"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Monday, September 24, 2007

Rudy Giuliani: Another Serial Liar
Posted by Jill | 7:18 AM
That's all we need, another faux tough-guy president who lies with impunity.

For some strange reason (maybe they're in love with Fred Thompson?), the Washington Post today bursts the "Rudy Giuliani is Tough on Terrorism" bubble:

As Rudolph W. Giuliani campaigns for president, he rarely misses a chance to warn about the threat from terrorists. "They hate you," he told a woman at an Atlanta college. They "want to kill us," he told guests at a Virginia luncheon.

The former New York City mayor exhorts America to fight back in what he calls the "terrorists' war on us" and accuses Democrats of reverting to their "denial" in the 1990s, when, he said, President Bill Clinton erred by treating terrorism as a law enforcement matter, not a war.

[snip]

In presenting himself as the candidate most knowledgeable about terrorism, Giuliani stakes the same claim he used to build a successful consulting firm after leaving City Hall: that he is not only a strong leader in a crisis, but someone who was deeply engaged with the Islamic extremist threat long before planes hit the World Trade Center.

But for most of Giuliani's career as a Department of Justice official, prosecutor and New York's chief executive, terrorism was a narrow aspect of his broader crime-fighting agenda, which was dominated by drug dealers, white-collar criminals and the Mafia. Giuliani expressed confidence that Islamic extremism could be contained through vigorous investigation by law enforcement agencies and prosecution in the court system -- the same approach he now condemns.

His public warnings about the threat were infrequent. To the extent that he mentioned terrorism in his aborted run for the Senate in 2000, for example, it was to call for more spending on intelligence. Even in the weeks after Sept. 11, he framed the attacks in the language of crime, describing the hijackers as "insane murderers" and calling for restoration of the "rule of law."

As mayor, Giuliani made decisions that seemed to discount the gravity of the terrorist threat, such as placing his emergency command center at the World Trade Center a few years after the 1993 bombing attack there, against the wishes of top advisers. By his own account, it was after Sept. 11 that he started reading up on al-Qaeda, devouring a book that his then-girlfriend Judith Nathan bought for him.


No doubt measuring herself for her queen's crown while doing so.

It's a long and detailed article that systematically slices and dices Giuliani's claim to be the best qualified leader to deal with terrorism. The problem is that the reality of Rudy Giuliani is not what Americans in the flyover states have seen. All they know is that he's the guy who showed up for work on 9/11/01 while George W. Bush was sitting glazed-eyed in an elementary school classroom and then flying willy-nilly around the country in Air Force One. On the day when frightened Americans yearned for leadership, Rudy was about as close as they got. But no one should be fooled that doing his job makes him somehow a hero. It's one thing to use the soft bigotry of low expectations when dealing with a numbskull like George W. Bush. It's another one to use it to turn yourself into Superman.

Labels: ,

0 comments
Bookmark and Share