Is 9/11 Heroism Overshadowing Giuliani's Incompetence?

   Not enforcing federal rules requiring workers at the 9/11 site to wear their safety equipment and not letting the federal government agencies do their jobs (FEMA, Army Corps of Engineers,OSHA ) when they arrived at the scene are a few of the things that an article in New York Times says has occurred under Rudy Giuliani's handling of the 9/11 disaster.

   The Republican faithful will call this article a smear campaign and it should be one. This man wants to be president so bad that he threw whatever morals that he did have, out the window to score points for his BIO.

   His leadership in NYC after 9/11 is the only thing he can run in and that leadership has become questionable as of late. I should not say as of late because the info has been out there for a long time but no one cared until he decided that he wanted to be the next GOP president.

An examination of Mr. Giuliani’s handling of the extraordinary recovery operation during his last months in office shows that he seized control and largely limited the influence of experienced federal agencies. In doing that, according to some experts and many of those who worked in the trade center’s ruins, Mr. Giuliani might have allowed his sense of purpose to trump caution in the rush to prove that his city was not crippled by the attack.

   Giuliani did not force firefighters, rescue workers and other groups to wear their respirators is one of the complaints against him. As much as I hate doing this, I'll side with Giuliani on this one for the simple reason that the workers and the others should have had enough common sense to know that breathing this dust and other toxic materials in, would cost them later on down the line. You do not need an Einstein I.Q. to figure that out.

Mr. Giuliani has said very little publicly about how his leadership might have influenced the behavior of the men and women who worked at ground zero. Mr. Giuliani, whose image as a 9/11 hero has been a focus of his run for president, declined to be interviewed for this article. His representatives did not respond to specific questions about the pace of the cleanup, the hazards at the site and Mr. Giuliani’s reticence about the workers’ illnesses.

Moreover, many of the people who ran agencies for Mr. Giuliani or who handled responsibility for the health issues after he left office would not comment, citing the pending litigation.

   Of course he wouldn't want to be interviewed over this mess! It would not show him to be the great " 9/11 hero " that he wants the public to see.

   Now, about the federal agencies that arrived at the scene in very short time.

Despite the presence of those federal experts, Mr. Giuliani assigned the ground zero cleanup to a largely unknown city agency, the Department of Design and Construction. Kenneth Holden, the department’s commissioner until January 2004, said in a deposition in the federal lawsuit against the city that he initially expected FEMA or the Army Corps to try to take over the cleanup operation. Mr. Giuliani never let them.

  I wager that the Department of Design and Construction was one of Rudy's close friends, like the mafia guy.

  This man is no more fit to be a president of this country any more than George Bush is fit to be a president. I wouldn't let either Bush, McCain, or Giuliani be the president of the " do nothing club" which they are very qualified to be members of.

Tags: Rudy Giuliani New York City 9/11