What Rudy REALLY Said
OK, boys and girls, you can stop the propaganda. Here's the article from www.politico.com in it's entirety. And he's right - the Democrats are fundamentally defensively minded as opposed to being offensively minded as the GOP is. If we sit back and disengage then the odds are much greater that a large-scale attack could happen here if we don't foil it in the planning stages.
So, naturally, the Dems scream and whine and cry when the simple, obvious, and plain truth is told about an area they are weak in.
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.
The former New York City mayor, currently leading in all national polls for the Republican nomination for president, said Tuesday night that America would ultimately defeat terrorism no matter which party gains the White House.
“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.”
He added: “The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us.”
After his speech to the Rockingham County Lincoln Day Dinner, I asked him about his statements and Giuliani said flatly: “America will be safer with a Republican president.”
Giuliani, whose past positions on abortion, gun control and gay rights have made him anathema to some in his party, believes his tough stance on national defense and his post-Sept. 11 reputation as a fighter of terrorism will be his trump card with doubting Republicans.
“This war ends when they stop coming here to kill us!” Giuliani said in his speech. “Never, ever again will this country ever be on defense waiting for [terrorists] to attack us if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense!”
Giuliani said terrorists “hate us and not because of anything bad we have done; it has nothing to do with Israel and Palestine. They hate us for the freedoms we have and the freedoms we want to share with the world.”
Giuliani continued: “The freedoms we have are in conflict with the perverted, maniacal interpretation of their religion.” He said Americans would fight for “freedom for women, the freedom of elections, freedom of religion and the freedom of our economy.”
Addressing the terrorists directly, Giuliani said: “We are not giving that up, and you are not going to take it from us!”
The crowd thundered its approval.
Giuliani also said that America had been naive about terrorism in the past and had missed obvious signals.
“They were at war with us before we realized it, going back to ’90s with all the Americans killed by the PLO and Hezbollah and Hamas,” he said. “They came here and killed us in 1993 [with the first attack on New York’s World Trade Center, in which six people died], and we didn’t get it. We didn’t get it that this was a war. Then Sept. 11, 2001, happened, and we got it.”
19 comments:
You're forgetting one minor little detail, Gonzo.
In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed. The Clinton administration came up with a plan to fight bin Laden, and was pushing it through the end of the administration, into the Bush admin.
As soon as Bush got into office, those plans stopped cold, until 9/11 "changed everything".
Bush, on 9/17/01: bin Laden, wanted Dead or Alive.
Bush on 3/13/02: "I don't know where [bin Laden] is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. I'm more worried about making sure that our soldiers are well-supplied..."
And if we use up our military fighting in Iraq 4 years after we won, how are we going to deal with a threat where we actually need those soldiers?
Never has there been such a clear case of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
**“This war ends when they stop coming here to kill us!” Giuliani said in his speech.**
And exactly how do we tell when they stop coming here to kill us?
The Clinton administration had a plan????? Hahahahahahahahahaha.
I suppose this is why they got away with the '93 WTC bombing. And the embassies. And the USS Cole. Yeah, they had a "plan". Perhaps it was the plan that Sandy Berger shoved down his pants.
Oh, yeah, WTC was Bush's fault. Clinton was such a STRONG opponent of terrorism.
You are delusional, Garrett. Utterly and completely.
I'm really fuming on this piece of dreck, Garrett, you're too smart to propose this crap as the truth.
If this Clinton "plan" was put together after the '93 bombing then why was Bin Laden still running around 8 years later? And how would that be Bush dropping the ball?
And if this "plan" were so good, what about the embassies and the Cole? Where was Bush!? Oh, wait, he wasn't President yet.
Can you explain this, Garrett? My bet is that you won't because I and the simple facts nailed you. There is no excuse for the Clintons inept handling of terrorism. None at all. They accomplished NOTHING besides jailing a blind cleric.
And who says that we've "used up" our military? You? Morons at Kos? Other disinformation experts? All WRONG. Our military is far, far from used up. Read any strategic review website on military capabilities. But you won't, will you, because you can't deal with the facts contradicting your reality.
How will we know when they stop coming to kill us? As long as we are offensively engaged in the GWOT, we'll see signs. Of course if we retreat to our borders and whine a lot the way the Dems want we may not know. Dumb ass comment, Garrett.
Every book - without exception - that has been written has said that Clinton's group KNEW that there was going to be a big attack in the states and that Bin Laden would be behind it. Every book says that Clinton was obsessed with the idea of getting him. The proof that bin Laden was behind the Cole came in JANUARY, after Bush took office. Clinton couldn't do anything until the proof was in.
What did Bush do? He IGNORED EVERY CLUE, EVERY WARNING!!
Your information, Gonzo is so off the truth it's pathetic.
And as for Olbermann - that "rant" was right on the mark. Are you aware of the NYC firefighters who are telling the truth about Rudy's almost criminal negligence after 1993? Rudy's an a-hole who is so self-absorbed he refused to move the emergency headquarters away from the twin towers after 1993 - the recommendation of all experts - because it was inconvenient for him. That's why he was walking the streets that day - he had no place to go!
Gee, maybe because Clinton waited for good intelligence to come in, instead of telling the CIA what intelligence to give him?
