Letter From Families of Sept. 11 Victims Supports Bush Ads

[karnac]

The Associated Press
Updated: 02:12 PM PT  March06, 2004 NEW YORK -

More than a dozen families who lost relatives in the Sept. 11 attacks released a letter Saturday declaring their support for President Bush and his use of images of the destroyed World Trade Center in campaign ads.

"There is no better testament to the leadership of President Bush than Sept. 11," the letter states. "In choosing our next leader we must not forget that day if we are to have a meaningful conversation."

The "Open Letter to America," signed by 22 people who lost loved ones in the trade center, comes as other victim's families asked that the ads be pulled from the airwaves. The spots also show firefighters carrying a flag-draped stretcher.

"In the November election we will have a clear choice laid before the American people," the letter reads. "President Bush is rightly offering us that choice and the images of Sept. 11, although painful, are fundamental to that choice. The images in President Bush's campaign television ads are respectful of the memories of Sept. 11."

...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4420934

Looks like the Dubya team is doing their homework and finding victims to support his sorry ass.

Karnac

[muchacho]

1. compared to?

22 compared to how many victims, firefighters and police that think he's a crass weasel?

[Tennessee_tarheel]

7. compared to 2 that iI have seen quoted

This is a non issue. OF COURSE he would put this in an ad and some would disagree - some would agree. It is a silly issue.
The union favors kerry ($$ for them) so they are opposed. There are bigger fish to fry here.

[alcuno]

10. I have to disagree. Using footage of remains being removed is

unconscionable. GWB - Campaigning on the remains of the dead and pitting 9/11 families against one another. It's bad enough that the country is so divided, did they have to do this to the families?

[bagnana]

12. absolutely not. how can he use 9/11 when he is screwing

the first responders and refusing to testify except under "his terms" before the 9/11 commission. He tried every way he could to undermine that commission and now he is trying to capitalize on the tragedy he does not want investigated. That is horrible. That is shameless.

[Zhade]

14. A silly issue?

That lying, murdering traitor is disrespecting the dead by using their images in a campaign commercial, and it's a SILLY ISSUE?

You've got to be kidding me! He's politicizing the very event he failed (at best) to prevent!

[struggle4progress]

15. NOT a non-issue

What? We can't have press coverage honoring dead soldiers coming home but Bush can use 9-11 remains for his campaign ads?

[newyawker99]

16. Hi Tennessee_tarheel!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Just Me]

19. I think the Bush abuses are very serious,...

,...and this is but one of so, so many. However, the "misuse" of an American tragedy is every bit as evil as all the rest of the Bush abuses.

[Tennessee_tarheel]

22. to all

I'm just sayng that he WILL use this as an issue to defend his term ("see - look what I did after 9/11" type thing) I certainly expected it. A bigger issue is what has he done, what hasn't he done, etc. ? Not the use of the issue in an ad.

I cettainly assume JFK will use it as an issue too. he's already using the FF union and you could argue his use of Veitnam is similar considering his pre and post and now "neo - post" veitnam positions.

BTW I'm an indie and I don't think GWB is a, to quote one of you a " lying, murdering traitor" nor is he alone in preventing the tradegy. No more than Clinton was for the the first trade center bombing or the targets in Africa or Saudi Arabia or the USS Cole. That sort of rhetoric is way over the line - on the right or left.

[bobbyboucher]

28. The difference is,

9/11 was coming into play while Bush vacationed, then happened while he idiotically sat in a classroom.

If Gore was president, 9/11 would have been just another Tuesday.

[burrowowl]

30. The so-called fire-fighters in the ad

were paid actors ....

[Cooley Hurd]

33. See my post... this is a BIG issue!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=404802&mesg_id=407131&page=

[sadiesworld]

2. A dozen families supporting Bush vs. 100's, maybe 1000's...

ready to personally kick his sorry ass back to Crawford.

[I AM SPARTACUS]

3. wait...I thought the anti-use comments were political, but these are not??

[GoddessOfGuinness]

4. Of course not...

This is about real Murrikans supporting their Gawd-chosen leader, sieg heil.

I wonder how much $$ the repugs offered the 22 signers.

[ramapo]

5. What a uniter!

The battle of the WTC victim families over the appropriate advertising use of the murder of their loved ones. Go for it George...

