Immediately After The Attacks Happened...

[THUNDER HANDS]

How long of a window did you give Bush to do the right thing?

What I mean is, how much time did it take you go to from "Well, he is the president and we need to stand behind him and hope he does the best he can" to a more "What a complete fucking idiot asshole he is"
stance?

For me it was from about 11:30 p.m. the night of 911, when I was in bed with my girlfriend and I told her that as much as I hated Bush, I hope he does good and gets these guys and if he does, I'll applaud him.

About three days later, after the thingy at Ground Zero with the bullhorn and the firefighter, I completely gave up hope on him. I believe this opinion was spurred on by the media's constant fauning over him.

What about you?

How long did your benefit of the doubt last with * ?

[bamademo]

1. I immediately increased my hatred of him...

...because I instinctively knew he caused it.

[rbnyc]

3. Me too.

I never gave him the benefit of the doubt for one second. Maybe that just shows how hard my heart is when it comes to the real enemies of Democracy.

[Jim Sagle]

29. What you said.

[ignatius]

30. Me three. The TV was on in our office, I work

for a small brokerage, and I said, they did this. The guy next to me said who and I said our government.

Bush senior, his connections with the CIA,Dubya ignoring and destroying treaties right and left, unemployment up, stocks down big, his ratings were plummeting as quick as the stock market, even the repugs were beginning to turn on him...then 9-11, a sophisticated,sleek,attack against all odds of happening in a no fly zone..

No benefit of the doubt at all and as time goes by my hatred of him grows ever larger.

[phillybri]

2. About a week....

Flip this around:

What if Clinton or Gore had been Prez during 9/11? Not only would there have not been a "window", but the Repugs would've wanted them hung...

[rbnyc]

4. But it wouldn't have happened.

Of course we'll never know that for sure, but I believe it in my heart.

[libertad]

8. I feel that way, too. I think their lack of foreign diplomacy brought

the attack on. It probably wouldn't have happened had Gore/Lieberman been permitted to take office.

[stopthegop]

28. do you think the whole thing was planned after Bush took office?

seriously?

[libertad]

34. How much time does it take to get 20 guys in place and book

flights? I think the planning requirements are highly exaggerated.

[MadHound]

41. I think only a minor part was planned after Bush took office

Details, who, when, where, etc. The big idea and initial logistics of CYA stuff probably happened before Bush took office, and the big idea of having a big time terrorist act was concieved probably back in '98 at least. Why then? Well if you go to the PNAC website and read the PDF titled "Rebuilding Americas Defenses. . . ", you will find stated in there that to acheive all of their goals of national and world dominance the PNACers believed that they would need a "Pearl Harbor type event". How far a step is it to go from realizing the need for such an event and actually starting to carry it(or at least the planning) out? I think they concieved the idea back then of WTC as the target, hit by suicidal terrorists in planes and maybe a bit more back then.

[THUNDER HANDS]

9. hey renee!!!

I haven't seen you around here in a while. How are you feeling?

:)

:loveya:

[rbnyc]

16. Hi.

Well, I'm getting there. I was supposed to get my cast off yesterday, but now I have to wait until Tuesday. I just don't know how hard it's going to be to walk again until the cast comes off. But my pain is much less and my flexibility is much better and I'm hoping to go back to work soon.

I'm also having a big birthday party on Friday October 3rd. PM me for details if you'd like to go.

:)

[elfwitch]

7. Hung??

They would have been first in line at the Home Depot to buy rope for the lynching.

[arcane1]

5. no windows here, it's all brick walls for Bush

and when he came out to announce Endless War (tm), my opinion dropped dramatically, and I knew that this would be a crime that goes unpunished

[rbnyc]

13. exactly, a CRIME!

I had a lot of things going through my head as I was watching from across the river, holding my sweetheart's hand, the man who is now my husband who was supposed to be at work at the World Trade Center that morning. But one of the things I thought was how important it was to underscore and clarify that this was a crime, a crime against humanity, to be pursued by the mechanisms of international justice, and not an act of war to be pursued by the mechanisms of war profiteers. And of course I knew there was no chance that the * administration would frame it that way. I knew as I was looking at the smoke that I was looking at what would be the greatest smokescreen for the most corrupt administration in American history.

[elfwitch]

6. Never

I have never given him the benefit of anything.

I live in Texas. Way back when he was grumbling about maybe running for President, I told everyone I knew that he couldn't be trusted. I never bought the "compassionate conservative" line.

I knew he was a coward and a sneak then. I knew it on that day. I know it now.

He and his are bad, bad men and have nobody's interests at heart besides their own.

