Rudy's oversimplifications & distortions are a tour de force following GOP debate

I've been meaning to get to this one, and before it's too after-the-fact, I have to mention it. After watching the Republican debate on Tuesday night, I left CNN on to listen to some of the post-debate interviews.

I was paying attention half-heartedly until Rudy Giuliani came on with Larry King. He immediately started dropping some whoppers. Here's an excerpt of his interview with King:

GIULIANI: If we have confusion about who is in the United States [referring to the immigration bill], then these situations like we've had in New Jersey, like the situation we had in Fort Dix with the attacks that take place - we're after September 11 now. And if this bill is going to be worth all the compromising that's necessary, it has to achieve a complete database of the people who are in this country.

KING: I think of all the candidates, you were the one attacking the Democrats the most, mentioning by name the debate of two nights ago.

Are you running already?

GIULIANI: Well, you know, I'm running against the...

KING: Have you got the nomination?

GIULIANI: I'm not running against the people on that stage. I mean we have some...

KING: Well, you are.

GIULIANI: Well, I'm not really. I have some disagreements with them, but largely, I hear things that I agree with. I mean, a lot of the things Senator McCain said, I agree with. Mitt Romney, at least three or four times, said, "I agree with Mayor Giuliani."

I probably disagreed with him most of the time.

My disagreements with are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and John Edwards. John Edwards saying that the war on terror was just a bumper sticker, and not even amending that after this plot in New York was uncovered to attack Kennedy Airport.

It's not a bumper sticker. It is a real war. And whatever you think about Iraq, it's bigger than Iraq.

These people want to come here and kill us...

Unbelievable - it was predictable as the day is long that as soon as Edwards said that the War on Terror is simply a bumper-sticker slogan, his statement would be distorted and maligned by hawkish Republicans (with a nod to Ron Paul).

Here is what John Edwards said during the June 3 Democratic Debate:

I reject this bumper sticker, Wolf. And that's exactly what it is. It's a bumper sticker.

As president of the United States, I will do absolutely everything to find terrorists where they are, to stop them before they can do harm to us, before they can do harm to America or to its allies.

Every tool available - military alliances, intelligence - I will use.

But what this global war on terror bumper sticker - political slogan, that's all it is, all it's ever been - was intended to do was for George Bush to use it to justify everything he does: the ongoing War in Iraq, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, spying on Americans, torture.

None of those things are OK. They are not the United States of America.

But, people like Rudy Giuliani and Bill O'Reilly have done nothing but distort and take out of context what Edwards said. And Rudy was right on message on Tuesday night. I should point out that Giuliani has appeared on Billy's show on numerous occasions, so people who want to paint BOR as someone out of the Republican mainstream need a reality check. (More on O'Reilly's Edwards distortions in a later post. Back to the Giuliani/King interview:

GIULIANI: I think the Democrats want to put us in reverse to the 1990s. All I heard on that stage two nights ago was to go back to the 1990s. The 1990s - when our taxes were 24, 25 percent higher. [No Rudy, when YOUR taxes were 24-25 percent higher, and any other millionaire - PECAD] The 1990s - when we weren't recognizing the Islamic threat against us, when they attacked the USS Cole and we didn't retaliate. We didn't do anything about it.

They attacked us in 1993. We had a criminal justice response, not a response commensurate with a terrorist threat.

KING: But we only have a minute left.

You will agree Iraq is the gorilla in the room, though?

GIULIANI: Iraq is...

KING: You can't escape Iraq.

GIULIANI: Iraq is very, very important. But how you deal with it is going to say a lot about how we deal with this terrorist threat. And to give the enemy a timetable of our retreat - when in the history of war has any army ever been required to do that? And that's why I think the Democrats are in denial.

So, if Giuliani is elected president, we can expect more of the same in Iraq? I'm wondering how the American public feels about that. Recent polls show that more than 2/3 of America disagrees with his position.

