Giuliani Did Business With Sheikh Tied To 9/11 Plot

Giuliani's bid for the GOP nomination may be on the verge of capsizing amidst a perfect storm of sex, money and terrorists. Links to terrorists, that is.
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Giuliani's bid for the GOP nomination may be on the verge of capsizing amidst a perfect storm of sex, money and terrorists. Links to terrorists, that is.

Oy.

Ben Smith of Politico.com posted a story of Giuliani's shady financial records while mayor, but it is Wayne Barrett of The Village Voice with a devastating report about Giuliani's post-9/11 business dealings with a Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, a Qattari oil tycoon with well known ties to the 9/11 terrorists.

As usual, Barrett sums up the significance of the story for the Giuliani campaign:

In retrospect, Giuliani's embrace of the emir appears peculiar. But it was only a sign of bigger things to come: the launching of a cozy business relationship with terrorist-tolerant Qatar that is inconsistent with the core message of Giuliani's current presidential campaign, namely that his experience and toughness uniquely equip him to protect America from what he tauntingly calls "Islamic terrorists" -- an enemy that he always portrays himself as ready to confront, and the Democrats as ready to accommodate.

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...

In other words, as incredible as it might seem, Rudy Giuliani -- whose presidential candidacy is steeped in 9/11 iconography -- has been doing business with a government agency run by the very man who made the attacks on 9/11 possible.

(read the full story here)

Alrighty, then.

So, let me get all this straight:
  • After the 1993 bombing of the WTC -- when he supposedly knew so much about security and stuff -- Giuliani ignored expert advice and put NYC emergency headquarters in the WTC
  • Before 9/11 -- when he was supposedly studying up on terrorism -- Rudy was really breaking up his (2nd) marriage via an affair with Judith Nathan (and hiding the charges in obscure agencies)
  • After 9/11 -- when he was supposedly stiff-arming state sponsors of terrorism -- Giuliani was really doing business (big money) with the oil Sheikh who protected and facilitated the 9/11 terrorists
  • With the money and contacts and prestige from that and other business, Giuliani runs a presidential campaign claiming he is a big-time pro on fightin' terrorism -- better than everyone else, particularly the Democrats

One has a hard time imagining Giuliani squirming out of sex and money and business ties to terrorism all at the same time, although I am sure he will try his darnedest.

Nonetheless, if you cup your hand behind your ear and turn towards Iowa, you can hear a faint, but distinct sound over the horizon: the flutter of Giuliani staffers mailing off their resumes to the Huckabee campaign.

Cross-posted from Frameshop.

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