Five years after 9/11 the Senate has finally gotten around to endorsing the proposals of the 9/11 Commission, weak as they may be. The Senate legislation in its current form faces a veto because it supports the rights of Transportion Security Administration workers to organize. That’s anathema to Republicans on the usual anti-union grounds, and in this instance, the outcry will be intense since it was the breaking of the air traffic controllers PATCO union in the early 1980s that launched the Reagan Revolution’s march to privatization.
The Senate bill is weaker than the House version. Probably the biggest terrorist threat to the U.S. comes in the form of ignored or non-existent security measures on the docks on incoming freight. Many of the freight containers come from China and are marked in Chinese. They are unloaded in ports like New York or Newark, loaded onto Chinese trucks, and driven away. Any one of them could contain explosives, a load of poison, even a low-level nuclear device. The House bill would have these ships checked at points of origin. The Senate version does not. The Bush administration opposes doing so.
The House bill also would require that all baggage being loaded into a plane be inspected in the same manner as the passengers. The government says that would cost too much and it’s plenty OK just to check 30 percent of the baggage as is the current process. The machines that check the baggage are of questionable value, meaning the 30 percent figure probably is on the high side.
On top of all this, the Darth Vader of 9/11, Rudy Giuliani, is using his ill-gotten reputation as a national hero to run for the presidency. NYFD doesn’t think he’s a hero. This evening at 6 pm, a group called 9/11 Firefighters and Families will hold a press conference outside the New York City Sheraton, the site of Rudy’s fundraiser, to expose his failures on 9/11 and before. Here is what they have to say:
“On 9/11/01 NYC was completely unprepared for a terrorist attack, despite the fact that the WTC was first targeted in 1993 with dire consequences, and those responsible vowed to ‘return to finish the job.’ The first WTC attack was characterized by disorganization, lack of radio communications, lack of an integrated FD & PD command structure, and yet an honorable and heroic response was made by our firefighters and emergency responders.”
“History was repeated on 9/11. With eight years as Mayor of NY to correct the problems & protect our city, Rudy Giuliani left the City of
NY defenseless on 9/11, resulting in the needless deaths of 343 firefighters and nearly 3,000 innocent victims. Rudy Giuliani was responsible for our City’s lack of emergency planning, emergency preparedness, emergency management and the most critical lack of FDNY working radios which doomed the NYC Fire Department on September 11th.** We love our country & America’s fire service and they need to know the truth about the real Rudy Giuliani. Since he did not prepare NYC for the second terrorist attack on 9/11, how can the American people trust him to safeguard our entire nation?”
