Giuliani and Fox News Still Fooling People

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."

- George Orwell


Watch what Rudy Giuliani does in this YouTube segment from the recent Fox News debate. He takes Ron Paul's statement about the blowback that can be expected from U.S. interventionist policy in IRAQ, a country of whose government had no link to 911, and employs faux outrage, turning it all around to his own survival on the day 19 hijackers, mostly of Saudi Arabian nationality, flew airliners into the towers in New York City. Moderator and Fox News reporter Wendell Goler, whether willingly or not, falls right into the trap and extends further inquiry based on Guiliani's false talking points. This is how misinformation/disinformation is spread. Note that Giuliani's faux outrage was over whether or not the U.S. "invited the 9/11 attack", even though Ron Paul never said such a thing at all. It was FOX News correspondent, Wendell Goler, who engineered that phrasing when he interrupted Ron Paul as he gave his position.



In truth, I believe Ron Paul is right on this. [It doesn't take an Einstein to see why we no longer have a military presence in Saudi Arabia.] I have been blogging about it for many years now, so this is not a new argument for me to be defending.

Read, for example, my posting about an interview with Karen Kwiatkowski, who put in 20 years in the U.S. military; was a former deputy undersecretary of defense for the NESA; has become a vocal critic of the war in Iraq and of U.S. Middle East policy; who holds a master's degree in government from Harvard and another one in science management from the University of Alaska.

An excerpt from Dr. Kwiatkowski's interview will reveal the likely reasons why we are in Iraq today. As most people in America know by this time, they were not the reasons offered by their own government, in whom they had - most unfortunately in this case - placed their trust:

It was not about terrorism, WMD, or saving the people of Iraq from a cruel dictator. Some of our allies are cruel dictators, support and fund terrorism, and sell lots of WMD (Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and others). It was not solely about oil as a material item, but it was about placement (permanently) of troops and U.S. bases in the oil-producing region such that we are in a position to control those nations' management (or mismanagement in our eyes) of the oil. It is also about ensuring that OPEC remains on a petro dollar standard. As a heavily-in-debt and debtor nation, it is important to keep demand for dollars globally high among the world central banks. If petroleum is traded on dollars, then central banks will ensure they have plenty of dollars in reserve and not euros or other less useful currency. Iraq had switched to the euro from the dollar for their oil (Iraq in November 2000, before 9/11). OPEC meetings had occasionally discussed this as well. Also, as a way to decrease our military footprint in Saudi Arabia, we needed alternative bases nearby, and Iraq not only provided an ability to leave Saudi Arabia, which we are doing now; it allows us to leverage Iran and Syria militarily with ease. Lastly, this presence in Baghdad of an Israel-friendly force, and the construction of the Mosul-Haifa pipeline that was reputedly begun last summer, and possibly other pipelines to the Haifa oil refinery, can serve as an economic and military security benefit for Israel, our longtime ally in the Middle East.

Clearly, the reasons given to Congress and the American people publicly were not the real reasons—but real reasons do exist if you view the globe as your property, inhabited by people that have no right to govern themselves. The neoconservatives talk about democracy, but most have a deeply rooted contempt for it.

See Karen Kwiatkowski's latest column, in which she proudly avers, "Ron Paul Rocks!" She believes that "Rudy Guiliani has the biggest reptilian brain of all the candidates."


The fact that there are still Republicans putting an official rubber stamp on Bush's veto-prone ways stems from a negligence so powerfully wrong and self-interested that, to my way of thinking about social justice, it borders on the criminal. There is also a decided lack of moral conviction and action from too many Democrats who how hold real power to defund this war as endowed to the Democrats by the people in the last election. I don't think these Democrats believe in themselves or trust their own constituents - some whose sons and daughters are dying and/or risking all that is precious in this life for a war that nearly every American wants to see come to an end.

I heard a lot of applause in the South Carolina Republican audience for Giuiliani's trickery. Honest Abe Lincoln would be surprised to see just how many suckers can still be fooled after all this time. It's important to remember that Fox News and Rudy Giuliani can only craft false scenarios and expect to fool people for as long as Democrats keep doubting their own power to act upon what they know is true.

[Did you notice, by the way, how quickly Fox News changed the subject when Republican candidates begged to get themselves deeper into the Ron Paul debate?]

Does any Republican acknowledge that General David Petraeus is saying it's nearly impossible to predict how well the surge will succeed before the full number of troops arrive? How many Republucan candidates are admitting that General Petraeus would not even begin to say that he thought he'd have a definitive answer about prospects for stability by this September, when he is to report back to Congress?


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Strong words of former CIA specialist Michael Sheuer from the May 18 Madison Capital Times editorial [LINK]:

Michael Scheuer, the former Central Intelligence Agency specialist on bin Laden and al-Qaida, has objected to simplistic suggestions by President Bush and others that terrorists are motivated by an ill-defined irrational hatred of the United States.

"The politicians really are at great fault for not squaring with the American people," Scheuer said in a CNN interview. "We're being attacked for what we do in the Islamic world, not for who we are or what we believe in or how we live. And there's a huge burden of guilt to be laid at Mr. Bush, Mr. Clinton, both parties for simply lying to the American people."

Ron Paul was squaring with the people.

Rudy Giuliani was simply lying to them.

Watch Ron Paul educating CNN's Wolf Blitzer this week.