Rough Ride for Rudy

As if Bernard Kerik's indictment, employing a priest who has faced allegations of child sex abuse and new allegations of hiding security costs incurred during adulterous trysts with future wife Judith Nathan, three marriages and pro-abortion, pro-gay rights and anti-gun stances weren't enough for Republican conservatives to stomach, now come new allegations of Rudy's involvement with some of the very "Islamic Terrorists" he promises to quash if elected President of 9/11.

Mr. Giuliani has had a long and involved relationship with Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani since right after 9/11 and the government of Qatar in dealings with his company, Giuliani Partners.

That doesn't sound too sinister until you start looking into Sheikh al-Thani and Qatar going back to the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993...

Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice (who is a long-time Rudy antagonist) has a rather long and highly-sourced new article on Rudy's relationships with some of the central characters on both World Trade Center tragedies.

Barrett starts the article with a scene just weeks after 9/11 and right after Rudy had very publically refused the money of a Saudi prince who had made disparaging remarks about our relationship with the Israeli's and the Palestinians:

Three weeks after 9/11, when the roar of fighter jets still haunted the city's skyline, the emir of gas-rich Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, toured Ground Zero. Although a member of the emir's own royal family had harbored the man who would later be identified as the mastermind of the attack-a man named Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, often referred to in intelligence circles by his initials, KSM-al-Thani rushed to New York in its aftermath, offering to make a $3 million donation, principally to the families of its victims. Rudy Giuliani, apparently unaware of what the FBI and CIA had long known about Qatari links to Al Qaeda, appeared on CNN with al-Thani that night and vouched for the emir when Larry King asked the mayor: "You are a friend of his, are you not?"

The Emir also has a very large stake in Al-Jazeera whom some in the Bush Administration have dubbed "Terror TV".

But there was another reason to think twice about accepting al-Thani's generosity that Giuliani had to have been aware of, even as he heaped praise on the emir. Al Jazeera, the Arabic news network based in Qatar (pronounced "Cutter"), had been all but created by al-Thani, who was its largest shareholder. The Bush administration was so upset with the coverage of Osama bin Laden's pronouncements and the U.S. threats to bomb Afghanistan that Secretary of State Colin Powell met the emir just hours before Giuliani's on-air endorsement and asked him to tone down the state-subsidized channel's Islamist footage and rhetoric. The six-foot-eight, 350-pound al-Thani, who was pumping about $30 million a year into Al Jazeera at the time, refused Powell's request, citing the need for "a free and credible media."

Barrett spends a good portion of the article describing in-depth the Giuliani Partner's security contracts with the government of Qatar and Qatar's known harboring of terrorists and other nasty business. If this information makes the light of day in MSM (other than Olbermann who hosted Barrett last night) will it hurt Giuliani?

As well-sourced and inflammatory as Barrett's article is, I see much less "there" there than our relationship with the Saudi's. To that point, Qatar may be harboring terrorists and cozying up to Iran's Ahmadinejad, but they are considered allies, we have troops stationed there and our oil companies deal with them quite successfully.

Some may find Giuliani's ties with Qatar out of the ordinary or even suspect, but I don't believe they'll be any blowback on this. I'm assuming his personal trevails and issue flips will be much more damaging if he becomes the Republican nominee. If it winds up being Clinton v Giuliani, watch "swiftboating" elevated to an art form.