Lawrence O’Donnell: Nothing more fraudulent than Giuliani as ‘hero of 9/11'

[deminks]

http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/08/lawrence-odonnell-nothing-more-fraudulent-than-giuliani-as-hero-of-911/

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell ripped former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani for choosing to put the city’s Emergency Command and Control Center in the World Trade Center despite being advised by professionals in his administration not to place it in an “obvious terrorism target.”

“Rudy Giuliani learned absolutely nothing from the first deadly attack on the World Trade Center,” he said. “As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, most of the media will continue to portray him as one of the heroes of 9/11. Know this. There is no more fraudulent public image in our politics than Rudy Giuliani, hero Of 9/11.”

video at the link.

[WillParkinson]

1. I disagree...

What about George Bush, hero of...well, anything?

[SpiralHawk]

2. "Bullshit. What about me as faux 9/11 hero? Smirk." - xCommander AWOL (R)

"I think I am WAY more fraudulent than the Ghoulster (R). Smirk."

- xCommander AWOL (R)

[mfcorey1]

3. He nailed it. Every word is the truth. nt

[sabrina 1]

4. I could not agree more and as someone who was familiar

with him before 9/11 and his complete disregard for the safety of both NYC residents and especially its First Responders, I was horrified when I saw how the media turned him into a hero. When I saw him that day, dazed and roaming around NYC, my first thought was that his command center was destroyed and he didn't know what to do, but everyone had warned him, he refused to listen. He was not only NOT a hero, he was a coward. The NYC Firemen absolutely despise him and blame him, as they should, for the deaths of their Dept members.

He should have been held responsible for neglecting his duty as Mayor. But in the upside down world we live in, cowards became heroes and heroes were turned into cowards. And the cowards, like Giuliani, have enriched themselves beyond belief on the bodies of the people who died that day. I could not despise someone more if I tried.

[sam11111]

5. Police mutiny IIRC after his order to push hmlss into freezing weather

So as to clear them from Penn Central station. "They are PEOPLE" one cop said.

Pls correct if it was another mayor...but I'm fairly sure it was him

[Bluebear]

6. And his crooked sidekick Bernard Kerik

[no_hypocrisy]

7. I remember when it was built. It was referred to as The Bunker.

First, with a name like that, you think of Berlin and the last days of Hitler. How'd that turn out?

Next, you have to remember what kind of a mayor Giuliani was. He wanted to control everything. He tried to buy the only local public radio station to control the content. (He even installed his "boy", Curtis Sliwa to spew out messages Giuliani wanted to go out.) You had to pay expensive fines for jaywalking, littering, etc. So, when the command center was named The Bunker, it was keeping in line with the mayor's "management style".

The price to build "The Bunker" was exorbinant and inexplicable. $15 million. Not one room. 47 stories at World Trade Center 7.

The obvious exposure of this "Command Center" was arrogance, daring danger to find it. It was imagined that the most action to "justify" building it would be a nasty snow blizzard.

Both ironic and expected when WTC 7 was "lost" during 9/11.

[deacon]

8. Kick + R for Larry O. n/t

[Eddie Haskell]

9. Has anyone researched Giuliani's connection with the anthrax attacks?

January 13, 2004 - Boca Raton, FL. Flanked by Rudolph W. Giuliani, Chairman and CEO of Giuliani Partners LLC, and John Y. Mason, President and CEO of Sabre Technical Services LLC, David Rustine, President of Crown Companies and the new owner of the American Media Inc. (AMI) building announced today that Bio·ONE™ has been selected to decontaminate and remediate the building –– site of the first recognized anthrax incident in 2001.

http://www.giulianipartners.com/press_bioone_011304.aspx

http://physics911.net/pdf/Scarlet%20A%20-%20Honegger.pdf

[kentuck]

10. Ten years after...

and the truth finally comes out.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[KittyWampus]

12. Memo from NYPD detailing why it was an idiotic choice-

Memo Details Objections to Command Center Site


By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
Published: January 26, 2008
The New York Police Department produced a detailed analysis in 1998 opposing plans by the city to locate its emergency command center at the World Trade Center, but the Giuliani administration overrode those objections. The command center later collapsed from damage in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

“Seven World Trade Center is a poor choice for the site of a crucial command center for the top leadership of the City of New York,” a panel of police experts, which was aided by the Secret Service, concluded in a confidential Police Department memorandum.

