Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Thursday dismissed his liberal social views, his divorces and his former aide’s imbroglio as irrelevant to a presidential bid.

Now, my first thought when reading that sentence was, “YEAHHH!!! Right buddy!”

But, after putting aside my knee jerk reaction and intuitively analyzing how this race could play out, Rudy might be right.

“You have to feel inside yourself there is something special I can do _ some kind of special experience I have had or background,” said Giuliani, who became known as “America’s mayor” for his response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

And that’s the point I am getting to. Giuliani is “America’s mayor.” Despite his liberal stances on many social issues he is highly admired by Republicans in both wings of the party, centrist and conservative. Polls have shown him having approval ratings in the 70 percentile even among social conservatives. I do believe that once the primary debates get going these issues will grind away at those numbers when they are brought to the forefront, but how much will it really hurt him?

The question that remains to be answered is, can Giuliani’s 9-11 reputation supercede his political faults?

My two favorite lines from Bush’s speech:

“Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me”

“Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents and there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have.”

It is utterly ridiculous that the strongest military in the world has not been able to secure a country almost three years after deposing its dictator. At least Bush finally admitted in public what many of us already know. Our soldiers were sent there and told to fight with their hands tied behind their back. They actually have to be allowed to kill the enemy. Instead they have been standing there getting picked off like they’re first prize in a turkey shoot.

I was against going into Iraq, but the decision was made to do it and we must be successful in our endeavor. Sending another 10,000 troops to the country will only be a waste of lives, time, and money if they can’t go there and actually be allowed to fight a war. We either have to do it right or not at all.