Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Ron v. Rudy

I was reading the transcript of last night's debate and came across a statement by Giuliani that seems (to me) to have been overlooked. During Hume's ridiculous line of "24" questioning (bold mine):

MR. HUME: Mayor Giuliani, the former director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, the current head of the CIA have both said that the most valuable intelligence tool they have had has been the information gained from what are called enhanced interrogation techniques to include, presumably, water-boarding.

What is your view whether such techniques should be applied in a scenario like the one I described?

MR. GIULIANI: In the hypothetical that you gave me, which assumes that we know there's going to be another attack and these people know about it, I would tell the people who had to do the interrogation to use every method they could think of. It shouldn't be torture, but every method they can think of --

MR. HUME: Water-boarding?

MR. GIULIANI: -- and I would -- and I would -- well, I'd say every method they could think of, and I would support them in doing that because I've seen what -- (interrupted by applause) -- I've seen what can happen when you make a mistake about this, and I don't want to see another 3,000 people dead in New York or any place else."


Perhaps it was a bit of a throwaway line, the purpose of which was to mention yet again that he was mayor of NYC during 9/11*, but is he betraying ignorance about the circumstances of 9/11? I don't recall any "mistake" in regards to not being hard enough with terror suspects.
In fact, his nemesis from the debate, Ron Paul, was more spot-on regarding the mistakes of 9/11 (bold mine):

"MR. GOLER: You would eliminate the Department of Homeland Security in the midst of a war, sir?

REP. PAUL: Well, I think we should not go to more bureaucracy. It didn't work. We were spending $40 billion on security prior to 9/11, and they had all the information they needed there to deal with the threat, and it was inefficiency. So what do we do?"

Giuliani is running as the security candidate? It bothers me that all he seems to need to do to project this impression is merely allude to the fact that he was mayor of NYC during 9/11 (as the applause indicates). Well, that and advocate "enhanced interrogation techniques".

Unfortunately, Ron Paul's line regarding this seems to have been lost in the noise:

"I think it's interesting talking about torture here in that it's become enhanced interrogation technique. It sounds like Newspeak."


*"I was just informed that Rudy Giuliani was actually the mayor of New York City during 9/11. Somehow, I didn't know this. He never points this out.

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