Which Child?

I agree that this latest Bush campaign ad is a strange one:

“I can’t imagine the great agony of a mom or a dad having to make the decision about which child to pick up first on September the 11th,” Bush says in the 30-second television ad, which started airing Wednesday. “We cannot hesitate, we cannot yield, we must do everything in our power to bring an enemy to justice before they hurt us again.”

I’m not a parent, but I imagine if I was one and there was an emergency which warranted them being picked up, I’d go first to (1) the one who I thought was most in danger; or (2) all other things being equal, to the one that was closest.
This is a strange point to make, however. Because of all the horror stories I heard regarding 9/11, I didn’t hear many parents talking about the agonizing minutes they sat in cars deciding which child to pick up.
If I was attempting to exploit 9/11 for marketing purposes, I think a much more effective statement would be:

“I can’t imagine the agony of trying to find out whether my loved one had made it out of the World Trade Center in time or not.”

I think this better conjures up the horrors of that day.
Anyway, Bush had the opportunity on last night’s Larry King Live to reflect on his own thoughts as the 9/11 attacks transpired:

KING: John Kerry, your opponent, has said at the convention: Had I been reading to children and had my top aide whisper in my ear, “America’s under attack,” I would have told those kids very nicely and politely, the president of the United States has something he needs to attend to. And there’s a film showing you sitting. What was going — let’s explain this, so we hear it from the other side.
G. BUSH: Well, I had just been told by Andrew Card that America was under attack. And I was collecting my thoughts. And I was sitting with a bunch of young kids, and I made the decision there that we would let this part of the program finish, and then I would calmly stand up and thank the teacher and thank the children and go take care of business.
And I think what’s important is how I reacted when I realized America was under attack. It didn’t take me long to figure out we were at war. It didn’t take me long to develop a plan that we would go after Al Qaeda. We went into action very quickly.
KING: So you think the criticism was unwarranted?
G. BUSH: Oh, I think it’s easy to second-guess a…
KING: What was going…
G. BUSH: What is relevant is whether or not I understand and understood then the stakes. And I recognized that we were at war. And I made a determination that we would do everything we could to bring those killers to justice and to protect the American people. That is my most solemn duty.

Didn’t Bush realize that America was under attack when Card said to him, “America is under attack”? His statement implies that this realization came at some later point when he decided to react (at the time, completing the photo op was more important than responding to the attack). Same goes for understanding the stakes. Aren’t those pretty easy to grasp once you realize someone has flown an airliner into a building?
Ordinarily, I would think a presidents (1) recognition that “America is under attack” means that America is under attack, (2) beginning to respond to said attack, and (3) realizing the stakes of the attack would be a nearly instantaneous process. But we know that with our current commander in chief it entails at least 7 minutes of processing time.