Candidates take offense at Giuliani’s remark

WASHINGTON – Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a Republican, drew a swift and angry reaction Wednesday from his prospective Democratic rivals for president for asserting that the election of a Democrat in 2008 would put the country back “on defense” against terrorism, prolonging the global conflict with violent extremists and costing the nation additional lives.

The leading Democratic presidential candidates challenged Giuliani’s claim that their party cannot keep the country safe and accused him of attempting to divide the country over what many consider the paramount issue of the coming campaign.

Giuliani’s comments at a county Republican dinner in New Hampshire on Tuesday night reignited a political argument that was at the center of the presidential campaign four years ago and that echoes now in the debate between President Bush and congressional Democrats over the administration’s Iraq policy.

In his 2004 re-election campaign, Bush argued that, even if the Iraq war was unpopular, he would protect the country against terrorist threats far more effectively than Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic nominee. Giuliani has picked up much of that theme in the early stages of his own presidential campaign, pointing to his performance in leading New York after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as evidence of his capacity to confront the threat of terrorism.

The former mayor told his GOP audience that America ultimately will win the campaign against global terrorism, regardless of whether there are Democratic or Republican presidents. But he warned that the election of a Democrat could be costly in terms of lives and the length of time it will take to succeed.

“The question is going to be: How long does it take, and how many losses will we have along the way?” he said. “And I truly believe that if we go back on defense for a period of time, we’re going to ultimately have more losses and it’s going to go on much longer.”

At another point in his speech, Giuliani noted that what his prospective Democratic rivals are saying about national security and terrorism should worry voters as they weigh their choices for 2008.

“If one of them gets elected, it sounds to me like we’re going on the defense,” he said. “We’ve got a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. We’re going to wave the white flag there. We’re going to try to cut back on the Patriot Act. We’re going to cut back on electronic surveillance. We’re going to cut back on interrogation. We’re going to cut back, cut back, cut back, and we’ll be back in our pre-Sept. 11 mentality of being on defense.”

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, a Democrat, said Giuliani’s “suggestion that there is some superior ‘Republican’ way to fight terrorism is both divisive and plain wrong. He knows better. ” Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., accused Giuliani of taking “the politics of fear to a new low” and predicted that Americans will reject such rhetoric.

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton picked up on Giuliani’s focus on the threats against the United States from violent extremists, but she argued that the record of the Bush administration proved “that political rhetoric won’t do anything to quell those threats.”