MANCHESTER, N.H. —- Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.
But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.
“If any Republican is elected president —- and I think obviously I would be the best at this —- we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it,” Giuliani said.
The former New York City mayor, currently leading in all national polls for the Republican nomination for president, said Tuesday night that America would ultimately defeat terrorism no matter which party gains the White House.
“But the question is how long will it take and how many casualties will we have?” Giuliani said. “If we are on defense [with a Democratic president], we will have more losses and it will go on longer.”
“I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani continued. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense.”
He added: “The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us.”
After his speech to the Rockingham County Lincoln Day Dinner, I asked him about his statements and Giuliani said flatly: “America will be safer with a Republican president.”
Giuliani, whose past positions on abortion, gun control and gay rights have made him anathema to some in his party, believes his tough stance on national defense and his post-Sept. 11 reputation as a fighter of terrorism will be his trump card with doubting Republicans.
“This war ends when they stop coming here to kill us!” Giuliani said in his speech. “Never, ever again will this country ever be on defense waiting for [terrorists] to attack us if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense!”
Giuliani said terrorists “hate us and not because of anything bad we have done; it has nothing to do with Israel and Palestine. They hate us for the freedoms we have and the freedoms we want to share with the world.”
Giuliani continued: “The freedoms we have are in conflict with the perverted, maniacal interpretation of their religion.” He said Americans would fight for “freedom for women, the freedom of elections, freedom of religion and the freedom of our economy.”
Addressing the terrorists directly, Giuliani said: “We are not giving that up, and you are not going to take it from us!”
The crowd thundered its approval.
Giuliani also said that America had been naive about terrorism in the past and had missed obvious signals.
“They were at war with us before we realized it, going back to ’90s with all the Americans killed by the PLO and Hezbollah and Hamas,” he said. “They came here and killed us in 1993 [with the first attack on New York’s World Trade Center, in which six people died], and we didn’t get it. We didn’t get it that this was a war. Then Sept. 11, 2001, happened, and we got it.”
I've found some video of Giuliani's speech at the Rockingham County Lincoln Day Dinner. From YouTube:
This is beyond outrageous. This is even beyond anger here. Giuliani is pulling a stale fear page out of the 2004 GOP campaign playbook, hoping to frighten Americans into voting Republican as a means of winning the Great War on Terror--the Democrats will lose The Great War on Terror if they capture the presidency! The terrorists will strike us again! America will be safer with a Republican president! Excuse me Mr. Giuliani, we already have a Republican President in the White House, and a majority of Americans disapprove of the way that Republican President George W. Bush is fighting this Great War on Terror. According to this April 26, 2007 MSNBC News poll:
[The] poll shows that 56 percent say they agree more with the Democrats in Congress who want to set a deadline for troop withdrawal, versus the 37 percent who say they agree with Bush that there shouldn't be a deadline.
What's more, 55 percent believe that victory in Iraq isn't possible. And 49 percent say the situation in Iraq has gotten worse in the last three months since Bush announced his so-called troop surge. Thirty-seven percent say the situation has stayed about the same, and just 12 percent think it has improved.
[....]
The pessimism about the war has also likely contributed to the country's overall sour mood. According to the poll, only 22 percent believe the country is on the right track. That's the lowest number on this question since October 1992, when Bush father's was running for a second term — and lost.
So tell me Mr. Giuliani, how will America be safer with you as the Republican president, when our current Republican president has screwed up both this country, and the war in Iraq, over the past seven years? Because looking at this MSNBC poll, and the countless other polls on terrorism and Iraq, the American people have decided that the Democrats in Congress can do a better job fighting terrorism and the Iraq war than the Republicans can.
But then again, who cares about poll numbers? The Giuliani campaign will reject any facts or poll results that does not conform to their political ideology. This is a campaign speech to elicit fear within the American population--especially within the 30-36 percent of hard-lined conservatives and Religious Right that still consistently supports President Bush. Giuliani is pandering to the Kool-Aid drinking, Faux News watching, GOP base here. We have a situation here where rank-and-file Republican voters have become demoralized with their political party, and the current crop of presidential candidates. We can see this demoralization in the contradictions regarding the increased violence coming out of Iraq, and the White House fantasy PR-spin saying the U.S. is winning the war. We can see this demoralization with the continued revelations of the U.S. attorney purges, the politicalization of the federal government, and the scandals that are connecting back to Karl Rove. We can see this demoralization in the Republican voters' lack of enthusiasm over any of these current candidates, and in the GOP dream wish of having either former Tennessee senator and "Law and Order" actor Fred Thompson or even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich enter the presidential race. As the disaster in Iraq continues to get worst, as the scandals continue to plague the Bush administration, and as the Bush White House continue to descend from any sense of reality to fantasyland, you are going to see more of these outrageous, personal attacks against the Democrats by Giuliani, and the rest of the GOP.
Update: Keith Olbermann has a Special Comment on Giuliani. More to come.
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