Isilion

In a very fundamental way, there are really only two candidates running for president this year: Ron Paul, and all the others.

This is because there are really only two issues at stake.

The first issue is our out-of-control foreign policy. America is embroiled in shooting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We spend more on our military than nearly the rest of the world combined. We have troops stationed in over a hundred foreign countries. Manic interventionism has stretched our military to the breaking point, and has ruined our nation’s reputation.

The second issue is our impending economic implosion. Our government, which has shed the last vestiges of constitutional restraint, has made a myriad of promises that it cannot keep. Our outstanding obligations to fund social security, government health care programs, and everything else under the sun are rapidly bankrupting our nation. To maintain these Ponzi schemes, the Fed is debasing our currency and igniting an ugly bout of hyperinflation.

Our predicament is severe and profound. We must immediately begin to shed our overseas obligations and put our domestic house in order. Otherwise, we will find ourselves reenacting the collapse of the Soviet Union right here at home.

Ron Paul is the only candidate who is willing to address these issues. He is the only one who is willing to speak frankly with the American people about our predicament and the painful actions which must be taken to prevent a real catastrophe.

And rather than offering solutions, Obama, McCain, Clinton and Romney, (and the other political hacks running for president) are not even willing to talk honestly about the problems.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/latulippe/latulippe82.html

Please, do not allow George Bush
(or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or John McCain or Rudy Giuliani)
to kill this green and pleasant land

Or these lovely children

Or these beautiful women

Or these devout Jews

Or these faithful Christians

Or these bowlers

Or these skiers

Or any of these peaceful people

Don’t believe the lies.
http://www.photoactivistsforpeace.org/videos.html

Look at the truth.
http://www.photoactivistsforpeace.org/gallery/main.php

Remember how they reacted to September 11th

Don’t Iraqify Iran

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

I wonder what happened in May of 2007 to cause the uptick in Republicans? And why even more in November and December?

Source: Rasmussen Reports*

Do you suppose it might have had something to do with this?
May 15, 2007

Then this?
November 6th

And this?
December 17th

*In their commentary on December’s increase Rasmussen attributes it to Americans suddenly loving the War in Iraq now that “surge” is working. Funny, I have a hard time believing that, especially since Rasmussen says George Bush’s popularity is still tanking. They love the decision, but not the Decider? Yeah, right.

From a post on RonPaulFourms.com

What an amazing picture.
You never see that on tv.
“Katherine Cathey was expecting a phone call from her husband, Marine 2nd. Lt. Jim Cathey, so she could tell him if their baby would be a boy or a girl. Instead, she got a knock at the door — the knock every military family dreads. When his body finally arrived at the airport in the Marine’s hometown of Reno, Katherine never wanted to leave his side. ‘You take for granted the last night you spend with them,’ she said. ‘I think I took it for granted. This was the last night I’ll have to sleep next to him.’ She said about her all night vigil by Jim’s casket the night before his burial. “

The night before the burial of her husband’s body, Katherine Cathey refused to leave the casket, asking to sleep next to his body for the last time. The Marines made a bed for her, tucking in the sheets below the flag. Before she fell asleep, she opened her laptop computer and played songs that reminded her of ‘Cat,’ and one of the Marines asked if she wanted them to continue standing watch as she slept. “I think it would be kind of nice if you kept doing it,” she said. “I think that’s what he would have wanted.”
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=60048

If your heart can stand it.

Apparently, the simple logic behind Ron Paul’s argument against non-intervention is way over-the-heads of the other candidates. Whether or not the U.S. wins every battle in Iraq really is inconsequential in terms how successful the geopolitical agenda is. For those who didn’t pay careful attention to what I just wrote, I wasn’t diminishing the consequences in terms of blood and treasure. What I am saying is that the U.S. can win every battle, but still not achieve military victory.

Unfortunately for Senator McCain, he must not be aware that this is an occupation. It is fairly hard to win an occupation. It is the occupation itself that fuels the insurgency, and no matter how many battles the U.S. wins, as long as the battles never end, military victory will be elusive.

There is yet another fallacy in McCain’s thinking: Conflating a military victory with success. In other words, even if the U.S. were to achieve a military victory, what do We-the-People win?

Today, we are less free than ever before. We have less economic opportunity than ever before. These are corollaries of being on a perpetual war footing. The natural consequence of empire is destruction of liberty and wealth.

That there are people throughout the world who wish to kill Americans has never been in dispute. But this is the wrong answer to the two questions that need to be answered.

