Comments from Aug 17: News Outlets Split

This Ground Zero worker, Bob Pernal, is NOT the anonymous commenter, as far as I know. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Anonymous commenter:
I've been to the WTC, there were no strip joints next door despite what libs want to use as an excuse.

My response:
Well, we knew you might get suspicious, so a few weeks ago we rushed up there and created a few building facades to make the article appear more convincing. But you're too clever for us Libs! Getting the businesses listed in the NYC Yellow Pages at such late notice cost us a small fortune, but we used all our hoarded welfare payments and made it happen!



From FACT CHECK: Islam already part of WTC neighborhood

THE FACTS:

No mosque is going up at ground zero. The center would be established at 45-51 Park Place, just over two blocks from the northern edge of the sprawling, 16-acre World Trade Center site. Its location is roughly half a dozen normal Lower Manhattan blocks from the site of the North Tower, the nearest of the two destroyed in the attacks.

The center's location, in a former Burlington Coat Factory store, is already used by the cleric for worship, drawing a spillover from the imam's former main place for prayers, the al-Farah mosque. That mosque, at 245 West Broadway, is about a dozen blocks north of the World Trade Center grounds.

Another, the Manhattan Mosque, stands five blocks from the northeast corner of the World Trade Center site.

To be sure, the center's association with 9/11 is intentional and its location is no geographic coincidence. The building was damaged in the Sept. 11 attacks and the center's planners say they want the center to stand as a statement against terrorism.

[Scary Muslim!] Guests listen as President Barack Obama speaks at an iftar dinner, the meal that breaks the dawn-to-dusk fast for Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan, in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, Friday, Aug. 13, 2010. For over a billion Muslims, Ramadan is a time of intense devotion and reflection. Obama emphasized the American tenet of religious freedom just as New York City is immersed in a deeply sensitive debate about whether a mosque should be built near the site of the World Trade Center that was destroyed during the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)