The Staton Jones Report

Everyone remember Al Haig's famous line when Reagan was shot?

Now, this last week we've see Bush wrap Reagan's dead carcass around him like a primitive caveman holding the body of a lion on his shoulders hoping to impart some of it's "magical" powers. And lo and behold, it worked! Pew reports Bush's ratings rose as he turned Reagan into an entry in the Mounted President Nature Trail.

So if Bush is Reagan, that makes Cheney ... Al Haig? Apparently Dick "Crashcart" thinks he is. Afterall, he ordered the Air Force to shoot down commercial airliners on 9-11. Isn't that the job of the Commander in Chief, just maybe?

Vice President Dick Cheney repeatedly authorized U.S. fighters to shoot down hijacked airliners as the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks unfolded but his orders did not reach military pilots until the last of the four planes had already crashed, the commission investigating the terrorist attacks said Thursday.

Cheney was in an underground bunker when Bush was still doing his level best to not appear dyslexic, scared or clueless (too bad he utterly failed) before an audience of future disenfranchised voters. So while "Crashcart" was ordering the deaths of hundreds of civilians, the al-Qaeda plan unfurled pretty much on target (with the notable example of the plane intended for the Capitol Building).

Bush was "rushed" to Air Force One fifty minutes after the attacks began, again showing staggering "cat like reflexes" on the part of the Secret Service. If I was a public school principal, I'd politely turn down any future offers of Bush visiting to read his favorite Victorian gothic literary masterpiece: My Hungry Caterpillar..

When it became clear that the nation was under attack, Bush decided to continue his remarks to a classroom of second graders. "The president told us his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis." Fifty minutes later, he was on Air Force One as it climbed into the sky with no certain destination. The objective was to get into the air as fast as possible and decide where to go, the commission said.

Poor "Crashcart". At one point, he thought that two commercial jets had been taken out by the Air Force on his orders. Alas, despite his (probably illegal) orders, the greatest military power in the world could not intercept commercial planes still on the Eastern seaboard with supersonic fighter jets and more radar than a Florida speed trap. No wonder Saddam thought we were bluffing about attacking him.