A year ago, John McCain was attacking Rudy Giuliani’s foreign-policy credentials as both battled for the Republican presidential nomination.
But Wednesday, it was Giuliani doing the attacking, blasting Democrat Barack Obama as unprepared to handle foreign affairs and praising McCain, his one-time rival, as an experienced leader. The former New York City mayor’s visit to Denver came as the McCain campaign released a TV ad criticizing Obama for remarks he made about Iran and calling him “dangerously unprepared.”
“He’s just not ready to lead,” Giuliani said of Obama. “I think Barack Obama has continuously, throughout this campaign, displayed his lack of knowledge and his lack of experience about foreign policy.”
Giuliani’s visit kept with the Republicans’ “Not Ready ’08” theme for this week. Like other McCain surrogates who have visited Denver, Giuliani pointed out that Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Joe Biden have said Obama is not experienced enough to handle foreign affairs.
The TV ad released Wednesday, shown during the news conference at which Giuliani spoke, alludes to a quote from Obama in which he referred to Iran as a “tiny” country that “doesn’t pose a serious threat.”
The ad continues, “Terrorism, destroying Israel, those aren’t ‘serious threats’?
“Obama — dangerously unprepared to be president.”
Giuliani said it was “naive” to “describe (Iran) as a tiny country that doesn’t pose any threat.”
But the quote to which Republicans are referring is taken out of context. Obama described Iran, Cuba and Venezuela as “tiny” countries compared with the former Soviet Union.
“They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us,” Obama said in May. “And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, ‘We’re going to wipe you off the planet.’ ”
And when asked about a gaffe McCain made about Iran in March, Giuliani bristled. McCain, in two separate instances, repeatedly said the Iranians, who are predominantly Shiite, were training al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq.
Al-Qaeda is a Sunni group unlikely to get Iranian help, a fact that McCain acknowledged after it was whispered in his ear by Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee in 2000.
Giuliani said candidates during a campaign sometimes get details mixed up when speaking. He pointed out, for example, that Obama, while speaking via satellite Monday night, said he was in St. Louis when he was really in Kansas City.
“When Sen. McCain does it, it becomes a major issue in the press,” Giuliani said. “When Sen. Obama does it, it gets buried.”
