While former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani portrays himself as an expert on terrorism, his actual statements and policy judgments usually reveal his ignorance. Last night’s debate was no exception. Consider this exchange between Giuliani and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX):

GIULIANI: And the point — I think it was Congressman Paul — made before, that we’ve never had an imminent attack — I don’t know where he was on September 11th. (Laughter.)

PAUL: That was no country. (Applause.) That was 19 thugs. It has nothing to do with a country.

GIULIANI: And there have been — and since September — well, I think it was kind of organized in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And if we had known about it, maybe hitting a target there quickly might have helped prevent it.

But as Time Magazine and the chairmen of 9/11 Commission point out, Giuliani has it backwards. While ‘hitting a target’ in Afghanistan would not have foiled the 9/11 attacks, mounting an aggressive campaign “to degrade the terrorist network worldwide,” and heeding the advice of Sandy Berger and Richard Clarke may have.

By the beginning of that year [2001], Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, two Arabs who had been leaders of a terrorist cell in Hamburg, Germany, were already living in Florida, honing their skills in flight schools. Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar had been doing the same in Southern California. The hijackers maintained tight security, generally avoided cell phones, rented apartments under false names and used cash-not wire transfers-wherever possible. If every plan to attack al-Qaeda had been executed, and every lead explored, Atta’s team might still never have been caught.

Steve Benen put it best: “Does Giuliani really think airstrikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the summer of 2001 could have prevented 9/11? That would have led the 19 terrorists to just give up and go home? Does that even make any sense?”

Fred Thompson’s reviews are in. According to the AP, “Fred Thompson stayed on script. The newcomer to the Republican presidential field didn’t stand out in his first debate of the 2008 race, but he didn’t blow it either.” And while Thompson has benefited from the bigotry of low expectations and the softball horse race media punditry, his policy pronouncements were less than accurate. Consider the following fact check:

Trade: “Free and fair trade has been good for America; responsible for millions of jobs in this country. We cannot turn our back on that.” In reality, free trade has led to an exodus of jobs and more appear to be at risk.

According to Alan S. Blinder, a Princeton economist and former Federal Reserve Board vice chairman and staunch free trade advocate, “a new industrial revolution — communication technology that allows services to be delivered electronically from afar — will put as many as 40 million American jobs at risk of being shipped out of the country in the next decade or two. That’s more than double the total of workers employed in manufacturing today. The job insecurity those workers face today is “only the tip of a very big iceberg.”

Taxes: “Generally speaking, lower taxes and lower tax rates grow the economy.” Unfortunately for Thompson, there is simply no evidence for this.

The claim that high taxes impede economic growth “is just not supported by the evidence in the U.S. or across countries.” Joel Slemrod of the University of Michigan and Jon Bakija compared the G.D.P. per capita with the level of taxes in the two dozen member nations. According to their calculations, “relatively low-tax nations like the United States and Japan did well…but so did high-tax nations in Scandinavia and elsewhere. More important, the authors contradict earlier findings that purported to show that high taxes reduced growth rates. There is no such relationship, they found; many economists now agree.”

Iraq: “Clearly, to me, we didn’t go in with enough troops [into Iraq] and we didn’t know what to expect when we got there.” Thompson may not have known, but the administration sure thought it did.

Vice President Dick Cheney: “I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators... The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.” (Meet The Press, 3/16/03) “I think that the people of Iraq would welcome the U.S. force as liberators; they would not see us as oppressors, by any means. (CNN American Morning, 9/9/02)

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: “Think of the faces in Afghanistan when the people were liberated, when they moved out in the streets and they started singing and flying kites and women went to school and people were able to function and other countries were able to start interacting with them. That’s what would happen in Iraq.” (Media Roundtable, 9/13/02)

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz: I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep requirements down.” (Wolfowitz, House Budget Committee, 2/27/03) “Until the regime is gone it’s going to be very hard to do anything. Even in cities that are liberated. I think when the people of Basra no longer feel the threat of that regime, you are going to see an explosion of joy and relief.” (Wolfowitz, News Conference, 3/25/03)

Secretary of State Colin Powell: We would hope that if it came to that, there would be such a sea change in the region, rather than it being seen as an assault, it would be seen as a liberation, and it would be seen as the beginning of a new era in that part of the world, as Mr. Lantos has spoken of. (Powell, HIRC, 9/19/02)

Press Secretary Ari Fleisher: My point is, the likelihood is much more like Afghanistan, where the people who live right now under a brutal dictator will view America as liberators, not conquerors.” (Fleischer, Press Briefing, 10/11/02)

During NFL football games yesterday, 4parents.gov, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, ran a taxpayer-funded ad promoting abstinence. The ad suggests that teens who do not delay sex until marriage will not be happy or successful. 4parents.gov has a history of providing one-sided information, for example placing “biased and misleading ideological claims about abortion” on its website earlier this year.

