9/11 Inside the President's War Room

[PermanentTemporary]

Great programme, gripping.

I know he seemed like a hold on rationality when T was president, but my main feeling watching this is how inadequate George W Bush really was as President.

Thank you @OhWhatsTheDifference.

I have just found the trailer for The Way I See It. It looks fascinating!

It's good, I watched it last week. Pete Souza has become very politicised by Trump.

I just started watching Turning Point, have a whole day to myself to watch something for a change

I thought his immediate leap to 'revenge' was a bit disturbing and clearly it was a mentality that lead to millions of lives being pointlessly lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Felt the same.

@Nat6999 I remember watching that programme and that bit in the foyer when you can hear the bodies landing is so sad and horrific

@Zotter

A security expert, Professor Paul Rogers, argues Bush should never have gone to war in Afghanistan. He said "an alternative approach that the response to 9/11 should not have been a war on terror since that was just what the extreme movements wanted. Instead, the attacks should have been seen as appalling acts of transnational criminal activity. The response should have been to bring those behind the attacks to justice. It might have taken a decade or more but would have had far more world-wide public support and cooperation than wars that followed. Even more important would have been to undercut the development of the extreme movements by learning why they got so much support in the first place and how to undermine and countering that support."

I will be honest over the years I have always said something similar. I always said we shouldn't go/ shouldn't have gone to war etc.

But thats always when its more faded and blurred in your mind. I know it was a horrific tragic attack and I think my memory is as clear as day. But its not. When I watch these images again of people hanging from windows it shocks me to the core every time beyond my memory.

A week ago I was saying re. Afghanistan we should have never been in there. Watching these images again this evening, it was an act of war. They weren't going to let it go.

I imagine re the photographers, that they all knew this was a massive event in history so that is why it was so heavily photographed. I always hated GWB, it's a very sympathetic documentary about him.

He came out declaring war far too soon, don't make decisions in anger etc... then when he made the unprepared speech in NYC he admitted he was going along with the vibe of the crowd, which isn't a great idea as POTUS. Of course they were hugely pissed off, but he needed to take a step back rather than ride their emotions and make further decisions he couldn't take back.

20 years later, the current situation and the Iraq fiasco tell us that it wasn't the right move. No matter how good the documentary makes him look, he still stands by the decisions he made that day and nobody with any objectivity would agree that any of it worked out well. We just ended up in an unwinnable war.

After the attacks in France I was absolutely up for wiping the ME off the map to get rid of IS. After a bit of time I realised how utterly stupid that was and how many innocent would be killed. But as I'm not the POTUS, my immediate reaction made no difference and I wasn't going to have to stick by words I said in the heat of anger.