c Cain - Mayor Rudy Giuliani On NBC's "Today"

"So I think it either indicates that Senator Obama is not on a fact-finding mission, because the facts don't seem to affect him or Senator Obama has a stubbornness of wanting to stick to his political position which now turns out to be incorrect. The position he took a year ago to oppose the surge would have left us with a great loss and a Middle East in chaos right now. The position that was the correct one, that turned out historically to be correct, is the position that we should have done the surge." -- Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani
NBC's "Today"
July 22, 2008

NBC's David Gregory: "Let me turn to Iraq this morning. A lot of news, Senator Obama's trip and he said late last night that if he had it to do again, he would not support the support troop surge in Iraq. McCain has already been critical about that, what do you think that should say to voters about his view of the war and his judgment?"

Rudy Giuliani: "I don't understand what Senator Obama is saying. He goes to Iraq to go on a fact-finding mission and the facts that he finds are that violence is down 70 to 80%. That everyone believes, particularly the military commanders he's talking to, that it was a great success. The only reason al-Maliki is talking about a possible withdrawal in 2010 is because the surge has worked -- couldn't possibly be talking about something like that and we don't know if it will happen or not depending on the facts on the ground. So I think it either indicates that Senator Obama is not on a fact-finding mission, because the facts don't seem to affect him or Senator Obama has a stubbornness of wanting to stick to his political position which now turns out to be incorrect. The position he took a year ago to oppose the surge would have left us with a great loss and a Middle East in chaos right now. The position that was the correct one, that turned out historically to be correct, is the position that we should have done the surge."

Gregory: "But let's take on this argument a little bit, because Mr. Mayor, as you know, Senator McCain has effectively chalked up Obama's position on Iraq to naivete. That he has effectively called for surrender, and yet by sticking to the idea of a 16-month phased withdrawal from Iraq that has ultimately been validated by the Iraqi Prime Minister, hasn't that effectively refuted that argument?"

Giuliani: "Of course not. You wouldn't be there if the surge didn't work -- unless, he wanted to pull out the troops in the midst of chaos. Unless, you wanted to create civil war in Iraq. These are the facts that Senator Obama ignored a year ago. It now turns out that had you not had the surge, either we would be in a much worse situation in Iraq or as the Democrats and Harry Reid and Obama wanted to do, we would have declared we lost and pulled out."

Watch Rudy Giuliani.