Why Hasn't Guliani read the 9/11 Commission Report
mammasan
Posts: 5,656
Why Hasn,t Rudy Giuliani Read the 9-11 Commission Report?
May 16, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ARLINGTON, VA - During the "First in the South" GOP debate in South Carolina last night, one thing was made clear: Rudy Giuliani does not understand how to keep America safe.
When Congressman Ron Paul, who has long served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, explained how 50 years of American interventionism in the Middle East has helped compromise our national security, Giuliani interrupted saying he had "never heard anything so absurd." This statement is particularly troubling coming from the former mayor who tries to cast himself as a security expert, since Dr. Paul's point comes directly from the bi-partisan 9-11 Commission Report.
"Rudy Giuliani has tip-toed around the issues of abortion, guns and marriage. The only issue he has left is security, and he doesn't even get that right," said campaign chairman Kent Snyder. "It is clear from his interruption that former Mayor Giuliani has not read the 9-11 Commission Report and has no clue on how to keep America safe."
-30-
I just received this e-mail from the Paul campaign. Interesting how the report states the samething that Ron did last night. Goes to show you how in touch are politicians are with the security needs of this country.
May 16, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ARLINGTON, VA - During the "First in the South" GOP debate in South Carolina last night, one thing was made clear: Rudy Giuliani does not understand how to keep America safe.
When Congressman Ron Paul, who has long served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, explained how 50 years of American interventionism in the Middle East has helped compromise our national security, Giuliani interrupted saying he had "never heard anything so absurd." This statement is particularly troubling coming from the former mayor who tries to cast himself as a security expert, since Dr. Paul's point comes directly from the bi-partisan 9-11 Commission Report.
"Rudy Giuliani has tip-toed around the issues of abortion, guns and marriage. The only issue he has left is security, and he doesn't even get that right," said campaign chairman Kent Snyder. "It is clear from his interruption that former Mayor Giuliani has not read the 9-11 Commission Report and has no clue on how to keep America safe."
-30-
I just received this e-mail from the Paul campaign. Interesting how the report states the samething that Ron did last night. Goes to show you how in touch are politicians are with the security needs of this country.
"When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads." - Ron Paul
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The only thing Rudy has going for him is 9/11. Prior to the attacks his popularity here in NYC was in the fucking toilet.
Ron Paul is popular right now so any kind of non party line mentality is going to be perceived as INSANE buy the usual people. God forbid...a moderate actually be elected president, wouldn't want anyone to actually have to think rationally before acting.
Imagine actually reading documentation......
and reveling in it's loyalty. It's made by forming coalitions
over specific principles, goals, and policies.
http://i36.tinypic.com/66j31x.jpg
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( o.O)
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The 9-11 Commission based its assessments on testimony from experts on terrorism and the Middle East. Asked about the motivations of the terrorists, FBI Special Agent James Fitzgerald told the commission: "I believe they feel a sense of outrage against the United States. They identify with the Palestinian problem, they identify with people who oppose repressive regimes, and I believe they tend to focus their anger on the United States."
Fitzgerald's was not a lonely voice in the intelligence community. Michael Scheuer, the former Central Intelligence Agency specialist on bin Laden and al-Qaeda, has objected to simplistic suggestions by President Bush and others that terrorists are motivated by an ill-defined irrational hatred of the United States. "The politicians really are at great fault for not squaring with the American people," Scheuer said in a CNN interview. "We're being attacked for what we do in the Islamic world, not for who we are or what we believe in or how we live. And there's a huge burden of guilt to be laid at Mr. Bush, Mr. Clinton, both parties for simply lying to the American people."
It is true that reasonable people might disagree about the legitimacy of Muslim and Arab objections to U.S. military policies. And, certainly, the vast majority of Americans would object to any attempt to justify the attacks on this country, its citizen and its soldiers.
But that was not what Paul was doing. He was trying to make a case, based on what we know from past experience, for bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq.
Giuliani's reaction to Paul's comments, especially the suggestion that they should be withdrawn, marked him as the candidate peddling "absurd explanations."
Viewers of the debate appear to have agreed. An unscientific survey by Fox News asked its viewers to send text messages identifying the winner. Tens of thousands were received and Paul ranked along with Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney as having made the best showing.
No wonder then that, when asked about his dust-up with Giuliani, Paul said he'd be "delighted" to debate the front-runner on foreign policy.
And then we'll have poor farms again, with cows on them...and stuff.
Oh, and uh, don't look into my LLC's or my personal life.....those are off limits."
- Rudy, 2007
Doesn't it though?
Obama was the only presidential candidate today to release his entire tax return to the public. The rest of the candidates (Giuliani, Clinton II, Romney, etc.) only released their SEC reports of their net worth.
Big diff.
