The PTSD Republicans: Rudy Giuliani Is an Asshole:
Doesn't it seem like the major Republican candidates for President are all suffering horribly from the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder? You got John McCain, who is a poster child for the latent effects of PTSD (more on that later). And Rudy Giuliani, whose campaign is based on the fact that he's never learned to deal with what happened under his watch in New York on September 11, 2001, and that we should love him for his inability to get on with his life.

Giuliani's PTSD was fully on display in Iowa City this weekend when he gleefully told the crowd, making that sneer that is his smile, that Saddam Hussein was getting punished in Hell: "You sure wouldn't want to be where Saddam Hussein is, where we helped put him." Oh, how the Iowa audience cheered and applauded. The message from the Giuliani campaign is clear: vote for Giuliani if you believe American should forever act like it's September 12, 2001. It's been the great lie of the last five and a half years, but the bloodlust, burn in Hades crowd loves to think it's part of a big war on eeevil. And Rudy's there to make sure, always, that he's gonna chew on Saddam's hellfire-cured entrails.

When he gave the commencement address at the Citadel Saturday, Giuliani laid this burden on the cadet graduates: "You are the 9/11 generation of service. Citadel graduates, as the leaders of the 9/11 generation, you have now acquired the insight, the training, the skills, the courage and the dedication to prevail over the terrorists and create a more peaceful world." You gotta wonder how many of the seniors thought, "Please don't let this man with the crazed eyes and Captain Queeg twitch send me to my doom." (Although, from the various reports, the good cadets told various newspapers they loved them some Rudy, so maybe they have been prepped to be RPG fodder.)

"The reality is that in this world today, there are people — terrorists, Islamic, radical terrorists — who are planning as we sit here at this graduation, who are planning to come here and kill us," Giuliani said, offering the graduating class of 2007 a gorgeous vision of the future as they head out into the world. The words of a mugging victim who refuses to leave his apartment are pretty much the same. Giuliani, though, thinks that paranoia and deep, deep psychosis from his scarring day in 2001 is what makes him qualified to be President.

But that's the kind of shit you do if you're an asshole, and, truly, the only reason that Rudy is running is because he's an asshole. Seriously, is there anything that makes the man a viable candidate? Is this what we've sunk to? Hell, Ross Fuckin' Perot was more qualified. Ya gotta look at Giuliani and think, "What's his game here?" Is it ego? Or is it just another way, like everything else for him post-9/11, another way to cash in big on his bullshit "America's Mayor" celebrity status?

Of course, Giuliani's unending greed is gonna catch up with him at some point, whether it's the Bernard Kerik tree falling down or Rudy's own corporate dirty dealings. The question is, when it happens, will the people cheering Saddam in hell be able to finally come to grips with the real post-9/11 world.