Why does this threat exist? If it is due to a lack of intervention abroad, then why isn’t every other country throughout the world at war for the same reason? Burkina Faso doesn’t have a huge security-industrial complex, nor does she have troops all over the globe, yet her fate isn’t imperiled. Seriously. Pursuant to neoconservative orthodoxy, non-intervention itself creates the conditions for intervention, which means every country not at war should be at war.*

What is the most efficient way to deal with the threat? How does invading and occupying foreign territory do anything to curtail the threat of asymmetrical warfare, i.e., terrorism? That there are terrorists across the globe does not excuse the occupation of Iraq, nor does it make Iraq a mission worth finishing.

Only Ron Paul answers the above two questions with sense. Ron Paul is the cure to the insanity.

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=44163

*Emphasis added by me.

At some point I suppose I shall have to cease just quoting other people and perhaps say something myself. But not today.

Hammer time:

If, on the basis of their rejection of the neocon stand on Iraq you think that people like George Will, Pat Buchanan, Andrew Bacevitch, the late David Hackworth, Kevin Phillips, Paul Craig Roberts, Charley Reese, Joe Sobran, Robert Novak, and Ron Paul are, or were, liberal America haters who want nothing more than to have Democrats run the country, you’re an idiot. If you don’t think that these guys and others on the right who agree with them on Iraq are so motivated, you’re misleading the listeners you claim to be faithfully informing. If you aren’t aware that such prominent Founders as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Quincy Adams strongly warned against our country messing around in the internal affairs of other nations, you’re ignorant. If you are aware that they opposed such interference in the affairs of other nations and reject their position, you’ve neglected to inform your listeners of the Founder’s views and explained why it’s conservative to reject them. If you’ve never heard of General Butler, that’s understandable, since the militarists you worship aren’t inclined to publicize the war-is-a-racket philosophy he acquired through hard-earned experience. If you are aware of what he wrote years back and you can still cheerlead for what’s going on in Iraq today, you’re disgusting. Many of us are on to you, Sean. You’re far from being a Great American.

Read it here.
Digg it here.

Ooh, that’s gonna leave a mark. Or rather, it would if Hannity ever read it.

William S. Lind is a smart man.

You cannot win at the strategic level simply by accumulating tactical successes, as our Second-Generation, firepower/attrition-oriented military automatically assumes. The strategic level follows its own logic, and strategic victory requires a sound strategy. When, as is currently the case, we have no strategy, this fact works against us.

We do not now have the power to re-create a state in Iraq, if we ever did. That is due in part to military failure, but it has more to do with a problem of legitimacy. As a foreign, Christian invader and occupier, we cannot create any legitimate institutions in Iraq. Quite the contrary: we have the reverse Midas touch. Any institution we create, or merely approve of and support, loses its legitimacy.

Full Article Here

[H]istory will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, many millions in the West, will ask another question this weekend, a question that will not be posed in other Western newspapers because it is not the narrative laid down for us by our presidents and prime ministers - what about the other guilty men?

No, Tony Blair is not Saddam. We don’t gas our enemies. George W Bush is not Saddam. He didn’t invade Iran or Kuwait. He only invaded Iraq. But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead - and thousands of Western troops are dead - because Messrs Bush and Blair and the Spanish Prime Minister and the Italian Prime Minister and the Australian Prime Minister went to war in 2003 on a potage of lies and mendacity and, given the weapons we used, with great brutality.

In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001 we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalised and killed the innocent - we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam’s shame at Abu Ghraib - and yet we are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we created.

Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam’s weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.

Roll Calls for Key Congressional Votes on Iraq War:

House Joint Resolution 114 Authorizing Use of Military Force Against Iraq
Final House Vote October 10, 2002: 296-133
Final Senate Vote October 10, 2002: 77-23

House Joint Resolution 2
Final House Vote Feb. 13, 2003:338-83
Final Senate Vote: Feb. 13, 2003: 76-20

HR 1559
Final House and Senate Vote April 12, 2003: (both voice votes)

HR 3289
Final House Vote October 31, 2003:298-121
Final Senate Vote November 3, 2003: voice vote

HR 4613
Final House Vote July 22, 2004: 410-12
FinalSenate Vote July 22, 2004: 96-0

HR 1268
Final House Vote May 5, 2005: 368-58
Final Senate Vote May 10, 2005: 100-0

HR 2863
Final House Vote December 19, 2005: 308-106
Final Senate Vote December 21, 2005: 93-0