UPDATE: Here is the video:

The Guardian of London notes that President “George Bush was castigated by European diplomats and found himself isolated yesterday after a special conference on climate change ended without any progress.”

European ministers, diplomats and officials attending the Washington conference were scathing, particularly in private, over Mr Bush’s failure once again to commit to binding action on climate change. […]

Britain and almost all other European countries, including Germany and France, want mandatory targets for reducing greenhouse emissions. Mr Bush, while talking yesterday about a “new approach” and “a historic undertaking”, remains totally opposed.

The conference, attended by more than 20 countries, including China, India, Britain, France and Germany, broke up with the US isolated, according to non-Americans attending. One of those present said even China and India, two of the biggest polluters, accepted that the voluntary approach proposed by the US was untenable and favoured binding measures, even though they disagreed with the Europeans over how this would be achieved.

A senior European diplomat attending the conference, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meeting confirmed European suspicions that it had been intended by Mr Bush as a spoiler for a major UN conference on climate change in Bali in December.

“It was a total charade and has been exposed as a charade,” the diplomat said. “I have never heard a more humiliating speech by a major leader. He [Mr Bush] was trying to present himself as a leader while showing no sign of leadership. It was a total failure.”

Climate Progress breaks down Bush’s approach to climate change: “If we had those technologies today, then maybe we could take genuine action now. But, darn it, people, we don’t. We can’t grow the economy and be responsible stewards of the earth quite yet. We are close, though, so be patient already and stop with all those calls for mandatory regulation. Sheesh!”

Mainstream media coverage of President Bush’s veto of the popular SCHIP legislation, failed to fact-check the president. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times adopted a less than informative political process framework, quoting bickering Congressional Democrats, Republicans and White House officials, while ignoring the inaccuracies in Bush’s reasons for vetoing SCHIP.

- New York Times: Noting that the veto “brought immediate statements of anger from Democrats,” the Times explained that “Mr. Bush and his backers argue that the bill would steer the program away from its core purpose of providing insurance for poor children and toward covering children from middle-class families.

- Washington Post: Similarly, before regurgitating Bush’s veto explanation, the Post conceded that “in vetoing the bill to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, the president finds himself isolated politically” but he “appears to have the votes to sustain his veto.”

- Los Angeles Times: “Bush has criticized the legislation as too costly, and complained that it would undermine private insurance by extending benefits to some middle-class families at the expense of the poor. He has also questioned the decision by Congress to use tobacco taxes to pay for children’s healthcare, saying cigarette taxes are not a reliable source of permanent funding, since fewer people are smoking.” Without challenging these claims, the paper resorts to covering the political bickering. “Republicans accused Democrats of politicizing a program that until now has enjoyed support from both parties.”

Despite Bush’s claims, however, “the overwhelming majority of children who would gain health coverage under the emerging agreement are precisely the low-income children the President says he wants to focus on.” A Congressional Budget Office analysis of the SCHIP bill “found that at least 85 percent of the otherwise-uninsured children who would gain coverage under the bill have incomes below states’ current SCHIP eligibility limits;” two-thirds of “those who gain SCHIP coverage…would otherwise be uninsured.”

Since SCHIP needs “14 billion more over the next five years to keep covering current enrollees, let alone reach more of the nation’s nearly 9 million uninsured children,” Bush’s willingness to pony up just $5 billion is “tantamount to a cut.” Bush’s plan of providing “tax breaks for the purchase of private insurance,” would cover less than one-quarter of the uninsured, according to an analysis by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber.

As for the alleged tax increase on cigarettes, a recent study found that “higher state taxes on smokers have produced sharp declines in consumption.” Economist Frank Chaloupka of the University of Illinois predicts that “smoking will drop 6% if the 61-cent-per-pack tax hike is passed.” “I expect a bigger drop than almost anything we’ve seen before,” he says.

By focusing on the politics of Bush’s veto and leaving the president’s reasons unchallenged, the mainstream press adds legitimacy to Bush’s reasoning and provides the administration with an uncritical platform for its spin.

On tonight’s Hannity & Colmes, co-host Alan Colmes asked Ann Coulter, who was promoting her new book, to defend her statement that all Arabs are “camel jockeys.”

