But Who Was Right – Rudy or Ron?

Patrick J. Buchanan
Friday, May 18, 2007 

It was the decisive moment of the South Carolina debate.

Hearing Rep. Ron Paul recite the reasons for Arab and Islamic resentment of the United States, including 10 years of bombing and sanctions that brought death to thousands of Iraqis after the Gulf War, Rudy Giuliani broke format and exploded:

“That’s really an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of 9-11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I have ever heard that before, and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11.

“I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us what he really meant by it.”

The applause for Rudy’s rebuke was thunderous – the sound bite of the night and best moment of Rudy’s campaign.

After the debate, on Fox News’ “Hannity and Colmes,” came one of those delicious moments on live television. As Michael Steele, GOP spokesman, was saying that Paul should probably be cut out of future debates, the running tally of votes by Fox News viewers was showing Ron Paul, with 30 percent, the winner of the debate.

Brother Hannity seemed startled and perplexed by the votes being text-messaged in the thousands to Fox News saying Paul won, Romney was second, Rudy third and McCain far down the track at 4 percent.

“I would ask the congressman to … tell us what he meant,” said Rudy.

A fair question and a crucial question.

When Ron Paul said the 9-11 killers were “over here because we are over there,” he was not excusing the mass murderers of 3,000 Americans. He was explaining the roots of hatred out of which the suicide-killers came.

Lest we forget, Osama bin Laden was among the mujahedeen whom we, in the Reagan decade, were aiding when they were fighting to expel the Red Army from Afghanistan. We sent them Stinger missiles, Spanish mortars, sniper rifles. And they helped drive the Russians out.

What Ron Paul was addressing was the question of what turned the allies we aided into haters of the United States. Was it the fact that they discovered we have freedom of speech or separation of church and state? Do they hate us because of who we are? Or do they hate us because of what we do?

Osama bin Laden in his declaration of war in the 1990s said it was U.S. troops on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia, U.S. bombing and sanctions of a crushed Iraqi people, and U.S. support of Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians that were the reasons he and his mujahedeen were declaring war on us.

Elsewhere, he has mentioned Sykes-Picot, the secret British-French deal that double-crossed the Arabs who had fought for their freedom alongside Lawrence of Arabia and were rewarded with a quarter century of British-French imperial domination and humiliation.

Almost all agree that, horrible as 9-11 was, it was not anarchic terror. It was political terror, done with a political motive and a political objective.

What does Rudy Giuliani think the political motive was for 9-11?

Was it because we are good and they are evil? Is it because they hate our freedom? Is it that simple?

Ron Paul says Osama bin Laden is delighted we invaded Iraq.

Does the man not have a point? The United States is now tied down in a bloody guerrilla war in the Middle East and increasingly hated in Arab and Islamic countries where we were once hugely admired as the first and greatest of the anti-colonial nations. Does anyone think that Osama is unhappy with what is happening to us in Iraq?

Of the 10 candidates on stage in South Carolina, Dr. Paul alone opposed the war. He alone voted against the war. Have not the last five years vindicated him, when two-thirds of the nation now agrees with him that the war was a mistake, and journalists and politicians left and right are babbling in confession, “If I had only known then what I know now …”

Rudy implied that Ron Paul was unpatriotic to suggest the violence against us out of the Middle East may be in reaction to U.S. policy in the Middle East. Was President Hoover unpatriotic when, the day after Pearl Harbor, he wrote to friends, “You and I know that this continuous putting pins in rattlesnakes finally got this country bitten.”

Pearl Harbor came out of the blue, but it also came out of the troubled history of U.S.-Japanese relations going back 40 years. Hitler’s attack on Poland was naked aggression. But to understand it, we must understand what was done at Versailles – after the Germans laid down their arms based on Wilson’s 14 Points. We do not excuse – but we must understand.

Ron Paul is no TV debater. But up on that stage in Columbia, he was speaking intolerable truths. Understandably, Republicans do not want him back, telling the country how the party blundered into this misbegotten war.

