Thread: Ron Paul on the Issues

Romney and Obama: Identical Foreign Policy

Jonathan S. Tobin
commentarymagazine.com
May 24, 2012

You don’t have to be a foreign policy expert to have noticed that issues of war and peace have played a very small part in this year’s election. The nation’s main worry as well as the chief point of contention between the two major parties is the economy, and it is no accident that the main item on the resume of the man Republicans are choosing to try to defeat President Obama is his business expertise. But according to the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Aaron David Miller, the lack of foreign policy talk is not just the result of Americans being distracted by their financial woes. As he writes in an article in Foreign Policy, there is a new bipartisan consensus on foreign policy that has minimized the differences between Republicans and Democrats. Indeed, as far as he is concerned, the policies Romney would pursue abroad are likely to be almost identical to those of Obama leaving him to joke that if the president is re-elected he could safely appoint the Republican as his secretary of state.

Miller, who has been saying and writing a lot of very smart things since he quit the State Department and stopped trying to conjure up mythical progress toward Middle East peace, concedes there are differences between Romney and Obama on Israel, Russia and to a lesser extent China. But he thinks these have more to do with nuance than substance or will be ameliorated if the Republican is actually elected. However, I think he is underestimating the implications of those nuances. Even more important, his belief in the president’s willingness to use force to stop Iran’s nuclear program and/or to back an Israeli strike seems more a leap of faith than something grounded in evidence. Considering that these issues are likely to be among the trickiest America faces in the next four years, the notion that there is no choice this year on foreign policy must be considered a gross exaggeration.

Read more

» Romney and Obama: Identical Foreign Policy Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!


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The Ten Principles of a Free Society by Ron Paul

Submitted by Bobdok on Sat, 05/26/2012 - 06:47
Delegates

On the Daily Paul there are 6 topics which have been open to discussion on the legal side of so called 'bound' delegates and the legality of the affidavit sent to MA delegates. Ron Paul is running for the nomination and he has written about the principles of a free society. What delegates who support Ron Paul's nomination need to know are the political principles on which he stand.

The Ten Principles of a Free Society

by Ron Paul - From the the Appendix to his book, Liberty Defined

1. Rights belong to individuals, not groups; they derive from our nature and can neither be granted nor taken away by government.
2. All peaceful, voluntary economic and social associations are permitted; consent is the basis of the social and economic order.
3. Justly acquired property is privately owned by individuals and voluntary groups, and this ownership cannot be arbitrarily voided by governments.
4. Government may not redistribute private wealth or grant special privileges to any individual or group.
5. Individuals are responsible for their own actions; government cannot and should not protect us from ourselves.
6. Government may not claim the monopoly over a people's money and governments must never engage in official counterfeiting, even in the name of macroeconomic stability.
7. Aggressive wars, even when called preventative, and even when they pertain only to trade relations, are forbidden.
8. Jury nullification, that is, the right of jurors to judge the law as well as the facts, is a right of the people and the courtroom norm.
9. All forms of involuntary servitude are prohibited, not only slavery but also conscription, forced association, and forced welfare distribution.
10. Government must obey the law that it expects other people to obey and thereby must never use force to mold behavior, manipulate social outcomes, manage the economy, or tell other countries how to behave.

Bound delegates, demagoguery and affidavits don't belong to Liberty movement.

The Ten Principles of a Free Society by Ron Paul | Peace . Gold . Liberty | Ron Paul 2012

★ The Illinois GOP is playing games with us. Either they're lying or just incompetent Deadline to become a delegate did NOT pass

Submitted by sovereignjanice on Sat, 05/26/2012 - 13:10
Delegates
Illinois

I just got word from a fellow Paul supporter in Illinois (Jack) who got through to his chairman. It seems that any chairmen who say that the deadline to become a delegate passed on May 22nd is either lying or misinformed. Here is part of Jack's message from a phone call he got yesterday (May 25th) and see for yourself:

"He said he would find out Tuesday if there were any slots available.. Just from his comments though, it sounded like there were not only alternate slots available, but delegate slots as well.

He then asked me a few questions, like why I recently became active.. I said I just am so upset at the President and that Republicans need to kick him out of the White House in November. I just couldn't bring myself to start spouting positive things about Romney! lol. THEN, Mr. Durante asked, "Alright, you're not a rabble-rouser or a nutcase or anything right?" haha! I can only assume that was slang for "Ron Paul supporter." I of course answered "No" and said I'm very easy going and diminutive.

I will let you know if/when I hear anything back Tuesday."

If you want to become a delegate in Illinois or know someone who does, please feel free to leave a comment or send me an email (sovereign120@gmail.com) with what county you live in (if cook county please add your township or ward) and I'll do by best to show you how to do it.

About 8 people have taken the time to tell me that they were successful in becoming delegates from my help and hopefully there are more who just didn't get back to me, but every single one counts.

★ The Illinois GOP is playing games with us. Either they're lying or just incompetent Deadline to become a delegate did NOT pass | Peace . Gold . Liberty | Ron Paul 2012

A Reporter Gets It

Writes The Star Ledger’s (NJ) Paul Mulshine:

I suspect I know more about the Ron Paul candidacy than any other journalist in America.

I’ve been speaking with him for five years now, which is about four more than anyone else.

Most of the other journalists who dealt with Paul basically asked him the same stupid question over and over: “Will you be running as a third-party candidate?”

They never asked Newt Gingrich or Rick Perry that…

Meanwhile Ron Paul stayed in the race the longest and is still accumulating delegates for the Republican National Convention in August.

NPR political commentator Ken Rudin, on whose show I appear now and then, has a good grasp of the situation, and he displays it here:

For most of the past year, nearly every journalist who interviewed Paul felt compelled to ask him if his ultimate goal was to run as the Libertarian Party nominee ( as he did once before, in 1988 ). Paul kept saying he had no “intention” to do so, but few believed him.

Everyone seemed to miss the obvious: It is all about the future of the Republican Party.

Paul says his campaign will not spend any money in the 11 states that haven’t yet voted, and he won’t. For one thing, he doesn’t have the money. But he will be — and has been — packing county and state conventions with his supporters and electing Paul-friendly activists as delegates … even if they are committed to voting for Romney in Tampa. “I hope all supporters of liberty will remain deeply involved,” Paul wrote. “Become delegates, win office and take leadership positions.”

Read the whole thing. No matter what happens in November, the liberty faction within the Republican Party is not going to go away.

A Reporter Gets It*|*Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign CommitteeRon Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee

NewsOK: Oklahoma Republican Convention results should be disallowed

Published: May 25, 2012 Oklahoman

In response to Pat Grisham (Your Views, May 19): As someone who's been involved in the Republican Party for more than 20 years, working on every possible committee, I can tell you the Ron Paul people weren't the cause of problems at the Oklahoma Republican convention on May 12.

I'm not a Paul supporter; I just believe in being fair.

It wasn't a Paul person who committed three different assaults on delegates.

It wasn't the Paul people who broke convention rules.

It wasn't the Paul people who were guilty of illegally electioneering in the convention room.

Guess who broke that rule? The party vice chair. The establishment, not the Paul people, created this mess.

If the Republican National Convention has any integrity, it will disallow the convention results and not seat the at-large delegates, per party rules.

John Williams, Edmond

Oklahoma Republican Convention results should be disallowed | NewsOK.com

Journey To Waukesha Wisconsin - Witness To Ron Paul History

Submitted by Patriot Press_U... on Sat, 05/26/2012 - 17:15
Daily Paul Liberty Forum

By Richard Gilbert Patriot Press @USA_Free_Press

Wisconsin has become ground zero for America's most divisive politics complete with fraudulent election tactics coordinated by the well planned schemes of a poltical machine.

