Josh Marshall: Giuliani's slack tack on Iraq is whack for Mr. National Security

[BurtWorm]

From Talking Points Memo:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_06_17.php#014709

Yesterday I discussed Rudy Giuliani's decision to bag on the Iraq Study Group to free up time to give paid speeches that netted him more than $11 million dollars over the last year and a half. But we found something funny when we started doing more research on Rudy and Iraq for today's episode of TPMtv. We figured we'd find a lot of examples of Rudy's huffing and puffing about Iraq and contrast those statements with the fact that he couldn't be bothered to show up for the meetings of the ISG. But it turns out flaking on the ISG is actually pretty consistent with Rudy's positioning on Iraq.

Remarkably enough, and I'm surprised more hasn't been made of this, Rudy has very consistently been ducking the issue for months. He's toed the party line opposing Democratic plans for a pull out. But he ignores the entire issue of Iraq whenever possible. And when he's forced to address he deals with it as quickly as possible as just one part of the war on terror, says he really doesn't know how it's going to turn out, and then moves on to something else.

A week ago, Greg Sargent flagged Rudy's eye-raising line that "We may be successful in Iraq; we may not be. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s in the hands of other people."

Pretty blase, if you ask me.

But again, that wasn't just one revealing remark. It fits together with a pattern that's -- I'll say it again -- remarkable when you figure that Iraq is the number one issue in the country right now and that he's running as a national security candidate.