Giuliani Overrode NYPD Objections To WTC Command Center

By Cernig

This one, if it gets the play it should, will seriously dent Rudy's already faded credibility as a competent, hard-nosed war-on-terror Decider, which is the only platform he's ever had.

A detailed 1998 New York Police Department analysis opposed the city's plans to locate its emergency command center at the World Trade Center but then-mayor Rudolph Giuliani's administration overrode the objections, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

"Seven World Trade Center is a poor choice for the site of a crucial command center for the top leadership of the City of New York," the Times quoted a panel of police experts aided by the Secret Service as having concluded in a confidential Police Department memorandum which has not been previously disclosed.

The longest of the analysis' nine sections, headed "Explosives," describes a blast analysis of the likely impact of various types of bombs, and concluded that the largest of truck bombs would have led to the building's collapse, the Times report said.

The command center was destroyed during the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center that also destroyed the twin towers in the seven-building complex.

Among the location's vulnerabilities was its history as a target, the report said. One of the World Trade Center's twin towers was attacked by truck bomb in 1993 that killed 6 people and injured more than 1,000.

"This group's finding is that the security of the proposed O.E.M. Command Center cannot be reasonably guaranteed," the July 1998 memo to the city's police commissioner concluded.

The Times said it obtained the document from a law enforcement official who it noted was not affiliated with any rival political campaign.

My guess on why Rudy overrode the report? Follow the money.

Giuliani's slogan

by shamanic

"Tested. Ready. Now." is kind of an odd slogan for a candidate who's busy sitting out elections, isn't it?

Rudy's Forever War

By Cernig

Here's today's "must read" - a long essay by Michael C. Desch for the American Conservative magazine that dissects Rude-G's neocon coterie and long-held warmongering ideology. Desch concludes: "Sending him and his team to the White House might actually ignite World War IV."

Tellingly, Desch is "Professor and Robert M. Gates Chair in Intelligence and National Security Decision-making at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University."

You knew Bob Gates was going to be mentioned in connection with any VSP voice of conservative foreign policy sanity, didn't you?

Can we non-warmonger, non-fundie, non-corporatist lefties who would sooner have a sane conservative opposition as no opposition at all put up Gates as a write-in for the Republican nominee?

No security detail for Bloomberg's woman partner

By Libby

Unlike Rudy's, at the time, illicit lover Judy, Mayor Bloomberg's live-in life partner of six years, Diana Taylor, "has never had a separate police protection detail."

Since the couple has been together, Taylor has acted as the city's unofficial First Lady, frequently marching with Bloomberg in parades, hosting Gracie Mansion social functions and campaigning with him.

The nearly 6-foot tall Taylor is often recognized on the streets and subway by New Yorkers, who shout out advice for her to pass along to the mayor.

"The only time I have security is when I am with the mayor at an event," Taylor said. "If I leave and go somewhere, like the ladies' room or to make a call, no one comes with me. I just tell them where I'm going so I won't be left behind," she laughed.

Taylor told the Daily News that she doesn't see why she would "need security in the safest city in the world." Which raises the question, if Rudy really made New York so safe under his watch, as he claims, why did his mistress need round the clock protection?

Calling Giuliani on his lies

By Libby

Quite a few bloggers are pretty excited by the front page article in the NYT calling out Rudy on his 'creative statitics.' Don't get me wrong, I think it's better than what we've seen so far, which has been nothing, but I'm not feeling quite as charitable about it as Big Media Matt and Greg Sargent. For instance, this is a good point.

All of these statements are incomplete, exaggerated or just plain wrong.

But I still find it a little wimpy when they add the caveat that all politicians exaggerate. I think they're cutting Rudy too much slack.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, or maybe I'm just old, but where I come from, the depth and breadth of Rudy's deceptions are called lies and that's exactly what I'm calling them at my multi-part and ongoing series on Rudy at the Detroit News blog -- Guliani lies. Somehow that sounds more honest to me.

Rudy's real terrorist connections

By Libby

I don't remember where I picked this up today but it seems not to have received enough attention in the wake of the all the revelations about the municpal funds Giuliani spent on his mistress. That seems small to me in comparison to his real connection to 9/11. He's friends with the planners.

Three weeks after 9/11, when the roar of fighter jets still haunted the city's skyline, the emir of gas-rich Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, toured Ground Zero. Although a member of the emir's own royal family had harbored the man who would later be identified as the mastermind of the attack—a man named Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, often referred to in intelligence circles by his initials, KSM—al-Thani rushed to New York in its aftermath, offering to make a $3 million donation, principally to the families of its victims. Rudy Giuliani, apparently unaware of what the FBI and CIA had long known about Qatari links to Al Qaeda, appeared on CNN with al-Thani that night and vouched for the emir when Larry King asked the mayor: "You are a friend of his, are you not?" [...]

But there was another reason to think twice about accepting al-Thani's generosity that Giuliani had to have been aware of, even as he heaped praise on the emir. Al Jazeera, the Arabic news network based in Qatar (pronounced "Cutter"), had been all but created by al-Thani, who was its largest shareholder. The Bush administration was so upset with the coverage of Osama bin Laden's pronouncements and the U.S. threats to bomb Afghanistan that Secretary of State Colin Powell met the emir just hours before Giuliani's on-air endorsement and asked him to tone down the state-subsidized channel's Islamist footage and rhetoric.

