r2465505333.jpg(photo credit: REUTERS/Tami Chappell)

Rudy Giuliani also has a bit of a claim to combat in a different way, because he was on the ground in 9/11.  And he‘s saying something popular when he says, look, we‘ve got to do anything possible to prevent that from happening again.

– Wall Street Journal's John Harwood on MSNBC's "Countdown", 5/16/07 

Just stop it, Mr. Harwood, you blinkered pantywaist. It wasn't enough that 9/11 was used so cynically as a cudgel to launch a preemptive and illegal war against a country that, despite Ron Paul's well-intentioned but off-the-mark comments at the debates on Tuesday night, did NOT attack us. Now you want to conflate Vietnam War draft dodger Rudy Giuliani's exploitation of 9/11 with "justifiable" cheerleading for waterboarding? I think this country has had quite enough of "President Jack Bauer," thankyouverymuch.

And no, Mr. Harwood, Rudy Giuliani cannot "lay claim" to 9/11.  He no more owns the tragedy than any other New Yorker, like my shellshocked neighbor who, when I met him up on the rooftops to watch the rest of the horror of that day unfold a mile south, recounted in an eerily detached monotone about fleeing WTC1 and seeing people hitting the pavement from ninety stories up. Or the friend of mine who broke her ankle trying to scramble out of the way of falling debris. Or the woman who battled back from the edge of death after she was engulfed in burning jet fuel as she rushed from the buildings. Or the families of the restaurant workers who had been starting their day at Windows on the World, way up on the top floor.  Or the 9/11 widows so snidely and cynically mocked by the War Whores on the Right who accused them of pimping the tragedy for their personal benefit.

Rudy Giuliani cleared $16.1 million dollars over the last 16 months, mostly in speaking fees. Tell me again who's pimping the tragedy? Because I'm pretty sure that Giuliani hasn't been getting paid to traverse the country, lecturing Promise Keepers on the sanctity of marriage. Mr. Giuliani is making the most of an attack that happened on his watch, and is determined to fool people into thinking that he, and only he, could hold New York City together through the crisis. Why, as Giuliani's theme song goes, had any other person been mayor that day, well, god knows how many more people would have died!

And in Rudy's vacuum-sealed world, geopolitics had no bearing whatsoever on Al Qaeda's motives for striking the United States. Witness his dig at Democrats after the debates on Tuesday night, via Greg Sargent:

It reminded me of the Saudi prince that gave me the $10 million. He did the same thing: "This is America at fault, the way America has outreach to the world." Look, it's real simple what happened. These people came here and killed us because of our freedom of religion, because of our freedom for women, because they hate us…If you're confused about this, I think you put our country in much greater jeopardy. The reality is, these people are planning to kill us because — and this is hard for people to recognize, I usually hear this on the Democratic side, don't usually hear it on the Republican side — you've got to face reality. If you can't face reality, you can't lead.  [Emphasis Greg's.]

Oh really, Rudy? Tell that to George Bush — you can't get more out of touch than the current President. No, Rudy Giuliani is gaming the system, trying to wring every last drop of blood out of 9/11 that he can.

And by the way, now he's taking credit for something else:  the drop in abortion rates in New York City while he was mayor. 

In the first two Republican presidential debates, Rudolph W. Giuliani has addressed questions about his stand on abortion by citing figures showing that abortions declined when he was mayor of New York, while adoptions increased.

Mr. Giuliani’s implication was that he had successfully reduced abortions at least in part by encouraging adoptions.

Big surprise there, Giuliani taking credit for something he was peripherally involved in.

A review of the figures from Mr. Giuliani’s years as mayor, from 1994 to 2001, shows that although abortions did decline and adoptions did increase, the changes mirrored national trends.

Furthermore, other factors probably contributed to those changes, calling into question Mr. Giuliani’s suggesting correlation between the two trends.

…

When Mr. Giuliani brought up the increase in adoptions, he was referring to those using city agencies involving children in the city foster care system. He was not including private adoptions or those by New Yorkers in other countries.

At the time, the child welfare system in New York had been mired in extreme disarray, with reports of severe abuse and highly publicized deaths. Mr. Giuliani created the Administration for Children’s Services in 1996 to try to improve caseworker responses to reports of neglect and to move children more quickly out of temporary foster homes and into permanent adoptive homes.

That increased adoptions for a few years, an increase that resulted largely from Mr. Giuliani’s response to the foster care crisis. Little if anything in the public record suggests that he was promoting adoption as an alternative to abortion.

At the time, a law enacted in the Clinton administration, the Adoption and Safe Families Act, offered huge incentives to cities' adoption programs.

Mmm-hmm. Serendipity smiles on Rudy Giuliani again and he "mistakes" it for his own greatness. I am curious to see just how long he can sustain this "America's Mayor" crap before people realize that he is merely another Emperor wannabee strutting around buck naked.

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