9/11 happened om George Bush’s watch. Who can forget those seven minutes of stunned silence. while he listened to the reading of “My Pet Goat.” But then he moved into action. Spoke with a bullhorn atop a mound of rubble at the site of the World Trade Center to rally America. Told us to go shopping to fight terrorism. Told the rest of the world “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

And ordered the EPA to lie to the World Trade Center volunteers, firefighters, police, other workers and residents in and around the massive clean-up site that the toxic stew of air to which they were exposed was perfectly safe to breathe.

Now those same, trusting, heroic people are getting cancer as a result of that lie. By the boatload:

(cont.)

NEW YORK – The head of the largest program tracking the health of World Trade Center site workers said several have developed rare blood cell cancers, raising fears that cancer will become a “third wave” of illnesses among those exposed to toxic dust after Sept. 11.

Dr. Robin Herbert, co-director of the World Trade Center Medical Monitoring Program at Mount Sinai Medical Center, said researchers who have screened 20,000 of the estimated 40,000 ground zero workers are “most concerned” about lymphatic and blood cancer cases. […]

“The kind of thing that worries us is that we know we have a handful of cases of multiple myeloma in very young individuals, and multiple myeloma is a condition that … almost always presents later in life,” she added. “That’s the kind of odd, unusual and troubling finding that we’re seeing already.”

Mount Sinai published research last year that said about 70 percent of the workers they screened had developed various respiratory illnesses. […]

An attorney representing thousands of workers and residents said that more than 100 of his clients have blood cell cancers. About eight have multiple myeloma, David Worby said. Most of his clients are in their 30s or 40s, and the youngest is 29, he said.

More than half of all cases of multiple myeloma, a plasma cell cancer that spreads throughout bone marrow, occur in people over 70, and about 1 percent of cases occur in people under 40, according to the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation in Norwalk, Conn. […]

Said Worby: “It’s not a great threat to the general public, but to people who are already sick and have these blood cell cancers and who gave up their lives … it’s a great threat to them because a lot of them are going to die.”

Yes, I know the terrorists flew planes into those buildings and created all that toxic air. But that doesn’t excuse President Bush from lying to the brave Americans who risked their lives to save others, and to salvage the site of the worst foreign attack on American soil regarding the risks they were taking with their health.

To him, and to others in his administration, it was more important to quickly erase the evidence of this attack, then it was to protect the health of the American people who responded to his call for help, or who did so simply because it was , like the firefighters, simply their job. Actions could have been taken to protect those people from the toxic effects of all that “bad air” but Bush decided expediency was more important than the lives of the people who trusted his judgment, and the judgment of his administration.

Under the criminal law, when someone takes an action that it he or she knows is likely to harm or kill another human being, we call that “a depraved indifference to human life” and such people can be prosecuted for premeditated murder in most states. That is what George Bush and/or others in his administration did when they lied to the 9/11 workers and the people who resided in lower Manhattan. They understood that the toxins released into the air by the attack on the Two Towers on 9/11/2001 were likely to cause respiratory illnesses and cancers among those living and working in the effected area, yet they still deliberately ordered th EPA to lie about these serious health hazards to human life. If that doesn’t qualify as “depraved indifference” I don’t know what does.

Last I heard, I President responsible for murdering innocent US civilians would have committed a “high crime and misdemeanor” justifying his impeachment. So why aren’t we proceeding with an impeachment investigation, or a murder investigation? Someone at the White House gave this order, and I suspect only the President of the United States had the authority to override the decisions of Christie Todd Whitman, head of the EPA and one of the members of his Cabinet. So I ask once more: Why isn’t the House of Representatives investigating this lie, which has killed, and will kill more, innocent Americans as possible grounds for impeaching President Bush?

I guess IOKIYAR* also applies to the intentional murder of Americans.

* IOKIYAR is an acronym for the phrase “It’s okay if your a Republican.”