Rudy Accuses Hillary Of Character Assassination Against Petraeus, Troops

by Jeff Dinelli

Mayor Rudy flipped his lid yesterday and not only accused Hillary of "character assassination" by questioning Gen. Petraeus during the hearings this week, but also incredulously tried to link her to the infamous MoveOn ad. "We believe, unlike Hillary Clinton, that General Petraeus is telling the truth," Giuliani, a man who has never even been to Iraq, said (Hillary's been there 3 times). The MoveOn ad, which Rudy called "abominable," was followed up "in a very, very coincidental way" by Hillary's tough questioning of the General. "What I don't think should happen in political discourse is the kind of character assassination that MoveOn.org participated in in calling him General Betray Us, that The New York Times gave them a discount to do and that Hillary Clinton followed up on with an attack on his integrity. It is time for Americans to really insist that American politicians move beyond character assassination and this is exactly what they attempted to do with General Petraeus."

Questioning an opponent's patriotism? For those that know Rudy, this hyperbole comes as no suprise, but it's pretty bold coming from a guy who dodged and applied for multiple deferrments from the Vietnam War. A guy who walked out on the Iraq Study Group to make a boatload of money on the lecture circuit exploiting 9/11. A guy who, in 2004, actually blamed U.S. troops in Iraq for not looking hard enough for missing weapons, refusing to blame Bush. "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," Giuliani said on NBC's "Today" show. "Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?"

To make matters worse, Rantin' Rudy took out his own ad in the Times. As The Carpet Bagger points out, "connecting Hillary to MoveOn is kind of silly — not only did Clinton not endorse MoveOn’s ad, but MoveOn doesn’t even support Clinton’s Iraq policy."

The Clinton campaign's response: "It's hardly surprising that Mayor Giuliani is running the first negative ad of the 08 campaign given his inability to justify his unqualified support for President Bush's failed Iraq strategy. Senator Clinton respects Gen Petraeus' service to our country. She knows the best way to honor our soldiers is to end the war in Iraq and bring them home."