Ron Paul is blowing up real good

Salon ^ | June 2, 2007 | Michael Scherer

[BlackElk]

IT: It is unquestionably true that paleoPaulie humiliated himself by serving as ObL's echo chamber in that debate, blaming America First. The "AQ experts" and bureaucrats you reference are just the usual gang of tweedy eggheads who are ever interfering with and obstructing the ability and necessity of our waging war against our enemies.

PaleoPaulie was not telling the truth. He was just serving as the Tokyo Rose/Axis Sally of the War on Terror, giving aid and comfort to our enemies in time of war by spouting their propaganda. What he and we should be concerned with is NOT psychoanalyzing the Islamofascisti but slaughtering them in memorable numbers and fashion. I don't care if their mommies beat them when they were little kids or that they got spankings or that they are just postal at anyone not enthusiastic to import Sharia "law." Killing them en masse simplifies matters and wipes away the despicable possiblity of pseudointellectual navel-gazing over several generations immobilizing us while the Islamofascisti catch up. Our Ohio class submarines and their payloads were designed for this moment.

If you can support paleoPaulie for any office much less POTUS, you still won't understand but you won't be able to claim that no one explained it to you.

[BlackElk]

If paleoPaulie did not want the focus to be on his screwball antiwar and antiAmerican foreign policy notions, he could have just shut up on them but he chose to advertise. No one to blame but himself. Therefore, somehow, it must be Dubya’s fault and America’s fault that paleoPaulie is making a jackass of himself as to both Paulie’s paleowussery and as to the appropriate party symbol for his pantywaist foreign policy.

[BlackElk]

Too bad Tim Leary is dead or he cvould have been paleoPaulie’s HHS Secretary.

[BlackElk]

DC: What actual conservatives are not interested in is the paleoperversion of the truth in service to paleoPaulie’s craven chronic surrender syndrome. PaleoPaulie wants an end to the income tax, wants this, wants that but does absolutely nothing in the real world to accomplish anything other than running his mouth as a lone ranger and, yes, nutbag.

[BlackElk]

That last sentence and about 75,000 volts should do it.

[BlackElk]

DC: Does the UN Charter to which the US is (regrettably) a signatory prohibit declarations of war? Just asking!

Read your constitution (if any) and particularly the supremacy clause of the second paragraph of Article VI of the original constitution (unamended to this day) for the treaty timebomb and note that the supremacy clause places treaties on a par with the constitution itself as supreme law for the US.

PaleoPaulie wants a Declaration of War but is not so ignorant as to think it will happen. More posing and more inaction. For a guy who claims to want a declaration of war, PaleoPaulie was also quick on the trigger to sing the praises of trade with our enemies over war against our enemies, citing our wonderful "friends" and trading partners in Hanoi as Exhibit #1.

Fighting is fighting. Passing cosmetic resolutions is political posing particularly where it violates treaties. Does paleoPaulie also favor establishing National Dill Pickle Week when he should be joining our country in fighting the Islamofascists instead of making Al Qaeda's excuses for them. Lord Haw Haw, Axis Sally, Tokyo Rose, Ezra Pound, Hanoi Jane and now..... PaleoPaulie.

[Dustbunny]

Our support goes to Duncan Hunter.

[RavenATB]

“I can cite you AQ expert after AQ expert and US government reports that state exactly what Ron Paul said.”

I’d love to talk with those AQ experts. I know a large number of intelligence analysts, and I’ve yet to hear any of them agree with Ron Paul.

When I hear some clown try to defend what Ron Paul said as being “truthful,” they say that Paul was factually correct in saying that Bin Laden’s fatwa claimed that the reason they attacked us was because of our involvement in the Middle East. However, Paul wasn’t simply pointing out that Bin Laden made that claim...Paul gave credibility to that claim and repeated Bin Laden's assertion as a way of supporting Paul’s contention that the 9/11 attacks were, in fact, a result of our actions.

