Imagine OBL's satisfaction as he watched Bush on CNN being informed of the attacks... then going back to reading the book 'because he didn't want to upset the children'. OBL must have been laying on the floor busting a gut. Imagine Bush's inner circle waiting for an excrutiating 7 minutes to pass for their chief to finish his book and give some orders so that the wheels could be put in motion. What were Cheney, Condi thinking during that time? I doubt if they also felt that it was appropriate for the man to keep reading.

Does anybody know what was FDR's immediate response when he found out about Pearl Harbor? What about Clinton's immediate response when told of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing.

I don't know what the appropriate response should be. W probably should have excused himself from the school and got on the phone to find out exactly what was happening at that point. Jumping up and grabbing an automatic weapon would not have been the correct action, but inaction and not cutting the visit short was probably not the best either.

Ultimately, he got it right when he identified the problem and went after it.

Craig

I remember watching the scene live on TV even before the 2nd plane hit, thinking that I was watching the beginning of WWIII. So Bush is reading a book to children while planes are headed into the 2nd tower, the Pentagon and the White House. You're telling me he shouldn't have been a little more involved in the process of determining what to do? For all he knew, OBL was coordinating a unilateral attack on 50 targets in the US.

I'm saying he should have excused himself and got on the phone to find out what was happening. This type of attack is unprecedented. Civilian planes flying into buildings. When i first saw what was happening, i thought it was an accident. I didn't think it was an attack. That thought never crossed my mind. Once the second plane hit, and then the third plane hit the pentagon, eveyone knew it was a coordinated attack, but by that time, it was too late.

Craig

I would be interested to know what FDR did when he found out about the Japanese surprise attack. In all reality, that shouldn't have been a real surprise -- they did the same thing in 1904 at Port Arthur, even during peace talks. The pattern is remarkable. Anyhow, does anybody have the history background to know what other presidents have done in emergencies? I know what lesser leaders routinely do, but a presidential comparison would be interesting.

Dan

Dan,

If there was a huge accident on your ship, would you pick up a children's book and read it while a fire raged on? That's essentially what Bush did. Now I am not saying that he should have lept in the air and said "launch the missiles now, we'll ask questions later", but he should have excused himself and gone to whatever "situation room" they have when offsite and gotten all the information possible. Granted there is little he could have done at that point, but getting on the phone to get more information is a lot better than picking up a book and doing nothing.

From http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/pearl.html which argues that FDR orchestrated the whole thing in order to goad his people to war with Germany:
7 December - 1:50 P.M. Washington time. Harry Hopkins, who was the only person with FDR when he received the news of the attack by telephone from Knox, wrote that FDR was unsurprised and expressed "great relief." Eleanor Roosevelt wrote about December 7th in This I Remember p 233, that FDR became "in a way more serene." In the NY Times Magazine of October 8, 1944 she wrote: "December 7 was...far from the shock it proved to the country in general. We had expected something of the sort for a long time."

http://www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/lessons/day_of_infamy/day_of_infamy.html -- not particularly focused on the mood or level of adrenaline, but rather on the document. “Early in the afternoon of December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his chief foreign policy aide, Harry Hopkins, were interrupted by a telephone call from Secretary of War Henry Stimson and told that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. At about 5:00 p.m., following meetings with his military advisers, the President calmly and decisively dictated to his secretary, Grace Tully, a request to Congress for a declaration of war.”

http://cooperativeresearch.org/wot/foreignpolicy/pearlharbor.html makes a lot of the same assumptions. FDR wanted to get the US into an unjust war and so he lied and lied and lied to make it happen.

Some speculation and questions: Were we right to enter the war? Had Japan not attacked us, would we still have been right to come to Britain's and Russia's aid? At the time, and in fact for many years afterward, the rumblings of conspiracy and deceipt were pretty quiet, and now seem to be surfacing fairly loud. Are we seeing the same thing with W, except a more rapid trend from patriotic support to consideration of conspiracy?

Just some thoughts, and some random opinionated history. More later, when I have more time.

Dan

John Toland the late author of many fine books on WW2, felt that FDR knew the Japs were going to attack Pearl Harbor. He basis his conclusion that we had broken their diplomatic code.

