Absolutely unbelievable. He’s mad that Obama said “we’re at war with Al-Qaeda” instead of “we’re at war with terrorism.”
Now he’s trashing Bush for returning Gitmo detainees to Yemen and citing Bumiller’s “1-in-5 returned to the battlefield.”
Update. It is not surprising that he did so badly in the 2008 primaries. Here’s commenter C on what came earlier:
He basically said that it (the anthrax attack) isn’t really terrorism, unless its Islamic terrorism and since the FBI couldn’t pin the anthrax attacks on Muslims, it wasn’t a terrorist attack
beltane
Why does Rudy love Al-Qaeda so much? What did they ever do for him that he wants us to suspend our war on them? Follow the money.
ajr22
Chris Mathews is on fire right now. Mathews ” What are Americans supposed to do in the fight against terrorism besides yell down with jihad and vote right wing?” Tom Ridge- speechless. Mathews repeated the question 5 times in his usual style. Good stuff.
Face
Here’s a terrorism-related question: just what would these planes actually do?
Does anyone really, truly think they’d blow up the plane and all the passengers on board? Who the fuck would ever actually order such a thing?
More theater. Expensive, ridiculous.
mcc
I demand Obama invade Terrorism immediately
SpotWeld
I wonder if someone figured out a way to bud a Bush speach so it would synch the lip movements with video of an Obama speech… would watching that cause a winger’s head to explore like scene out of Scanners?
bayville
“Great look Mr. Mayor, we’ll have to leave it there.”
joe from Lowell
“War on Terrorism” instead of “War on al Qaeda” = Invasion of Iraq.
“War on Terrorism” instead of “War on al Qaeda” = bin Laden escaping Tora Bora.
Objecting to Obama’s concentration on al Qaeda means you want us to take our eye off the ball.
Sentient Puddle
Is he saying anything about the beltway snipers? Also not terrorism because the shooters weren’t Muslim?
Why oh why
@Face:
There was a drunk passenger locked in the bathroom: like Putin said, those jets would “corner the bandits in the toilet and wipe them out.”
JR
Glad to see we’re still bitterly waging the War on Semantics, Rudy. I thought the Battle of “Islamic Extremism,” fought last year on crowded stages (Tom Tancredo could have been hurt!), was going to be our Waterloo, but since then we’ve persevered, and now that the fight against “Happy Holidays” is over for the time being (though we must stay vigilant!), it’s good that we’re back to fighting the main enemy: namely, whatever term any Democrat uses on any given day to discuss the threat to American lives.
If we don’t continue to wage war on those terms that Democrats might employ to describe our nation’s enemies, then we might as well all call it a night and go home. Remember, it’s not enough that they discuss the threat, think about the threat, and act to remove the threat: if they don’t call the threat exactly what we say it should be called, then they’re no better than Bin Laden.
Sophist
Pfft. Quisling. Treasonist. Appeaser.
We are at war with nothing less than Universal Entropy, and it shames me to see such a public figure equivocate in so cowardly a manner. Such displays do nothing but give aid and comfort to the laws of thermodynamics.
KG
I think saying we’re at war with al Qaeda is a mistake. Wars, under international law, are armed conflicts between nation states. The British Empire did not declare war against Blackbeard because pirates aren’t nations. To say that you are at war with some entity that is not a state (no territory, no population, no government, no recognition from other states) is to grant them legitimacy that they don’t deserve, particularly in this case. Rather than elevate the terrorists in their minds, and more importantly in the eyes of possible recruits, why not refer to them as what they are: a nuisance that will shortly be relegated to the ash heap of history.
I’m not saying ignore them or to not take them seriously, just be more reasonable about it.
Punchy
Can Rudy provide me with that Declaration of War against terrorism that Congress surely approved?
Wait, he cant?
