Bill Maher article/Bush on Larry King

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-28-2003
Bill Maher article/Bush on Larry King
66
Fri, 08-13-2004 - 8:35am
Did anyone know of the 20 minute photo-op AFTER the seven minutes and "My Pet Goat"? Saw Bill on Larry King and he made a great point that's not in his article. There is a guy who's sole job is to tag along with the President with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. The briefcase holds the "Big Red Button" that could launch US nuclear missiles should we be attacked. This is to save time in the event of a strike. Bill said "Is Bush the guy we want in charge of those nuclear codes?" He did nothing on 9/11. I say, apparently the guy with the briefcase can be 7 minutes and a photo-op away and still have time to spare.

Also, saw Bush on Larry King last night. The guy can't pass up a chance to say 9/11. Too bad he didn't have anything else to say and Larry was lobbing him softball questions with no real follow-up. Good thing Laura was there too. She made Bush's fumblings less obvious. I think overall this was a warm-up for convention or debates. Very weak interview, but it's nice to see George step out of his safe Republican scripted campiagn spots. Too bad the press can't really press him for real answers.

Bush blew it the morning of 9/11



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/story/221433p-190107c.html



By BILL MAHER



John Kerry has waded into an issue raised by Michael Moore in his film "Fahrenheit 9/11," namely, President Bush's sitting for seven minutes in a Florida classroom after being told "the country is under attack." Republicans are waxing indignant, of course. But the criticism is richly deserved.

The fact that Bush wasted 27 minutes that day - not only the seven minutes reading to kids but 20 more at a photo op afterward - was, in my view, the most outrageous thing a President has done since Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court.

Watergate was outrageous but it still did not carry the possibility of utter devastation, like a President's freezing at the very moment we needed his immediate focus on an attack on the United States.

This is an issue about the ultimate presidential duty, acting in an emergency. If nothing else in Washington is nonpartisan, this should be.

But it is not. Republicans are tying themselves in knots trying to defend Bush's actions that morning. The excuses they put forward are absurd:


He was "gathering his thoughts." This was a moment a President should have imagined a thousand times. There is no time in the nuclear age for a President to sit like Forrest Gump "gathering thoughts" after an attack has begun. Gathering information is what he should have been doing.

From the White House press secretary: "The President felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening." I agree that gaining a better understanding of what was happening should have been his goal. What I don't get is how that goal was reached by just sitting there instead of getting up and talking to people. Is he a psychic? Was he receiving the information telepathically?

"He didn't want to scare the children." Vice President Cheney has said of Kerry, "The senator from Massachusetts has given us ample reason to doubt the judgment he brings to vital issues of national security." So Kerry's judgment is suspect, but at a moment of national crisis, Bush's judgment was: Better not to scare 20 children momentarily than to react immediately to an attack on the country!

If he had just said, "Hey, kids, gotta go do some President business - be good to your moms and dads, bye!" my guess is the kids would have survived.

I cannot see how someone who considers himself a conservative can defend George Bush's inaction. Conservatives pride themselves on being clear-eyed and decisive. They don't do nuance, and they respect toughness.

But Bush choked at the most important moment a President could have. We're lucky Al Qaeda had done its worst by the time he pulled himself away from the photo op. Next time, it might not be that way.

Maher is the host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher."



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iVillage Member
Registered: 07-05-2003
Fri, 08-13-2004 - 9:11am
Also, saw Bush on Larry King last night. The guy can't pass up a chance to say 9/11. "

It was and will always be the defining moment of his Presidency....live with it, Bill.



The fact that Bush wasted 27 minutes that day - not only the seven minutes reading to kids but 20 more at a photo op afterward - was, in my view, the most outrageous thing a President has done since Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court." Even assuming it was 27 minutes wasted, it still beats the 40 or so Kerry spent in coma.

