Campbell's group scheduled a news conference for today on the grounds of the World Trade Center to call for Bush to withdraw the two ads that include images of the tragedy.
USA Today 3/20/03
"Personally, it feels like Sept. 11 all over again," says Kelly Campbell, co-founder of September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. "Only this time, it's people in Iraq that will experience what we've gone through. And also the families of service people here in the U.S."
Campbell, whose brother-in-law, Craig Amundson, 28, was killed in the attack on the Pentagon, added that "the president has never provided anything resembling a link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, yet he continues to use our loved ones' deaths to promote this unrelated war. ... And we're also very worried that this very unpopular war is really going to fuel the fires of terrorism."
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CNN 3/5/04
Added Rita Lasar, who lost a brother on 9/11, "President Bush promised in a speech he gave in 2002 that he would not use the site for political reasons. We believed him; we trusted him. He has broken his promise to us.
"To say that we're outraged is the truth, but it's more than outrage. It's a deep hurt and sorrow that any politician, Democrat or Republican, would seek to gain advantage by using that site."
She added, "We're here today to beg them not to use those ads ... and not make any ads like them."
From a WEBSITE called "RNC NOT WELCOME in NY" (undated)
(protesting the upcoming convention)
Everyone from radical anarchists to moderate environmentalists expects the NYC/GOP ideological collision to spark the biggest American protest march since the end of the Vietnam War. Families of 9/11 victims, predominantly Democratic like the oasis of ideological sanity they live in, are so incensed at reports that the convention was timed to allow Bush to lay the Freedom Tower cornerstone at the World Trade Center site that many plan to join the protest. "Keep your hands off Ground Zero," Rita Lasar, head of a 9/11 victims group, warns Republicans. "Do not make a political football out of this."
RNC NOT WELCOME...
Washington Post 3/20/03
The 9/11 family members who led demonstrators across police lines Monday included Rita Lasar, 71. Her brother, Abe Zelmanowitz...refused to abandon his friend, a quadriplegic in a wheelchair who could not descend the stairs of the North Tower. After the attack, Bush cited Zelmanowitz's heroism -- praise that enraged Lasar, who thought her brother was being used.
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Yahoo 3/5/04
Among those angered was Bob McIlvaine, who lost his son Bobby when hijacked planes destroyed the Twin Towers.
"My son was murdered on September 11th," he said. "To argue that using footage of the wreckage of the towers to further someone's political career is 'tasteful' really needs to be rejected outright, and I condemn it."
CNN 3/18/03
Outside the U.S. Capitol, demonstrators Monday marched and waved signs that read "Stop the Slaughter of Innocents in Iraq" and "No Blank Check." Fifty-four protesters were arrested when they broke police lines. Three of them had relatives killed in the September 11 attacks.
"We can't simplify these world problems with evil and good. The problem is so complex, so great, and diplomacy is the only way to go," said Bob McIlvaine, whose son was killed in the attacks on New York's World Trade Center.
McIlvaine said he is certain his son would not have supported war against Iraq.
Washington Post 3/20/03
It's the first time he's been away from his wife in the 18 months since their son died in the World Trade Center. Robert McIlvaine doesn't like to stray too far from home near Philadelphia anymore. Since September 11, 2001, a sense of "gloom and doom" never leaves him. He calls his grief a hurricane, a storm always blowing beside him. He holds it at bay by keeping busy, by going to a support group of other 9/11 families once a week and to a psychologist twice a month. But he has learned sometimes it is necessary to face the hurricane. He came to Washington knowing he would be forced to talk about Bobby's death all over again. Knowing he would cry. But on the eve of war, this trip was more important than staying safe at home. He came to Washington to get arrested. McIlvaine, 58, a teacher at a critical-care psychiatric hospital, joined 53 other peace demonstrators who crossed a police line at the Capitol on Monday.
"It's very insulting to hear President Bush say this is for September 11," McIlvaine said.
...They wear U.N.-blue peace-sign buttons with the vertical line of the peace symbol rendered as twin towers.
miserable failure miserable failure miserable failure miserable failure miserable failure
Now, tell me again who's "politicizing" 9/11.
</sarcasm........... p.s.Nice find, thanks for the post
The so called anger of these people was too quick to surface, and in such a well organized way, plus it was fed too quickly into a well greased media pipeline that no sane rational person can doubt that the reaction was pre-planned.
Bush is the President during a War on Terror. 9-11 was a Terror Attack. The DNC knows it is in a self painted corner on this issue and obviously had this reaction planned to try and offset the ads.
Personally I do have some misgivings about some of Bush's growth of government, and lack of response to illegals. I would like to see a stronger effort to cut waste ,fraud and mismanagement in the Federal government. I still give the Administration high marks on the war on terror. I believe there is room to improve on the home front....
...as for these ads, they strike me as fair and legitimate to run. The DNC is afraid of these ads because their policy during Clinton /Gore was containment and thus far the sock puppets of the left have all stated they will bring everyone home and do nothing in the face of terror. All but Leiberman, and he tossed in the towel early in the game. Containment and appeasement fail each and everytime they are used. Ask Neville Chamber Pot...
America's Fifth Column ... watch PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
http://12thman.us/media/jihad.rm (Requires RealPlayer)