No shame at all : Bush and his 9/11 campaign ads paid for by Halliburton et. al

[MORTARDUDE]

And Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell will not even testify to the 9/11 Commission ? What are they hiding ?????

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Furor over Bush's 9/11 ad



By MAGGIE HABERMAN in New York
amd THOMAS M. DeFRANK in Washington
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS


Film grab from President Bush's new campaign ad.


'After 3,000 people were murdered on his watch, it seems to me that that takes an awful lot of audacity. Honestly, it's in poor taste.' - Kristen Breitweiser, with her husband's ring.

The Bush reelection campaign yesterday unveiled its first three campaign commercials showcasing Ground Zero images, angering some 9/11 families who accused President Bush of exploiting the tragedy for political advantage.
"It's a slap in the face of the murders of 3,000 people," said Monica Gabrielle, whose husband died in the twin tower attacks. "It is unconscionable."

Gabrielle and several other family members said the injury was compounded by Bush's refusal to testify in open session before the 9/11 commission.

"I would be less offended if he showed a picture of himself in front of the Statue of Liberty," said Tom Roger, whose daughter was a flight attendant on doomed American Airlines Flight 11. "But to show the horror of 9/11 in the background, that's just some advertising agency's attempt to grab people by the throat."

Mindy Kleinberg said she was offended because the White House has not cooperated fully with the commission and because of the sight of remains being lifted out of Ground Zero in one of the spots.

"How heinous is that?" Kleinberg asked. "That's somebody's [loved one]."

Firefighter Tommy Fee in Rescue Squad 270 in Queens was appalled.

"It's as sick as people who stole things out of the place. The image of firefighters at Ground Zero should not be used for this stuff, for politics," Fee said.

But Jennie Farrell, who lost her brother, electrician James Cartier, called the ad "tastefully done," adding: "It speaks to the truth of the times. Sept. 11 ... was something beyond the realm of imagination, and George Bush ... led us through one of the darkest moments in history."

The gauzy, upbeat spots, aimed at shoring up Bush's sagging approval numbers, begin airing today on national cable networks and 50 media markets in 17 states that Bush-Cheney strategists consider electoral battlegrounds.

Two ads, including a Spanish version, show fleeting images of the World Trade Center devastation. The 30-second spots include a poignant image of an American flag fluttering defiantly amid the WTC wreckage.

One, titled "Safer, Stronger," also features a one-second shot of firefighters removing the flag-draped remains of a victim from the twisted debris.

Both ads reinforce the Ground Zero imagery with frontal shots of two firefighters. Unlike the paid actors and actresses in most of the footage, they are not ringers, but their red headgear gives them away as non-New Yorkers. The Bush campaign declined to reveal where the burly smoke-eaters actually work.

Bush officials defended the imagery as totally appropriate.

"9/11 was the defining moment of these times," campaign manager Ken Mehlman told reporters. "Because of that day, America is at war and still is."

Charging Democratic rival John Kerry with politicizing the attacks by alleging Bush has turned his back on the city, Mehlman added: "The President's never forgotten. It's a central part of his leadership."

The spots, pegged to the theme of "steady leadership in time of change," do not mention Kerry. Instead, their uplifting message hopes to refurbish Bush's battered image after two months of harsh Democratic attacks and a series of missteps by the normally surefooted White House political apparatus.

"We've been off our game for weeks," a senior Bush strategist conceded. "Thank goodness, there's plenty of time to get well, and plenty of grist to chop Kerry down to size."


With Kenneth R. Bazinet and Michele McPhee


Originally published on March 4, 2004

[SuperScout]

So what's your point? Should anybody else get all in a lather that the Democrats' ads are being paid some liberal nutcase? And check the timing of the complaints: within hours, mere hours of the ad running for the first time, lo and behold, there's the Demo-gog-ers filming these offended widows, all of them spouting the exact same line -- naw, they couldn't possibly have been coached, coaxed or convinced to sound like a group of parrots? Naw.............. $20 sezs more survivors approve of the ad then otherwise............