The President was ALWAYS in communication with ALL his staff, and if necessary could have been accessed in a second. Further if he were safer elsewhere it was and is the sworn duty of the Secret Service to remove him, which they would have done without his being able to stop them (ask Dick Cheney). The terrorist Czar and FAA had already arranged to shut down airspace, Jets were already scrambled. There was an ongoing effort to identify hijacked targets, IF one had been discovered AND IF it were within range of a US Fighter, the President would have been interrupted to give the order. This did NOT happen. There was no need to add to the alarm, or to remove the President to a less safe location as he was already safe where he was.

A military assessment was NOT possible until almost an hour after the 2nd plane hit the towers. Bush would have been reacting without any understanding to have acted much sooner.

Bill Maher has had trouble controlling his idiotic expressions before, which is why he's on leftist HBO instead of a national network. Looks like he hasn't changed. He still is however Politically Incorrect :-)

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-21-2004
Fri, 08-13-2004 - 9:19am
O.K. The "big red button" only exists in James Bond movies. There is no "button". What may be in the briefcase might be a secure line to top officials. The president cannot launch ANY attack without congressional approval. So it's time we take our heads out of the "hollywood" clouds.

So the president harmed the United States by not launching an attack the moment he heard of the terrorist attack? Who was he supposed to attack? What was he supposed to do? Noone knew who attacked us the minutes following it and even if they did, It wasn't a country but a network of Al Queda spread out all over the world. He couldn't do any more than he did... Get to a safe place and get more information. The defense department was in action as soon as possible.

Grounding several hundred planes nationwide, giving the order to shoot down civilian planes if necessary, putting the government and military into "lock down", declaring a national state of emergency...Yeh, he didn't do anything that morning.

~laura~

PETA...People Eating Tasty Animals

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Fri, 08-13-2004 - 11:26am
No, he wasn't supposed to launch an attack in 7 minutes. But in 27 minutes, he could have, and should have, been on that phone with a secure line. Otherwise, what's the point of that guy following him around with that suitcase?
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-05-2003
Fri, 08-13-2004 - 11:29am
He was available to his staff, and to the staff in DC at a seconds notice from before the first incident. If Bush was needed for anything he would have taken care of it. As it turned out his staff did what they were supposed to... unlike the Clinton era appointees (anyone remember Hazel O'Leary) Bush appointed competent people. They did their jobs, when the President was needed he was there.
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-12-2004
Fri, 08-13-2004 - 1:44pm
"O.K. The "big red button" only exists in James Bond movies. There is no "button". What may be in the briefcase might be a secure line to top officials. The president cannot launch ANY attack without congressional approval. So it's time we take our heads out of the "hollywood" clouds."

Oh you are so WRONG! The suitcase that his aide carries (which is officially known as the football) contains the release codes for U.S. nuclear weapons. Only the President can authorize the use of nuclear weapons, and he does not need anybody's permission, and certainly not that of Congress, to authorize the launch of nuclear weapons. The football is not actually "big red button", but a computer linked to STRATCOM headquarters at Omaha and other facilities in the U.S. national command authority. This is not a hollywood dream; this is our nuclear command and control system.

The whole system of nuclear command and control is set up so that the President can be holding a secure conference with military leaders within moments of evidence that the United States is under attack. It is designed so that the President can release the codes and authorize a nuclear response in less than 30 minutes (that's the amount of time it would take for Russian ballistic missiles to reach targets in the U.S.; and that's what this system was designed for, the possibility of global nuclear war with the Soviet Union.)

That being said, none of this is relevant to 9/11. We were not under nuclear attack, the President was not going to even consider, let alone authorize, a nuclear response, so he did not need the football. But, what is relevant is that we have a system for the President to be in contact with his military leaders in 2-3 minutes, so decisions could be made in less than 30 minutes. That system is with him every minute of every day, even in this post-Cold War era, so there really was no excuse for a 7-minute or 27-minute delay. Wonder what he would have done if the whisper in his ear had said "Mr. President, we've detected 1,000 Russian nuclear warheads headed our way." Collected his thoughts for an hour or two, while the nation burned?

