ADMITS "ACTION PLAN" TO LAUNCH WAR WAS IN PLACE BEFORE THE ATTACKS BEGAN
THE WHITE HOUSE CLEARLY KNEW THE ATTACKS WERE COMING
President Bush gave an interesting interview to a reporter for ABCNews in the US, describing the events of 9/11 from his perspective.
Remember, he was infamously listening to a class full of children reading from a book while hijacked airliners were crashing into the World Trade Centre.
After being informed - "Mr President, we are under attack" - and then spending long minutes staring into space, he was whisked away by the Secret Service and then bounced around the country on Air Force One for most of the day.
What hasn't been revealed before is....He Wanted To Go Home.
Not White House 'Home'. But the ranch in Crawford, Texas home.
How did the president feel when he was sitting on Air Force One?
"There's a range of emotions. One from incredible sadness and horror as I looked right on that TV screen there and saw the World Trade Center buildings aflame...seeing the Pentagon burn, created a real sense of outrage as well...
So I was heartbroken, horrified and mad.
I'm mad because I recognize the people who attacked us, and we were going to do something about it.
So Bush is saying there he knew it was Bin Laden and Al Qaeda from virtually the moment it happened.
There is a fog of war. It was hard to get information. Communication systems were not as good as they should have been. In other words, I couldn't get information...
He's not kidding. The presidential-level security 'hot' phone link between Bush and the White House was down due to congestion, apparently. By the time he had arrived at an airport to board Air Force One, he was trying to get through Vice President Dick Cheney on a borrowed cell phone. No dice.
So Bush couldn't get information, but he could 'recognise' who was responsible for the attacks....I couldn't find out, you know, where, uh, trying to get a hold of the vice president at times...
I was constantly in touch with him, but they would have trouble getting him.
Whether Bush was actually in touch with Cheney was not even revealed by the 9/11 Commission Report.
Bush and Cheney refused to talk about this key fact, even in off-the-record discussions with the commission board members.
And hello to another classic Bushism :"I was constantly in touch with (Cheney)...." but then, in the same breath, "They would have trouble getting him."
What he really wanted to do was go home.
Well, you know I tried to get home and the Secret Service said, "You're not going home. Matter of fact, you're heading to Omaha, Neb., where we will put you in a bunker."… And it frustrated me because, you know...
So the Commander In Chief says where he wants to go, and the SS over-rides his choice and directly tells him where he is going?
Not just the SS, but Cheney and a few other as well it appears.
....it was not just the Secret Service, the vice president suggested, others suggested, that it's probably best to let things cool down for a while, till we get enough information to understand. And I can understand that. You don't want to put the president in a situation that could jeopardize his life.
Particularly not when you're the president.
I got back there, you know, at six in the evening, and it was plenty of time to start the action plan of dealing with, uh, what I knew was going to have to happen, and that is the United States needed to go on the offense.Presumably this is because Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush had treated the early August, 2001, presidential daily briefing memo about Bin Laden planning to attack the US with hijacked aircraft utterly seriously. Israel's Mossad and the German secret service were among two other international intelligence agenices who passed on less clear warnings that something was coming in early September.
The Action Plan to go on the offense was in place and all that was needed was for Bush to "start" it.
The White House clearly knew the 9/11 attacks were coming and had made plans for a fast strike back.
But over the next 48 hours, Cheney and Rumsfeld were ramping up the hype for War On Iraq, and Bush was putting out feelers for any credible way to pin the 9/11 attacks on Saddam Hussein...even though Bush clearly knew Osama Bin Laden was responsible, while he was still being bustled around the country on Air Force One.
Like he said, he "recognised" who was responsible.
...one of my vows to the people...is we will stay on the offense. Because that's the only way, in the short term, to protect this country.
Short term?
Might the War On Terror not turn out to be the generational, decades long event that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have been claiming recently it has to be?
