The 9/11 hijackers and Osama bin Laden, all deservedly dead, planned a coordinated attack with multiple strikes, killing thousands. They made no distinction between victims at the World Trade Center or at the Pentagon or at the likely target of the Capitol, which was saved when heroic passengers brought down Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
So why does the health program set up by Congress under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for responders and survivors suffering from serious and too often fatal maladies from exposure to the toxic fallout from the attack — a program that this column has championed for years — exclude Department of Defense personnel, civilian and uniform, if they incurred their 9/11 illnesses at the Pentagon and Shanksville?
Be it an oversight or a drafting error, the implications are clear, as Mike McAuliff explains in the Daily News: Military personnel who aided the rescue and recovery at the Pentagon and in Shanksville and were sickened with cancer and other diseases are not eligible to have Uncle Sam pick up their medical treatment. Soldiers and sailors and Marines and DOD civilians who were exposed downtown are in the program, as are other non-military people, such as firefighters and cops, who were exposed at the Pentagon and Shanksville.
