Kristen Breitweiser: "In the three years since 9/11, I could never have imagined I would be here today, disappointed in the person I voted for, for president,"
Patty Casazza: "It was President Bush who thwarted our attempts at every turn."
Breitweiser: "We were joking amongst ourselves yesterday that we should come down here geared up in football pads and helmets, because we were anticipating personal attacks...Some other 9/11 family members have supported President Bush, and I think we have always been respectful of anyone's points of view. And I hope that going forward, the debate and dialogue will be about the issues and it will be respectful and lively. But most important, respectful."
Think about it. These women, who lost their husbands on 9/11, know...not feel or think, but KNOW...that they're going to be dismissed as partisan hacks. Breitweiser is a lifelong Republican (and is not switching parties to endorse Kerry), another fact she pointed out yesterday at a press conference at the National Press Club.
Breitweiser: "I am scared [by] the mentality that my daughter, who is 5 years old, is being handed a tomorrow that will be a war for a lifetime. My husband was killed on 9/11. I do not want to lose my daughter 18 years from now when she's walking or living in a large city, and it's payback for our actions in Iraq,"
Lorie Van Auken: "Unfortunately, before the work in Afghanistan was complete ... this administration moved our most precious resources, America's sons and daughters, into Iraq, without the support of our allies. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and that is what we learned from the 9/11 commission's final report. "Sept. 11 was an enormous intelligence failure, and yet nothing was done to fix our intelligence after 9/11, and that same intelligence apparatus took us into Iraq. So it's doubly frustrating to learn that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11."
Salon has more.