A Bigger Badder Version of Bush?

This post, written by Steve Benen, originally appeared on
The Carpetbagger Report.

Yesterday, speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition, Rudy Giuliani...
almost seemed to be looking forward to a military confrontation,
insisting without proof that Iran is currently building nuclear weapons and
emphasizing that the "military option is not off the table." Giuliani said every
new American president prayed to avoid war, but accused Tehran of
backing attacks on US troops in Iraq, and ruled out the notion of America
learning to live with a nuclear Iran."We have seen what Iran will do
with ordinary weapons," Giuliani told a forum of presidential candidates
organized by the Republican Jewish Coalition.
"If I am president of the United States, I guarantee you, we will never find
out what they will do if they get nuclear weapons, because they are not going
to get a nuclear weapon."
The remarks were well received by the partisan audience, but they're a
small reminder of why the public should be genuinely concerned about the prospect
of a Giuliani presidency.

Now, I appreciate the context of this. Most Dems will say the prospect of a
Republican president in 2009 is inherently dangerous. Likewise, most Republicans
will say the same about a Democratic president. ..... but there's something altogether more (frightening) about the notion of giuliani in the oval office. Josh Marshall on Tuesday described the "truly catastrophic foreign policy Giuliani
would likely pursue." . Matt Yglesiasa said yesterday that he struggled to find a way to explain how "terrified" he
is of a Giuliani presidency, explaining that it would be "a quantum leap of lunacy
and just the time when the country desperately needs a clean break and a
lurch in the other direction."Ezra Klein
added, "He's not just another Republican. He's not even another Bush.
He's constructed a foreign policy team that is almost unimaginably dangerous
and aggressive."

Maybe some specifics will help flesh this out. The policy advisors a
candidate chooses to surround himself or herself with can tell us quite a
bit about what kind of policies he or she would pursue in office. That's
especially true when it comes to candidates with no foreign policy or national
security experience, such as Giuliani, who has tapped some high-profile foreign
policy aides to help shape his worldview on international affairs.
In a must-see, six-minute clip, Josh Marshall <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/056020.php">explains