Local social media is replete with headlines that read such as "Something Is Rotten In Wisconsin." Beneath these headlines are stories of corrupt Waukesha County District Attorney Brad Shimel covering up the felony crime of Presidential candidate Mitt Romney with a fake investigation that claimed no witnesses to Romney's televised election bribery, viewed by thousands, could be located.

Other stories tell of a rigged election for Supreme Court Justice and corrupt practices by Waukashee County Clerk, Kathy Nickolaus, who produced 7500 questionable unsealed votes for her candidate the day after the election which altered the outcome. There was no investigation of this fraud and no voter ID would have prevented this fraud. A Patriot Press Investigation revealed that after the Polls closed on election day 7500 names were added to the Poll books by insiders who did not actually vote. These 7500 votes were then awarded to Incumbent Republican Supreme Court Justice David Prosser.

With the upcoming June 5, 2012 recall election of Governor Walker stories of election rigging are already emerging in the early two week voting phase prior to June 5.

Through all this fog there is a strong beam of light spreading from Waukashee County with all the emotion of what the founding fathers, and their patriots must have felt, centered on Ron Paul as their only hope to take back liberty from the corrupt elements controlling their lives. Returning war veterans, teachers, firemen, deputy sheriffs and folks from all walks of life who ventured Saturday May 26, 2012 into Cousin's Sub shop on Pearl Street in Waukashee just to buy lunch each met their destiny with fate to become patriots to take back their city, county, and country, from corrupt political forces.

As they entered Cousin's Sub Shop they were handed a copy of a Daily Paul Story with the headline - District Attorney Covers Up Romney Felony Case With Fake Investigation.

Waukesha County is small enough in population for a story in The Daily Paul about their county to capture their attention. It was a sight to see so many people in the store focussed on the story.
Soon the story became the subject of conversation with everyone there and the employees. This was the same sub shop where Mitt Romney stole the Wisconsin Primary with bribes on election day.

These folks had no idea that Mitt Romney has not yet won the nomination or that Ron Paul was not only still in the Primary race, but, doing so well. This was a huge surprise. Some asked why isn't the news media covering the story? I could only respond that I was covering it.

They asked me questions about Ron Paul. Soon they were using their cell phones to learn about the success Ron Paul was enjoying and the excitement Ron Paul was generating among his supporters. They felt betrayed by the news media for failing to report the truth.

I showed them my twitter account and they saw the excitement of tweet messages by so many about Ron Paul. I showed them where I learned so much about Ron Paul @Charlie_missy .

They spent 15 minutes reading as much as they could. Then they began to organize. The Vets had their respect and started organizing to stay in touch. They exchanged Cell numbers but no one left.

Soon they wanted to send tweets on my account to see what it was like. As each wrote a tweet of thanks or a message of resolve to change the direction of our country an exchange began between these folks at the sub shop and Ron Paul supporters on twitter.

At one point a message appeared from a certain Ron Paul supporter and they could see I was overwhelmed.

At least a dozen sheriff's cars were on the street with deputies writing down the license plate numbers of the cars parked on Pearl Street. Inside one plain clothes deputy walked up to my laptop and tweeted "I am so ashamed. I am an undercover deputy sheriff. I am going outside to get the license plate numbers" she explained this is not what the deputies were told when they were dispatched to write down license plate numbers.

I watched as they started the first meeting of the Waukashee County For Ron Paul Meeting. Only a poet could explain what I was witnessing.

Journey To Waukesha Wisconsin - Witness To Ron Paul History | Peace . Gold . Liberty | Ron Paul 2012

The establishment in Texas fears Ron Paul

Submitted by divinebovine on Sat, 05/26/2012 - 16:51
Delegates
Texas

I will be serving this year at the Texas State GOP convention as a delegate and I recently received an email warning all delegates in my congressional district of the Ron Paul agenda. I initially thought this was an official email from the GOP, however, it was sent out from a gmail account.

They think that we don't care about about anything other than getting Ron Paul elected. Sadly, it seems that they are the ones who care for nothing else but to get their candidate, Mitt Romney elected.
For those of us who are representing Dr. Paul at our various conventions never forget the lessons he has taught us. We need to prove them wrong with our actions by always being respectful, yet unyielding.

Original email follows below:

BEWARE all Texas GOP Delegates & Alternates!

Many of us in CD3 just received this e-mail (below) on Friday afternoon from the Collin County Conservative Coalition (CCCTX) and we ALL need to be on the alert! This is NOT just a group of conservative organizers... They definitely have an agenda - and their agenda is to FOOL YOU into picking National Delegates / Alternates that will support their candidate: RON PAUL!

It may sound good on the surface, but things are not as they seem. They are hoping that by using key words like "pro-life, pro-liberty & pro-constitution" that you will let your guard down and listen to them. They also want to discredit Mitt Romney, and substitute their candidate, Ron Paul, so he can be the GOP Nominee! They are aware that Collin County is very conservative, so they know that Romney may not have been among your top choices - and it sounds good to say that they want to hold him accountable... but their goal is to REPLACE him. YOU are a KEY par of their plan! They are banking on YOU listening to them - and then voting for THEIR candidates for National Delegate and Alternate as well as other elected positions. They don't care about us or the Republican Party - they are solely focused on getting their guy in and all others out.

This is NOT a joke, unfortunately. They are prepared to fight tooth-and-nail to take Texas, overturn the GOP, throw out our officers, etc. (see videos below)

As TRUE REPUBLICANS (not Libertarians who are posing as Republicans), we do not need their help when it comes to choosing the National Delegates / Alternates - as well as the other elected positions. We can make up our OWN minds. If we want to interview the candidates, we can do that on our own. (They have even co-mingled two Ron Paul supporters amongst the known Republicans on their "candidate list for those running for National Delegate".)

Most importantly, as a Delegate or Alternate to the Texas State Convention, it is important that we really KNOW who we are sending to Tampa to represent CD3. There are several who have already announced that they are running and their body of work is evident. We should BEWARE of ANYONE that cannot show what they have done for our party. Being selected as a National Delegate or Alternate is not only an enormous honor for the individual, it is a responsibility to REPRESENT US. We need to get references and do our homework. We can't depend on others to "help" make our decision. They just want us to join their little revolution. That is specifically why we are not making suggestions on who to vote for - that's your job, not some made-up organization's job to think for you and then feed you with information that will "guide" you to their candidates of choice.

There may be similar organizations cropping up all over the state as well... so feel free to forward this e-mail to others outside of CD3.

Take a look at these videos and articles from RECENT state conventions:

Arizona: Ron Paul Revolutionaries chaotic Takeover attempt of Arizona GOP Convention - YouTube

Alaska: Ron Paul Supporters Join Joe Miller to Take Over Alaska Republican Party | Alaska Dispatch

Nevada: Lie, Cheat, and Steal – It’s the Ron Paul Way! - First Principles

Oklahoma: GOP Establishment makes a mockery of the democratic process in Oklahoma - Manchester Independent | Examiner.com

and Follow Today's GOP State Convention Chaos in Real Time - Ron Paul's rEVOLution : Reason.com

and After complaints about “illegal” activity, Ron Paul faction takes GOP convention to parking lot : Deadline Live With Jack Blood

Video of the rump convention in the parking lot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=sI1aZ-e1cV4

Oklahoma GOP Delegate Explains about the Cops Jacking him up at the Convention - YouTube

They have already challenged the Oklahoma Convention: Ron Paul Supporters Submit Challenge to Oklahoma GOP State Convention | Peace . Gold . Liberty | Ron Paul 2012

--------------------
In each of these cases, delegates (who did not share the Victory strategy of uniting behind the GOP nominee unless it was the one of their choice) caused many problems at these conventions by disruptive behavior, such as shouting, refusing to yield the floor, calling erroneously for points of order, etc. We can expect the same here in Texas.