The memorandum, which has not been previously disclosed, cited a number of “significant points of vulnerability.” Those included: the building’s public access, the center’s location on the 23rd floor, a 1,200-gallon diesel fuel supply for its generator, a large garage and delivery bays, the building’s history as a terrorist target, and its placement above and adjacent to a Consolidated Edison substation that provided much of the power for Lower Manhattan.

[KittyWampus]

13. Guiliani choose WTC cause it was close to City Hall & he could use it to fuck his mistress.

Don't blame me for 7 WTC, Rudy says. In response to his critics' most damning sound bite, Giuliani is attempting to blame a once-valued aide for the decision to put his prized, $61 million emergency-command center in the World Trade Center, an obvious terrorist target. The 1997 decision had dire consequences on 9/11, when the city had to mobilize a response without any operational center.

"My director of emergency management recommended 7 WTC" as "the site that would make the most sense," Giuliani told Chris Wallace's Fox News Channel show in May, pinpointing Jerry Hauer as the culprit.

Wallace confronted Giuliani, however, with a 1996 Hauer memo recommending that the bunker be sited at MetroTech in Brooklyn, close to where the Bloomberg administration eventually built one. The mayor brushed the memo aside, continuing to insist that Hauer had picked it as "the prime site." The campaign then put out statements from a former deputy mayor who said that Hauer had supported the trade-center location at a high-level meeting with the mayor in 1997.


<snip>

But Hauer says Denny Young, the mayor's alter ego, who has worked at his side for nearly three decades, eventually "made it very clear" that Giuliani wanted "to be able to walk to this facility quickly." That meant the bunker had to be in lower Manhattan. Since the City Hall area is below the floodplain, the command center—which was built with a hurricane-curtain wall—had to be above ground. The formal city document approving the site said that it "was selected due to its proximity to City Hall," a standard set by Giuliani and Giuliani alone.

The 7 WTC site was the brainchild of Bill Diamond, a prominent Manhattan Republican that Giuliani had installed at the city agency handling rentals. When Diamond held a similar post in the Reagan administration a few years earlier, his office had selected the same building to house nine federal agencies. Diamond's GOP-wired broker steered Hauer to the building, which was owned by a major Giuliani donor and fundraiser. When Hauer signed onto it, he was locked in by the limitations Giuliani had imposed on the search and the sites Diamond offered him. The mayor was so personally focused on the siting and construction of the bunker that the city administrator who oversaw it testified in a subsequent lawsuit that "very senior officials," specifically including Giuliani, "were involved," which he said was a major difference between this and other projects. Giuliani's office had a humidor for cigars and mementos from City Hall, including a fire horn, police hats and fire hats, as well as monogrammed towels in his bathroom. His suite was bulletproofed and he visited it often, even on weekends, bringing his girlfriend Judi Nathan there long before the relationship surfaced. He had his own elevator. Great concern was expressed in writing that the platform in the press room had to be high enough to make sure his head was above the cameras. It's inconceivable that the hands-on mayor's fantasy command center was shaped—or sited—by anyone other than him.

[ljm2002]

14. Of course the reason Guiliani appeared "heroic"...

...is because he appeared at all, unlike GWB who was notably absent for the first day, and then did not speak to the nation for another day or two. Karen Hughes was the first Administration official to make a statement to the American people about the events of 9/11. She was the President's counsel at the time, hardly an appropriate official to be the first one talking to the public about this horrific event. Much as I dislike her, she did it well, I'll give her that.

It was a shameful, shameful display on the part of our President, and the Giuliani-as-hero meme was a direct result of that.