Premier Rock Forum

olbermann wrote: "How many casualties will we have?" - this is the language of Bin Laden.

Yours, Mr. Giuliani, is the same chilling nonchalance of the madman, of the proselytizer who has moved even from some crude framework of politics and society, into a virtual Roman Colosseum of carnage, and a conceit over your own ability — and worthiness — to decide, who lives and who dies.

Rather than a reasoned discussion — rather than a political campaign advocating your own causes and extolling your own qualifications — you have bypassed all the intermediate steps, and moved directly to trying to terrorize the electorate into viewing a vote for a Democrat, not as a reasonable alternative and an inalienable right… but as an act of suicide.

This is not the mere politicizing of Iraq, nor the vague mumbled epithets about Democratic 'softness' from a delusional Vice President.

This is casualties on a partisan basis — of the naked assertion that Mr. Giuliani's party knows all and will save those who have voted for it — and to hell with everybody else.

And that he, with no foreign policy experience whatsoever, is somehow the Messiah-of-the-moment.

olbermann wrote: Which party held the presidency on September 11th, 2001, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party held the mayoralty of New York on that date, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party assured New Yorkers that the air was safe, and the remains of the dead, recovered - and not being used to fill pot-holes, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party wanted what the terrorists wanted - the postponement of elections - and to whose personal advantage would that have redounded, Mr. Giuliani?

Which mayor of New York was elected eight months after the first attack on the World Trade Center, yet did not emphasize counter-terror in the same city for the next eight years, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party had proposed to turn over the Department of Homeland Security to Bernard Kerik, Mr. Giuliani?

Who wanted to ignore and hide Kerik's Organized Crime allegations, Mr. Giuliani?

Who personally argued to the White House that Kerik need not be vetted, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party rode roughshod over Americans' rights while braying that it was actually protecting them, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party took this country into the most utterly backwards, utterly counter-productive, utterly ruinous war in our history, Mr. Giuliani?

Which party has been in office as more Americans were killed in the pointless fields of Iraq, than were killed in the consuming nightmare of 9/11, Mr. Giuliani?

Drop this argument, sir. You will lose it.

olbermann wrote:Go beyond Mr. Bush's rhetorical calamities of 2006.

Call attention to the casualties on your watch, and your long, waking slumber in the years between the two attacks on the World Trade Center.

Become the candidate who runs on the Vote-For-Me-Or-Die platform.

Do a Joe McCarthy, a Lyndon Johnson, a Robespierre.

Only, if you choose so to do, do not come back surprised nor remorseful if the voters remind you that "terror" is not just a matter of "casualties." It is, just as surely, a matter of the promulgation of fear.

Claim a difference between the parties on the voters' chances of survival — and you do Osama Bin Laden's work for him.

And we — Democrats and Republicans alike, and every variation in between — We — Americans! — are sick to death, of you and the other terror-mongers, trying to frighten us into submission, into the surrender of our rights and our reason, into this betrayal of that for which this country has always stood.

Franklin Roosevelt's words ring true again tonight.

And, clarified and amplified, they are just as current now, as they were when first he spoke them, 74 years ago.

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself" — and those who would exploit our fear, for power, and for their own personal, selfish, cynical, gain.

"Isn't it annoying, upsetting and even in some cases a matter of national security that we have to send money to our enemies?" Giuliani asked. "We need a president who knows how to get things done so we don't have to be sending money to Chavez."

"Who would listen to Chavez if he didn't have all this oil money? Nobody would listen to him," Giuliani said.

He said Chavez's social programs and those of Cuban leader
Fidel Castro "keep people in poverty" and "keep people dependent."

Giuliani argued that "astounding" unemployment levels show that the Venezuelan president isn't using his oil revenues to help his own countrymen.

Caracas, Venezuela, July 20, 2005.- Unemployment dropped 3.7 percentage points in June, relative to the same month a year earlier, reported Venezuela’s National Institute of Statistics (INE). The unemployment rate for June 2005 was thus at 11.8%, one of the lowest rates of the Chavez entire presidency. A year earlier the rate had been 15.5%.

Unemployment rate:
8.9% (October 2006 est.)

Venezuela remains highly dependent on oil revenues, which account for roughly 90% of export earnings, more than 50% of the federal budget revenues, and around 30% of GDP. Tax collection - Venezuela's primary source of non-oil revenue - is expected to surpass $23 billion in 2006, exceeding the yearend collection goal by more than 20%. A nationwide strike between December 2002 and February 2003 had far-reaching economic consequences - real GDP declined by around 9% in 2002 and 8% in 2003 - but economic output since then has recovered strongly. Fueled by higher oil prices, record government spending helped to boost GDP growth in 2004 and 2005 to approximately 18% and 11%, respectively. Economic growth in 2006 reached about 9%. This spending, combined with recent minimum wage hikes and improved access to domestic credit, has fueled a consumption boom - car sales in 2006 increased by around 70% - but has come at the cost of higher inflation. Despite government attempts to withdraw liquidity from the economy, Venezuela's money supply set a record in June 2006, approximately 70% higher than the previous year. Imports have also jumped significantly.

the nation 5-16-07 wrote:Giuliani: "That's really an extraordinary statement. That's really an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I have ever heard that before and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11. I would ask the congressman withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that."

