Relatives of 9/11 victims call Bush ads inappropriate
Images show World Trade Center rubble, firefighters with flag-draped stretcher; 'It makes me sick'; Campaign defends commercials

The Associated Press
Originally published March 4, 2004, 11:40 AM EST
WASHINGTON -- Relatives of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and a firefighters union said today they're angry that President Bush's new campaign ads include images of the destroyed World Trade Center and firefighters carrying a flag-draped stretcher through the rubble.

They say the ads are in poor taste and accuse Bush of exploiting the attacks.

"It makes me sick," Colleen Kelly, who lost her brother Bill Kelly Jr. in the attacks and leads a victims families group called Peaceful Tomorrows, said today. "Would you ever go to someone's grave site and use that as an instrument of politics? That truly is what Ground Zero represents to me."

Bush's campaign defended the commercials as appropriate for an election about public policy and the war on terror, saying they were a tasteful reminder of what the country has been through the last three years. The campaign had said in the past that it would not use the attacks for political gain.

"September 11th was not just a distant tragedy. It's a defining event for the future of our country," Karen Hughes, a Bush campaign adviser, told "The Early Show" on CBS today. "Obviously, all of us mourn and grieve for the victims of that terrible day, but September 11th fundamentally changed our public policy in many important ways, and I think it's vital that the next president recognize that."

The first ads started running today on broadcast channels in about 80 markets in 18 states, most of which are expected to be critical to the election, and nationwide on select cable networks. The ads do not mention Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, focusing instead on improving Bush's image after criticism by Democrats in recent months. Bush is expected to spend a large part of his $100 million war chest on ads.

One of the ads shows the charred wreckage of the twin towers with a flag flying amid the debris. Another ad -- and a Spanish-language version of it -- uses that image as well alongside firefighters carrying a flag-draped stretcher through the rubble as sirens are heard. Firefighters are shown in all the ads.

Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, today called the ads disgraceful and said they should be pulled.

"We're not going to stand for him to put his arm around one of our members on top of a pile of rubble at Ground Zero during a tragedy and then stand by and watch him cut money for first responders," Schaitberger said. He said his union is politically independent even though it endorsed Kerry and has donated money to Republicans.

Barbara Minervino, a Republican from Middletown, N.J., who lost her husband, Louis, in the attacks, questioned whether 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."

Until Bush cooperates with the federal commission that is investigating the nation's preparedness before the attacks and its response "by testifying in public under oath ... he should not be using 9/11 as political propaganda," said Kristen Breitweiser, of Middletown Township, N.J., whose husband, Ronald Breitweiser, 39, died in the World Trade Center.

"Three thousand people were murdered on President Bush's watch," Breitweiser said. "He has not cooperated with the investigation to find out why that happened."

Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press

March 9, 2004 -- To hear some folks tell it, families of the 9/11 victims have risen en masse to denounce President Bush for using brief images from Ground Zero in his campaign commercials.
We have no doubt that the use of the images is appropriate - given that the president's leadership in the wake of 9/11, and his conduct of the War on Terror, are under drumbeat assault by John Kerry and the Democrats.

But now it turns out that this whole furor is driven by a tiny group that's motivated by a far-left agenda and a festering hatred of the president - and has some quite dubious financial ties.

Leading the rhetorical charge has been an outfit called September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows - which, the group admits, has only a few dozen members and represents relatives of no more than 1 percent of the 9/11 victims.

More to the point, the group was formed specifically to oppose the entire War on Terror: Not just the campaign against Saddam Hussein, but also the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Indeed, the group's leaders traveled to Afghanistan, drawing a detestable moral equivalence between the 9/11 attacks and U.S. bombing of the Taliban and opposing "violent responses to terrorism."

Then, before the onset of Operation Iraqi Freedom, a Peaceful Tomorrows delegation went to Baghdad to "demonstrate solidarity" with Iraqis - a move that Saddam's deputy, Tariq Aziz, termed at the time "a very important international development."



They also demanded that Congress set up a $20 million fund to compensate Afghan "victims" of the U.S. military.

And back in January 2003, the group said had it had gotten a "verbal commitment" to the fund proposal from the junior senator from Massachusetts - John F. Kerry.

Little surprise there - because Peaceful Tomorrows' parent group, the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation, has received millions from foundations controlled by Kerry's heiress wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.

A spokesman for Kerry insists that her donations to Tides were earmarked specifically for environmental charities based in Pennsylvania. But money is fungible - and the Tides Foundation has a lot more than greening the earth on its plate.

It has given millions to anti-war groups since 9/11 - particularly the extremist MoveOn.org.

Tides has also funded groups like United for a Fair Economy, which has been involved in violent anti-globalization street protests.

