I'm gonna name my band Rudy and the Terrorists.

And again, ask yourself what Fox News would do with it if John Edwards or Hillary Clinton made a blatant lie like this in a campaign speech. And then ask yourself how likely it is that this story will ever get any farther than the Village Voice.

Still, Giuliani is a good Catholic.

I always suspected Giuliani was involved with terrorism but you'd think a presidential candidate would want to be quiet about it.

But without terrorism, what would Rudy do for a running mate???

It's telling that Giuliani cites Bodansky as his major source of information on bin Laden: Bodansky's work is impressive in its monumental collection of falsehoods, errors and lacunae. (At least Brisard's al-Zarqawi book contained original source material.)

I can accept him reading Bodansky right after 9/11 -- after all, there weren't that many published works on bin Laden at the time -- but six years after the attacks, can't he cite *anything* else?

Blue Girl: But without terrorism, what would Rudy do for a running mate???

He'd have to fall back on the squeegee guys.

I wouldn't trust anything that Victoria Toensing said about anyone, but even a broken clock....

Politics, without principle...Oh wait, thats a redundancy! Ergo, periodic revolutions.

Rudy's actual involvement with terrorism

Talk to some black folks from NYC. Plenty of there, there.

Victoria Toensing, the deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department in Washington who filed a criminal complaint in the Lauro investigation, says that no one in Giuliani's office "was involved at all."

Kevin, is this the same Victoria Toensing who "made regular appearances on television claiming that they were the target of investigations by Clinton Administration" during the Monica Lewinsky scandal? It's hypocritical for you to not trust her when she said bad things about Clinton but trust her now when she says bad things about the conservative Rudy.

"I knew, in detail, the Americans he murdered. I went over their cases."

What kind of a list has he put together?

if you want to be president you have to act presidential, there are standards to uphold here.

Bob Novak has reported that Vickie Toerag is a supporter of Huckleberry Fred.

Toerag was also the one of the liars who claimed Valerie Plame was the subject of constant chatter among the Beltway cocktail weenie waggers.

I fail to understand how he has any credibility on this matter. He completely abandoned his 9-11 commission responsibilities. Blew them off would be the best description.

I was an associate and Jay Fischer was a partner and he spoke about the Klinghoffer case. Never mentioned Giuliani one bit. Never.

In fact, part of the reason he tells the story is that the US Govt was essentially ineffective against Arafat back then and he went after the PLO in civil court and won.

Let's see if he gets Gore'd. I doubt it. Unlike Gore, he actually seems to be a liar and confabulator. So, you know, where's the challenge in twisting his words?

Oh, yeah, and St. Ronnie liberated Auschwitz...

Well Broder sez...

Republican presidential candidates have to embrace President Bush now, but soon enough they'll be distancing themselves from him.

Really?

Repugs are so caught up in the Bushism cult, I doubt they would know change if it bit them in the face.

Frankly, I don't think the GOP candidates can change, and still hold on the radical right, the disillusioned skin-heads of the neo-con party that worship Bushism today.

Alas, if only Repugs would listen to Broder, and Broder's stupid, partisan-armchair two-cents worth. I mean, how is Judy going to say he is for change??? NY is the only off-world planet he knows, and the South will always view him as an alien devil that Jerry Falwell warned them all about.

AND how is Romney going to kiss a liberal woman's baby without getting hit with mommy's purse?

With Border, it's all about change, and he's right. If only Broder could shed the armchair pundit image BUT, due to his own cult worship of Bushism - he's hopeless lost "the normal" American reader's respect.

Jon Chait of TNR?

No thanks.

Classic TNR straddle too: criticize someone as being "not serious" or incompetent at fighting terrorism. That way the rag can still be butch to its neo-con, I mean liberal hawk, readership, while still looking ostensibly liberal, since they're criticizing a conservative, after all.

Fuck TNR and the "liberal" hawks.

