Bush's effort to co-opt 9/11 may enrage many closest to the tragedy -- and many who reside nearest the sites of attack -- but clearly they aren't the audience for the advertising. The ads are airing in 17 battleground states -- and not in the New York area. In those areas, as Hughes suggests, the ads may sit well with many Americans.

Rice fears that many voters in Oklahoma, where he lives, will approve. "I'm not critical of people who live in the middle of the country. They work hard all day, come home, but they don't come home and get on the Internet and educate themselves on issues," he said. "They trust the president; they'll be very moved by those images -- the flag and the busted-out windows. Karl Rove knows it's all about images. Let's get people emotionally, speak to the lowest common denominator -- like he's got some sort of special ownership over this."

While 9/11 family groups say they'd criticize any candidate who plays politics with the terror attacks, Bush is, still, a special case. It does make a difference that he is the one plastering images of ground zero into a video montage. It's Bush, after all, who has stonewalled the independent commission investigating the 9/11 attacks. The White House has consistently failed to cooperate with the panel. The White House fought creation of the commission, and caved only under pressure. Bush didn't want to appear before the commission to divulge what he knew before the attacks. His latest offer, rejected as not good enough, was to speak for only an hour, and only to two people, the chairman and co-chairman. The panel just barely won a 60-day extension of its probe, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice won't agree to testify in public.

Bush's failure to cooperate with the commission only stokes the families' anger. Andrew Rice called it hypocrisy. "On the one hand, he wants to use 9/11 for political gain, but he's not even cooperating with the commission. There is pretty extreme bipartisan cooperation for the commission. Rice won't testify, but Sandy Berger [Clinton's national security advisor] will. Clinton and Gore will. We're looking for balance on both sides."

The firefighters, too, have their substantive beefs with Bush. The same president who has used firefighters' images to promote himself has also made cuts in fire-fighting programs that have infuriated the International Association of Fire Fighters. Now the group has passed a resolution calling on the president to pull the ads.

"Since the attacks, Bush has been using images of himself putting his arm around a retired FDNY firefighter on the pile of rubble at ground zero. But for two and a half years he has basically shortchanged firefighters and the safety of our homeland by not providing firefighters the resources needed to do the job that America deserves," said the group's general president, Harold Schaitberger. "The fact is Bush's actions have resulted in fire stations closing in communities around the country. Two-thirds of America's fire departments remain understaffed because Bush is failing to enforce a new law that was passed with bipartisan support in Congress that would put more firefighters in our communities." Schaitberger, it's worth noting, is a John Kerry supporter, and the IAFF endorsed Kerry.

Retired New York firefighter Tom Ryan also feels betrayed by the president. Ryan was off duty on Sept. 11, 2001, but he watched the planes hit the World Trade Center on television at home and was at the scene by 11 a.m. Like so many firefighters, he worked 24 hours at a time for weeks after the attacks. And like so many firefighters and others who spent too much time near ground zero when it was still a burning pile, the heroic work has left him with breathing problems.

Ryan is outraged that Bush and his Environmental Protection Agency said the air was safe at ground zero. "They lied to us," he said. "They told us it wasn't that bad down there. We lost 3,000 that day but thousands and tens of thousands will be affected by the air quality. No one could have protected us from that, but you could also have not lied about it."

That's why it's especially galling for so many to see Bush making 9/11 the centerpiece of his campaign. When they needed him, he wasn't there. Now he needs them, or at least the image of their tragedy, to win. And it's painful.

"It's hard to explain this burning in my pit that goes on," said Ryan, trying to describe how he felt when he saw the use of the firefighters' image in the Bush-Cheney ad. "It's hard to put that into words sometimes. You'd have to be stupid to say this wasn't going to go on. This is probably going to be the ugliest campaign we've ever had in this country. It's going to be coming from both sides, Republican and Democrat, and I guess if you don't have both sides questioning from different angles we'll never get to the truth. It's like going through a divorce: A woman tells her side of the story, a man tells his side of the story and the judge has to decide. We have to be the judges."

Recent Stories