CNN) -- A Florida man is using billboards with an image of the burning World Trade Center to encourage votes for a Republican presidential candidate, drawing criticism for politicizing the 9/11 attacks.
Businessman Mike Meehan says he has put up three billboards such as this one around Orlando, Florida.
"Please Don't Vote for a Democrat" reads the type over the picture of the twin towers after hijacked airliners hit them on September, 11, 2001.
Mike Meehan, a St. Cloud, Florida, businessman who paid to post the billboards in the Orlando area, said former President Clinton should have put a stop to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda before 9/11. He said a Republican president would have done so.
"I believe 9/11 could have been prevented if we'd had a Republican president at the time," Meehan said Wednesday on CNN's "American Morning."
But Democrats and Republicans are saying Meehan shouldn't be using a 9/11 image to make a political point.
"This is a blatant exploitation of that terrible tragedy for political and, perhaps even worse, personal gain," Bill Robinson, the Orange County, Florida, Democratic Party chairman told CNN affiliate WFTV-TV in Orlando.
It's also a blantant misrepresentaiton of the facts.
But hey, that's how the lunatic-fringe-conservatives ( both within the media and those that they target ) often operate.
Let's take a look at a few facts, shall we.
There's a CNN report about targeting Al-Queada training sites, some info regarding the Clinton administration's tracking down of terrorists, as well as more facts here and here.
This guy even latches onto Sean Hannity's favorite talking-point about having Bin Laden "offered up on a silver platter" - which is also wrong:
On July 20, ABC radio host Sean Hannity thrice repeated the false claim that former President Bill Clinton refused a 1996 offer from Sudan to hand Osama bin Laden over to the United States. Hannity has previously propagated this claim, for which the 9-11 Commission found "no reliable evidence to support."
Mr, Meehan doesn't seem to realize that the George W. Bush and his own adminstration didn't see terrorism as an "urgent issue":
President Bush's former counterterrorism chief testified Wednesday that the administration did not consider terrorism an urgent priority before the September 11, 2001, attacks, despite his repeated warnings about Osama bin Laden's terror network.
"I believe the Bush administration in the first eight months considered terrorism an important issue, but not an urgent issue," Richard Clarke told a commission investigating the September 11 attacks.
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