Ad Cast Giuliani As Nation's Protector

Wednesday, January 2, 2008 7:00 PM

TITLE: "Ready"

LENGTH: 30 seconds.

AIRING: Fox News Channel, and in Florida and New Hampshire.

SCRIPT: Male voice: "An enemy without borders. Hate without boundaries. A people perverted. A religion betrayed. A nuclear power in chaos. Madmen bent on creating it. Leaders assassinated. Democracy attacked. And Osama bin Laden still making threats. In a world where the next crisis is a moment away, America needs a leader who's ready."

Giuliani: "I'm Rudy Giuliani and I approved this message."

KEY IMAGES: The announcer's voice is carefully synchronized with specific visual images.

As the announcer intones: "A people perverted. A religion betrayed," footage of crowds waving guns and burning cloth in protest flash across the screen. Giuliani's campaign says this part of the ad refers to "Islamic terrorism" that Giuliani has said "defiled a great religion" _ Islam.

The "nuclear power in chaos " refers to Pakistan. The "madmen bent on creating it" are the leaders of other countries, Kim Jong Il of North Korea and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But Ahmadinejad's face flashes on-screen as the announcer says "madmen."

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto appears as the announcer says, "Leaders assassinated," but the campaign cites others from Lebanon, Iraq and Pakistan. And when the announcer says, "Osama bin Laden still making threats," there is footage of the al-Qaida leader firing a firearm.

On the word, "threats," however, bin Laden's image is quickly mingled with the image of World Trade Center wreckage.

The announcer says "America needs a leader who's ready," the screen goes black and the words "Rudy Giuliani. Tested. Ready. Now," appear.

ANALYSIS: The spot attempts to remind voters why they liked Giuliani in the first place: for his leadership as New York's mayor when terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. He uses an enduring image from that day in a risky move that could leave Giuliani open to charges of exploiting the tragedy for political gain, as happened last week when he released an ad in which he talks about 9/11 and includes images of firefighters at ground zero. The photo of the upended, but still standing, wall of one of the fallen towers is unmistakable. But it flashes on-screen so briefly that viewers could miss it in a blink.

Still, the spot casts Giuliani as an able protector of a nation under constant threat from a source the announcer names in the first two seconds: "An enemy without borders." Though the campaign says the phrase refers to al-Qaida, the spot's images attribute the threat as well to Islamic terrorists generally and rogue, nuclear-armed nations.

http://www.newsmax.com/politics/giulian ... 61258.html