Here’s a real blow to the tibia: chances are your 9/11 brain, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will receive the COVID vaccine before you.
People accused of terror, such as KSM and other Guantanamo Bay detainees, will begin receiving the coronavirus vaccine, the Pentagon confirmed Friday, even as the United States continues to experience severe miracle shortages.
A Defense Department spokesman confirmed that officials had signed an order to see COVID-19 vaccinations “offered to all detainees and prisoners.”
The images could be given as soon as next week.
“It will be administered voluntarily and in accordance with the Department’s priority distribution plan,” spokesman Michael Howard told The Post.
Forty detainees remain in the US military prison in Cuba, including the man accused of planning the worst ground attack in the United States, which claimed 2,977 innocent lives on September 11, 2001 and has since been linked to thousands more deaths.
The order was signed on January 27 by Terry Adirim, the deputy chief secretary of defense for health, who was appointed Biden on the day of the inauguration, a Pentagon spokesman confirmed.
The move immediately sparked outrage from New Yorkers who lived and helped bring New York back to its darkest day.
“You can not do that. The ridiculousness of what we receive from our government. They will administer the vaccine until those low lives at Guantanamo Bay, before every resident of the United States of America gets the theater of the absurd, ”said Tom Von Essen, who was fire commissioner on 9/11 and lost 343 of firefighters 9/11.
“It’s nuts,” he said of the KSM, which received the vaccine before most Americans could.
John Feal, a Ground Zero demolition supervisor after the attacks, who has various 9/11-related illnesses and has not yet received the vaccine, was amazed by the news.
“The fact that the 9/11 community cannot receive the vaccine and the terrorists can show how backward our government is,” he told The Post. “It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. It is an insult to people who fled to the towers and were killed and to those who worked in droves for months and are sick. ”
On average, 9/11 respondents were 38 at the time and now between the ages of 58 and 59, outside the New York vaccination deadline, said Feal, which runs the Feal Good Foundation, a support group. for the 9/11 respondents and which helped push Congress to permanently expand the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund.
Brian Sullivan, a retired security officer with the Federal Aviation Administration, said: “I am upset. This is totally scandalous. I am 75 years old. I did not get my COVID vaccine. Will Khalid Sheikh give him Mohammed? ”
Sullivan added that it is a scandal that the terrorists did not face justice as the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches. “This news adds insult to injury. It’s a slap in the face to the families of the 9/11 victims, “Sullivan said.
“This year will be the 20th anniversary, and the terrorists are still at Guantanamo. And now we will give them the COVID vaccine. It’s just crazy. “
Two other men, accused of being accomplices to the 2002 bombings of the Bali nightclub, which killed 202 people, are also said to have received vaccines under the command of the Department of Defense.
The Pentagon’s decision comes as states like New York complain that their closets are empty, forcing them to cancel a mass inoculation program, and the Biden administration warns that the lack of jab will last until 2021.
On Tuesday, The Post revealed that thousands of teachers in New York had canceled COVID-19 vaccine programming due to declining supply and snafus programming.
“It is inexcusable and non-American that President Biden chooses to give priority to Gitmo convicted terrorists over vulnerable American seniors or veterans,” said Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY).
Lt. Michael O’Connell, a FDNY retiree, worked to search and rescue when the towers fell. He left him with sarcoidosis, an autoimmune disease.
“It simply came to our notice then. It’s very annoying. It’s absolutely disgusting, “he said of the Gitmo vaccination order.
“These terrorists have done harm, but the patriots are the ones who have to wait to be vaccinated. I responded within 10 seconds of the first plane crashing into the building. Here we are a year later [since the COVID-19 outbreak] and politicians cannot understand the coronavirus vaccine correctly. ”
– Additional reporting by Steven Nelson