Bush said in the interview. But then-White House Chief of Staff "Andy Card's Massachusetts accent was whispering in my ear -- 'A second plane has hit the second tower. America is under attack.'" Bush was in a Florida classroom for an education event when he first heard about the attacks. "Remember ... he's not in Washington. He's literally flying across the country" in the hours that followed, Schnall told CNN. "They are literally running from an unknown enemy and they're having to make decisions at 40,000 feet on Air Force One." Among other things, Bush ordered the military to shoot down commercial planes that failed to respond to a Federal Aviation Administration demand to land as quickly as possible. For a period of time, the president was unsure if that order was responsible for the crash of United Airlines flight 93 near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. "Those were decisions that (Bush) had to make. ... They troubled him then, and I think they still trouble him now," Schnall said. "What struck me the most was that during those hours, the days of 9/11, the president was overwhelmed" by events, Schnall added. He was "overwhelmed in the sense that ... (initially) they didn't really know who the enemy was. They didn't know if there were more attacks about to happen." Bush "spoke about that fact that he was journeying through the fog of war." In light of the intense controversy surrounding the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan -- as well as the broader war on terror that followed the 9/11 attacks -- does the former president have any regrets? "Those decisions that they made ... (have permanently) changed our lives and the world today," Schnall said. Source:CNN.com
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