Giuliani Charges Lack Context

[Khephra]

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 31, 2004; 6:44 PM

Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani made a number of specific attacks based on statements allegedly made by Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry in his speech to the Republican National Convention Monday night. But Giuliani's description of those comments often lacked context.

For example, Giuliani said: "In October of 2003, he told an Arab American institute in Detroit that a security barrier separating Israel from the Palestinian territories was a barrier to peace. Okay. Then a few months later, he took exactly the opposite position."

The context: When Kerry made his statement about a "barrier to peace," he was referring to, as he put it, the "Israeli government's decision to build the barrier off of the Green Line -- cutting deep into Palestinian areas."

Kerry's stance was similar to the position taken by President Bush a few months earlier, in July 2003, when he said in the Rose Garden: "I think the wall is a problem, and I discussed this with Ariel Sharon. It is very difficult to develop confidence between the Palestinians and Israel with a wall snaking through the West Bank."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50256-2004Aug31.html