Posted on 03/04/2004 8:59:42 AM PST by The South Texan
9/11 Victims' Kin Angered by Bush Ads 12 minutes ago Add Top Stories - AP to My Yahoo!
By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Relatives of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and a firefighters union said Thursday they're angry that President Bush (news - web sites)'s new campaign ads include images of the destroyed World Trade Center and firefighters carrying a flag-draped stretcher through the rubble.
They say the ads are in poor taste and accuse Bush of exploiting the attacks. Bush's campaign defended the commercials as appropriate for an election about public policy and the war on terror, saying they were a tasteful reminder of what the country has been through the last three years. The campaign had said in the past that it would not use the attacks for political gain.
"It makes me sick," Colleen Kelly, who lost her brother Bill Kelly Jr., in the attacks and leads a victims families group called Peaceful Tomorrows, said Thursday. "Would you ever go to someone's grave site and use that as an instrument of politics? That truly is what Ground Zero represents to me."
"September 11th was not just a distant tragedy. It's a defining event for the future of our country," Karen Hughes, a Bush campaign adviser, told "The Early Show" on CBS on Thursday. "Obviously, all of us mourn and grieve for the victims of that terrible day, but September 11 fundamentally changed our public policy in many important ways, and I think it's vital that the next president recognize that."
The first ads started running Thursday on broadcast channels in about 80 markets in 18 states, most of which are expected to be critical to the election, and nationwide on select cable networks. The ads do not mention Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites), focusing instead on improving Bush's image after criticism by Democrats in recent months. Bush is expected to spend a large part of his $100 million war chest on ads.
One of the ads shows the charred wreckage of the twin towers with a flag flying amid the debris. Another ad — and a Spanish-language version of it — use that image as well alongside firefighters carrying a flag-draped stretcher through the rubble as sirens are heard. Firefighters are shown in all the ads.
Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, on Thursday called the ads disgraceful and said they should be pulled.
"We're not going to stand for him to put his arm around one of our members on top of a pile of rubble at Ground Zero during a tragedy and then stand by and watch him cut money for first responders," Schaitberger said. He said his union is politically independent even though it endorsed Kerry and has donated money to Republicans.
Barbara Minervino, a Republican from Middletown, N.J., who lost her husband, Louis, in the attacks, questioned whether Bush was "capitalizing on the event."
David Potorti, an independent from Cary, N.C., whose brother Jim died in the north tower, called the campaign's use of the images audacious.
"It's an insult to use the place where my brother died in an ad," Potorti said. "I would be just as outraged if any politician did this."
Until Bush cooperates with the federal commission that is investigating the nation's preparedness before the attacks and its response "by testifying in public under oath ... he should not be using 9/11 as political propaganda," said Kristen Breitweiser, of Middletown Township, N.J., whose husband, Ronald Breitweiser, 39, died in the World Trade Center.
"Three thousand people were murdered on President Bush's watch," Breitweiser said. "He has not cooperated with the investigation to find out why that happened."
I splained to my family last week that the ultra conservative is the nazi or fascist and the ultra liberal is the communist. What do they have in common, total authority and power over you. How did they get it? The ultra right tells you that you have some horrible enemy in Jews or some foreign country or terrorists and they need more power to protect you. So you empower them to enslave you. The ultra left tells you that big business is your horrible enemy and they want power to protect you from them. Net result, you empower them and they enslave you. But I ramble.
This lady testified in the Moussaoui case, she seems like a class act. Given what we have found about the author of this (hit)-piece, I would really like to see the entire interview where this quote was taken. I'll bet its not as bad as she (the author) made it look, which isn't bad really in the first place. I mean, all she could quote from this lady was 4 words... makes ya wonder..
Nope. The media is all about the minuses, and has been for at least a generation. Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead, Mr. President.
So true. Here is the link to Democrats.com Please note the large photo of the Bush add complaining about using 9/11 victims while on the lower right of the web page they have a flash of our troops that have been lost.
The counterattack by the DemonRAT Medyuh is so obviously pre-plaaned to derail the Bush reelection that Dubyuh must simply ignore it and move along with his candidacy as if the caterwaulin' didn't exist!!
FReegards...MUD
That's all I needed to see.
...whoshhhhhh.
Sounds like a toilet flushing...MUD
BTW...Bush's ads just came out in the last coupla days, and they aren't nation-wide, but this attack on them as insensitive to the dead is all over the airwaves. You'll never convince me that this wasn't premeditated by the Vast, LeftWing Medyuh Whore'd and these grieving widows were set up to complain at the first hint of bringing up 9/11/01!! This tells me the RATS are runnin' scair't, and we oughtta just redouble our efforts to make this election about the War on Terrorism!!
An independent??? I guess guys who write hateful anti-Bush screeds for something call "New World Peace" are now called "independents.":
http://www.newworldpeace.com/insight7d.html
Coming to A Mall Near You
Just War By David Portoti
17 January 2002
The phrase, 'Just War,' used in reference to the battle being waged in Afghanistan, is beginning to resonate. Not as a deep philosophical concept, but like the names of those specialty stores you find in shopping malls: 'Just Lamps,' 'Just Bulbs,' and 'Just Paper.' In fact, 'Just War' turns out to be an eerily accurate marquee for the little shop known as The United States of America. War, to the increasing exclusion of everything else, is the only thing that America collectively cares about anymore.
