In July 2001, at the G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, US President George W. Bush was himself the suspected target of a terrorist plot to crash a hijacked commercial plane into a building. "Italian officials took the reports seriously enough to prompt extraordinary precautions during the July summit of the Group of 8 nations, including closing the airspace over Genoa and stationing anti-aircraft guns at the city's airport." (LA Times, 9/27/01, http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2001/l... )

Given that Bush himself was a suspected target of a "hijacked plane bomb" terrorist attack in July 2001, how can the Bush administration possibly explain the fact that Bush kept reading The Pet Goat in a widely publicized, previously scheduled public appearance in Sarasota, FL (only 5 miles from the Sarasota International Airport and 40 miles from the Tampa International Airport) for at least 9 minutes and then remained at the school for a press conference more than 30 minutes AFTER it had become obvious to him and everyone else over 10 years old with access to breaking news that the US was dealing with a coordinated attack of suicidal terrorist hijackers? From 9/12/01 AP reports (for example, http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,... ): "In Florida, Bush was reading to children in a classroom at 9:05 a.m. when his chief of staff, Andrew Card, whispered into his ear. The president briefly turned somber before he resumed reading. He addressed the tragedy about a half-hour later."

Didn't it cross anybody's mind in the entire Bush entourage that the grammar school might be the terrorists' next target and that they just might want to get Bush and ALL OF THE LITTLE KIDS he was reading with out of harm's way? If not, why not? Remember that just two months before, Bush himself had been one of the suspected targets of just such a terrorist plot. Is there no one in the entire Bush administration intelligence/Secret Service entourage with a three digit IQ?

The simplest explanation for this bizarre reaction to the very real potential of toddler mass murder is administration foreknowledge at the highest levels. Bravado doesn't make sense as an explanation because Bush would have been taking a bunch of little kids with him in any potential attack. Stunned inaction doesn't make much sense either because the primary mission of the entire Secret Service is to ensure the President's safety. There are only two obvious choices here: on 9/11 the Bush administration was either criminally incompetent or just plain criminal.