By all means, throw out of the debate the only man who was right from the beginning on Iraq.

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Column: Paul's 9/11 theory should be considered

Raw Story
Saturday May 19, 2007 

Ron Paul's assertion in this week's Republican presidential debate that American foreign policy in the Middle East invited the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 should not be dismissed, lest Americans continue to ignore the lessons of history, a CNN contributor wrote in an opinion piece Friday on the network's Web site.

"As Americans, we believe in forgiving and forgetting, and are terrible at understanding how history affects us today," wrote Roland S. Martin, who also hosts a talk show in Chicago. "We are arrogant in not recognizing that when we benefit, someone else may suffer. That will lead to resentment and anger, and if suppressed, will boil over one day."

After Paul, a Texas congressman, asserted that terrorists attacked the US "because we've been over there" bombing Iraq for a decade, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said he'd never heard such an assertion and pounced on Paul and demanded a retraction of the statement.

Paul's performance at the debates has rankled some GOP faithful, who have said he should not be allowed to participate in future debates. Supporters of the outspoken, quirky longshot have responded in force, inundating Republicans unfriendly to their cause with angry phone calls, according to The Hotline's On Call blog.

Martin said the emotional response from Giuliani and the crowd at the debate belies a full understanding of the implications of America's military interventions around the globe.

EXCERPTS FROM MARTIN'S COLUMN

#
Granted, Americans were severely damaged by the hijacking of U.S. planes, and it has resulted in a worldwide fight against terror. Was it proper for the United States to respond to the attack? Of course! But should we, as a matter of policy, and moral decency, learn to think and comprehend that our actions in one part of the world could very well come back to hurt us, or, as Paul would say, blow back in our face? Absolutely. His real problem wasn't his analysis, but how it came out of his mouth.

...

As Americans, we believe in forgiving and forgetting, and are terrible at understanding how history affects us today. We are arrogant in not recognizing that when we benefit, someone else may suffer. That will lead to resentment and anger, and if suppressed, will boil over one day.

Does that provide a moral justification for what the terrorists did on September 11?

Of course not. But we should at least attempt to understand why.

Think about it. Do we have the moral justification to explain the killings of more than 100,000 Iraqis as a result of this war? Can we defend the efforts to overthrow other governments whose actions we perceived would jeopardize American business interests?

The debate format didn't give Paul the time to explain all of this. But I'm confident this is what he was saying. And yes, we need to understand history and how it plays a vital role in determining matters today.

#
FULL COLUMN AVAILABLE HERE

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Fox News Claim Ron Paul's Online Voters Skewed Text-Message Only Poll!
Limbaugh, Neo-Cons pretend Ron Paul doesn't exist to prevent their delusional soap bubble from being popped

Prison Planet | May 16, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson

why Ron

Paul did so well in their poll even after the deliberate smear job that constituted their presidential debate - online activists were skewing the numbers.

There's only one problem with that claim - the poll was by text message only and no online votes were taken!

Watch the video.

 

It seems that the Neo-Cons who are hell-bent on destroying anyone other than their Neo-Lib icon Hillary Clinton, for whom Fox owner Rupert Murdoch regularly throws fundraisers , and will go to any lengths to try and dismiss the massive wave of popular support for Ron Paul, including by lying outright in claiming Internet votes swung the vote for Paul when no Internet votes were even taken.

This moron also states that Romney won the MSNBC poll after the first debate! Another total lie - Ron Paul won it hands down.

Neo-Con blog sites like Little Green Footballs are now removing Ron Paul from their polls because too many people are voting for him! This is not as a result of one person voting multiple times, as in all the online polls only one vote per IP address is allowed, but the operators of the site simply don't like Ron Paul and have chosen to ignore reality and pretend that he doesn't exist.

