I, Podhoretz: Mr. World War 4 Tutors Giuliani

Jason Horowitz
NY Observer
Thursday October 25, 2007

Norman Podhoretz believes that America needs to go to war soon with Iran. As far as he knows, Rudy Giuliani thinks the same thing.

“I was asked to come in and give him a briefing on the war, World War IV,” said Mr. Podhoretz, a founding father of neoconservatism and leading foreign policy adviser to Mr. Giuliani. “As far as I can tell there is very little difference in how he sees the war and how I see it.”

During a long interview this week in his bookcase-lined East 81st Street home, Mr. Podhoretz, 77, explained the very straightforward proposition he has been proposing to Mr. Giuliani from the start of the campaign: “The choice before us is either bomb those nuclear facilities or let them get the bomb.”

In the apartment, a Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded by President Bush was displayed next to records of Bach and Beethoven, tin African sculptures and Japanese furniture. A picture of his son, John Podhoretz, the new editor of Commentary, which he himself edited for decades, was stuck to the refrigerator. Two of his grown Israeli grandchildren, one in a tank top, the other in an Atari T-shirt, watched television in John’s old room.

In July, Mr. Giuliani named Mr. Podhoretz a senior adviser on a foreign policy team subsequently stockpiled with more neoconservatives, including Middle East historian Daniel Pipes and Paul Wolfowitz acolyte Michael Rubin.

To Mr. Podhoretz’s obvious admiration, the Giuliani campaign seems to have become something of a lifeboat for neoconservatives shipwrecked after the Bush administration’s failures in Iraq.

“Well, I’m not finished,” said Mr. Podhoretz, who has just come out with a new book titled World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism.

Full article here.