Every once in a while, you stumble across a story in the lamestream media that departs from the lemming mindset of our distinguished fellows in the press to a most remarkable degree. Today's story on Rudy Giuliani in the Washington Post [1] is such a story.
Now, we all know the legend of Saint Rudy the Watchful, endlessly retold by every media outlet that can afford the newsprint: how he planted his 200-foot-tall hulking frame at The Narrows, ever on the watch against Islamist evildoers. How he would have leaped across Manhattan in a single bound to stop the planes hitting on 9/11, if that dastardly Bill Clinton hadn't had him under a mind-control spell. How siting his Emergency Command Center in the World Trade Center was just a ruse that Osama, of course, fell for.
The filthy iconoclasts at WaPo desecrate the national legend by offering up some chilling observations about Hizzoner's actual tenure, and how it's somewhat at odds with what he's saying now as he runs for higher office.
In presenting himself as the candidate most knowledgeable about terrorism, Giuliani stakes the same claim he used to build a successful consulting firm after leaving City Hall: that he is not only a strong leader in a crisis, but someone who was deeply engaged with the Islamic extremist threat long before planes hit the World Trade Center.
But for most of Giuliani's career as a Department of Justice official, prosecutor and New York's chief executive, terrorism was a narrow aspect of his broader crime-fighting agenda, which was dominated by drug dealers, white-collar criminals and the Mafia. Giuliani expressed confidence that Islamic extremism could be contained through vigorous investigation by law enforcement agencies and prosecution in the court system -- the same approach he now condemns.
His public warnings about the threat were infrequent. To the extent that he mentioned terrorism in his aborted run for the Senate in 2000, for example, it was to call for more spending on intelligence. Even in the weeks after Sept. 11, he framed the attacks in the language of crime, describing the hijackers as "insane murderers" and calling for restoration of the "rule of law."
As mayor, Giuliani made decisions that seemed to discount the gravity of the terrorist threat, such as placing his emergency command center at the World Trade Center a few years after the 1993 bombing attack there, against the wishes of top advisers. By his own account, it was after Sept. 11 that he started reading up on al-Qaeda, devouring a book that his then-girlfriend Judith Nathan bought for him.
As terrorist incidents occurred sporadically in the 1990s, Giuliani sought to keep them in perspective. He urged against publicizing terror drills, to avoid needlessly scaring New Yorkers. He resisted branding as terrorism smaller-scale acts of Islamic violence in the city.
In late 1999, as authorities scrambled to unravel a worldwide "millennium plot" and a top former FBI official advised people not to attend the New Year's Eve festivities in Times Square, Giuliani warned against overreacting. "I would urge people not to let the psychology of fear infect the way they act. Otherwise we have let the terrorists win without anybody striking a blow," he said.
There's far, far more. Scandalous liberal lies, needless to say, which you can best inoculate yourself against by reading the whole piece [2], repeatedly.
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