We don't manufacture much of anything; just war. We don't concern ourselves with education; just war. We don't attend to the 40 million Americans without health coverage; just war. We don't focus on the 30 million American children living in poverty; just war. We don't support the arts; just war. Even though a multitude of human needs were in existence prior to September 11, and have only increased since then, we continue to direct our attention and our resources into what we do best: war. Just war.
Need a billion dollars a day for the military? No problem. Need an extra $40 billion for the war on terrorism? Here it is. Need a blank check to pursue an undeclared struggle with unexplained means and undefined ends? You got it, because that's what America is all about: just war. America is the world's biggest supplier of conventional weapons. America is the world's biggest supplier of torture devices. America manufactures and exports terrorists at its School of the Americas (now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). America exports violent entertainment around the globe. Prison construction remains one of our top industries. Global slavery is the secret behind our economic success. The military remains our biggest budget item. Whether it's war on people of color overseas, or war on our rights at home, that's what we're all about just war.
And we’ve now codified that reality. President Bush’s guarantee of ‘a long, long struggle,’ absent a measurable goal, and without a quantifiable conclusion, suggests that America will be in a permanent militarized state until the end of our days, forever erasing the distinction between 'war time' and 'peace time.' There was an era when wars were ugly spectacles, dreaded from a distance, entered reluctantly, and ended as swiftly as possible. There were victory parades and celebrations, and a return to 'life as we knew it.' There was a 'peace dividend'--the billions of dollars no longer needed for war could finally be used for the benefit of public health, welfare and the arts.
But no longer. With no legal declaration of war, there can be no cessation of hostilities. With no nations from which to demand surrender, there will be no surrender ceremonies. In the absence of negotiations, there will be no realignments, treaties or agreements. Terrorists, whoever they are, wherever they are, will be rounded up in secret, tried in secret, and executed by secret tribunals. The waging of war will become a regularly-occurring municipal function, like trash collection or street cleaning--all the while draining money out of our schools and hospitals, food out of our children's mouths, and peace and beauty out of the rest of our lives.
There is a moral corruption that comes from living in a militarized society. When military demands continually defy debate, hold center stage at the expense of monumental human need at home, and consume resources essential for the well-being of people, our culture is diminished, and we are diminished along with it. Our national dialogue becomes a monologue. And our interactions become brutal and coarse.
It's a corruption evident in Congressional disregard for the needs of laid-off workers and Americans without health coverage. In the Attorney General's contempt for the civil rights and freedoms he purports to defend. In the continuing debasement of our language into 'war is peace' doublespeak. And in the creeping fascism of pundits who define those opposed to the war as 'irrelevant,' academics teaching history as 'un-American,' and anyone calling for alternatives as 'lending aid and comfort to the enemy.
It's a corruption that extends to our high schools, where kids can visit ROTC recruiters on campus--whose presence, more and more, is a condition of receiving state funds for education. It's a corruption that extends to our colleges--where, we are told, kids are flocking to CIA recruiters in droves, perhaps as the result of watching the new crop of network TV dramas which employ official CIA script consultants.
And it's a corruption that extends to our smallest kids. Enlisted by a president who spends billions of dollars on a military campaign that destroys the homes and lives of Afghan children, American children have been asked to send money to clean up the wreckage of his dirty war. Here's a better idea: don't bomb civilians (by one estimate now numbering 3,500 dead) in the first place. Use the money to build and stabilize rather than to bomb and terrorize. And teach our kids from their earliest days that they--and their money--have value beyond supporting the war effort.
The corruption extends across the breadth of increasingly harsh American mass cultural offerings, where you can take your pick of cop chases, spectacular crashes, or real-life fights caught on tape. If you're tired of watching crimes being committed, you can choose from a gaggle of court shows, where a judge of your gender and racial preference will verbally terrorize pairs of arguing litigants. You can get all the blood and gore you could possibly want on the local news--just don't ask the folks at the network to report how many civilians have actually been killed in Afghanistan. Apparently, that information could have a negative effect on the war. And war is, after all, what we're all about. Just war.
With no end to the struggle in sight, no perceivable opposition party in Washington, and no balancing voices of reason being given the light of day by the mainstream media, there's ample cause to believe that America, like its counterparts that sell just lamps, bulbs, and Scotch tape, is becoming a one-product economy: Just War. And where there is just war, there will be no justice.
David Potorti is the brother of a 9-11 World Trade Center victim and recently took part in the Family Members of 9/11 Victims DC-NYC Peace Walk. He lives in North Carolina.
The uproar about the 9/11 pictures being used is amazing. RATS don't like that reminder as they may know that the real reason that it happened is that the Felon failed to get OBL when he had at least three chances.
Gannett papers, especially this one, are so far left it is pathetic. They deserve to be ignored on the news stands and never, but never, subscribe to them. Let them know too!
I don't really consider this a "backlash". I consider it business as usual in the media. There have always been a few (very few) 9/11 family members who've been anti-Bush. The press focuses on them.
Bush has a bigger audience: the American people. And I don't think the American people will believe Bush is exploiting 9/11.
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