"Two minutes Mr President."
The President nodded his head in acknowledgement as he looked straight into the large camera several feet in front of him. His hands shook and trembled as he shuffled the pages which had his speech printed on them. The camera was a dark shade of black,
an irony thought the President, that of all colours that would be the one which would project his first speech to the nation after a tumultuous few days. He sighed, he had lost many friends and many adversaries in the twenty fours hours since. He shook off such thoughts, what was important now was putting the interests of the nation as a whole first, not dwelling on the losses incurred by the series of attacks of the past day.
No, it was time for him to put the rage that had been in his belly for decades to good use and to ensure that the mongrels who orchestrated the attacks would be made to pay.
Nobody would've thought that he of all people would have been sitting here, little under a year before. As the year after a contentious presidential election dawned, Congress itself was just as dramatic. Both houses of the legislature were effectively divided along a knife edge, the Senate in particular, with the new Vice President having to give a tiebreaker vote when legislation fell along party lines. This deadlock was momentarily broken when a Rockefeller Republican switched his allegiance towards the Democratic side of the isle, this was quickly reversed when a conservative Southern Democrat jumped ship and regained the Grand Old Party it's 'majority' in the Senate via the Vice President's deadlock vote.
Over the years the new President had went from a presidential candidate and a direct threat to the status quo and 'modern America' in the eyes of the leftist-liberal to the face of the modern party of silent majority of Americans. Over the years he had grown older and older, they thought he had become innocuous and senile, no threat to them from his position as the most senior Senator in the Senate, which they had gifted to him (as they had to most of his kind) so as to keep him quiet, content and senile during his seemingly last term in office. Well he had served in that role for many years, never quite going away as the years piled up. He may have been old, but by God he was not senile and was well within control of his senses. His body was not what it used to be, but he still did the morning jog, push ups, treadmill run and other exercise routines in the morning before breakfast.
He had hobnobbed with the establishment and dignitaries from far and wide, an interesting relic from the nation's past, which just wouldn't have gone away. His longevity, which had once been an asset, was now mocked by the liberal eggheads who joked that he was in fact a mechanised robot which was set to go for several centuries. If only, for if that were true they'd be in for a hell of a culture shock.
A culture shock was what they now were indeed in for.
The President muffled a chuckle at that thought, it was wrong considering the circumstances, but by God he had earned it after years of striving and trying.
"One minute Mr President."
The President snapped out of his daze and once again stared into the camera. He shuffled the pages in front of him, with his old clammy hands. This was his chance to show those eggheads once and for all that his people, the proud people of America' backbone region were not to be trifled with. After over a century of being put down and told that they were a source of national shame, they were now victorious. How good it felt to show the liberals in both parties that despite all their efforts to put the South down, they would always come back up with a vengeance. The USA had just been attacked by terrorists, yet it was the South which fought the first terrorists in the nation's history.
Things had come to a head a day before, a beautiful crisp Tuesday morning in early autumn. Around half eight in the morning, eastern time, reports began to surface that the President had been injured in an 'altercation' around Longboat Key in Florida. It later emerged that the President had been rushed to a local hospital after having been shot by some Arabs posing as reporters, a tactic which had seen North Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud killed in a bombing a mere two days prior. [1] A mere fifteen minutes later the first plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Centre in New York City. Then twenty minutes later another United Airlines flight ploughed into the South Tower. Then another flight ploughed into Pentagon buildings in Virginia. The final twist of the knife occurred around half an hour later, when a final plane collided with the Capitol Building, killing most of the House of Representatives and Senate in the process, including all of the two party's leaderships in both houses. Apparently on hearing all of this, the Vice President from his safe house position had a serious heart attack which saw him dead.
The deaths of the three highest ranking government officials on Presidential line of succession, ensured that the fourth placed individual, the President pro-tempore of the United States Senate, became the 44th President of the United States of America.
And it was so that just after midday on the eleventh of September, 2001, James Strom Thurmond swore on the same constitution of the Republic that the Yankee northerners, the liberals and the mongrels butchered, sodomised and raped 150 years prior. The new President finally saw how the fruits of his patience and labour had now come to bare. One of his first acts as President was to fire that mongrel S.O.B from the State Department - perhaps what was left of the Senate would confirm Jesse, who had survived the attacks by virtue of being back in North Carolina for a constituent event.
"Mr President, five..., four..., three..., two..."
Thurmond cleared his throat and shuffled the papers in front of him with his clammy hands, as he stared directly into the camera.
"Good evening my fellow Americans.
Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes or in their offices: secretaries, business men and women, military and federal workers, moms and dads, friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge -- huge structures collapsing have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed. Our country is strong..." [2]
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[1] This is based of an 'alternative theory' suggested idea that there was an attempt to assassinate Bush on the same day as the attacks to the north. I don't buy into the idea, but it was included to help the scenario run.
[2] Bush's OTL remarks.