The McCain camp, sensing an opening, has deployed Rudy Giuliani to turn up the the heat on Barack Obama’s praise of the Supreme Court’s case granting Guantanamo detainees habeas corpus rights and praising the 1993 trial of the world trade center bombing as the model for handling these prisoners.

Giuliani and McCain advisor Randy Scheunemann held a conference call this morning to continue the debate. The Mayor stressed repeatedly that it was a “very, very important” debate and this emphasizes his frequently made point during his campaign that Obama is on “defense” and McCain on “offense.” He said that this is not the politics of “fear,” but the “politics of reality.” He explained that Obama’s advisors’ comments that Osama bin Laden would deserve habeas corpus rights is “startling.” He emphasized that McCain had always favored a military procedure for processing prisoners but what the Supreme Court did was “create a new right that didn’t exist the day before” — namely extending to enemy combatants held outside the U.S. full habeas corpus rights. He said he didn’t understand why we would want to do that during the war on terror, remarking that it “reminds me of the Warren Court which created new rights for criminals.” He then sharpened the knife a bit, reminding the press that it was Hillary Clinton who often said that Obama was “naive” and “irresponsible” when it came to the war on terror.

An AP reporter then asked a question. Actually she made a statement, parroting the Obama talking point that there was “no evidence” that Obama supported merely a criminal justice proceeding (reminding those on the call that Obama favored bombing Pakistan) and why wasn’t that clear to the McCain camp. (Really, it is startling that the comment was phrased as a given fact and not “the Obama camp contends…”) She also asked when the criminal justice system would be appropriate. Giuliani disagreed with her premise about Obama’s view of the criminal justice system and noted that Obama lauded the 1993 trial as the model for dealing with these terror suspects. He recounted a number of other instances in which he contends Obama revealed that he is on the defense on the war on terror (e.g. a response to Brian Williams in a debate in which Obama said his first response to destruction of two cities would be to make sure we had an adequate emergency response, wanting to meet without preconditions with dictators who support terror and now granting Osama bin Laden habeas corpus rights.)

Bottom Line: The McCain camp is convinced this is a winning issue and doesn’t intend to let Obama wriggle out of the accusation that he likes a Supreme Court decision giving Osama bin Laden full access to the U.S. courts.

+ A A -
You may also like
Share via
Copy link