Okay, it's taking great effort not to post this here.
The poem says, "Warning: Al Queda Determined to Strike US The President does nothing. Open My Pet Goat while death approaches for flights 11, 175, 93, and 77. While reading My Pet Goat, the President does nothing." Ah, lovely, but those unrelated facts have been strung together in a way to suggest that they are related. Yes, the President was reading to children when the event happened. What were you doing when the attack happened? I'll bet you were "doing nothing," too. No, this did not happen because the President was warned and did nothing, nor did it happen because he was reading picture books to children. If you think otherwise you need to get adjusted and get a grip on reality.
I read this as: the president did nothing despite warnings; then while reading his book did nothing as people died. That is, even after informed of the attack, read the book. If this poem were written for Erlang, perhaps we'd have a clearer idea of how it was intended to be parallelised.Warning: Al Queda Determined to Strike US
The President does nothing.
Open My Pet Goat while death approaches for flights 11, 175, 93, and 77.
While reading My Pet Goat, the President does nothing.
And 2752 people die.
Re:well...
jdavidb on 2006-09-13T15:13:27
That is exactly the way I am reading it.
Re:well...
rjbs on 2006-09-13T15:25:05
In that case, I think you are being weird. The problem is not that he was "doing nothing" when it happened. It is that he continued doing nothing when he was informed.Re:well...
jdavidb on 2006-09-13T17:26:08
When he was "warned al Qaeda might attack," or when he was told, "a plane struck the World Trade Center"?
Re:well...
rjbs on 2006-09-13T20:30:30
The latter. He did not, for example, say, "Gosh, I've gotta go, guys. Mrs. Hoover will read the last chapter for you."
I dunno, this is certainly a niggling detail, I guess.Re:well...
jdavidb on 2006-09-14T14:40:22
The seriousness of the incident was not clear when it was first reported. I remember here we thought it was some minor accident. It wasn't until the second plane hit that somebody said, "Wow, terrorism!"
Re:well...
q on 2006-09-13T20:43:58
Are you just being dense on purpose?... He sat there and read a book to children after learning the towers were hit. That's about the time the president should be finding out additional details, getting briefings on the situation, sending orders for interception, etc etc etc.
If he's not doing that, what do we pay him for exactly? To keep telling us how scared we should be?Re:well...
jdavidb on 2006-09-14T14:41:09
He sat there and read a book to children after learning that ONE tower had been hit. The situation was by no means clear. At that point, nobody knew it wasn't an accident, nor that it was going to happen again.
Re:Beg to differ
q on 2006-09-13T20:55:50
agreed.Re:Beg to differ
pudge on 2006-09-13T23:07:05
I think it's pretty clear that if Bush had taken the terror threats more seriously and (even more importantly) Airline Security and Intelligence services were fit-for-purpose then it could have been prevented.
Then you didn't read the 9/11 Report.
The 9/11 comission made it clear that there were a catalogue of problems, from the executive downwards.
Absolutely. But most of those problems happened under Clinton.
Re:Beg to differ
chromatic on 2006-09-15T22:20:08
But most of those problems happened under Clinton.You frothing maniac, don't you know that Bush should have dropped that goat book immediately, rushed into a phone booth, and used his green magic ring to spin the earth backwards in time to save Mary Jane and the World Trade Centers from the tsunami and the moon from becoming a tasty snack from Galactus?!? He could do it too.
Re:Beg to differ
jdavidb on 2006-09-18T12:26:45
Who got to moderate this? I never get mod points! Waahh!!!.
