Coulter Slanders 911 Widows as Commission Forewarns

Ann Coulter describes herself as a polemic. In an apparently desperate effort to beat the drum for her new book that accuses liberals of being "godless", Ann Coulter took aim at the widows of 911. During her interview with Matt Lauer on the Today Show, she said: "These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing Bush was part of the closure process....These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much."

Lauer then asked: "Because they dare to speak out?" and Coulter responded: "To speak out using the fact they are widows....Don’t put up someone I am not allowed to respond to without questioning the authenticity of their grief....They were cutting commercials for Kerry. They were using their grief to make a political point while preventing anyone from responding." Of course, here's where Coulter sets up her own conundrum: these women became widows on 911 but should not discuss it, and should not offer the nation the benefit of identifying possible improvements to our national security derived from their excruciating experience.

To their credit and our national benefit, they responded, not with the vitriol that one might have expected, but with candor, grace and patriotism. "We did not choose to become widowed on September 11, 2001. The attack, which tore our families apart and destroyed our former lives, caused us to ask some serious questions regarding the systems that our country has in place to protect its citizens. Through our constant research, we came to learn how the protocols were supposed to have worked. Thus, we asked for an independent commission to investigate the loopholes which obviously existed and allowed us to be so utterly vulnerable to terrorists. Our only motivation ever was to make our Nation safer. Could we learn from this tragedy so that it would not be repeated?

We are forced to respond to Ms. Coulter’s accusations to set the record straight because we have been slandered.

Contrary to Ms. Coulter’s statements, there was no joy in watching men that we loved burn alive. There was no happiness in telling our children that their fathers were never coming home again. We adored these men and miss them every day.

It is in their honor and memory, that we will once again refocus the Nation’s attention to the real issues at hand: our lack of security, leadership and progress in the five years since 9/11."

They offered specific recommendations and the reasons for them, too.

1. Homeland Security Funding based on risk. Inattention to this area causes police officers, firefighters and other emergency/first responder personnel to be ill equipped in emergencies. Fixing this will save lives on the day of the next attack.

2. Intelligence Community Oversight. Without proper oversight, there exists no one joint, bicameral intelligence panel with power to both authorize and appropriate funding for intelligence activities. Without such funding we are unable to capitalize on all intelligence community resources and abilities to thwart potential terrorist attacks. Fixing this will save lives on the day of the next attack.

3. Transportation Security. There has been no concerted effort to harden mass transportation security. Our planes, buses, subways, and railways remain under-protected and highly vulnerable. These are all identifiable soft targets of potential terrorist attack. The terror attacks in Spain and London attest to this fact. Fixing our transportation systems may save lives on the day of the next attack.

4. Information Sharing among Intelligence Agencies. Information sharing among intelligence agencies has not improved since 9/11. The attacks on 9/11 could have been prevented had information been shared among intelligence agencies. On the day of the next attack, more lives may be saved if our intelligence agencies work together.

5. Loose Nukes. A concerted effort has not been made to secure the thousands of loose nukes scattered around the world – particularly in the former Soviet Union. Securing these loose nukes could make it less likely for a terrorist group to use this method in an attack, thereby saving lives.

6. Security at Chemical Plants, Nuclear Plants, Ports. We must, as a nation, secure these known and identifiable soft targets of Terrorism. Doing so will save many lives.

7. Border Security. We continue to have porous borders and INS and Customs systems in shambles. We need a concerted effort to integrate our border security into the larger national security apparatus.

8. Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Given the President’s NSA Surveillance Program and the re-instatement of the Patriot Act, this Nation is in dire need of a Civil Liberties Oversight Board to insure that a proper balance is found between national security versus the protection of our constitutional rights."

Yesterday, June 6, 2006, Tom Kean, chairman of the 9/11 Commission and the former Republican governor of New Jersey was back on Capitol Hill updating on the progress of recommendations made in the commission's final report. He said, "There is still a great deal we have to do and haven't done to protect the American people...(regarding the decision to cut security funding to NY & DC by 40%) "It's very hard to give below an F. If I could, I might…[Osama] bin Laden wants to target New York again, he wants to target Washington. Those are his two prime targets....I'm mad about New York City, I mean not getting what it needs. I'm mad about Washington."

Both Kean and his co-chair Lee Hamilton support granting subpoena power to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. "If the board does not have the power to get information they need, then there might as well not be a board...without subpoena power, the board's findings could be summarily overruled and shunted aside by top administration officials," said Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, in testimony before the House Government Reform Committee.

Bush and the GOP congressional leaders oppose granting the board subpoena power, but Representative Chris Shays (R-CT) is pushing for legislation to grant the board subpoena power after the furor over the NSA data mining of telephone records of American citizens and use of warrantless eavesdropping.

The board's chairperson, Carol E. Dinkins of Texas, said the board expects to receive the information it needs from the White House staff and the Department of Justice. Other members of the board are: Alan C. Raul of DC, Lanny J. Davis of MD, Francis X. Taylor of MD and Theodore B. Olson of VA (who argued Bush v. Gore) and lost his wife, Barbara, on American Airlines flight 77.

Coulter reveals her blatantly partisan, self-serving agenda by viciously slandering the courageous widows who offer their excruciatingly acquired insights into how to improve our national security. She describes how her good friend, Barbara Olson, "risked having her neck slit to warn the country of a terrorist attack. She was a patriot to the very end...(she was) nice and a patriot." The 911 widows have selflessly and astutely used the occasion of Coulter slandering them to specifically outline their recommendations for all our benefits. That's what truly nice, patriotic Americans do. Kudos to them!