Bush Administration & 9/11

From a letter I wrote to the Philadelphia Inquirer:
"There was a mention of 9/11 among the reasons given for the court decision. Yes, Osama bin Laden is the primary culprit in this. But the president showed negligence, incompetence and dereliction of duty. Bin Laden could not have succeeded had the president done his own job."

This statement might reasonably lead folks to call for an explanation. Very well, if you go to the Reading Room for 911Truth.org and click on the category "foreknowledge," you'll see that there are 96 items listed there. These are articles and blog posts that all add significant knowledge to the issue of whether the Bush Administration had foreknowledge of, or had reason to have had foreknowledge of 9/11. The most famous warning was of course the 6 August Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) that should have set off alarm bells and should have roused the Administration into a high state of alert. Instead, CIA Director George J. Tenet mentioned in April 2004 that he didn't even personally speak with President Bush for the entire month of August! No one from the Administration has ever specified any actions taken as a result of learning about the PDB!

The other major reason I describe President Bush's performance as "dereliction of duty" is because of what didn't happen while the planes were crashing into the buildings. Bush failed to get himself to a command post. Any command post would have done. Air Force One would have, of course, been ideal, but any ship or military base could have provided a perfectly satisfactory post. The first and most important point is that the Commander-in-Chief needs to be in a place where he can receive reports. Issuing orders and instructions is also quite important, but first & foremost, the C-in-C needs to be in a place where people up and down the chain of command can keep him and the people around him informed as to what's going on. This way, the person in charge has a detailed, up-to-date and accurate picture as to what's going on. If the President had been a civilian all his life, he might have an excuse for not knowing this, but Bush served four honorable years in the Texas Air National Guard (He apparently blew off the last two years of a six-year term).

Back when I was in the Navy (1991-2001) and the lights went out on the ship and stayed out for more than a few seconds or some other unexplained event occurred, going to "General Quarters" was an automatic response. The President should have regarded the nearest command post as his GQ station and should have gotten there immediately.

The President also needs protection. Well, where better than aboard Air Force One, flying at several thousand feet up and surrounded by fighter aircraft? How does one get much safer than that? What if Bush had gotten to a ship or base? Working from a ship that's underway and that has other ships around it or on a base where soldiers are stationed is also about as safe as one gets. As American citizens saw in the Michael Moore movie Fahrenheit 911, Bush responded to hearing about the second plane crashing into the second building by just sitting there. Was he fully aware as to what was going on? Obviously not, which is why he needed to get to a command post where he could have learned what was going on!

Should he have looked about wildly, screamed and tripped over chairs and tables trying to get out of the classroom, as conservatives have suggested was his only alternative to just sitting there? Of course not! He could have calmly excused himself by telling the students he had "Presidential business" to attend to and could have walked out to where his transportation was.

I repeat, before and during the 9/11 attacks, Bush and his subordinates demonstrated incompetence, negligence and dereliction of duty.