This time, it's their garbage that Kerry can't criticize the President's 7 minute pause on 9/11 because Kerry
was "not thinking" for 40 minutes the same day.
1. Newsmax - an cog in the GOP attack machine - is reaching here. Kerry didn't say that they sat around "not thinking" for the entire time between the the second and third crashes. He said:
"And we shortly thereafter sat down at the table and then we just realized nobody could think, and then boom, right behind us, we saw the cloud of explosion at the Pentagon. And then word came from the White House, they were evacuating, and we were to evacuate, and so we immediately began the evacuation."
From that, Newsmax is assuming that Kerry and his colleagues were "not thinking" for 40 full minutes? Of course, if you look at the CNN transcript, Kerry next explains that he knew immediately that this was no accident - so clearly he wasn't "without thought" for 40 minutes as Newsmax insinuates. He was simply in shock during that time - as was everyone else - and awaiting orders from the White House. Speaking of the White House ...
2. This is comparing apples and oranges anyway.
Kerry did not have the obligation to our Nation to "spring into action" like a Commander and Chief. He did not have the power to scramble fighter jets or order evacuations. He was watching the events unfold on television, like the rest of us, likely assuming that the President was handling things and simply shocked by what was happening. And clearly waiting for orders on what to do next.
Here's the argument on Bush's actions: Bush - who is making a campaign issue out of being a "decisive" leader - was Commander and Chief at the time and was told "the Nation is under attack." After being told that - he sat there for 7 minutes. He wasn't watching the horrible TV images, frozen like the rest of us. He couldn't assume that someone else was taking caring of it. He didn't seek more information during those 7 minutes, like a president should. Simply put, he didn't assume his Commander in Chief responsibilities immediately as a "decisive" leader would. In fact, what Newsmax's little exercise shows is that Kerry (like the rest of the world) was waiting on the White House to tell them what to do ("evacuate"), and those 7 minutes may have been critical given that there was a plane moving towards the Capital.
Kerry's reaction is wholly irrelevant when discussing what Bush - our Commander in Chief - should've been doing on the morning of 9/11.