Their ultimate goal was to elect their slate of delegates to the national convention where further mischief will probably occur. They are able to successfully take over some of these conventions simply by out-shouting or outlasting the traditional Republicans who were there as delegates, usually in greater numbers than the mischief makers (MMs), but who finally gave up in exasperation and left to tend to family or other personal matters. Thus those who have their own agenda are able to pass that agenda, electing their delegates to the national convention (who do NOT represent the primary vote as cast in those states) while there was still a quorum present.

How can we prevent this from happening here in Texas? There are several key actions:
1) Traditional Republicans (TRs), no matter if you supported Gingrich, Santorum, Perry, Romney, etc., who have been selected as delegates or alternates MUST attend the entire convention and stay until it is adjourned on Saturday NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TAKES!

2) TR alternates most likely will be seated at some point so they should plan to stay for the duration. Their votes can make the difference in a close election for delegates!

3) TRs MUST be present for every vote and expect several roll call votes which are designed to kill time and exasperate us into leaving early. The first caucuses are Senate District caucuses and while they are important, the Congressional District caucuses are where the delegate action will be. A convention agenda may be found here:Tentative Agenda :: Texas GOP Convention

4) The first important votes will be at the CD caucus on Thursday afternoon following the 3rd General Session. At this caucus, the permanent chairman will be elected and also the National Nominations Committee member from each CD. This Committee member will be among the 36 such members who will select the 44 at-large national delegates. THIS IS A VERY CRITICAL ELECTION! This person should be someone known to you who has pledged to support in the Committee meeting a person with a proven track record of conservative activism for the Republican Party. In fact, the CD caucus can choose someone whom they instruct the Committee member to support, and he/she is bound to do so for at least one round of voting in the Committee. It is important to ask the candidates for this Committee member who they plan to support and for how long in the National Nominations Committee. Then vote for the candidates accordingly.

5) The second important votes come on Saturday. The first one is at 8 a.m. when the caucus will elect the national delegates and alternates, three of each. TRs should be prepared NOT to run against one another in this caucus, as the MMs will likely run only one of their group for each spot and if the TR vote is split, then an MM may well win. Those elected are supposed to be proportionately reported at the national convention to represent the primary presidential vote on the first ballot. However, they are unbound on the second ballot, which is where the danger lurks if no nominee is picked on the first ballot. (And that indeed appears to be the MMs strategy since they have elected MM delegates in many states who do NOT represent the vote that was cast in the presidential primary within that state.) In other words, they have elected many rogue delegates.

6) It is important during this election process to ask each candidate for national delegate or alternate if they pledge to be bound by the proportionate primary vote in Texas for the first ballot at the national convention and if there is a second ballot, ask them who they will be supporting. We know that in some states, the MMs have been instructed to lie, in order to achieve delegate status. So perhaps TRs should make some discreet inquiries prior to this caucus as to who is interested in running for national delegate and support only those who will be helping to unify rather than to divide the GOP at the national convention.

7) If a good TR national delegate candidate fails to be elected in the CD caucus, he/she can go before the National Nominations Committee and ask to be considered for delegate or alternate at large. There is a form Click here to download the Application for Consideration. Fill it out completely and legibly, then return it to RPT Headquarters by May 31st. Mail: 1108 Lavaca, Suite 500, Austin, TX 78701 Fax: 512-480-0709. Testify in front of the National Nominations Committee at the State Convention on Friday, June 8th at 6:00pm or Saturday, June 9th at 10:00am. Room numbers will be announced in the official convention program. Please see RPT Rule 38 for nominating procedures. (It might be a good idea to go ahead and fill out this form and get it to RPT by May 31 in order to be considered by the National Nominations Committee. If you are subsequently selected as a delegate from the CD, the application for at-large delegate would be withdrawn.)

If you do not feel that the caucus is being run correctly (for instance if the chairman is being overrun by the MMs), then you should raise a point of order and request that the chairman remove the disruptive delegates. That may or may not be done, but you can also put it into the form of a motion for the caucus to vote on and if it passes, then the chairman must do so, using the sgts. at arms if necessary and then seating alternates in the places of the removed delegates.

9) The last important vote will be late in the day on Saturday, during the final general session. It is here that the National Nominations Committee will make its report, which must be voted upon by the delegates in the general session. If many of the TRs have gone home, then the MMs may well control the convention at this point and if they vote the Committee report down, it must be sent back to the Committee and re-submitted to the delegates until it is passed. There will be no substituting of names. It is an up or down vote and its passage will be determined by how many people remain at that point.

10) Have a plan to work within your CD to inform others and convince them to coalesce with you to stand your ground for the TR principles and candidates. Remember that there are four very important elections in your CD: the member of the National Nominations Committee, and the three National Delegates. The alternates are also important, but less so than the Delegates. Find out in advance from the RPT who the delegate/alternates are in your CD and contact them. The number of delegates will determine how many votes are needed to elect a Committee member or a delegate 50% plus 1.

Here are some of the things they are saying about the GOP, the process and YOU:

"This is a numbers game. If more of Dr. Paul's supporters turn out than any other candidate's delegates, we control them. If more of our people show up, we take over the state convention, we change the rules, and we take over the Republican Party. Turnout is key. We vote as a block and never deviate from the voting instructions dispensed by our command center. On every vote, we vote together. We will be informing you via text message on how you need to vote on every vote that comes up. If you have not sent us your cell phone number you will have with you on Saturday, please do so right away. The Santorum, Gingrich, and Romney supporters will be splitting their votes because they will not be communicating with each other like we will be doing. Our internal numbers show that if Santorum, Gingrich, and Romney delegates vote as a block, they have a majority at the state convention. So it is absolutely crucial that we use whatever tactics necessary to promote division and confusion amongst their supporters. We promote confusion and division by:

*Gaining the trust of our opponents supporters and taking advantage of their ignorance so that we can gain control of them and tell them how they have to vote. For example if you are talking to Santorum supporters, tell them you are also pro-life and agree with a lot of what he has to say. Tell them you used to support him but now that he is out of the race you are supporting the only constitutional conservative remaining in the race. Tell them whatever they need to hear so that you gain their trust and establish credibility with them. Once you've done that you will control them.

*Deception and Misinformation - use any means necessary to divide and conquer our opponents.
*Prolonging the convention through parliamentary maneuvers. The longer the convention goes, the better for us. Our opposition will have a majority at the start of the convention but as the day goes on their delegates will have to leave because their baby sitter is only scheduled to watch the kids until 3pm or because they have dinner reservations, or because they just get too frustrated because the convention is taking so long. We will wait them out. We are disciplined and organized while they are weak willed and lazy.

So the longer the convention goes, more and more of them will leave. All of a sudden what started out as a majority for them dwindles away and the balance of power shifts to us. We will use every parliamentary tactic in the book to prolong the meeting. Dr. Paul's campaign has sent national lawyers who will run circles over the local Alaska lawyers. Our lawyers are ready to sue anyone who tries to get in our way.

*Despite what the Republican Party wants us to believe, this election is not about beating Obama. This election is about cleansing the Republican Party. The poor excuse for Americans that support Santorum, Gingrich, and Romney need to be run out of the Republican Party. Once we have cleansed the Republican Party and President Paul is elected, we will end America's wars of aggression, we will put an end to American imperialism, and we will end the Fed!"

