- Don't have a clue how I would have reacted in the same circumstances, but I do find it interesting that those who criticize Bush's reaction to the 9/11 news 1.) do not offer any suggestion about what the President should have done during those seven minutes, rather than staying calm for the sake of the classroom and of the public; 2.) nor do they point to any way that the 9/11 events might have turned out better in even the slightest way if the President had acted differently. What would you have him to do, dash out to the nearest telephone booth and swap into his Superman tights? Lee Hamilton, the Vice-Chair of the 9/11 Commission and a former Democratic Representative from Indiana: "Bush made the right decision in remaining calm, in not rushing out of the classroom." Moreover, as detailed by the
Washington Times, Ari Fleischer was in the back of the classroom, holding up a legal pad with the words, "DON'T SAY ANYTHING YET." The Secret Service may well have been cautious about moving Bush, not only because of hijackings, but also because on the morning of 9/11, a Middle Eastern man had
tried to gain personal access to the President by falsely claiming that he was a journalist with a scheduled interview, and by asking for a Secret Service agent by name.
- General Aviation traffic was suspended. On the morning of 9/11, the FAA suspended all nonemergency air activity in the national airspace. While the national airspace was closed, decisions to allow aircraft to fly were made by the FAA working with the Department of Defense, Department of State, U.S. Secret Service, and the FBI. The only flights allowed were repositioning flights by commercial carriers and LifeFlight organ transplant deliveries. The Department of Transportation reopened the national airspace to U.S. carriers effective 11:00 A.M. on September 13, 2001, for flights (including private charters) out of or into airports that had implemented the FAA's new security requirements.
From the House Subcommittee report on the shutdown:
"On September 13, 2001, FAA, in cooperation with the National Security Council (NSC), began incrementally reopening the NAS to civilian operations, first on a flight-by-flight basis to commercial air carriers and then to other segments of the aviation industry."
See:
House Transportation Timeline
Limited airport operations began all over the country on Sept. 13... the first day the Saudis were allowed to fly
within the country. On Sept 13, Tampa police brought three young Saudis they were protecting on an off-duty security detail to the airport so they could get on a plane to Lexington. Tampa police arranged for two more private investigators to provide security on the flight. They boarded a chartered Learjet. The plane took off at 4:37 P.M., after national airspace was open, more than five hours after the Tampa airport had reopened, and after other flights had arrived at and departed from that airport. The three Saudi nationals debarked from the plane and were met by local police. Their private security guards were paid. and the police then escorted the three Saudi passengers to a hotel where they joined relatives already in Lexington.
It's an absolute fallacy that the Saudis got some super-special clearance available to no one else either to fly about or out of the U.S. On the 13th, waivers were being given to flights all around the country. The Saudis applied for one, and after it was cleared by Richard Clarke and the FBI, the waiver was granted. So, to be clear here - when the Saudis first flew
within the U.S. on Sept. 13, permission was already being granted all around the country for various flights.
Actually, they flew out of the country in the following days. According to this
Snopes article, after the airspace reopened, nine chartered flights with 160 people, mostly Saudi nationals, departed from the United States between September 14 and 24. In addition, one Saudi government flight, containing the Saudi deputy defense minister and other members of an official Saudi delegation, departed Newark Airport on September 14. Every airport involved in these Saudi flights was open when the flight departed, and no inappropriate actions were taken to allow those flights to depart.
These flights were screened by law enforcement officials, primarily the FBI. For example, one flight, the so-called Bin Ladin flight, departed the United States on September 20 with 26 passengers, most of them relatives of Usama Bin Ladin. Screening of this flight was directed by an FBI agent in the Baltimore Field Office who was also a pilot ... The Bin Ladin flight and other flights we examined were screened in accordance with policies set by FBI headquarters and coordinated through working-level interagency processes. Although most of the passengers were not interviewed, 22 of the 26 people on the Bin Ladin flight were interviewed by the FBI. Many were asked detailed questions. None of the passengers stated that they had any recent contact with Usama Bin Ladin or knew anything about terrorist activity.
- If you question the cost or necessity of protecting America, perhaps it is you who should expand their reading material. As starters, may I suggest this link:
AL-QAEDA'S INTELLECTUAL LEGACY:
NEW RADICAL ISLAMIC THINKING
JUSTIFYING THE GENOCIDE OF INFIDELS
Jonathan D. Halevi
