EDITORIAL - Over the past few weeks, you folks have been trumpeting a charge directed at George W. Bush that he spent seven whole minutes continuing to read a story to a group of children on September 11, 2001, after he'd heard about that second plane crashing into the south tower of the World Trade Center.

Does it matter that, at the time, there was nothing he could have done about the attacks? Of course it doesn't. No, that swine Bush actually continued READING instead of leaping into action like Superman and single-handedly saving our nation from imminent peril! Why, he should have been impeached that second... right?

Well guys and gals, it's time to slide down the big bright beam of light from that magical spacecraft you're on, back down to planet earth for just a moment. The mother ship will be waiting for you after I'm finished commenting, I promise.

You see, as much as you may hate to admit it, President Bush wasn't derelict in his duty on that fateful day in September nearly three years ago. As a matter of fact, he was actually fulfilling his duty when those vicious bastards attacked us, and his reaction upon hearing the initial news was to remain calm and await further information. He continued reading to those young people because there was no reason for him to immediately stop doing what he was there to do. Behaving like some panicky housewife with a mouse under her chair would have accomplished nothing except to frighten those kids unnecessarily, and rattle everyone else around him.

Now, you may not believe that visiting a school is a very important thing for the president to be doing in the first place, but I can think of a lot worse things he could have been up to at the time. After all, he could have been cheating on his wife with some bubble-headed bimbo, but he wasn't. He could have been testifying before a court of law about a sexual harassment complaint lodged against him, and committing perjury, but he wasn't. He could have been embarrassing this country in any number of ways, but he wasn't. No, he was simply reading a story to some little kids, and he continued to do so even under tremendously difficult circumstances. That's called maintaining one's composure.

Indeed, that may not matter to people like yourselves when you think about what makes a person presidential, but ask yourself this, is the way George Bush reacted in that classroom on 9/11 less or more presidential than saying that war crimes committed by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam were the RULE and not the exception? That's what John Kerry did in 1971... and, just in case you didn't know it, that contention wasn't true.

Here's an example of something that IS true. During the '72 Olympic games, as Rudy Giuliani pointed out at the Republican National Convention on Monday night, 11 Israeli athletes and trainers died during the siege by Palestinian terrorists of the Olympic village in Munich, Germany. What's also true is that less than two months after capturing three of those terrorists, the German government let them go following a Lufthansa jet hijacking. The hijackers had demanded the release of the three murderous scumbags in custody after taking over the airplane, and the Germans capitulated.

It seems that, back then, caving into the demands of Middle Eastern terrorists actually was, as Giuliani said, "the rule, not the exception," unlike Kerry's reprehensible Vietnam war crimes claim. By the way, you can thank George W. Bush that it is no longer the rule, at least in the United States.

But what's all this stuff about the Olympics got to do with what President Bush was doing on September 11 you ask? Well, nothing really, I just wanted to illustrate a point, which is that what you wish was the truth and what actually IS the truth are two different things.

Tell me, can you see the difference between Kerry's version of certain events surrounding the Vietnam War and Giuliani's version of the terrorist events which took place during the Olympics in Germany? Here's a clue, one version was fiction and one was R-E-A-L-I-T-Y. Of course, I wouldn't expect John Kerry to know much about that whole Munich terrorism thing in 1972. At the time he was too busy admitting to the very war crimes he had accused his fellow soldiers of committing the year before.

Be that as it may, I hope you are now able to appreciate that some of the things you've been told are true, really aren't, and that other things you don't believe, are true no matter how much you may wish they weren't... like the fact that George Bush reacted exactly as he should have on 9/11, with calmness and equanimity.

Now, I don't want to detain you any longer, I know you have a long trip ahead of you back to whatever fantasy world you're currently living on. Just do me one little favor before you go. The next time you decide to come back and visit us earthlings, try to keep what I've written above in mind... especially if you intend to vote here.

I thank you for your time, and don't forget to say hi to Michael Moore for me.