F9/11 Pros and Cons

I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last week, and agree with my fellow 13Ders that it is a must-see. Some thoughts:

• The $1.4 billion figure reflects investments in firms associated with Bush & Co, not income. I do not believe it is fair to compare that figure (due to Craig Unger) to the income derived from being President.
• I do not believe one has to appeal to sinister motives to understand why Saudis would invest in Texas oil companies. Oil is obviously a market they feel competent in.
• I do not believe the Saudis - much less Bush & Co. - stood to gain from the 9/11 attacks. I do not even believe it makes sense to believe this.
• Richard Clarke personally approved the escape flights for the Saudis; Moore references a WaPo article citing "White House approval" but there is no evidence it rose higher than Clarke.
• In general, I believe that Moore has been flat-out inconsistent, if not disingenuous, on the question of whether we should have invaded Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11.
• I believe that our President is in over his head (see also this post).
• I believe that this is demonstrated irrefutably by the seven minutes our President spent reading "My Pet Goat" after he was informed that the nation was "under attack."
• I fully credit Moore with bringing the President's utter lack of preparation or capacity for his job to the attention of a broader public.

It's worth spending some time on the last point, I think. Thanks to the 9/11 Commission and Richard Clarke, we now know that (1) The fighter jets scrambled in the wake of the first attack on 9/11 did not have authority to shoot down commercial aircraft; (2) After several back-and-forth exchanges between Clarke, Cheney, and the Air Force Chief of Staff that morning, such authority was granted to the fighter pilots; (3) During this time the President was not in contact with Clarke, Cheney, and the White House situation room; (4) Had the fourth plane not been brought down by the actions of its hostage passengers, the shoot-down order would very likely have been put into effect when the plane reentered DC airspace.

In other words, the answer to the question, "What else could the President have done during those seven minutes?" is this: "Get in touch with his counter-terrorism team in the White House situation room and grant the Air Force shoot-down authority for commercial airliners threatening civilian targets." With a sufficiently rapid response, this could have prevented the potential attack of the fourth plane, and any attacks from whatever other planes might also have been hijacked that morning (as many as 12, in Osama's initial plans). Because remember, at the time that our President was listening to the recitation of "My Pet Goat" in a Florida kindergarten, no one had any idea how many hijacked planes there were or might be.