by Taylor Marsh
photo by Paul Martinka
This is a follow up, because no one is following up. Seriously, is anyone in the corporate media covering this story? It broke this morning, but so far it's been **crickets**. Rudy Giuliani ducked out of his Iraq Study Group responsibilities. You'd think that would be news, even big news. MSNBC covered it. Anyone else except the blogs? Rudy Giuliani is asked to be on the Irag Study Group, but he fails to show up because he's too busy raising money?
NRO got a statement from camp Rudy.
The Giuliani campaign forwarded me the following statement:
"As someone considered a potential presidential candidate, the Mayor didn't want the group's work to become a political football. That, coupled with time restraints led to his decision."
Surely not even Jonah Goldberg could fall for this crap. However, their readers defininitely are.
Greg Sargent is not and he's got some proof.
Rudy's excuses for for not being part of the solution for Iraq is as thin as his 9/11 armor. Problem is no one is covering that story either.
"We have all the UFA, the UFOA, and the fire members are all behind us -- the International Association of Fire Fighters," said Riches. "And we're going to be out there today to let everybody know that he's not the hero that he says he is."
The group's complaints center on the faulty radios used by the fire department that day and what they say was a lack of coordination at Ground Zero.
And Riches disputes the notion that Giuliani provided any form of leadership on September 11 or in the days following.
"If somebody can tell me what he did on 9/11 that was so good, I'd love to hear it. All he did was give information on the TV"
"He did nothing," Riches continued. "He stood there with a TV reporter and told everyone what was going on. And he got it from everybody else down at the site."
The corporate hack pack and cable continue to ignore both of these stories. They're absolutely petrified to talk about Rudy's 9/11 failures, which are evident to anyone who was there. Is this another GOP "strong on national security" badge we're not allowed to challenge? I don't think so.
"He pretended he was a leader on 9/11 and he ran, and then failed to provide the workers (at Ground Zero) with adequate protection from respiratory disease," Ansbro charged. "If he's so prepared for terrorism, how come it took him a week to get basic respirators for the people that down there? And there was no enforcement on wearing them whatsoever."
... .. "He was a probie, just like so many of the families here today," Regenhart recalled. "He died because of the failures of the Giuliani administration - numerous failures but the most glaring one that contributed to his death was no radios. The radios they was given, he had no idea that they didn't work. He had no idea that they were the same ones that didn't work in 1993. He had no idea that he couldn't communicate with anyone in the World Trade Center."
Jimmy Riches, whose firefighter son also died on 9/11, concurred. After new radios ordered but never properly tested turned out not to work, the FDNY, he said, "Had to go back to the radios they had before." ... ..
9/11 families denounce Giuliani run - Protesters jeer Rudy as former mayor comes to Bklyn seeking GOP presidential nomination
Kristen Breitweiser said similar things when I interviewed her last fall.
Rudy's 9/11 failings and his nonchalance on Iraq say a lot about Candidate Giuliani. But if these issues are considered untouchable by the corporate press Democrats are going to have a tough time if Rudy's the GOP nominee. It will turn into a national security coronation based on bupkis.
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