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Politics : THE WHITE HOUSE -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (4740)	5/17/2007 9:41:17 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25737

People keep insisting on putting words in his mouth that he never used. I'd advise just sticking to the ACTUAL WORDS: ======================================================== Rudy Giuliani v. Ron Paul, and Reality John Nichols BLOG \| Posted 05/16/2007 @ 12:29am thenation.com Rudy Giuliani made clear in Tuesday night's Republican presidential debate that he is not ready to let the facts get in the way of his approach to foreign policy. The most heated moment in the debate, which aired live on the conservative Fox News network, came when the former New York mayor and current GOP front-runner angrily refused to entertain a serious discussion about the role that actions taken by the United States prior to the September 11, 2OO1, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon may have played in inspiring or encouraging those attacks. Giuliani led the crowd of contenders on attacking Texas Congressman Ron Paul after the anti-war Republican restated facts that are outlined in the report of the The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Asked about his opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Paul repeated his oft-expressed concern that instead of making the U.S. safer, U.S. interventions in the Middle East over the years have stirred up anti-American sentiment. As he did in the previous Republican debate, the Texan suggested that former President Ronald Reagan's decisions to withdraw U.S. troops from the region in the 198Os were wiser than the moves by successive Republican and Democratic presidents to increase U.S. military involvement there. Speaking of extremists who target the U.S, Paul said, "They attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East [for years]. I think (Ronald) Reagan was right. We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. Right now, we're building an embassy in Iraq that is bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting." Paul argued that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are "delighted that we're over there" in Iraq, pointing out that, "They have already... killed 3,400 of our men and I don't think it was necessary." Giuliani, going for an applause line with a conservative South Carolina audience that was not exactly sympathetic with his support for abortion rights and other socially liberal positions, leapt on Paul's remarks. Interrupting the flow of the debate, Giuliani declared, "That's really an extraordinary statement. That's really an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 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 withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that." The mayor, who is making his response to the 9-11 attacks on New York a central feature of his presidential campaign, was joined in the assault on Paul by many of the other candidates. But congressman did not back down, and for good reason. Unlike Giuliani, the Texan has actually read the record. 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. The 9-11 Commission based its assessments on testimony from experts on terrorism and the Middle East. Asked about the motivations of the terrorists, FBI Special Agent James Fitzgerald told the commission: "I believe they feel a sense of outrage against the United States. They identify with the Palestinian problem, they identify with people who oppose repressive regimes, and I believe they tend to focus their anger on the United States." Fitzgerald's was not a lonely voice in the intelligence community. Michael Scheuer, the former Central Intelligence Agency specialist on bin Laden and al-Qaeda, has objected to simplistic suggestions by President Bush and others that terrorists are motivated by an ill-defined irrational hatred of the United States. "The politicians really are at great fault for not squaring with the American people," Scheuer said in a CNN interview. "We're being attacked for what we do in the Islamic world, not for who we are or what we believe in or how we live. And there's a huge burden of guilt to be laid at Mr. Bush, Mr. Clinton, both parties for simply lying to the American people." It is true that reasonable people might disagree about the legitimacy of Muslim and Arab objections to U.S. military policies. And, certainly, the vast majority of Americans would object to any attempt to justify the attacks on this country, its citizen and its soldiers. But that was not what Paul was doing. He was trying to make a case, based on what we know from past experience, for bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq. Giuliani's reaction to Paul's comments, especially the suggestion that they should be withdrawn, marked him as the candidate peddling "absurd explanations." Viewers of the debate appear to have agreed. An unscientific survey by Fox News asked its viewers to send text messages identifying the winner. Tens of thousands were received and Paul ranked along with Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney as having made the best showing. No wonder then that, when asked about his dust-up with Giuliani, Paul said he'd be "delighted" to debate the front-runner on foreign policy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (4740)	5/17/2007 10:10:43 AM
From: Bill	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 25737

America is responsible for 9/11, it's the "blowback" for being over in the middle east in the first place We are in England and Germany too. And other places. Yet they don't fly planes into our buildings. So there must be another reason...

