Wolfowitz: We were having a meeting in my office. Someone said a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Then we turned on the television and we started seeing the shots of the second plane hitting, and this is the way I remember it. It’s a little fuzzy.
Q: Right.
Wolfowitz: There didn’t seem to be much to do about it immediately and we went on with whatever the meeting was. Then the whole building shook. I have to confess my first reaction was an earthquake. I didn’t put the two things together in my mind. Rumsfeld did instantly.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is not a concept, it it a very real thing – a powerful thing. The acute phase is an experience that overwhelms the mind, that literally cannot be "taken in." If you see a person in this phase of the illness, they often look blank, "fuzzy," and later have little accessible memory. They’re dazed. On the battlefield, such a person might stand up and casually begin to walk. A rape victim may talk about a missed appointment or torn clothes. The mind is a muddle.
In Michael Moore’s movie, Farenheit 911, we see President Bush in such a state. In this piece, we hear Paul Wolfowitz describing such a state. Some of us may recall being in such a state as we first watched the t.v. on 911.
In this article in the Huffington Post, the author, Eric Boehlert, says:
Now, as 9/11 remembrance week draws to a close, I thought it might worth examining the odd inaction by such a senior member of the administration. The same senior official who later played a central role in planning the disastrous war in Iraq.
Lord knows, I don’t want to defend George W. Bush or Paul Wolfowitz, but this muted, fuzzy response doesn’t say what the author implies. It says, "I can’t think." It’s a human response. What is also true is that it’s a human response of someone who has never been in combat, has never been traumatized – a rookie. It’s the fog of war…
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