Giuliani's Iraq scandal

This weekend, Rudy Giuliani launched a series of attacks on MoveOn.Org for exposing the White House spin on the "surge."

Giuliani is hoping to scare war critics into staying silent. But that isn't going to happen. MoveON has put together a rapid-response ad which demonstrates that Giuliani doesn't have a leg to stand on when it comes to leadership on Iraq: He was booted from the Iraq Study Group after missing meeting after meeting so he could make millions of dollars giving speeches.




The facts are very clear: When it really mattered, Giuliani chose to make big money from speeches rather than helping figure out a strategy for Iraq.

The Iraq Study group was a bipartisan panel appointed by Congress in March of 2006 to evaluate the situation in Iraq and make policy recommendations on the war. Sometimes it's referred to as the Baker-Hamilton commission.

Giuliani originally said that he looked forward to participating in the group, but then he never showed up to any of the meetings.

Newsday reported earlier this year that, "Rudolph Giuliani's membership on an elite Iraq study panel came to an abrupt end last spring after he failed to show up for a single official meeting of the group, causing the panel's top Republican to give him a stark choice: either attend the meetings or quit, several sources said."

Giuliani later said that he couldn't participate in the group because of "time constraints." A close look at his financial records shows that those time constraints actually consisted of a series of speeches that he made millions of dollars on.

In April of last year. Giuliani skipped a meeting and made $200,000 giving a keynote speech at an economic conference in South Korea.

The next month he skipped another meeting to give a $100,000 speech on "leadership" in Atlanta. Later that day, he attended a $100-a-ticket political fundraiser for conservative activist Ralph Reed.

For Giuliani to claim any authority on handling the war in Iraq when he abdicated his responsibilities to the Iraq Study Group is a plain betrayal of the nation's trust. In fact, Stephen Hess, who served on the panel and has served in Republican and Democratic administrations, said, "Leaving that study group was not exactly an act of courage."