[williams919]

I am with you SuperScout. Bush has and is doing a good job. People don't realize that 9/11 was just another day until those planes hit the towers. I really in my heart and military mind don't think or beleive that Bush had anything to do with it. Matter a fact when the $hit hits the fan, we may all be assured that this was planned even before Monica and Bill didn't have a situation in the Oral Office.
Could be wrong but, I seriously doubt this will be one of those times.

theemperor

[melody1181]

I think he wwas wrong to use it in the add...flat. Think he should of stuck with the war in Afhg. and Iraq. He had nothing to do with 9-11 either way. He may of boosted moral but those firefighters and volunteers are the ones who did the work.

Just think it was a little classless of him and I don't think he has done a "great" job in this country.

What a stinky choice we have this election...but whats new.

[SuperScout]

Hero 9/11 Firefighter Defends Bush Ads

Hero New York City firefighter Mike Moran, whose words of defiance against Osama bin Laden helped rally the nation in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, said Friday that he finds President Bush's campaign ads invoking the attacks "inspirational."

"I think they're inspirational," Moran said. "They remind me of how lost I felt on 9/11," explained the hero smoke-eater, whose brother John, also a fireman, perished when he rushed into World Trade Center Tower Two to rescue stranded New Yorkers that day.

"Seeing on the news when George Bush went down to the Trade Center to put his arm around that fireman - the words he spoke - they were inspirational," Moran remarked. "They made me feel like, wow, this isn't just going to be another terrorist attack where we sit back on our a---- and do nothing."

Moran criticized family members of other 9/11 victims who have complained about the ads, saying, "It's nothing less than slimy." He said too many Americans seem to want to forget some of the images from that day that appear in the Bush ads.

The famed fireman also weighed in on rebuilding efforts now ongoing at Ground Zero, saying he'd like to see the Towers reconstructed just as they were before, with one modification.

"I think we should build them bigger, the same way ... [but] name one tower Mecca and one Medina, and [announce] that as long as those towers are standing those cities will stand," he told Limbaugh.

Moran rose to national prominence five weeks after the attacks when he mounted the stage at Paul McCartney's "Concert for Heroes." As the show was being telecast worldwide, he spoke the words that resonated with Americans from coast to coast:

"All I can say, on behalf of my brother John and the twelve members from Ladder 3 that we've lost ... and all the people from my neighborhood, my hometown, Rockaway Beach, Queens, New York - our friends, our relatives, our neighbors, they are not gone because they are not forgotten."

Then, in one of the most memorable lines to come out of the disaster, Moran added:

"And I want to say one more thing, in the spirit of the Irish people: Osama bin Laden, you can kiss my royal Irish a--!"

[Moran's words speak for themselves.]

[Andy]

Would anyone be shocked to learn that in the 1944 election FDR had a picture of himself superimposed over a photo of Pearl Harbor? I'd guess Lincoln probably did something similar in 1864. This is nothing new.

By the same token if you have a war that's going badly you know your leadership will be a big issue, so you don't run. Trueman and LBJ as examples.

Stay healthy,
Andy

[MORTARDUDE]

no point at all I guess. Just like some of the other things that are posted here by other folks...

Larry

[Gimpy]

From wire services:

###

"Bush is afraid to let us see the dead being brought back from Iraq," one fire fighter in New York said yesterday. "But he doesn't mind at showing the dead at the twin towers to further his campaign, it makes me mad as hell !."

Firefighters and some families of the victims of the World Trade Center attacks, have criticized the use of the images as cynical exploitation of a national tragedy.

The International Association of Fire Fighters Union approved a resolution asking the Bush campaign to pull the advertisements, the union's spokesman, Jeff Zack, told The Associated Press. The resolution also urges Bush to "apologize to the families of firefighters killed on 9/11 for demeaning the memory of their loved ones in an attempt to curry support for his re-election."

Harold Schaitberger, president of the union, said today that the advertisements were "disgraceful" because the Bush administration had not, in the opinion of the union, done enough to ensure that fire departments around the country have been adequately staffed and equipped. "I recall the president early on saying that he would never utilize the terrible tragedy of 9/11 for political purposes," he said.

"Bush is calling on the biggest disaster in our country's history, and indeed in the history of the fire service, to win sympathy for his campaign," Mr. Schaitberger said in a statement that echoed his initial reaction on Wednesday.

"It makes me sick," Colleen Kelly, who leads a group of victims families called Peaceful Tomorrows, told The Associated Press. Her brother died in the attacks. "Would you ever go to someone's grave site and use that as an instrument of politics?" she asked. "That truly is what Ground Zero represents to me."

