Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani’s “September 11” campaign advertisement

America was attacked on September 11. No one has sole ownership of 9/11, including my family because we lost someone.

Here is the text of Rudy Giuliani’s advertisement:

“Right before September 11 and months before I had read this book about the greatest generation written by Tom Brokaw and the book explains how brave, and how persistent, and how courageous the people were in the generation that won the Second World War.

“And during the day of September 11 living through the things that I saw and observed, immediately, when I saw people helping each other, I saw the picture of the firefighters putting the flag up, I said these are the children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren of the greatest generation. They have the same resolve, the same understanding.

“When you challenge Americans, there’s no country that stands up stronger and better than the United States of America. When you try and take something away from us like freedom, my goodness, Americans are going to be one in resisting you.

“So, the Islamic terrorists would make a terrible mistake if they confuse our democracy for weakness.

“Our democracy means we disagree with each other but when you come and try and take away from us our freedom, when you try and come here and kill our people, we’re one and we’re going to stand up to you and we’re going to prevail.”

Debra Burlingame adds:

“It’s perfectly legitimate for Giuliani to remind us of that day, and how the country responded and his role in it,” said Debra Burlingame, co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America, and whose brother, Charles, was the pilot of the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

“I was very moved by Giuliani’s great leadership on Sept. 11,” added Burlingame, who said the “silent majority” of families affected by the attacks are not Giuliani critics.

He helped me get through that day. He helped rally the nation when we were on our knees.”

New York Times falsely reports September 2007 polls results about Giuliani

“No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.” — Abraham Lincoln

The New York Times could have written today that, “86% of all Republicans surveyed said Mr. Giuliani would do as good a job or better than as the other candidates when it came to fighting terrorism.” They did not. Instead, they skewed their own reporting.

On September 11, 2007, the Times wrote:

“Eighty-two percent of Republican primary voters said Mr. Giuliani has strong leadership qualities. Mr. Giuliani’s strongest appeal remains his handling of the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York six years ago, with an overwhelming majority of Republicans, and a clear majority of all voters, saying he did a good job.

But 61 percent of Republican voters [emphasis added mine and you will see why in a moment] said Mr. Giuliani would do about the same job as his rivals for the nomination in combating the threat from terrorism; Mr. Giuliani has made keeping the United States “on offense” against terrorism a centerpiece of his campaign…”

And here’s the proof of what I assert. Today, the New York Times wrote:

“In a New York Times/CBS News poll in September, Mr. Giuliani’s supporters were asked [emphasis added mine. Note the difference between this and the bolded text above] if they thought he would do a better job fighting terrorism compared with the other candidates running for the Republican nomination. A quarter of them said they thought Mr. Giuliani would do a better job than his opponents, but the large majority — 61 percent — said they would expect Mr. Giuliani to be about the same as the other candidates when it came to fighting terrorism.”

Back on September 11, 2007, the Times did not write that only “Mr. Giuliani’s supporters” were asked that question. And they failed to report that additional “quarter” (25%) who said Giuliani would do a better job of fighting terrorism.

This is how the Times, back on September 11, 2007, characterized those polled:

“The nationwide telephone poll was conducted Sept. 4-9 with 1,263 adults, including 357 voters who said they planned to vote in a Republican primary. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus three percentage points for all adults and five percentage points for Republican primary voters. The detailed questions focusing on Mr. Giuliani, who has been leading for months in most national polls, were not asked about the other candidates.”

As usual, the Times failed to publish the full poll results in order to avoid scrutiny while spinning the results.