Rudy Giuliani: "We have always been at war with Eastasia"

"We had no domestic attacks under Bush; we've had one under Obama," said the man who was mayor of New York City on September 11, 2001.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Chuck

>”We had no domestic attacks under Bush; we’ve had one under Obama,”

Yeah! You tell ‘em, Rudy! 9/11 happened on JFK’s watch, and he was justifiably executed for it!

I’m thinking I’d have a little more respect for Giuliani if he’d said something like this on 9/11/2001.

“Terrorist attack? What terrorist attack?”

*rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble-rumble boooooooom CRASH!*

“I don’t see a terrorist attack.”
Felton

So what is the cut-off date for the previous president taking the blame? Thanksgiving?
Lilah

What about the various abortion clinic attacks?

Or is that classified as evildoers getting what they deserved?
- Felton
  
  Good point. They should specify “domestic attacks of which we don’t approve.”
Mungo

I dunno, I seem to remember some minor disturbance on 9/11……….
- Felton
  
  Anon@7: I dunno, I seem to remember some minor disturbance on 9/11……….
  
  That was the sound of countless neo-con minds all clicking into gear at the same time.
Anonymous

well, you know, Bush wasn’t really in charge during his presidency, so Giuliani’s statement is technically true, of course, also technically true: We had one domestic attack under Cheney & Rove
gollux

To think about it, we have Holocaust deniers.

Now we have a Twin Towers denier? Who presided over the aftermath?

Must’ve sucked too much jet fuel smoke and concrete dust.
- Felton
  
  He thinks maybe David Copperfield made the towers disappear?
- phoomp
  
  Nah … they’re not denying it. They’re just claiming it happened on Clinton’s watch.
Anonymous

Rudy’s forgetting about American Idol, too.
Antinous / Moderator

And George Stephanopoulos just let it slide right by.

i made u a question but i forgetted it
- MrJM
  
  i made u a question but i forgetted it
  
  Xactly.
hallpass

This from a man whose attire for casual public appearances is still some sort of FDNY schwag eight years later.

When they showed him on TV sitting in the front row at one of the World Series games, I actually did a double take because my brain processed the characters on the brim of his cap as “9/11″ — nope, FDNY.
anansi133

There might be a certain logic about this statement, if you want to get all tin-foil hat about it…

“When their side does it, it’s terrorism. When our side does it, it’s freedom fighting.” If 9/11 was an inside job, then it wasn’t really the kind of terrorism they’re talking about.
- Jawbone Minding
  
  So, basically a Freudian slip. I like it.
dculberson

well, see, they weren’t domestic, they were wild.
adonai

That’s so weird, I thought all he was able to actually say was “9/11″. Guess the 405,030 times he said it when running for the GOP nomination weren’t enough for it to sink in.

Still, in fairness, he never actually said “9/11/2001″…he could have been referring to 2010.
DoktorFaustus

Funny, during his bid for presidential nominee we couldn’t get him to shut up about 9/11, now he doesn’t even recall it?

Maybe he just ‘misremembered’
Anonymous

You realize he’s referring to a specific group of people and their attacks on the US?

Stop twisting everything someone says to make it fit your agenda.
demidan

Joseph Goebbels is alive and well in the Repuglican party, double plus good!
Antinous / Moderator

Here, have a piÃ±ata.
- Felton
  
  Hahaha!
Alex

@#16 Adonai: Maybe his 9/11 counter overflowed and now reads negative.

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does.”
Felton

Anon@19: You realize he’s referring to a specific group of people and their attacks on the US?

What group of people is he referring to that doesn’t include the 9/11 attackers?
Crawford Tillinghast

Was that before or after he wattaboarded mobstuhhhs?
Anonymous

I didn’t even hear what Guiliani said because as soon as I heard he was going to be interviewed on GMA, I changed the channel. I don’t care what that guy has to say about terrorism. He lost his credibility long before now. Only idiots would pay that guy for his “expertise”.
Daemon

The “logical” assumption is that this is a tacit admission that the CIA was actually behind those events, not terrorists.
- anansi133
  
  Wait, so if the CIA does it, it’s not terrorism?
  
  From wikipedia: “Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion”
  
  Anyone can play! Governments, policemen, vigilantes, even schoolyard bullies.
  
  Sure, it helps pin things down if the suspect has an arab-sounding name and a dark complexion, but it’s still an act of terror even if white people do it.
Stefan Jones

You people don’t know a real American hero when you see one!

