HERO 9/11 vets expressed their fury at Joe Biden after the Pentagon approved giving Covid vaccines to Guantanamo Bay terror inmates before most Americans.
Tom Van Essen, who was New York City Fire Commissioner during the September 11 attacks, called the move “f**king nuts.”
“You can’t make this up,” he told the New York Post. “This ridiculousness of what we get from our government.”
“They will run the vaccine down to those lowlifes at Guantanamo Bay before every resident of the United States of America gets it is in the theater of the absurd.”
Among those at Guantanamo who could be eligible to get the vaccine as soon as next week is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the supposed principal architect of the 9/11 attack
The Pentagon revealed on Friday the Cuba prison would begin offering the jabs to “to all detainees and prisoners,” should they choose to get it.
The move is reportedly intended to help resume legal proceeding against prisoners like Mohammed, which had been delayed due to the pandemic.
Still, many are enraged, including many people who were on the ground after the attacks Mohammed is accused of helping to orchestrate.
“The fact that the 9/11 community can’t get the vaccine and the terrorists can show how backward our government is,” John Feal, who was a demolition supervisor at Ground Zero, said.
“It’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard. It’s an insult to the people who ran into the towers and were killed and those who worked on the pile for months and are ill.”
Terry Adirim, the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for health affairs and an appointee of President Joe Biden, signed the order on Wednesday, according to the Pentagon.
The order means that the inmates will have a chance to get inoculated sooner than the majority of free and innocent Americans including, as Feal pointed out The Post, many people who have developed 9/11-related illnesses.
Mohammed, accused of engineering the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack that killed 2,977 Americans, is among 40 detainees at the US military prison in Cuba.
While the Biden administration is ramping up vaccine distribution—aiming to inject 100million Americans in the president’s first 100 days in office and 300million Americans by the summer—the country still lags behind.
Many seniors are still struggling to land appointments for the jab and it is not yet available to younger Americans.
Brian Sullivan, a retired special security agent with the Federal Aviation Administration, told the Post he was “incensed” and that the order was “totally outrageous.”
“I’m 75. I haven’t gotten my Covid vaccine. They’re going to give it Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?” Sullivan said.
“This news adds insult to injury. It’s [a] slap in the face to the 9/11 victims’ families.”
Sullivan added that this year will be the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and “the terrorists are still at Guantanamo and now we’re going to give them the Covid vaccine, it’s just insane.”
Republican Rep Elise Stefanik said it is “inexcusable and un-American” that Biden “is choosing to prioritize convicted terrorists in Gitmo over vulnerable American seniors or veterans.”