Yes that would be the same Al Jazeera that the fringers tell me is the mouthpiece of jihadists and the very voice of AQ, spreading lies and demoralizing our troops. So were's the outrage? Why hasn't the blog mob seized on this damning connection and investigated every corner of Mr. Giuliani's life? I would have expected to know the square footage of his house and the composition of his kitchen counters by now.

And how could our relentless citizen journalists failed to turn up this explosive item on Rudy's current dealings?

The contradictory and stunning reality is that Giuliani Partners, the consulting company that has made Giuliani rich, feasts at the Qatar trough, doing business with the ministry run by the very member of the royal family identified in news and government reports as having concealed KSM—the terrorist mastermind who wired funds from Qatar to his nephew Ramzi Yousef prior to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and who also sold the idea of a plane attack on the towers to Osama bin Laden—on his Qatar farm in the mid-1990s.

That would be the guy who was -- you know -- actually responsible for the 9/11 attacks as opposed to a guy who takes pictures for a living or some poor grunt making up a war story. We're talking about a guy who is so evil that he's used to excuse waterboarding. So why are our keyboard warriors giving Rudy a pass on this?

That's a rhetorical question. I think we can all guess the answer to that. The better question would be why isn't our establishment media reporting it? Isn't that what 'real' journalists are supposed to do?

Why scandals haven't ruined Rudy

By Libby

Everybody in Blogtopia is on this story about Rudy's 'creative' bookkeeping. As I see it, it's not so much that he billed out tens of thousands of tax dollars for security for trysts with Judy while he was cheating on his second wife, it's that he had no compunction about dunning agencies serving the underprivledged in order to hide it from his then current wife. I blogged on it at the Detroit News but allow me to quote myself on this point.

I honestly don't see how anyone can support this man. He's a serial liar, an adulterer and a cheat.

Of the all the GOP hopefuls, it appears Rudy has the most claim to the Reagan legacy. As Ronnie was the teflon president; it appears Rudy is the teflon candidate. So far, none of the stink of his scandals seems to stick to him. It remains to be seen whether this will be the one that finally scratches that no-stick surface.

"Terrorists" can't be "tortured"

by shamanic

Reading this rambling answer by Rudy Giuliani, I think it's time we acknowledge the GOP attitude about torture: there is no such thing as "torturing" a "terrorist". The designation "terrorist" makes it impossible to categorize any interrogation technique as "torture", which we can all be thankful for because, as Giuliani says, no president wants to torture.

This has to be the key, because if a guy who wants to be president doesn't think that waterboarding, a really old-school style of torture recognized as such for centuries, is necessarily torture, then the only answer can possibly be that there's something inherent in the victims of such torture that makes it not torture in their case.

If you waterboard a crash test dummy, that's not torture because the dummy is incapable of suffering. Apparently, if you waterboard someone who Rudy says is a "terrorist", it also isn't torture because Rudy knows which human beings are beneath the contempt of an always-outraged constituency.

I will never vote for that man.

Well, I guess Giuliani's a lock for the nomination

by shamanic

WorldNetDaily, that bastion of impartial journamalism and desperate attempts at thinking, says that "terror leaders" want to kill Rudy Giuliani. Once that meme hits the blogosphere, Mitt & McCain can pretty much pack it in. There's nothing the GOP likes better than narratives like this: On one side, a macho, tough talking American leader. On the other, Palestinian terrorists.

My God, it's like Rambo or Die Hard. And you know that Giuliani's the kind of guy who would come up with that witty comment at the finale of the movie. You know, he's just blown away the 17 armed and shooting bodyguards of the super bad guy without receiving so much as a papercut when, right at 1:47 in, a spectacular 8-minute fight sequence ensues complete with Giuliani high kicks (which he learned earlier in the movie when he took lessons to dance in drag - it ties the drama together with the comedy, just brilliant!). At the last minute, the Palestinian terrorist has Giuliani down in the gutter of a New York street, arm crushing firmly against his windpipe, when the almost-defeated hero of our American saga sees his opening. Giuliani uses the last of his immense strength to roll his despotic Islamofascist attacker hard into the street just in time for a city bus with a huge "I {HEART} NEW YORK" ad on the side to flatten him into the pavement! Giuliani rises, sweaty, bloodied, but like America itself, entirely unbowed and gives voice to the sentiments of millions when he quips, eyes atwinkle, "That's what New Yorkers mean by, 'Let's roll'."

Judith races out from someplace where she's been held captive by the sweaty, monosyllabic thugs that Rudy has just taken care of (for America!) and briefly touches his face with her shaking hands. "You saved me," she says, her voice pitching with emotion. "You saved us all!" They kiss. Roll credits.

That's the narrative right there, the compelling, action-packed story line they're all looking for, and by God, WorldNetDaily's Jerusalem bureau chief has given it to them. Election's over, folks. There's nothing to see here. Move along.

Political Christianity getting nervous about Giuliani

by shamanic

An influential group of conservative Christians, including James Dobson and Tony Perkins, suggests they may bolt the GOP if Rudy Giuliani is nominated. Pat Robertson, knowing who butters his bread, instantly mobilizes his Christian Broadcast Network to disseminate Giuliani talking points.

This has all the hallmarks of well-crafted drama. The next time someone tells me that politics is boring, I'm just going to have to laugh.