I also got a kick out of Rudy saying he's not running against the people on the stage with him, his fellow GOP presidential hopefuls. That's pretty arrogant. Polls right now show him in the lead, but I've also read that his lead is shrinking. Right now, he IS running against other GOP candidates, whether he likes it or not. Of course, every GOP candidate has to state what how his views differ from Democrats as well as fellow GOP candidates, but Giuliani seems to be simply dismissing the other candidates. That's no surprise - the arrogant candidate acting arrogant.

What outraged me most about his King interview was his vast, Reagan-like oversimplification of terrorism.

First of all, history shows that it was the BUSH administration that did not retaliate for the USS Cole bombing, not the Clinton administration. I've done some reading on this - Giuliani acts like we immediately knew who attacked the Cole and that we had airtight proof. That's simply not true.

From the 9-11 Commission:

Evidence of al-Qaeda's involvement was inconclusive for months after the attack. The staff of the 9-11 Commission found that al-Qaeda's direction of the bombing was under investigation but "increasingly clear" on November 11, 2000. It was an "unproven assumption" in late November. By December 21 the CIA had made a "preliminary judgment" that "al-Qaeda appeared to have supported the attack," with no "definitive conclusion."

Giuliani's also way out of bounds for deriding the Clinton administration for its "criminal justice response, not a response commensurate with a terrorist threat."

That's flat-out b.s. First of all, we caught who was responsible for the 1993 attacks. Following the '93 World Trade Center attack, ATF bomb technicians found the axle in the bomb crater with the VIN of the Ryder truck that carried the explosives. The ATF discovered the vehicle had been rented by a Palestinian named Mohammad Salameh.

On March 4, 1993 authorities announced the capture of Salameh. In March 1994, Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Mahmud Abouhalima and Ahmad Ajaj were each convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the World Trade Center bombing.

In a sweep the same day, Salameh's arrest led to the apartment of Abdul Rahman Yasin in Jersey City, New Jersey, which Yasin was sharing with his mother, in the same building as Ramzi Yousef's apartment. Yasin was taken to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headquarters in Newark, New Jersey, and was then released. (Great, but that's Clinton's fault? Try the FBI.) The next day, he flew back to Iraq, via Amman, Jordan. Yasin was later indicted for the attack, and in 2001 he was placed on the initial list of the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists, on which he remains a fugitive today. He disappeared prior to 2003's U.S. coalition invasion in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The capture of Salameh and Yasin led authorities to Ramzi Yousef's apartment, where they found bomb-making materials and a business card from Mohammed Jamal Khalifa. Khalifa was arrested in relation to the crime on December 14, 1994, and was deported to Jordan by the INS on May 5, 1995. He was acquitted by a Jordanian court and lives as a free man in Saudi Arabia. Yea, the same Saudi Arabia that has such a cozy relationship with the Bush administration. The same Saudi Arabia that is responsible for 15 of the 19 9-11 hijackers. The same Bush administration that Rudy has functioned as a PR flak for since 9-11.

The 1990s also shows that the Clinton administration also prevented a number of intended attacks in the United States. Funny how those foiled plots never got very much press though. That's a 180 compared to today, when an FBI agent finding a scrap of paper on the street is heralded as "foiling a major terrorist plot." Anyone who needs great examples of that - the recent Fort Dix and JFK "terrorist plots."

Of course, since 9-11 is Rudy's "franchise" and because he's from New York, he's going to milk those two instances for all they are worth. Never mind the fact that he was mayor of New York City for almost all of the 1990s (and mayor during the entire time between the WTC terrorist attacks). I've read lots about how his arrogance and lack of preparation of the city made the immediate aftermath of 9-11 worse, not better. (I'm reading some books about this soon, and I'll blog more at length about it.)

Giuliani is beyond contempt - a man who has profited and made millions of of 9-11. Whoops - another inconvenient truth about American's Mayor that receives next to no press from our liberal media.