http://news.yahoo.com/photo/060911/ids_pho...r1066002127.jpg

Mister President, this is for you:

 

Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.

 

All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and -- as I discovered from those "missing posters" seared still into my soul -- two more in the Towers.

 

And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.

 

I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.

 

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft,"or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

 

However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast -- of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds -- none of us could have predicted this.

 

Five years later this space is still empty.

 

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

 

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

 

Five years later this country's wound is still open.

 

Five years later this country's mass grave is still unmarked.

 

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

 

It is beyond shameful.

 

At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial -- barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field -- Mr. Lincoln said, "we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."

 

Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.

 

Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. "We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground." So we won't.

 

Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they're doing instead of doing any job at all.

 

Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The terrorists are clearly, still winning.

 

And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.

 

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.

 

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

 

Those who did not belong to his party -- tabled that.

 

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election -- ignored that.

 

Those who wondered of his qualifications -- forgot that.

 

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political advantage.

 

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

 

The President -- and those around him -- did that.

 

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, "bi-partisanship" meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President's words yesterday, "validate the strategy of the terrorists."

 

They promised protection, and then showed that to them "protection" meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

 

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by implication."

 

The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."

 

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.

 

Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.

 

Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own administration.

 

Yet what is happening this very night?

 

A mini-series, created, influenced -- possibly financed by -- the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.

 

The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

 

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you -- or those around you -- ever "spin" 9/11?

 

Just as the terrorists have succeeded -- are still succeeding -- as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.

 

So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

 

This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney's continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.

 

And long ago, a series called "The Twilight Zone" broadcast a riveting episode entitled "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street."

 

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car -- and only his car -- starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man's lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An "alien" is shot -- but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there's no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, "they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it's themselves."

 

And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.

 

"For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children, and the children yet unborn."

 

When those who dissent are told time and time again -- as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus -- that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American...When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"... look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

 

Who has left this hole in the ground?

 

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

 

You have.

 

May this country forgive you.

Olbermann speaks from the heart and makes no bones about his stance(s).

 

I can dig it.

 

I haven't been to the site, yet, what's there? I saw a pool of some sort where W. laid the wreaths, and some tents where people were walking around and that's about it.

There's basically nothing there.

 

I agree with Olbermann completely, he hits the nail right on the head.

one would think 5 years is long enough to get something going there.

As long as politicians' priority remains posturing and photo-ops for the sake of election and re-election, there will be little to no progress there.

http://www.lowermanhattan.info/constructio...ower_26204.aspx

 

What took so long? Can't we just sh*t out the designs for a 1776ft tall building? It isn't like the first WTC took 16 years to authorize, finance and design and 6 years to complete... oh wait.

http://www.lowermanhattan.info/constructio...ower_26204.aspx

 

What took so long? Can't we just sh*t out the designs for a 1776ft tall building? It isn't like the first WTC took 16 years to authorize, finance and design and 6 years to complete... oh wait.

 

 

Except there were designs made almost a month after the attacks for memorials. Can't tell me they haven't been completed by now.

http://www.lowermanhattan.info/constructio...ower_26204.aspx

 

What took so long? Can't we just sh*t out the designs for a 1776ft tall building? It isn't like the first WTC took 16 years to authorize, finance and design and 6 years to complete... oh wait.

 

 

Except there were designs made almost a month after the attacks for memorials. Can't tell me they haven't been completed by now.

 

The memorial is going into the building design

"Ground Zero" is 16 vertical acres of some of the most valuable commercial real estate in the world. Millions of square feet of commercial space was lost. It is a multi-billion $ spae that is co-opted betwen the Port Authority and private ownership.

 

What to build there is a highly charged, emotional issue that was debated for years between government agencies, private companies and the tens of thousands of survivors and relatives of the killed. Yes, some initial designs were presented by the LMDC relatively soon after the diaster, but all were rejected, either in whole or in part. The construction of the new highrises, "reflecting pool" and all other reconstruction are parts taken piecemeal from other proposed designs.

 

As for Olbermann, his position simply uses emotionalism as it's guiding motivation without granting consideration to any other myriad issues.

 

Actually, it's somewhat insulting that he would pander to people's heatstrings by grossly oversimplifying one of the most complex legal, commercial and bureaucratic issues the country has had to deal with. Should we have filled in Pearl Harbor and made it a monolithical memorial instead of keeping it as a functioning military complex, even decades after WWII?

