benefit him."
"Yet new details emerged this week from President Bush himself in a little-noticed interview with the German newspaper Bild. When asked what was the most awful moment of his presidency, Bush started talking about 9/11 and the instant he heard from Card. “On a situation like that, it takes a period to understand exactly what was going on,” Bush said. “When somebody says ‘America is under attack’—you’ve got to fully understand what that meant. And the information coming was haphazard at best for a while. We weren’t sure if the State Department got hit. I’d heard the White House had got attacked. Of course, I was worried [about] that—my family was here.”
According to two authoritative versions of events, and Bush’s earlier media interviews, the president’s first thoughts sounded very different. One version, as told to Bob Woodward in his book "Bush at War," is a tale of resolve and immediate decision-making. “A photo of that moment is etched for history,” Woodward writes of Card whispering to the president. “Bush remembers exactly what he was thinking: 'They had declared war on us and I made up my mind at that moment that we were going to war'.”
Another version, as recounted by the 9/11 Commission, cites the president as saying “his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis.” The first reference to his concern for his family comes when he boards Air Force One, after leaving the school 40 minutes later. “He boarded the aircraft, asked the Secret Service about the safety of his family, and called the Vice President,” the 9/11 Commission reported.
7 comments:
As I said here reporters confirm Bush knew about the first hijacking about 8.30am and the 8.48 Nth tower impact before entering the elementary school. His conversation with Card (9.05) was 30 minutes after he first became aware there was a problem. When later asked about his reactions to those remarks Bush claimed he believed both tower impacts to be accidents due to pilot error. Given previous intel warnings of likely bin Laden airline attacks, and the fact that Bush knew the first plane had been hijacked, his remarks ought to be seen as straight out lies. What for? Well they did cover for the complete failure of NORAD on 9/11. Some coincidence.
lol - i didnt realise he (said he) thought BOTH were pilot failures.
(fyi - Damien's "Failure of Norad" link didnt work. i think he was pointing here http://damien911.blogspot.com/2005/12/norad-failure-2.html)
Clarification: he was asked on separate occasions about his reactions to the 1st and 2nd plane crashes. In both cases he said he thought they were accidents.
wrt his Card reaction, he knew the 1st plane had flown into the nth tower before entering the school. He then gets told by Card of a 2nd plane into a high rise building which he later attributes to pilot error. No intelligent adult could believe BOTH tower impacts the result of pilot error - esp when they know the first plane was hijacked. It's just in your face nonsense.
watch the card/bush exchange again - and try to mouth out the words that card is presumed to have said in the time that he was whispering "america is under attack" - theres barely time for him to say those words - even if he was just saying something normal, let alone saying something of serious import and checking to see whether the recipient actually heard, and understood. card doesnt even wait for acknowledgement. it's all kabuki.
I don't know if you are referring to my original comments here but I pointed to that feature (and so have others). Yep, the video runs for 1.7 secs and he could not have said "A second plane has hit the second tower. America is under attack" in 1.7secs. So he just made that statement up for posterity. Now if he had just said some simple thing - like "there's been another crash" - then you would have expected clarifying questions from Bush. You don't get that. You get a kind of uncomfortable 'acceptance'. One commentator interpreted Bush's facial reactions as "I can't believe we are actually going through with this". The whole deal with Bush on 911 smells. It's all wrong. He should have been out of there before 9.00am. There were too many security alarms:
Fl 11 hijacked about 8.21 (monitored by Security Service);
NORAD had followed the phone conversation from fight attendants Betty Ong and Amy Sweeney on Flight 11 since 8:21 and they knew it had been hijacked by terrorists.
There was the 6am attempt by unidentfied arabs to get a media interview with Bush (in a manner similar to the assassination of popular Afghan leader Shah Massoud two days previously);
The Sarasota visit had been publicised for months (and by staying at the school he endangered the children as well);
The intel in the previous months had been clear: a large al Qaeda attack involving airlines is coming.
Bush knew there was trouble from 8.30am. He left finally at 9.30am. That's a full hour. If those hijacked planes had been incoming Soviet missiles the eastern seabord of the US would have been decimated without a US response. That's a total intelligence failure. The only question is accidental or planned.
No question in my mind; it was always intended that Bush stay there till 9.30 in order to sell the idea that awareness of the attacks only really emerged after 9.03 am. He provided the cover for NORAD failure.
actually i wasnt referring to your earlier ref - but yep the same conclusion.
these fucking people make my mind explode.
btw - one thing i noted from looking at thompson's timeline again the other day is that bush made a speech at 9.29 - on schedule!
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