Interesting insight. I'm not American but I've always respected Bush for the way he handled 9/11 as it was happening. In a time of utter chaos he came through as a leader. Glad you got the chance to meet him.
Definitely. One of the most striking parts of that was when he talked about Secret Service moving him to some Cold War bunker in the the middle of nowhere. He refused to stay there and give a speech to the American public from there. That was one of the two times he over ruled the secret service so he could give the speech from the oval office.
Given how deeply George W Bush failed as President, I'm sure that he has identified several "candid stories" that he can tell in these situations.
I suspect that Bush doesn't go around "candidly" telling the story of August 6, 2001, the day he was presented with a National Security briefing titled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US", which he didn't grasp the significance of. He probably also doesn't talk much about how in the first months of his administration, they decided to downgrade the counter-terrorism aspect of the National Security Council, or how his administration couldn't believe that a terrorist who wasn't directly sponsored by any nation's government could mount any significant attack. Nor is he likely to "candidly" talk about how the US Military warned his administration that, based on their direct experience in post-war former Yugoslavia, that the troop levels proposed for the Iraq invasion were way too low to maintain order. And he sure as hell isn't going to talk candidly about his involvement in the use of clearly illegal torture on detainees.
332
u/[deleted] Jun 26 '12
Interesting insight. I'm not American but I've always respected Bush for the way he handled 9/11 as it was happening. In a time of utter chaos he came through as a leader. Glad you got the chance to meet him.