They have been training for this - putting their supporters through "boot camp" - check out this meet-up group and their comments:

Trending Meetups near Fort Worth

State Convention Delegate Training

Tuesday, May 15, 2012 6:00 PM at Painless Performance Products in Fort Worth, TX

Come learn what all to expect at the state convention so you will be prepared to participate. This will be around 2 hours of presentation followed by an hour for questions. ...

Who's coming?
16 Members
a Meetup of: Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty - Tarrant County

Sung Song: I seriously think Ron Paul has a chance at the nomination. The "secret strategy" is esoteric and available but rarely mentioned in the media. The process for nominations is one that is used by both Dems and Repubs but the average citizen doesn't know them.

The US is a Constitutional republic not a democracy as many would have you think. This is a good thing because then the tyranny of the majority would squelch the voice of the minority (aka mob rule). Before you criticize Ron Paul, please do some research and have an open mind. I hate generalizing but Rin Paul people tend to understand government, economics, and opposing candidates more thoroughly than the blind followers of the Democrats or Republicans.

Vinny Urrabazo Kelly, from what I have read so far... you are the only one talking about conspiracies and delusion. Get outta here. RON PAUL 2012. YOU ARE EITHER WITH US, OR AGAINST US. But, we hope you are with us

Christopher Sweet If Kelly wants to believe Paul is unelectable then let him. I don't believe he is unelectable. I think he should be elected and that when there's a will there's a way. He will certainly have some kind of outcome with this delegate strategy, which has largely paid off due to people ignoring the election process and simply believing he has no chance. We'll see what happens.

David Baur hey Kelly, he is not ahead in the media or in the delegate counts, but the Delegate counts are incorrect as they are not factual yet. The nominated Delegates is when it matters, and that is where Ron Paul is winning. The Beauty Contest Vote is nothing, but the delegate is permanent. hence why the hope for Ron paul is growing and strengthing. The Delegate selection is what counts, not the already proven corrupt and false State Vote that occurs first.

RON PAUL DELEGATES: If our goal for liberty and a restoration of the republic is shared, the way forward is no doubt filled with great obstacles and hard work. What we as a team, (and I'm speaking of all of us) have accomplished, is truly awesome.

If you think of all the Delegates we've trained, the Precinct Committeepeople we've elected, and the minds we have changed, then we are successful.

What we must do is to continue to push forward. We want Ron Paul as our next president. Should that not happen - we can continue to multiply the effect in the years to come and continue the R3volution.

Continue to fight by the pen my friends - until your fingers are ragged and the ink runs dry. We will win and defeat tyranny.

Here's an excellent blog entry from a recent delegate to the Oklahoma GOP State Convention:
The Serveto Papers: Point of Order!

Below is the original e-mail that was sent out in order to FOOL the Delegates and Alternates:

________________________
We are pleased to introduce a new website for and by Delegates and Alternates to the Texas State Republican Party Convention.

www.CCCCTX.com

As Delegates to the Texas State Republican Party Convention, we have an awesome responsibility. In addition to an enormous amount of work on Texas state party business, we will also select a slate of Delegates to represent us at the National Convention in Tampa.

During this primary season, we have heard a lot of conservative rhetoric, but like the Etch a Sketch, those promises are sometimes forgotten.

Sometimes campaign rhetoric can cloud the issues. We want to make sure that our Texas Values and Texas Votes are NOT taken for granted. We want to make sure the National Campaign remembers where Texans stand on critical issues that matter to Texans, like ratifying a Balanced Budget Amendment, protecting the sanctity of human life, abolishing the TSA, supporting the 2nd Amendment, repealing ObamaCare, and defending our borders.

That's why the Collin County Conservative Coalition was created.

That's why we are publishing our Texas CD3 National Delegate Candidate Guide.

We want to give all our delegates an opportunity to present themselves to our delegation in a fair and open manner. After all, we know our party is stronger when we invite all conservatives to work together.

Would you like an opportunity to serve as a delegate to the Republican national Convention? The CCCC is dedicated to giving all delegates a fair chance to accomplish just that.

Just send us an email stating your wish to compete for one of the delegate slots. You may include any information you wish to share with your fellow delegates. This can include a political resume, an introduction to yourself, or just a statement about your positions on various issues. We will post whatever you send with no editorial input from us. Your fellow delegates will see exactly what you send us.

Please help us preserve our Conservative principles. We need to send our best and brightest to represent Collin County and our Texas Values at the National Convention.
www.CCCCTX.com

YouTube - Videos from this email

The establishment in Texas fears Ron Paul | Peace . Gold . Liberty | Ron Paul 2012

Why Voting The Lesser of Two Evils Always Fails

Submitted by The Libertybelle on Sat, 05/12/2012 - 01:04
Ron Paul 2012
California

This is my arguement to those who like Paul but insist that he can't win and are holding their nose and voting for Romney (This is a first draft, so it's rough and needs editing...)

Why Voting Pragmatically Always Fails and Destroys a Free Country(AKA voting for the lesser of the two evils)

Many of us have heard the saying, 'when you vote for the lesser of two evils, you still get evil."

And in spite of this people still feel compelled to abstain from voting for the person they would rather support and vote for the one the have come to believe (or have been told over and over again) can win and unseat the candidate they so despise. They may even despise the one for whom they vote, just not as deeply at incumbent.

And so, once they have settled, they hold on to a dreamlike hope that their chosen winner will somehow become someone else, and do 'good' to turn things around, when they get into office...that they will undo all the bad, or at the very least be not as bad, as the incumbent. These same people frequently bemoan the fact that" there is no one to vote for". And I ask, how can it be otherwise? You see the reason "we have no one to vote for" is really quite obvious when you stop to think about it.

Lets imagine that you support the platform of a good, principled candidate, Candidate A, who happens to be running for office for the first time. They typically are the underdog and underfunded and poll low when compared to other better known, but marginal candidates running for the same office including an incumbent known for corruption that you feel must be gotten out of office. Now in your fervor to oust the rascal incumbent, you review the slate and, although you support candidate A, you decide to vote for candidate B, simply because you believe he can win against the incumbent, not that you agree with or are especially enamored with many of their policies or their record. You believe you are being pragmatic, sensible and realistic, as the most important issue is to kick the rascal out, right?

WRONG! The unintended and oft times unseen consequences of this act send this message to the Candidate A, whom you actually supported. You see, candidates see the election as the ultimate poll and can only judge the support for their platform by the votes they receive. Now if they realize that even those whom they believed supported them chose NOT to vote for them, they will see this with dismay and will not RUN AGAIN. Why should they, you just told them not to!

This also sends a message to others of like mind, that there is no support for these good policies and principles that were represented by Candidate A, and they too will not choose to run. So, by choosing pragmatism over principles, for short term gain, you not only discourage Candidate A from running in the future, you discourage all other like minded potential candidates from running too, and so,over time, you diminish the pool of principled candidates until there are none left and the only choice you have is a choice between the lesser of two evils.

In this manner you have chosen to vote for and create a government run by evil people. This is the unintended consequence of falling to the siren's song of voting pragmatism over principles.

It will never get better in America until we realize this trap and STOP and STAND LIKE A ROCK ON PRINCIPLES , just as Jefferson admonished us 250 years ago.

