On August 28, 2011, as part of its 9\/11 remembrance series, National Geographic aired a one-hour special, “George W. Bush: The 9\/11 Interview.” \u00a0Here is my initial perspective.<\/p>\n
Overview<\/strong><\/p>\n President Bush’s presentation was not an interview, it was a remembrance. The remembrance was presidential in tone, as expected, and chronological in presentation. \u00a0He established a simple theme, “protect the nation,” and stayed on theme throughout the hour-long memoir. \u00a0Along the way he set a controversial high bar for historians on at least four essential points. \u00a0He concluded with the announcement of the killing of Osama bin Laden, a president-to-president passing of the torch of leadership for the war on terror to President Obama.<\/p>\n Setting the bar for history<\/strong><\/p>\n Shootdown authority. <\/strong>President Bush established that a first order of business on board Air Force One was to provide the Air Force \u00a0the authority it needed, if necessary, to shootdown other hijacked aircraft. \u00a0He is clear that he passed that authority before he learned that United Airlines flight 93 was down and that he was concerned when he learned that news. \u00a0The President provided no elaboration and never mentioned the national command authority or Vice President Cheney. \u00a0He has concluded, for history, that he, alone, issued the order. \u00a0That is his retrospective internalization and statement for the record and for history.<\/p>\n Iraq. <\/strong>President Bush established that September 15, 2001, at Camp David, was the first serious discussion about Iraq. \u00a0His decision at that time was to deal with that issue later on. \u00a0He did not elaborate and did not return to the subject. \u00a0Here, especially, he stuck to his protect the nation theme and said that all his decisions were to protect the country. \u00a0He did his duty as a wartime president.<\/p>\n PEOC.<\/strong> He mentioned this subject after a video clip of his motorcade to the airport at Sarasota, screen-stamped at 9:35. \u00a0He stated that Condi Rice, who was there, called him with the report that a hijacked plane had struck the Pentagon. \u00a0He did not mention the Vice President.<\/p>\n The threat, what he knew, and what to do about the intelligence community. <\/strong>The President said that his morning security briefing was “nothing out of the ordinary.” \u00a0After the events of the day he thought about why we didn’t know about this. \u00a0The August 6 PDB was shown on screen but the President did not speak to it. \u00a0Again, he stuck to his theme and said that we had a job to do and we needed the intelligence Community. \u00a0We needed the community to look forward, not backward. \u00a0The strong implication was that there was not a need to look at the mistakes that were made.<\/p>\n Other points of interest<\/strong><\/p>\n Some have argued that the President somehow, someway should have gotten involved with the counterattack, the immediate defense. \u00a0That is not what President’s are paid to do. \u00a0President Bush’s job was to speak to the nation. \u00a0The screen stamps show that the President was in the holding room at 9:25 and spoke to the nation at 9:30. \u00a0In that same time frame the FAA’s primary net was activated, the NMCC’s Significant Event Conference was convened, and the Secure Video Television System (SVTS) was activated. \u00a0The President was not involved with any of them, nor should he have been.<\/p>\n I have previously written that the job of the President is to protect the country and the job of the Secret Service is to protect the President. \u00a0On the morning of 9\/11 those two jobs became mutually exclusive, as the President described. He wanted to go to Washington; the Service, the military, and Andrew Card said no. \u00a0There was a threat to the White House, a background voice said, as the President described the ascendance of Air Force One over Florida. \u00a0A previous screen stamp showed 9:58. \u00a0Air Force One turned west at 10:10. \u00a0The Langley fighters reached Washington at 10:00 and by 10:07 one of them became the threat to the White House. \u00a0The President aquiesced and did not put his foot down as Commander in Chief until after he reached Offutt Air Force Base.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On August 28, 2011, as part of its 9\/11 remembrance series, National Geographic aired a one-hour special, “George W. Bush: The 9\/11 Interview.” \u00a0Here is my initial perspective. Overview President Bush’s presentation was not an interview, it was a remembrance. The remembrance was presidential in tone, as expected, and chronological in presentation. \u00a0He established a … Continue reading George W. Bush: The 9\/11 Interview, National Geographic<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-911-reference"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4671"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4674,"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4671\/revisions\/4674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oredigger61.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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