Explanations we can understand
from the WSJ (sub. may be required):

"Shortly after a passenger jet crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers raced back to the military headquarters from a meeting on Capitol Hill. The four-star general, acting head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that day, went directly to the Pentagon's command center. With smoke spreading into the cavernous room, he ordered the officer in charge, Maj. Gen. W. Montague Winfield, to raise the military's alert status to Defcon III, the highest state of readiness since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. . . . In the months after Sept. 11, President Bush had a different public explanation about who put the military on high alert. The president said publicly at least twice that he gave the order. During a town-hall meeting in Orlando on Dec. 4, 2001, Mr. Bush said that after the attacks, "one of the first acts I did was to put our military on alert."

Regarding Mr. Bush's statements that he had ordered troops to a higher alert status himself, Mr. Bartlett (White House Communications Director) said the president provided a 'description that the public could understand' and spoke in 'broad strokes.'"

"I did" is pretty hard to understand, he's right. I had to look it up. I wonder what they would have done to Al Gore if he had spoken in such "broad strokes."