Why Voting The Lesser of Two Evils Always Fails | Peace . Gold . Liberty | Ron Paul 2012

Colonel Douglas Macgregor on Two Failed Wars and Why He Supports Ron Paul for President

Sunday, April 15, 2012 – with Anthony Wile
Col. Douglas Macgregor


The Daily Bell is pleased to present this exclusive interview with Colonel (ret) Douglas Macgregor (left).

Introduction: Colonel (ret) Douglas Macgregor is a decorated combat veteran, the author of four books. He is also Executive Vice President of Burke-Macgregor Group LLC, a consulting and intellectual capital brokerage firm based in Reston, Virginia. Macgregor was commissioned in the US Army in 1976 after one year at the Virginia Military Institute and four years at West Point. Macgregor has testified as an expert witness on national security issues before the House Armed Services Committee and the House Foreign Relations Committee. He is a supporter of Ron Paul (R-Tex) and a spokesperson for veterans' groups that are organizing marches and demonstrations on behalf of Republican candidate for president, Ron Paul.

Daily Bell: Give us some background on yourself and the US military-industrial complex.

Colonel Douglas Macgregor: Let's be clear. I think we are spending far more on defense than we need to and that's been true for a very long time. It's become a self-perpetuating industry, sometimes referred to as a self-licking ice cream cone. I think it's a good way to depict the American defense establishment at this point, though. I am by no means anti-defense or anti-defense industry but I think we can extract more for our money and we can do business much better than we are or what we have been doing for a very long time. One of the reasons that I wrote the books on military reform and reorganization is because until you go after the defense system and reorganize it and change it, the defense industry is not going to be changed. The defense industry has organized itself to support the client and it mirrors a very Byzantine, bloated defense establishment that we maintain in the United States.
Unlike many people, I walked away in 1991 from Desert Storm with the view that we had failed strategically to achieve our objective. The generals were, as usual, very timid and reluctant to fight. We assembled this monumental military force designed to take on and defeat the Soviet Armed Forces in Europe and we didn't use it effectively. We didn't use it effectively for a whole range of reasons – because we were organized to refight WWII, which was a mistake, but also because the people at the top were very much bureaucrats who had risen through the ranks in peace time and they failed.
The political leadership chose to ignore that failure because they could, and I'm talking about George Bush Sr. and others, who thought they could capitalize on this great strategic achievement, which was not a great strategic achievement politically in the next election. As we know, that did not work. The American people, as usual, were not terribly engaged. They were happy to lead cheers, happy to receive the usual glowing reports regardless of whether or not they were accurate.
And so I walked away from the desert and that experience and we should have taken it more seriously than we did and made fundamental changes in reforms. Again we did not because there was no interest in the senior ranks to do so and no one in Congress was either sufficiently well informed or interested to make any changes. So the result is you have this trillion-dollar defense establishment that is still designed for the most part to maintain large numbers of generals and admirals and headquarters and to feed politicians' re-election campaign coffers and sustain this bloated defense industry. Again, it's all linked together but it all begins fundamentally with the nature of this military establishment.
Daily Bell: What was key to your realization that the US military was not what you thought it was?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: The key to realizing that was seeing the various people in the chain of command operate, the various senior officers. I describe it in great detail in my book, Warrior's Rage, which describes the largest tank battle the US Army fought since the end of the Second World War. It describes the enemy and it describes the generals and their failure to come to terms with the weakness of the Iraqi enemy, and the opportunities that were presented, because they really weren't interested in fighting at all. To sum it up briefly, they were much more worried about losing the fight than they were about winning it. So their objective was to emerge without having lost as opposed to having won anything. And that's the mentality that continues to this day. We've seen it again and again in Afghanistan and Iraq and the consequences have been destructive and disastrous for the American people and the American taxpayer.
Daily Bell: What is it?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: I think it's a self-licking ice cream cone. The generals are not oriented on waging war; they're pre-occupied with maintaining the bureaucratic status quo. Remember, depending on at what level you retire, the higher obviously the better, you can make a great deal of money in the defense industry. The defense industry hires you not because you know anything or you are a particular expert; they hire you because you can call your friends on active duty and tell them to buy things or do things in return for which when they retire, they too will be rewarded with handsome retirements inside the defense industry. This extends to Congress; it's kind of a form of what I would call legalized corruption.
So the last thing anyone is concerned about is the quality of the fighting formations, the people in them, what happens to them and their readiness to deploy and fight against anyone who can fight back. I think that's the most important feature that your readers should keep in mind, that certainly since 1991, we have not fought anyone who has armies, air forces, navies or air defenses. In fact, we haven't fought anyone who is capable of presenting real resistance or fighting back so we haven't had real wars, in that sense. What we've had are colonial expeditions reminiscent of what the British and the French conducted in the late 19th century.
Daily Bell: Is it a danger to the US republic?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: Very much so but there are a couple of things to keep in mind. I think your readers will appreciate this. We are on the threshold of budgetary Armageddon. There are people, of course, in Washington – in fact, the majority at this point – who don't seem to think that matters. They seem to think we can borrow money in perpetuity at 2% interest, that the world is so dependant on this enormous American consumption machine that people will lend us money regardless of the circumstances.
I don't happen to share that view. My view is quite the opposite. Debt matters. It's always mattered and it's going to crush us. The United States within the next two to three years is going to be in a position very similar to Greece, Italy and Spain. And long before that occurs, of course, we are going to watch the Eurozone collapse along with London, I suspect, and the British economy and then it will reach us and Japan. The Chinese, who are already in the throws of a downturn, if you will, is going to have an effect on them and on us, in ways that today no one really appreciates.
So in the final analysis, budgetary Armageddon is going to provide us with an opportunity to make fundamental changes, not just in the defense establishment but also in the organization of our government. Because it's not a question right now of simply tinkering on the margins and making modest reforms. The whole structure is in serious trouble because it doesn't work very well and it no longer performs the tasks for which it was designed. To understand why this budgetary Armageddon will make a difference, just keep in mind that the British ultimately left India not when they should have left India – that was probably immediately after WWI, because certainly from the beginning of the 20th century onward, the British were investing more in their empire than they were taking out of it. So the empire was mortgaged to British vanity and you can make the argument that our bloated military establishment, the way we do business, is mortgaged to American vanity.
There are lots of Americans who equate bombing people in remote places who can't fight back with the demonstration of American greatness. There are lots of them on the Hill but there are lots of citizens who simply don't understand that war has consequences because, again, we have been faced with adversaries who couldn't fight back. So again, the whole idea of war is no longer understood. Its consequences and impacts are not appreciated because it doesn't hit home.
Well, we are going to go through something very similar. We are going to make profound change in this country not because we should but because we will have no choice. There will simply be no more money to finance the kind of insanity that we're engaged in right now, both overseas and at home. We're not going to be able to finance social security, Medicare, Medicaid or the defense establishment in the scale we have in the past. This is going to be a very difficult time for the United States − a true catharsis for the English-speaking public.
Daily Bell: Is there a US republic?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: Well, there certainly are the outlines of one. I have great confidence and faith in the people who I call Americans. Not everybody in the United States today is an American, unfortunately. We have a country that is Balkanized and divided. Multiculturalism ultimately equates to multinationalism and a multilingual state. We've been on this road now since the late '60s and early '70s and I think the proverbial chickens have come home to roost. We have large numbers of people who are divided along racial as well as economic lines, and unfortunately, much of the economic divide overlaps with the racial divide.
Again, these issues of prosperity have effectively submerged and no one really wants to deal with them. But the collapse in prosperity, the downturn in living standards that will come as a consequence of this crisis that looms on the horizon, which Ron Paul has talked about for decades, as you know. This is going to throw all of these divisions into very sharp relief. And at that point we are going to discover, first of all, the answer to your question, which is, is this republic real? Does it still exist? I think it does but I think it's going to be a very serious crisis. And then we are going to discover who is an American and that's going to be another catharsis. We are going to define ourselves. What are we – who are we – that is something we have not had to do for a very long time, certainly not since the Second World War.
Daily Bell: Were the Founders in favor of a standing army?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: Well, I think the Founders were concerned about the experience with Cromwell and the English civil wars even though Cromwell frankly had a huge impact on the development of the United States. If you want to understand the American Constitution and you want to understand the development of the American people, you have to go back to the Protestants from Great Britain who came to the United States in the 17th century, their experiences and backgrounds. They really defined us. What we thought of our religious freedom and the American Constitution, contrary to what people think today, they were not talking about all religions at all. We were talking about religious freedoms for Christians and those Christians at the time, as I am sure your readers know, where Protestants, and largely Baptists, Presbyterians, a few Lutherans thrown in, these people had been oppressed and suppressed by the Anglican Church and before that the Roman Catholic Church. So they were very concerned about religious freedom for those sects.
At the time, no one considered the possibility that we would have large numbers of Muslims come to the United States and I doubt seriously if that had occurred to anyone at the time that they would have wanted it. These are divisive issues. We now have more Muslims in the United States than we have Jews. Again, where do they fit in? Do they assimilate? Do they become Americans, particularly in an environment where we have renounced assimilation? In fact, the Obama administration is encouraging all these people from the Third World to set up and establish their own independent states inside the United States for all intents and purposes. The lessons of history are that great nations that go through this don't survive. Austria/Hungary is gone. Czarist Russia and the success of the Soviet Union are gone. Yugoslavia is gone. Czechoslovakia is gone. Nations that tolerate that kind of division and Balkanization inside their countries do not last.
