The President's behavior

koala · Site Admin Joined: 12 Oct 2006 Posts: 712

President Bush was promoting the passage of his education plan at Emma E. Booker Elementary School on the morning of September 11. Two aspects of his behavior have been offered as indications that he had privileged access to the planning and execution of the events of 9/11. First, neither Bush nor his security personnel responded to the terrorist attacks in a manner that indicated that the President might be in danger, though he would presumably be among the targets of a coordinated terrorist attack. His continuing to read The Pet Goat to a classroom of schoolchildren, which was criticized in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, would be understandable if he knew what the plan was in advance. A response is that Bush did not want to cause more panic by fleeing the room, as the footage would likely have been replayed over and over on news coverage. Some, such as Political Research Associates have claimed that this is a logical fallacy known as affirming the consequent. This logical error is called the fallacy of affirming the consequent because it is mistakenly concluded from the second premise that the affirmation of the consequent entails the truthfulness of the antecedent. An example illustrating the fallacy is below:

If someone is human , then they are mortal .
Anna is mortal .
Therefore Anna is human .

But in fact Anna can be a cat; very much a mortal, but not a human one.

Second, Bush made statements on two separate occasions, in late 2001 and early 2002, that suggested he had seen the first plane hit the World Trade Center. But unless he had some special access to the events of that day, he could not have seen the first plane hit the tower live on commercial television, since no television stations were covering that area when the first plane hit. The White House explained his remarks as "a mistaken recollection," or that Bush saw taped footage being replayed on news stations of the first plane hitting the Tower, after it happened.

ClaraJayne · Joined: 21 Jul 2010 Posts: 54 Location: Burntwood, UK

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_9TzKDyMps&videos=GKAqe5NIPFY

bitterbuck1 · Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2011 7:59 am Post subject:

D B Sweeney · Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2011 9:38 am Post subject:

Oh Jesus not this old chestnut Rolling Eyes

DB