 

Don't get sucked into Olbermann's trap.

I feel that there should have at least been a temporary memorial established at the site by now.

That's where I stopped reading.

He's almost spot on, which is why the extremist Bush fans are quiet in this thread. He's COMPLETELY wrong in defending Clinton and downplaying the T.V. series, because that series is 100 percent accurate in it's portral that Bin Laden would have been caught and/or dead in 1998 if Clinton had ANY balls at all.

 

However, all of his comments in regards to Bush's pathetic failures since 9/11 are dead on.

I feel that there should have at least been a temporary memorial established at the site by now.

 

I think there is.

 

The problem is that site is so big and there are so many things that have to be rebuilt while things like trains and irrigation systems have to be kept working. You have that retaining wall.

I feel that there should have at least been a temporary memorial established at the site by now.

 

 

Well, there's a big timeline and the lights are put on every September 11th.

 

Personally, I'm in favor of having the lights on all the time until the big memorial is built.

 

If anyone's interested: www.buildthememorial.org

You know what, I'm going to man up and change my statement, and say that maybe it's not political, but rather that no idea seems good enough.

"Ground Zero" is 16 vertical acres of some of the most valuable commercial real estate in the world. Millions of square feet of commercial space was lost. It is a multi-billion $ spae that is co-opted betwen the Port Authority and private ownership.

 

What to build there is a highly charged, emotional issue that was debated for years between government agencies, private companies and the tens of thousands of survivors and relatives of the killed. Yes, some initial designs were presented by the LMDC relatively soon after the diaster, but all were rejected, either in whole or in part. The construction of the new highrises, "reflecting pool" and all other reconstruction are parts taken piecemeal from other proposed designs.

 

As for Olbermann, his position simply uses emotionalism as it's guiding motivation without granting consideration to any other myriad issues.

 

Actually, it's somewhat insulting that he would pander to people's heatstrings by grossly oversimplifying one of the most complex legal, commercial and bureaucratic issues the country has had to deal with. Should we have filled in Pearl Harbor and made it a monolithical memorial instead of keeping it as a functioning military complex, even decades after WWII?

 

Don't get sucked into Olbermann's trap.

 

 

Great post man.

 

Olbermann is nothing but an asswipe.

He's almost spot on, which is why the extremist Bush fans are quiet in this thread. He's COMPLETELY wrong in defending Clinton and downplaying the T.V. series, because that series is 100 percent accurate in it's portral that Bin Laden would have been caught and/or dead in 1998 if Clinton had ANY balls at all.

 

However, all of his comments in regards to Bush's pathetic failures since 9/11 are dead on.

 

 

That tv series about Clinton not being able to kill Bin Laden was false. And the reason they had to come out and say, "Look, it's a work of fiction," in the first place. Hard to say if there's irrefutable evidence that they'd do that otherwise.

Great post man.

Olbermann is nothing but an asswipe.

 

 

yeah, I wonder how you feel about Limbaugh & Hannity & the crew on the other side.

 

All wonderful Amercans I'm guessing.

Great post man.

Olbermann is nothing but an asswipe.

 

 

yeah, I wonder how you feel about Limbaugh & Hannity & the crew on the other side.

 

All wonderful Amercans I'm guessing.

 

Hey, you're pretty smart for a lib. Good Job!!! :thumbup

Great post man.

Olbermann is nothing but an asswipe.

 

 

yeah, I wonder how you feel about Limbaugh & Hannity & the crew on the other side.

 

All wonderful Amercans I'm guessing.

 

Hey, you're pretty smart for a lib. Good Job!!! :thumbup

is limbaugh still sucking down those pills like no one else's business? or has he moved onto something less like heroine? :whistle

Last I checked he was shoveling down the Viagra pills.

Last I checked he was shoveling down the Viagra pills.

 

 

At least the man is getting some, something you probably wouldnt be too familiar with :whistle

Last I checked he was shoveling down the Viagra pills.

 

 

At least the man is getting some, something you probably wouldnt be too familiar with :whistle :banghead

 

 

 

Has this thread really devolved into senseless sniping?

the idea behind what keith is saying is spot on.

 

 

he makes a few stretches, but generally speaking he is spot on with this piece.

Last I checked he was shoveling down the Viagra pills.

 

 

At least the man is getting some, something you probably wouldnt be too familiar with :whistle

For your information, I get plenty from my g/f. Maybe it's you with the problem.

 

Let's get back on topic.