# Giuliani buggered out of Iraq Study Group to give $$$ speeches **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 19, 2007, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634 "2007-06-19T19:54:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![11811](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/1/9d8465/32.png) [@11811](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/11811)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/41 "2007-06-20T00:51:33Z")
[QUOTE=usar\_jag] The affairs of State must take precedence over the affairs of State. Now, back to walking the parapet… [/QUOTE] That was a reference to Cheney, whose priorities were not always to serve. Jeez, and I was worried that the joke would be too heavy-handed. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/42 "2007-06-20T01:04:09Z")
[QUOTE=usar\_jag] …Now, back to walking the parapet… [/QUOTE] ‘ere, you had your own parapet? Lor’, we had only the _dog_ to walk, and damned happy to have it, too… Mangy bugger, he was… ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/43 "2007-06-20T01:21:10Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] As \*\*Liberal \*\*said, why sit on that ridiculous committee when you can be out making $$$? I could have told you what conclusion that group would come to before they even met for the first time-- it was an obvious middle-of-the-road recommendation. [/QUOTE] Maybe, if you were one of the 10 members of the committee, you could have helped to steer it towards a useful conclusion. Of course, we’ll never know, because our Presidential Hopeful decided he didn’t want to be involved in reviewing the situation in Iraq and working with others to recommend a course of action. It is only the single biggest issue that faces our country today, wouldn’t want to give up a few paydays to sit in on 9 whole meetings about it. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/44 "2007-06-20T01:37:28Z")
As a longtime fan of political invective, presented for your approval, a Mr. Matt Taibbi, who can be found hanging around at _Rolling Stone_ > [@](#): > > …Rudy giuliani is a true American hero, and we know this because he does all the things we expect of heroes these days – like make $16 million a year, and lobby for Hugo Chávez and Rupert Murdoch, and promote wars without ever having served in the military, and hire a lawyer to call his second wife a “stuck pig,” and organize absurd, grandstanding pogroms against minor foreign artists, and generally drift through life being a shameless opportunist with an outsize ego who doesn’t even bother to conceal the fact that he’s had a hard-on for the presidency since he was in diapers. In the media age, we can’t have a hero humble enough to actually be one; what is needed is a tireless scoundrel, a cad willing to pose all day long for photos, who’ll accept $100,000 to talk about heroism for an hour, who has the balls to take a $2.7 million advance to write a book about himself called Leadership. That’s Rudy Giuliani. Our hero. And a perfect choice to uphold the legacy of George W. Bush… Political invective: truth masquerading as slander. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/45 "2007-06-20T01:45:49Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] Maybe it WAS a ridiculous committee, but Rudy **did** agree to serve - then welshed on his commitment, without bothering to let anyone know what he was doing, or why. Just didn’t show up, gave speeches instead. [/quote] Your link says that he wrote a letter to Baker after having missed the first few sessions. Again, I consider the ISG a complete waste of time, so I think he made the better decision. Should he have handled his exit better? Sure. > [@](#): > > People I respect don’t do stuff like that But you can still respect someone who voted to authorize the Iraq war without educating himself on whether or not Saddam was an actual threat or not? Why is that? > [@Cheesesteak](#): > > Maybe, if you were one of the 10 members of the committee, you could have helped to steer it towards a useful conclusion. I doubt it. I’ve been on committees like that before, and I know what a waste of time they are even in the private sector. In government, and with George Bush running the show? Not a chance. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/46 "2007-06-20T01:58:00Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > In government, and with George Bush running the show? 😕 But George Bush wasn’t running the ISG—it was an independent bipartisan commission authorized by Congress. Or are you saying it was George H. W. Bush “running the show” with Baker as his proxy? I so confused. