I may just be a shrill lefty, but Giuliani's hiring of Norman Podhoretz as a foreign policy advisor is a really big deal. A few months ago, Podhoretz wrote:
Like Hitler, [Ahmadinejad] is a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism. Like Hitler, too, he is entirely open about his intentions, although--again like Hitler--he sometimes pretends that he wants nothing more than his country's just due. In the case of Hitler in 1938, this pretense took the form of claiming that no further demands would be made if sovereignty over the Sudetenland were transferred from Czechoslovakia to Germany. In the case of Ahmadinejad, the pretense takes the form of claiming that Iran is building nuclear facilities only for peaceful purposes and not for the production of bombs.
If we believe the CIA, perhaps as much as 10 years. But CIA estimates have so often been wrong that they are hardly more credible than the boasts of Ahmadinejad. Other estimates by other experts fall within the range of a few months to six years. Which is to say that no one really knows. And because no one really knows, the only prudent--indeed, the only responsible--course is to assume that Ahmadinejad may not be bluffing, or may only be exaggerating a bit, and to strike at him as soon as it is logistically possible.
Italics mine. So are we to understand that Giuliani would, on day two of his presidency, dispatch the bombers to Tehran? Given Giuliani's utterly nonexistent foreign policy record, these personnel decisions are about all we have to go off of. And if this is the sort of advisor Giuliani is choosing to hire, why should we assume he's anything but aching for war with Iran?
