Ron,

I wasn't trying to contradict you that there was confusion. I was merely saying that I didn't experience as much of it because I heard the news ten minutes later than you, when the first plane was confirmed as a jumbo and the second had not yet hit.

Teribus,

If you meant what you now say you meant, then you're just obscuring the point again. What he was told after the first plane hit is irrelevant to the film. In the film we see him being told about the second plane and the attack. That's the only thing relevant to the film, which is what this thread is about. The whole question of what he was told after the FIRST plane hit is another of your smokescreens, diverting attention from the question: why was he so slow to act?

As to your second point, He got up, thanked the children and left the classroom you are wrong, and that's what this whole part of the film is about. The president stayed for seven minutes with the children after he heard about the second plane, then got up, went through about fifteen more minutes of photo-op, in the school, THEN left.

What I would have done, and what I would have wanted HIM to do, is get up immediately, say "I'm really sorry, kids, but I've just heard about an emergency in New York, and I need to get more information on it," and leave, calmly but quickly. The kids would have found out what was going on and probably would have forgiven him.

Nobody said he should "run around like a headless chicken," or show panic or hysteria. This is another distortion thrown around by people determined to defend Bush no matter what.