Bushism is the art of lying - how else can Repugs get into office?

The dwindling voters of the once mighty Repug party expect a good Pecos Bill style tall tale anyways. If you can't tell tall tales(Big lies,) than you just ain't much of a Repug. It's a Bushism cult thing. You have to be born a sucker to understand.

Rudy is a classic example of a grade A, prime cut...CHICKENHAWK. All squawk, no walk. Never fought a fight in his life without big brother there to protect him. His accrual balls are the size sweet peas...

hell, what's the big deal? inflating one's bio is republican tradition (see reagan, ronald. military record during wwII, places never visited, action never seen.)

theresites: "Talk to some black folks from NYC. Plenty of there, there."

You're absolutely correct about Rudy Giuliani's intimate knowledge of the issue of state-sponsored terrorism -- to which the family, neighbors and friends of the late Amadou Diallo can no doubt and unfortunately attest, and all too well.

Al: "It's hypocritical for you to not trust [Victoria Toensing] when she said bad things about Clinton but trust her now when she says bad things about the conservative Rudy."

Toensing's role as lead federal attorney in the Klinghoffer murder case is part of the historic record, putz, and thus beyond dispute. Further, the incident happened while the Achille Lauro was in the Mediterranean Sea, which was completely out of then-U.S. Attorney Giuliani's jurisdiction of the Southern District of New York.

But, hey, I'll bite. Show us any legal document concerning this case where Rudy's name appears as either a prosecutor or even as a consulting attorney, and I'll gladly admit I'm wrong.

But until you do, STFU.

larry birnbaum: "Oh, yeah, and St. Ronnie liberated Auschwitz ..."

You're mistaken. It was Dachau. Auschwitz was in Poland, and thus was liberated by Soviet forces -- and you know how St. Ronnie of the Reaganites felt about them ...

Kevin,

You are dead wrong about Rudy having no involvement in terrorism. He
was a fund raiser for the Provisional IRA, the organization that
attempted to murder Thatcher and her cabinet.

Before 9.11 it was still fashionable amongst NYC political circles to
support the IRA through their US fundraising organization NORAID. A
polite fiction was maintained that NORAID was a humanitarian
organization but nobody with any sense would have beleived this was
the case.

When Gerry Adams, the leader of the IRA's political wing Sinn Feinn,
made his first visit to the US during the Clinton administration Rudy
gave him a 'humanitarian award'. His stated intention to force Clinton
to talk to Adams.

So here we have Rudy demanding that the US president speak to
terrorists, raising funds for terrorists and giving awards to
terrorists. That is quite a trifecta. According to Rudy that makes him
a terrorist.

Yes, and the Dachau Ronnie spoke of was one he saw newsreels of in a movie in which he was participating.

As my best friend in high school used to say when his right-wing dad would get all excited about John Wayne war movies, "Yeah, dad, those actors sure can fly."

To me, puffery and padding your resume are not the most compelling reasons to not vote for Giuliani. All politicians do it, to a greater or lesser degree. The more compelling reason is he is a fear-monger and a bigot. He wants people to believe Muslim radicals are as big a threat to this nation as the Soviet Union was, which is unmitigated horseshit and is an attempt to exploit uninformed people's fears.

The person who leads this great and proud country should lead with hope, optimism and compassion, qualities Mr. Giuliani sadly lacks.

even if you squint, there's no there there.

What... a... freaking... surprise.

The notion that Arafat murdered Klinghoffer is a little ahistorical. The Achille Lauro was hijacked by the PLF, run by Abu Abbas, not the PLO. Arafat, together with Egyptian President Mubarek, had some involvement in post-hijacking negotiations.

Now, it's possible, of course, that secret evidence never made public shows that Arafat was behind it all. However, I'd like to see more evidence than Giuliani's unsupported assertion before concluding that Arafat did it.

Rudy's just suffering the effects of having spent so much time at Ground Zero.