Taken from one of Bob Dylan’s songs, Subterranean Homesick Blues, this lyric “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” is fitting for what went down on 9/11/01 in that classroom in Sarasota, Florida. If you recall, Junior Bush was on a scheduled visit to an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida on the morning of September 11th, 2001. When he arrived at the school, before entering Ms. Daniels’ classroom Junior Bush was told that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers. It is said that he exclaimed “They’d better check that pilot’s license” as he readied to begin his visit. While reading to the children sometime after, Bush’s chief of staff Andrew Card whispered in his ear that a 2nd plane had crashed into the other tower. Researcher David Ray Griffin then offers this:
· On the one hand, the Secret Service, which has the responsibility for protecting the president from any possible threat to his life, should have assumed, once it was clear that terrorists were going after high-value targets, that the president might have been one of those targets. As one article put it, “Bush’s presence made… the planned reading event a perceived target,” because “the well-publicized event at the school assured Bush’s location that day was no secret.” On the other hand, people observed that the Secret Service had not acted accordingly. The day after 9/11, Canada’s Globe and Mail commented: “For some reason, Secret Service agents did not bustle [Bush] away.”
· The background for this comment was explained by Philip Melanson, the author of a book about the Secret Service. “With an unfolding terrorist attack,” Melanson said, “the procedure should have been to get the president to the closest secure location as quickly as possible.” That this indeed would have been standard operating procedure is illustrated by the fact that, as soon as the second strike on the World Trade Center was seen on television, one agent said to Sarasota County Sheriff Bill Balkwill: “We’re out of here. Can you get everybody ready?”
· But this agent’s decision was obviously overridden by some higher-level Secret Service agent, as Bush was allowed not only to remain in the classroom for seven or more minutes, but also to remain at the school for another twenty minutes. He was even allowed to deliver a television address to the nation, thereby letting everyone know that he was still at the school.
· This behavior seemed especially reckless in light of reports, issued at the time, that as many as eleven planes had been hijacked. The Secret Service should have feared that one of those planes was bearing down on the school at that very moment. The Secret Service’s behavior, however, suggested that it had no fear that the school would be attacked.
· The Secret Service’s failure to hustle Bush away seemed even stranger in light of the reports that Vice President Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and several congressional leaders were quickly taken to safe locations. Should not protecting President Bush have been an even higher priority? As Susan Taylor Martin of the St. Petersburg Times put it on July 4, 2004: “One of the many unanswered questions about that day is why the Secret Service did not immediately hustle Bush to a secure location, as it apparently did with Vice President Dick Cheney.”
How many of you have seen countless films about how the Secret Service reacts when they feel a president is in any way in danger? In the film In the Line of Fire when the president is at an event and a balloon pops, they rush him out like gangbusters! On September 11th, as David Ray Griffin explained, the whole world knew that Junior Bush was in Sarasota at that school. Yet, even after a 2nd plane crashed into the tower, they let him sit there for at least seven minutes and then for some time after at the school. Translation: Those in the ‘know’ must have felt that the president was as safe as a could be that morning. Of course, then, in perhaps a PR move, they rushed him onto his plane and took him for a ride all over the country… after they allowed him to be a target at that school.
One needs not to study (as this writer has for over 16 years) all the multitude of inconsistencies and actual facts that those in the 9/11 Truth movement have uncovered. Just this one simple little incident must show anyone with ‘half a brain’ that something was rotten on that Tuesday morning. There is NO way that the highly professional Secret Service would allow what transpired to occur… ever!!
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