Late last night, I cam across this story from The Politico about some comments made by Rudy Giuliani at a campaign stop in New Hampshire. At the time I tried to put together a post in response, but I ended up using so many different expletives that I eventually abandoned the effort and decided to wait until morning. First, the story:
MANCHESTER, N.H. —- Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.
But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.“If any Republican is elected president —- and I think obviously I would be the best at this —- we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it,” Giuliani said....
“But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have?” Giuliani said. “If we are on defense [with a Democratic president], we will have more losses and it will go on longer.”
“I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani continued. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense.”
As I said, I was going to write a long post in response to this nonsense, but then I thought better of it. If Giuliani wants to go down this ridiculous road, more power to him. If he wants to make 2008 about unity vs. division, have at at. Given a choice between a "house divided" and a "house untied," I have no doubt the people of this nation will choose wisely.
UPDATE: Looks like Obama was the first to respond. Hillary's also weighed in, but rather than focus on Giuliani, she reframed the argument so that it was about Bush. Weird.
UPDATE II: I'd love to know, when Giuliani says that Republicans are better at keeping the nation safe, is this what he means?
Security practices at the White House are dangerously inadequate say current and former employees of the security office there, according to a letter sent today from the House Oversight Committee to former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, asking that he cooperate with the committee's investigation into the alleged security lapses.
"These security officials described a systemic breakdown in security procedures at the White House," wrote the chairman of the committee, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.Among the lapses cited by the security officers, who spoke to the committee anonymously, are multiple instances of breaches being reported to the security office that were ignored and never investigated. Several of those instances allegedly involved the mishandling of SCI (Sensitive Compartmentalized Information), which is the highest level of classified information.
In one instance, a White House official reportedly left SCI material behind in a hotel room during a foreign trip with the president. The CIA did recover the highly classified material, but the security office did not investigate the incident or discipline the individual, according a security officer's account in the letter.
UPDATE III: Andrew Sullivan takes the respond in full approach here. Although I agree with most of what he said, I have to take issue with this:
I think Giuliani will run as the Jack Bauer candidate. It's in his DNA. There isn't a civil liberty he wouldn't suspend if he felt it was necessary for "security." And there isn't a dissenter he wouldn't bully or silence in the interests of national security. There is a constituency for this - a big one.
I don't disagree with his characterization of Giuliani, but I think he's way off when it comes to the size of the "security" constituency. Americans didn't support the Patriot Act because it traded liberty for security. How could they? It was sold in a way that entirely obscured that trade. And although I don't doubt that there are in fact many Americans who are perfectly willing to make that trade - off the top of my head, the 30% that unquestioningly support Bush strikes me as a reasonable number - its nowhere near a majority.
Look back at Tester's campaign for the Senate, for example. Tester used his opposition to the Patriot Act as a central theme in his campaign. Here's just one example:
If that worked in Montana, I promise you, it will work across the nation.
When the Patriot Act was first proposed, it was all hypothetical. Civil liberties groups warned about the potential for misuse and abuse, but the warnings were just that - hypothetical. At the time, the threat of "another 9/11" seemed much more real to most Americans, and as a result, the warnings about liberty were ignored. But today that situation is reversed. Many of the abuses that were predicted have in fact come to pass, while thankfully another terrorist attack on American soil has not. In this new environment, the issue just won't play the same. Rudy may not understand that yet, but eventually he will.
UPDATE IV: Kevin Drum criticizes both Obama and Clinton for "whining." The Economist seconds his complaint, and asks:
What is the liberal position on making America secure?
Isn't The Economist supposed to be one of the top news journals in the world? If so, how did they miss Obama's big speech on national security policy just two days ago? Seems to me it directly answers their question.
UPDATE V: DNC spokesperson Karen Finney:
"How can the man who failed to prepare NYC for a second attack after the first one, quit the 9/11 commission because he was too busy raking in money from sketchy business deals, can't assess if the surge is working or if Iran and North Korea have nuclear weapons claim that he will keep America safe?"
UPDATE VI: Last update, I swear. Greg Sargent has Edwards' response, along with his own response to Kevin Drum.
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