What emergency could you do something about in 7 minutes?

[Paragon]

Call 911?
Give CPR?
Hold the hand of an injured or dying person?


Just sayin'.

[fob]

1. Save a drowning person

My son fell in a lake when out with the missus and another friend and her son on a play date. They were playing on the other side of a tree that completely hid him from the missus view and partially hid him from friends view. My friends son made some remark like, hey don't do that toward the water and gave my wife a funny/worried/confused/upset look at the same time. She got up and saw our boy completely underwater! There was no sound or nothing. She dove in before our friend knew what was going on and had him out before she got up and made it over to the lake. Total time from disaster (fall in) to warning (funny look) to action (rescue)? Approx 15 seconds. If that process is stretched to 7 minutes at the warning to action phase...

I prefer not to complete that thought.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

2. You could make arrangements to get yourself out of harm's way

You know, save your own ass, hide like a scared little wimp until it's over and you're sure the terrorists have run out of airplanes.

GREAT article here on Bush hiding out on 9/11:

http://www.mikehersh.com/article_101.shtml

[Jacobin]

3. Call and order the shootdown of a hijacked pasenger

plane which is headed for a building by a supersonic fighter jet.

Or try damn hard to do so.

(thinking about the goat book reading here)

[Guaranteed]

4. Exactly...may as well TRY.

It's not like you've got anything much better to do. My Pet Goat can wait.

[yorgatron]

5. 7 minutes?

more like 20 minutes,just SITTING there like the world's biggest DUMBASS!!!

[Solomon]

6. Yep. It was longer than 7 minutes that Bush just sat there. That's my

only quibble with the movie. For me, he was waiting for the scenario to play out.

[DoYouEverWonder]

8. More like 45 minutes

Remember Bu$h claimed at least twice, that he saw the first plane hit WTC1.

He knew a few minutes after the first plane hit, that the attack had begun. The attack should have been over by 9:00 AM if all the other planes had left on time. Then the script fell apart and Bu$h, Rummie and Cheney had to stall until at least multiple targets had been hit. So they sat on their hands until the Pentagon got hit, before they took any action.

[Cannikin]

7. Scramble jets and order any plane out of contact be pursued?

[Generator]

9. You clearly don't have a good perception of time

Seven minutes is a long time. Of course, he didn't get out of the school until much later anyway. I suggest you read:

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/essay.jsp?article=bushon911


Also, it was estimated that the time it took to hit the ground after jumping instead of being burned to death out of the World Trade Center was twelve seconds.

Just something to think about!

[Lisa]

10. well, if you'd already had advance warning about a problem ...

... as they did in this particular case -- you could whisper to your aide to activate one of the plans you've already worked out in case of emergency. (20 seconds?)

You could applaud vigorously as the student who's reading aloud to you pauses for breath, and tell the class that there's some super-urgent business to see to (or if you want them to laugh, tell them you have to go to the little President's room). Smile, stand up, and calmly exit. (That should take 60 seconds, max.)

Once you're out of the kids' sight, hustle to the car and get back to AF1 at top speed -- if this is the start of a war, an elementary school isn't equipped with the weapons and communication equipment you'd need.


I wish that they'd showed ALL the classroom footage. In some situations, 7 minutes isn't a lot of time (say, if the boss is coming down the hallway and you've got to get that presentation ready) -- but paramedics and nurses, for example, have to make critical decisions on that time scale. They can and do, because they train for it and are prepared -- something which surely ought to be the case for national security as well?



This is how the widow of Flight 93's first officer felt:

"Mr. Bush was notified 14 minutes after the first attack, at 9
a.m., when he arrived at an elementary school in Sarasota, Fla. He
went into a private room and spoke by phone with his national
security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, and glanced at a TV in the
room. Mrs. Homer's soft voice curdles when she describes his
reaction: "I can't get over what Bush said when he was called
about the first plane hitting the tower: That's some bad pilot.
Why did people on the street assume right away it was a terrorist
hijacking, but our President didn't know? Why did it take so long
to ground all civilian aircraft? In the time between when my
husband's plane took off and when the second plane
hit in New York <9:02 a.m.>, they could have turned back to
airfield.""

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/M.A.Sweeney.txt


I don't know if she's seen the movie yet, but I thought about what she said while I was watching that particular segment.

p.s. the only recent emergency I've experienced was finding a colleague who has diabetes, experiencing an insulin reaction. I got her to sit down, and found her some apple juice to drink. That took just under 5 minutes in total.