Posted on 10/23/2001 7:01:18 PM PDT by jerod
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- By all accounts the mayor of Washington, D.C., Anthony Williams, is a rising political star. He is very popular here in the nation's capital. His credentials are truly impressive. He graduated magna cum laude from Yale, later earned a law degree from Harvard, and, for good measure, also got a master's degree in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. After serving in the U.S. Air Force, he held a series of public policy jobs around the country before becoming chief financial officer for the District of Columbia in 1995. He became ,mayor in 1999.
He now finds himself in the middle of a huge crisis -- namely, the spread of anthrax in Washington. For the mayor, the confirmed deaths of two postal workers from inhalation anthrax and the confirmed infections of at least two others have very personal overtones. That's because both of his parents worked for the postal service. "I feel a special connection," he told me. "They raised eight children working in the Post Office. So I don't look at the Post Office as an institution. I look at thousands of workers with hopes and dreams and families -- like everybody else."
When we spoke Monday evening, Williams was clearly upset about the fact that thousands of Capitol Hill workers were tested and treated for anthrax last week immediately after an anthrax-laced letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was detected, but thousands of postal workers were not tested. Those postal employees work at the huge Brentwood processing center. All the mail that gets to Capitol Hill goes through that facility.
Williams says that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of last week, didn't think it was necessary to test those postal workers. "Based on their experience and what they had seen in Florida, what they had seen in other places, there was no indication that one should go in and do treatment and evaluation where there wasn't a confirmed finding of anthrax," Williams said. "There was no confirmed finding of anthrax -- so they were following their experience and their science at the time."
That, of course, changed once postal workers began showing up at local hospitals with symptoms. Williams noted that everyone, including the best health care experts in the country, are clearly learning about this bacteria. "I think to blame the CDC directly may be unfounded because I think the science is changing," he said. "A lot of people are learning new things here."
In hindsight, of course, those two dead postal employees might still be alive today if they had been tested and treated early last week when the Senate staffers began receiving the antibiotic drug Cipro. That's on the minds of many postal workers here in Washington and around the country. CNN medical correspondent Rea Blakey spoke to one of them, a man named Melvin Thweatt, who was very blunt: "It was very shocking. It's very shocking. They knew it [the mail] came through the building. Before they go to Capitol, it has to come to our building anyway. You know, better safe than sorry. They should have closed it down and then say all clear."
Unfortunately, there are now some racial undertones to what some see as a double standard. The Senate staffers were mostly white; the postal workers were mostly black. At the White House press briefing, spokesman Ari Fleischer tried to dispel the notion that this tragedy had any racial motivation. He pointed out that there was no difference in the way the D.C. postal workers were treated from those in Florida and New Jersey where most of the employees are white. At the time, moreover, the scientific and health experts were apparently unaware that unopened mail containing anthrax could pose such a huge danger. They also apparently didn't realize that the entire mechanical mail sorting process -- during which the letters are shaken -- could present health risks to postal workers.
In short, we are all learning a lot as we go along in this crisis.
For Mayor Williams, the headaches are enormous, but he's got a job to do. "I've got a city to run," he told me. That is an understatement. The city he's running has many high-profile targets for terrorists, including Congress, the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, our country's top public officials and so many more.
Wolf Blitzer (JERK!)
You pass the test. You have 20-20 hindsight. Congratulations.
The way the postal employees have been treated in this situation is despicable, at best. It is almost negligence bordering on treason.
Sheesh.....what has happened to this country?
DashHell and Gimpheart are on the verge of joining the Republican party. Dispite their party affiliation, they are patriotic and have been very supportive of Bush.
The looney left, which includes Blitzer, Thomas, WoodRufRuf, et al - are going nuts. They need somebody like Jesse Jack*ss, or Al Sharpton to voice discontent, which they can then report on.
And now this; I wonder whoever told these liberal pukes that the government is SUPPOSE to anticipate every single consequences of every single thing that happens on the face of the earth.
Just do a search.
Leni
Not race, but class. It's the elites vs. the "grunts" (as Peggy Noonan so lovingly calls them).
Blitzer is a liberal. These people are narrowly focused. Skin pigmentation is always a factor in their world. They never see people, they see skin colors and facial features. And whenever possible they begin (and end) their analysis of situations based on this racial paradigm. To them, Whites are always the bad guys, Blacks and minorities are always good.
Their minds are really very simple. Liberals cannot grasp more than one or two facts in any given situation. When they encounter facts that undermine their preconceived notions of reality, liberals ignor, deny or reject the facts. It's their way of dealing with the cognitive dissonance produced by contradictory information.
So, I would not necessarily accuse Blitzer of being "anti-American," but I would say he's analytically limited and mentally impaired.
I'm surprised at Ridge. It was a serious error and very preventable.
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