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/47 "2007-06-20T02:03:25Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] Your link says that he wrote a letter to Baker after having missed the first few sessions. Again, I consider the ISG a complete waste of time, so I think he made the better decision. Should he have handled his exit better? Sure. [/quote] “Hi. You know those meetings I didn’t show up at? Well, I didn’t show up at them.” BFD. And the letter doesn’t exactly impress me, because evidently if it made it clear that he was leaving the ISG, it came _after_ this: > [@](#): > > At some point, Baker spoke to Giuliani to find out if he intended to continue his involvement with the group. “He basically said, if people can’t make the meetings, we’ve got to find people who can,” Panetta recalled. > [@](#): > > But you can still respect someone who voted to authorize the Iraq war without educating himself on whether or not Saddam was an actual threat or not? Why is that? Because everyone except Obama’s in the same boat there. In fact, most of them are in even deeper - just about all of the GOP candidates, plus Hillary on the Dem side, still can’t tell whether Saddam was a threat or not back then. And of course the GOP candidates still want to keep on throwing in good lives after bad. Accordingly, I pretty much have to accept that a mass hysteria overcame our country in late 2002 and early 2003, sucking out pretty much everyone’s brains except for those of a few of us dirty fucking hippies. So I have to ask whether people whose brains got sucked out wound up learning anything from the experience after their brains were restored. Best I can do under the circumstances; the only alternative I can see is to say, “Obama’s my man, no matter how insubstantial he seems on most days.” ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/48 "2007-06-20T02:21:26Z")
[QUOTE=Kimstu] 😕 But George Bush wasn’t running the ISG—it was an independent bipartisan commission authorized by Congress. Or are you saying it was George H. W. Bush “running the show” with Baker as his proxy? I so confused. [/QUOTE] Bush is running the show = he’s the Commander in Chief. I had no illusions that Bush would embrace the results of the ISG unless it agreed with what he had already planned to do. That’s one reason I thought it was a complete waste of time all along. > [@RTF](#): > > Because everyone except Obama’s in the same boat there. In fact, most of them are in even deeper - just about all of the GOP candidates, plus Hillary on the Dem side, still can’t tell whether Saddam was a threat or not back then. And of course the GOP candidates still want to keep on throwing in good lives after bad. > > Accordingly, I pretty much have to accept that a mass hysteria overcame our country in late 2002 and early 2003, sucking out pretty much everyone’s brains except for those of a few of us dirty fucking hippies. So I have to ask whether people whose brains got sucked out wound up learning anything from the experience after their brains were restored. Best I can do under the circumstances; the only alternative I can see is to say, “Obama’s my man, no matter how insubstantial he seems on most days.” Well, that’s a convenient explanation for glossing over something that I think is a lot more important than participating in a “study group”. There were plenty of Senators who took the time to think about that vote and voted “no”. Fienstein, Graham, Kennedy to name a few. Or I guess you could say I want my president to be the kind of guy who doesn’t have his brains “sucked out”. YMMV. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/49 "2007-06-20T02:43:37Z")
Actually, the idea that there was some kind of mass hysteria back in Oct '02 is revisionist history at best. How many times do I have to cite that CBS news article from about week before the AUMF vote that clearly laid out what Americans were thinking, and they absolutely wanted to take a go slow approach to war. Maybe you’re thinking of the **mass cowardice** that was seen in the Senate as Republicans and Democrats tripped over themselves trying to show who was tough and who wasn’t. Americans, by and large, were of a different mind. ---
**Author:** ![Plan\_B](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Plan\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plan_B)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/50 "2007-06-20T03:03:39Z")
I don’t get what this has to do with qualifications to be POTUS. It sounds like a dumbass committee which was a waste of time. He joined it. It sucked. He quit. What’s the big deal? Are we going to limit ourselves to candidates who stick with one job their entire lives? BTW, wasn’t there one candidate who was on the board of Walmart or some other oppressor of the working classes who is no longer holding down that job? Are you guys scared that Giuliani might win or something? :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/51 "2007-06-20T04:12:35Z")
[QUOTE=Plan B] I don’t get what this has to do with qualifications to be POTUS. It sounds like a dumbass committee which was a waste of time. He joined it. It sucked. He quit. What’s the big deal? Are we going to limit ourselves to candidates who stick with one job their entire lives? BTW, wasn’t there one candidate who was on the board of Walmart or some other oppressor of the working classes who is no longer holding down that job? Are you guys scared that Giuliani might win or something? :eek: [/QUOTE] This pretty much echoes my sentiments. From **RTFirefly** we’ve basically got this: -Giuliani is weak on credentials in foreign relations -To fix that, he should have participated in this committee, he chose to make money instead, so he’s instantly a terrible candidate There’s all kinds of