The Giuliani Papers

Is Giuliani Taking Orders from the White House?

It's no secret that Bush wants war with Iran. Giuliani is doing his part to help him.

In London, Giuliani announced his intention to expand NATO to include Israel. The radical nature of the proposal and its relationship to Iran policy was explained by Glenn Greenwald:

In London this week, Rudy Giuliani proposed what is probably the single most extremist policy of any major presidential candidate, certainly this year and perhaps in many years:

"Rudy Giuliani talked tough on Iran yesterday, proposing to expand NATO to include Israel and warning that if Iran's leaders go ahead with their goal to be a nuclear power "we will prevent it, or we will set them back five or 10 years." . . . .

While Giuliani did not explicitly address the implications for Iran of adding Israel to NATO in his speech, his aides later highlighted a 2006 Heritage Foundation paper by Nile Gardiner, a former Thatcher aide who was announced as a new Giuliani adviser yesterday.

That step would "leave the mullahs with no illusions about the West's determination to respond to Iran's strategic threat to the region," Gardiner wrote. "Any nuclear or conventional attack on Israel, be it direct or through proxies such as Hezbollah or other terrorist groups, would be met by a cataclysmic response from the West."

Note the simularities between those implications and what is before the Senate today.

The Kyle-Lieberman amendment attached to the Defense Authorization Bill says:

(3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;

(4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies.

Same end, different angle. We agree to attack Iran if Israel is attacked by Iran's "proxies" like Hezbollah and, presumably, Hamas.

Giuliani's Texas Connections Noted by Washington Post

On Friday, the Washington Post ran a story about Guiliani's Texas base of financial and political support.

The lede said:

AUSTIN, Texas -- Republican Rudy Giuliani _ thrice-married, liberal on social issues and a consummate New Yorker _ seems an unlikely White House contender to be embraced by a Texas' GOP establishment rooted in the energy industry and dominated by religious conservatives.

But the former New York mayor has built a formidable political base in Texas with the help of well-connected Republican money men. He owes his advantage in part to his role as a name partner with a powerhouse, Houston-based law firm known for its impressive roster of energy-giant clients, Bracewell & Giuliani.

The Giuliani Papers ran a very similar story back in June. The lede said:

In addition to the millions of dollars of personal income Giuiliani earns from his partnership in the Houston law firm Bracewell & Giuliani his presidential campaign has received more money from Texas than any other candidate, $2.2 million, during the first quarter. Giuliani joined the firm in 2005.

You saw it here first.

Giuliani Pal Mukasey for AG

It is reported tonight that Michael Mukasey will be Bush's nominee for Attorney General. He is connected to Giuliani on a number of levels.

Mukasey was a close Giuliani pal in New York when Giuliani was a U.S. Attorney and Mukasey was a federal judge.

Mukasey's son Marc is a partner at Bracewell & Giuliani in the firm's New York office.

Mukaseys senior and junior are both members of the Giuliani campaign's "Justice Advisory Committee."

See more at my previous post here.

Neo-Con Giuliani III

Doug Bandow of the American Conservative Defense Alliance has this take on Giuliani's Neo-Con foreign policy ideas:

The Republican Party is in desperate straits. How else to explain that Rudy Giuliani – a former mayor with no foreign policy experience – is the Republican front-runner, largely based on his supposed foreign policy expertise?

That the former mayor is unsuited to be president is evident from his recent essay in Foreign Affairs. He is breathtakingly naive, shockingly irresponsible, and cynically dishonest in turn. Indeed, since this document was undoubtedly carefully drafted and vetted by his campaign staff and outside policy advisers, his personal instincts likely are even more extreme.

There's much more here.

Neo-Con Giuliani II

I missed this report on Giuliani's Nightmare Team of foreign policy advisors by Ken Silverstein in Harpers.org.

Neo-Con Giuliani

It's not exactly news, but at least it's not another 'Rudy attacks free speech and Hillary' story.

David Saltonstall of the New York Daily News comments on Giuliani's posse of Neo-Con thugs:

They are officially known as Rudy Giuliani's senior foreign policy advisory board, but they also could be dubbed something else: Neocons For Rudy.

As in neoconservatives, the Republican faction that many see as among the most potent forces of Bush-era Washington - a well-funded, sharply analytical bunch that provided the ideological basis for invading Iraq and is now training its cross hairs on Iran.

Many of its leaders now see Giuliani as the made-to-order candidate, or at least the best chance to perpetuate their influence, experts say.

Giuliani is the Bush redux, the candidate of endless pointless war.

