Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[seabass]

Bin Laden: Bush slow to react on 9/11


"Bin Laden suggested Bush was slow to react to the Sept. 11 attacks, giving the hijackers more time than they expected. At the time of the attacks, the president was listening to schoolchildren in Florida reading a book, an incident to which bin Laden referred.

"It never occurred to us that the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces would leave 50,000 of his citizens in the two towers to face these horrors alone," he said, referring to the number of people who worked at the World Trade Center.

In planning the attacks, bin Laden said he told Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers, that the strikes had to be carried out "within 20 minutes before Bush and his administration noticed." Instead, bin Laden said, his operatives had three times that period."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/29/terror/main652373.shtml