I listened to Rudy G. speaking at the Congressional 9/11 inquiry this morning. He talked about how he disliked the focus on mistakes made by police and firefighters. He talked about how many terrorist threats NYC gets every year, usually focusing on the subways and government buildings. How he had been criticized for closing down buildings too quickly and disrupting services. He also talked about how in any unanticipated emergency there was a combination of heroism and mistakes, and how we should focus our blame on the terrorists, not on those who did their humanly best to respond to the situation, and who managed to evacuate several thousand from the World Trade Center.

Rudy is the man. Hindsight is 20/20. Although we should find ways of improving our response in the future, I don't think blaming those who were responding to the emergency does us any good. My thoughts go out to the victims and their families, but we should be applauding the efforts of those worked their hardest to minimize the losses and not blame them for being imperfect.

I'm looking for a transcript of Mayor Giuliani's remarks. He said it much better than I could here.