Hillbilly heroin popping walrus Rush Limbaugh also accused Ron Paul supporters of spamming online polls on his radio show. These people do not seem to be able to grasp the meaning of the term "IP address" and how online polls are designed to block multiple votes from one person.

Here's a newsflash to all you chicken hawk fake conservatives - political campaigns and elections are about people getting involved and having their voices heard - this is called the "democratic process". More individuals are motivated to vote for Ron Paul over establishment bootlickers like Romney and Giuliani because Ron Paul actually stands for something and represents the majority view of the people living in the United States.

This is not "cheating" or skewing the vote, it's a reflection of popular opinion and just because it feels good for you to ignore that fact - God forbid it pop your phony little Neo-Con bubble - doesn't mean it's not the truth.

Ron Paul clearly won the debate and heads up every poll taken other than Fox News' suspicious closed-door 3 hour text-message only charade, in which Paul came second behind Mitt Romney after a mysterious sudden swing in the last 20 minutes.

Vote.com has the Texas Congressman way ahead of the pack on 63 per cent.

A World Net Daily Poll also shows Paul on top in front of pro-torture "Jack Bauer" acolyte Tancredo at 32 per cent.

Both ABC News and MSNBC show Paul trouncing his rivals again despite Fox News' best efforts to shoot him down last night. Ron Paul is made of sterner stuff and this snowball is only getting bigger!

 

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Michigan GOP Move To Kick Ron Paul Out Of Debates Dropped
Another crushing victory for free speech as RNC overwhelmed with thousands of calls, 20,000+ petition signatures

Freedom of speech has just registered a crushing victory after it was announced that the Michigan GOP have dropped their move to have Congressman Ron Paul kicked out of the Republican debates.

Though we still have to be wary that other factions within the GOP could seek to bar Ron Paul, we have shot down this trial balloon for now.

The RNC and the Michigan GOP received thousands of calls after we quickly organized a campaign and a petition in opposition to Michigan head Saul Anuzis' action to circulate a petition calling for Ron Paul to be removed from all future debates. Others also circulated online petitions to counter the move, totaling over 20,000 signatures between all the petitions.

Anuzis was angry that the Texas Congressman had dared to suggest that bombing Middle Eastern countries causes anger and blowback at the Republican candidate debate on Tuesday evening.

"After consulting with my fellow RNC members, I believe there isn’t anything to be gained by advancing a petition aimed solely at removing Congressman Paul from the debates. The primary is and will continue to work itself out," writes Anuzis on his blog.

Anuzis also protests that his intention was never to censure free speech but in moving to kick Ron Paul out for something he said that offended the Neo-Con leadership of the Michigan GOP, this was clearly an attempt to stifle a candidate who has made himself a frontrunner and won all the debate polls by simply telling the truth.

Judging by this call (MP3 link) to the RNC, both the Republican National Committee and the Michigan GOP have been flooded by complaints over the last couple of days and their only recourse was to submit to the will of the people and drop the idea altogether.

This is another victory for free speech and another example of how we can make a difference and make our voices heard in the political process

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Phone Call To Michigan RNC About Ron Paul

PrisonPlanet
Saturday May 19, 2007 

From the prison planet forum:

Saul Anuzis head of the Michigan Republican Party wanted to kick Ron Paul from the debates. After speaking with his office I was informed Saul has suddenly changed his mind and decided not to circulate a petition having Ron Paul dropped.

Phone call to the RNC and the Michigan state Republican party:

Click link below to listen or right click and save target as to download

http://www.pumpitout.com/audio/rnc.mp3

(funny the lady at the office thought everyone would understand why Saul wanted to kick Ron from the debates)

I guess we were on fire yesterday and Saul "collapsed".

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Ron Paul to Rudy "Read the 9/11 Report!" - Ron Paul on CNN

You Tube
Thursday May 17, 2007 

Ron Paul refuses to retract his comments on the root causes of terrorism and "Blowback" during this week's Fox News GOP candidates debate and demands Rudy Guiliani apologize to him, pointing out that Paul trounced Guiliani in Fox's own poll.

