The outrage of FDNY radios on 9-11

This is a pretty damning video about Rudy Giuliani's outrageous inaction and foot dragging about the well-documented problems with the New York Fire Department's radio equipment during his tenure as mayor. The city knew about the problems with the radio equipment as early as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. America's Profiteer became mayor 11 months after the '93 attack, and he had nearly eight years to fix this problem. The Giuliani administration failed to do so.

The radios were ordered in the spring of 2001 in a no-bid contract to Motorola. Where have we heard of no-bid contracts before? Oh yea - the Bush administration. Under Bush's watch, no-bid contracts have become as common as the sun rising and setting.

It's beyond contempt that Rudy Giuliani was brazen enough to publicly say these words (in the video above):

Their willingness [New York City Firefighters], the way I describe it, to stand their ground, and not retreat, the fact that so many of them interpreted it that way, kept a much calmer situation...

Family members of deceased FDNY firefighters and firefighters themselves can be heard shouting "No!" in the back of the room, and rightfully so, for so many reasons.

First of all, how does Rudy know how the firefighters who lost their lives interpreted the orders of their commanders, or if they even heard them? Based on the problems with these same radios in 1993, the likelihood that firefighters did hear the order to evacuate is very unlikely. And it's just patently absurd for Giuliani to insinuate that the firefighters willfully ignored the order to evacuate to twin towers out of bravery. That's just cover for his administration's screw up for inexcusably not fixing the problem that the FDNY had faulty, wonky radios. Put another way, would the firefighters have been viewed as cowards if they had high-tailed it out of the twin towers if they had heard the order to evacuate? Of course not. Giuliani's idiotic reasoning simply makes no sense.

I really do hope that America wakes up and quits buying into the myth that Giuliani was a spectacular leader up to, before and after 9-11. It just isn't going to hold up.

So, why does all this matter? I've written it before and I'll write it probably dozens of more times before the '08 election (or until Giuliani is defeated): if he's going to run as the 9-11 Candidate, his decisions, before, during and immediately after 9-11 until the end of his term as New York City's mayor bear scrutiny. When that scrutiny comes, much of the Giuliani mystique of being a great leader with the golden touch is going to lose much of its luster.

Notice the people in this video are family members of firefighters who died, or former leaders of the FDNY. Once the primaries draw nigh, I wonder how long it will take the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Michelle Malkin and the rest of the intolerant right wing cabal attack the people in this video? It's not a question of if, but a question of when.

And that's nearly as much of an outrage as the radios themselves that New York City firefighters were stuck with on the morning of September 11.

Go Here to sign the petition to demand that this issue be investigated by New York City Council. And find more videos that are breaking down the Giuliani myth at The Real Rudy. I'll be featuring and discussing many more of that sites videos here in the months to come.