Five Reasons Giuliani's No Hero
The GOP hopes that Giuliani's post-9/11 glow will impress, but there's a lot about his past that isn't so heroic.
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5) Refusal to Acknowledge Mistakes or Apologize
In the section concerning the city's response to the World Trade Center, the 9/11 Commission wrote, "Effective decision-making in New York was hampered by problems in command and control and in internal communications." Firefighters inside the towers didn't hear what was being transmitted on police rescuers' radios, or learned news of collapsing floors from emergency calls made to 911 operators.
At a New York hearing last May, 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman noted that at the time of the attacks,
the city's command, control and communication systems were "not worthy of the Boy Scouts, let alone this great city." Although he had been mayor for eight years following the first terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center, Giuliani never repaired the communications problems that plagued the city. A McKinsey & Co. report found that on September 11, New York's fire chiefs were working with defective radios and often could not communicate their orders to evacuate.
The same radio system, they observed, had failed eight years earlier. Far from taking responsibility or apologizing, when Giuliani appeared before the 9/11 Commission, he called the city's emergency response "unbelievably capable" and "terrifically effective." Giuliani's testimony was repeatedly interrupted by the angry protests of relatives of victims. Monica Gabrielle, whose husband was killed in the attacks, complained afterward that the panel and Giuliani spent the morning "cloaking everything in heroism. We leave frustrated," she concluded.
"They made a huge faux pas in letting Rudy Giuliani polish his crown."
The American public should not make the same mistake. Hero coronations are for autocracies, not democracies like ours.
for complete:
http://www.alternet.org/election04/19673/?page=2
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