Paul Right, Romney Wrong on Iraq and 9/11

Ron Paul was right during the Des Moines Republican debate when he said that our going into Iraq had nothing to do with al-Qaeda. And Mitt Romney was wrong when he interrupted him.

At the Republican debate in Des Moines, Iowa, on August 5, Congressman Ron Paul made clear that our going to war against Iraq had nothing to do with going after al-Qaeda, the terrorist group that attacked us on 9/11.

"The neoconservatives promoted this war many, many years before it was started," Paul said during the debate. "It had nothing to do with al-Qaeda. There was no al-Qaeda in Iraq." As Ron Paul elaborated on how wrong the neocons have been, Governor Romney, apparently attempting to telegraph his disgust with the congressman’s remarks, snidely said to the audience, "Has he forgotten about 9/11?" as he gestured with his hands. A couple seconds later, Romney again rudely interrupted — "Have you forgotten about..." — as Paul continued using the time allotted to him.

Later in the debate, Paul revisited the subject of al-Qaeda. "I supported going after the al-Qaeda into Afghanistan," he said, "but, lo and behold, the neocons took over. They forgot about Osama bin Laden. And what they did, they went into nation- building, not only in Afghanistan, they went unjustifiably over into Iraq. And that’s why we’re in this mess today."

Put simply, Ron Paul does not believe we went into Iraq because of 9/11. But Mitt Romney obviously believes we did. So who’s right?

It is true that President Bush and other neocons in his administration have repeatedly juxtaposed references to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to those of 9/11 in their public statements. In so doing, they have created the impression among many Americans — apparently including Romney — that Saddam Hussein had attacked us on 9/11. But the administration did not explicitly say this and did not even present evidence supporting this allegation. As President Bush himself said on September 17, 2003: "We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th [attacks]."

The administration did portray an al-Qaeda/Iraq connection as a concrete fact. Yet in a January 8, 2004 press conference, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged: "There is not — you know, I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I think the possibility of such connections did exist and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did." In truth, the evidence simply was not there.

By interrupting Congressman Paul with his "Has he forgotten about 9/11?" protestation, Governor Romney not only made himself appear less than presidential, he also confirmed that, where Iraq is concerned, he does not know what he’s talking about.

AQ is a non-state actor. Deterrence doesn’t work.

You misunderstood me. The only deterrence that works is killing enough of them that they're no longer a threat. Not much different than state actors.

PMJI, guys, but you are both correct, after a fashion. As I follow these discussions on FR and elsewhere I am dismayed that so few people seem to be able to grasp the "big picture" we presently confront. I'm not referring specifically to you guys - your exchange simply provided an opportunity to interject a few observations.

So many doggedly seize on whichever narrow slice of reality relates to their agenda and completely ignore aspects which don't fit their template or storyline.

That's enough generalities - time for a few specifics about the reality we face:

1. There is a worldwide resurgence of radical, conquest-minded Islam. This is nothing new, but has occurred repeatedly over the last fourteen-hundred years. There are literally dozens of al Qaida-type terrorist organizations, those "non-state actors" - al Qaida is only one of many. Previously, however, they lacked access to WMDs.

2. These non-state actors may be inherently dangerous, and deterrence certainly doesn't work with them, but in order to rise above a deadly nuisance status they must have the support of nation-states and their governments. Those nation-states provide them with sanctuary, money, training facilities, diplomatic cover for travel, money-laundering, communications, etc. and access to the science, technology and precision fabrication capabilities necessary to acquire and deploy WMDs and WMD-level stockpiles of conventional weapons.

3. These sovereign nation-states are our enemies, but they understand perfectly that any direct attack on us will result in their destruction. The non-state terrorist groups serve as their proxies and provide them with plausible deniability for attacks on us.

4. No matter how many terrorists we kill there remains an almost inexhaustible supply of cannon-fodder for the terrorist groups and their nation-state puppet-masters to draw upon. We are playing the asymmetric-warfare version of "whack-a-mole" when we really need to "drain the swamp" by replacing the hostile nation-state regimes which aid and shelter them with regimes which won't. Killing Osama bin Laden and the entire al Qaida leadership won't end the threat - others will rise to fill the void as long as the hostile nation-state support system remains in place.

