Wounded Rudy

Thanks to memeorandum for leading me to even more outrageous lies from the mouth of Judi Stish Ross Nathan Giuliani's third husband.

Rudi said the following yesterday:

Speaking to reporters in Cincinnati, Giuliani said: "I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers. ... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them."

Michael Palladino, head of the Detectives Endowment Association, the union of NYPD detectives, told the Associated Press that the mayor's record can't compare to those who spent 12 months sifting through toxic debris for evidence and human remains.

Atrios appropriately asks for researchers to prove how false this statement is.  Two obvious sources of information are the photographic and medical records.

• Every photo of Rudy on 9/11 shows him running away from the tragedy. There is no photo of Rudy getting dirt on his hands. Rudy is not the guy who tried to remove rubble from atop a body. Rudy ran uptown, while heroes were running downtown. He even turned the city's police commissioner into his own personal body guard, instructing Kerick to run up town. The photographic evidence proves that Rudy saw the fallen World Trade Center as a site for photo-ops; not for work.
• The medical evidence is just as compelling. As his exhausting campaign schedule shows, Rudi has no respiratory problems.  Yet a study by Mt Sinai done a year ago showed close to 70% of actual responders had breathing problems. Rudy is quite careful about his health. Let him show us his lung x-rays, and we can tell how much time he spent at Ground Zero.

Rudy has even less respect for the real heroes of 9/11 than he does for the truth. He lied to the 9/11 commission about the reasons so many firefighters died that day. He is now minimizing the sacrifices made by those who actually worked to try to save others.  I'm sure he feels he has suffered as much as anyone in the Great War On Terrorism, even more so than the paraplegics stuck at Walter Reid Hospital.