Cross-dresser Rudy Giuliani (recently found to be leading in Illinois) has apparently ticked off some of the people he thought were just extras for his campaign’s Really Big Show. NYC’s firefighters have thrown the book at Giuliani, letting us all know how his leadership was lacking on (and well before) that fateful September day:
Survivors of the attack and relatives of some of those who died in the twin towers blamed Giuliani for a lack of radio gear they said could have saved the lives of more than 100 firefighters who had been ordered to evacuate the north tower before it collapsed.
And they criticized Giuliani for placing his emergency command center in the World Trade Center complex before the attacks, after the towers had been the target of a previous bombing in 1993.
“He’s not a leader,” said retired Deputy Chief Jim Riches, whose son was killed in the 2001 attack. “He’s running on 9/11, and it’s all a fallacy.”
It’s not clear why anyone considers this former mayor to have any sort of standing on security matters given he didn’t bother listening to his first responders’ warnings about potential disasters. Sure, he’s groomed an air of knowledgeability on security for himself — but til now that’s been mostly an effort to help fatten his wallet as the star of a consulting firm bearing his name.
He cleaned up Gotham’s streets? Great. Terrorists aren’t bums and pimps (and there are still plenty of both in the Big Apple anyway). As we saw on 9/11 and again in recent weeks in London and Edinburgh, al Qaida and its splinter groups and copycats specifically recruit terrorist cells from among the middle class.
Despite his carefully crafted image, Rudy Giuliani failed to protect his first responders on 9/11 by failing to listen to their advice — and hasn’t America had enough of presidents who fail to listen to the wisdom of others? (And don’t forget this is the same guy who highly recommended the disgraced Bernard Kerik for Homeland Security Czar… So we already know his ideas for potential cabinet members is suspect.)
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July 12, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Windypundit
He cleaned up Gotham’s streets? Great.
Not even that. Most of the changes in the NYPD during that period were enacted by Commissioner Bill Bratton and his Deputy Jack Maple. Sure, Giuliani appointed Bratton and backed him for a couple of years, but that all fell apart over personality conflicts.
When disaster struck he held things together, you’ve got to give him that, but that’s all he’s got going for him. Giuliani is the Mayor of 9/11. Now he wants to be President of 9/11.
July 12, 2007 at 6:11 pm
robnesvacil
But Windy, he didn’t hold things together on 9/11 — that’s the point firemen are trying to make.
Rather, Giuliani left the firemen ill-equipped (without working radio equipment) which trapped them when their commanders outside the buildings knew the inevitable. (Where else have we heard about ill-equipped men and women in uniform?)
That, and he decided to put the city’s emergency response center in the one place he knew for certain was a definite target. I get the symbolism (even so far as wanting to add employment opportunities to what at the time was a somewhat depressed area of the city). But that doesn’t excuse the hubris which crippled communications on the one day they were needed most.
(Those photos of him walking the streets immediately after the hijackers rammed the Towers were basically of him escaping the emergency comm center.)
And this is the guy leading among Illinois Republicans?
If we don’t listen to NYC firemen and their first-hand account of his questionable leadership … will be listening to military personnel when the same things start (or continue, depending on your perspective) happening to them under a possible Pres. Giuliani?
July 12, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Windypundit
But Windy, he didn’t hold things together on 9/11 — that’s the point firemen are trying to make.
The point I was making is that Giuliani’s response to 9/11 on the day it happened was pretty good (compare, for example, Brown and Chertoff during Katrina), and he’s been living off that ever since.
I’m not denying what the firemen are saying. Most of it is stuff we’ve been hearing for years: Poor design and testing of the radio systems, putting the OEM center in the only place in New York that terrorists had ever attacked. These are examples of typical short-sighted thinking about emergency planning on Giuliani’s part.
My biggest concern about Giuliani is not about his planning but about his priorities. You mentioned the crime rate in New York. When it comes to Law-and-Order, Giuliani was always more about the order than the law. Remember when he had the police give out lots of tickets for stupid stuff just to earn money for the city? Remember the crusade against porn and strip joints? Remember how he backed the police in all those brutality cases?
I happen to think that Bratton and Maple had some good ideas for the NYPD, but don’t forget that the drop in crime rate was nationwide and mostly attributable to demographic changes.
July 12, 2007 at 10:50 pm
Narc
If “not as bad as Michael Brown during Katrina” is now our metric for competence, our nation is in dire straits, indeed.
July 12, 2007 at 11:09 pm
robnesvacil
ROFLMAO Narc
July 13, 2007 at 9:41 am
alec
Rudy Giuliani or Vampire Ghouliani?
July 14, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Windypundit
Oh, totally. Rudy Giuliani is just Vlad Ţepeş waiting to be reborn. If you pitched the question to him in just the right way during a debate, he’d probably come out in favor sending a message to lawbreakers by impaling convicted criminals outside the courthouses.