5. Iran and Saudi Arabia are the sources of the modern world-wide terrorist threat. Lesser players such as Pakistan, Syria, etc. are important, but Iran is the grand-daddy of modern Islamic terrorism (with Jimmy Carter as the midwife) since 1979, and the Saudis have followed closely by massively funding the ideological efforts via madrassas, etc. This is basic "Axis-Of-Evil" stuff, and it is real.

6. The point of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan was to set the stage for changing this reality by destabilizing and ultimately replacing these regimes and remaking the Middle East. Whether we kill Osama or Saddam Hussein specifically aided al Qaida in the 9/11 attacks is much less important to the overall solution to this threat than is disrupting and destroying the murderous clandestine network of nation-state/non-state players who are waging asymmetric warfare against the West. These hostile nation-states, when faced with destruction, are, unlike their terrorist proxies, amenable to deterrence.

And, in accomplishing this goal it is essential to remember that the dominant pieces in this global chess game of terror and conquest are the nation-states. They are the Knights, Bishops, Rooks and Queens, with Iran and Saudi Arabia as the Kings - the terrorist organizations, al Qaida included, are merely their pawns. Pawns which are expendable. To win the game, the war of civilization, we must checkmate the kings.

It truly bodes ill for Western civilization that our putative leaders and self-styled intelligentsia cannot honestly and forthrightly frame the issues and make the necessary arguments in our public discourse.

Who is Sean Hannity?

Hannity is an syndicated radio host on ABC affiliates, out of New York. He's currently promoting Giuliani. He has a daily 3-hour show, following Rush Limbaugh's show in many markets. He is probably #2, Mark Levin and Laura Ingraham are probably tied for #3 (she mostly in morning markets, Mark usually in the evening slots).

He has his own conservative message board he started. It has many ads for books, Sean's and others and for which he makes a cut from his "audience". It even provides same-sex dating, a feature us Neanderthal forums don't offer.

And he doesn't like us even though he claims he was once a member here.

Hannity bashes Free Republic

Hannity, who also has a nightly 1-hour TV show on Fox News Channel, is now joined at Fox News by O'Reilly, who recently called us a hate site on national TV.

John Lott recently did an analysis on contributions that showed that employees of Fox News contributed just as heavily to the Dims as any other major media outlet. And Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, gave a huge donation to Hitlery, something he hasn't done for any GOP candidates.

Well we did it with out UN approval, but we asked for it and they said no and we still went in and used there resolutions as justification. We had every right to take out Saddam with out referring to the UN. It was a just war in my book.

Now my biggest concern about Iraq is that we have fallen into the same trap as the Soviets did in Afghanistan. It bankrupted them.

We accomplished the mission of taking care of Saddam and his regime. Now we are fighting a mix of foreigners and iraqis, just like the soviets did in Afghanistan. We can pick them off one by one for the next 20+ years in the same place, they will still keep coming, they will be better armed, trained and funded each year. The Chinese and Russians (I’m sure there are more on this list) are supplying the Iranians and the Iranians are fueling the fire in Iraq. Just like the US, Israel, China, Saudi Arabia and Egypt supplied the Pakistanis to fuel the fire in Afghanistan against the Soviets.

Now we don’t need to stay in Iraq at all. We should have taken this on as nation leveling rather then nation building. We should just plow through Iran, meet up in Afghanistan and go after Osama in Pakistan and if Pakistan gives us any grief we could remove their dictator and nuclear capability pretty darn quick. But I think he will cooperate after he sees what we did to Iran.

It would take 10 months. George Bush could bring the troops home victorious and no one would screw with us.

1.Failure to comply with the cease fire agreement of the first gulf war.
2 Failure to comply with weapons inspectors.
3 Continued development of WMD programs. 4 Failure to disclose fate or whereabouts of documented banned weapons.
5 Support of terrorist organizations.
6 Aggressive actions against their neighbors.
7 Aggressive actions against US assets.

8 Genocide against it’s own population.

You say this is the reason we went into Iraq... OK.

But haven't we addressed all of the issue above. If not, which of the above have we not met? If you could be specific.

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