we're a strange lot, we Americans ... we see our so called leaders with their bullhorns barking out orders during times of national disaster ... we see their rolled up shirt sleeves ... we see their steely determination and the resolve in their eyes ... we see them hugging a victim or someone from the victim's family ... and we propel these heros to national prominence ... some are prepared to give them "the big job" and put them in charge of the most critical policy decisions ...
one such leader is Iowa '08 republican front-runner Rudolph Giuliani ...
when will we Americans learn to look past our symbols to see the ugly truth they often hide???
kudos yet again to Mr. Keillor ...
source:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0824-28.htmMr. Giuliani is still flying around giving speeches on leadership, knocking down a hundred grand per shot, getting standing ovations everywhere as a stand-in for the police and firemen who died in the towers. He has never faced up to his failure to prepare for the attack, even after the 1993 bomb explosion at the center, when it was shown clearly that police and fire couldn't communicate with each other by radio.
Eight years passed, little was done, and then came the 19 men with box cutters. The 911 operators took thousands of calls and had no information to give. Police helicopter pilots, who had a clear view of the infernos and could see that the buildings were going to collapse, couldn't get word to fire chiefs on the ground who, unable to see the fire, sent their men up the stairs to die. Official bungling cost those men their lives.