Look, Rudy's reputation as an "expert on terrorism" is clearly overblown, and his stubborn insistence on placing the emergency response center in the WTC complex was idiotic, with disastrous and fatal consequences (unlike his other moronic crusades against jaywalking, cabdrivers, street vendors, littering gum-chewers, the Brooklyn Museum, etc.). But it is simply not fair, or correct, to say that he never raised the threat of terrorism as an issue during his mayoralty, despite what that numbskull Iris Weinshall says. (She was DOT C'mish, by the way, for about a cup of coffee in the waning days of his 8-year mayoralty, so she is hardly an expert witness on his inner sanctum or his counter-terrorism strategy, which presumably would have been tightly held in any case.) In fact, Rudy was widely derided by Barrett's cohort among lefty journalists, if not specifically by Barrett himself, for cordoning off City Hall and instituting strict security measures there, which he did in response to an alleged terrorist plan targeting that building, among others. And armchair critics like the self-important Jim Dwyer lampooned him mercilessly at the time for his emergency response "bunker", with some even likening him and it to the unfamous bunker of the last days of Hitler's Nazi regime. Those critics, while taking only glancing and passing notice of the ill-chosen location of the emergency response center, attacked Rudy primarily for even feeling the need to lavish millions on constructing such a facility in the first place. In retrospect, Rudy clearly had a better grasp of the all-too-real threat of terrorism than they did -- but they can skate away from their mistakes scot-free, can't they?