With Rudy's 9/11 rescue worker comments all over the place today, it's only fitting that we draw attention to an absolutely must-read article about Rudy and terrorism in this week's Village Voice.

The story -- by Wayne Barrett, longtime Giuliani scourge and co-author of Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11 — methodically demolishes Rudy's record as a Churchillian 9/11 hero. Barrett lays out what he calls five "Big Lies" underlying Rudy's campaign and overall image, and systematically destroys each one.

"Giuliani's terrorism biography is bunk," Barrett writes. "As mayor, his laser-beam focus was street thugs, and as a prosecutor, it was the mob, Wall Street, and crooked politicians. He can't reach back to those years and rewrite such well-known chapters of his life."

It's a very long, detailed piece, but we've got a summary of all its key points after the jump.

Rudy's five Big Lies, according to Wayne Barrett, and their rebuttal:

1) "I think the thing that distinguishes me on terrorism is, I have more experience dealing with it."

Barrett says that Rudy's supposed long experience with terror, which he's claimed goes back to his time as a U.S. Attorney, simply doesn't have much there. For example, Rudy has claimed to have been involved in prosecuting the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, who was killed on an Italian cruise ship by Palestinians. But sources in the Justice Department, as well as the attorney for the Klinghoffer family, say Rudy never had any contact with them about the case. And many of the supposed terror cases he said he dealt with while mayor either involve lone nuts, or in the case of real terrorists, cooperation by the city with the federal authorities that were actually following the cases.

2) "I don't think there was anyplace in the country, including the federal government, that was as well prepared for that attack as New York City was in 2001."

In fact, Barrett contends, Giuliani never didn't do that much in the way of terrorism preparation when he was mayor. And the preparations that did occur were pretty weak — such as a 1995 drill plotting out a sarin gas attack. After the attack was poorly planned and carried out, with many emergency personnel "dying" in the simulation, Giuliani's administration never performed another one — for fear of bad publicity. And on 9/11, firefighters were stuck with the same malfunctioning radios that they had back in 1993, when the World Trade Center was first attacked.

3) Don't blame me for 7 WTC, Rudy says.
The decision to place the emergency management "bunker" (actually 23 floors above the ground) in a World Trade Center complex building left the city without a centralized command on that horrible day. And the selection of that site had Rudy's fingerprints all over it: Giuliani aide Jerry Hauer could only pick from among sites already picked out by Bill Diamond, a Republican donor who had been put in charge of the city's agency rentals. And when the office suite was laid out, it had to contain a luxurious office for Giuliani — which he frequently visited — and special care was even taken in making sure that his platform in the press room was high enough so he would be always visible to the cameras.

"It's inconceivable that the hands-on mayor's fantasy command center was shaped—or sited—by anyone other than him," Barrett writes.

4) "Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us."

President Bush's approach to terrorism before 9/11 did, in fact, change from Bill Clinton's: it was actually slightly weaker. Bush and Condoleezza Rice expressed skepticism about sending missiles after terrorists, warnings about Al Qaeda plans were ignored, etc. And instead, Giuliani continually denounces what he claims to see as a weak approach to terror during the 1990's, never critiquing the Bush Administration's soft, inattentive approach in early 2001.

"It is all part of a devoutly partisan exploitation of his 9/11 legend," Barrett writes. "Though Giuliani volunteered to execute bin Laden himself after 9/11, he's never criticized Bush for the administration's failure to capture him or the other two top culprits in the attack, Mullah Omar and Ayman al-Zawahiri, a silence more revealing than anything he actually says about terrorism."

5) "Every effort was made by Mayor Giuliani and his staff to ensure the safety of all workers at Ground Zero."

Internal memos from city government find that personnel had "faulty or no equipment" for filtering out harmful dust. And while Giuliani today blames the EPA for respiratory problems from which many of the emergency workers still suffer, former EPA head Christie Whitman says she "would call my people at midnight after watching the 11 o'clock news and say, 'I'm still seeing them without the respirators.'" And Giuliani's photo ops did not help, either — he did not wear a respirator in all those news segments where he toured the site.