by Taylor Marsh
"He's not one of us. He never has been and he never will be. He never served in a capacity where he was a responder," Sferazo said.
Forgive the title, but that's what he's running on so we might as well call him out on it now. I mean no disrespect, except towards the man doing all the bloviating.
No, I'm not talking about Mr. Bush. I'm talking about the man who wants to be his heir.
Rudy has a plan. It's simple. Forget Iraq, and run on 9/11. He laid it out very early. Now it's collapsing. However, Rudy's still leading the GOP pack by a huge margin. Says a lot about the Republicans, doesn't it? But if he gets past the primaries we will have a festival with the evidence.
There is nothing more damaging to Rudy's presidential hopes than the flood of stories continuing to pour forth about the myth of this man. The firefighters are pushing back, but that's just the beginning.
Rudy Giuliani drew outrage and indignation from Sept. 11 first-responders yesterday by saying he spent as much time - or more - exposed to the site's dangers as workers who dug through the debris for the missing and the dead.
Speaking to reporters at a Cincinnati Reds ballgame he caught between fund-raisers, the GOP front-runner said he helped 9/11 families and defended himself against critics of how he managed the attack's aftermath.
"This is not a mayor or a governor or a president who's sitting in an ivory tower," Giuliani said. "I was at Ground Zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers. I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them."
His statement rang false to Queens paramedic Marvin Bethea, who said he suffered a stroke, posttraumatic stress disorder and breathing problems after responding to the attacks.
"I personally find that very, very insulting," he said.
"Standing there doing a photo-op and telling the men, 'You're doing a good job,' I don't consider that to be working," said Bethea, 47. .. ..
Some of the words that appear in the article are self-absorbed, arrogant and deluded. They all seem apt.
When Rudy stood at the microphone on 9/11, when Bush was running around the U.S. and Dick Cheney was decorating his bunker, it was a welcome sight. No one is taking that away from him.
However, the truth about Rudy's actual leadership before 9/11 is far more damning and is being documented daily, especially in how he let first responders down and so many of them are sick or disabled from the environmental impact of the digging. Then there's the reality of where Rudy put the command center, as well as all the radios that failed that day. The stories that keep coming out all happened under Rudy's watch. That matters. People need to understand what that means.
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