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Sean Hannity Vs Ron Paul Supporters

You Tube
Saturday May 19, 2007 

Sean Hannity struggles to defend his smearing of Ron Paul, claiming that quoting the 9/11 Commission Report and the CIA is a conspiracy theory, and otherwise cutting off anyone who disagrees with him. This was the hilarious result of the phone jam that we organized on Friday.

Related: Sean Hannity Radio Show Phone Jam

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Key California Republican Group Endorses Ron Paul

Ron Paul 2008
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

ARLINGTON, VA – The United Republicans of California (UROC) have unanimously endorsed Congressman Ron Paul for president of the United States. UROC, formed in 1963 to support Barry Goldwater, represents the traditional conservative wing of the California Republican Party.

“The unanimous endorsement from the United Republicans of California proves what the campaign has been saying all along,” said campaign chairman Kent Snyder. “Ron Paul is the only true conservative and real Republican in the race.”

In their official statement endorsing Dr. Paul, UROC called him “the leading advocate for freedom in our nation’s capital” and recognized that:

Ron Paul’s voting record demonstrates that he has voted against:

· raising taxes;
· unbalanced budgets;
· a federal restriction on gun ownership;
· raising congressional pay; or
· increasing the power of the executive branch.

His voting record demonstrates further that he voted against:

· the USA Patriot Act;
· regulating the Internet; and
· the war in Iraq.

Dr. Paul is the only candidate with a record that matches the UROC’s platform.

“Whether the issue is life, the Second Amendment, foreign policy, spending or taxes, Ron Paul is the only traditional conservative candidate,” continued Snyder. “Traditional conservatives across the country should support Ron Paul for president.”

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Ron Paul Courageously Speaks the Truth

You Tube
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

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Ron Paul Victorious

Lew Rockwell.com
Monday May 21, 2007 

Over the smilingly hostile John King on CNN. What a well-spoken defense of a peaceful foreign policy, against a smirking interrogator! (Note: King did, at least, allow Ron to speak, unlike Hannity and other reichwingers). YouTube to come.

UPDATE: Here's the YouTube, thanks to James Ostrowski.

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CNN Attempts to Smear Ron Paul, Fails

You Tube | May 25, 2007 

Viewers of CNN support Ron Paul in his effort to "Educate Rudy" on Middle East policy.

Do you think this loaded question back fired on CNN?

 

 

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Ron Paul Says Elements of Government May Stage False Flag as Pretext to Attack Iran

Prison Planet | May 25, 2007
Steve Watson

When Ron Paul told a packed TV studio and the watching world that "They attack us because we attack them over there" he was making an extremely cogent and informed point about US foreign policy on more than one level.

Though it is clear Ron Paul was undermining the fallacy the American people have been sold in the shape of the "war on terror", Paul was also repeating an assertion he has made many times before that the agenda of those in the White House now is a systematic continuation of aggression abroad as well as an exploitation of its fallout in order to push for total authoritarian global control.

While the media has attempted to spin his words and acuse him of saying Americans are to blame for being hated, Paul was actually making it clear that it is the policy of the US government that is to blame and that has continued to stimulate hatred, sometimes even for its own gain.

In his famed Neoconned speech a few years ago for example, Paul outlined the fact that the self-proclaimed neo-conservatives are not conservative and there is nothing new about the disgraceful philosophy to which they adhere. Their philosophy of endless war and big government really finds its roots in Machiavelli's obsession with the “greatness of the state” along with Trotsky's belief in “permanent revolution.”

Paul has warned of a new world order based on this philosophy many times.

In an Interview with the Alex Jones show last year Paul sternly warned listeners of a push towards an authoritarian global government:

"Who do we have at the UN? Bolton, the arch Neo-Con warmonger and actually what they've done is taken the Neo-Con position on intervening on the internal affairs of other nations and regime change and they've institutionalized that in the United Nations, now the UN is in the business of regime change."