The 9-11 Commission report detailed how bin Laden had, in 1996, issued "his self-styled fatwa calling on Muslims to drive American soldiers out of Saudi Arabia" and identified that declaration and another in 1998 as part of "a long series" of statements objecting to U.S. military interventions in his native Saudi Arabia in particular and the Middle East in general. Statements from bin Laden and those associated with him prior to 9-11 consistently expressed anger with the U.S. military presence on the Arabian Peninsula, U.S. aggression against the Iraqi people and U.S. support of Israel.

The 9-11 Commission based its assessments on testimony from experts on terrorism and the Middle East. Asked about the motivations of the terrorists, FBI Special Agent James Fitzgerald told the commission: "I believe they feel a sense of outrage against the United States. They identify with the Palestinian problem, they identify with people who oppose repressive regimes, and I believe they tend to focus their anger on the United States."

clocker bob wrote:Now Guiliani is going off on Venezuela- calls Chavez 'dangerous', because we are forced to buy oil from him against our will.

I don't think I have ever heard that before

glynnisjohns wrote:

I don't think I have ever heard that before

BLEW MY LITTLE MIND.

giuliani wrote:That's really an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq.

clocker bob wrote: I'm really really surprised that Brit Hume didn't ask Rudy some follow up questions on his rejection of the blowback motive.

The Man Who Stole 9/11

GOP frontrunner Rudy Giuliani is hoping to ride his 9/11 experience straight into the White House. But while "America's Mayor" is playing well in New Hampshire, New Yorkers directly impacted by the World Trade Center tragedy are less convinced.

In a recent New York Daily News poll, New Yorkers said they favor current mayor Michael Bloomberg, who hasn't even declared his candidacy, over "America's Mayor" by almost 2 to 1.

Howard Lutnick, the CEO of money management firm Cantor Fitzgerald who lost 658 of his employees on 9/11, has given Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) presidential campaign $4,600 of his own money over the last two months and has not given the Giuliani campaign a dime. Diny Lajamian, who as Cantor's human resources director worked with families of deceased employees and helped rebuild the company's staff, says she's disgusted by Giuliani's use of 9/11 as a political prop. "It's absolutely disgraceful. He's just a sleazebag," Lajamian says. "I think now the families feel like he left them high and dry."

A rep for a group that aides families of those injured or killed in the WTC seconds that. "Rudy thinks our grief and the hurt we experienced somehow makes us stupid," says Monica Gabrielle, co-chair of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign. "Rudy just can't control himself.... He can't acknowledge his failures.... He just can't stop creating his own myth about himself and about that day. The man is in love with his own legend."

jim dwyer new york times 2005 wrote:In the epic accounts of Sept. 11 provided this week by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his aides, the police and fire departments bravely worked together and no catastrophic failure to communicate doomed scores of firefighters inside the World Trade Center.

Instead, Giuliani testified, those firefighters heard an evacuation order, but still did not leave the building. They were "standing their ground" to make sure civilians got out, he said.

Giuliani's vision of the day, offered during his testimony before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, addressed the loss of many firefighters who appeared to have had ample opportunity to escape.

Along with his former commissioners of the police, fire and emergency management departments, Giuliani denied that the city's response suffered from the central problems identified by the panel and by earlier city investigations. The firefighters "were interpreting an evacuation order the way a brave rescue worker would interpret an evacuation order, which is to first get the civilians out and then get yourself out," Giuliani said.

For all the power of his voice and stature, however, Giuliani's account must compete with a substantial and diverse body of evidence that flatly contradicts much of what he and his aides say happened that day, particularly on matters that could be seen as reflecting on the performance of his administration.

On perhaps the most painful of these, the loss of at least 121 firefighters in the north tower, Giuliani suggested that they stayed inside the trade center because they were busy rescuing civilians - never mentioning that they could not hear warnings from police helicopters, that they never learned the south tower had collapsed and that they were having serious problems staying in touch with their own commanders.

Witnesses who escaped from the tower tell a story vastly different from Giuliani's. They say that in the north tower's final 15 minutes, only a handful of civilian office workers were still in the bottom 44 floors of the building, perhaps no more than two or three dozen. Many of the firefighters who remained in the towers were between the 19th and 37th floors, having made slow progress up the stairs in their heavy gear.

It is clear, witnesses said, that even after the south tower collapsed, many, if not most, of the firefighters had no idea that they were in dire peril, or that it was time for them to leave. Police officers received strong guidance from their commanders to get out of the building, the commission reported, thanks in large part to the information sent to the ground by police helicopters.