Fox News' Pro-Giuliani Conflict of Interest
By Cliff Kincaid | May 16, 2007
The exchange with Paul over 9/11 might have been seen in a different light if Hannity had asked Giuliani about why, according to the AP report, his firm represented Saudi Arabia.
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Rudy Giuliani's much-publicized but misleading put-down of Ron Paul during Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate should have been tempered by a report that Saudi Arabia, the country that spawned most of the 9/11 hijackers, has been one of Giuliani's lucrative foreign clients. However, Fox News questioners Chris Wallace and Wendell Goler did not bring it up.
Perhaps this can be explained by the fact that the same Associated Press story that named Saudi Arabia as a Giuliani client listed News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News, as another Giuliani client. This AP story, which was not disputed by Giuliani or News Corporation, was carried on the Fox News website.
This writer had raised questions about Fox News' co-sponsorship of the debate, based on the fact that the company had a relationship with Giuliani when he was mayor of New York City. But now we know that the relationship has continued into the period of time that Giuliani has been planning a presidential run. It is an obvious conflict of interest.
It was during a discussion of foreign policy that Paul, a Texas congressman, identified U.S. involvement in the Middle East, especially in Iraq, as a factor in the 9/11 attacks. Giuliani pounced on that, saying the claim was worse than absurd. "Rudy's Wrath" was the headline as Fox News proclaimed Giuliani the winner of the exchange. However, the Fox News text-message poll, with 40,000 votes, gave Paul 25 percent over Giuliani's 19 percent. Mitt Romney came in first with 29 percent.
Giuliani was the first Republican candidate to come on Fox News after the debate and talk about his performance. Co-host Sean Hannity wanted to focus on Giuliani's comments on 9/11 and his attack on Paul. Later, Michael Steele, Maryland's former Lieutenant Governor, was on Fox News, declaring that Giuliani had destroyed Ron Paul. "It's done," Steele said of Paul's campaign. It wasn't mentioned that Giuliani had campaigned for Steele when he ran for a Maryland Senate seat.
The exchange with Paul over 9/11 might have been seen in a different light if Hannity had asked Giuliani about why, according to the AP report, his firm represented Saudi Arabia. But that was a taboo topic.
Equally important, it turns out that Paul's point-that the 9/11 attacks were linked to U.S. involvement in Iraq and the Middle East-was factually correct. Osama bin Laden's 1996 "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places" specifically mentioned the situation in Iraq, blaming the U.S. for the impact of economic sanctions on the Saddam Hussein regime. Bin Laden accused the U.S. of "aggression" against Iraq and the record shows that his anti-Americanism was motivated, at least in part, by the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia.
Yet, Giuliani claimed "I don't think I've heard that before," in reference to Paul's citation of some of these facts. One would think that "America's Mayor" and "Mr. 9/11" would understand the genesis of the attacks that took almost 3,000 American lives.
Despite the facts of the case, Fox News correspondent Steve Brown said it was a matter of "Mission Accomplished" for Giuliani because of his exchange with Paul. Of course, "Mission Accomplished" has become associated with a war in Iraq that has no end in sight. Paul has been against the Iraq War from the beginning. He made the point, as he had during the first debate on MSNBC, that the war had cost the GOP control of Congress. Senator John McCain tried to insist that Republicans had lost Congress because they had been spending too much federal money. He didn't explain why the public had replaced the Republicans with bigger spenders from the Democratic Party.
Conceding Paul's point about 9/11, however, doesn't mean that the U.S. should withdraw from the Middle East, as bin Laden demanded, or as Paul advocates. But U.S. involvement in the Middle East should be debated and discussed. The Texas Congressman noted that President Reagan inserted U.S. troops into the civil war in Lebanon but that when 241 lost their lives in a suicide bombing he withdrew them, citing the irrationality of the region. The unanswered question of the debate was what President Reagan would do about Iraq. Only more debates, with war critic Ron Paul, will smoke the candidates out on this critical issue.
There is no issue more important than American involvement in the Middle East. At least in this regard, the Paul-Giuliani exchange was welcome and long-overdue. We need more of this, not less. But Fox News seems determined to run Paul and other candidates out of the race.
Steve Doocy of Fox News called Ron Paul the "Sanjaya" of the Republican presidential debate, a reference to the American Idol contestant many believe stayed in the national competition for too long. But this is reality turned upside down. Fox News didn't want its audience to know the facts behind the exchange. Especially with his controversial Saudi and other foreign connections, Giuliani may end up looking like the real "Sanjaya" of the race.
The bottom line is that Giuliani's applause-winning response to Ron Paul was beside the point. Giuliani should have been on the spot, but he wasn't.
Indeed, Giuliani was completely spared any tough questions about his controversial dealings with foreign clients. Neither Wallace nor Goler brought up the growing controversy over the Giuliani law firm representing a Spanish company that is privatizing a Texas road in the proposed "NAFTA Superhighway." The same firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, represents Citgo, the oil company owned by Venezuela's anti-American ruler Hugo Chavez.
