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The hearings

9 comments on The hearings

The hearings
: God bless Mayor Giuliani. He told the 9/11 Commission today what they other too many others need to hear and have too often forgotten:

Our enemy is not each other, but the terrorists who attacked us….

The blame should be put on one source alone, the terrorists who killed our loved ones.

: I listened to part of the hearings in the car on the way back from a meeting and I ended up shouting at the shouters, the people who interrupted Giuliani yelling about radios and such. I don’t know who they were; I hope they weren’t family members. Whoever was shouting, if they think they are somehow paying tribute to or protecting the memory of the brave firefighters and police who died in the towers with their heckling, they are wrong. It is unfortunate that they fit in all too easily with the m.o. of these hearings.

This should not be about finding blame. This should be about finding improvements.

: The commission’s idiocy returns today. Timothy Roemer played a prosecutor on TV as he repeatedly asked one witness whether a given problem was solved or not. The witnessed tried to answer but Roemer would not let him. He would accept only one-word answers: solved or not? If Roemer and this commission have not yet learned that this is not about simplistic one-word, one-dimension answers, then they might as well just quit now.

: Michele blogged Guliani’s testimony and she found it hard.

9 responses to “The hearings”

  1. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    This the only war in American history where it seems the newspapers and politicans have forgotten that we are at war. The longing for the far off annoyance that was Vietnam equates the far off TV war of Iraq.
    The 9/11 Commission continues its witch hunt for headlines, jobs in the new administration, books and dinner invitations. The families of the victims continue to seek justice in their TV sets.
    The reality of a far-off enemy who kills with ingenuity and patience but without mercy or compassion is so alien to our TV besotted populace that Guiliani has to remind them who the killers are.
    Perhaps bin Laden is right.
    Perhaps we are weak, cowardly, overcome with our own importance, filled with sweets and easy living, comfortable and arrogant.
    Watching the 9/11 Commission and then the Senators-Stop-War-For-Photo-Op hearings makes Bin laden’s assessment credible.
    Are we serious? Are we capable of being serious?

  2. Ebb Tide Avatar
    Ebb Tide

    Didn’t Giuliani make a comment similar to what Churchill said about the democratic form of government (about it not being very good, but compared to all others the best….paraphrased)…. in that Giuliani said that mistakes were made in the midst of unbelievable circumstances and up against all other comparable resuce workers anywhere, the NYPD and NYFD did one heckofa job!
    He said it a lot better than I am trying to relate, and the truth of that also can be said of Abizaid and Sanchez being brought up in front of the Senate Armed Forces Committee…. yes, some abuse took place at the prison BUT A WAR WAS GOING ON, and IS GOING ON !
    And mistakes were made in communications on 9-11 BUT WE WERE BEING ATTACKED !!!! This committee is starting to become counter-productive.
    Identify the problems, FIX THEM. Stop all the grandstanding, it is pathetic.

  3. Ryan Avatar
    Ryan

    One of the people shouting was Christopher Brodeur. He basically hates Guilliani.

  4. Steel Magnolia Avatar
    Steel Magnolia

    What I always wonder is how the shouters get into some of these hearings in the first place. I was particularly struck by the shouters during Rumsfeld’s recent testimony on the hill. As it showed up on almost every nightly t.v. news show (of course), it looked as though it were 6 or 7ish people standing at the back of the room. Surely access to hearing rooms is restricted, so who were these folks, and who arranged for them to be there?

  5. Ptolemy Avatar
    Ptolemy

    And who do the people shouting think they are? I’ve lost almost all sympathy for these self-absorbed wenches. I think all the Red Cross hoopla gave them a far larger view of themselves and their suffering than was justified. Everyday military families are losing loved ones, many of them the primary bread winners and what are they going to get not just for their loss due to death but for their loss while deliberately sacrificing for their country. I wouldn’t want to trade places with 9/11 families but they are not unique in losing loved ones.

  6. AST Avatar
    AST

    I would announce at the outset that anybody who interrupts from the cheap seats will be TASERed.
    These hearings always make me think about what the response of in the media and Congress would have been if the President had started cancelling flights prior to 9/11 or started scrutinizing or detaining all Arab-looking passengers. We can’t even do that now.
    I thought Bloomberg sounded like a whiner. The measure of funding can’t be based solely on per capita figures, although it probably shouldn’t have been cut as much as he says it was, but if his only suggestion is Give us more money, he’s not going to be of much help to the commission.

  7. h0mi Avatar
    h0mi

    I got the impression that the FDNY and police departments made mistakes but I can’t specify a single mistake that they did, let alone how to “fix” such mistakes. Correcting those mistakes would not have prevented those planes from crashing into the buildings. They might have spared some of the thousands killed, but how many?

  8. TC-LeatherPenguin Avatar
    TC-LeatherPenguin

    Give Mayor Mike some props, too. When he laced into them about helping NYC fund the defense of the city, he stood tall…for a ‘wee’man! ;-)

  9. Bob M Avatar
    Bob M

    Andy:
    I’d guess less that less than a quarter of Americans are by consitution ‘weak horses,’ even if it looks close to 50-50 at the moment. But among that quarter are many influential people and institutions–much of the media and academia, in particular. And they have considerable influence on public opinion and on policy. Another 9/11 or worse will wake up the quarter who is now with them but can be moved by facts and events.