http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/02/1622/Giuliani: Worse Than Bush
He’s Cashing in on 9/11, Working with Karl Rove’s Henchmen and in Cahoots With a Swift Boat-Style Attack on Hillary. Will Rudy Giuliani Be Bush III?
by Matt Taibbi
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Although respiratory-mask use was mandatory, the city allowed a macho culture to develop on the site: Even the mayor himself showed up without a mask. By October, it was estimated, masks were being worn on site as little as twenty-nine percent of the time. Rudy proclaimed that there were “no significant problems” with the air at the World Trade Center. But there was something wrong with the air: It was one of the most dangerous toxic-waste sites in human history, full of everything from benzene to asbestos and PCBs to dioxin (the active ingredient in Agent Orange). Since the cleanup ended, police and firefighters have reported a host of serious illnesses — respiratory ailments like sarcoidosis; leukemia and lymphoma and other cancers; and immune-system problems.
“The likelihood is that more people will eventually die from the cleanup than from the original accident,” says David Worby, an attorney representing thousands of cleanup workers in a class-action lawsuit against the city. “Giuliani wears 9/11 like a badge of honor, but he screwed up so badly.”
When I first spoke to Worby, he was on his way home from the funeral of a cop. “One thing about Giuliani,” he told me. “He’s never been to a funeral of a cleanup worker.”
Indeed, Rudy has had little at all to say about the issue. About the only move he’s made to address the problem was to write a letter urging Congress to pass a law capping the city’s liability at $350 million.
Did Giuliani know the air at the World Trade Center was poison? Who knows — but we do know he took over the cleanup, refusing to let more experienced federal agencies run the show. He stood on a few brick piles on the day of the bombing, then spent the next ten months making damn sure everyone worked the night shift on-site while he bonked his mistress and negotiated his gazillion-dollar move to the private sector. Meanwhile, the people who actually cleaned up the rubble got used to checking their stool for blood every morning.
Now Giuliani is running for president — as the hero of 9/11. George Bush has balls, too, but even he has to bow to this motherfucker.
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