From time to time, the question occurs to every keen observer of the political scene: just how deeply up the bottom end of his alimentary canal is Rudy Giuliani‘s head actually lodged?

Out of the goodness of his heart, Rudy has decided to clear up the matter once and for all. And he chose Larry King Live on Wednesday night as the time and place:

GIULIANI: I think the president has to make a major correction in the way he is dealing with terrorism because I think he has mishandled the situation. First of all, it was 10 days too late. This is something you react to immediately, not 10 days later after your vacation. The president of the United States, when there is a potential massive attack on this country, which is what this guy was going to do, should have been on top of this immediately, not 10 days later, 11 days later, 12 days later.

We should have had our response ready. After all, this is not an unexpected act. We are in the age of terrorism. We don’t need 10 days to respond or figure out our response. All that does, I believe, is convince our enemies that we are not ready, that we are pondering too much and thinking too much. So, you know, there is — you want to take some time. But this has been an extraordinarily long time given the magnitude of this kind of attack.

KING: President Bush took six days once in a similar incident.

GIULIANI: Well, six days is less than 10. And the reality is that President Bush was criticized for taking — what was it, like 20 or 30 minutes in delaying his response to September 11th. And I believe that six days was before the September 11th attack.

Now, remember, this is Mr. Terrorism himself. Confused out of his mind about pretty basic terrorism facts.

Of course, it’s hard to tell exactly what his confusion consists of. From what he (and Larry King) actually said, it’s not even clear that he made the connection that King was referring to Richard Reid‘s shoe-bombing attempt. In fact, his last response sounds like a classic example of the vague generalities people hide behind when they have no idea what is actually being talked about.

But in any case, either Rudee doesn’t even remember that the shoe-bombing incident happened after 9/11, or there is some entirely fictitious terrorist incident he carries around in his head that is supposed to have happened in the time of Bush but before 9/11.

(The answer to the opening question, by the way: far deeper than is supposed to be anatomically possible.)