Jay in Oregon
@KG:
Why are you giving aid and comfort to Drugs, Poverty, and Homelessness? Appeaser!
fraught
He’s not running for governor and he’s not running for senator, but he’s running for something. He’s taking lessons from Sarah Palin. Somewhere in his raving imaginings he sees a combine of Palin/Giuliani/Giuliani/Palin that will work somehow. He’s listening to his wife. Liz Cheney fits in there somehow. As a longtime New Yorker I’ve learned that this guy has no idea how berserk he is.
ppcli
@Sophist:
Damn Straight! Rudy’s weakness is going to cause the heat death of the universe. (It’s already happened to the part of the universe inside his head.)
Yutsano
@fraught: You think he might be angling for 2012 again? I doubt it since he’ll never survive the teabagger onslaught.
peach flavored shampoo
@fraught: Can you imagine a country run by Guliani as Pres, Liz Cheney as Vice, Palin as SecState, and Dick Cheney as SecDef?
joe from Lowell
Why do people keep saying this?
The very first war Congress ever declared was against a stateless entity.
joe from Lowell
In fact, they were PIRATES.
Comrade Dread
Funny. It was pretty much the anthrax attacks that spurred the country into panic about Saddam and his mobile WMD labs.
Not that I’m a conspiracy theorist or anything. I’m sure the lone virologist they pinned it on despite evidence to the contrary was the only guy involved. Also disgruntled. Who committed suicide.
joe from Lowell
I’ve encountered this before: support for “War on Terror” over “War on al Qaeda” because the former is more amenable to what they truly want, which is “War on Islam.”
They want to be able to roll any hostilities against any Muslim bad guys, no matter how unrelated to al Qaeda (cough Saddam cough), to be considered part of our response to the threat demonstrates on 9/11.
Ash Can
@peach flavored shampoo: Isn’t that, in essence, why Somalia imploded?
Shell
Gaah!!! Guess we didn’t get the memo, that there are no such things as domestic or home grown terrorists. Timothy McVeigh, the Unibomer?
Heavens no. Just guys pissed off with the current political scene.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Face:
__
Having fighters in position to shoot down a passenger plane that may be used to carry out another WTC/Pentagon attack makes sense, and it makes sense to have the assets on scene just in case. The problem is that it appears that there is no rational risk assessment going on; there’s no way to go from someone who is obviously inebriated locking himself in the loo to a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11. Likewise, one guy going the wrong way through a security gate which was left unpersoned by the TSA stooge who was supposed to be personing it should not automatically mean having to rescreen thousands of people.
Appropriate security measures are fine, but security theatre is wasteful and counterproductive. At best, security theatre will only prevent the last attack.
KG
@joe from Lowell: no, it was military action authorized by Congress, the first formal declaration of war was against the UK in the War of 1812. And the Barbary States were actually states, or at least Regencies of the Ottoman Empire. They were governmental entities that supported pirates but they were not pirates – sort of like the Taliban would be to al Qaeda.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Ohh, Ohh! I know! I know!
[waves hand in the back row]
How about we are at war with both AQ and the IRA! At the same time! Quick, somebody ask Peter King his opinion on that score.
mcc
So is the war in Afghanistan, and so was the Vietnam war.
At the moment in Afghanistan, we have a war powers authorization against “nations, organizations, or persons” who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001”. In other words, we are engaged in a military action against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, both of which are, at the moment, non-state organizations. We do not have force authorization right now against any state. Absent involvement by Al Qaeda and the Talban I’m not sure if we’d still have authorization to continue policing a civil war in Afghanistan (maybe we could justify it by saying we are assisting NATO in keeping with our peace treaty obligations, that’s what we did in Bosnia right)?
It might be technically accurate to say this is not “war” because no war was declared? But then Vietnam wasn’t a war either, nor was either war in Iraq. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything meaningful done by swapping out “war against al qaeda” for “military action against al qaeda”.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Punchy:
__
Public Law 107-40, Senate Joint Resolution 23, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed 18 September 2001, which fulfills the requirements under the War Powers Act of 1973 for Congressional approval for the use of the military.
