Posted on 08/24/2006 3:03:32 AM PDT by Eagle Forgotten
It's the unexamined question of 9/11: What if Rudy Giuliani wasn't quite the hero everybody thought?
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But what if Rudy's take-charge image was mostly a load of bravado and PR? What if the actual decisions he made - before, during and after the terror attacks - were directly responsible for the city's inability to deal effectively with crucial aspects of the crisis?
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With dozens of exclusive and previously unreleased interviews, Barrett and Collins show how the ambitious ex-mayor has spent recent years revising his own truth of 9/11 - and profiting handsomely from it. Casting himself as a prescient terror hawk who wisely prepared his city for the inevitable, Giuliani in fact ignored repeated warnings from the experts, including his own commissioners and aides.
Instead of confronting the looming danger, they tell how he grew increasingly distracted by pet projects, political turf wars and an extraordinarily messy personal life.
(Excerpt) Read more at amny.com ...
You obviously have generous criteria when it comes to defining conservatism. Conservatism is all about small government, personal liberty, and adherence to the Constitution. How could you consider someone too dense to understand the meaning of the 2nd Amendment even remotely conservative?
Disarming citizens is not the conservative approach to fighting crime.
- what exactly would you expect a gop mayor of new york city to say on the subject.... but what did he do about it? not much as i can recall...
I wasn't trying to start a general thread about pro-or-con on Rudy Giuliani (although it's obviously turned into that). I wanted to address a specific point: Giuliani gets a lot of credit for "leadership" in connection with 9/11, and that credit is (I believe) largely undeserved. That's why I didn't get into stuff like gun owners' rights or the Cuomo endorsement or the squeegee men.
Peach addresses the issue by praising "the way he comported himself in the days after 9/11." I'd actually agree with that praise, but I think Giuliani has gotten way too much mileage out of that one moment. In evaluating someone for the Presidency, it's more important to consider substantive policy decisions.
PISANO argues that this criticism of Giuliani is just "monday morning qb'ing!" Well, according to the article, the book is based in part on the statements of a former NYPD chief, Louis Anemone, who faulted Giuliani's response (or lack of response) when the issue of preparation for terrorist attacks was raised with him years before 9/11. This is the sort of specific criticism that Giuliani backers will have to come to grips with in pushing him as an anti-terrorist leader.
It was more than a moment of leadership by Giuliani.
He showed leadership in the years before 9/11 in NYC by cleaning up the streets, trying to take down some disgusting art displays, working with police on specific programs to ensure that crimes against innocent people were reduced, reduced the deficit in NYC (which was substantial), got people to move back into the city again, etc. It was a pretty long list you're ignoring there.
Yeah................their so-called "principles" translate into losing and losing monumentally, with blood all over the floor, from that gaping hole in the middle of their collective faces.
Clinton was LOUSY after Oklahoma City. He bit his lip, he shed a couple of tears, and did NOTHING!
OTH, Rudy, long before 9/11, was a fantastic mayor; he quite literally saved N.Y.C!
Go back to DU, you stinking lefty troll.
Yeah, being divorced twice sure is a whole lot worse than having a lover murdered, staying with a husband who cheated on one from even before she married him, and on and on. Yep, GOPers will NOT vote for Rudy and allow Hillary a free ride into the White House....suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure they will. LOL
The savaging of Giuliani has just begun. If it looks familiar, it is because it bears all the fingerprints of the Clinton smear machine.
The Clintons are terrified becauser they know Rudy's strengths as a courageous and fearless leader, and as a speaker and debater. Remember Rudy's actual stands against terrorists and terrorism before 911, as well as his courageous stands against public institutions funding art that trashes religion.
You should be afraid that the GOP will put up a losing candidate and the Arkansas Grifters will fly on Hillary's broom all the way back to the White House. Shame on you people who have joined in this.
Times have changed; even in the South.
bttt
bttt
Before Reagan they didn't divorce they cheated - divorce would 'look bad'.
If the Dem presidential candidate is Hillary or Kerry, or algore, against Rudy, can you envision any Southerner with more than tree brain cells working, allowing anyone of the three Dems I listed, becoming president?
Some cheated; a few, a VERY few divorced.
This particular book about Giuliani is co-authored by Wayne Barrett. He's been blasting Giuliani since long before the Clintons ever even thought about moving to New York. If Hillary had never run for anything and was back practicing law in Little Rock or Chicago or somewhere, Barrett would still have written this book.
It's bad news for Giuliani if his supporters can't say much more than "Hillary must be behind it." What would Giuliani, as the nominee, say two years from if his opponent (Hillary or whoever) raises these charges?
I appreciate the contributors to this thread who've begun to outline how to make the case for Giuliani in connection with 9/11. Rudy will need more of that if he's to win over the swing voters. This book won't go away just because Freepers don't like Ellis Henican or the Village Voice.
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