I am not an enthusiastic fan of Hillary Clinton for a variety of reasons. However, her dogged dedication to a cause very close to my heart is enough to earn my vote. Hillary continues to champion the cause of the tens of thousands of victims of 9/11--no, not those who died in the attack but those who died and are dying and will die as a result of the attack.
Hillary invited the son of Cesar Borja to the State of the Union Address in her seemingly futile crusade to focus national attention on what one day may be considered to be one of the most heinous crimes in American history. Cesar Borja is one of a growing number of 9/11 heroes who are dying. Borja needs a lung transplant because he was poisoned on The Pile. Borja is one of as many as 400,000 victims of the largest and most ignored toxic waste dump in world history.
Back in September of 2006, NY1 ran a series on the release of a Mount Sinai Medical Center study that horrifyingly documented the true nightmare and crime of 9/11. This profoundly disturbing study scientifically documents the short and long term health impact of the World Trade Center collapse among an estimated 400,000 New Yorkers. That number includes those heroes who worked on the pile during the days and weeks following 9/11, the office workers and residents who returned to their jobs and homes in lower Manhattan within weeks following the disaster and residents of Brooklyn and Staten Island who were subsequently exposed to lingering dust and the dumping of debris.
The evidence is clear, overwhelming, "statistically significant and conclusive" and the questions raised by the evidence are likely the most disturbing and spirit-crushing questions ever raised in American history.
9/11 produced the most lethal and overwhelming toxic waste dump crisis in human memory. Close to 400,000 men, women and children were exposed to unprecedented toxic doses of dozens of known carcinogens, toxins and pathogens.
Of those exposed most were exposed not because of the attack but because the Bush Administration, the Giuliani administration and Christine Todd Whitman, the then head of the environmental protection agency declared that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan; and they did so because they determined that the financial, commercial and real estate interests of the city, state and nation took precedence over the lives of tens of thousands of human beings.
In fact, when Christine Todd Whitman told New Yorkers on September 18, 2001 that the air in Lower Manhattan was "safe to breath" she was not only lying, she was knowingly condemning hundreds of thousands of people to an early grave. One of the panelists on NY1 said it simply enough: Christine Todd Whitman will be responsible for more 9/11 deaths than Osama bin Laden. Whitman, Bush and Giuliani buried the facts that were handed to them by the experts: the air was lethal and would remain so for quite some time to come. Some suggest that it is still unbreathable in certain areas of downtown Manhattan through today, some five years later.
It is conceivable that George W. Bush, Christine Todd Whitman and Rudy Giuliani will be judged by history as among the greatest mass murderers of all time. But within our time they will live as heroes and champions among millions of Americans. And Rudy Giuliani's punishment for betraying the people of New York is Republican support for a run at the White House.
It's interesting to note that some months ago Whitman actually launched a campaign to blame Giuliani for "mass murder" and Giuliani has launched a campaign to blame Whitman. It appears that faced with the Mount Sinai report neither side is denying it's obvious veracity, rather they are fighting to assign blame. Of course the media, the criminal justice system and the American public remain indifferent to this blame game and to this nightmare. If you google hard, you'll find the stories, but overall, the media serves its corporate masters well.
Hillary continues to champion this cause--albeit in her very low key and polite manner. And in the meantime, the media remains indifferent. That is what most shocks me. Is it because the crime and the scope of this horror is so great that no one dare face it? Is the question just too awful to ask or to answer? The facts very much indicate that Bush, Pataki, Whitman and Giuliani knowingly condemned men like Cesar Borja to death and knowingly condemned tens of thousands of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn residents to an early grave. Why is the issue met with such silence? Why was the presence of Cesar Borja Jr. at the State of the Union address a minor footnote?