[alcuno]

9. Truly disgusting. Pitting 9/11 families against one another.

Whose remains are those? Do they belong to the RNC?

[rooboy]

6. I wonder if Lisa Beamer was one of the signiatories. n/t

[maxanne]

8. I'd bet on it

especially if there were something in it for her.

[Cooley Hurd]

11. I wondered the same thing when I heard this...

Oddly enough, no one is showing the actual letter. And the only name in the article is Jimmy Boyle, former president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association. I wonder if the letter even exists. Maybe another Rove production?

[dw]

13. Did you see the poll attached to the article?

If the presidential election were held this week, who would you vote for?

164,823 responses

George W. Bush.....40%

John Kerry............56%

Ralph Nader...........4%

[Snellius]

17. Sounds like it was directly dictated by Karl Rove

Obviously this was not a spontaneous outpouring in defense of our Great Leader but a rearguard action organized by the Committee to Reselect (i.e. Karen "She's Back" Hughes). The problem is the families of victims who objected to Bush's ads were not necessarily attacking Bush but rather the use of 9/11 as a political propaganda.

[Gingersnapsback]

18. If the village idiot is saluted for staying the course...

imagine what an intelligent, sensitive, diplomat could have done to unite the country, and save the world from more terrorism!!

[Katie]

20. You can show the 9/11 dead but not the coffins of soldiers?

Bush Exploits Photo of Dead Bodies, Despite Ban

As the nation headed for war last year, President Bush "clamped down" on the media, extending and expanding a controversial policy that banned reporters from photographing flag-draped caskets of soldiers killed in combat 1. The White House said the policy was enforced to "spare the feelings of military families." 2 Yet, in the very first television advertisement of his 2004 campaign, the president has blanketed the nation's airwaves with an image of "firefighters carrying a flag-draped body" from the 9/11 wreckage at Ground Zero 3.

The hypocrisy of preventing Americans from receiving a "reminder of the toll of war" at the very same time the president exploits an image of a dead body for his own political gain has caused an outrage among victims' families 4. Chris Burke, whose brother Tom died in the attacks, said, "Using my dead friends and my dead brother for political expediency is dead wrong. It's wrong, it's bad taste and an insult to the 3,000 people who died on Sept. 11." 5

http://www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/Read.asp?fn=df03052004.html

Add that to the statements of Kristen Breitweiser: "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.' And 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." http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/170291p-148587c.html

So you can spare the "feelings" of military families, but not 9/11 families? Someone explain that to me, please.

[IndianaGreen]

21. Both sides are trying to politicize 9/11

A pox on both houses!

[Dr Fate]

27. Leave the house and go to the green house then.

Stop attacking Kerry and DEMS like Bush & the media does.

[IndianaGreen]

31. 9/11 was a national trauma, and both parties are trying to exploit it

That's a fact!

Are we now to adopt the Fascist tactics of the GOP and stiffle any critical thinking and expression?

Liberals and civil libertarians will not be silenced!

On edit, here is a good article about this:

Colleen Kelly, whose brother, William Kelly, Jr., died at the World Trade Center, said, “I am afraid these ads, and others to follow, will be part of an ugly political jousting match between candidates, where one side attacks the other as somehow indifferent to the horrors of the day.” Kelly has been active in antiwar activities, traveling to Iraq early in 2003 to show her opposition to the impending US invasion, and to declare that the war did not represent a legitimate response to the September 11 attacks.

Tim Ryan, a firefighter stationed in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, said, “As a firefighter who spent months at Ground Zero, it’s deeply offensive to see the Bush campaign use these images to capitalize on the greatest American tragedy of our time.”

Kelly Campbell, co-director of September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, said that there was sharply divided opinion among relatives of victims. “There’s no consensus around this, but for the most part 9/11 families are very sensitive to someone using images of our loved ones’ death for their own ends,” she said. “And that’s what’s pretty blatantly happening here.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/mar2004/bush-m08.shtml

[DoYouEverWonder]

35. There's a big difference between

talking about 9-11 and using famous images such as the towers burning, and using images of a person's flag drapped casket in a campaign ad.

Of course, 9-11 will be politisized, that started about 3 days after the attack when W showed up at ground zero for his bullhorn photo op to dance on the dead.

