I like to try and identify what's going to be "The Big Story," especially in politics, before it becomes "The Big Story." Right now, it's Bush's National Guard service, though it seems to be morphing into a Conservative attack on John Kerry's Vietnam record. Both onslaughts bother me, partly because they seem so irrelevant to possible future presidential actions and partly because the accusers (and often, the defenders) tend to so readily misrepresent old quotes and evidence. There may be something shameful in each man's past but it's not to be found in trying to zero in on which Tuesday in 1972 Bush was on or off the base, or locating a photo of Kerry in the proximity of Jane Fonda.
Between now and Election Day, I'd bet we're going to go through a cycle of recriminations on what actions George W. Bush took on the morning of 9/11…or didn't take. We will hear in righteous condemnation that even when there was clear info that hijacked airplanes were heading for populated buildings, Bush was no leader; that he sat there and read goat stories to children and then was "out of the loop" for hours, allowing others (mainly, Dick Cheney) to make his decisions for him. I don't know if there's a lick of truth to this — and neither do most of the folks who'll be charging or denying this — but we're going to hear an awful lot about it.
In anticipation of that controversy, I refer you to this article by Gail Sheehy. It's primarily about the flight attendants and air traffic controllers on 9/11 — what they knew and when they knew it — but it gets to the question of how government agencies responded that horrible morning. And it raises more questions about just what weaponry the hijackers brandished that enabled them to get through security, then seize control of four airliners.