Again, this is a catharsis. We are going to have go through it and deal with it and answer to it and all of it overlaps with the economic problem. We know from our study in history that it is the economic crisis, the downturn in economic prosperity, the collapse of economic strength that inevitably brings on these developments. So when you ask about a standing army, the same thing is true for the English-speaking people, that they are uncomfortable with large standing professional military establishments because historically the English people haven't needed them. Britain is an island; it has no need for a large standing professional military establishment. It needed a professional military organization, which it had, which was a small but effective professional army and a confident navy that was designed to protect access to markets. We in the United States were very similar but in the last 50 or 60 years we have become quite confused. We have become effectively an imperial power, something the Founders never thought would happen and would object to, and that I object to, I don't think we need to be an imperial power. I don't think we need to be but we now have inside the United States, interests, single-issue interest groups, with agendas that are frankly divorced from the American people.
Daily Bell: Give us some specifics on the Iraq war. Afghanistan. Success or failure?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: Iraq and Afghanistan are disasters and anyone who asserts otherwise is misinformed. I recently met with someone who is an advocate for Mitt Romney and he was unhappy with me because I pointed out that the differences between Governor Romney and President Obama are marginal at best. He was trying to demonstrate how profoundly different they were. He was unsuccessful but one of the things he insisted on was that Obama had somehow or another sacrificed our great gains in Iraq. I looked at him and said, "You can't be serious." He said, "What do you mean?" He seemed to be completely unaware, as many Americans are, that Iraq is effectively a satellite for Iran. That the United States Army and it's generals did a brilliant job of consolidating the power and influence of Iran inside Iraq, by backing Mr. Maliki who is always Tehran's chosen candidate and utterly destroying the Sunni Arab population's influence and power. He was stunned and he said, "I don't understand what you are talking about." I said, "Of course you don't but consider this. If you think we were successful in any way in Iraq, then why did our columns of troops leave at 2:00 in the morning in the dead of night, along a road that was more secured than any penitentiary in the United States? And why, once we arrived in Kuwait, did we celebrate the fact that no one had been killed during the withdrawal in the middle of the night?" I said, "If that is evidence for victory then you certainly define victory very differently from me." I think Afghanistan will be perhaps even worse.
Daily Bell: You are a supporter of Ron Paul. Why ... and how?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: What appeals to me about Ron Paul can be summed up by one of his performances during the debates. He was asked a question by someone, after they had criticized Romney, Gingrich and Santorum for lobbying activities that characterized them to a greater or lesser extent as having behaved or acted like lobbyists. When they got to Ron Paul they asked him about lobbyists and he said, "You know, I don't know any lobbyists. I won't meet with them."
Now, for your readers who may not be Americans it is important that they understand that lobbying is an enormously important and influential industry inside Washington. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent by both foreign powers as well as corporate entities inside the United States and various private organizations to shape and influence legislation. The fact that Ron Paul knew no lobbyists and wouldn't meet with them is a measure of the man's integrity. And frankly, a demonstration to the extent that he is not corrupt. He is there not only to represent his district but as Edmund Burke suggested, to also think clearly about what is in the interest of the American people and try and act in accordance with that larger national interest as well as the interest of his constituents. So I think that is more than anything else what appeals to me about Ron Paul.
Daily Bell: How have your politics changed?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: I like to think of myself as a politically conservative person not in the sense that I am interested in using big government to shove my views down other people's throats. Again, that is something that appeals to me about Ron Paul. He sees government as something that needs to shrink because it's too intrusive, and so do I. Again, I see the traditional English-speaking paradigm in the United States where the best decisions are made at the local level, inside people's families, in their communities, towns, cities and states − not in Washington. So I have great confidence in the ability of the majority of Americans to make good decisions if they are allowed to do so. I am not interested in legislation on the federal level. It is designed to re-engineer how people think, how they live, where they go to school, what they eat and so forth in the United States.
Daily Bell: What about areas such as globalization and the so-called new world order?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: These terms you just used are really Trojan Horses for the socialist elite that dominates both western Europe and North America, to essentially re-engineer society to suit themselves. And as you can imagine, like all ruling elite they are corrupt. This also goes to the issue of the central bank and the origins of not only the Federal Reserve System but the central banking system in Europe. These things have turned out to be destructive because not only do they seek to socialize losses by shifting the burden by compensating the losses to the taxpayers in both Europe and North America, but it also allows them to manipulate countries and states into conflicts with each other that otherwise would probably not occur. That, again, is another reason I have been very supportive of Ron Paul because I think central banking has turned out to be a disaster.
But again, the socialist is very beguiling in his approach promising vast numbers of people in countries if only they will surrender their influence, surrender their rights for all intents and purposes to the socialist ruling elite, that somehow the ruling socialist elite will postpone or eliminate entirely the business cycle, that no one need ever suffer again. I think this is the thing that appeals to me about Ron Paul. Ron Paul wants to live in a world where we are not sedated consumers ready to make ourselves dependent on the whims of the ruling elite that masquerade as democrats − and I am using democrats with a small d. In fact, the ruling elite is like the ruling elite in any society. It's about itself. It's about abridging itself, maintaining and controlling everyone that it can in order to stay in power.
I don't want to live in that world, Ron Paul doesn't want to live in it and I don't think most Americans really want to live in that world. But again, the catharsis is coming, the fight is coming and we are going to have to sort this out and decide just what do we want, just where we want to live, what kind of America do we want? And this economic crisis is going to compel us to answer those questions.
Daily Bell: Are you helping to organize veterans' marches for Ron Paul?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: No, I haven't organized any of that. That's being done by an entirely different group of people. They asked me to be a spokesperson for them. I have to tell you I grew so angry over time. Going to the funerals for young people, soldiers, sergeants, lieutenants and captains. People I knew in active duty. People I taught at West Point. I was very, very willing to speak on their behalf because these are veterans and they're an enormous number, well over 100,000. These are people who've actually served and done something. They not only showed up and did their duty as Americans as they were asked to; they have done more than that. They've seen action, they've been under fire as I have, and they understand what combat means and what warfare means. And they understand what devastating impact these colonial expeditions that we call Iraq and Afghanistan have had on the Americans in uniform and on the people in these countries who are caught in the middle. They know that we have killed, wounded or incarcerated hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Afghans and we have done so unnecessarily and pointlessly, in pursuit of this Utopian notion that we can transform millions of Muslims and Afghans into Anglo-Saxon democrats. It's absurd nonsense. It needs to die once and for all but in the meantime the damage we have done to ourselves, between the 4 trillion dollars at least that we have lost indirectly and trillions more that we'll lose as a consequence of trying to help the damaged human beings that are trying to emerge from these conflicts, then you have the human toll, which we occasionally read about and we pay lip service to but really people don't understand. This sort of thing is why I was drawn to the veterans' thing for Ron Paul and that is why I am happy to speak for them.
Daily Bell: What happens if he drops out?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: First of all, those of us who support the man never thought that Ron Paul was the sort of candidate in the current environment that would win the nomination. We always understood that his campaign was about a great deal more than this particular electoral contest and a great deal more than just this nomination. Ron Paul has been making these arguments about the criticality of reform and reorganization of our government, the way we do business, restoring the free market or Austrian economics for a very long time. He has also warned against the damage that these interventions are causing here at home and he's pointed to the link between the large intrusive government domestically and the large intrusive government that leads us to intervene in other people's countries overseas. Those are the things that he has been talking about.
We are now at that point where these things are going to be thrown into very short release. In the next two to three years everything that Ron Paul has warned against will come to fruition. I think that Ron Paul's great contribution at that point will be to act as a beacon of light in this very dark period of our nation's history. Ultimately he will illuminate the way out of this by espousing the principals that he has. So I think that's what we're all about, that's why we support him and that's why we don't regard the failure of the Republican Party, which has strayed very, very far from it's underlying principals and ideas. I don't think we're too worried about the failure of the Party at this point because this party has strayed very far from its ideals, and it's going to be compelled to regain its old position inside our American society or it will be replaced.
Daily Bell: Will you support another GOP candidate – perhaps Mitt Romney?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: I think there are many people running for office in the Republican Party, in the House and the Senate, who agree with Ron Paul. What I think is very interesting in this current electoral contest is both Gingrich and Santorum, who continue to espouse silliness overseas, in a domestic sense, largely adopted the Ron Paul economic agenda. They adopted his view of the business world, the private sector and the kinds of things that can be done in terms of legislation and change to reinvigorate prosperity in the United States. I think that's a glimpse of where we're headed. They might not want to admit that publicly, although I think Newt Gingrich objectively has and so did Santorum. The problem for us, of course, is the status quo individuals like Mitt Romney and the people that surround him who aren't very different than the people surrounding Obama and none of this will last. At this point, they are nearing the end of their tenure. The coming economic catharsis is going to sweep them away. I think there are lots of people who know Ron Paul is right, most of them Republicans, and I will certainly support them for office in the United States.
Daily Bell: On your website you speak about the Japanese striking Pearl Harbor. Did Roosevelt know about the strike in advance? Did he help facilitate it?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: Well, what I will tell you is this. As with most things in history, the truth really begins to emerge 40 or 50 years after the event. That's not because no one told the truth at the time but because it simply becomes very difficult to break through the status quo. One of the things that I say about Ron Paul is one of the things that George Orwell said: When deceit is universal, speaking the truth is a revolutionary act. Ron Paul has been speaking the truth for years and that in itself is a revolutionary act. The things that I am saying are viewed by the status quo in the mainstream media and in the government as revolutionary, but really aren't.