"I think the goal is one world government - we have not only the U.N. - we have the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, then we have all the subsidiaries like NAFTA and hemispheric governments, highways coming in."

Most recently at a campaign stop in Austin Paul repeated this warning :

Ron Paul responded, "The first President Bush said the New World Order was in tune-- and that's what they were working for. The U.N. is part of that government. They're working right now very significantly towards a North American Union. That's why there's a lot of people in Washington right now who don't care too much about our borders. They have a philosophical belief that national sovereignty is not important. It's also the reason I've made the very strong suggestion the U.S. need not be in the U.N. for national security reasons."

Taken in this context, Paul's warnings on foreign policy become a lot clearer. The Cabal that has seized control of America and subverted the constitutional values of the country by consistently launching preemptive military activity abroad, overtly and covertly, has an agenda to seize control of all nations across the globe in the same manner.

Though Rudy Guiliani and an audience of Fox news goons seemingly found it "absurd" that people do not like being waged war upon, both the vaunted 9/11 Commission Report and the CIA admit that American. foreign policy has endangered the U.S.

"The 9-11 Commission report detailed how bin Laden had, in 1996, issued "his self-styled fatwa calling on Muslims to drive American soldiers out of Saudi Arabia" and identified that declaration and another in 1998 as part of "a long series" of statements objecting to U.S. military interventions in his native Saudi Arabia in particular and the Middle East in general. Statements from bin Laden and those associated with him prior to 9-11 consistently expressed anger with the U.S. military presence on the Arabian Peninsula, U.S. aggression against the Iraqi people and U.S. support of Israel," reported the Nation .

At a National Press Club conference held yesterday entitled "Educating Rudy Guiliani on American foreign policy" Ron Paul defended his position.

In answer to those who have challenged his patriotism he quoted Paul Wolfowitz, asserting that in a previous speech the arch neocon essentially confirmed exactly what Ron Paul is saying about US foreign policy:

"There are a lot of things that are different now (after 9/11), one thing that has gone almost unnoticed but is huge is that by complete mutual agreement between the United States and the Saudi governments, we can now remove almost all our forces from Saudi Arabia."

Wolfowitz was acknowledging the fact that American forces in the middle east were fomenting Islamic tensions and fostering extremism.

Michael Scheuer, the former head of the Bin Laden unit at the CIA, backed up Ron Paul and asserted that it is absurd to believe that the "war on terror" has anything to do with a preservation of freedom or the way of life of the American people.

He stated that it is solely fueled by a consistent aggressive American foreign policy in the middle east and points out that there is no Presidential candidate other than Ron Paul who has even addressed the issue.

He then outlined six primers that he believes have led the US and the world into the precarious position it now faces:

It is clear however that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon know exactly what the reaction and fallout will be to and from their actions and is all too willing to use this to its own advantage to further its foreign agenda, rather than wasting their time analysing where it has come from.

Documents such as P2OG , which outlined a vast operational program of actually inciting extremism in order to widen the unrest and justify a more aggressive foreign policy have proven this.

The long policy of funding, equipping and training whichever militant groups it sees fit in any given country for furthering its own goals abroad is also a clear indication that the war on terror is nothing other than a meal ticket to these people.

Ron Paul has also stated that he fears the controlling cabal may even stage false flag events in order to further an aggressive foreign policy and achieve neocon goals outlined by the Project for the New American century's Rebuilding America's Defenses document.

Most recently Paul stated that he fears a staged incident may be used to provoke air strikes on Iran as numerous factors collide to heighten expectations that America may soon be embroiled in its third war in six years.

Writing in his syndicated weekly column earlier this year, the representative of Texas' 14th district warned of "a contrived Gulf of Tonkin-type incident (that) may occur to gain popular support for an attack on Iran."