[grasswire]

11. a fraud is a fraud is a fraud

How could Bush be given our confidence when he occupies the White House through anti-democratic and despotic means? Nothing could happen to change that, unless he were to resign and remove himself and live a life of poverty and sacrifice.

[joshdawg]

15. On the nose!!

I, too, live in Texas. I know what a poor excuse of a governor he was. I know what kind of slug he is. No window at all. The "man" is beyond reprehensible.

[rucky]

10. "Axis of Evil" and "You're either with us or against us"

and I was thinking...here we go! The clampdown begins.

[StuartStark]

12. To give up on him completely? I remember the exact day. November 2, 2001.

That's when I wrote the editorial included here:

***********************************************

I HELD OUT AS LONG AS I COULD, FOLKS.

For two months now, in the wake of a national tragedy that cried out for national unity, yer old pal Jerky has bitten his tongue and, for the most part, held his fire. The shreds of deference and institutional esteem which, at the time and considering the circumstances, still clung stubbornly to his body politic, dampened and held in check his desire to give full throat to cynical suspicions at the grim synchronicity of the terrorist attack and all the effluvia that churned in its roiling wake.

But on this, the one-year anniversary of his popular and (most likely) electoral loss to Al Gore - and with a specific eye towards his recent corporate-donor-payoff disguised as a "stimulus package," the prodigious delivery of the Constitution-trampling U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. monster, and his selfish attempts to obstruct the revelation of history by countermanding the Presidential Records Act with a stench-emitting Executive Order - yer old pal Jerky is convinced that, for those of us who have yet to be a) bought off, b) bullied into silence, or c) hypnotized by all the pretty flags, the time to resume our public pillorying of the illegitimate, puffed-up national embarrassment who calls himself our President is NOW.

Yer old pal Jerky realizes this decision will not be popular with many Daily Dirt readers. If CNN/AOL/Gallup polls are to be trusted - and judging from the tenor of the e-mails we get, that might just be the case - probably only around ten to fifteen percent of you are in agreement with his harsh opinion of the Dubya Preznitcy. The other 85 to 90 percent are either happily stone ignorant of the facts, wanton contrarians playing at Devil's advocate, or complicit co-conspirators, smirkingly tacit supporters of this corporatist cabal's long list of crimes against democracy.

Those of you who are simpatico will no doubt recognize the types to which yer old pal Jerky is referring. Sneeringly dismissive of dissent, gleefully immune to reason, one-time self-described radicals - anti-government to the core! - now lining up like genetically engineered livestock, willingly presenting their pink, puckered ass-holes to the giant, throbbing cocks of the Living Embodiments of Abused Authority. "Ah yes," think the Old/New Powers That Be as they piston their erect members in and out of the slackening, blood-lubed orifices of the smiling, anesthetized zombies, their faces shoved in the dirt, one arm sticking in the air to give a big Thumbs Up! - "they are most accommodating, these former Johnny Rebs, these Dittoheads. It is a JOY to fuck them in the ass." A more detailed taxonomy of the species and genera involved will be the subject of a later Dirt, for those of you still reading, and still interested.

But there's no sense in despairing over the consensual reaming of the half-conscious and drooling idiot masses. You can't rape the willing, after all, and meanwhile, it's the rest of us - the regretfully wide-awake - who are left to deal with the neofascistic nightmares the dreamers dream up in their somnambulant, rectal-probe fantasies… nightmares rendered into barely-believable concreteness by those who, with the kind of crystalline telepathy rapists share with their exhausted and struggle-weary victims, watch said fantasies as they rise from sweaty heads like the pages of some perverse Nazi comic book projected onto the smoke shed by smoldering Gypsy flesh and Jew bones. It is we who have to watch in forehead-smacking disbelief, for instance, as Attorney General John Ashcroft - with America facing one of her most taxing challenges - chooses to ignore it and, intead, waves his mighty law hand with righteous Christian fervor at our nation's "pagans," at those who would supply the sick with medicinal marijuana, and at doctors who assist their suffering, terminal patients in expediting their own, personal, inevitable demise.

But Ashcroft, vile as he is, is only just one symptom of an ever-growing feedback loop of idiocy, a loop that has been threatening to wipe our carpet-crawling race off the face of the Earth since it was flicked into existence at exactly fifteen minutes and seventeen seconds past nine o'clock on the morning of August 6, 1944 when, for better or worse, we rewrote the rulebooks in one fell swoop. It is the source of all tyranny - this unnamed, ineffable death urge - of all that's gone wrong with every massing together of peoples, from the mightiest empire to the most humble tribal society, in the spiral of time. It is the justification for every selfish craving, the rationalization for every blinkered opinion stated in the confident certainty that opprobrium will not be aimed at groups of a sufficiently impressive number.

