Draft Dodger Rudy On McCave's Torture: John And I Had "Different Experience"

Peace and love, Rudy...

TPM:

MR. HUNT: Let me try a couple of national security questions. Waterboard. You have noted the Congress has not outlawed it, and that you say it's not necessarily torture; it depends on the circumstances. John McCain says you are wrong and he says you haven't served in the military and have no experience in the conduct of warfare. Do you know more about torture than John McCain?

MR. GIULIANI: I can't say that I do but I do know a lot about intensive questioning and intensive questioning techniques. After all, I have had a different experience than John. John has never been -- he has never run city, never run a state, never run a government. He has never been responsible as a mayor for the safety and security of millions of people, and he has never run a law enforcement agency, which I have done.
Now, intensive questioning works. If I didn't use intensive questioning, there would be a lot of mafia guys running around New York right now and crime would be a lot higher in New York than it is. Intensive question has to be used. Torture should not be used. The line between the two is a difficult one.

A "different experience" than McCain? Hmmm -- that strikes us as kind of a casual, offhand way for Rudy to be describing what McCain went through. After all, McCain was tortured regularly for five years in Vietnam, while Rudy secured five draft deferments, according to preeminent Rudy biographer Wayne Barrett. Indeed, as Barrett wrote in Grand Illusions, his book about Rudy and 9/11, Rudy got one deferment for every year that McCain was tortured.

And here is something interesting from NY Magazine. Rudy never enlisted and had twice been eligible for the draft:

To recap: After receiving several deferments as a student, Giuliani applied for an occupational deferment as a law clerk, but his application was rejected. Giuliani appealed their decision, and asked the federal judge he was clerking for to petition the draft board for him. Which the judge did. When his deferment expired in 1970, Giuliani became susceptible to the draft. He received a high number and was never called. Giuliani “has made it clear that if he had been called up, he would have served,” says Katie Levinson, Giuliani’s spokesperson.

http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/30661/

On side note: Romney and Uncle Fred never enlisted too. Romney received a draft deferment while serving as a missionary in France during the war. He was eligible for the draft later, but was not selected. Thompson, with a wife and child, was deferred from service.