The intent of the War Powers Act is to provide the Congress a path for exercising its responsibility to declare war under Art I Sec 8 of the Constitution. Although there is an argument that the WPA is itself unconstitutional, it has never been tested in court. Unless it is overturned at some point in time, authorizations for the use of military force which fulfill the requirements of the WPA are considered to satisfy the Art I Sec 8 requirement. The Congress does not have to pass a law that says “Declaration of War” on it to place the US on a war footing.
Colette
@Shell:
As who wouldn’t be? Seriously, I would not be surprised if someday soon we see McVeigh and Kaczynski lauded by tea-party types as true patriots righteously outraged by our evil, big-spending liberal government.
KG
@mcc: it would also be technically accurate to say we are not at war because we are not fighting a State. Like I said @26, even the Barbary State Wars involved States of some sort. That’s the difference I’m talking about, if I wasn’t clear, my apologies.
joe from Lowell
KG,
You’re right that it wasn’t a formal declaration of war.
However, they weren’t actual states. They were more like warlords in Somalia – non-state powers that controlled territory in a territory that the actual sovereign government was unable to control.
It was common for the Sultan of the weak Ottoman Empire to reach an accommodation with such groups, because he really couldn’t do anything to dispatch them, but that doesn’t make them state-sponsored, either.
Sophist
Oh, and also:
So, wait, the two main benefits of the military system are:
(1) We can question them for a long, long time, and:
(2) They tell us what we want to know very quickly?
Does no one else see how those points are completely idiotic when taken together?
Sentient Puddle
So I’m reading off of Shuster’s Twitter feed (through some retweets) that Haley Barbour is now saying that America was not attacked under Bush.
This of course on Fox, so there’s no reasonable expectation for the interviewer to press him on it.
Max
Red Alert! Red Alert!
Do NOT watch State of the Union on CNN on Sunday (not that you would)
Guest line up, according to Halperin
President McCain
President Lieberman
and… wait for it….. Liz Cheney
On a better note, RIP Momma Biden.
Zach
@Sentient Puddle:
The younger one claimed it was all part of a jihadist thing at the older one’s trial. Like they thought they could send America into chaos and take over. The younger one, I believe, was convicted on terrorism charges.
Guster
Why is is that right-wingers don’t consider the DC sniper (even conveniently named Mohammed, if I remember correctly) terrorism?
Batocchio
So this is Hardball? Can someone toss up some video links later on, or can we have a post update? I’m happy to look for them later myself if I know the programs involved…
Justin Cognito
@Guster:
Really? Because I remember Ann Coulter going, “They’re MUSLIMS, people, do I have to paint a picture here?” Oh, well. Down the memory hole it goes.
Alex S.
@Max:
Oh my god… is this the real one or the one in Halperin’s dreams?
chuck
Remind me again, why are we supposed to care what a tantruming *loser* like Guliani thinks?
Let me repeat that for Guliani’s benefit: *LOSER*
SiubhanDuinne
@Sentient Puddle #8
Actually, I always assumed that the Beltway Sniper *was* Muslim, given that his name was John Allan Muhammad. But now you mention it, I don’t recall that either the wingers or the media ever made much of that fact. Curious.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne
I stand corrected by Justin Cognito. I either missed that from Ann Coulter at the time, or have repressed it in the intervening years.
jl
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
“The intent of the War Powers Act is to provide the Congress a path for exercising its responsibility to declare war under Art I Sec 8 of the Constitution.”
You are saying that the War Powers Act authorizes all the commonly recognized domestic executive war powers that come with the declaration of war? Or the clause defining treason in the constitution? Or not?
RedKitten
@Colette:
Nope. If I know my right-wingers, they’ll be pinning McVeigh and Kaczynksi as liberals.
Walker
No matter how Rudy parses it, this incident is exactly like the shoe bomber. A failed Islamic terrorist on a plane overpowered by passengers. And the shoe bomber happened on Bush’s watch after 9/11.