COLMES: So you have no problem referring to Arabs as camel jockeys?
COULTER: Oh, yeah no, they killed 3,000 Americans, I’ll be very careful with my language!
COLMES: All Arabs killed 3,000 Americans?
COULTER: The point is they were a little slower to attack me for that than the Jews were.
COLMES: But when you refer to an entire ethnicity as camel jockeys, it sounds bigoted.
COULTER: Yes, and it’s so mean after they killed 3,000 Americans. And I shouldn’t be mean.
COLMES: But they were not all Arabs.
COULTER: We have sure moved from the day when we called them krauts and nips.
COLMES: You are very proud of yourself, aren’t you?
COULTER: No, I am making a point. We’re at war and what liberals are concerned about is what language we’re using. I’m describing humanity.
COLMES: Language is very important and in fact if you are going to try prosecute a war or try to win a war, you do not win it by using nasty language toward your opponent or calling everyone who is an Arab…

Colmes is right. As former CENTCOM Commander Gen. John Abizaid noted recently, “the battle of words is meaningful, especially in the Middle East to people.” In fact, by giving sensationalist commentators like Ann Coulter a platform, the Fox News Channel “makes it ‘very, very difficult’ to ‘work together’ with mainline regional leaders to keep extremism “from becoming mainstream.”

Yesterday, Rudy Giuliani lashed out at Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) for changing her view on the use of torture.

I am going to wait till she holds a position for a week or two and then I am going to comment on it. Senator Clinton changes her mind so often, that it is really really hard to critique a particular position, because by the time you critique it she may have changed it.

But since announcing his candidacy for president, Giuliani himself has changed his positions on immigration and the threat of terrorism to reflect the views of GOP primary voters. While mayor, Giuliani sued the federal government over a provision in a welfare reform bill which he believed would lead to “inhumane” treatment of illegal immigrants. He defended immigrants “as valuable contributors to the city’s economy and culture” and acknowledged that “we’re never going to be able to totally control immigration to a country that is as large as ours.”

Now, Giuliani is certain that we can. In a recent speech Giuliani promised that “we can end illegal immigration” with “stricter border control, tamper-proof identification cards for noncitizens and the deportation of foreign-born criminals.”

Giuliani’s rhetoric on terror also contrasts with his record. These days, Giuliani says that he understands terrorism “better than anyone else running for President,” and portrays himself as “deeply engaged with the Islamic extremist threat long before planes hit the World Trade Center.”

“But for most of Giuliani’s career as a Department of Justice official, prosecutor and New York’s chief executive, terrorism was a narrow aspect of his broader crime-fighting agenda…Giuliani expressed confidence that Islamic extremism could be contained through vigorous investigation by law enforcement agencies and prosecution in the court system — the same approach he now condemns.”

In fact, Giuliani framed “terrorism in the language of crime” in the weeks after September 11th and “as mayor, Giuliani made decisions that seemed to discount the gravity of the terrorist threat, such as placing his emergency command center at the World Trade Center a few years after the 1993 bombing attack there, against the wishes of top advisers.”

World events and shifting political realities can surely cause politicians’ views and positions to evolve. But Giuliani’s disingenuous attempt to portray himself as a consistent, tough and even visionary candidate, and his hypocritical attacks against Clinton, only highlight the contradictions of his image.

Not contented by the Senate’s recent threat to “‘combat, contain and [stop]’ Iran via ‘military instruments,’” nor by the constant attempts of Fox News to promote war with Iran, the Wall Street Journal writes today, the President “has an obligation to do whatever it takes to stop [Iran].”

With shrill rhetoric, the WSJ argues for the declaration of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization and faults Bush for not blocking Mohamed ElBaradei’s nomination as chief the IAEA over John Bolton’s “warnings.” “Now, the U.S. has to live with his pro-Iranian machinations,” the WSJ writes.

The WSJ ought to be reminded: while they were trumpeting the cause for war with Iraq, it was El Baradei who “spoke up against the White House’s campaign of misinformation” and provided “intelligence that shot down White House rationales for going to war.” And it was El Baradei who was right.

The Washington Post’s Capitol Briefing recently investigated Sen. Larry Craig’s (R-ID) version of the events leading to his arrest. The Post notes, “Craig usually passed by four other restrooms on his way to the North Star Crossing restroom,” where he has said he regularly stops when he flies to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, “including one sitting right at the gates he usually arrived at, literally a hundred or so feet from the gate.” The Post also notes that Craig’s explanation for pleading guilty - that he was “anxious” about missing his flight - is “completely implausible.”

