fj1200
05-04-2011, 12:48 PM
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20110504/us_time/08599206932700
An interesting perspective from a select group of students.
There has rarely been a starker juxtaposition of evil and innocence than the moment President George W. Bush received the news about 9/11 while reading The Pet Goat with second-graders in Sarasota, Fla.
Seven-year-olds can't understand what Islamic terrorism is all about. But they know when an adult's face is telling them something is wrong - and none of the students sitting in Sandra Kay Daniels' class at Emma E. Booker Elementary School that morning can forget the devastating change in Bush's expression when White House chief of staff Andrew Card whispered the terrible news of the al-Qaeda attack. Lazaro Dubrocq's heart started racing because he assumed they were all in trouble - with no less than the Commander in Chief - but he wasn't sure why. "In a heartbeat, he leaned back and he looked flabbergasted, shocked, horrified," recalls Dubrocq, now 17. "I was baffled. I mean, did we read something wrong? Was he mad or disappointed in us?"
...
One thing the students would like to tell Bush's critics - like liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, whose 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 911 disparaged Bush for lingering almost 10 minutes with the students after getting word that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center - is that they think the President did the right thing. "I think he was trying to keep everybody calm, starting with us," says Guerrero. Dubrocq agrees: "I think he was trying to protect us." Booker Principal Gwendolyn Tose-Rigell, who died in 2007, later insisted, "I don't think anyone could have handled it better. What would it have served if [Bush] had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?"
...
An interesting perspective from a select group of students.
There has rarely been a starker juxtaposition of evil and innocence than the moment President George W. Bush received the news about 9/11 while reading The Pet Goat with second-graders in Sarasota, Fla.
Seven-year-olds can't understand what Islamic terrorism is all about. But they know when an adult's face is telling them something is wrong - and none of the students sitting in Sandra Kay Daniels' class at Emma E. Booker Elementary School that morning can forget the devastating change in Bush's expression when White House chief of staff Andrew Card whispered the terrible news of the al-Qaeda attack. Lazaro Dubrocq's heart started racing because he assumed they were all in trouble - with no less than the Commander in Chief - but he wasn't sure why. "In a heartbeat, he leaned back and he looked flabbergasted, shocked, horrified," recalls Dubrocq, now 17. "I was baffled. I mean, did we read something wrong? Was he mad or disappointed in us?"
...
One thing the students would like to tell Bush's critics - like liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, whose 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 911 disparaged Bush for lingering almost 10 minutes with the students after getting word that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center - is that they think the President did the right thing. "I think he was trying to keep everybody calm, starting with us," says Guerrero. Dubrocq agrees: "I think he was trying to protect us." Booker Principal Gwendolyn Tose-Rigell, who died in 2007, later insisted, "I don't think anyone could have handled it better. What would it have served if [Bush] had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?"
...