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Rick Lazio, the GOP gubernatorial hopeful who helped draw national attention back to the Ground Zero-area mosque by using it against his Democratic rival, Andrew Cuomo, had this (lengthy) statement in response to President Obama's speech:
“President Obama and Attorney General Cuomo still are not listening to New Yorkers. With over 100 mosques in New York City, this is not an issue of religion, but one safety and security through transparency. Since calling for transparency the first week of July along with several of the groups representing the victim’s families, I have been joined by the Anti-Defamation League, Governor George Pataki, Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Representative Peter King in calling for the Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to open the books of the Cordoba Initiative, a registered charity with the Attorney General’s office.
"If Andrew Cuomo had just done his job and looked into the books of the backers of the Cordoba Initiative, the public would have found out sooner that the developers do not even own some of the land they claim to own. What we do know is that the Imam leading this effort is not a peace maker or a bridge builder having said in the week after the attacks that, ‘United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.’ What we also know is that there has been a deliberate attempt to avoid transparency and a deliberate attempt to build the Mosque at this location, why? President Obama; along with Andrew Cuomo silence nearly brought the civilian trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to lower Manhattan. President Obama and Andrew Cuomo were wrong then, they are wrong now, and we made a promise to ourselves following 9/11 that we would ‘Never Forget.’”
Tim Brown, a New York City firefighter and the plaintiff in a suit filed recently aimed at stopping the mosque based on the argument that the city failed to follow its own landmark policies, said, "I really think he was not speaking to us, I think he was speaking to the Muslim world."
"It's hurtful," he said. "Our own president, the president of the United States, has abanddoned the families who gave too much already. It's insensitive what he did, it's hurtful what he did, and he couches it in religious freedom except (the Imam building the mosque)" doesn't feel that way.
"I think he's also trying to do damage control he's triyng to turn the polls back a bit," he said.
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