Back to the Future?
Posted: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 10:04 AM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC’s Domenico MontanaroA day after the
McCain campaign accused
Obama
of having a Sept. 10 mentality, it kicked the day off hammering the
Illinois senator on the issue again. The campaign got the jump start on
the conference call circuit with an early morning (9 am ET) one with
former New York City Mayor and failed presidential candidate Rudy
Giuliani.
VIDEO: Newsweek's
Richard Wolfe discusses John McCain's comments which accuse Barack
Obama of being "a perfect manifestation of a September 10 mindset" and
of taking a "law enforcement approach" to terrorism.
Yesterday, Giuliani also put out a statement
attacking Obama on the issue and went on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this
morning to echo the sentiments.
“There are very clear, dramatic,
important differences between McCain and Obama,” Giuliani said,
describing those differences as “one wanting to be on offense, the
other wanting to be on defense.”
Giuliani said he believed
Obama’s inexperience was evident because he likened how the U.S. should
handle terrorists to how those accused in the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing were prosecuted.
“These are not isolated criminal acts,”
Giuliani said. “They are a loosely defined conspiracy and an act of
war. For Sen. Obama to suggest ’93 is the best example of how to deal
with this is a good example of him wanting to go on defense.”
He added, “The real problem with Sen. Obama’s answer is he seems to think the 93 situation was correctly handled. It’s the failure to recognize that you had to go further than.” He said it was treated as “a criminal act” when it should have been treated “as an act of war. We didn’t recognize that even as late as the Cole. …It seems to me Sen. Obama is of that mindset.”
He also expressed astonishment that Obama camp seemed to imply, he said, that even Osama bin Laden would get habeas corpus rights.
“That bin laden would be given habeas corpus rights is startling,” Giuliani said, adding, “it shows where Democrats are going. There seems to be more concern about the rights of terrorists than American security.”
McCain adviser Randy Randy Scheunemann said that McCain is for trials for suspects held at Guantanamo but not under the rules of federal courts. He and Giuliani warned that there would be risks of giving away sensitive intelligence, specifically how evidence was obtained, during defense discovery at trials.
Giuliani also replied to Obama foreign policy adviser Susan Rice saying on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that this was a choice between a “stupid” foreign policy (Bush continued by McCain) and “smart” (Obama).
“I think that’s language that probably shouldn’t be applied to this debate,” Giuliani said, adding, “Addressing the merits of it, criticizing the Bush administration in this area is probably an area of weakness for the Democrats …. This country has been kept safe over the last seven years. …
“If we move back to a defensive approach, like Sen. Obama wants, is at our peril. … Why do you want to go back to making the same mistakes of the 1990s?”
After pledging not to call Obama naive for his stance, Giuliani added this: "The words irresponsible and naïve were applied to Sen. Obama not by a Republican but by Hillary Clinton."
