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.

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?

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.