The Battle For Ground Zero, Part 42

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday dealt a crushing blow to the International Freedom Center planned for Ground Zero, saying she wants the project canned for failing to listen to the 9/11 families.

"I cannot support the IFC," Clinton declared last night in a strongly worded statement in response to an inquiry from The Post.

Her tough comments are Clinton's first significant remarks about the controversy raging at Ground Zero over the Freedom Center, which 9/11 families and other critics fear will become a center of anti-Americanism.

"While I want to ensure that development and rebuilding in lower Manhattan move forward expeditiously, I am troubled by the serious concerns family members and first responders have expressed to me," Clinton said.

"The LMDC [Lower Manhattan Development Corp.] has authority over the site and I do not believe we can move forward until it heeds and addresses their concerns."

The family members of victims, as well as unions representing the city's cops and firefighters, want nothing less than the Freedom Center being booted from Ground Zero.

The crushing blow eh? Okay. Whatever it takes to end this sad chapter in the rebuilding of Ground Zero. It's a curious political step for Hillary to take, but getting on the good side of cops and firefighters is a shrewd political move with a Senate campaign (and possible Presidential aspirations) looming next year. Even the NY Post editorial page is impressed for her stand against the IFC. While this is sure to upset some of the more her more liberal backers, the opposition to the IFC now has a broad bipartisan makeup:

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also voiced concern yesterday and called for a compromise — although he didn't state flat-out opposition to the Freedom Center.

"There's got to be a way to meet the families' sincere and real needs and build a center that honors the freedom that the victims died for. We hope that the LMDC will find some common ground quickly," Schumer said.

Gov. Pataki — who wields strong influence over the LMDC, which will soon decide the Freedom Center's fate — is traveling abroad and has yet to take a stand on the Freedom Center's latest proposal. Pataki has said thathe won't support any plan that offers a forum for anti-Americanism.

Clinton's opposition means that the anti-IFC push is now a bipartisan cause. Three New York Republicans — Reps. John Sweeney (Saratoga), Peter King (L.I.) and Vito Fossella (S.I.) — are already challenging it as a "blame America first" project.

Yesterday, the trio of Republicans formally requested a congressional oversight hearing as a step toward blocking the IFC from getting any of the $2.7 billion in federal funds allocated for Ground Zero.

As Andrea Peyser notes, the IFC would be an affront to the memories of those murdered on 9/11 by putting all kinds of other issues before getting to why this center even was being built in the first place - the hijacking of planes, the destruction of the WTC, and the murder of nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11.

And the plan demonstrates, beyond doubt, that if the Freedom Center is built at Ground Zero, it will serve to dishonor, demean and insult the memory of the thousands who died on 9/11.

It will do so by completely ignoring their own particular brand of sacrifice. Or worse — degrading it as unimportant.

There's a planned "Freedom Walk" — where people can walk through a representation of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, see Gandhi leading the Salt March, watch Martin Luther King Jr. write his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and watch the Berlin Wall fall.

The victims of 9/11 are less than an afterthought.

After naming all the historic celebs you will meet on the Freedom Walk, the document finally gets to 9/11.

Technorati: World Trade Center, WTC, Pataki, LMDC, urban policy, Freedom Tower, IFC, Drawing Center, Ground Zero.