Me and another regular e-mail correspondent got into a long harangue about Michael Moore and his movie Bowling for Columbine. Along the way we ended up discussing Fahrenheit 9/11 and specifically the seven minutes Bush spent frozen in leadership in that Florida classroom:

Funny you should mention that. Moore’s voice-over of the title of the book was wrong (actual title “Reading Mastery 2”, Moore’s take “My Pet Goat”).

Well, then, he’s a liar! The story in the book was called “My Pet Goat”, but he said the book’s title was “My Pet Goat.” Obviously a distortion to win over illiterate goat-aphobes.

This joke would work better if I had a real name for goat-aphobes. The folks at phobialist.com give me:

But no “fear of goats”. Oh well.

Moreover, the principal who (unlike Moore) was actually in the room and who is a lifelong Democrat, has stated “I don’t think that anyone could have handled it better.”

She’s correct. Bush listened to children read during a national attack better than anyone. What difference does it make to me what the principal thinks? I get to judge the actions of the Commander-in-Chief myself based on the evidence I have. Besides, what is a star-struck Florida school administrator, traumatized as we all were by the devastation of 9/11, supposed to say about the president during that time?

In point of fact, Bush had learned of the first strike on WTC on his way into the school but the details were not known.

And, in point of fact, afterwards when asked about the first strike, Bush said he had seen it on television live when it happened, which was impossible. Is that an “outright lie”? Can we make a deal? I’ll make Michael Moore stop using editing tricks to foster false impressions if you make the Bush Administration stop outright lying.

What Moore fails to suggest is what Bush SHOULD have done.

But you’re the one all upset about Moore suggesting anything! Here’s a suggestion: When your advisor whispers “A second plane has hit the World Trade Center. America is under attack.” you get up out of your chair and act like the god damn President of the United States! I cannot believe you’re even trying to justify this!

So no one was sure what was going on at the time? Well, then, just sit in the classroom and listen to the kids read! Not sure how many attackers there were or where they’d strike? Why, what’s the chance they’ll know the president’s publicly-posted itinerary and crash a plane into a school?

It was SEVEN minutes. That’s a real long time in a crisis. Suppose you’re reading this at work. Quick, look at the clock on your monitor. I just got a call from the fire department; your house is on fire. Now, sit still for the next seven minutes — you don’t want to alarm your co-workers.

I don’t know what Bush was thinking or if he was thinking anything. But I think it disingenuous to create a timeline which implies that seven minutes of contemplation was, somehow, a failure in leadership. After all, Moore has the advantage of knowing what has already happened. Bush was just becoming aware of it at the time and had not, yet, learned of the magnitude of the attack or who was responsible.

Exactly my point. Bush was just becoming aware of it and had not learned the scope of the attacks. How, then, does he fix that ignorance? Through seven minutes of contemplation? How about thirty seconds of “oh shit, what do I do now?”, thirty seconds of “hey, kids, it’s been nice listening to you, but something has come up and I have to go be president now,” followed by six minutes of getting in contact with Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, NORAD, FAA, Guiliani or whoever else and asking “what the hell is happening?”

But I’m not even most angry about that. I’m angry that Bush gets a PDB on 8/6/01 saying that bin Laden is determined to strike within the US, then Bush takes a vacation, then there’s an “accident” where a plane (don’t know if it’s commercial or private, large or small) hits the tallest building in the largest city in your country, a building that was previously bombed by the same terrorists eight years prior, and that’s not enough of a red flag to consider cancelling a meaningless photo op!

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