"this basically indicates Kerry sat unable to think for around 40 minutes"

Actually if you read the quote more carefully, Kerry "sat down at the table" and "realized nobody could think" for 40 minutes.

BTW, Bush is the President and Kerry is a Senator. Bush responsibility to make the decision whether to shoot down passenger airliners, not Kerry. Bush is a potential target in a terrorist attack - an elementary school classroom is not normally considered a secure location.

I'm quite aware of Kerry's lower position as a Senator. However if Kerry can only sit realizing nobody could think for 40 minutes, I don't really feel someone sitting gathering his thoughts, while keeping children around him calm for 7 minutes is unreasonable in comparison. And just because Kerry was only a senator doesn't mean his best course of action was to sit there over that time. In his case, he wasn't leading by example...

Outside of this I'm still significantly convinced that if Bush had gotten up and ran off, Kerry would say that he scared the children, then began acting rashly before gathering his thoughts...

And we already know from evidence that the capitol was not exactly free from chance of attack. There was just as much chance of a plane hitting the capitol (and at this point in time we do know that there was a real chance a plane was headed there). Kerry could himself have thought "hey, what if a plane tries to crash into the capitol, we should evacuate, I'll go start telling people to leave." His own words seem to indicate that he was even less capable of handling this problem than Bush was. It's easy in hindsight to say "hey, he should have left right away." However when Kerry admitted himself to sitting around the whole time, what evidence do we really have that Kerry would have functioned half as well as Bush did on that day??? Other than his clams today, which evidence shows changes on a regular basis anyway...

Come on!!!!!!! First of all, Bush didn't have to "run off," as you state it. Screaming and running hysterically would have in fact been criticized. You have to realize there is a middle ground between doing nothing (which is what Bush did for 7 minutes in the classroom and for the 20 minutes during a photo op and recording of his inane ramblings for later broadcast) and running off like a scalded ape. How about if Bush just gets up, says to the children, "I'm sorry to interrupt boys and girls, but I have something very important to attend to." I bet the kids would have been anything but scared. Curious, perhaps, but not scared or alarmed.

Second, John Kerry, as the previous poster said, was not the President. He has no duty or power to act in such an emergency. The idea of running out and taking control of an evacuation is absurd. That would be interfering with the job functions of authorities who would actually be carrying out the evacuation, if there was going to be one. What if Kerry started encouraging evacuation when the law enforcement authorities had decided evacuation was the absolute worse thing to do. Not knowing what to do when you are a Senator is a lot different when you are the President and your JOB is to be the commander in chief and to act decisively.

The very least Bush should have been thinking of doing was gathering information, not gathering his thoughts. Kerry can be forgiven; Bush cannot.

It's very easy for Kerry to NOW say "Oh, he should have stood up immediately and left." The only thing we have now is Kerry's words that he would have done more right off the bat. It's easy for him to say 3 years later that Bush's actions were so terrible...

Kerry was a senator, he was in a position of government that is rather high up. To say Kerry was in no position to do anything is a little overly convenient. I can tell you there was virtually nothing I could do, but to say Kerry couldn't have done anything is just a bold face lie. It's a cheap ploy to cover up the plain and simple fact that he did the same thing, ONLY HE DID IT 5 TIMES AS LONG!!!

Also keep in mind what the principle at that school said about this exact issue: "I didn't vote for Bush, but that day he had my vote..."

Someone who works with children, and who voted against Bush, has stated very openly that he believes Bush's actions were exactly what they should have been...

It took me over a day to try and take in what happened on 9/11, and several more weeks for everything to really sink in.

I'm very pleased of the way Bush handled himself. I would like to think that any American president would handle himself that well. Unfortunately I do know that can't always be the case...

The only thing I can do is try to prevent someone who so blatantly contradicts himself from getting into office. This is why I'm voting against Kerry. I still can't believe his own statements of owing 4 SUVs, his being a Chevy Suburban, then changing his story on earth day to "my family owns them..." You can't have it both ways, and this is such a stupidly obvious indication that he's indeed trying to do just that...

Then of course there?s a statement he made in 1998 that he was way ahead of the Commander in Chief (AKA Bill Clinton) and many of his colleagues in the idea that we needed to go to war with Iraq... Now all of a sudden he's the anti-war candidate??? I just don't see how anybody can logically justify this argument...

Oh, and apparently Kerry's wife thinks Bush did the right thing... Interesting side note...