I've already posted a link to the FOX news post-debate discussions (which contained a link to YouTube for the actual video of the question and the answers...), so there needn't be any confusion about what he said, or what the actual QUESTION was. Unfortunately though, FOX (in it's infinite wisdom) does not appear to make that link to the discussions as easy to find anymore, as it was last night. :-)
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But, I found this following link in today's news, showing a reporter's write-up of the relevant question (NOTE that it is not the same as how Rudy phrased it... not at all.)
It all started when Paul was asked how September 11 changed American foreign policy. “Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us?” Paul answered. “They attack us because we’ve been over there; we’ve been bombing Iraq for ten years…”
Questioner Wendell Goler, of Fox News, asked, “Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?”
“I’m suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it,” Paul said. “They don’t come here to attack us because we’re rich and we’re free. They come and they attack us because we’re over there.”
Enter Giuliani. “May I comment on that?” the mayor said, interrupting the orderly flow of things for the first time in the debate. “That’s really an extraordinary statement. That’s an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I’ve heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th.”
The audience loved it. As the applause built, Giuliani added, “And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn’t really mean that.”
Paul didn’t back down, but by cutting in, Giuliani had scored some of the best, and perhaps easiest, points of the night. So much so that advisers from rival campaigns couldn’t quite hide their frustration that Giuliani had moved so quickly. “I don’t think it takes a lot of courage to use Ron Paul as a prop,” said Charlie Black, the longtime GOP strategist who is backing Sen. John McCain. “But he [Giuliani] got his 9/11 credential in there, so congratulations.”...
article.nationalreview.com
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(Now here I'll freely admit though that, within the confines of the '60 second answers', Paul's initial reply --- although not saying what Rudy claimed it did --- was more then a bit labored and infelicitous... a bit like picking lint.)
But he got more at the point he was attempting to make in his FOLLOW-UP, when he referred to his agreement with C.I.A. analysis that predicted "blow-back", and when he discussed the 1953 over-throw of Iran's government (which, I think most people will admit has *absolutely nothing* per se to do with "bombing Iraq" many decades later. :-)
Naturally though, now that the words "caused 9/11", which were used ONLY BY RUDY, NOT BY PAUL, have sunk into everyone's subconscious, that is what people think that Paul actually said....
But he didn't.
To put it a little more crudely, (but possibly in words that more people will understand), when one screws-around in other people's back yards... overthrowing governments, installing pet dictators, establishing bases, etc., it is only natural to expect that that will increase the odds of people wanting to screw-around in your back yard, too.
A fairly simple concept, and easy to understand.
No doubt though --- if they had asked Paul the exact same question that they asked of the other nine, (about a 'terrorist group, with training camps in a West African country, supported by the government there, that attacks us via suicide bombings in malls...'), instead of trying to KEEP THE QUESTION FROM HIM, they would have heard an answer like "You hit the camps, AND the government that protects them, HARD... and you hit them right away, declaring war on the nation aiding and abetting there...."
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