Salon: Has Bush* No Shame? [View All]

Relatives of 9/11 victims say the president's new ad campaign desecrates ground zero -- and demand that he pull it off the air.

Andrew Rice, like many 9/11 family members, is speaking out against campaign commercials for President Bush that use television footage from the place where his brother died. Ground zero, fallen firefighters, the torched and toppled remains of the World Trade Center -- these images are sacred to Rice, and he doesn't want them used as fodder for anyone's political gain. "Taking images, sensitive images, like those firefighters carrying that coffin -- that's a dead body in that coffin," Rice said. "It's not Gettysburg 100 years after a battle. They are real firefighters carrying a dead body. That should be hands-off."

But Bush's spokeswoman and longtime advisor Karen Hughes told Rice and other family members on Thursday that they are plain wrong to be incensed that Bush-Cheney '04 is using 9/11 footage in a multimillion dollar ad campaign. "With all due respect, I just completely disagree, and I believe the vast majority of the American people will as well," she said in a television interview.

Hughes, unlike many protesting family members of 9/11 victims, approves of the ground zero footage in the president's political ads, using the kind of language some use to describe softcore porn. "I think it is very tasteful," she said. "It is a reminder of our shared experience as a nation."

And those who disagree with her and the White House clearly have an agenda, Hughes says. They must be partisan. They must be Democrats. "I can understand why some Democrats might not want the American people to remember the great leadership and strength the president and first lady Laura Bush brought to our country in the aftermath of that," Hughes said.

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"I have no idea what the political affiliation is of people I've been talking to," he said in an interview Thursday. "I was a Republican up until I voted for Bush. I will still vote for a good Republican, but not for Bush. To say this is Democrats doing this is another damn lie."

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For some 9/11 families, the Republican Convention in New York, scheduled later than usual this year to coincide with the third anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, is the true test of how far Bush will go to exploit their tragedy. From what they've heard, they're expecting the worst. News accounts have suggested Bush has plans to travel to ground zero during the convention, perhaps to give his acceptance speech, just as he used an aircraft carrier to prematurely proclaim the accomplishment of his mission in Iraq. Some family groups are already planning their response to this use of ground zero as a campaign backdrop. According to Rice, the GOP's plan to exploit ground zero this fall will motivate some 9/11 families to join the estimated 1 million protesters who will descend on New York in early September.

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http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/05/bush_ads/index.html