Fox News had attempted to limit participation in the debate to the so-called "serious" candidates before a public outcry forced all of them to be included. That ploy was seen as an effort to cement Giuliani as the frontrunner. After the debate, Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron was again trying to limit the field, declaring that the "second-tier candidates" had slowed down the exchanges. He implied that candidates like Paul, Duncan Hunter and Mike Huckabee should be left out of future debates.
Fox News has a reputation as a conservative news channel and many Republicans rely on it for news and information. But its handling of this debate raises serious questions about the channel's commitment to being "fair and balanced." It seems to be emerging as an arm of the Giuliani-for-president campaign. Honest conservatives should demand better coverage.
register republican just for this election and vote ron paul....he is the only one that can save this dying nation
both him and bush's popularities were all based on planes crashing into the WTC ... nothing more ... without that event - they wouldn't be remembered for anything ...
Hell, 90% of what this country has done in the past 6 years, and probably a majority of the money spent/made was because of 9/11.
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
Granted, this kind of frank honesty, dosen't win campaigns, and that's why it's sexier to cover Rudy's somewhat idiotic response.
Sure, he may have been an inspiring figure - but everyone was all fucked up and it was easy to grasp onto things.
If you look at his actual actions though - he wasn't a hero, in fact his brilliant idea to setup the city's emergency repsonse center INSIDE the WTC (AFTER THE 1993 BOMBING) probably caused alot of ppl to die. Not to mention the air quality issues that he ignored with firefighters at ground zero.
Fuck Rudi - go make your millions on the speech circuit and keep ringing that 9/11 bell.
I often wonder the samething. What did he do post 9/11 that was so fantastic. Everyone credits him for keeping the city together, like if he was not the mayor at the time the city would have descended into pure anarchy and completely imploded. People make comments like he was out on the streets with the average citizen. Well that's maybe because his emergency command center was destroyed during the attack. the man had no choice byt to be out on the streets. I'll give Guiliani credit for lowering crime in NYC and revitalizing the city after decades of decay, but that by no means makes him the hero of 9/11. He did what any elected official would have done.
"Hell, even Mickey Mouse up there on the TV screen would've done just as good a job at calming everybody!"
I watched the Republican debate the other night and I felt that, no matter the topic of discussion, Rudy would twist it in order to talk about how well he handled everything during the attacks. Rudy only wants to talk about "ter'ism".
Rudy won't talk about his many LLC's and their conflicting interests and he is trying too hard to please all the people, all the time, with his ethical viewpoints. While he may have cleaned up NYC, he hurt an awful lot of people along the way. His personal life is supposed to be 'untouchable' (he has publicly pleaded with the press not to delve into his relationship with his kids nor talk about his marriages) -- hey, I'm sorry, but the family life of a potential US President is open to scrutiny (unfortunate as that may sometimes be) and he shouldn't be allowed any special favors.
Rudy has one platform, and one only: "Terrorists!!"
Quite frankly, he fills me with terror.
Unfortunetly most of the country does not know Guiliani as well as us who live on near or work in NYC. All they ever saw of him was 9/11 while the rest of us dealt with his policies on an everyday basis.
There's always the hope of an Independent BLOOMBERG/HAGEL ticket...or is that HAGEL/BLOOMBERG? Or an OBAMA/GORE ticket....or is that GORE/OBAMA?
Or there's Ron Paul/Mike Gravel...
This is all very true. I DO think he was a great Mayor. The city definitely changed for the better under Giuliani. President though? eh... I'm not so sure. Even with the million+ questions you have to answer as mayor of such a huge city, few of them are issues that affect the nation as a whole. But I'm not ruling him out for a while... Who else is so great right now?
I also don't think Rudi is "ringing the 9/11 bell" as some have claimed on here-- at least I don't think he's been doing it himself. Lots of people have been praising him since that day-- it's not like he asked for it. But as a politician, you're gonna roll with it-- I think he handled things the best he could, didn't make a photo-op out of it, and the same could be said for W. And in times of disaster, it is very possible to be a leader and a fuck up. Katrina, anyone?
you dont think he is ringing the 9/11 bell? did you watch the debates on fox?
Oh he rings that bell every chance he gets. He has nothing else to go on but the fabrication weaved by the media that he is the Hero of 9/11.
Ya know, I have to admit, I really haven't been paying the attention that I should to this whole thing.
After watching some of the debate on Youtube, I have decided to rule out Giuliani altogether. 9/11 bell or not, I just can't see myself voting for this guy. Both him and McCain have let me down-- 2 guys I used to like, and for whatever reason, I can barely stand them anymore.
My current favorite: Ron Paul. This guy seems pretty genuine, and I like a lot of his ideas. The more I research him, the more I find I share very similar viewpoints with him.
This forum ain't so useless after all. At times it can be very informative!