JOSH MARSHALL: Hi, it's Josh Marshall from TPM Media. It's Wednesday June 20, 2007. Yesterday on TPM we highlighted an article in Neswday that reported that Rudy Giuliani had originally been a member of the Iraq Study Group – that's the Baker-Hamilton commission – the commission about Iraq that reported its findings late last year and, in addition to a number of other findings, suggested that the US pull back from frontline action in Iraq. Now it turns out Rudy had signed on to the commission back in March of 2006, but a couple of months later he had not shown up for one of the meetings of the commission. So James Baker, the senior Republican on the study group got in touch with Rudy and said “Hey! Either you show up for the meetings of you're off the commission.” Well it turns out Rudy was too busy making so many of these high paid speeches so he didn't have time to be on the group - he didn't have time to do his part figuring out how the US could resolve its problems in Iraq. So he begged off.

Now we thought this was pretty telling about his candidacy, so we planned on making it the subject of todays episode. But when we actually looked into Rudy's positions on Iraq we found something that really surprised us. What we found is that Rudy's positions on Iraq are not in contradiction with his bagging on the Iraq Study Group, they're really of a piece. And what it turned out is that Giuliani somehow, under the radar, has consistently been ducking the issue of Iraq - what to do about Iraq, how important Iraq is, almost everything about Iraq - consistently, over the course of the last year.

Let me give you a few examples: a short time ago Rudy published what he called his twelve commitments. These are a series of bullet points - the things he'll do as president, the promises he'll make to the American people. Iraq doesn't show up once on the list. And actually the New York Times asked him about this – Iraq's such an important issue, how can you not address it in your twelve commitments? Well here's what he said: “Iraq may get better; Iraq may get worse. We may be successful in iraq; we may not be. I don't know the answer to that. That's in the hands of other people. But what we do know for sure is that the terrorists are going to be at war with us a year, year and a half from now.” So Iraq – hard to say, we may win, we may lose, I cant tell you. That's a really funny thing for a presidential candidate to say. but it turns out it's what he's been saying pretty much consistently when the Iraq issue comes up. Its' basically a two-pronged talking point he has: the first is, Iraq isn't actually that important, it's just a small piece of the war on terror. And what will happen in Iraq? Well, that's hard to say and I cant make you any promises.

Now if there's one point that unites people across the political spectrum today it's that Iraq is the issue in American politics today - whether you think its life or death that we succeed in Iraq or whether you think the major issue is how we get out of Iraq - Iraq is the big issue. So it's astonishing that a presidential candidate, particularly one who's basing his entire candidacy on national security issues and foreign policy, would be willing to duck it so cavalierly so frequently. Again those two talking points. Iraq: only a small part of the war on terror which is much bigger. And what will happen? Hard to say, I cant make any promises.

(video montage of Giuliani speaking)