''Was George 'with' God ' or against' Him on 9/11?''

(YellowTimes.org) – The other day my brother and sister-in-law sent me a very touching Internet card that says God did many things to try and diminish the horror of the 9/11 attacks. It holds that without His intervention, literally tens of thousands more people would have died. And it also offers the hope that for the victims - He gave them comfort in their last moments. The card gives encouragement to the belief that God was performing miracles on that day.

I don't know exactly what to think about this card. I am still one who moves between doubt and belief in the concept of an intervening God. On the other hand, because I have experienced several synchronicities, or meaningful coincidences, in my life, I am open to the possibility of there being something of the miraculous in this world.

But what if, for the sake of argument, we assume the premises of the Internet card: that God was trying to mitigate the horror of 9/11? What then does that say about George W. Bush?

Can we say that George W. Bush was doing God's work on September 11?

Let's take a look at his actions on that day.

George W. Bush said on two different occasions that he saw the first plane hit the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. on September 11. He also stated that Andrew Card, the Chief of Staff, told him about the second plane hitting the World Trade Center at 9:05 a.m. Despite all of this, Bush did nothing but listen to a children's story until 9:30 a.m. instead of ordering fighter jets to intercept all hijacked planes immediately.

Why did he sit in that classroom and not even budge for at least 25 minutes? Why did he not order jets to be scrambled to intercept the other planes after the first strike on the World Trade Center at 8:46? Maybe he could have prevented the second plane from hitting the WTC at 9:05? And maybe he could also have prevented Flight 77 from striking the Pentagon at 9:43? Even if the chances were slim of stopping any of these attacks, couldn't Bush have at least tried?

Granted there is one thing Bush may have actually done to prevent a greater disaster. There is evidence that he ordered the shootdown of Flight 93 that crashed at 10:06 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. But then there remains the troubling question of why he and his administration chose to cover up this action - if Flight 93 was indeed shot down?