Barbarian From the Rubble

Rudolph Giuliani unfortunately remains an ace in the hole for the Bush administration. We received a taste of this last March when John Ashcroft fell seriously ill, and Giuliani instantly appeared on the major TV news programs, grooming himself to become Ashcroft's obvious replacement. When incompetent CIA director George Tenet unexpectedly resigned, Giuliani's name immediately surfaced in the media as a possible permanent successor. Giuliani spoke at the Republican National Convention, actively campaigns for the Bush ticket, and will be rewarded for it sooner or later. However, in spite of his folk status, most people remain willfully ignorant about him.

Giuliani's political malfeasance dates back to his days as US Attorney for the Southern District of NY, when he approved a US Customs sting operation ordered by White House shill Oliver North to catch Israel's Joint Committee middlemen of the Iran-Contra scandal. North wanted the sting because he considered the Joint Committee not criminals but competition, since they supplied our supposed enemy Iran with more weapons of mass destruction then he illegally could trade. As a result of the sting arrests, Joint Committee leader Ari Ben-Monashe leaked Iran-Contra to Beirut newspaper Al Shiraa. This prompted Giuliani to quickly release the arms dealers on virtually no bail, and drop all charges against them once they were out. (Though North and George Bush Sr. testified before Congress that they never worked together on Iran-Contra, North's now declassified diaries of that time prove otherwise.

Iran-Contra insider retired Brigadier General Russell Bowen stated in his book Immaculate Deception that Bush and North 'were as close as the stamp to the envelope.' Not surprisingly, President George W. Bush has endeavored to have North's diaries that also pertain to Giuliani re-classified.) In the end, Giuliani used his role in Iran-Contra to solidify strong political ties and springboard to his mayor campaign.

Giuliani ran for mayor claiming he learned traditional family values from his father, whom a Giuliani biographer later discovered was a sexual predator. As mayor, Giuliani employed NYC police detectives to chauffeur his girlfriends in and out of the mayor's Gracie Mansion; one incident included Giuliani waving off one paramour while shipping off another, as his wife and children waited for him upstairs.

Giuliani also marched in a Fifth Avenue parade with one of his mistresses, while his kids watched it on TV. Giuliani originally denied committing adultery because treatment for prostate cancer had left him impotent, known by Giuliani spin doctors as 'the prostate defense.' Giuliani later admitted to adultery, in the press conference he used to inform his wife he had left her. Giuliani had to pay his second ex-wife $6.8 million, plus $8000 a month in child support.

Mayor Giuliani's war profiteer begging for post-9/11 NYC 'needing and deserving' the Super Bowl contradicted his last major act as mayor, allocating $1.1 billion in cash and tax breaks to the New York Stock Exchange, calling them a 'non-profit' organization. NYC taxpayers now have to fund the new stock exchange building, as well as repay the $4 billion Giuliani added in his term to the city's budget deficit. All told, Giuliani doled 'wealthfare' to eighty different firms, including almost $184 million to the New York Mercantile Exchange, who with undeserved taxpayer money laid off a significant portion of their staff.

Giuliani also funneled the last $100 million in the city-run Twin Towers Fund--designed to help 9/11 victim's family members--to his own private charity, and paid himself $2.2 million from the fund for anticipated administrative costs. Giuliani reinvented himself utilizing the worst disaster in America's history--preying on people's misdirected sentimentality and patriotism to play both victim and hero--in the face of 9/11's real victims who deserved better than to have their deaths recalculated into propaganda for Giuliani's gain.

Giuliani even attempted to become the first elected official in US history to exploit an emergency to extend his term. President Bush's first 2004 campaign commercial manipulated pictures of the World Trade Center attack, which enraged 9/11 family members and was described by Newsday's Jimmy Breslin as 'George Bush reached down and molested the dead.' (But then a Bush family business, The Carlyle Group, previously abused 9/11 as a selling point in a defense company IPO stock brochure, and gleaned almost $300 million as a result--some of that money President Bush will one day inherit.) However, Giuliani was the first to defend Bush for capitalizing on the 9/11 images.

Rudolph Giuliani, a former Time Magazine Man of the Year (prior recipients include Josef Stalin and Ayatollah Khomeini) and knighted by England's Queen Elizabeth (as have many people who benefited from mass murder), now bides his time to enter a government near you. Since 9/11, he has reaped over $10 million in public appearance fees.



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