If you know, I ask you to take pity on me. Be you friend of foe, please tell me... what is it?

Sincerely,
yer old pal Jerky

[hippiegranny]

46. good stuff, there, jerky (stewart)

and to answer the original post, i never for one moment, not one single nano-second felt i should suddenly embrace the moron monkey sock puppet as an instantly credible leader. and within days my original gut was proven to be correct. and the belief that the bush handlers were somehow complicit in the scheme has done nothing but grow.

[latebloomer]

14. Not one second!

Knew he was an evil rat before it happened. Trembled in fear afterwards about what further shit he would unleash upon the world.

on edit: No offense to rats!

[bif]

21. I'll second that

Mistrusted him from the get-go.He's part of the reason they attacked in the first place.

[THUNDER HANDS]

26. thanks

I appreciate it.

:evilgrin:

[trof]

17. I think that's when I walked out in my front yard

and brought my flag in.
Right about "bullhorn" time.
:-(

[Minstrel Boy]

18. It took me a while

As much as I loathed him, it didn't occur to me on the day that he could have allowed to happen. Too monstrous to imagine. There were several significant stages to my conversion:

* When Bush called it a "war." That made my heart sink. Terrorism is rightly combated as an international police action.

* When my oldest friend, a Toronto extradition lawyer, told me in hushed tones about his client Delmart Vreeland, and his "let one happen stop the rest" warning.

* When powerful anthrax was sent to Democratic opponents of the Patriot Act. With the White House already on Cipro?

* When it became apparent that the need to "get" bin Laden was nothing but a ruse. When The Guardian and Le Figaro reported he'd met with CIA agents in a Dubai hospital in July 2001. When the farce of Tora Bora unfolded, and bin Laden was spirited to Pakistan.

Since then, everything I've learned confirms that BUSH KNEW AND DID NOTHING.

[dutchdemocrat]

32. Curious

What is your opinion of the Vreeland case now? It has been very controversial and had a view on the inside. Care to let us in?

[Minstrel Boy]

39. I honestly don't know what to make of it

But I trust the judgement of my lawyer friend. He said he was sure Vreeland was withholding information, and feeding him some disinformation as well as the truth. He's been called a liar and petty criminal, but I don't think we should be surprised to learn that some of those doing clandestine work are shady characters.

Some things are incontestable:

Vreeland left a warning of impending attacks in the care of prison officials, which was opened in the days after 9/11. As well, his lawyers took the information to the RCMP and CSIS in the month of August.

The Pentagon lied about his service record. It said he'd been discharged in the mid-80s, but Paul Slansky called the Pentagon in open court and asked the Department of Defense operator to locate the office of Lt. Delmart Vreeland. Within moments the operator had confirmed Vreeland's posting, his rank as a Lieutenant O-3, his room number and given Slansky his direct-dial number. His service record runs over 1,200 pages. The prosecution responded by saying Vreeland was such a wizard, he'd hacked into the Pentagon computer. Is that more plausible than he is who he says?

Paul also asked contacts in the Canadian intel community to check him out, and they came back saying he was genuine.

Paul received death threats, had his phone tapped, was followed and had his car broken into. Only his case papers were stolen. He feared for his life.

Vreeland disappeared while on bail before ruling in his extradition case. No one knows where he is.

Vreeland's a mystery. That's all I know for sure.

[Solly Mack]

19. I never gave him the benefit of the doubt

I never once entertained the notion of:

"Well, he is the president and we need to stand behind him and hope he does the best he can"

He wasn't, we shouldn't, he can't

[hackwriter]

20. Until I saw Larry Kudlow grinning....

It was the evening of September 11, and Larry Kudlow was on CNBC grinning from ear to ear and crowing about how this meant an end to all talk about a Social Security lockbox.

That's when I turned to my husband and said, "Oh my god, they planned it, they executed it, they were behind it because they wanted to gut social programs in favor of the military."

Is that the first documented incident of believing in LIHOP?

[DS1]

22. I knew he'd fuck it up no matter what, so there was no "window"

Fuck Bush.

[nostamj]

23. i didn't think about * for several days...

i didn't think about much of anything except the images of the jumpers, watching the collapse on live TV...

and the next drink.

later, my loathing for * began to rise anew

[rock]

24. Three seconds

Nah. Not really. It wasn't anywhere near that long.

[bloom]

25. I never gave him the benefit of the doubt, either

I remember that morning that it was reported Bush was sitting there in the classroom as it all unfolded and thinking - "What the hell?"

I had no expectations of him to do or say anything useful.

[Neecy]

27. hated him before, hated him after

After viewing his cowardly bunker-hopping on that day I knew we had nothing more than a sneaking fraud 'in charge' at a critical time in our history. I also knew he'd use the attack as a justification for unleashing war upon war upon the world.

