Rudy Giuliani was forced to backtrack on his comments that there were no domestic terrorism incidents under Bush on CNN yesterday:
“I usually say, ‘We had no major domestic attacks under President Bush since September 11,'” he told Wolf Blitzer.
“I did omit the words, ‘since September 11,’ and I apologize for that,” he went on. “I do remember September 11. In fact, Wolf, I remember it every single day and usually, frequently during the day.”
Of course, that is completely wrong. There was the anthrax letters, attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid, the El Al ticket agent shootings at LAX and the DC snipers.
Of course Rudy couldn’t resist digging his hole a little deeper and managed to piss off a lot of people in the process. His spokesperson clarified that Rudy meant:
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.”
Oh goody. Only certain incidents count? First of all, when your clarification relies on a lot of legalistic parsing you know you’re in trouble. That means Reid doesn’t count (it was in the plane). Rudy’s actually pushing this because he told Blitzer:
In his explanation just now, Giuliani told Blitzer that be meant the Fort Hood shootings as that one attack that happened under Obama.
“Fort Hood was clearly an Islamic terrorist attack,” he said. “He was clearly under the influence of Islamic terrorism.”
He also said the anthrax attacks of 2001 don’t count, because they never proven to be done in the name of “Islamic terrorism.”
That’s insulting. Does he think we’re stupid? Is he trying to say that terrorist attacks don’t count if they’re done by other religions? He does know that the 2nd biggest terrorist attack on American soil was done by Christian Timothy McVeigh, right?
George Stephanopolous is also (rightly) taking some heat for not challenging Giuliani’s remarks during the interview.
Whatever the Mayor meant, it’s not what he said. All of you who have pointed out that I should have pressed him on that misstatement in the moment are right. My mistake, my responsibility.