Posted on 10/04/2007 8:43:18 AM PDT by traviskicks
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul seems to believe that both major parties are wrong on most things most of the time, most of all about fiscal prudence and foreign policy. That's why, though he has Powerball odds or worse of winning the presidency, it's refreshing and thought-provoking to have the 71-year-old surgeon in the race.
Paul, a five-term Texas congressman, ran as the Libertarian Party's candidate for president in 1988, but he's on the national stage this time because he's running as a Republican. He is passionate about his belief in small government, fidelity to the Constitution, faith in the free market and fear of foreign interventionism. He backs a return to the gold standard and the abolishment of the income tax. He is often marginalized as an extremist. But he is not an angry man, and that's part of his considerable charm.
Paul met with the Monitor's editorial board yesterday. He is charismatic in the way television doctors of the 1960s like Marcus Welby were. He seems incapable of not saying exactly what he believes, and he's the only Republican candidate to call for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. The diversity of opinion he brings to his party is healthy and provides anti-war Republicans with a choice.
Paul smiles often and cuts to the quick of political folly. He was, he says, in the Air Force during the Cuban missile crisis, when nuclear warheads 90 miles offshore were pointed at America. That crisis was defused with diplomacy, he said. Now, politicians are talking about going to war with Iran and "hysterical over a weapon that doesn't exist."
Paul adamantly believes that it's both arrogant and counterproductive for the world's only superpower to meddle in the affairs of other nations and engage in nation-building. It makes Americans less safe, he says, because occupying another country turns some of its most desperate and troubled residents into suicidal terrorists. It's a point that few Republican candidates are willing to make.
Paul fears the loss of freedoms at home more than he does terrorist attacks. The prescriptions he dispenses are common sense and fidelity to the Constitution. The United States began going astray about a century ago and then rapidly under President Woodrow Wilson, he said. He believes in market solutions to most problems but says he is not running to undo the welfare state. The needy will receive care, he said.
Paul can simplify problems in a way that must give his Republican rivals fits. On Iraq and the use of military force as an instrument of foreign policy he said: "We're taxed to blow up their bridges, then we're taxed to rebuild their bridges. Meanwhile, our bridges are falling down."
There is nothing to be gained by staying in Iraq, Paul said. America left Vietnam and it became a friendly trading partner. No one knows what the outcome of leaving would be, but in time, the same thing could happen in Iraq.
At times, Paul seems to be campaigning on issues history discarded a century ago. But he does so with so much wit, concern for personal freedom and an absence of malice and ego that, rather than put people off who disagree, he makes them think. That's why his candidacy contributes so much to the race.
No, thank you for reading it.
Perhaps "bounty" fits better the reasoning of Paul:
It's tempting to give him the benefit of that doubt, but the State Department had already placed a $50M bounty on Bin Laden's head before Paul proposed this letters of marque notion.
As far as Paul's idea that Western intelligence is unable to penetrate Al-Qaeda, all I have to say is that an American teenager named John Walker Lindh was able to get from a high school in Marin County, CA to a madrassah in Yemen to a madrassah in Islamabad to a training camp near Kandahar where he physically came within yards of Bin Laden.
All in a space of about 20 months.
Lindh was a complete outsider before he got involved - there is no reason why a CIA operative shouldn't be able to do that.
I don’t know.
Lindh got close, but he believed in the jihad cause. Hard to fake that.
But even assuming you could fake the fervor, to kill Bin laden, you’d have to sacrifice your own life, probably.
Arrgh!
Bring on the bloody Moors!
“What I find amazing is how Ron Paul supporters are given free reign and carte blanche to relentlessly post propoganda 24/7 while Giuliani supporters have been beaten down here to the point where some have been kicked off the FR website. Its sad.”
One is far right, one is far left.
Is it clearer now?
That came later.
Apparently it was only at 20 million as of 10/10/2001:
MR. BOUCHER;...Now, we have received additional funding to pay those $5 million rewards. So we just got, I think, some $20 million to support this program out of the emergency funding. So if four people come forward, we can pay each of them up to $5 million. We have the money available.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_ponn/is_200110/ai_2984794109/pg_2
Your main point stands, though. Bin laden had at least a $5 million bounty on him for "information" going back to 1998. Paul should have addressed that, and argued for the superiority of LM&R vs bounties.
He does things like, IMO, to simply use language in the Constitution to stoke the fires of well-meaning Constitutionalists. They hear exact phrases from our governing document and they forget to ask "Um...ok...how does that work now?" And then they put up a sheet over the highway with "rLOVEution" scribbled in magic marker and donate their $50 to his campaign. And he continues his Quixotic tour of the Presidential election.
THat's what undercover operatives do.
to kill Bin laden, you’d have to sacrifice your own life, probably.
Or you could send a cellphone call that would alert air support to a target. Special forces do this all the time.
And now it looks like the same thing happening. We’ll have the far left Hitler in a skirt or a warmed over Democrat mayor from NY. Tweedle dumb and tweedle dumber and the Republic keeps being flushed down the toilet.
‘Careful, Badeye. Too much truth is unhealthy to your posting privileges.’
Any political website that does as you indicate isn’t worth being a member of. And I haven’t seen that here.
I have seen hundreds and hundreds of threads on other website, bought and paid for by people banned from Free Republic claiming this.
They are always kooks. Always. Upset they can’t spew whatever they want, whenever they want. Its childish in my experience. These types of posters are so maniacal, a couple of them got their butts banned from here just this week for spamming me via email over things that occured six months ago at Liberty Post for just one recent example.
As for Ron Paul....I don’t think anyone can say what he would do if the world turned upside down and he became President.
Hell, from what I can tell if he became the GOP nominee, won the election for President...he’s just as likely to say during his Inaugural Speech ‘I’m resigning from the Republican Party, and will be the first Libertarian President in history!’.
In short, his history indicates he’s simply not trustworthy politically.
And his view on the war is simply the adult version of hiding under the blankets hoping the ‘monsters’ won’t getcha.
No thanks.
‘But you still have to remember that the lesser of two evils is still evil.’
Having seen evil in my lifetime up close, I don’t toss the term around so casually as many do.
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