The cheerleading with a bullhorn on a pile of smoking human remains was also repulsive, but was to be expected out of this mindless bastard.

[ChimpyMcSmirk]

31. About 2 hrs

I was really pissed when he spent most of the day in the sky when there was a real crisis taking place. I mean I wouldn't have minded if he was a *real* President but it just really bugged me how he handled things that day.

[Capn Sunshine]

42. Yeah, that's about what my limit was

I kept thinking :
WHY doesn't he get on TV ASAP instaed of flying around?

and


"I hope this demonstrates how futile the Star wars program is"

[chookie]

33. I just thought, "oh shit"

Even while reeling from the horror of that day, my powers of critical judgement were still functioning.

Based on what I knew about the man and his administration, I knew that -- tragically -- there was no reason to believe he would rise to the occasion and deal with this national horror in any effective manner. Like everyone else, I waited to hear what he was going to do, how he would react -- and I found it hopelessly inadequate, and even ominous.

Here's my post about what I saw happening that day, and two years hence
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=319277

"Then, there was the president’s visit to Ground Zero, and his speech. Part of the process of coming out of our shock involved trying to come to grips with the immensity of the tragic events. We desperately needed a leader who could give voice to the magnitude these events had upon us all. But instead of a great leader at this terrible time, we had a small, venal man intoxicated with simple utter certainties but barren of wisdom and understanding, who offered us the comic book version, one that would fit in a Chick Tract.."

[Mandate My Ass]

35. None

I happened to be home with the TV on during OK city bombing, Waco, Columbine and September 11, 2001. The difference in news coverage was nothing short of amazing. Everything about 9/11 felt vastly different and the only word I can use to describe the feeling of the coverage that day was that it appeared extremely scripted. From the pristine passport to the car trunk with the videotape "How to fly airplanes into buildings" in Arab, it was impossible for me to overcome my gut feeling that this was all too convenient.

I waited all day for Bush to address the nation. He did not. Why? Because he was hiding while the rest of us wondered what was going to blow up next, how many more were going to die. When he finally did come out of hiding, his words and actions were inappopriately inflammatory as well as much too late.

I just couldn't swallow any of it without gagging. I still can't.

[rbnyc]

36. Oh, I know--that passport!

How did so many people just let that go by? Makes me sick.

[Mandate My Ass]

38. welcome back

I'm glad you're back and doing OK. I'm also glad your husband wasn't in the WTC that morning. Hopefully you guys are now "pre-disastered" and it'll be smooth sailing from here.

[rbnyc]

40. One would hope!

:hi:

It's great to be back. I'm still recovering, but I'm home and I'm much better. Can't wait til I don't need any more x-rays and we can start trying to get pregnant again.

Anyway, I missed you.

:loveya:

[ComerPerro]

37. It sunk in that evening

I started thinking about what this meant after I came out of my shock. I thought about how people would have to rally around our president, because that is what is expected. I thought about how he was becoming very hated. I thought about how he was franticly trying to justify all the spending on defense while gutting education. I thought about how this would skyrocket his popularity. I thought about the potential for unending war against terrorism.

Then I thought about the movie "Canadian Bacon". And I decided from then on that Bush had sold us out.

[DinahMoeHum]

43. Until I heard his SOTU address in January 2002. . .

when he started turning us toward Iraq. That was like ice-cold water thrown in my face.

(Bear in mind that at this point, i had never heard of DU)

Several days later, through another site, I read Will Pitt's essay "Stand Your Ground". That marked the end of my apathy and despair.

I lurked around DU for about a month, and then, in early March (on my birthday) I took the plunge and joined up, with a $$ contribution.

:kick:

[dennis4868]

44. NO WINDOW!

I knew he screwed up right away. He is sitting in a damn classroom trying to read a childrens book while thousands of our citizens are burning to death. Plus, after the 2000 Election/coup I did not trust anything he did or does!

[Individualist]

45. The next day

September 12, 2001 I heard a radio reporter say that our government had been warned that attacks would occur. That day I began searching the 'net for facts about 9/11, and that's what led me to DU. I must add, however, that during that first 24 hours I didn't even remotely feel we should stand behind chimpy. I've despised him ever since he stole the election.

[Bake]

47. None. Nada, zip, zilch.

I kept waiting for him to come on TV, like I knew our last elected President would have, to console the nation, to be a LEADER. Here was his big chance. Instead, he was running like a damn deer to some undisclosed location. Then when he finally did come on, he was pathetic. Lucky him, he hit the trifecta. He got no slack from me then, and gets none to this day.

Bake