Unanswered questions

It's remarkable, and disturbing, how quickly local news can broadcast an interview with grieving family members following a fire, crime, accident or other calamity.

The victims' loved ones often appear to be in shock, seeming too traumatized even to demand the privacy they require and deserve in the immediate aftermath of tragedy. Rarely is there any legitimate news value in these interviews, only raw emotion and the voyeuristic thrill of watching some unfortunate soul in the grip of one or more of Kubler-Ross's stages of grief.

Even more remarkable and disturbing is the way the media has come to almost completely ignore another set of grieving relatives — the families of the nearly 3,000 Americans who were killed in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

What these families have to say is newsworthy, but they can't seem to get anyone in the media — or the government — to listen.

The Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 Independent Commission has produced a list of questions they want answered. After more than two years of stonewalling and distractions, they're still waiting to hear these questions asked.

It's quite a list. Many of these are explosive questions. Many seem aggressively suspicious and accusatory. Reading this list, one gets the sense that anger is the stage of grief that most characterizes the members of the FSC.

But these are also necessary and important questions. It is astounding to consider, more than two years after the horror of 9/11, that so many of these questions remain unanswered and largely unasked. Realizing that these questions — and the families insistently asking them — have largely been ignored by the public, the government and the media, suggests that perhaps the rest of us are best characterized by denial.

I would never have imagined two years ago that this group of people would so soon find themselves so utterly marginalized, with scarcely a voice or a platform.

They deserve to be heard.

I have no answers for them. All I can do is join them in asking their questions.

Today's question is for President Bush:

"As commander-in-chief on the morning of 9/11, why didn’t you return immediately to Washington, D.C. or the National Military Command Center once you became aware that America was under attack? At specifically what time did you become aware that America was under attack? Who informed you of this fact?"