Bush Caught in a Lie About the 9/11 WTC Attacks

President Bush has stated on two occasions that he saw a plane hit World Trade Center 1:

Occasion 1: President Bush Holds Town Hall Meeting [CNN, Aired December 4, 2001] QUESTION: One thing, Mr. President, is that you have no idea how much you've done for this country, and another thing is that how did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack? BUSH: Well... (APPLAUSE) Thank you, Jordan (ph). Well, Jordan (ph), you're not going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my chief of staff, Andy Card -- actually I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. And I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on, and I use to fly myself, and I said, "There's one terrible pilot." And I said, "It must have been a horrible accident." But I was whisked off there -- I didn't have much time to think about it, and I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my chief who was sitting over here walked in and said, "A second plane has hit the tower. America's under attack." RealMedia video download of comment Occasion 2: President Holds Town Hall Forum on Economy in California [whitehouse.gov, January 5, 2002] "I was sitting there, and my Chief of Staff -- well, first of all, when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on..." [whitehouse.gov] WMA download of comment

There is a problem with the above statements. There was no live video coverage of the first plane hitting the tower. There couldn't be. Video of the first plane hitting the tower did not surface until AFTER the second plane had hit World Trade Center 2.

11 a.m. on 9/11. One of the first broadcasts of Flight 11's impact into WTC 1. WMV video download (831kB)

This Washington Times article states he didn't see the impact at the school...

The president entered a holding room at the school and picked up a secure telephone to speak with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice at the White House. She was sitting in her office, watching live coverage of the stricken north tower as it belched black smoke into a cloudless sky. "There's one terrible pilot," Mr. Bush muttered. Turning to Mr. Card, he speculated that the pilot must have suffered a heart attack. Mr. Bush, who had yet to see the TV images, drafted a statement pledging federal assistance.

...and this is confirmed by Booker Elementary School Principal Gwen Rigell in this Propaganda Matrix posting:

I had the opportunity to talk with Principal Gwen Rigell of Booker Elementary school for about twenty minutes. ... I asked her if in fact the President had been watching the events of 9-11 unfold on TV before he went into that classroom and she told me "Absolutely not". There was no TV in the corridor or anywhere near that classroom.

Even though Bush is not a very good pilot (he was taken off of flight status for failure to take a medical exam which included a drug test), it would be silly to assume that a passenger jet hitting the WTC in clear weather was pilot error, especially since warnings had surfaced of hijacked commercial aircraft attacking symbols of American culture:

U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies received warning signals [in July 2001] that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture. [FromTheWilderness] FBI information [...] indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York. [President Bush Intelligence Briefing 8/6/2001]

If Bush really did see an airplane on TV hitting the World Trade Center then he saw that the aircraft was under control at the time, and he saw it before arriving at Booker Elementary because he was en route to the school when the first plane struck WTC 1 - a closed-circuit live feed to his limo is the only way he could have seen this impact on TV.

Each of us will ... remember the moment the news came -- where we were and what we were doing. [G.W. Bush, September 20, 2001]

It must also be remembered that even after Andrew Card informed Bush of the second impact, by his own admission Bush knew America was being attacked, but he continued listening to the reading skills of a classroom full of children.

Just think about that for a while.