posted
Donald Rumsfeld, among others, has been accused of collecting souvenirs of the 9-11 attacks. As much as I dislike Rumsfeld, I had to wonder whether there might be an appropriate set of circumstances under which top officials in our Defense and Intelligence agencies might well want to retain reminders of those events.
It could be a sort of penance -- "we let this happen on our watch" kind of thing. If that's what it is about, then I'm all for it. In fact, why not let every one of them carry around a shard of their failure if they want to. It would actually improve my opinion of them. If that was the purpose.
But it does appear that some of the items were collected as personal favors to dignitaries and distributed as gifts. I'm not sure the motivation behind such a gift, but it does seem macabre...
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This is Rumsfeld - so humility and penance aren't the likeliest explanations for his behavior.
Having said that, the only item specifically mentioned in an article (linked below) is of the plane that crashed into the pentagon. It's kept in plain sight on a table in his office. A spokesperson says he "doesn't consider it his own."
I'm not a fan of the guy, but if this is the extent of his "souvenirs" (term used in the article), there's probably not much to complain about.
There's a much bigger problem, though, when it comes to FBI agents - who were collecting souvenirs at the World Trade Center, just for personal gratification or maybe even profit.
posted
Bob...I can understand your point about penance.
But, it just bothers me that there are these pieces of such horrible events floating around to be gaped at and ooh'd and aah'd over. I agree with the person who, in one of the news articles about this, called it "ghoulish". That's exactly what it is, no matter who it is who has them. Rumsfeld included.
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posted
I promise I am not trying to be inflammatory here, but... what is the problem? 9/11 was a historic event, and if I was connected to it more closely than I actually am I might have wanted a piece of it as well. I see little difference between that and the exploration of Tutankhamen's tomb. Buying and selling is a little tacky, I guess, but less so than half the items you find in a mall.
Personal items belonging to a victim are different; those should of course be returned to the families. But a piece of shrapnel... I honestly cannot understand why it should be a big deal.
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quote:The report stated FBI agents who worked in New York repeatedly expressed their disgust that visiting colleagues and supervisors would "want to take items, including pieces of the building which were contaminated with blood and human body parts."
The report disclosed that among the items taken, agents had cut World Trade Center security patches from the sleeves of shirt pieces found in the rubble.
This goes beyond tacky.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I don't like Rumsfeld's politics or world view, never did. But I don't have the slightest objection to the US Secretary of Defense keeping a reminder of the cost of over-relaxed vigilance due to misplaced priorities on his desk. Especially Rumsfeld, who was among those who actually physically participated in the rescue&recovery of personnel immediately after the attack on the Pentagon, where the piece of jet wreckage being used as a momento was found.
I'm basically in the same place you are - although I think it's important that the piece of plane wreckage remain a possession of the Defense Secretary (the officeholder) rather than Rumsfeld himself.
And, I think it's a separate issue than the private "looting" of souvenirs that contained human remains and/or were part of individual clothing and possessions.
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posted
Thanks -- meme->memento->memory -- I woulda probably continued misspelling the word after failing to catch my mistake this time.
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