Giuliani on Ted Olson: "Totally Non-Partisan"

Today in an interview on KSFO radio in San Francisco, Giuliani praised likely Attorney General nominee Ted Olson as "totally non-partisan, bi-partisan."

Right.

Like the "Arkansas Project" to destroy Bill Clinton was non-partisan.

And arguing to appoint Bush president before the Supreme Court in 2000 was non-partisan.

The audio is here.

After Bush's Speech, Giuliani Clueless

Giuliani was on CNN after the president's speech last night. James Fallows first impression:

He looks like a man who is crazy. Making no clinical diagnosis here, just talking about his affect as it comes across on TV. I am sure this is partly just my unfamiliarity with his tic of stressing a point by opening his eyes so wide you can see the whites all the way around. He does that a lot, and at first glance it's odd. But beyond that is the eerie sense of how strongly he resembles the earlier, cockier G.W. Bush of two or three years ago.

And his second thoughts with the cold light of dawn:

Mayor Giuliani... is this how he's been all along? To start with, he doesn't know anything. To be more precise: not a single sentence that he utters suggests any familiarity with what people have been saying and arguing -- about terrorism, Iraq, the situation of the military, security trade-offs, etc -- for the last few years. He's out of date in two ways: He displays the "fashionable in 2003 and 2004" assumption that if you say "nine-eleven, nine-eleven, nine-eleven!!" enough times, you end all debate about military policy. He displays the "fashionable about three weeks ago" assumption that if you say "General Petraeus, General Petraeus, General Petraeus" enough times, you've offered an Iraq policy. And through it all he seems totally self-confident. Hmm, have we seen anything like this combo before?

Time Takes a Teensy-Weensy Step in Re-Evaluating Saint Rudy "Mayor of the World"

When Time magazine named Giuliani "Person of the Year for 2001" there was no hesitation or question. We were in the presence of greatness. And not just ordinary everyday greatness, but ceiling-of-the-Sistine-Chapel sort of greatness, where history reaches forward (or should it be backward?) to pass on the fiery genius of leadership to a new hero for a new generation. Giuliani's moment had arrived. The fickle finger of fate came down from heaven's Ten Downing Street into the apartment of a gay couple on the upper east side to touch America's chosen one:

Now, around 2:30 a.m., Giuliani walked into the Upper East Side apartment of Howard Koeppel and his longtime partner, Mark Hsiao. Koeppel, a friend and supporter of Giuliani's, had been lending the mayor a bedroom suite since June, when Giuliani separated from his second wife, Donna Hanover, and moved out of Gracie Mansion. His suit still covered with ash, Giuliani hugged Koeppel, dropped into a chair and turned on the television--actually watching the full, ghastly spectacle for the first time. He left the TV on through the night in case the terrorists struck again, and he parked his muddy boots next to the bed in case he needed to head out fast. But he was not going to be doing any sleeping. Lying in bed, with the skyscrapers exploding over and over again on his TV screen, he pulled out a book--Churchill, the new biography by Roy Jenkins--turned straight to the chapters on World War II and drank in the Prime Minister's words: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

There is a bright magic at work when one great leader reaches into the past and finds another waiting to guide him.

This magic moment (cue Jay and the Americans) did indeed signal something bright for Rudolph Giuliani. He has since made millions of dollars from best-selling books, giving lectures at 100K a pop, and lobbying for companies that lied about the deadly drugs they marketed to middle America.

That historic touched-by-a-Churchill moment? It seems we have to wait for that until he becomes President of the United States. But now, Time Magazine isn't so sure. Amanda Ripley basically says, if you think Bush is great vote for Rudy because Rudy is GWB II:

Giuliani's limitations are in fact remarkably similar to those of another man who has led the nation into a war without end. Some of the Bush Administration's policies, like improved intelligence sharing between countries and our own agencies, have made the U.S. better at fighting terrorism. But others, from the war in Iraq to the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, have actually made the task much more difficult. The challenge for the next President will be focusing on and adapting the good tools and jettisoning the bad. Whether you conclude Giuliani can win this war depends ultimately on whether you think we are winning now.

Rove to Rudy?

A column by Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News suggests that Karl Rove and Rudy Giuliani are made for each other.

Rove stood for nothing other than getting his man elected - twice - no matter what he had to say to accomplish that. Rudy Giuliani ought to hire him tomorrow, because it is clear now that Giuliani will say anything, about terrorism or immigration or abortion or gun control or gay marriage, if he thinks it will get him the Republican nomination, maybe even the presidency.