problems with that line of thinking. The biggest one is the leaping assumption that absenting yourself from an essentially pointless, waste of time committee equates to lack of interest in educating yourself about foreign relations. There’s no evidence of that. Then to sort of drive the point home, RTF talks about how Giuliani “doesn’t show a strong grasp” of foreign relations on his website. Well, so fucking what. Pretty much every candidate website is vague and noncommital, there’s pretty much no way I’d ever say “this candidate doesn’t know shit about foreign relations” because his website was too vague unless I already had an ax to grind against the candidate (for, I don’t know, being a member of the party I dislike.) I think as the campaign develops, we’ll get a bigger picture on Giuliani. Ultimately, the honest truth is, unless we elect a military leader with experience in Iraq, or a former Ambassador to a Middle Eastern country, no one we vote for is going to have seriously relevant foreign relations credentials in the Middle East. What we have to do is vote for who we think will be the best President, and part and parcel of that is hoping that that person is able to get good staff and appoint the right people who will help him manage foreign policy. There’s a reason experienced foreign policy types haven’t been all too successful in Presidential elections, traditionally Americans have always put domestic concerns above foreign policy concerns. So politicians who have been governors and congressmen, and who have primarily dealt with domestic politics, tend to be favored. If it was actually shown that Giuliani didn’t care about foreign policy, or didn’t care about learning about it, we may be able to bash him. But all his actions here show is that he valued a few million dollars more than he valued time spent on a committee. And lets be honest, I don’t care if this was the best committee ever, there’s no way you’re going to become an expert in foreign policy based on what you do in a committee for a relatively brief period of time, even if you do avail yourself of all the committee staff and their vast resources. The whole thing about congressmen not reading the AUMF is ludicrous. You don’t have to read every line of text to know what you’re voting on as a legislator, they have staff for a reason. Executive summaries exist for a reason. The argument that if senators had read it in its entirety they would have voted differently is ludicrous, the only people trying to say that are the ones who want to wash their hands of responsibility for Iraq. The whole “we didn’t have time, we couldn’t have known better” is bullshit, the members of Congress who voted for the AUMF knew damn well the situation, and they knew they were voting for it because they wanted to look tough on national security and be popular with the electorate. I might gives this thread a tad bit more credibility if it had been started by pretty much any other poster. RTF’s modus operandi the last few months has been to periodically start some random pit thread showing how X presidential candidate is terrible and shouldn’t be elected (with a preponderance of said threads being targeted at GOP candidates and this isn’t his first pit thread focusing on Giuliani.) I wouldn’t be surprised if similar threads pop up about the rest of the GOP field in the next few months. This is a partisan hack with an ax to grind, out on some mission to discredit every GOP presidential hopeful he can. He’s also started a (very few, relatively) pit threads about Democratic candidates. At best, he’s someone who thinks every candidate is worthless, so likely to blow every little thing out of proportion for no reason whatsoever. ---
**Author:** ![DoctorJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctorj/32/2904_2.png) [@DoctorJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoctorJ)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/52 "2007-06-20T04:16:14Z")
I can’t get too worked up about this, mostly because I don’t live in the alternate universe where Rudy Giuliani could be the next President. But I’ll be happy if it brings some attention to Rudy’s speaking fees. The right-wing press tried to make a big thing out of a big honorarium that John Edwards got for a speech a while back, as if he were the only out-of-office politician ever to do so. Bringing Rudy’s fees out into the public eye neutralizes the issue. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/53 "2007-06-20T04:29:03Z")
> [@](#): > > …If it was actually shown that Giuliani didn’t care about foreign policy, or didn’t care about learning about it, we may be able to bash him… Thing is, he said “Yes”. At the time, he probably said something sombre but determined, like politicians do when they’re pretending they’re grown-ups. How much you want to bet that, at that time, he was talking about how very, very important was the responsibility he had just chosen to burden himself with. Someones got it on tape. Be on the Daily Show or something. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/54 "2007-06-20T05:23:13Z")
