by Taylor Marsh
This ad is rich coming from "Mr. 9/11", especially considering that it was Rudy blaming the troops while covering for Bush at the beginning of the war. Camp Clinton wasn't shocked:
"It's hardly surprising that Mayor Giuliani is running the first negative ad of the 08 campaign given his inability to justify his unqualified support for President Bush's failed Iraq strategy. Senator Clinton respects Gen Petraeus' service to our country. She knows the best way to honor our soldiers is to end the war in Iraq and bring them home."
But oh the hypocrisy of it. If only Republicans would have been so sanctimonious about soldiers when they were swiftboating Max Cleland or John Kerry, even John McCain. Rudy only squeals when he's got something to gain. Like when he blamed the troops to suck up to the boss.
"No matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there," Giuliani said on NBC's "Today" show. "Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?"
Democrats, especially vice presidential nominee John Edwards, seized on Giuliani's comments to claim that the Republicans were trying to shift blame away from President Bush. ... ..
Democrats try to turn Giuliani's weapons remark against Bush (2004)
"Mr. 9/11" doesn't care about the troops any more than he does first responders. (And don't even get Kristen Breitweiser started on Rudy.)
He just wants to use them to prop up his image, which has been taking hit after hit recently, starting when it was learned he'd rather raise money than find a solution for Iraq.
"Rudolph Giuliani's membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel's top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said."
Then there is the prerequisite for Republicans who blame the troops one minute, then embrace them another. These opportunistic inspired inconsistencies always lead one place. People like Rudy didn't have the spine to serve themselves.
"During his years as an undergraduate at Manhattan College and then at New York University Law School, Giuliani qualified for a student deferment. Upon graduation from law school in 1968, he lost that temporary deferment and his draft status reverted to 1-A, the designation awarded to those most qualified for induction into the Army. At the same time, Giuliani won a clerkship with federal Judge Lloyd McMahon in the fabled Southern District of New York, where he would become the United States attorney. He naturally had no desire to trade his ticket on the legal profession's fast track for latrine duty in the jungle. So he quickly applied for another deferment based on his judicial clerkship. This time the Selective Service System denied his claim. That was when the desperate Giuliani prevailed upon his boss to write to the draft board, asking them to grant him a fresh deferment and reclassification as an "essential" civilian employee. As the great tabloid columnist Jimmy Breslin noted 20 years later, during the former prosecutor's first campaign for mayor: 'Giuliani did not attend the war in Vietnam because federal Judge Lloyd MacMahon [sic] wrote a letter to the draft board in 1969 and got him out. Giuliani was a law clerk for MacMahon, who at the time was hearing Selective Service cases. MacMahon's letter to Giuliani's draft board stated that Giuliani was so necessary as a law clerk that he could not be allowed to get shot at in Vietnam.'"
So let's be honest, shall we? The ad campaign by "Mr. 9/11" is just another attack on Hillary by just another Republican using a soldier to get the job done (something Republicans have turned into an art form). As for Rudy's negative tactics this early, long before he even gets the nomination, well, his venom is legendary. So is his craven ambition, which like Bush, includes soldiers as stepping stones. Considering Sean Hannity's Rudy crush, it seems entirely fitting that Fox "News" is now joining in.