HR 4939
Final House Vote June 13, 2006: 351-67
Final Senate Vote June 15, 2006: 98-1

HR 5631
Final House Vote September 26, 2006: 394-22
Final Senate Vote September 29, 2006: 100-0

The Iraq Study Group’s report simply confirms, yet again, the bedrock truth of the war: the American Establishment has no intention of leaving Iraq, ever, and no intention of having anything but a pliant, cowed, bullied puppet government in Baghdad to carry out whatever the Establishment decides is in its best interests on any given day. Iraq was invaded because large swathes of the American elite thought they could make hay of it one way or another (financially, politically, ideologically or even psychologically, for those pathetic souls who get their sense of manhood or personal validation from their identification with a big, swaggering, domineering empire). And U.S. troops will remain in Iraq, indefinitely, at some level, because the American elite think they can make hay of the situation one way or another. The war is all about – is only about – what the American elite feel is in their own best interest, how it aggrandizes their fortunes, flatters their prejudices, serves their needs. That’s it. The rest is just bullshit and murder.
Read it here…

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.

read more | digg story

If there’s another major terrorist attack on American soil, here’s my prediction: Congress will again wake up from its slumber and respond positively to the president’s call for PATRIOT Acts 2, 3, and 4, followed by new rounds of indefinite military detentions, illegal wiretapping, kidnappings and renditions, censorship, and more.

And U.S. officials will again tell us that the suspension of our rights and freedom is only temporary and that it will protect us from the terrorists who hate America because of our freedom and values, not because of the homicides at Haditha, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the torture and sex abuse at Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi deaths from the sanctions, the destruction of Iraq, and the other aspects of U.S. foreign policy.

After all, they’ll remind us, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have brought love, peace, freedom, and democracy to the Iraqi people – well, at least to those who are not dead.

Do Hadithans Hate Us for Our Freedoms?

Left unexplained is why Shiite Iran would want to help Sunni insurgents overthrow a Shiite-dominated Iraqi government led by Tehran proteges (and employees) who are busy aligning the country with, er, Tehran. That’s the kind of self-defeating stupidity one might expect from the Bush poltroons, who have spent $300 billion and almost 1,900 American lives to establish an unstable, terrorist-ridden, fundamentalist Islamic state in the center of the Middle East. But it’s unlikely that the subtle Persians, with 3,000 years of statecraft behind them, would be foolish enough to kill the golden goose that Bush has handed them by destroying Saddam and installing their allies in power.

http://context.themoscowtimes.com/print.php?aid=155469

The United States and Great Britain used hundreds of tons of Depleted Uranium in the first Gulf War, and they have used thousands of tons in this current war. (A dose the size of an M&M is potentially fatal.) During the first war they were used primarily in the desert, now they are used in the cities. In the area around Basrah where DU was used extensively in the first war, the incidence of childhood leukemia has increased by 700 percent, overall cancers by 1000 percent, birth deformities by 2000 percent. People also experience immunodeficiency disorders, AIDS-like syndromes, kidney and liver dysfunction, neurological problems, rashes, vision degradation, sexual dysfunction, and psychological disorders – to name a few of the problems. In effect, the people of Iraq are suffering as though they are the victims of a nuclear war. They are. The United States has inflicted a low level, slow motion nuclear war on the people and country of Iraq.

www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/shetterly3.html

I sent a message to one of the authors of this article and said:

I just read your article about DU on LewRockwell.com. You have written a damning indictment of the cabal who have hijacked our government. I suppose I should have asked first, but I sent a copy of your article to the same list of folks as my aunt who since the beginning of the war has been sending the most mindless neocon rants in support of every fantasy in the twisted mind of President George W. Bush to me and a couple of hundred poor souls who happen to be in her address book. I hope you don’t mind.

Somewhere in here, www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer-arch.html, Butler Shaffer talks about straws and camel’s backs. Well, as I read your article my camel’s back broke. I’m ready to start tossing tea into the harbor. History is going to judge us harshly. I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that both what we did to the natives of this continent and our shame in ever allowing the institution of slavery in the country pale in insignificance to what we are doing right now not only Iraq but to the entire world. I am ashamed to be an American and feel impotent rage against something that seems totally beyond my ability to fight. I am on the verge of giving up hope for us as a people and a nation.

Sorry to be dumping this all on you, but you struck something deep in me and I wanted you to know it. Your conscience is heartening.

As I said in that message I am ready to start throwing tea into the harbor. If anyone reads this and feels the way I feel I’d love to hear from you. I’m feeling very alone these days.