[QUOTE=elucidator] Thing is, he said “Yes”. At the time, he probably said something sombre but determined, like politicians do when they’re pretending they’re grown-ups. How much you want to bet that, at that time, he was talking about how very, very important was the responsibility he had just chosen to burden himself with. Someones got it on tape. Be on the Daily Show or something. [/QUOTE] And, who cares? It was a mostly irrelevant committee. Do you really expect outrage for Giuliani acting like, you know, a politician? Politicians act like every bullshit committee they’re on is some great important thing, newsflash: the vast majority of them aren’t. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/55 "2007-06-20T05:27:47Z")
Outrage, no. Scorn and derision, most assuredly. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/56 "2007-06-20T05:31:21Z")
[QUOTE=Mr. Moto] Much as I respect . . . Edwin Meese, and Vernon Jordan, . . . [/QUOTE] Pray tell, whatever for? ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/57 "2007-06-20T06:42:26Z")
[QUOTE=elucidator] Outrage, no. Scorn and derision, most assuredly. [/QUOTE] Well, you have enough scorn and derision for _any_ Republican that it could fill the Grand Canyon. Why should anyone pay attention to anything you have to say when you are mind-numbingly single minded? The dullest people I know are the ones that are permanently on one side of every argument because they don’t have any type of opinion or thought independent of “the other side sucks.” I’ll save my scorn and derision for things that actually matter. I honestly can’t understand why any rational voter would care one way or another about Giuliani deciding to opt out of a committee. Because he said he’d be part of it? So fucking what. Because he’s a politician he can’t back out of something? I sure as hell wouldn’t want to vote for a guy who gets involved in a committee, realizes, “hey, this is a waste of time” but sticks with it anyway for no real tangible reason other than a few shrill lefties who will use it as yet another avenue to bash him (but you can’t really decide how to act based on people like that, because they’ll find something to bash you for no matter what you do. Note this isn’t, by far, RTF’s first thread like this on Giuliani.) If there was actually any evidence whatsoever that Giuliani felt that foreign policy wasn’t important, or that it wasn’t worth his time then he’d deserve scorn and derision. All this little incident illustrates is that the _Iraq Study Group_ wasn’t worth his time. Guess what, it’s not worth my time either. The ISG served virtually no purpose, certainly no purpose that a private, non-Federally funded think tank couldn’t have served. It didn’t introduce anything new or informative about Iraq and aside from the very general overviews of their findings I didn’t have any desire to waste even a single second of my life reading their actual reports because I recognized it would have no bearing on policy and that it would present no new or interesting ideas on the situation whatsoever. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 9:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/58 "2007-06-20T09:28:11Z")
[QUOTE=Cheesesteak] Of course, we’ll never know, because our Presidential Hopeful decided he didn’t want to be involved in reviewing the situation in Iraq and working with others to recommend a course of action. [/QUOTE] And he would recommend a course of action based on what? His vast experience with New York’s zoning laws? The moon being in the seventh house? What? ---
**Author:** ![Sevastopol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cdc98d/32.png) [@Sevastopol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sevastopol)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/59 "2007-06-20T10:25:52Z")
It seems rather unfair to jump all over Giuliani for not running like a Democrat. Sure, I understand that some find it unappealing when he claims a competence to manage war while cultivating ignorance and impulsiveness, but that’s what separates the parties. Your redblooded GOPer knows everything he needs to know by the age he saddles his first pony. Any more learning than that and the base will stay away in droves. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634/60 "2007-06-20T11:05:40Z")
[QUOTE=Plan B] It sounds like a dumbass committee which was a waste of time. He joined it. It sucked. He quit. What’s the big deal? [/QUOTE] It was a bipartisan committee created by Congress with the full support of the President to develop a recommendation for Iraq. It would only be a waste of time if the 10 members of the committee decided to sandbag the process, they alone were in charge of it. I’m not really sure how Giuliani could have known it “sucked” if he never even went to a single meeting. He also didn’t “quit” he just never showed up. Maybe that’s the way a teenager decides to quit a job, but one would hope that a guy hoping to be president would actually show a bit of respect for the fact that he agreed to join the committee, and at least inform them he wasn’t going to attend. Regardless of what this says about his foreign policy, it says a ton about his personal character. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/giuliani-buggered-out-of-iraq-study-group-to-give-speeches/408634.md?page=4)