The Giuliani Papers

The Reality of a Giuliani Police State

It can happen here, and will, if Guiliani wins.

...a vote for Giuliani is a vote for a police state that uses torture. I put it that bluntly because I don't see how granting one man the right to seize and torture anyone anywhere is anything else. Let's be honest about that reality too, shall we? And it's in that context that you have to understand Giuliani's fondness for a certain kind of judge. Giuliani will appoint judges who believe that the executive branch should be granted carte blanche in wartime - and wartime is now defined as permanent and includes as potential "enemy combatants" anyone in the US or anywhere else liable to seizure and "aggressive questioning" by cops or soldiers. Just think about the consequences of that for a while, even in the hands of a man or woman with a record of restraint and level-headedness and magnanimity. Now imagine those powers handed to someone with a long history of vindictiveness, over-reach, and hot-headedness.

Giuliani's "Moderate" Myth

Glenn Greenwald delineates what should be the obvious:

The most transparent and destructive fallacy being recited by our Beltway media class is that Rudy Giuliani is a moderate or centrist Republican. Examples of this fallacy are everywhere.

The very idea that Giuliani is a "moderate" or a "centrist" is completely absurd. Regarding the issues over which the next President will have the greatest influence -- foreign policy and presidential powers -- Giuliani is as far to what is now considered the "Right" as it gets. His views on foreign policy are far more radical and bellicose even than Dick Cheney's, and his view of presidential powers makes George Bush look like Thomas Jefferson.

This whole "moderate" myth is grounded exclusively in Giuliani's non-doctrinaire views of social issues. But that's pure fallacy. Political ideology doesn't function like mathematics, where two numbers situated on opposite extreme poles can be averaged together to produce a nice, comfortable number in the middle.

That isn't how political ideology works. A warmonger with authoritarian impulses and liberal positions on social issues isn't a "moderate" or a "centrist." He's just a warmonger with authoritarian impulses and liberal positions on social issues.

How a Giuliani Campaign Will Look

Andrew Sullivan foresees the campaign if Giuliani gets the nomination:

If Rudy wins the nomination, we will, I fear, have a campaign in which he routinely pulls the fear-chain to justify enormous powers for himself as a post-Cheney president. Any crisis or attack would lead to his eager suspension of the civil liberties we have left. And he will be aided in this by Fox News and even, I suspect, by Joel Surnow, who will deploy the "24" series next year into a running campaign for more torture and more war. Rudy will run on rounding up illegal immigrants, building a massive wall on the Southern border, bombing Iran, fighting indefinitely in Iraq, and tearing up what's left of America's alliances. There would be no transparency in his campaign or administration - just an appeal to trust a strong leader to protect us and attack undesirables. Think of a Malkin-Hannity fantasy - and that is what he would eagerly provide.

Giuliani Makes Cheney Look Like Che Guevara

How the MSM can continue to be so braindead on Giuliani is beyond scandalous.

Andrew Sullivan again makes the TOTALLY OBVIOUS point:

One of the most fundamental questions of the next election is whether the American people are going to endorse the protectorate of extreme executive power that Cheney and Bush have constructed: an executive empowered to over-rule the rule of law, issue signing statements declaring itself the superme branch of government, to detain any person at will, torture at will, and wage war at will, without Congressional approval, and to do all this on a permanent - not temporary, emergency - basis. With Giuliani, you have one more dictatorial impulse: to refuse to submit even to an election if he deems the crisis too great. Any rule-of-law conservative who believes that liberty is best secured when power is divided knows whom not vote for.

The TOTALLY OBVIOUS argument is summarized by David Greenberg in The Washington Post:

...the idea of Rudy as a liberal or even a moderate is unreal, topsy-turvy -- like describing George McGovern as a hawk or Pat Buchanan as a Zionist. The case for Giuliani's moderation rests mainly on three overblown issues -- guns, gay rights and abortion -- and even in those cases, his deviation from conservative orthodoxy is far milder than is usually suggested.

The "social" and "cultural" issues that divide Americans encompass much more than guns, gay rights and abortion. They include state support of religion; the legitimacy of dissenting speech; the president's right to keep information secret; the place of fair procedures in dispensing justice. The Bush administration's hard-line stands on these matters have polarized the nation as much as the Iraq war has. And on these issues, Giuliani is just as hard-line as the man he'd like to succeed.

