In six days America will commemorate the 7th year since the World Trade Center towers were destroyed. The common consensus since then has been that it’s simply inexcusable to try to use the memory or footage of those who died for political gain. With Rudy “9/11″ Giuliani speaking at this years Republican National Convention nobody would have been at all surprised if he pulled out his offensive “a noun, a verb, and 9/11″ trick, but they likely didn’t expect this:

For those of you unable to watch video’s Raw Story has the details:

…a full-on technicolor extravaganza as “tribute” to the day that briefly made their president among the most popular in history. (With George W. Bush’s approval ratings now cemented among the lowest in history, perhaps the GOP thought a good dose of terror-porn was just what was needed to rouse their troops.)

The three-minute video, which featured graphic, disturbing images of a plane flying into the World Trade Center and the Twin Towers’ collapse, attempts to conflate all of America’s struggles in the Middle East into a singular crusade against a uniform enemy.

“The first attack occurred in Iran,” the narrator says over photos of hostages held there in 1979. According to the video, it was the same enemy who bombed US embassies, the USS Cole and the Twin Towers and Pentagon.

[...]

The video was the most deliberate and graphic use of images from 9/11 in a political context. Along with the montage of the collapsing towers — which is already seared into the consciousness of anyone who saw it happen on that day — is followed by video of a burning Pentagon, of police and firefighters combing through wreckage and of mourning families and missing persons posters.

Some mentally unstable partisan’s see nothing wrong with so brazenly using footage of the dead and dying for their own political benefit.  Thankfully, they’re in the minority.  For the rest of us on the left and right this is, simply put, disgusting.  Over at Riehl World View they sum things up nicely:

This isn’t just about appealing to someone’s emotions. Left or Right we should all agree that the dead are to be respected. And the video, added to Olbermann’s principled denouncement of the GOP makes it pretty clear - the GOP set out to exploit the dead for political gain as almost a theme for the convention. Sorry, but that’s just crossing the line with me.

The simple fact of the matter is 9/11 was one of the defining moments in American history.  It affected liberals.  It affected conservatives.  The people who carried out these attacks didn’t care what political persuasion their victims had, they hated us all.  This wasn’t an attack on any one group, it was an attack on America.  I was lucky, I didn’t know anyone who died.  Keith Olbermann however did:

Having craven political operatives try to use this tragedy for the sake of winning an election unfortunately isn’t that surprising and it was bound to happen.  Did they cross a line?  Absolutely, and that’s precisely why they deserve to lose this election.