Giuliani Claims He Was a 9/11 Rescue Worker

By Liliana Segura
Posted on August 10, 2007, Printed on December 25, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers//59375/

First the bad news: The 2008 presidential primaries are creeping towards us at a record pace, which means our impending long national nightmare is looking longer by the day.

The good news? It gives Rudy Giuliani more time to hang himself on his own tongue.

Since the start of his campaign, the galloping liar known as "America's Mayor" has managed, among other things, to:

1) Attract unwanted attention about the women in his life--from Vanity Fair's recent, sprawling portrayal of Wife # 3 as a "a vicious, scheming harpy."

2) To his famously pro-Obama daughter;

3) Earn the derision of legions of other women with his pathetic posturing on abortion rights.

and,

4) Seriously piss off New York's firemen.

Now, the aspiring fascist turned GOP frontrunner has further infuriated any 9/11 workers who might have remained on his side by announcing yesterday:

"I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers...I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them."

One Queens paramedic disagrees. "Standing there doing a photo-op and telling the men, 'You're doing a good job,' I don't consider that to be working," Marvin Bethea told The New York Daily News.

No doubt other 9/11 workers found Rudy's remarks, like Bethea, "very, very insulting," but there's no need to pick the claim apart. Giuliani's 9/11 exaggerations have been widely documented--see this week's Village Voice: "Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11"--and critics agree that the man could win a fiction prize for his attempts at revisionist history (if only they weren't so sloppy). Nonetheless, with the presidential campaign in full swing and public scrutiny rising terror-alert style, the more time he has to exercise his mouth- without-borders, the more Rudy will become his own worst enemy.

And he's made lots of enemies. Like Jerome M. Hauer, New York City's first emergency management director, who recently shared his take on Giuliani's accounts of post 9-11 heroics with The New York Times :

"That's Rudy's own reality that he lives in...It is not, in fact, the truth."

Kind of like another commander-in-chief. But don't tell the base. Maybe he's presidential material after all.

Liliana Segura is a writer and activist living in New York

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