However after reading NUMEROUS books on WW2...I don't believe FDR knew they were going to attack Pearl Harbor. They felt they might attack the Philliphines, but Pearl Harbor would be a little too audious for contemplation. I don't believe that FDR wanted to go to war with Japan, I think his mistakes in diplomacy were due to his preoccupation with Europe and an underestimation of the little yellow men.

FDR wanted very badly to go to war with Germany, as being the true meance to the world. Remember in the fall of 1941 the Germans were threatening in North Africa, were at the gates of Moscow, were sinking everything in sight in the North Alantic, which was threatening Great Britains very survival, Germany was still bombing Britain at night even on a reduced scale, and the USA was allready in a defacto war with the Germans in the North Alantic (several of our Destroyers had been sunk by UBoats in the fall, as we were protecting British convoys to Iceland). So things were very dicey in Europe in the fall of 1941.

Going to war with Japan would have diverted the effort to defeat Germany. Remember if the USa is at war with Japan it doesn't mean we are at war with Germany. As it turned out Germany declared war on the USA several days later. Hitler was thinking that Japan would then declare war on Russia. The Japanese had no intentions of fighting the Russians after having a taste of fighting them the previous year along the Manchurian boarder.

When Churchill heard the news of the bombing of Peral Harbor, he said, "We've just won the war." It was a forgone conclusion because the industrial capacity of the USA was greater than both Japan and Germany combined many times over. Also the USA's industrial capacity was invunerable to attack during the war. Also within a week FDR and Churchill met in the White House and devised the plan to defeat Germany first as it was the stronger opponent.

<i>"Watched MM on C Rose tonight...seem that his real pet pieve is that "the Media didn't ask the hard questions that could have prevented the USA from going to war.""</i>

To get this back on topic: the 'Media' have an extremely high opinion of themselves. Moore, perhaps, personifies this character flaw better than most of them. I've always believed members of the 'media' should wear large lapel pins with, say, a 60-point bold font indicating whether they are registered as Republican, Democrat, Communist, Liberitarian or whatever. That would make it easier to tell which way the ball is spinning. :cool:

Spurious, at best. From MSNBC

More Mooreisms here:
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20040702.html
http://www.moorelies.com/
http://moorewatch.com/
http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html
http://www.mooreexposed.com/

Tom

In all reality, there were a number of times that the Captain was engaged in other things at the outset of a casualty. Virtually anything that came up could be dealt with without interrupting his post-dinner game of Uckers, let alone interrupting a meeting with guests. My point about the time is that in a super-fast emergent situation in a relatively small-scale environment, it makes a lot of sense to stop for a moment. In a national scale, the momentary pause _should_ be longer. So yes, I would expect him to pick up a book and "do nothing," as you suggest. That's a pretty good answer, really.

The bottom line for me is that the people who hate bush claim he's done all manner of heinous things, that he's a criminal on many fronts, ought to be in prison, etc. Yet somehow, incredibly trivial stuff like this get brought to the front. Can someone explain to me why this is really such a huge deal, bigger than the crimes he's supposed to have committed? I mean, making a big deal out of this really makes us all look petty, which is a little absurd -- we're all educated, intelligent people.

(shaking head)

Dan

Yeah, there is major sh~t going on in the world and in the US, and we have to spend a few thousand keystrokes pondering a few minutes of Bush's life. On the other hand, Clinton's approval rating spiked 10% shortly after the OKC bombings, which goes to show you lip service goes a long way with the American public...

Of course, Dan, we don't get it, because on-ramp said, "with a little intelligence, you can understand my analogy."

Time for me to get out of this pissfest. :mad:
Jürgen

Yup, fer sure -- those bits sure are in short supply. I mean, there's a limited number of characters in a keyboard, and once they're out, they're really out. I volunteer with an organization that sends underprovileged third-world nations excess letters from countries that are very wealthy. For example, many Polynesian islanders have never even _seen_ a consonant, let alone used one themselves, while small children growing up in the vowel-starved breakaway Russian state of Krzdkjstn may go their whole lives without seeing the excessively wasteful American expression "a-e-i-o-u."

So be careful with those keystrokes, people -- conserve those precious letters!!!

/removes tongue from cheek

Dan