I was following a note I saw about that paragon of probity, Rush Limbaugh, claiming some relatives of WTC attack victims were using their grief for political ends. And this quote struck me a poignant enough to look into . . .
Rush Limbaugh Attacks Widows and Children – Maureen Farrell at BuzzFlash.com:
“I saw a picture of the president, I think it was Newsweek or Time, and I read the caption. And the caption said, you know, ‘Andy Card telling the president about the second plane’ And then I read that he proceeded to read for 25 minutes to the 2nd-graders, Breitweiser said. “And I read it again, and I thought it was. . . misreported. And it wasn’t, and I got upset.. . . And I-I am concerned. I want to know why the Secret Service did not whisk him away. I want to know why he is the commander-in-chief of the United States of America, our country was clearly under attack, it was after the second building was hit. I want to know why he sat there [at Emma E. Booker Elementary School] for 25 minutes. . .”
A Google search for Emma E. Booker Elementary School turns up a lot of stuff: the tin foil hat crowd are all over this.
But I followed this link and some other links at that site. To be honest, I have no idea how much of this is true: it sure doesn’t look like anyone was all that concerned. There is a timeline here that illustrates some bewilderment on the part of the Commander in Chief. During the time of the classroom appearance, one tower was in flames and the other about to be: what constitutes an emergency?
And I heard Kristen Breitweiser, quoted above, on the radio this morning, talking about how useless the two days of hearings were: the whole affair seemed more about political posturing and finger-pointing than getting at the facts. What all these insiders and collegial public servants fail to understand is that 3,000 people died in one morning, and their families want to know what decisions and policies led to those deaths as well as who made those decisions.
And perhaps most important, could it happen again?
I’m reluctant to think anyone in the administration knew this was going to happen or were in any way complicit. That’s just too much for me to accept. But the lack of emotion or surprise in the response, the comment about “one terrible pilot” when he was aware there were hijacked planes with transponders deactivated . . . . the most charitable response I can come up with is that he was just overwhelmed.
Perhaps that’s the problem: the horror is too great to make anyone responsible for it. So the whole thing will be blamed on failed procedures and miscommunications with a list of action items and some long, grave faces intoning their findings . . . .
In unrelated news, Argentina will convert a former naval base used to torture dissidents into a memorial to the dirty war that claimed as many as 30,000 Argentines over a 28 year period. No word on whether former Secretary of State and proposed head of the 9/11 commission Henry Kissinger will attend the dedication.