So, if you’re talking to an AQ expert, ask them...specifically...which statement they agree with:

1. Bin Laden claimed that the 9/11 attacks were in retaliation for US involvement in the Middle East.

2. The US suffered the 9/11 attacks as a direct consequence of our involvement in the Middle East.

These two statements are dramatically different in meaning. I’ve spoken with many experts who agree with #1, but none who agree with #2.

Ron Paul statement is reflected in #2. Apparently Ron Paul trusts Bin Laden to be truthful, rather than use his fatwa as a propaganda tool.

I have no such faith in Bin Laden’s integrity.

[BlackElk]

DC: George McGovern was an Army Air Corps bomber pilot in WWII bombing Trieste back to the Stone Age. Curtis LeMay could not have been more enthusiatic then. McGoo’s view of war (and bombing raids) changed when the Cold War against his favorite foreign and domestic enemies of America began and McGovern was no less pro-soviet than Andrei Gromyko. Service in any American war on the side of America is honorable and praiseworthy but it is NOT a lifetime guarantee of patriotism in war against different enemies. An American defense contractor who was an enemy of America would be one confused dude.

[BlackElk]

I think you are failing to note that in the body of my post at its beginning, I addressed the post itself to Irontank as “IT”. I pinged you and another because he had been attacking you. Hunter, as nominee, would be great but I think it will be FDT. In that event, Hunter for Veep or SecDef. Apologies for not making that clearer.

[Bigg Red]

Well said, BlackElk.

And I concur with Dustbunny, as well.

Our support goes to Duncan Hunter.

[radioman]

Insane is blaming the CIA for one of its finest foreign operations in Iran in 1953

Finest operation?
Don Wilbur had to drag the terrified Shaw into the plan. On the night of the overthrow nothing went according to plan and the CIA boys were fleeing for their lives. Several Iranian officers took control of the crowd and staged the coup themselves.

This "finest operation" led directly to the rise of radical Islam in Iran.

the U.S. government for causing 9/11

Our disastrous foreign policy in the mideast since the sixties has fueled the rise of radical Islam and put people like Bin Laden in power.

If Dr. Demento had been around during the Revolution, he’d be blaming Gen. Washington and Thomas Jefferson for bringing the force of the crown down upon our heads.

As long as were going to speculate...What would Washington and Jefferson think of our nation building?

We’d call that “treason.”

Only those who drink the kool aid. The rest of us would just laugh at the nonsense. ;-)
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[Grampa Dave]

[fieldmarshaldj]

"Finest operation?"

One of, yes.

"Don Wilbur had to drag the terrified Shaw into the plan. On the night of the overthrow nothing went according to plan and the CIA boys were fleeing for their lives. Several Iranian officers took control of the crowd and staged the coup themselves."

Regardless of any gaffes, it WAS a success. Contrast that with other botched operations, namely Bay of Pigs. A fiasco because proper support was not provided. If the President had fully committed to the operation, Fidel would've been an asterisk in the history books and Cuba would be a Republican Democracy today instead of a totalitarian regime.

"This "finest operation" led directly to the rise of radical Islam in Iran."

Bull$hit. That's Dr. Demento's line of absurdity. Iran became one of the most forward, progressive societies in the middle east following this operation during the years under the Shah. And "radical Islam" needs no modifier. Islam itself is OPPOSED to modernity, and because Iran was such a success story in moving into the modern age, its psychotic, 8th century adherents were the ultimate reactionaries to the progress made. Thanks to that whale$hit Carter, he aided and abetted the crime that has oppressed the Iranian people for the past 28 years.

=snips the rest of the Dr. Demento fecal matter=

[Irontank]

These two statements are dramatically different in meaning. I’ve spoken with many experts who agree with #1, but none who agree with #2.

Ron Paul statement is reflected in #2. Apparently Ron Paul trusts Bin Laden to be truthful, rather than use his fatwa as a propaganda tool.

I have no such faith in Bin Laden’s integrity.

I also have no faith in bin Laden's integrity...but what he himself believes is really less important than the fact that he has emphasized a consistent message of the US is at war with Islam...is stealing oil from Muslim lands, favors Israel over the Palestinians, bombs Iraq with no concern for the Iraqi people, etc., etc.