Giuliani has never said anything else but the Truthiness!
El Cucui

I’m not going to try to defend it (because that’s not exactly possible), but I think I can explain it: The 9/11 attackers were for’ners, not domestic terr’ists… like the shooter at Fort Hood a couple months back (and maybe also like captain underpants a few weeks ago, who certain inflated talking heads are claiming was effectively a successful attack …that was only just barely thwarted by pure luck). Thus, this comment could be part of the Birther-esque attempt to get Obama and/or his supporters to admit Fort Hood was a terrorist attack, because, the lack-of-thinking goes, Obama is trying to pretend that wasn’t a terrorist attack so he can claim he (and/or the Dems) kept the nation safer than Bush II did. The fact that former press secretary Dana Perino made almost the same comment a few weeks ago suggests that either she and Rudy are both mind-numbingly stupid (still a possibility… or even a probability) or this is some kind of coordinated effort.

… except the post 9/11 anthrax episode destroys that concept also. But nobody remembers about that so it doesn’t count?

Nevermind. I give up. This is simply aggressive ignorance.
- Deidzoeb
  
  Not to defend Rudy, but also trying to understand why he would say such a thing seriously. Rudy might have meant “domestic” to describe the place where attackers came from, not the area being attacked. (A stupid way of using the term, but maybe that’s what he meant.) By that way of thinking, if we’re ignoring the place where an attack happens, John Walker Lindh might have been a “domestic terrorist” during Bush’s terms, because he came from the US and fought on the side of “terrorists.” That example would prove Rudy is wrong even by that way of thinking.
  
  The 2002 Washington sniper attacks by John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo could count as “terrorist” attacks that happened during Bush’s time in office, on US soil, one of the attackers born in the US. That’s “domestic” either way you look at it, but depends on how you define “terrorist.” There are surely other examples Rudy and I are forgetting. Why is anyone taking this guy seriously still? I look forward to the day when he is as widely forgotten as Yahoo Serious.
- phoomp
  
  If by “domestic” he’s referring to Ft. Hood, then wouldn’t the Beltway Sniper also be considered a domestic terrorist?
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks
padster123

This is actually a Freudian slip. Bush’s presidency is so utterly defined by 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’ that giuliani has convinced himself that it hadn’t even *started* until then. Bush announced his own arrival through that megaphone at ground zero. Without Al Quaeda and the defence contractors, Bush would barely exist.
Anonymous

El Cucui you were there. He did not say terrorist attack, he said domestic. Meaning attacks by Americans. I believe the antrax letters were never classified as a terrorist attack, just a loony man acting loony. Oh and of course because the news gods and the political gods will be hard pressed to call anything done by an American as a terrorist act. Don’t you know no American could ever be a terrorist? Mr. Mayor wasn’t stupid, just assumes everyone understands what he counts as Domestic. Which of course is implied by the word itself. Domestic=American loonys. So taking domestic and the time Obama has been in office, he’s got to be talking about the murders in Fort Hood.
thequickbrownfox

Exactly, padster123, the NeoCon millennium begins at 2001.
jackie31337

Also, what’s this part about inheriting a recession from Clinton? Hadn’t Clinton managed to get at least the federal budget into a surplus by the end of his term?
IamInnocent

I remember a time when the American people was a courageous people that stood up for something. Now it is all but a cowardly fat asses (with all due yet rare exceptions) running around like beheaded fowls every time their jailers shouts “terrorists”.

THE US IS NOT UNDER ANY GREAT TERRORIST THREAT!
put it in your heads once and for all. This is and always has been organized bullshit. I understand that it is humiliating to admit it but it is the goddamn truth.

Oh and, please, Arky or anyone else: don’t come back saying that many here always were against the Iraq war and criticized TSA and… I know that! What I want you to admit in no adulterated terms is that, at least since 9/11, 99.99% of the terrorism in the US has been domestic and government organized. TSA is there in no way to protect you but it acts as a constant reminder that you should live in fear, not one fucking thing else. Same goes for the Afghan war: it is not about terrorism, it’s about oil!

The worse part is that I am pretty sure that the most lucid Americans know that full well, and then agree that “it is how things be”. For them, the US standing in the World must be preserved at all costs and, to achieve it, the people must be put under restraints.
Anonymous

reminds me of when McCain (who was around when JFK was shot) described JFK’s assassination as “The intervention at Dallas” then quickly corrected himself.

