As is all too apparent, Rudy Giuliani has built a career on an edifice of threats and distortion. And because of a pliant and often non-functioning media, he has been allowed to get away with it for far too long. Not anymore. This week bloggers across the country raised their voices to demand accountability for the actions of this tinhorn tyrant who's tried to turn 9/11 into the personal property of his campaign communications team. Working with the investigative video we at Brave New Films produced, citizen journalists have unleashed a major effort to initiate an investigation into the negligence and nonchalant incompetence that defined Rudy Giuliani's tenure as Mayor of New York--never more so than in the case of the radios he saddled New York firefighters with on 9/11. Radios that had been deemed "dangerous" and "outdated" 11 years earlier!
These were no minor screw ups. Firefighters were killed because the Giuliani Administration did not fix problems that they had crystal clear and voluminous evidence existed. In 1993, during the first World Trade Center bombing, the radios didn't work. In 2001, firefighters were still using the very same radios when the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed, and as a direct result many of them never heard the calls to evacuate (Rudy lied about this to gasps of horror from family members of the fallen during his testimony in front of the 9/11 Commission). The police, who had updated radios, were able to get to safety in much larger numbers.
So Rudy and his gang of neocon apologists may threaten, they may huff and they may puff. But bloggers from the national scene (Digby, Firedoglake, The Huffington Post, MichaelMoore.com, DNC, The Carpetbagger Report, The Agonist, The Smirking Chimp, Down With Tyranny, The Right's Field, MyDD, Open Left, Daily Kos, Crooks & Liars, Campaign 08 [The Nation], The Fundamentalist [The American Prospect], Salon Blog Report, Talk Left, Taylor Marsh) and those right in his backyard of New York City and the tri-state area (The Albany Project, The Daily Gotham, My Left Nutmeg, Rochester Turning) are simply not the types cower in the face of Rudy's tough guy routine.
Now let's take this populist groundswell and turn it into an investigation. Critical questions raised by families, investigative journalists and experts simply MUST be answered.
Please join us in signing our petition at The Real Rudy. Don't let Rudy Giuliani get away with turning political malpractice into a presidential platform.