9-11 is a major issue and Kerry and the dems need to continue to remind people that 3 years later, we still don't know why W thought that reading a children's book was more important than dealing with an ongoing terrorist attack. We still don't know why Standard Operating Procedure totally failed that day. If you call this politisizing then so be it. If it force people to see W for who and what he really is then at least some good can come from this horrible event.

I'm glad W kicked off his campaign by exploiting the firemen who gave there lives that day. It just shows more people what a disgusting excuse for a human he really is.

[young_at_heart]

23. Question to letter-writers.....How did he show "leadership"?

Sitting in the classroom didn't really accomplish very much. What exactly did he do that was so wonderful?

[Gingersnapsback]

24. Clueless in Baltimore

[scarface2004]

25. that s a crock....

of shit!

[nolabels]

26. my mistake

edited for better times

[notbush]

29. I may not be a hardcore enough DUer

but this ain't gonna win us an election.
Just today on the news, these original stories were covered with victims families who supported the ads. On ABC they pointed out that FDR used Pearle harbor in his 1944 reelection,Clinton showed and talked about the OKC bombing in his.
I just don't think this is a winner for us, we're going to look hypocritical.
We must take a more long term approach.
Scoring a point today, may cost us 2 points tomorrow.
The election isn't for 9 months anyway.

[Cooley Hurd]

32. Do you have a list of names...

...of 9/11 families who support the ad? I've looked everywhere - I'm beginning to believe Rove made it all up (their support).

Also, do you have proof Clinton used images of the OKC bombing in 1996? I worked for the Clinton campaign (albeit, locally) and I can say without equivocation that Clinton did no such thing. I would've remembered if MY candidate did such a tasteless thing - more importantly, Clinton's critics would've ripped him to shreds if he did. The fact that they didn't invariably means it never happened...

As far as FDR and Pearl Harbor, he never singled out the Pearl Harbor attack in his 1944 re-election campaign. Sure, he mentioned the war in general when stumping, but he certainly didn't use images of dead sailors in any campaign imagery.

Using human remains in any campaign ad is tasteless. Welcome to DU - try not to let yourself get sucked in by the Republican talking points/lies.

[IndianaGreen]

34. It is wrong for the 2-major parties to demagogue a national tragedy

The roots of 9/11 go back to the failures by the FBI to pursue leads in the Ramzi Yousef case. Yousef had documents detailing terrorist attacks involving planes hitting buildings.

Some would argue that the roots of 9/11 go back to the Carter Administration support of Islamic radicals during the Soviet-Afghan war.

Be as it may, the fact is that 9/11 was a national tragedy. It is wrong for the 2-major parties to demagogue 9/11.

Bush campaign ads provoke protests from families of September 11 victims
By Patrick Martin
8 March 2004

Colleen Kelly, whose brother, William Kelly, Jr., died at the World Trade Center, said, “I am afraid these ads, and others to follow, will be part of an ugly political jousting match between candidates, where one side attacks the other as somehow indifferent to the horrors of the day.” Kelly has been active in antiwar activities, traveling to Iraq early in 2003 to show her opposition to the impending US invasion, and to declare that the war did not represent a legitimate response to the September 11 attacks.

Tim Ryan, a firefighter stationed in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, said, “As a firefighter who spent months at Ground Zero, it’s deeply offensive to see the Bush campaign use these images to capitalize on the greatest American tragedy of our time.”

Kelly Campbell, co-director of September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, said that there was sharply divided opinion among relatives of victims. “There’s no consensus around this, but for the most part 9/11 families are very sensitive to someone using images of our loved ones’ death for their own ends,” she said. “And that’s what’s pretty blatantly happening here.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/mar2004/bush-m08.shtml

[Bridget Burke]

36. Got proof that Clinton used OKC in his campaign?

What about proof that FDR used Pearl Harbor?

[lumpy]

37. Fdr didn't have to campaign

He was elected in 1932,36',40'and 44'. Pearl Harbor attack was in 1941. His was elected to an unprecedented 4th term because we were still at war. The only line that was heard was "don't change horses in the middle of the stream". No problem, the US seemed to be in agreement. There was no TV, little media campaigning and no need to spend astronomical spending on poltical campaigning at any rate.