Giuliani on Bush Iraq Plan: 'We Have to Get This Right'
Jan. 11, 2007 — -- Republicans lining up to support President Bush's plan to increase troops in Iraq include former New York City mayor and potential presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani.
The overall change in strategy -- and recognition that old strategies were not working -- are more important than the additional 21,000 troops being sent to Iraq, Giuliani said today on "Good Morning America."
However, Giuliani said, we have to "hope and pray" the new strategy will work.
"There is a great deal at stake. … A collapsed Iraq is a disaster, for the danger this creates in more terrorist attacks. We have to get this right," he said. "The strategy now is to try to think about security in Baghdad and al-Anbar, and then the rest of the country."
For the first time, President Bush accepted responsibility for past mistakes in Iraq in Wednesday night's speech.
"The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people -- and it is unacceptable to me," he said. "Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me."
Giuliani said the problems Iraq faced reminded him of crime problems he faced when he became mayor of New York in 1992.
"We took neighborhoods. We cleaned them up, and then we pulled the troops out," Giuliani said. "It reminds me of what I faced in New York City with crime. Now the objective is to take those neighborhoods and create stability there."
Once the neighborhoods are stable, Giuliani said, the hope is that the Iraqi government and security forces can begin to function on their own and deliver services.
"It's a critical region," he said. "Our national security is at stake."
Giuliani has formed an exploratory committee for a possible White House run but deflected questions about whether he was running for president in 2008, saying it was very early to make an announcement.
On Jan. 3, the New York Daily News reported that a Giuliani presidential strategy memo had been left behind in a hotel room, and the newspaper published excerpts from the 140-page document.
Advisers to Giuliani said Wednesday that "someone sympathetic to one of Giuliani's rivals for the White House" had given the memo to the paper in order to embarrass him.
Giuliani, who gained national attention for his leadership after the Sept. 11 attacks, said he would consider running for president if "there is something special I can do, something unique I can bring" to the race.
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