Bin Laden has expanded Al Qadea since the early 1990's because he knows that message plays across the Muslim world. In other words, its less important what bin Laden, Zawahiri and other AQ leadership believe than what those who are actually leaving their families and blowing themseves up believe.

Americans like to believe that we are good and benevolent...and I think, in the case of the American people, that is mostly true. But Americans need to understand that the American government is not always a force for good (bottom line is that OBL got a lot of mileage out of Madeline Albright's statement that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children was "worth it") and even when government policies have benevolent intent...the actual consequences of those policies are, more often than not, not what was intended.

Just for some perspective as to what the US is up against in terms of its image in the Muslim world...look at this recent poll I link to below. A lot of people on here would say..."who cares what they think"...but, the reality is that we will never defeat Al Qaeda through military force alone...or even primarily...you have to revise American policies so that AQ is marginalized and repudiated by the very people from whom they want to recruit.

You don't do that by invading and occupying Iraq for 4 years and building permanent bases there....we closed the bases in Saudi Arabia not so long ago because it was well recognized that AQ was able to exploit the US presence in Saudi Arabia..now we are preparing to repeat the same policy...this time in Iraq

Negative Attitudes toward the United States in the Muslim World: Do They Matter?

[RavenATB]

Even if I admit that all of that is true, it still doesn’t mean that the reason that 9/11 happened was that the US was involved in the Middle East. To draw such a conclusion one would have to also conclude that were the US not involved in the Middle East that Al Qaeda wouldn’t have attacked us.

I don’t accept that as fact, and therefore I cannot accept Ron Paul's assertion as fact. No matter how much he may want to believe that he’s right, its still only speculation.

[radioman]

Iran became one of the most forward, progressive societies in the middle east following this operation during the years under the Shah.

I was stationed in Iran in the sixties. We needed a base there. Simple as that. The years under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi were better than they are now but Iran was in no way a bastion of freedom and progress.

Carter gave Iran to the terrorists but that wasn't the first mideast blunder. Our foreign policy in the mideast was cold war based. We worried about Communism and ignored the rise of radical Islam.
We're paying the price now.

Bay of Pigs

Agree with you 100%. Another foreign policy disaster. Every president since Ike, including Reagan, failed to defend America's world interests.

When we let Syria and Iran chase us out of Lebanon we gave the mideast to radical Islam. We would be in better shape today if we would have invested in South America instead of the mideast. Our foreign intervention in the mideast has cost us dearly.

It was justifiable when we were fighting the Cold War but that war is over. We have enough petroleum in the new world to meet present and future needs. We need to get the hell out of that part of the world and let the Muslims get back to slaughtering each other like they've done for centuries.
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[fieldmarshaldj]

"We need to get the hell out of that part of the world and let the Muslims get back to slaughtering each other like they've done for centuries."

That might make sound all well and good if it wasn't for the fact that the Mohammadan hordes aren't isolated to that part of the world anymore... and we're not isolated from them, either. Isolationism doesn't work anymore. We can't pretend what goes on around the globe doesn't effect us. It all does now. Like I said, you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

Want a real substantive policy ? A complete and total ban on Mohammadans immigrating to the U.S. under any circumstances (save maybe for women fleeing that evil). Expulsion of all Mohammadans within the U.S. Europe and other civilized nations will have to play serious hardball in this regard if they wish to remain civilized. Jihad is very real, and we'd better start responding.

[radioman]

Isolationism doesn't work anymore.

Paul is not a supporter of isolationism. Non intervention is not isolationism. We can attack those who attack us directly and forcefully without intervention and nation building.

Paul supported our attack on Afghanistan because they were harboring those who attacked us. Our Iraq adventure has done nothing to protect us from the hoards of Islam.

If Ron Paul is wrong why has president Bush taken his advice and hired mercenaries to go after the terrorists?

Jihad is very real, and we'd better start responding.

I agree with you, Jihad is very real. We need to respond forcefully even if that means going after "allies", like Saudi Arabia, who support those who attack us.

We're using WWII tactics to fight terrorism and that is just plain stupid.
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