BUSH ADMINISTRATION LIED TO NEW YORKERS IN WAKE OF 911

[The_Rorschach]

Well, maybe I'm just getting soft, but I personally think that from a leadership perspective, it was the correct action to take. How much good would it have done the nation to hear that it was unsafe for anyone to go near the twin ruins? Arguably, I think it could have caused an even more wide spread panic, though on the plus side we might not have had to deal with the weeping reporters on CNN, and the Year After segments that popped up so various networks could justify the expendature of footage which never made the air.

I think I might have shared this story before, but the night of the strike, a couple Indian Cruisers approached our location at my last duty station. We saw them coming because hell, what kind of intellegence station would we have been if we hadn't, but aside from my orders to report it to the CO, that information never left the watch floor. We had already recalled everyone with prior NSF training to stand armed watches at various points on the island, and aside from worrying personnel, there wasn't much else that could have been done to resolve the situation. At the time, the ships still unidentified, we were almost certain that they were hostile and were getting ready to destroy our crypto.

In some situations, certain facts should be supressed as they do more harm then good. I think was either Truman or Churchill who said that in times of war, the truth must be protected by a pack of lies. The people who went in there understood there were risks -falling debris, choking hazards, broken glass and whatnot. Do you think the government saying that the existance of possibly harmful inhalants would have really told stopped anyone? Do you think that information was really something they didn't already figure out, considering that every American knows buildings have been built with dangerous materials ranging anywhere from lead paint, asbestos to halon fire suppressant systems?

I don't know, maybe I'm knit picking, but this articles, and those like it, seem like smear press to me, especially as I haven't notice one mention the exact health risks workers WERE exposed to (asbestos and lead paint both having been banned as construction materials long before the towers were built), and what they should be doing about it.