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made their way to New Orleans, but the Federal government couldn't get there. Three days later Bush flies over the carnage, but doesn't land. Nothing his political operatives dreamed up, after the fact, to explain his inaction will ever cause millions of Americans who witnessed those events to forgive this man.

Which leads me to his biggest failure of all: September 11, 2001.

I am not referring to the attack itself. We simply do not know enough, at this point, to render judgment on that aspect of the day. We do have an abundance of evidence however to judge him on his response to the planes flying into the towers. On that point, he was a complete failure.

We have the video proof that when informed that "America is under attack" this President froze. For an agonizing seven minutes he sat in his chair, bewildered look upon his face, and did nothing. Bear in mind, that's all he knew. He didn't know if the attack was nuclear, whether troops were amassing upon our borders, whether or not missiles aimed at American cities had been detected by radar, none of this. All he knew was that we were under attack. His failure to act cannot be forgiven by the fact that two days later, surrounded by Secret Service, he could muster the courage to grab a bull horn and parade his macho bad boy self to the world. When the chips were down, he froze.

History can sometimes be a harsh judge. What will it think of George W. Bush? No one knows, but I think it may well be this: When his time came to serve his country in Vietnam, he ran away. When the nation came under attack, he froze, and when the worst natural disaster to strike these shores in a century, he was no where to be found.

His was not a failure of policy, his legacy will be a failure of courage, competence and character.

Learn more about this author, Dale Hoskin.
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