ESPN RADIO: Rudy Giuliani shares his thoughts on Osama bin Laden's death with Michael Kay
Rudy Giuliani praises Barack Obama on mission that killed Osama bin Laden
By Maggie Haberman, POLITICO
Rudy Giuliani praised President Obama's "courage" for the risky method he chose to take down Osama bin Laden, adding his death is a "significant step" in the war on terror - but saying the tones of jubilation feel strange to him.
"I feel a great deal of satisfaction that justice has been done, and I admire the courage of the president to make a decision like this because if something had gone wrong everyone would be blaming him," Giuliani told POLITICO Monday morning in his first comments since the capture.
"And I admire the courage and professionalism of our military intelligence officials who carried this out and this is a great victory against terror. Nobody can minimize it. He was a symbol more than anything else right now but ... symbols are really important."
Calling it a "significant step," he added: "I feel satisfaction and some emotional relief, but I don't feel great elation. I watch a lot of the celebrating and it makes me feel a little strange, I don't know. Nothing erases the loss of all those lives. ... so I feel satisfaction and I feel the right thing has been done. and I guess it will good thing ultimately but I don't feel like celebrating [as if it's] the end of World War II, because the war is still going on."
"My immediate reaction [was] ... I hope they caught him. Once I found out he was dead I probably thought that's probably better we don't have to go through three or four years of a trial ... and I felt that it shows the determiniation of our military. I'm sure there are people who havent rested a day since that happened."
He also said former President George W. Bush "deserves tremendous credit. This was only accomplished because we have developed a tremendous apparatus in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the accumulation of years and years of effort.
"I do think it's a sense of relief that he's gone both from the normal human desire for justice, [and] in the long run this will be very helpful to us in defeating Islamic terrorism. ...In the long run this is a much bigger step than people realize."
FLASHBACK: The Charlie Rose Show
August 1, 2007
CHARLIE ROSE: Barack Obama said a very interesting thing today in pursuit of Osama Bin Laden. He said the following, if, in fact -- he's in favor of withdrawing all the troops from Iraq, as you know. If in fact, there was in Pakistan a realistic evidence of Osama Bin Laden, a hot target and Musharraf was not prepared go after him, he, as President, would be prepared to go into Pakistan to get him, regardless of what Musharraf did. Would you do that? That's a tough stand against terrorism. Which you have defined as the number one issue as President.
RUDY GIULIANI: As I have said many, many times, we should redouble and triple our efforts to crush the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
ROSE: Even if meant going into Pakistan, which is an ally despite the objections of Musharraf.
GIULIANI: I certainly would not take that option off the table. You would have to judge that given the circumstances that were presented to you, hey, these things are all to be called on. Is the intelligence correct? Can you actually get him? Are you going to be successful? Will America look foolish because it will make a mistake? There are so many questions that have to be resolved. But if what you're asking me is, would that be an option that's on the table, which is we have a chance to catch bin Laden and we got to do it ourselves because we're not sure if somebody is going to do it correctly, yeah, I think I would take that option.