Oh, and if you remember 9/11, after the President flew around the country for a while, he went to Barksdale Air Force Base in LA. Any military or nuclear analyst can tell you why he did that (although I'm surprised he didn't go straight to Omaha). Barksdale is a B-52 base, it still is home to some nuclear weapons, and it still has all the communications systems in place to allow for the conferences and responses needed to authorize a nuclear launch. It could handle a sense of urgency, even if the President didn't seem to feel one.

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-21-2004
Fri, 08-13-2004 - 4:10pm
O.K. If what you say is correct, you should be employed by the **** government and not wasting "valuable minutes" on all the details. So what? 9-11 was NOT a military attack. I don't really know why everyone has their panties in a bunch over 27 minutes when there wasn't anything that could be done that wasn't already being done. How do you KNOW what the president was doing or who he was comunicating with?

All this is is the democrats taking TALKING POINTS from a hollywood HACK and turning it into an issue when there is absolutly noone who could have prevented or stopped the attacks once they happened. In an interview shortly after 9-11, Kerry said he was in a meeting and they "couldn't think" for 40 minutes between hearing of the first plane and then seeing the Pentagon hit. Oh, but I guess that doesn't matter. Kerry would be either dumbstruck without time for a POLL to be taken or he would change his mind a few dozen times before doing anything.

You are still inferring that you think he should have launched nuclear weapons? I don't understand that last paragraph. ((P.S. He wasn't just riding around in his plane. The first order is to insure the safety of the president. Even if you don't like him!))

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-23-2004
Fri, 08-13-2004 - 4:48pm
< I don't really know why everyone has their panties in a bunch over 27 minutes when there wasn't anything that could be done that wasn't already being done. >

I know why-there's an election coming up in a couple of months. Funny how Maher nor anyone else had squat to say about the situation when it happened three years ago. Just a source of more election year cheap shots for the Dems. I don't think any of us could say with certainty exactly what we would have done in that moment. Perhaps Bush should have handled it differently, I would agree with that in hindsight. But it's what he's done in the three years subsequent to that 27 minutes that really matters.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Fri, 08-13-2004 - 5:56pm
So the biggest attack on our country since Pearl Harbor, & we are supposed to be satisfied that events were being monitored & handled by the staff, the president did not need to be involved at that point, everything will be fine now, you just sit there quietly & let the staff do its' work...

We shouldn't even NEED a president, right?

And fer chrissake Clinton had nothing to do with whether or not Bush showed leadership that day.

Can anyone tell me just ONE THING that Bush did that day on his own initiative, ONE THING he said or did that might convince me he was in charge.

See in a crisis, I'm able and willing to put aside partisan differences, if I can determine that the crisis is being handled appropriately, I just don't believe it was. Guiliani did that for me, but Bush did not.


< He was available to his staff, and to the staff in DC at a seconds notice from before the first incident. If Bush was needed for anything he would have taken care of it. As it turned out his staff did what they were supposed to... unlike the Clinton era appointees (anyone remember Hazel O'Leary) Bush appointed competent people. They did their jobs, when the President was needed he was there.>

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-05-2003
Fri, 08-13-2004 - 7:35pm
The INSTANT the President was needed, he would be there, he was SURROUNDED by staff which had excellent COMMUNICATION. Sorry, but that's the way it was... it wouldn't make sense to move him if Air Force 1 wasn't ready... it'd be silly for him to waiting in a grounded plane while it was topping off, or preparing for an emergency lift off.
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-07-2004
Fri, 08-13-2004 - 7:41pm
He could have moved to the principals office, shut the door, & used the secure line. I didn't say he should have been sitting on Air Force 1. I'm saying he should have been using that time to take charge. Apparently in your mind it's OK in a crisis to rely on staff. Guess the pres is just a figurehead then. I prefer real leadership in a crisis. I think the INSTANT he was needed was the INSTANT he was told.



< The INSTANT the President was needed, he would be there, he was SURROUNDED by staff which had excellent COMMUNICATION. Sorry, but that's the way it was... it wouldn't make sense to move him if Air Force 1 wasn't ready... it'd be silly for him to waiting in a grounded plane while it was topping off, or preparing for an emergency lift off.>

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