So when you talk about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and you point to the obvious decisions that were made in the lead-up to that unfortunate tragedy that involved the embargo, that left the Japanese very little choice and made it abundantly clear that we were their enemies, then you begin to reach the conclusion that perhaps, in fact, this was something the FDR administration wanted to bring on, because they saw it as a means to extricating us from the economic depression, which I am sure as many of your readers know was very bad in 1939 and 1940. It made matters worse than it had been previously. One of the reasons that FDR implemented the draft in 1939 was to reduce unemployment. The universal draft meant that you took large numbers of people off the street that otherwise had no employment. So you see in retrospect there is a systematic approach that leads to an inevitable conclusion.
But yes, war was a means to an end, and having said that, it would be a mistake to argue that FDR necessarily wanted to go to war in Europe. Some people will assert that but the truth of the matter is that in 1941, if Adolf Hitler had renounced his treaty with the Japanese on the grounds that he would not go to war with the United States, we would not have gone to war with Nazi Germany because there was very little support in the United States for war with Germany. Our experience in WWI was still very fresh in everybody's minds and everyone concluded that we had no business going to war in 1917, that we rescued British and French imperialism, that the Germans, the Austrians and the Hungarians were never our enemies and we should never have involved ourselves. Remember, we suffered 310,000 casualties in about five months of fighting. That's worse than any other conflict that we have ever been involved with. That had a huge impact. I can tell you from my own family and from others whose relatives were in the First World War, everybody came back and made the decision to vote Republican and that never again will American forces be used on behalf of another nation's interests, which in 1917 was the British Empire.
Daily Bell: You write, "Today, the same voices that advocated war with Iraq on specious grounds are urging an attack on Iran." Who are these voices? Why do they want a war?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: This is a different set of circumstances. Iraq was the unfinished war. As I point out in my book, our failure in 1991 to accomplish our mission, which was to destroy or capture the Republican Guard thus making it impossible for Saddam Hussein and his regime to survive in power, was the reason we went back in 2003. All this business about weapons of mass destruction was subterfuge and utter nonsense. Lots of people lied to do that. The real reason was to finish the war, remove Saddam and restore Iraq's oil to the world market.
All of that could have been done very easily, with relatively few forces and very little damage to Iraq, had we stuck to the original plan, which was not to dismantle the army, the state, effectively try to make Iraqi society into something it could never be. But the neocons, Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, Cheney and others, managed to prevail upon George Bush to do something that we shouldn't have done, which was adopt this position that we could turn Iraq into the Middle East's first liberal democracy and make this Arab liberal democracy in Iraq friendly to Israel. Once we adopted that particular goal in the aftermath of Bagdad's fall, then we started down this road to disaster. The lesson in history in the Middle East is very simple. Muslims will not tolerate government and administration from Christians – European Christians, any Christians. We knew that and we did it anyway, supposedly for Utopian reasons. Serious mistake and we paid a terrible price for it.
Afghanistan was a little different. We initially went in there with a light footprint, which made sense. We tried to work with the locals. We capitalized on brilliant intelligence provided to us by Iran and Russia and we were successful until we were unsuccessful in Tora Bora and we allowed Osama bin Laden to escape. Having allowed them to escape we had to maintain a presence in the country and then, of course, this same group of people, the same kinds of mentality that mired us in Iraq, pressed us to do something similarly stupid in Afghanistan.
So you have this influence of over 100,000 conventional combat forces as we embark upon a nation-building mission and, of course, we declare the Taliban and a host of others to be our enemies when, in fact, they were irrelevant to us. We were only interested in Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is not and was not in the country yet. Al-Qaeda is extremely unpopular with the Taliban and I dare say once the Taliban reasserts it's control over the country, anyone who shows up who is a foreigner from Al-Qaeda won't likely be welcomed.
Again, we are saddled with ideology and the same ideology in the foreign policy arm that thinks that we can transform the world into a replica of the United States and can export English speaking liberal democracy and its underlying values to peoples where the conditions to these things don't exist for reasons of culture and economics. They are also responsible for the Utopian dream that we can simply print or borrow money in perpetuity, the Keynesian illusion. That illusion is going to die very hard with very terrible consequences for all of us and it's unfortunate but this is usually the case with Utopian ideologies. They have to be destroyed before people will abandon them.
Daily Bell: Where does Israel fit into all this?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: I think the Israeli thing has to be understood in the following sense. It is a mistake to insist, as I increasingly hear from people, that "all Jews are somehow or another unconditional supporters of whatever the Israeli state wants to do regardless of what is in American interest." That's simply not true. What you have are numbers of people who call themselves neocons. They operate in a variety of settings in the government and in the media, and they support or advocate, for all intents and purposes, unconditional support for whatever the Israeli government wants to do. They are no means the majority and they are by no means representative of what I would call Americans who happen to be Jewish.
I say that because I fear anti-Semitism. I fear it because I think there is growing discontent with this sense that we have people making decisions in Washington that in their minds are beneficial to a foreign power and are not necessarily good for the American people or the United States. That's a bad thing and I don't think it's unique because we have been down this road before. What will happen in the future? I don't know. What will happen with Iran? I don't know. They are a nation of 78 million people that spends less on defense than Greece, a nation of 11 million. The Iranians cannot project any military power beyond their border. They are very weak. Currently they are very fragmented as a society. There is great discontent. The economy is in serious trouble. The living standards are poor and there is a growing awareness inside that country that things could be very different and much better.
At the same time, Iran's trump card is subversion, it's ability to operate through Shia populations in adjoining or neighboring countries. That's what's happening in Iraq, that's what goes on in Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia. In that sense, the Iranians do present a real security challenge to those countries except in Iraq where Shia's are a majority and they have now established themselves so that's why effectively Iraq is an Iranian satellite. But other than that, Iran's ability to take material like enriched uranium and turn it into a warhead and make it work or subsequently integrate to a missile or an aircraft to deliver it, those are much more challenging things that more people are aware of, as we have seen recently with North Korea, which is more confident technically than the Iranians. This is the second attempt to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile, which has been a dismal failure. Iranians are looking at inter-ballistic missiles, for use inside their own region, because they feel threatened.
We continue to quote them out of context and often quote them inaccurately. We've got this bandwagon that's trying to drag us into yet another conflict with them on the assumption that doing so will be good for us and Israel. I don't think either is the case. I think it's a very short-term view and a very misleading one. Iran is evolving. It's going to continue to do that over the decade. We could wake up to discover that we are dealing with a very different state of the future than the one we see today. There are lots of reasons to look forward to the time when we can work with as opposed to work against Iran.
On the other hand, the evolution in the Sunni Muslim world is very different. The Turks have retreated dramatically from the secular state that he created and you now have an Islamist Turkish government with a perfectly nationalistic population and that also, in contrast to Iran, has a very proper military establishment and a very strong martial tradition. Turkey is in a position over the next ten years to become the leading Muslim power that not only dominates on the basis of its military power but is recognized as the de facto leader of the Sunni Muslim world in the Middle East and North Africa. You could see over the next several years an alliance emerge in the region, a Sunni Muslim alliance that is anti-western, anti-European and anti-Israel. That, I think, is more prominently our concerns for the future than anything in Iran. But then again, I am a minority on that point right now in the United States.
Daily Bell: Is a military dictatorship in the cards for the US?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: A military dictatorship in the United States is not going to happen. There's no danger of that and there never has been. Most of the people in the military are like myself; the last thing they want to be involved with after what they have been dragged into for the last 20 years is civil administration. That destroys military establishments. It's one of the reasons that the US Army and Marines, in my judgment, are in very serious trouble right now because they have been involved in everything other than war fighting. There is no appetite for it at all and I think that is the least of everyone's concerns.
Daily Bell: What kind of military would you like to see in the US?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: What we need is a military establishment with a unified military command structure. That is, a joint integrated command structure. We have too many single-service headquarters, massively bloated bureaucratic overhead that we don't need and we need to change that. Then we need to go into the services and reduce the rank structures, reduce the echelons of commanding control, consolidate many of the activities much as the British have done and the United Kingdom where they have created joint integrated acquisition and procurement and so forth. All of these things will allow us to preserve critical military capabilities that we need to defend the United States and its interests while at the same doing so much more inexpensively and economically.
But again, that's not a popular approach. Reducing overhead, bloat and the way you do business, ensuring that there are no proprietary systems, and systems that are all compelled to talk to each other, work with each other and collaborate with each other. These things threaten interests and they threaten people who make a great deal of money from proprietary systems. Through acquisition they threaten huge bureaucracy employing large numbers of flag officers. And all of this will have to go away but, again, I think we have the opportunity for all this because of the economic downturn that will come as a result of the fiscal meltdown.
Daily Bell: Any final thoughts?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: I would like to say to your readers, don't be misled. There are lots of men in uniform who feel the way I do. I am just willing to speak publicly and I have written books and so forth and that's not something most people do. I think you would be surprised at the attitudes of people in uniform. Again, remember that many of them are worried. If you are on active duty you can't say anything about these things or you risk everything. If you are retired and you are dependant for income on what you referred to earlier, the military-industrial complex, those jobs and access to them are controlled by retired flag officers who will quickly move to remove you if you say things that, in their view, undermine the income stream, the revenue stream. Bottom line is, there are lots of people who share these views but, for the reasons I have outlined, are not going to go public with it.
Daily Bell: Any other points you want to make? Any websites you want to mention for readers to look at?
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: Just thank you for talking to me and your efforts to inform the public. We need every alternative we can find to the mainstream media, which is simply not interested in information. As we discussed, they are in the business of preserving the status quo and they support the self-appointed ruling elite that we have been discussing. That's the problem.
Readers might have a look at www.warriorsrage.com, www.douglasmacgregor.com and our YOUTUBE channel, www.youtube.com/user/douglasmacgregortv.
Daily Bell: Thanks for sitting down with us.
Colonel Douglas Macgregor: Thank you.