Don’t underestimate the power of rebublican crazies. They’re LESS dangerous when they’re in power.
Hakan

I can’t understand why no one remembers the Anthrax attacks, they even haven’t (really) found who was behind it. I wonder why…
- hungryjoe
  
  No kidding! Also, the shoe bomber! Maybe he counts that as someone else’s problem since Reed tried to blow up his US-bound flight while it was still over the Atlantic, instead of waiting until it was over US soil? Because otherwise, I fail to see the difference between that attack and the Christmas attack, which was foiled.
Anonymous

It doesn’t take a big reach to classify Bush’s response to Katrina as domestic terrorism — not merely on his watch, but for which HE WAS RESPONSIBLE!
jungletek

Maybe he simply meant that we’ve had no terror attacks perpetrated by US citizens? AFAIK that’s called domestic terrorism.
Anonymous

Also remember the Washington DC sniper.
Anonymous

Under Bush, we had Richard Reid’s attack, with a scenario so much like the Mr. Sizzlepants attack it’s uncanny. It’s pretty clear to me that Republicans in the US have more loyalty to their party than yo their country – instead of rallying behind their president, they’re doing everything they can to magnify the effects of this terrorist attack.
AirPillo

It is unendingly strange that he rode the fame of that event for so long and yet is stupid enough to make such a misstatement about it.

He has leaned upon this one event so much that he has ceased to have any public identity other than it. To not at least speak in superficially accurate ways about it is astonishing.

Of course, Bush was also posing for publicity pictures with firefighters while the rubble was still smoldering and before the dead were even recovered and buried.

Dancing on a grave is overt disrespect, but mooching its’ publicity is apparently okay.
fiendishthingy

Maybe he was referring to Bush Sr.
zandar

What’s sad is the lie machine would be just as eager to jump down Obama’s throat if that bomb had gone off as planned, and everyone perished. That’s just how precious life is to them, you see.

We’re all- realized and in the flesh, theoretical and in the womb, and dead and long gone- grist for the bullshit mill. Personally, I feel a tad denigrated.
TokenFrenchDude

Never forget.
abstract_reg

Guys and gals… look at a map. Afghanistan is in West Asia. You’re being dumber than he is.
Xopher

He’s just a lying sack of shit. And the kind of right-wing morons who watch Fox News will listen to him and repeat it just as if it made any kind of sense, and Faux Noise won’t even broadcast him saying he misspoke.

The fact that Rudy has never been struck by lightning proves that old Yahoowahoo (the “Lord” in the Old Testament) has abandoned the world.
abstract_reg

Ahem, on reading the article, no you’re right, he’s being stupid. Where did the “East Asia” headline come from?
Hal

it’s just the same old blame game.
what’s unfortunate is Guiliani was an effective and bipartisan mayor but he will be remembered as the tiresome political hack he has become.
- DN
  
  I have lived in New York all my life and certainly through Rudi’s reign of mismanagement and idiot appointments and taking credit for things that he had nothing to do with. And ignoring blame for his many stupid decisions. Ah how little he has changed.
  Just remember that it was Rudi who decided to put the command central for dealing with terrorist attacks right next to the Twin Towers, where a previous bomb had gone off. He didn’t. however make changes to the police and fire department radio communication problems that proved to add so much to the disaster that day. He was a loud-mouthed, school-yard bully, with the intellect that that entails, then and has not changed a bit.
Sea Daddy

What an ass clown! Then again, all politicians are, save one or two.
chgoliz

Abstract @ #38: It’s a reference to George Orwell’s 1984.
xsus

Why is the media giving windbags like Guliani any attention at all? Paris Hilton has a firmer grasp on reality.
Idle Tuesday

Hey, wait a minute! What about the Washington snipers? Wasn’t the lead guy a converted Muslim? Wasn’t he terrorizing people? Wasn’t that domestic? Wasn’t that during Georgie Porgie’s epoch of torpidity?
Idle Tuesday

Also, everyone who didn’t read Orwell’s 1984 in high school (because “it was too boring, dude”), please do so now. And realize why teachers asked to read it. Because the same bullshit just keeps on coming.
Anonymous

“Ahem, on reading the article, no you’re right, he’s being stupid. Where did the “East Asia” headline come from?”

Not “East Asia,” “Eastasia.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Fourwound
MacShaggy

First this was a failed attack and if I remember correctly wasn’t the Shoe bomber another failed attack. And that incident occurred during the Bush era. So, what is this talk about no domestic attacks under Bush because that at least was one. And from that we have to all take off our shoes. Now, just as reactionary as that failed domestic attack, we have to be patted down. Even though where this Terrorist was hiding the bomb no one would have thought; “now that bump between this guys legs is that his member, or a bomb?” I doubt anyone would have reached up that far.
Anonymous

Hasn’t this guy already distinguished himself as the craziest neo-con that still has a popular audience? Dude is trying too hard.
Anonymous

It should be noted that Cheney also parroted this line. It’s a new meme they’re trying to spread in the wake of the pantybomber.