So he is just a liar. Big shock.
Keith
When did Giuliani stop calling it “The Terrorists’ War Against Us”? 12 months ago, *that* was what you had to say to demonstrate that you were serious about fighting terror.
Anne Laurie
@Zach:
The older guy wanted to kill his ex-wife and not pay for it, so he decided the best way to achieve this was to kill a bunch of people at random and have his motives for domestic violence get lost in the “noise”. He persuaded his teenage accomplice that LARPing with real weapons would cause widescale panic and lead to the breakdown of White American Oligarchy. Since the two of them actually managed to cause a level of social fearfulness out of all proportion to their actions, fReichtards like G-Rude prefer to send all mention of the Beltway Sniper(s) down the memory hole, because letting a couple poor scrimy not-white dudes with no assets TERRRIZE AMURKA! ! ! does not reflect well on G-Rude’s self-esteem.
Comrade Kevin
Apparently Rudy Can Fail.
Little Dreamer
Sometimes for shits and giggles, I head over to see the freepers implode on their bad news days (I admit, I enjoy watching them freak out).
Today I decided to head over there, and do searches on Both Steele and Guliani.
I found about 20 or so Steele threads where they’re bashing him right and left. They are pissed.
I then performed a search for Guliani as a keyword, not a single thread since 2009. Freepers are ignoring this and hoping it sticks. Idiots can’t even admit that 9/11 happened during the Bush administration.
Little Dreamer
My edit function isn’t working.
I wanted to add, not just 9/11, but the shoe bomber and anthrax attacks and other incidents that all occurred on Bush’s watch.
kay
Bush doesn’t get nearly enough shit for the anthrax attacks.
I’m also surprised the Rudy now says they weren’t a terrorist attack, because Bush described them as a “terrorist attack against our country”, on television.
John McCain (incredibly) went on Letterman and linked them to Iraq.
Joe Lieberman announced they were “state-sponsored”.
The Bush Administration “beat up” Mueller when he wouldn’t go out and tie the attacks to middle eastern terrorists.
So it’s interesting to me that the conservative line is now that they don’t “count” as a terrorist attack.
Were they lying then or are they lying now?
I would like you to just imagine the Republican response if some deadly infectious agent was sent to two GOP Senator’s offices on Obama’s watch.
We all saw how disgustingly the GOP reacted to the airplane attempt.
Imagine if two GOP Senators offices had been targeted, and one was actually hit.
Compare the behavior of Daschle and Leahy then- two Senators who were actually at risk- to the behavior of GOP members of Congress now.
kay
I’m shocked that Rudy doesn’t think the anthrax attacks were a terror attack.
At the time, conservatives were telling us they were launched by Al Quaeda and Saddam Hussein gave him the “weaponized” anthrax.
We’ll never know, I guess, because Ashcroft completely botched the investigation, and ended up paying out 5 million in damages for civil rights violations in the course of the botched investigation, and then he drove his main suspect to suicide.
Down the old memory hole, I guess.
It’s truly scary to contemplate these people being back in power.
I mean, it’s not difficult to read their statements or look back 7 years. They must know their statements can be checked, and they’ll be shown to be liars.
You really can’t tell fantasy from reality, listening to them. Maybe they believe the nonsense they spout is true, or they believed all the bullshit they sold after the anthrax attacks, but I don’t know. It doesn’t even matter to them.
Nathan Implosion
No, it’th not thuprithing at all.
YellowJournalism
@Walker:
Ah, but, according to Guiliani, that’s comparison is not even part his argument. He says that the instance of (Islamic) terrorism is the Fort Hood incident.
Yeah, that whole interview was infuriating to watch.
calipygian
@YellowJournalism: And, according to wingnuts, the Reed case isn’t like the Abdulmuttallab case at all because Reed tried to set the bomb off over international water while Abdulmuttallab tried to do it in US airspace.
Except he was over Ontario. Also. Or something.