"new $h!t has come to light, man!"
Posted on 05/18/2007 7:52:44 AM PDT by Reagan Man
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 soundbite 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 mujahideen 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 mujahideen 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.
Yep, never heard that before in history have we? Oh wait a minute.....
Do Republicans even bother reading anymore? Or do you just get your historical 'knowledge' from Sean Hannity, Vic Hansen, and Fox News now?
"new $h!t has come to light, man!"
Ron Paul was right. Rudy’s outburst showed me his lack of understanding on M.E. issues. Understanding why something happens does not mean condoning a wrong.
Paul is getting the Buchanan treatment for being for America first. In this world of favorite cows that thought cannot be debated, it must be totally purged from political debates. Not allowed to see the light of day.
Ignorance of why we are opposed is today’s no bliss. I don’t want our women to wear Burkas, I don’t want our women to wear Burkas, I don’t want our women to wear Burkas. I don’t ..... It’s not working, pass the kookaid, I’m beginning to question if we know what we are doing in Iraq.
Evidently you have not lived in a foreign country.
If you did you may not have hung around with common folks.
Most of the populaces get their ideas about America not from our presence anywhere but from the constant anti-American rhetoric found in just about every movie coming out of Hollywood.
It is embarrassing to hear high level foreign government folks ask our embassy personnel about the prevalence of slavery, bondage of women and the immoral world we live in.
If that insults you Patrick then so be it.
bump
I’m going to assume that was sarcasm....
what crap
“I want to fight until we crush terrorism.”
I’ll loan you a rifle (buy your own ammo) and make reservations for you on the next Iraq-bound flight out. You go have a good time. I’ll be busy making sure our borders are secure so they can’t come over here anyway.
A brilliant statement. Absolutely stellar. Plus, to boot, Japan did not have a theocratic, life encompassing worldview which was resistant to the invaders. Germany was already Christian, we just needed to rub their noses in their sin. Iraq is different because we have a Satanic, perverse, hegemonistic life and worldview, steeped in lies and hypocrisy, and nurtured on hatred. If we went in determined to wipe THAT out, possibly we could "succeed" politically, but the price in blood would be very very high. Russia could not do it in the steppes. We do not (thank God!) have the stomach for the brutality that would be necessary to eradicate Islam from Iraq. That makes our present "mission" there endless, hopeless, and doomed to fail.
If we won the ‘war’ in Iraq why not move on to Syria and Iran?
Continue the march. I say we take Iran next from our bases in free Iraq. And do it now.
Hey Pat, Dr. Melfi (Sopranos) will be taking new patients in a couple of weeks. Suggest you go pay her a visit as your mind is failing.
I am 100% for a massive Air and Naval war against the terrorist regime in Iran. Once we weaken the regime there and help in its downfall, the Syrian terrorist regime will fall as well. I also strongly believe that the defeat of Syria and Iran in Iraq will greatly hasten the fall of these 2 terrorist regimes.
>>>>>Any person who has a shred of patriotism and a basic common sense will realize that we simply cannot afford to leave Iraq before we defeat terrorism there.
If terrorism was an army, that might be possible.
In addition, one of the (at least) two terrorist attacks in NYC on his watch prior to 9/11 was perpetrated by a terrorist who was part of the Brooklyn Islamofascist community -- linked to a hotbed of Brooklyn Islamofascism centered in Bay Ridge. But Giuliani didn’t follow up to see if there was a wider pattern of Islamofascist attacks being planned/supported/funded there - he treated the shooting as an isolated crime, tried to avoid admitting any links to terrorism, and met with leaders of Brooklyn’s Arab community. Yes, hindsight is 20/20, but wouldn't it have been nice if Giuliani had had the guts to acknowledge the murders as a terrorist attack and take a much closer look at the entire Islamofascist community there in Brooklyn?
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9801E2DD113AF936A35750C0A962958260
Key excerpt: The Mayor’s urgency to quash the widespread reports of a link between the shooting suspect and the well-known terrorist organization fit a pattern he established immediately after the Tuesday shootings. From the beginning, he personally took control of all briefings on the matter, often appearing with the Police Commissioner at his side, and took pains to dampen the rumors that might pit one ethnic group against another or raise the city’s level of fear.
Even now, Mr. Giuliani and the Police Department have refused to discuss the question of a motive in the van shootings, which left one student brain-dead, another in poor condition and two others with less serious wounds. Though many Hasidim say they are certain the students were shot because they are Jews, the police say they have not determined the shooting was anti-Semitic.
Yesterday morning, Mr. Giuliani met for 40 minutes with a group of Arab restaurateurs, business owners and community leaders from Brooklyn. He told them that Arabs as a group should not be blamed for the shooting, and the Arab leaders put out a statement expressing condolences to the families of the victims and noting that Arabs were instrumental in contributing information that led to Mr. Baz’s arrest.
ROFLMAO
You do realize that Paul is against attacking Iran?
Then how about staying until we defeat Al Qaeda there?
I used to read all of Osamas statements....I guess Rudy never did.
Did he even know of the State Dept. warnings the weekend before 9/11.
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