“1/08/2010, 2:52pm EST”
Rudy Giuliani has now claimed on Good Morning America (yay for YouTube): “We had no domestic [‘terror’] attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama [re: failed underwear bomber].”
Not only was Giuliani the mayor of NYC during the Bush Administration at the time of the 9/11 attacks, he also shamelessly capitalized on the attacks to raise his national profile. He eventually ran for president in 2008, a campaign during which he earned the nickname Mr. Noun-Verb-9/11. (That’s all he talked about.)
Moreover, there were four attacks on 9/11 alone: American Airlines Flights 11 and 77, and United Airlines Flights 93 and 175. Moreover, there were mailed anthrax attacks that same month. Moreover, there was the infamous failed shoe bombing attack that took place in American airspace on a flight to Miami in December 2001.
As for Giuliani’s personal “national security” credibility, NYC’s multi-million dollar command center was destroyed on 9/11 because he personally made the decision, against expert recommendation, to build it in the World Trade Center — even though it was widely understood to be the likeliest target in the event of an attack. Why? So he and his mistress would have a convenient rendezvous point near Giuliani’s office in City Hall. In any case, Giuliani didn’t do much commanding that day.
Back to Bush, that’s 6 domestic attacks that we know about within the first year of Bush’s administration, which then exploited those events to usurp hundreds of billions in public money to wage two failed wars (the larger one being blatantly unjustified, inflammatory, and illegal). Giuliani was right there with them, the consummate cheerleader.
Giuliani’s statement can only be rationally viewed as one element of a concerted right-wing effort to revise history in their favor. As poor as establishment liberals may be at taking advantage of their power, we would be absolute fools to put the foxes back in the henhouse.