Remember, besides 9/11, there was Richard Reid, the DC Sniper, and Anthrax Attax all under Bush, not to mention numerous attacks abroad on US interests.

The media has got to start consistently calling lies lies. There’s no excuse for this kind of craven behavior on the part of Guliani or his interviewers.
wil9000

Delusion is not just limited to Rudy.

http://blacknewblack.blogspot.com/2010/01/we-did-not-have-terrorist-attack-on-our.html

OH FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! The levels of complete and utter self delusion among the right wing idiots never ceases to amaze me. Hey, Dana, if what you were saying were true, it would render Rudy Giuliani effectively mute. Think about it. The biggest blind spot among conservatives is that 9-11 happened on THEIR WATCH! They blew it, and 3000 people died! Then 8 months later, the shoe bomber happened. They blew it again! And he was tried in civil, not military court, so now, the hypocrites are saying that the underpants bomber needs to be treated as an enemy combatant and tried in a military court. And right away, the President admitted that on the underpants bomber, we “screwed up” and he’s making sure that we do our best to untangle the rat’s nest of intelligence gathering that was left behind by….. oh, I don’t know who could have left such a mess.
Posted by Mel Phistopheles at Thursday, January 07, 2010
webmonkees

He was referring to domestic attacks; spouse, servant. He was bemoaning the Tiger Woods/ Charlie Sheen “domestic attacks”.

In other news, chocolate rations have been increased to 25 grams per week.
Sethum

From the article:

“In December, Mary Matalin – a former senior adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney – made comments that seemed to place the 9/11 attacks under President Clinton’s watch. “We inherited a recession from President Clinton and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation’s history,” Matalin a CNN analyst, told John King on CNN’s “State of the Union” last month.”

So wouldn’t that theory of “events that happen during a president’s term in office must have been caused by actions taken years in the past” suggest that Bush is responsible for the underwear bomber, the failed security cameras at the TSA, and the current job losses…
Baldhead

yeah apparently Bush only served six and a half years or so, since they’e now apparently blaming Clinton’s lighter security for 9/11 and Obama, of course, is to blame for the market collapse, even though it happened before he was even nominated for election..
gollux

Seen making the rounds…

Knock knock
Who’s there?
9/11
9/11 who?
Ha Haaa!, you said you’d never forget!
Cowicide

Conservatives and facts are like oil and water.

Then again… if you keep repeating lies over and over again it HAS been found that the buffoons that watch Fox “News” will start to believe them.

Fox “News” repeatedly exclaimed to their flock the lies that we’d found WMD in Iraq after the invasion (only quietly issuing corrections later that were easily left unnoticed). Eventually, studies/polls found that higher percentages of of Fox “News” viewers errantly believed we had, indeed, found WMD in Iraq.

Just keep repeating lies over and over again… people who lack critical thinking skills will believe them.

Flock manipulation 101:
http://mediamatters.org/research/200606230005
Tdawwg

Back to the infernal regions from whence ye came, O Rudy Cthuluiani, spawn of darkness, son of evil!
dougrogers

McVeigh doesn’t count as a domestic attack?
- CitizenJohnJohn
  
  McVeigh was 1995.
  - Felton
    
    True, but, using neo-conservative logic, he may very well have been a late inheritance from Bush, Sr. :-)
chip

Not counting the obvious, there were two successful terrorist attacks in the US during Bush’s tenure, and one unsuccessful one.

The successful ones were the anthrax mailings and the DC snipers. The unsuccessful one was the shoe bomber.
- mdh
  
  “not counting the obvious”? You mean the one where two good sized airplanes destroyed two ENORMOUS buildings? and in his own city?
  
  For the 9iu11ani’s of the world ‘never forget’ is a mere tribal identifier used when they shake the money tree, and it is not at all real sentiment.
Glossolalia Black

Dana Perino’s appearance on Hannity’s show, Sherman Frederick’s column in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, that time Mary Matalin went on CNN, and now Rudy “Never Forget” Giuliani… all of them saying 9/11 didn’t happen on Bush’s watch. There’s misspeaking, and then there’s a concerted effort toward misinformation that banks specifically on people having short term memories.

There’s a big population of people born after September 11, 2001. The oldest of them is in 4th grade and will be able to vote in the elections of 2020.

You ever heard of a thing called “playing the long game”? Yeah, that.
- chgoliz
  
  Glossolalia @ #65 said: “There’s a big population of people born after September 11, 2001. The oldest of them is in 4th grade and will be able to vote in the elections of 2020.”
  
