The Hill News

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) Wednesday appeared to reject President Obama's comment that the nation could "absorb" another terrorist attack, saying that the country can never truly be prepared for such an event.

In leaked excerpts of Washington Post editor Bob Woodward's new book on the Afghanistan war, Obama is quoted as saying that "We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger." 

{mosads}Giuliani, who was mayor during the Sept. 11 attacks, agreed that the nation is better prepared for a terrorist attack than it was nine years ago, but said that the Obama administration is taking the wrong approach to its anti-terror efforts. 

"Well, I don't know that I would have said that. The country has to be prepared for any terrorist attack," Giuliani said on a conference call with reporters. "I would prefer t! hat the president put his effort in preventing another Sept 11.

"You're never prepared for an attack that kills 2,000 or 2,300 people ... We just do the best that we can, we don't get overly assertive about it," Giuliani later added. "I would say you're never prepared for it, you just to the best that you can."

The former mayor, who was early front-runner in the 2008 GOP presidential primary before dropping out, has been a consistent critic of the administration's anti-terrorism and national security policies.

Those critics were fueled by portions of Woodward's book that were published in the Washington Post and New York Times late Tuesday night.

The excerpts contained spats between the presidents political advisers and his national security team over the administration's strategy in pursuing the Afghan war and portrayed Obama as frustrated with his military brass for not providing a timetable for withdrawal in Afghanis! tan.

Giuliani excused the fights between advisers as typical of any executive administration, but criticized the timetable and questioned the president's leadership on national security issues.

The Obama administration's handling of the Fort Hood attack and the attempted Christmas Day airplane bombing "showed a kind of unwillingness to come to grips with what we are facing," he said. 

With regards to Afghanistan, Giuliani said that the timetable poses a danger to Americans troops fighting there because it gives "the enemy a period of time in which to pressure you to withdrawal faster."

"The president would make a really good decision if he would change that and make it clear," that the U.S. will stay in the country until it "wins" the war, he said.