LEFT of the HUDSON: October 2007

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Memos Show Giuliani was Ignorant of Terrorism Before 9/11

MSNBC reports that Rudy Giuliani's claim that he's the only presidential candidate who foresaw the danger posed by al Qaeda before 9/11 has now been refuted by a leaked document.

In Giuliani's 9/11 Commission testimony, Giuliani admits he didn't comprehend the threat. The core of Giuliani's candidacy is his 9/11 experience, but that is now called into question.

Wayne Barrett, a reporter for New York's Village Voice and author of Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11, has now obtained leaked memos describing Giuliani's testimony before the 9/11 Commission which directly contradict that claim.

Barrett told Shuster that taken as a whole, Giuliani's testimony "was a confession of ignorance. He basically said, 'I knew nothing about al Qaeda.'"For example, Giuliani acknowledged that even though he had received information on threats between 1998 and 2001, "At the time I had no idea it was al Qaeda." He further told the commission that after 9/11, "we brought in people to brief us on al Qaeda. ... We had nothing like this pre 9/11, which was a mistake.

"Giuliani's testimony, like that of other witnesses describing New York City's response on 9/11, was supposed to remain secret until after the 2008 presidential election.Barrett also emphasized Giuliani's continuing ignorance of technological systems involved in the fight against terrorism. As late as April 2004, when he testified before the commission, Giuliani admitted that he didn't know much about a New York Police Department system called ComStat -- which he's now saying he'd like to see extended nationwide. He was also unable to answer questions about the malfunctioning radios which caused many deaths among firefighters or about a repeater installed in the World Trade Center after the 1993 bombing to amplify radio communications.

"The Guy from Boston" is a Big Fat Liar

Snopes throws the Bullshit Flag on "The Guy from Boston"

This guy is totally full of shit. He's paraphrasing a chain e-mail that started from an article written in 1999 that made many claims that were not and cannot be verified.

* The information isn't independently verifiable, since none of the people referenced is identified by name. (Why bother to conduct all that research but then not mention any names? One plausible answer is that doing so heads off libel lawsuits if the information proved to be inaccurate or false.)

* The original article is now several years old (having been published in 1999) and even when first published didn't list any names or state when its information was collected, so there's no telling how many of the people referenced might still be in Congress.

* The list is long on vague innuendo and woefully short of hard facts. It describes members of Congress who have supposedly been "arrested," "accused," or "defendants," but doesn't mention a single case (anonymous or otherwise) of any of them having been convicted (or even tried) on criminal charges, no matter how minor, or of having been found liable in a civil lawsuit. We're told that "117 members of the House and Senate have run at least two businesses each that went bankrupt, often leaving business partners and creditors holding the bag," but get no detail about who these members were, the nature of the businesses that failed, why the businesses failed, or who was left "holding the bag" (and for how much). We're also told that "twenty-nine members of Congress have been accused of spousal abuse in either criminal or civil proceedings," but find nothing about any of them actually being convicted or ordered to pay civil damages.

* Lacking any specific context, some of these claims border on the silly. "Twenty-one [Congress members] are current defendants in various lawsuits, ranging from bad debts, disputes with business partners or other civil matters." How much significance should we place on such a vague statement in our litigious society, where just about anyone can find himself a defendant in a civil lawsuit over the most frivolous of matters (or nothing at all)? And "seventy-one of them have credit reports so bad they can't get an American Express card"? Based on what — irresponsible overspending, absent-mindedly making a few late credit card payments, or simply being the innocent victim of a credit reporting agency screw-up? Once again, nothing in the original enables the reader to make any such distinction.

So all this idiot is doing is repeating scurrilous gossip, and some eight years too late as well, these were charges made against the 105th Congress (a GOP majority by the way), not the 110th. And what a gentleman he is calling Nancy Pelosi "a bitch."

What a moron this "Guy from Boston" is.

Friday, October 26, 2007

FEMA Meets the Press and they are FEMA

If you didn't like the tough questions that reporters asked you during the last natural disaster, why not create your own reporters and write your own softball questions. That's what FEMA did, they faked a press conference about the Califonia Wildfires. This is even more evidence that our government is attempting to "Pravda-ize" media coverage.Click the link and read the Washington Post's coverage of this shameful abuse of power by the administration.

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