The Daily Bell - Colonel Douglas Macgregor on Two Failed Wars and Why He Supports Ron Paul for President

VIDEO: Is Ron Paul Actually Winning the Delegate Count?

Friday, May 11, 2012 – by Staff Report

CNN Asks Ron Paul To Drop Out & Endorse Romney Despite His Chances To Win 5/9/12 ... Ron Paul on CNN "Newsroom." They continue to attack and ask Ron Paul to drop out. Ron Paul still has a good chance to win and continues to get asked to endorse Mitt Romney and just give up. – matlarson10

Dominant Social Theme: Ron Paul is done?

Free-Market Analysis: Citizen reporting continues to make the point that GOP libertarian Congressman Ron Paul has remained in the US presidential race not just to "make a point" but because he actually may have the possibility of winning the damn thing.

This video we have presented below makes this point categorically, showing us how power elite media facilities like CNN are simply lying about Ron Paul's delegate counts.

Turns out in these examples that mainstream GOP candidate Mitt Romney has far fewer delegates than CNN claims. The narrator of the video shows us this clearly and points out that not only is Ron Paul adding to his delegate total but that if the momentum continues he may actually have a chance – perhaps a slim one – at winning the nomination.

Here's the video: (Video from matlarson10's YouTube user channel.)



The Daily Bell - VIDEO: Is Ron Paul Actually Winning the Delegate Count?