For example, the Ruckus Society, which was largely responsible for the anarchy in Seattle in 1999 and trains would-be environmental terrorists in the practice of "monkey-wrenching" - the willful destruction of construction equipment and so on.

Tides gets much of its funds from philanthropists like Mrs. Kerry and billionaire George Soros - who has made defeating President Bush his top personal priority.

As Richard Berman, director of the Center for Consumer Freedom, told Congress in 2002: "The Tides Foundation distributes other foundations' money, while shielding the identity of the actual donors."

Call it charitable money-laundering.

This, then, is the fringe crowd that declares itself "offended" by the Bush ads.

They're people who are offended by anything this president does - and they are working hard to put John Kerry in the White House.

Remember that the next time you hear a news report about "widespread popular outrage."

-- Source --

___________________
"...End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path...one that we all must take.
The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all change to silver glass...and then you see it...
...white shores...and beyond...the far green country under a swift sunrise."

Here's more on the bogus outrage:

quote:

U.S. News and World Report http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/...nion/22john.htm Science & Society 3/22/04 By John Leo The not-so-perfect storm Call it "three green suitcase" journalism. Let's say a feature writer thinks green luggage is becoming popular. So the reporter taps out a story citing three people in different states who have given up black suitcases and bought green ones. The second paragraph begins: "All across America, people are switching to green suitcases." This creates a media trend that might be real but is probably bogus and certainly isn't established by three sales. The uproar over President Bush's 9/11 ads was a classic three-green-suitcase story. The New York Daily News broke the story on March 4, with a huge headline "STORM OVER BUSH 9/11 AD." As howling front-page storms go, this one was small. The story quoted three unhappy members of victims' families and one fireman. There were more bylines (four) than outraged family members (three). The size of the headline letters, 2 inches tall, in a famous big-city daily, established that a major story was underway. With an extra day to rewrite the News, the Washington Post kept the story rolling, although, it could find only two displeased family members and one fireman. So did USA Today. TV and print media blossomed with furor stories, prodded along by a quick press release from the Democratic National Committee that pointed to the storm in that morning's Daily News. By dinnertime, the story was all over TV. The next day, CBS.com was talking about "a flood of anti-ad criticism." This "flood" consisted mainly of 10 or 12 people quoted over and over. Some people turned up in stories because they were already in reporters' Rolodexes as complainers, unhappy about many different 9/11 issues. This group included a lot of vocal anti-Bush activists, who were not really representative of the victim-families movement but were fairly well known to the media. One of the conservative bloggers, John Hawkins at RightWingNews.com, figured out early what was happening. He pointed out that in the big Associated Press story on the alleged furor, "5 out of 6 people interviewed had an ax to grind with George Bush." Monica Gabrielle, who called the ad "despicable," is a Bush-basher who turned up on at least nine news sites. David Potorti, who was also quoted in many stories, said last October, "I feel like the foreign policy of the Bush administration is almost like a second assault on us." Readers and viewers were not told about these anti-Bush sentiments in stories about the ads. Potorti is a founder of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, identified by reporters as "an advocacy group," "a victims' families group," or "one of the families' organizations." More accurately, Peaceful Tomorrows is the antiwar segment of the victims' families movement, long hostile to Bush policies and affiliated with MoveOn.org, a Web-based organization of the left that wants Bush censured and then defeated. Reporters kept quoting leaders of Peaceful Tomorrows without mentioning their leftward push or their small membership (they claim 120 members, out of a population of victims' family members that surely tops 10,000). Partisans. Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, denounced the ads in nearly every story. Most reports pointed out that his union had endorsed John Kerry. But I saw no report mentioning that Schaitberger is national cochair of the Kerry for President committee and therefore the most important nonpolitician in the Kerry leadership. Quoting Schaitberger on Bush's ads is like quoting Karl Rove as a detached analyst of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Amazingly, the AP story left the impression that Schaitberger resented the Bush ad because money for first responders had been cut. According to the AP report, "He said his union is politically independent even though it endorsed Kerry and has donated money to Republicans." Good thing the reporter mentioned this evenhandedness. Otherwise, readers might have concluded that Schaitberger's highly abusive remarks about the Bush ads were coming from some sort of partisan. We ought to have some discussion of how these stories were constructed, why reporters didn't go beyond the first wall of savvy and activist family members, and why so many of the small decisions reporters made on deadline seemed to go so heavily in one political direction. It would also be nice to learn why reporters think that three or four people constitute a storm. Once the story line was set, of course, there was a storm. But some of us would like an ombudsman or two to discuss where the storm arose. Was it in the outside world or in the newsroom?

___________________
FLUSHED THE JOHNS!

oh come on and shut-up.

If Gore was in office, he would use 9-11 as well

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