WTC update

A very troubling article by Debra Burlingame in the Wall St. Journal (via Power Line) about the World Trade Center Memorial in planning:

The World Trade Center Memorial Cultural Complex will be an imposing edifice wedged in the place where the Twin Towers once stood. It will serve as the primary "gateway" to the underground area where the names of the lost are chiseled into concrete. The organizers of its principal tenant, the International Freedom Center (IFC), have stated that they intend to take us on "a journey through the history of freedom" -- but do not be fooled into thinking that their idea of freedom is the same as that of those Marines. To the IFC's organizers, it is not only history's triumphs that illuminate, but also its failures. The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona.

Burlingame, whose brother was the pilot of American flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, says that this is driven by the political outlook of the people in charge.

The driving force behind the IFC is Tom Bernstein, the dynamic co-founder of the Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment Complex who made a fortune financing Hollywood movies.
* * * * *The public has a right to know that it was Mr. Bernstein's organization, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, that filed a lawsuit three months ago against Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was Human Rights First that filed an amicus brief on behalf of alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, an American citizen who the Justice Department believes is an al Qaeda recruit. It was Human Rights First that has called for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the alleged torture of detainees, complete with budget authority, subpoena power and the ability to demand that witnesses testify under oath.

According to Burlingame, others involved in the project include a "a Who's Who of the human rights, Guantanamo-obsessed world." She concludes by asking, "Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?"

UPDATE (6/9): Richard Tofel, president of the IFC, responds in a piece in the Wall St. Journal. Summary: "Blah, blah, blah."

UPDATE (6/15): Just noticed Michelle Malkin's summary of Tofel's piece: "Blah times 3." Great minds think alike. (See previous update.)

UPDATE (6/16): Takebackthememorial.org.