Debra Burlingame

Debra Burlingame, Ground Zero, Iran, Islamofascists, World Trade Center

Just shove your wreath, Ahmadinejad

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Just shove the wreath you want to place at Ground Zero, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Those are my words and so are these: if you try to set one foot on where the terrorists your regime supported murdered a member of my family and 3,000 others, I will be there standing in your way.

“Just shove your wreath” is also a part of a headline in this morning New York Post:

That was the response when the Iranian Mission to the United Nations asked city, state and federal officials if Holocaust — denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could lay a wreath at Ground Zero during his visit next week. At a Sept. 6 meeting with the NYPD, Secret Service and Port Authority — five days before this year’s emotional 9/11 ceremony — the Iranian Mission was told no one is allowed in the pit because it’s a live construction site and dangerous.

As for Ahmadinejad, who is arriving Sunday to address the U.N. General Assembly, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, says his country is giving “lethal” support to Iraqi militias. Speaking yesterday in London, Petraeus said evidence shows the Axis of Evil member, which sponsors Hezbollah, listed by the State Department as a terrorist group, is training militias and giving them weapons – including rockets and especially deadly improvised explosive devices that have killed many American troops.

According to recent reports, EFPs – explosively formed penetrators – accounted for 18 percent of U.S. and allied troops’ combat deaths in Iraq in the last quarter of 2006. And intelligence reports point to Iran’s role in providing them.

But for a few hours yesterday, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly had City Hall and civic and religious leaders reeling with his remarks that talks were under way on a possible Ahmadinejad visit.

“They have expressed an interest in having the president do that [visit Ground Zero],” Kelly said at a news conference. “We are engaging in conversation with them right now as to that possibility. . . It is something we are prepared to handle if, in fact, it does happen.”

In a terse clarification hours later, Kelly spokesman Paul Browne set the record straight.

“A request earlier this month to permit a visit by Iranian President Ahmadinejad to Ground Zero during the United Nations General Assembly was rejected in a meeting which included NYPD, Secret Service and Port Authority officials,” his statement said.

Yet WABC is reporting Ahmadinejad is planning to visit Ground Zero at 10 a.m. Monday:

Iranian mission says he’ll go despite NYPD rejection

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad requested to visit Ground Zero during an upcoming trip to New York. That request was rejected Wednesday. But a source tells Eyewitness News that the decision may not stop him. A law enforcement source says the Iranian mission to the United Nations has informed the Secret Service that the Iranian president intends to visit Ground Zero Monday at 10 a.m. The source says regardless of the NYPD’s rejection of the request for a Ground Zero tour, Iran’s president and his entourage will be accompanied by a Secret Service protective detail, a detail provided to all heads of state when they visit the United States.

Ahmadinejad’s regime supports terrorists, as our own State Department has said. The 9/11 Commission reported Iran facilitated the travel of many of the 9/11 hijackers:

Intelligence indicates the persistence of contacts between Iranian security officials and senior al Qaeda figures after Bin Ladin’s return to Afghanistan. Khallad [Sheik Mohammed] has said that Iran made a concerted effort to strengthen relations with al Qaeda after the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, but was rebuffed because Bin Ladin did not want to alienate his supporters in Saudi Arabia. Khallad and other detainees have described the willingness of Iranian officials to facilitate the travel of al Qaeda members through Iran, on their way to and from Afghanistan. For example, Iranian border inspectors would be told not to place telltale stamps in the passports of these travelers. Such arrangements were particularly beneficial to Saudi members of al Qaeda.

Our knowledge of the international travels of the al Qaeda operatives selected for the 9/11 operation remains fragmentary. But we now have evidence suggesting that 8 to 10 of the 14 Saudi “muscle” operatives traveled into or out of Iran between October 2000 and February 2001.

Debra Burlingame told Mark Levin that she doubts they will let him anywhere near the place on his syndicated radio broadcast last night:

If he comes to Ground Zero Monday, I will stand in his way. Will you join me? Michelle Malkin says she will.

No, I do not want to get arrested and would not resist arrest for blocking his path but I will not stand by idly while Mahmoud Ahmadinejad walks on our sacred ground.

More at MarkLevinFan.com.

9/11, Debra Burlingame, Political wind

9/11 “mean and nasty” says Massachusetts Governor Patrick

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Update, 9/14/2007: Audio added.

Deval Patrick

Michael Graham writes today in the Boston Herald:

In his 9/11 commemoration speech, Patrick observed that while the attack on the World Trade Center was “mean and nasty,” (that’s telling ’em, Deval!) the real tragedy of six years ago was the “failure of human understanding.” Yes, 9/11 was, Patrick said “a failure of human beings to understand each other, to learn to love each other.” [Emphasis added.]

To find out what the victims of 9/11 didn’t understand about the terrorists that might have prevented the attack, I turned to Debra Burlingame. Her brother, Chic, was the pilot of American Airlines [AMR] Flight 77 — the plane that hit the Pentagon.

When I first read Debra the governor’s remarks over the phone, her reaction was astonished silence. “Can you read that again please?”

I did. More silence.

Editor: Click on the speaker icon:

“Did he have the audacity to say that in front of grieving 9/11 family members?” she asked, somewhat astonished.

Yes.

“Well, I’m glad I didn’t have to listen to that on 9/11,” she said in a measured tone, trying unsuccessfully to conceal her anger. “I would have found it extremely insulting to the memory of my brother.”

“Did he really say ‘mean and nasty?’ ” she wanted to know. “At Ground Zero, they’ve recovered 21,000 body parts and still counting. That’s not mean and nasty, that’s an atrocity.”

Debra wasn’t happy with the governor’s suggestion that 9/11 was born of the failure of mutual understanding between the victims and their killers, but she understood it. She called is a form of moral vanity.

“It appeals to one’s sense of vanity to think we’re better than these people because we’re nicer than they are. Liberals like this think ‘I’m not judgmental, so that makes me superior,’ ” Debra said.

This self-gratifying “we’re all responsible for 9/11” preening isn’t just dumb, however. It’s also dangerous. “If your governor thinks we can love-bomb al-Qaeda into submission, he’s living in a dream world.”

Perhaps that’s Patrick’s problem. Maybe he’s living in another world, an imaginary liberal land were every Muslim radical is just one hug away from Methodism, and every criminal can be rehabilitated by a proper diet and midnight basketball.

The rest of us, alas, are trapped in the real world. And in this world, “9/11 is the price we paid for not truly understanding the enemy,” Debra told me. “It was the moral vanity of our politicians that told them the Islamists could be dealt with through diplomacy, or negotiated with.

“The only negotiating they do is with a Kalashnikov rifle.”