Rudy Giuliani And His String Of Bad News

In the past week Rudy Giuliani has had a sting of bad news. Fred Thompson hasn’t even announced and he is eating into Giuliani’s poll lead. His South Carolina chairman, Thomas Ravenel, had to step down because he was indited on federal cocaine charges. Ravenel’s father Arthur Ravenel still works for Giuliani. Last week Giuliani was criticized for not attending meetings of the Iraq Study Group, a bi-partisans group that has promoted troop reductions in Iraq. He quit the panel after two months because it was hard to focus on “a bipartisan, nonpolitical resolution.” Instead of attending meetings during the two months he was a part of the group, Giuliani was on paid speaking engagements. New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg quit the Republican party last week opening a door for him to run as an independent. Some polls from New York suggest that Bloomberg is the best candidate from New York. A childhood friend of Giuliani, Monsignor Alan Placa, a Catholic priest, was just suspended from the church because of child abuse charges. Placa works on Giuliani’s security team. Last week former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christie Todd Whitman said that New York city was repeatable told that the rescuers needed breathing protection during the 9/11 rescue and recovery time. Whitman testified on Capitol Hill this past Monday. Over 80% of the people involved in the rescue operations have suffered some sort of lung damage. And Giuliani is basically running as the mayor that stood strong during that time. The Democratic National Commitee said it best with this response to Giuliani, “Rudy’s arrogance has gotten the best of him. How can a man who failed to prepare New York City for a second attack after the first one, who sent firefighters and emergency workers into Ground Zero without respirators and quit the Iraq Study Group to raise money keep America safe?”
Giuliani tried to take the attention off all his problems in a speech before Regent University on Tuesday. He told the crowd at this conservative Christian collage, that was founded by televangelists Pat Robertson, that the Democrats are naive and weak when it comes to terrorist. He tried to place blame for 9/11 on President Bill Clinton. “Islamic terrorists killed more than 500 Americans before Sept. 11. Many people think the first attack on America was on Sept. 11, 2001. It was not. It was in 1993,” said Giuliani. When Bill Clinton treated the first bombing of the World Trade Center as a criminal act it was a “big mistake,” according to Giuliani. Those guys were terrorist, and Clinton only “emboldened” the terrorist to commit more terrorist crimes. “The United States government, then President Clinton, did not respond,” Giuliani said. “bin Laden declared war on us. We didn’t hear it.” He realizes that it is easier to see this with hindsight, “but now is now, and there is no reason to go back into denial, and that is essentially what the Democratic candidates for president want to do: they want to go back, to put the country in reverse to the 1990s.” This is funny, because last September during a stop in Florida Giuliani said, “The idea of trying to cast blame on President Clinton is just wrong for many, many reasons, not the least of which is I don’t think he deserves it. I don’t think President Bush deserves it. The people who deserve blame for Sept. 11, I think we should remind ourselves, are the terrorists — the Islamic fanatics — who came here and killed us and want to come here again and do it.” I can’t wait until Fred Thompson jumps in so we can be over this clown.
Alan Cosgrove