Time to downsize Rudy 9/11 myth

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/445698p-375131c.html

The images and their accompanying story line are, by now, the stuff of legend, seared into memory. Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a lame-duck local pol, becomes the take-charge, already prepared leader of a stunned city and nation on Sept. 11, 2001, striding through the streets of lower Manhattan with his top commanders to rescue, rally and reassure the populace.

Five years later, Giuliani is a pop-culture superhero ("I didn't have time to be afraid, Oprah") and has unabashedly converted 9/11 into wealth, fame and a shot at the White House.

But a new exhaustively researched and unsentimental peek behind the mythology strongly suggests that Giuliani and his top deputies committed many errors that did grave, even fatal, harm to citizens, emergency responders and recovery teams before, on and after that terrible day. Investigative reporters Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins, the co-authors of "Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11," think the time has come for the public to trade in myth for some hard, uncomfortable truths.

They could be wrong: Given a choice between a well-told heroic tale and a catalogue of faults, humans instinctively choose fable over facts. But Barrett and Collins hammer away at Giuliani and leave his mythic armor dented.

[varun]

1. Rudy was at the right place at he right time

and media made him appear larger than life...

[Skittles]

7. anyone would have appeared larger than life

compared to our kiddie book-reading, chickenshit, hiding incompetent f***tard "president"

[classysassy]

9. the prez

you forgot cowardly,lying,dumb a hole.

[MadMaddie]

2. Well his biggest mistake was not protecting his city workers

and the citizens by not Questioning the air quality immedietly after the event. How could the government come out and say that the air was okay.
For crying out loud it's not rocket science....

[TreasonousBastard]

3. His entire career, from prosecutor to Mayor, was...

one of PR and bullshit.

As proscutor, he lost many cases because of leaks from his office and some simply bad lawyering, but managed to spin it as Rudy the Crusading Prosecutor.

While Koch held impromptu events on City Hall steps, King Rudy walled it and the park off with the public allowed nowhere near it.

When any of the city departments did any good, Rudy was out there taking the credit, with commissioners forbidden to speak to the press.

He stopped city agencies from giving reports out to press and civic agencies. Reports that had been ordinarily given out for up to a hundred years, but now had to be cleared and edited by his office.

He even refused to give details of the city budget to the Council, which was to vote on the budget.

And there was the Great Ferret Fiasco...

[hedgehog]

4. You must tell us about the ferrets.

[TreasonousBastard]

6. For some reason lost in the fog of history...

NYC had a law against owning a ferret as a pet.

Ferrets now being pretty popular, a lot of people wanted that law removed and the Council seemed to be leaning that way.

Rudy was immediately on the case, calling ferret owners uncivilized trash for wanting filthy weasels in their homes, and went on a rampage against repealing the ban, complete with his usual panoply of threats and insults.

Quite frankly, after being initially bemused at the ferocity of his attack, I never really heard just how it all ended. Maybe someone else knows if it's now legal to have a ferret in NYC.

[BayouBengal07]

5. What are the chances...

Do you think this book will get the same kind of media attention and pimping that "Unfit for Command" by the Swiftboat crew got? I think not...

[saltpoint]

8. I get a real strong mobster vibe from Giuliani. Not suggesting he's in

the Mafia, but in style, he has many of the same bullying character traits.

Possibly GOP voters will pick him over their pack of pathetic candidates for 08 but I'm thinking his climb is steep.