  Point of fact: I was 3rd trimester at the time, so one of my children was born less than 2 months after 9/11. She’s in 2nd grade, not 4th.
  - Glossolalia Black
    
    Okay, yeah. But close enough for horseshoes, and my original point still kind of stands.
    
    Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks this! Dan Savage over at Slog says:
    
    How Many Times Do They Have to Say It Before The Media Recognizes That It’s a Coordinated Effort?
ROSSINDETROIT

Not only that but the Clinton people prepared lengthy and detailed documentation of AQ and their plans to attack us. It was handed over during the transition but ignored. Next time someone of Bush’s caliber takes over all briefings should be in graphic novel form with plenty of boobies and explosions to hold the President’s attention.
benher

Alzheimer. Blog for a cure!
ill lich

Is it better to think he is being deliberately misleading (also known as “lying”) or just stupid?

Conservatives learned from Rush “there-are-more-trees-now-than-when-the-Pilgrims-arrived” Limbaugh that lying to prove a point is OK because (since the Democrats are all communists) the stakes are so high (or maybe they learned that from Nixon’s justification for Watergate.)

Since I’ve already heard at least one other conservative make this “point” before, I’m guessing they have started on the “if you say it enough times it will become true” strategy.
Anonymous

Terror Attacks Under Bush: 17

* December 6, 2007: Chad Altman and Sergio Baca were arrested for the arson of Dr. Curtis Boyd’s clinic in Albuquerque.
* May 9, 2007: Unidentified person deliberately set fire to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
* April 25, 2007: A package left at a women’s health clinic in Austin, Texas contained an explosive device capable of inflicting serious injury or death. April 16, 2007 – Terrorism? Virginia Tech Shootings.
* September 13, 2006 David McMenemy crashed his car into the Edgerton Women’s Care Center in Davenport, Iowa. He then doused the lobby in gasoline and then started a fire. McMenemy committed these acts in the belief that the center was performing abortions, however Edgerton is not an abortion clinc.
* March 2006 – Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, an Iranian-born graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, drives an SUV onto a crowded part of campus, injuring nine.
* December 12, 2005: Patricia Hughes and Jeremy Dunahoe threw a Molotov cocktail at a clinic in Shreveport, Louisiana.
* July 4, 2005: A clinic Palm Beach, Florida was the target of an arson.
* October 1, 2005 – Joel Henry Hinrichs III detonated a bomb near the packed football stadium at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma killing himself in the process.
* October 2002 – John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo conduct the Beltway Sniper Attacks
* July 4, 2002 – An Egyptian gunman opens fire at an El Al ticket counter in Los Angeles International Airport, killing two Israelis before being killed himself.
* May 2002: Luke Helder injures 6 by placing pipebombs in mailboxes in the Midwest.
* June 11, 2001: Tacoma, Washington bombing destroys a Clinic Wall
* December 12, 2001 – Jewish Defense League plot by Chairman Irv Rubin and follower Earl Krugel to blow up the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, California, and the office of Lebanese-American Rep. Darrell Issa, foiled.
* December 22, 2001 – Richard Reid attempts to bomb flight 63
* November 2001 – Clayton Waagner mails powder-laden envelopes to 550+ Clinics, is convicted on 51 counts in 2003.
* September 2001 – 5 People Killed, 17 Infected by Anthrax laden letters, $250million spent cleaning up postal facilities.
* September 11, 2001 – 15 Saudis, 2, UAEs, 1 Egyptian and 1 Lebanese Hijackers kill 2,973 persons, cost billions of dollars, and cause permenant, irreparable damages to modern societies freedoms to the United States citizens.

Terror Attacks Under Obama: 4

* Christmas Underpants Bomber
* May 31, 2009 – Dr. George Tiller Murdered
* February 4th, 2009 – West Memphis, Arkansas, United States. Trent P. Pierce Chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board was critically injured in a car bombing that occurred in his drive way.
* January 22, 2009 – Matthew Derosia drives his SUV into a Planned Parenthood facility
- Cowicide
  
  Thanks for that list, Anon…
  
  BTW, he now says he misspoke…
  
  http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/giuliani-i-do-remember-sept-11.php
  
  Now… did he also misspeak on all the other terror attacks under Bush??? Hrrrmmm…
  
  Conservatives & Facts = Oil & Water
Felton

Mind like a sieve.
LostCatSoda

Sadly these are exactly the kind of one-liners that whip my kool-aid drinking Republican family members into an Obama hating rage.

In other news: For All Mankind – what a mindblowing bit of documentary zen.
Marchhare

What else is there to say about contemporary American movement conservatives?
gollux

Serious brain rot has set in.