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (4740)	5/17/2007 10:15:26 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25737

...Paul has been a hoot in the past two debates. He's been brutally honest and he seems to be one of the few people running for the nomination that actually remembers the GOP platform. The Republican's used to be about nothing more than restricted government intervention, low taxes and non-interventionist policies. In other words, Republican's are supposed to believe in leaving people to their own device-win, lose or draw. In social work lingo it's called "rugged individualism" and it means that you take care of yourself and the government will make sure you keep as much of what you make as you can. It is simple math really. Lower or lowest taxes means that the government is only minimally involved in your inalienable rights. This is why traditionally Republicans have been against social service programs and an interventionist foreign policy. Contrary to what the liberals would have you believe, it's not because all Republican are old, white ogres who hate people, it's because entitlement programs and foreign wars costs money and money costs people their freedom and privacy. Paul has been trying to remind people of this in the sparingly little time he's had at the previous two debates. In fact, at the Fox debate on 5/15/07, Paul made statements that got him eviscerated by the mind-numbingly oafish pundits as well as a jingoistic spanking from the most liberal of the contenders, Mayor Rudy Giuliani. You can hear Paul's comments for yourself in the embedded video but the crux of what he said was that if you want to fix the economy you have to cut spending and the best places to cut are the monsters of bureaucratic inefficiency, the departments of Homeland Security, Education and Energy. He also said that the reason we were attacked on 9-11 is because we had been bombing Iraq for about 10 years prior and said attack was retaliatory in nature. For this, Ron Paul has nearly usurped Hillary Clinton as the Right's new boogeyman. The problem is that if you actually took the time to think about, and read about what Paul was saying, he actually makes perfect sense and is telling the awful truth. In our sound-byte happy country, it sounds like he blaming the US for being attacked by Al Qaeda on 9-11. However, if given more time and the ability to set the record straight in an arena where the audience doesn't have Attention Deficit Disorder, I'm sure he would say the following: We were in fact bombing Iraq after the first Gulf War. That was part of the containment policy. As a matter of fact, part of the reason the liberals thought that Iraq didn't have WMD's is because of said containment policy. We were monitoring them night and day as well as enforcing no-fly zones in the South and over Kurdistan. We were based in Saudi Arabia both during the conflict as well as after the war had ended. This was one of Osama Bin Laden's big demands of the United States. On top of wanting to convert or murder all infidels, he also wanted the US out of Saudi Arabia, or as he likes to call it, the holy land. Now this little wrinkle hardly gets any mention in the news what with all of the focus on the much more easier understand former issue but it was in fact a serious demand. The problem was that he didn't have much of a right to make a demand. The Saudi Royal Family had us there by request and stayed in Saudi Arabia at their pleasure. In any case, the attacks by Al Qaeda in the 90's and then 9-11 were partly his answer to our unwillingness to leave Saudi Arabia. This was Ron Paul's point. Had Osama Bin Laden gotten his way and been allowed by the Saudi Royal Family to lead the Mujahudeen against Saddam Hussein in Kuwait as he did (with CIA help) against the Russians in Afghanistan, there probably wouldn't be an Al Qaeda today. However, as history has shown us, that's not what happened. The other statement he's being attacked on is his idea that we should cut the department of Homeland Security (and Education and Energy). Again, in sound-byte land that means he suggesting we do not defend ourselves or protect our national interests in time of war. While that assertion made for great television, it was also idiotic. In the land of attention spans, what Ron Paul was getting was that beyond the National Guard and other branches of the military, the job of safety and security is supposed to fall on state agencies and not some monstrous federal bureaucracy that is so convoluted it can't function in a time of crises. His point was that you don't keep people safe by creating more red tape; you do so by giving the state agencies all of the resources they need to get the job done. That doesn't take more bureaucrats, that just takes good common sense and better budgeting. It's the same thing with Energy and Education. Instead of having the government control something that it does not understand and is woefully unqualified to govern, you should allow but to be provinces of state and private enterprise exclusively. It is the job of the governors of each state to manage their own affairs and getting the federal government involved only muddies up the waters. More to the point, you end up, as we have, throwing away billions in tax dollars are bureaucratic machines don't function very well and don't actually solve the problem. Ron Paul's problem is not that he was wrong, it's that he was too right for an audience that doesn't have time for long complicated answers. In Defense of Ron Paul Posted by Mark Radulich on 05.17.2007 411mania.com

To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (4740)	5/17/2007 11:01:52 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25737

Some facts about Ron Paul: He has never voted to raise taxes. He has never voted for an unbalanced budget. He has never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership. He has never voted to raise congressional pay. He has never taken a government-paid junket. He has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch. He voted against the Patriot Act. He voted against regulating the Internet. He voted against the Iraq war. He does not participate in the lucrative congressional pension program. He returns a portion of his annual congressional office budget to the U.S. treasury every year. Wants to abolish the IRS -Wants to get rid of the Federal Income Tax. Ron Paul is a representative of Congress from Texas's 14th district. He is currently seeking the Republican party nomination for president.