Newest 9/11 Revisionist – Rudy Giuliani?

Filed in National by on January 8, 2010

I can’t believe Rudy Giuliani passed up the opportunity to talk about 9/11:

Rudy Giuliani, the man who was mayor of New York City during the 9/11 attacks, appeared on Good Morning America today to say President Obama should take lessons from former President George W. Bush on how to prevent a terrorist attack.

“What [Obama] should be doing is following the right things Bush did. One of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama,” Giuliani said.

When Dana Perino did it, we thought she was just stupid. Then Mary Matalin did it. Is this a new GOP push to revise history? I knew Republicans wanted everyone to forget the anthrax letters and the DC snipers, but 9/11 too?

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Comments (15)

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  1. Delaware Dem says:

    Well, if you count the attempted Christmas bombing as an attack, then you have to count the attempted Richard Reid shoe bombing as an attack under Bush’s watch. We then also have to count the anthrax attacks as a terrorist attack (which they were) under Bush’s watch. And we also have to count the September 11, 2001 attacks as a terrorist attack that occurred under Bush’s watch, and we we count them up, that is at least three attacks under Bush’s watch.

    What is with these Rethuglicans forgetting that the September 11, 2001 attacks occurred on September 11, 2001? Because they are all liars, that is why.

  2. They want to revise history so that the 9/11 attacks happened under Clinton and the Great Recession happened under Obama.

    I think it is unbelievable that Stephanopolous didn’t challenge him on that one.

    DD,

    You’re also forgetting the DC sniper. Giuliani may be referring to the Ft. Hood shootings. If you count those, though, you have to count the D.C. sniper.

  3. anon says:

    It is scary to think how many people believe this bullshit when they hear it. Republicans don’t even have to get everyone to believe it; just a few percent of the population is enough to win an election. And they know it. They are moving the Overton window on the Bush Administration; it is a team effort.

    We tend to forget that the phrase “reality-based community” was bestowed on us by a Republican:

    The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

  4. I’ve always wondered who said we create our own reality. Rove?

  5. cassandra_m says:

    Watching the media react to this revisionism is really instructive. Even though every person in the US knows were were attacked while Bush was president, apparently the rules of “objectivity” mean you never challenge what a wingnut says. Even when it is clearly wrong.

    This is why I really think that the Dems badly need to rethink their media presence — they need to just start saying whatever is useful to them and do it often too. There is simply NO DOWNSIDE to recreating the world in the image that is politically most useful to you.

    It is really heartbreaking to just watch the media be a willing part of the bullshit.

  6. Geezer says:

    Cassandra: Be serious. Any show that books Rudy Giuliani realizes exactly what he’s going to say — a pull-string doll repeats a greater variety of phrases. If they challenge him on it, he’ll take his shtick to the next network over instead. The media is part of the problem.

    As for adopting their tactics, remember that it only works on dumb people.

  7. cassandra_m says:

    LOL, Geezer.

    The last round of Guiliani stupidity was that 9/11 changed everything. Noun and a verb an 9/11. But now he wants us to pretend there was no 9/11.

    The tactics do work on dumb people, which is why I think Dems should think about doing it. If Guiliani manages to get people — media and otherwise — to credulously talk about no attacks under Bush’s watch, then apparently he is speaking to voters how they want to be spoken to. With lies and stupidity.

  8. Geezer says:

    If you really want to reach dumb people, you go on Jerry Springer or Maury Povich and claim you’re not sure who your baby daddy is.

  9. cassandra_m says:

    Well apparently for political news George Stephanopolis = Jerry Springer.

  10. Rudy’s spokesperson clarified:

    A spokesman for the former Mayor clarifies, saying that the remark “didn’t come across as it was intended” and that he was “clearly talking post-9/11 with regards to Islamic terrorist attacks on our soil.”

    By “on our soil,” the former mayor is not including either Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab’s failed Christmas Day attack or Richard Reid’s December 22, 2001 attempt to blow up American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami.

    So the spokesman says that the “one” attack that Giuliani says took place during the Obama administration was a reference to the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Major Nidal Hasan.

    I guess this was even too far for the press. Not sure why they didn’t pursue Perino or Matalin when they said the same thing.

    Tapper in this article picks three incidents on American soil:

    1) The shooting of El Al ticket agents at LAX
    2) DC sniper
    3) Anthrax mailer

  11. Delaware Dem says:

    I don’t blame the Republicans. They have been lying so long and so much they thought the press would just bend over again.

  12. anonone says:

    “I didn’t campaign on the public option.” Not just repubs.

  13. just kiddin says:

    and let’s us not forget New Orleans! Those who lived there would believe they were attacked. Attacked by water, floods due to the failure of the Army Corp of Engineers! How many days did it take Bushite to arrive in New Orleans for his flyover? Good Job Brownie!

  14. just kiddin says:

    and, let us not forget it was Rudy who placed the Terrorism Center in the World Trade Center after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. This was good thinking, this made sense to Rudy? Seymour Hirsch on NPR yesterday, stated that Cheney left “moles” in every agency of government. People who never went through a Congressional review, just some die hard republicans who got permanent positions within all the CIA, Homeland Security, TSA etc. These are people who are giving Cheney information, these moles. If they knew 6 hours after the underwear bomber was on the plane from Amsterdam that he was a possible threat, why didnt the CIA, or those in charge alert the captain of the plane, or the federal marshal on the plane. Why send the information to the Detroit airport to people on the ground? Someone made a mistake leaving out one letter of the name….sorry, I smell a rat code named Darth Vader.

  15. vikram alladi says:

    Denying 911 follows the same footsteps as denying the Holocaust. The cronies in the republican party lie like a rug to get the presidency and the congress. What is new? Time will tell how successful these strategies are going to be.