News reports say that Rudy Giuliani is a contender for secretary of state.
Though he backed Trump in the campaign, the position would be an odd fit. Trump falsely claimed that he opposed the Iraq War from the start. Giuliani was a Bush cheerleader.
Giuliani's speech at the Republican National Convention, August 30, 2008:
It was here in 2001 in lower Manhattan that President George W. Bush stood amid the fallen towers of the World Trade Center and said to the barbaric terrorists who attacked us, "They will hear from us."
They have heard from us!
They heard from us in Afghanistan and we removed the Taliban.
They heard from us in Iraq and we ended Saddam Hussein's reign of terror.
They heard from us in Libya and without firing a shot Qadhafi abandoned weapons of mass destruction.
...Senator Rand Paul says that he would oppose a Giuliani nomination. Perhaps one reason is that Giuliani clashed with his father during the 2008 primaries.
At the time, we believed we would be attacked many more times that day and in the days that followed. Spontaneously, I grabbed the arm of then Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik and said to Bernie, "Thank God George Bush is our President."
And I say it again tonight, "Thank God George Bush is our President."
Giuliani has a lot of baggage.
- See a vulnerability study for his 1993 mayoral race.
- See charges of police brutality during his tenure.
- See the many potential conflicts stemming from his work for foreign interests
For years, Giuliani has been one of the most prominent American officials to advocate on behalf of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), a Marxist Iranian opposition group that claims to be the legitimate government of Iran and resembles a cult. A Treasury Department investigation in 2012 examined whether speaking fees paid by several MEK front groups to a long list of U.S. politicians, including Giuliani, violated laws on Americans receiving money from designated terrorist organizations.
The State Department added the MEK to the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 1997 due to its involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992. The group, which has about 3,000 members living in exile in Iraq, has not conducted a confirmed act of terrorism in more than a decade. In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the United States mostly disarmed the MEK and provided its members with protection at their Iraqi base, Camp Ashraf.