"I wouldn't have a problem with the president using 9/11 if I thought that he had done everything in his power, first off, to thwart the attack and then, on the morning of 9/11 itself, had a full sense of plan once the attacks were under way," Patty Casazza, who lost her husband John at the World Trade Center, told the CBS News Early Show. "Additionally, after 9/11, the president has done everything in his power to thwart the investigation into the death of 3,000 people."

Barbara Minervino, a Republican from Middletown, N.J., who lost her husband, Louis, in the attacks, questioned whether Mr. Bush was "capitalizing on the event."

David Potorti, an independent from Cary, N.C., whose brother Jim died in the north tower, called the campaign's use of the images audacious.

"It's an insult to use the place where my brother died in an ad," Potorti said. "I would be just as outraged if any politician did this."

Casazza, who dislikes the ads, feels the president's resistance to the panel probing the attacks undermines his claims of leadership.

"I don't understand why he wouldn't want an investigation into the death of 3,000 people that occurred on his watch," she said, noting that Mr. Bush for months resisted calls for an independent investigation. "The president is only willing himself to be heard by two members the commission, not under oath, and for one hour. That equates to 1.3 seconds per victim who died on 9/11. "

#####

[darrels joy]

The group Peaceful Tomorrows, which bills itself as an independent group of 9/11 victim families and whose members have led the charge to force the Bush reelection campaign to yank ads citing the Twin Tower attacks, has direct financial ties to the Heinz Foundation, the charitable trust administered by the wife of likely Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

On its Web site, Peaceful Tomorrows identifies itself as "a project of the Tides Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization."

A Dec. 2003 report in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review detailed the financial relationship between the Tides Center and the charitable foundation controlled by Mrs. Heinz Kerry:

"Known as the Tides Center for Pennsylvania, formerly the Tides Center for Western Pennsylvania, it is a creation of the Tides Foundation and Center, headquartered in San Francisco, and two Pennsylvania-based foundations -- the Vira Heinz Endowment and the Howard Heinz Endowment-- chaired by Teresa Heinz Kerry."

According to the Tribune-Review, Mrs. Heinz Kerry funneled millions of dollars into the parent group of Peaceful Tomorrows:

"Between 1995 and 2001, $4.3 million of that money came from the Howard Heinz Endowment. In 2002, it and the Vira Heinz Endowment blessed The Tides Center, a San Francisco spin-off of the Tides Foundation, with another $190,000 while the two endowments gave $1.6 million to the new Tides Center for Western Pennsylvania," the paper revealed.

Though the Tribune-Review report was first unearthed by researchers on FreeRepublic.com within 36 hours of the inception of the Bush ad controversy, the mainstream press has been slow to pick up on Peaceful Tomorrows' anti-Bush pedigree. The group, for instance, has long been active in opposing U.S. involvement in Iraq.

Still, PT's political portfolio escaped the notice of the Washington Post, which described the group as "nonpartisan" on Thursday.

Other mainstream outlets repeatedly quoted PT members without revealing their anti-Bush agenda.

Comments by PT's leader, Colleen Kelly, have been prominently covered by the Associated Press, the Boston Globe and in dozens of other press reports complaining about the Bush ads. None of the reports mentioned PT's money ties to Heinz Kerry.

Andrew Rice, another prominent member of PT, has been quoted in the New York Times and has appeared on MSNBC, again without a single reference to his group's Heinz Foundation funding.

Besides Peaceful Tomorrows, other Tides grant recipients include the Iraq Peace Fund, which has helped bankroll anti-war marches, and MoveOn.org, which featured a campaign ad in November comparing President Bush to Hitler.

Just information. Carry on with the rant.

[Andy]

Is there a difference between the 9/11 adds by Bush and Kerry telling us what a hero he was/is? Not everyone likes Bush and the way he has dealt with 9/11. Some don't care for Kerry's "Winter Soldier" involvement?

The head of a Union who has already endorsed Kerry, the Fire Fighters, had bad things to say about Bush. Is that news?

As I've said I will not vote for Bush this year. Of Course it wouldn't make any difference anyway. There are only about 11 or 12 states that are in play this election. Won't vote for Bush, but Kerry, isn't that a girls name? :re:

Stay healthy,
Andy