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Benjamin Bush Informative Speech

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On the fateful September day nine years ago, Bush's first inkling of the unfolding tragedy came as he walked into a classroom in Florida to read to a group of young children. "On the short walk from the motorcade to the classroom, Karl Rove mentioned that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Centre. That sounded strange. I envisioned a little propeller plane horribly lost," writes Bush. But then his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, called to tell him that what he thinks is a small plane is actually a commercial airliner. "I was stunned. That plane must have had the worst pilot in the world. How could he possibly have flown into a skyscraper on a clear day? Maybe he had a heart attack," writes Bush. The president may …show more content…

The president looks as though he has been paralysed by shock. For seven minutes he sits there before a group of children, immobile while America was under attack. But Bush says he was thinking. "I looked at the faces of the children in front of me. I thought about the contrast between the brutality of the attacks and the innocence of those children. Millions like them would soon be counting on me to protect them. I was determined not to let them down," Bush writes. "The reading lesson continued, but my mind raced far from the classroom. Who could have done this? How bad was the damage? What did the government need to do?" Bush finally leaves the class and is ushered into another room to watch TV coverage of the attacks. The president's first impulse is to get on television himself. "I watched in horror as the footage of the second plane hitting the south tower replayed in slow motion. The huge fireball and explosion of smoke were worse than I had imagined. The country would be shaken, and I needed to get on TV right away," he says. He drafted a few words longhand and duly appeared to begin: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is a difficult moment for America

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