If you've managed to keep liking President Bush, you'd have no trouble loving President Giuliani.

When will the craven ass-licking sycophants masquerading as journalists start to do their fucking jobs?

Mukasey is Bush is Giuliani

Andrew Sullivan is unerring on the most dangerous AND UNREPORTED actual threats to America.

Mukasey is just one more example:

I think we're in denial about this. Following Mukasey's statements with confirmation would set a precedent we may well deeply regret. Think of another terrorist attack. Think of the Cheney precedents. Think of Giuliani in the White House. Now think of what would be left of democracy and the Constitution the day after.

Giuliani's Apocalyptic Presence

Steve Benen adds more to the discussion. (Note: The Marshall video is in a previous post today.):

There’s something different, and altogether more menacing, about the notion of Giuliani in the Oval Office. Josh Marshall on Tuesday described the “truly catastrophic foreign policy Giuliani would likely pursue.” Matt Yglesias said yesterday that he struggled to find a way to explain how “terrified” he is of a Giuliani presidency, explaining that it would be “a quantum leap of lunacy and just the time when the country desperately needs a clean break and a lurch in the other direction.” Ezra Klein added, “He’s not just another Republican. He’s not even another Bush. He’s constructed a foreign policy team that is almost unimaginably dangerous and aggressive.”

Giuliani's Four Horsemen

More on the dangerous warmongers on Giuliani's foreign policy advisory board courtesy of TPM.

Video here.

Giuliani's Crazy Jewish Hawks

Giuliani's foreign policy advisory board is full to overflowing with radical Jews who would lbe happy to start World War IV so long as it would help Israel. Norman Podhoretz is leading that charge.

Daniel Pipes is another dangerous wacko.

Maureen Dowd in The Times today commenys.

W. blew off the Baker-Hamilton panel suggestions on Iraq that urged the administration to aggressively referee the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, to begin negotiations with Iran and Syria and called for Israel to return the Golan Heights to Syria. Imagine what Rudy would do.

Must-Read of the Week: Giuliani's Israeli-Based Committment to Endless War

Glenn Greenwald in Salon explains what the spineless MSM is afraid to mention:

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.

Namely, that Israel should be admitted to NATO and, in turn, that the United States respond militarily to any attack on Israel by any outside force. The consequences of such an agreement would be catastrophic.

So Rudy Giuliani, as President, would in essence deem any war in which Israel is involved to be, by definition, a war on the U.S., and would use American resources and lives to become involved in any such war and fight on behalf of Israel.

A Giuliani presidency would mean that we would be almost immediately deemed to be at war with Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. It is hard to imagine a more certain and rapid guarantee of endless American wars in the Middle East than this.

In a rational world, Giuliani's proposal would be a major controversy, and the other presidential candidates -- Republican and Democrat alike -- would be loudly pointing to this extremist view to harm the Giuliani campaign. After all, if Americans are asked: "Do you think the U.S. should fight in any wars that Israel fights?" or "do you believe the U.S. should consider any attack on Israel to be an attack on the U.S.?", is there really any doubt what the views of most Americans would be?

Behind Giuliani's thinking is the most radical faction of neo-conservativism:

Of course, none of Giuliani's extremism on this issue should be surprising, given that his senior foreign policy advisor is Norman Podhoretz, whose life has been devoted to trying to induce the U.S. to wage war against any country hostile to Israel. Podhoretz was one of the signatories on the 2002 PNAC letter to President Bush which declared that "No one should doubt that the United States and Israel share a common enemy" and -- listing Iraq, Iran and Syria, among others -- argued that "Israel is fighting the same war." Podhoretz currently "prays" that the U.S. bomb Iran.

And on the day after we are at war with Iran and Syria, people will be outraged and ask why nobody tried to stop it while there was still time.

Giuliani Signals Attack on Iran?

Giuliani in London pretended to be president of the United States, going so far as to seemingly dictate current U.S. foreign policy.

According to The New York Times:

Mr. Giuliani said the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, called him Wednesday night to discuss Iran. The candidate said the United States would use every lever at its disposal, including a military strike, to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Did the president or the state department give Giuliani the OK to deliver policy messages to Olmert?

Later Giuliani said:

“If they get to the point where they are going to become a nuclear power, we will prevent them,” he said of the Iranians, adding, “Or we will set them back 5 or 10 years.”