Behind Giuliani's Tough Talk

Brooks Kraft / Corbis

Republican presidential hopeful, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, visits the Dodge's Store in New Boston, New Hampshire on August 17, 2007.

"Islamic terrorists are at war with us," Rudy Giuliani told about 300 people at a synagogue in Rockville, Md., one evening in July. He likes to say it that way — that they are at war with us, not the other way around. "They want to kill us," he warned a group in New Hampshire the same month. "They hate you," he told a woman in Atlanta.

Giuliani says he understands terrorism "better than anyone else running for President," and he certainly talks about it more than anyone else. "Basically, what he's selling is, 'As dangerous a world...