I thought of an answer for Kerry when asked about Bush*'s 7 minutes:

[LittleApple81]

I know I would have reacted a lot swifter than that... Not even a hamster dies under my watch... even for a hamster's life, 7 minutes is too much.

[mwm]

1. TiH

Did you listen to TiH this morning?

[LittleApple81]

2. Who is TiH?

[mwm]

5. TiH defined

TiH is WNUR's This is Hell.

[CarolynEC]

3. Possible response...

"Let's go to the videotape!"

Show that cinematic epic everywhere, in it's entirety. Moore was too kind (to his audience) showing only a portion of it.

[DrFunkenstein]

4. USA Today: Kerry criticizes Bush's reaction to 9/11 attacks

Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry told minority journalists Thursday that he would have reacted more quickly to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks than President Bush, who read with a group of children for seven minutes after learning about the second jet hitting the World Trade Center.

"Had my top aide whispered in my ear, 'America is under attack,' I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something he needed to attend to," Kerry told about 7,000 people at Unity 2004: Journalists of Color Conference.

White House communications director Dan Bartlett, who was with Bush that day, called Kerry's response "politics at its worst."

Bartlett told ABC that Kerry was "armchair quarterbacking three years after the fact for political purposes. President Bush was very mindful that he was in front of the children and the country and did not want to cause any more panic than the attacks themselves. It was the right decision then, and it was the right decision today."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20040806/ts_usatoday/forfirsttimekerrycriticizesbushsreactionto911attacks

Let me repeat that last part: "President Bush was very mindful that he was in front of the children and the country and did not want to cause any more panic than the attacks themselves."

[Kierkegaard]

6. ummm

"...very mindful that he was in front of the children..." Either that, or he was just dumb-founded, much like he is during any public appearance which hasn't been carefully scripted in advance.

[elperromagico]

7. The "Let's not scare the children" line is a ridiculous excuse.

Bartlett acts as though the only other thing Bush could have done would have been to jump up and scream "Oh God, children! We've been attacked! We're all gonna die! PANIC! PANIC!" A simple, "I'm sorry, children, but I have to go" would have sufficed. The President does not have to give an essay on why he suddenly has to leave a classroom. Nor should he have to.

[DrFunkenstein]

13. Do You Think The Kids, You Know, Panicked AFTER Class?

Thinking to themselves, "Shouldn't the friggin' President of the United States be doing something besides reading My Pet Goat to us!?!"

(I'm sure they have cleaner mouths than that, of course.)

[elperromagico]

16. Those kids will have a story to tell their grandchildren.

"I was sitting in the classroom when Bush just sat there! He just sat there!"

[Dem2theMax]

8. Hahaha. "President Bush was very mindful "

Now THERE is a lie if ever I heard one. Bush has a MIND.

You don't even have to watch the film - that picture shows he's frozen, period. He didn't have a clue as to what to do. I'd bet my life he was sitting there waiting for someone to come and rescue him.


On second thought, maybe he peed his pants upon hearing the news and didn't know how to get up without it showing? :evilgrin:

Ever since I saw F 9-11, I've tried to picture ANY other president sitting in that chair and getting that news. In my wildest imaginings, none of them 'just sat there'.
Clinton wouldn't have had a second of hesitation before taking charge. Then again, Clinton would have read the August 6th memo.....

[elperromagico]

9. Clinton would have been impeached for that.

After all, he was impeached for far less.

[soggy]

11. bullshit alarms are going crazy

"i'm sorry your baby died during delivery, maam, but the doctor didn't want to worry you by actually doing something"

does it really take 7 FUCKING MINUTES to figure out a way to excuse yourself discreetly while our country's under attack??? this guy's "Tough on Terror"???

it's nice to see that protocol w/ kindergartners overrides our entire multi-trillion dollar national defense.

why don't they just tell us the truth? that he wanted to know how the story ended?

[LiberalFighter]

14. Then I guess Andy Card should had waited until after gw* was finished...

reading to the kids.

[powergirl]

10. All of us civilians jumped out of our chairs when we learned of 911

I was 8 months pregnant and heard about the 2nd plane while listening to the radio in my car. I literally ran to my office so that I could call all of my family and friends all over the country to make sure they were ok. My secretary's daughter was scheduled to fly out of Boston to Dallas that morning and I helped her track her daughter down. I was HUGE pregnant, checked on my family and friends, and helped a very upset colleague find her daughter. Why couldn't our fearless leader do the same. What an ignoramus.

[Dem2theMax]

12. Why couldn't our fearless leader do the same.

Exactly.

I never even thought about it till reading what you wrote. I was in an airport (Nashville), 10 minutes from boarding my flight, when everything came to a stop. It took me about an hour to find a relative who could come and get me. In all that time, I didn't see ONE person in a panic. I'd call it 'controlled confusion.' None of us really knew what was going on. Yet everyone was helping out. Strangers all working together to do whatever we had to do. Same thing when I finally got a flight home five days later.

Funny how us mere mortals were able to work with what little info we had and we took care of each other. * had ALL the facts at hand that were to be had, and he couldn't even get out of a chair.

[LiberalFighter]

15. Which shows that we didn't need the "leadership" of gw or guiliani

[LonghornJack]

17. Basic Question: Why Would the Children Panic?"

If the President suddenly left the room without a word, what possibly could have caused the kids to panic? They certainly didn't know anything about airliners as missiles, and....are they even old enough to understand what "our nation is under attack" means, if someone told them? If Duhbya left the room suddenly, I can see maybe confusion and question, but....panic?

This "don't panic the children" mantra makes no sense; it is so bogus. Weren't these children in kindergarten? They weren't old enough to know that there was something to be panicked about!

If there was anything to be panicked about, it was the look in Duhbya's face when Card whispered in his hear. The kids got by without missing a beat.