After laying a wreath at Ground Zero, President Obama is meeting with first responders and families of 9/11 victims today in his first visit to Ground Zero since 2008 and since announcing the death of Osama bin Laden. Retired fire chief Jim Riches, whose son, a firefighter, died while responding to the World Trade Center attacks, was invited to meet with the President, and he said, "I’m gonna thank him for what they did. He was a man of his word. He did [what] he was supposed to do. There will be no closure for me; my friends are not coming back. But I think he deserves an ‘atta boy’ for doing what they did."

Riches described looking for his son Jimmy's body, "When we did find his body down at Ground Zero, there was a stretcher with a woman right nearby his body, so you know he was helping her and consoling her all the way down, I’m sure. That’s just the way he was." Riches is also grateful to the Navy SEALs for their mission, "They won’t know the happiness they brought to us and if I could, I would have loved to be there and hug each and every one of them."

Queens resident John Cartier wants to give Obama a photograph of his brother James Cartier, "I'm going to tell him, 'This is the reason you had to do what you did. This face is one of thousands.' And I want him to personally thank, on my behalf, the team that killed bin Laden." And Kurt Horning, a NJ resident whose son died in the attacks, says that he'll tell the president the sea burial Bin Laden received was too good, "He was washed and wrapped and buried at sea after prayers were read and thousands of people from the World Trade Center are in a garbage dump in Staten Island."

However, Debra Burlingame, whose brother was a pilot in one of the planes that hit the WTC, told Politico, "There is a growing controversy right now, as we speak, over the whole manner in which the White House is doing this," saying that the president is "using families in what is a transparent political ploy." She did "root" for Obama when he announced Bin Laden's death, but "This is wrong, and I don’t know if they even understand it." (FWIW, Burlingame is no fan of Obama's and an opponent of the mosque proposed for a few blocks from the site; Riches is also an opponent of the mosque.)