Yesterday, a majority of the Senate voted to approve Sen. Jim Webb’s (D-VA) amendment to the Defense Authorization act that would have required “that troops get as much time at home as they spend overseas before being redeployed.” Yet, the measure, which was backed by the Military Officers Association of America, was blocked by a Republican filibuster.

This isn’t the first time Congressional Republicans and the White House have undermined the safety and security of American troops and their families despite their deceptively pro-troop rhetoric:

TROOPS SENT TO WAR WITHOUT PROPER BODY ARMOR AND EQUIPMENT:

- In March, former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Peter Pace admitted that the army was “$56 billion short of being fully equipped back in fiscal 2001, before the war [in Iraq] began.” Since then, the army “has struggled to keep up with demands for new armor to protect against increasingly deadly bombs.” [Washington Post, 2/17/07]

-As recently as February, “U.S. Army units in Iraq and Afghanistan lack more than 4,000 of the latest Humvee armor kit…designed to reduce U.S. troop deaths from roadside bombs…that are now inflicting 70 percent of the American casualties” in Iraq. [Washington Post, 2/17/07]

- A report by the Defense Dept. Inspector General’s office “found that the Pentagon hasn’t been able to properly equip the soldiers it already has.” Soldiers have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan “without enough guns, ammunition, and other necessary supplies…Soldiers have also found themselves short on body armor, armored vehicles, and communications equipment.” [Business Week, 1/30/07]

BUSH THREATENED TO VETO MILITARY PAY RAISES:

- In May, the White House threatened to veto “a comprehensive $646 billion defense spending bill” which passed the House “by an overwhelming vote of 397-27″ because it objected to “a recommended 3.5 percent military pay raise for 2008, with further increases in 2009 through 2012.” The White House described the pay raise as “unnecessary.” [ThinkProgress, 5/17/07]

- In August 2003, the Pentagon sought to deny the 157,000 troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan a promised pay increase of “$75 a month in ‘imminent danger pay’ and $150 a month in ‘family separation allowances.’” In response to opposition from military family members and the Army Times, “Congress ultimately approved of the pay increase and the Bush administration backpedaled in its opposition.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 8/17/03]

REPUBLICANS BLOCKED EFFORTS TO EXPAND HEALTH CARE COVERAGE:

- In the summer of 2005, the Bush Administration was forced to acknowledge a $2.7 billion shortfall in veterans health care funding because the Department of Veteran Affairs failed to budget for 77,000 new veterans entering the VA medical system. [Global Security, 6/30/05]

- Under Bush, the Veterans Affairs administration is “battling a crisis in mental health care.” Returning Iraqi veterans, one-fourth of whom display PSTD and other mental illness symptoms, “enter a VA system that chronically loses records and is sags with a backlog of 400,000 claims of all kinds.” According to a report commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, “there is not a coordinated effort to provide the training required to identify and treat these non-visible injuries, nor adequate research in order to develop the required training and refine the treatment plans.” [WP, 6/17/07]

- Republicans have opposed efforts to expand TRICARE, the military health care plan. As the American Prospect has noted, Republicans have undercut efforts to allow soldiers coming back from war, who loose their TRICARE coverage after a short grace period, to buy into the system, despite the fact that “as many as one-fifth of the nation’s 1.2 million part-time soldiers lacked health insurance.” Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld “called the Senate’s efforts to expand TRICARE a “troubling provision.” [American Prospect, 9/28/04]

BUSH UNDERFUNDED MILITARY SURVIVORS AND WIDOWS:

- Bush opposed “a $40 monthly allowance for military survivors, additional benefits for surviving family members of civilian employees, and price controls for prescription drugs under TRICARE.” [ThinkProgress, 5/17/07]

- In 2006, citing a “steep price tag,” Congressional Republicans opposed reversing the so-called “widows tax,” which reduces the benefits widows receive “from their Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) annuities by one-third when they reach age 62.” [New York Times, 8/19/06]

Republicans’ stubborn insistence on fighting the Iraq war on the cheap has jeopardized American men and women serving overseas. The troops are using their own wallets to register their displeasure: “members of the U.S. military have dramatically increased their political contributions to Democrats, marching sharply away from the party they’ve long supported.”

This week, many prominent Republicans have called upon MoveOn.org to apologize for their ad about General Petraeus. After reviewing their embarassing record of undercutting the troops, Republicans should first consider apologizing to the troops themselves.