An AP story on Monday quoted Rudy
Giuliani as saying:
"This is the world we
live in. It's not this happy, romantic-like world where we'll
negotiate with this one, or we'll negotiate with that one and there
will be no preconditions, and we'll invite (Iranian President
Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad to the White House, we'll invite Osama (bin
Laden) to the White House," Giuliani said.
"Hillary and Obama are kind of debating whether to invite them
to the inauguration or the inaugural ball," he added.
The quote caused a stir among anti-Rudy bloggers, with TPM
running with it and Andrew Sullivan
writing, "This is literally insane.
If he is starting with this kind of unhinged claim, where
will he end up?" Keith Olbermann fumed, "A year before the election and
Rudy Giuliani is already publicly contending the Democrats are
willing to invite Osama bin Laden to the White House to negotiate.
Sure they are, buster."
The only problem is, the quote wasn't accurate.
While watching this video of the Olbermann segment
portraying Giuliani as "Bush on steroids," I noticed that Giuliani
(around the 1 minute mark) did not say Osama, but Assad.
As in, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, one of the many leaders of
hostile regimes that leading Democrats have said they would
negotiate with without preconditions. This is consistent with a
point Giuliani made at the
Republican Jewish Coalition earlier this month:
This is the great fallacy in this now very strong Democratic
desire to negotiate, negotiate, negotiate and negotiate. You've got
to know with whom to negotiate and with whom you should not
negotiate. When Barack Obama, a couple of months ago, said that he
would invite Ahmadinejad, Assad, Castro and Chavez
- did I miss somebody - to Washington in the first year that he's
in office to meet with them, without preconditions, when he was
condemned by Hillary Clinton, who now has joined his
position...
Video here.
Now, it's perfectly accurate for Giuliani
to hit Obama for wanting to invite Ahmadinejad and Assad to
Washington, as Obama said he was willing to do here. Clinton later joined him, at
least on Iran, here. If you want to argue that
Giuliani went overboard by joking that the Democrats "are kind of
debating whether to invite them to the inauguration or the
inaugural ball," that's one thing. But clearly what sensationalized
this entire story is the idea that Giuliani was saying that
Democrats want to invite Osama bin Laden to the White House. That's
a claim that Giuliani clearly did not make, and the AP, as well as
bloggers who picked up the story, and Olbermann, should correct the
error.
UPDATE: Sullivan and the AP have issued corrections.
UPDATE II: Olbermann corrects. See more
here and
here.
topics:
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Iran