You say "offensively-minded" like it's a good thing.
OK, point-by-point:
It's the firefighters UNION who is against Rudy for the same reasons that all unions are generally against GOP candidates.
As to Clinton knowing that there was an attack coming and being "obsessed" with bin Laden, then he did a piss-poor job of protecting folks, didn't he?
I mean, seriously, no one in his right mind believes that Clinton or any other President is not going to chase down a threat to the public. But what the hell? We were attacked in 1993 ... seven years before Clinton left office. And now fucktards like Garrett want to blame Bush in his 8+ months in office before 9/11?
Does that even make sense?????
I fail to see how Bush was a failure for not being goddamn Batman and figuring everything out and thwarting 9/11 is a relative short amount of time and not also condemning Clinton AT LEAST as equally as a failure.
And, uh, yeah, offensive-minded IS a good thing. Normandy was offense minded. Inchon was also. Do unto enemies before they do unto you. When you have a sec I'd be happy to brief you on strategic strategy since you seem to have a deficit of understanding it.
I can blame Bush for throwing out everything the previous administration had put together. He was _not_ starting from bloody scratch here.
Gonzo wrote:
It's the firefighters UNION who is against Rudy for the same reasons that all unions are generally against GOP candidates.
Uh, wrong again. How Right-Wing talking points of you. The firefighters are quite specific in their complaints about Rudy. It was because of his negligence after 1993 that the first defenders were STILL not equipped with the communications devices that might have saved lives. Among other things.
Gonzo wrote:
I fail to see how Bush was a failure ..
He #$$#@ing IGNORED the memos about an imminent attack! Everyone was screaming about this to him. Why doesn't that count as utter failure?
and Garrett wrote:
I can blame Bush for throwing out everything the previous administration had put together. He was _not_ starting from bloody scratch here.
You didn't answer this one, Gonzo. No comment?
CLINTON: What did I do? What did I do? I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still president, we’d have more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him.
Now, I’ve never criticized President Bush, and I don’t think this is useful. But you know we do have a government that thinks Afghanistan is only one-seventh as important as Iraq.
And you ask me about terror and Al Qaida with that sort of dismissive thing? When all you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s book to look at what we did in a comprehensive, systematic way to try to protect the country against terror.
And you’ve got that little smirk on your face and you think you’re so clever. But I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it. But I did try. And I did everything I thought I responsibly could.
The entire military was against sending Special Forces in to Afghanistan and refueling by helicopter. And no one thought we could do it otherwise, because we could not get the CIA and the FBI to certify that Al Qaida was responsible while I was president.
And so, I left office. And yet, I get asked about this all the time. They had three times as much time to deal with it, and nobody ever asks them about it. I think that’s strange....
Here's another link about why Clinton didn't send troops after bin Laden:
"Mr. Miniter (In his Book "Losing Bin Laden") also alleges that in the spring and summer of 1998 the Clinton administration was deadlocked over the decision to conduct a special forces mission near a bin Laden camp. Mr. Miniter suggests that the president did not want to overrule Pentagon concerns over risks because he could not "stomach sending thousands of troops into harm's way." Mr. Clinton was, in fact, ready and willing to undertake a special forces or other paramilitary assault on bin Laden, particularly after our missile attacks on bin Laden in the summer of 1998, and often pressed his senior military advisers for options. But Mr. Clinton's top military and intelligence advisers concluded that a commando raid was likely to be a failure, given the potential for detection, in the absence of reliable, predictive intelligence on bin Laden's whereabouts.
Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al Qaeda. As President Bush well knows, bin Laden was and remains very good at staying hidden."
Bush didn't throw out everything Clinton had put together or else Richard Clarke and George Tenet would have been "thrown out" as well. And he didn't "ignore every clue" as well. That's (as Krauthammer would put it) Bush Derangement Syndrome talking. Your hatred of Bush makes you see black or white on everything and unable to rationally assign responsibility.
I don't think that the Clinton administration truly understood the depth of the threat after the 1993 WTC attacks. If they had then I doubt 9/11 would have happened. I'm not blaming them or saying that this makes them incompetant. That would be unfair as we were gradually moving into new territory that culminated in 9/11.
You posted part of the transcript from the interview Clinton had with Chris Wallace (I think) where he was visibly upset.
I feel for the guy in that respect. With perfect coordination of assets and a clue as to what Bin Laden wanted to do, he could have done something. But he didn't have all the right ducks in a row and it wasn't his fault.
Neither was it Bush's.
You folks need to get your heads out of your ass and stop seeing this as a blame game.
The country got caught looking the wrong way.
And you need to pull _your_ head out of your ass and stop absolving Bush of every stupidity and crime he's committed over the past 6 years.
I notice that you comment on the Clinton interview, but you don't comment on the second clip. Couldn't find anything in it to knock down?
I didn't post anything about the Miniter stuff because I have no way of knowing the facts. I don't have a reason not to believe it.
As to "crimes and stupidity", that's wishful thinking on your point and ties directly into my assertion that when it comes to Bush you don't know how to be objective and analytical.
Deleted that last comment because you didn't actually say what I thought you said.
Fair 'nuff.
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