| Friday, May 21 2004 |
Urge to kill... rising...
The wee hours of the morning are supposed to be for relaxing, winding down, catching some tube and enjoying some golden reward. Great theory, but I keep screwing it up by reading the news.
The object of my ire and raised blood pressure is this piece on the WaPo. In a nutshell, it calls Giuliani down for "intimidating" the 9/11 commission, and graces us with such tripe as this:
If, indeed, some firefighters died inside the World Trade Center because they did not hear an evacuation order, Giuliani does not have to deny the fact, as he did in his testimony. Let's assume Giuliani really does believe they stood their ground in order to rescue civilians. The commission has no choice but to deal with all the evidence that points instead to those communication and coordination problems.
And evidence is what should matter to this commission. It simply can't allow those with an interest in having the Sept. 11 story told a certain way to get in the way of telling us the real story. That means especially telling the story of what went wrong. That's the only way we'll learn how to do things right.
Oh, heavens no. Honoring the brave men who died trying to save others just won't do if there's a possibility a few of them would have tucked tail and run, had they heard an evacuation order. Yeah, sure. I've seen the FDNY do many things. I've seen them rush into burning buildings to save others. I've seen them stop traffic-- vehicles and pedestrians-- when playing the pipes and honoring their fallen. One thing I have not, however, seen, is the FDNY leave a disaster scene when there are live bodies who need help.
This article pisses me off, even more than the average media garbage tends to do. The condescending attitude. The whining. The complete lack of respect. It makes me grind my teeth and reach for my .45.
Yes, the commission knows more about what happened that day because they're... well, the commission! They can't be wrong! They're looking through all that heroism crap in an effort to find all those root causes and things! They couldn't possibly learn something from a man who was there, a man who was saddled with the responsibility of dealing with it, no. He needs the astute eye of a newspaper journalist to set him straight!
I'll ask the obvious: How many people can formulate the mental image of a FDNY fire fighter looking on as people screamed for help, only to wave to them with his radio and say: Sorry, orders are orders, good luck?
Now, I'll ask. Which do you think is a more accurate representation of the FDNY? The above situation? The whiny finger pointing covered in the article? Or this:
posted by Mr. Lion @ 2:23 hours | comments (1)
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