{"id":12903,"date":"2007-09-16T15:05:48","date_gmt":"2007-09-16T19:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/12903.html"},"modified":"2007-09-16T15:05:48","modified_gmt":"2007-09-16T19:05:48","slug":"pushing-back-against-giulianis-latest-smear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/pushing-back-against-giulianis-latest-smear\/","title":{"rendered":"Pushing back against Giuliani’s latest smear"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign probably thought it was being very clever using Gen. David Petraeus’ image in a new ad<\/a> this week. For the Republican candidate, it was the best of all worlds — Giuliani got to bash MoveOn, smear Hillary Clinton, and associate himself with a decorated general, all at the same time.<\/p>\n

What the campaign probably didn’t expect was pushback from the Pentagon — but that’s exactly what it got<\/a>. Apparently, uniformed personnel aren’t supposed to appear in political ads, and wouldn’t you know it, Giuliani didn’t ask before using pictures of Petraeus to score a few cheap points.<\/p>\n

Petraeus’ spokesman is putting some distance between Giuliani’s ad and the general, too: “General Petraeus has not condoned the use of his photo in political ads. Use of his photos in recent ads was without his consent or advance knowledge.”<\/p>\n

Eventually, the Giuliani campaign got around to responding<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Asked if the campaign was concerned, Giuliani spokeswoman Maria Comella said: “It speaks volumes that Hillary Clinton wasn’t concerned about the use of Gen. Petraeus’ photo when MoveOn.org used it to disgrace the American general’s image.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, Giuliani disrespected a general by using his image in a campaign ad without his permission, refuse to apologize, refuse to pull the ad, and this is Hillary’s fault.<\/p>\n

It’s almost as if Giuliani’s campaign wants<\/i> to come across as idiotic.
\n
\nWhat’s really odd is that Giuliani’s entire smear of Clinton is based on one sentence — the senator thanked Petraeus for his service but told him his reports “really require the willing suspension of disbelief.” In other words, he offered a series of dubious claims that spun conditions in Iraq, and Clinton was skeptical (as were, according to polls, most Americans). That’s it. That’s the entire outrage.<\/p>\n

By Giuliani’s logic, questioning a general’s assessment is anti-military. Hmm. I wonder whether blaming U.S. troops for a Bush mistake should be construed as pro-military?<\/p>\n

Remember the al Qaqaa munitions site that Bush left unguarded<\/a>?<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Asked about the missing explosives in Iraq, Giuliani said, “The president was cautious. The president was prudent…. No matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn’t they search carefully enough?”<\/p>\n

Faced with a scandal, Giuliani decided it was more important to blame the troops than hold the president responsible for his own costly mistake. He didn’t hesitate to throw the troops under the bus for political expediency — if tarnishing their service helped Bush, than so be it.<\/p>\n

It was as shameless and direct an attack on U.S. troops serving in Iraq as I’ve seen in nearly five years. And he still hasn’t apologized for it.<\/p>\n

As Wesley Clark said<\/a> at the time, “For President Bush to send Rudolph Giuliani out on television to say that the ‘actual responsibility’ for the failure to secure explosives lies with the troops is insulting and cowardly.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign probably thought it was being very clever using Gen. David Petraeus’ image in a new ad this week. For the Republican candidate, it was the best of all worlds — Giuliani got to bash MoveOn, smear Hillary Clinton, and associate himself with a decorated general, all at the same time. What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}