The August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, where US warships were apparently attacked by North Vietnamese PT Boats, was cited by President Johnson as a legitimate provocation mandating U.S. escalation in Vietnam, yet Tonkin was a staged charade that never took place. Declassified LBJ presidential tapes discuss how to spin the non-event to escalate it as justification for air strikes and the NSA faked intelligence data to make it appear as if two US ships had been lost.

Make no mistake about it Ron Paul has given America a clear warning about a new world order he stands firmly in opposition to. The people of America still have a choice and that choice should emphatically be Ron Paul.

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Ron Paul, CIA Big, to Rebut Giuliani at Press Confab Today

Free Market News | May 24, 2007

Presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-TX) will be joined by Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit, to discuss flawed American foreign policy and its implications on terrorism, security and Iraq.

The press conference will be held at 9:30AM EST on Thursday, May 24 in the National Press Club Lisagor Room.

During the "First in South" GOP debate, earlier this month, Dr. Paul stated that 50 years of interventionism in the Middle East is a significant motivating tool for radical Islamists. Dr. Paul's position, though disparaged during the debate, has since received backing from numerous individuals, including others in the GOP, administration officials and - in excerpted reports - from the 9-11 Commission itself.

In the debate, Rudy Giuliani, a presidential candidate and well-known former Republican mayor of New York, called Dr. Paul's position "absurd." Giuliani is commonly characterized as a GOP "front-runner." He is also considered well-versed in foreign policy, given his supervision of the "international city" of New York and his position as its leader during 9/11. However, he stated that he had "never heard such an explanation" as Ron Paul's.

According to a limited-circulation release, Dr. Paul and Mr. Scheuer are expected to explain why Rudy Giuliani is wrong on security and foreign policy and provide documentation about the unintended consequences of interventionism - known to many in the intelligence community (and Dr. Paul as well) as "blowback."

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U.S. candidate Paul assigns reading to Giuliani

Reuters | May 24, 2007
Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Longshot Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Thursday gave front-runner Rudy Giuliani a list of foreign-policy books to back up his contention that attacks by Islamic militants are fueled by the U.S. presence in the Middle East.

"I'm giving Mr. Giuliani a reading assignment," the nine-term Texas congressman said as he stood behind a stack of books that included the report by the commission that examined the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.

Giuliani was mayor of New York when Islamic militants slammed two commercial airliners into the World Trade Center, a role that has vaulted him to the front of the Republican presidential pack despite his liberal social positions.

"I don't think he's qualified to be president," Paul said of Giuliani. "If he was to read the book and report back to me and say, 'I've changed my mind,' I would reconsider."

Paul advocates a limited U.S. foreign policy, including an end to the war in Iraq and a reduction in troop levels abroad.

Paul said he was unfairly attacked during last week's debate by 10 Republican presidential hopefuls, when Giuliani dismissed his contention that U.S. policies in the Middle East had contributed to the attacks in New York and Washington.

"I don't think I've ever heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th," Giuliani said to wild applause.

Paul barely registers in opinion polls of Republicans hoping to win their party's nomination to contest the November 2008 presidential election.

An obstetrician-gynecologist from the Houston area, Paul frequently strays far outside the Republican mainstream.

He voted against the Iraq war resolution in 2002 and has proposed abolishing the Homeland Security Department and diminishing the Federal Reserve. His 1998 bid for president as the Libertarian candidate drew just slightly more than 400,000 votes nationwide.

Paul said it was irresponsible of Giuliani and other leaders to not examine the motivations of al Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups.

A Giuliani spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment.

Among the books on Paul's reading list were: "Dying to Win," which argues that suicide bombers only mobilize against an occupying force; "Blowback," which examines the unintended consequences of U.S. foreign policy; and the 9/11 Commission Report, which says that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was angered by the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.

Another book on the list was "Imperial Hubris," whose author appeared at the press conference to offer support for Paul.

"Foreign policy is about protecting America," said author Michael Scheuer, who used to head the CIA's bin Laden unit. "Our foreign policy is doing the opposite."

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