The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
The Ron Paul Peace and Prosperity Institute
Subscribe to the Institute View Us on YouTube Follow Us On Twitter Join Us on Facebook Join Us at Google Plus

Search Results

for:

Iraq: The Things Warmongers Said

Saturday June 28, 2014

Neocons

Iraq is in turmoil — with ISIS controlling large areas of the country — but the truth is that it's been in turmoil since the illegal 2003 invasion.

2013 was Iraq's bloodiest year since 2008, but as I wrote here members of the elite political class and warmongers in the West weren't interested.

Iraq post-invasion had become the greatest non-news story of the modern era. The people who could not stop talking about Iraq in 2002/3 and telling how much they cared about ordinary Iraqis were strangely silent. Instead they were devoting their energies into propagandizing for another Middle Eastern military 'intervention', this time against Syria.

Now that Iraq is back in the western news headlines again, with calls for “intervention” to counter ISIS, it's worth bearing in mind what the architects of the Iraq war and the cheerleaders for it said in the lead up and during the invasion about the “threat” from Saddam's WMDs and how toppling a secular dictator would help the so-called 'war on terror' and bring peace and security to the region.
read on...

Obama's Self-Made Foreign Policy Problem

Friday June 27, 2014

The Obama Administration is talking too much.

Kerry went to Egypt, delivered money and weapons, and was shown the finger over his human rights laments. Kerry went to Iraq, delivered some military support, and demanded a "unity government." Maliki's government already includes Kurds and Sunnis and he just won elections. So Kerry gets shown the finger. Kerry went to Erbil and demanded that the Kurds stick to Iraq. They have all the oil they want. Kerry gets shown the finger. Obama wants more sanctions on Russia but needs the Europeans to join. But why should the Europeans ruin their economies over this? Obama will be likely shown the finger.


read on...

Ron Paul, the CIA, and Dr. Zhivago

Friday June 27, 2014

Zhivago CIA

It is no secret that Boris Pasternak’s 1957 novel Dr. Zhivago influenced RPI Chairman and Founder Ron Paul. Indeed, Dr. Zhivago and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged are the only two works of fiction included in the list of 48 books at the end of Paul’s The Revolution: A Manifesto that Paul says influenced him over the years. What has long been a secret, though, is that the United States Central Intelligence Agency played a significant role in helping promote the Pasternak novel.

A peek at the influence Dr. Zhivago had on Paul may be found in ABC News and National Public Radio profiles of Paul from 2011 that report on how Paul reading in his 20s a copy of Dr. Zhivago that his mother had given him put Paul on course reading many other books that helped him develop his understanding of libertarian ideas. This reading led directly to Paul first running for Congress in 1974 and continuing to communicate regarding political topics to this day. As Paul has explained many times, his runs for political office have been motivated largely by a desire to share ideas related to freedom with a larger audience.

Might Paul’s mother not have given him Dr. Zhivago if the CIA had not boosted the book’s popularity? Without reading the book, may Paul not have proceeded in the study that led him to help build support for liberty and nonintervention in the US and abroad?
read on...

Federal Court Rules Government’s No-Fly List Is Unconstitutional

Wednesday June 25, 2014

DHS

There is a major decision out of Oregon where U.S. District Judge Anna Brown has ruled that the government’s no-fly list is unconstitutional since there is no meaningful way to contest inclusion of the list barring you from commercial flights. Brown issued a 65 page ruling with the holding that the “inclusion on the no-fly list constitutes a significant deprivation of their liberty interests in international travel.” It is a refreshing opinion from the federal courts which tend to be highly deferential to the government in this area.

Central to the decision is Brown’s recognition that “international travel is not a mere convenience or luxury in this modern world. Indeed, for many international travel is a necessary aspect of liberties sacred to members of a free society.” We have all heard horror stories of how people are mistakenly placed on this list and how they find themselves in an endless bureaucratic process to correct such mistakes. 

The sheer stupidity of many of these mistakes has been shocking with government officials barring people with similarly sounding names to terrorists like Bin Laden or the cavalier addition of names despite the huge cost to the individuals. The list is a CYA moment for many officials who want to be more safe than sorry, but those unfairly placed on the list find themselves in a governmental nightmare of red tape and delay.
read on...

The US Supreme Court Is Marching in Lockstep with the Police State

Tuesday June 24, 2014

Kagan Scalia 105065421

The U.S. Supreme Court was intended to be an institution established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet as I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice. In the police state being erected around us, the police and other government agents can probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts

Whether it’s police officers breaking through people’s front doors and shooting them dead in their homes or strip searching innocent motorists on the side of the road, these instances of abuse are continually validated by a judicial system that kowtows to virtually every police demand, no matter how unjust, no matter how in opposition to the Constitution.

These are the hallmarks of the emerging American police state: where police officers, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, are part of an elite ruling class dependent on keeping the masses corralled, under control, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.
read on...

Opt-Out of Common Core, Opt-In to The Ron Paul Curriculum

Sunday June 22, 2014

Oklahoma recently took action to protect the state’s children from the federal education bureaucracy by withdrawing from Common Core. Common Core is the latest attempt to bribe states, with money taken from the American people, into adopting a curriculum developed by federal bureaucrats and education “experts.” In exchange for federal funds, states must change their curriculum by, for example, replacing traditional mathematics with “reform math.” Reform math turns real mathematics on its head by focusing on “abstract thinking” instead of traditional concepts like addition and subtraction. Schools must also replace classic works of literature with  “informational” texts, such as studies by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Those poor kids!
read on...

The Orwellian Daily Mail

Friday June 20, 2014

Orwell

Many people have an instinctive feeling that the mainstream media do not tell them the whole story.

But few people realise quite to what extent the media are manipulated to send out a particular political message.  This problem is especially acute with foreign stories because by definition readers know less about far away countries than about their own.  They are therefore much more susceptible to a story being "spun" in one direction or another, especially if moral condemnation is involved: everyone enjoys the sense of being morally superior and interventionist media encourage this sentiment to justify interventionism.

A recent flagrant example was provided by a report in the Daily Mail on the Sunni Islamist insurgency in Iraq which has taken Mosul and now threatens Baghdad itself.

On 16 June 2014, the Mail carried an excited report which enthused about how even teenagers and young boys were taking up arms to defend the capital city against the Sunni militants of ISIS (The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant).
read on...

Eric Margolis: ‘Any US Move in Iraq Will Be Wrong’

Friday June 20, 2014

United States Military In Iraq 485X728

The US might be forced to send more ground troops to Iraq and seek an unpopular alliance with Tehran to stop Iraqi extremists from destroying the US creation, the Maliki government, award winning journalist Eric Margolis told RT.

RT:Militants from ISIS are closing in on Baghdad. How bad is this and what position will US continue to pursue?

Eric Margolis: As the old expression goes, “Damned if you do, and damned if you don't”. The US is in a very difficult position. This is a nightmare that has come back to haunt it. Practically any movement it makes, it will be wrong, in a sense that it angers somebody. And US has more interests in the Sunni world than it does in the Shia world. Behind the scenes, the Saudis, the major Sunni power are very unhappy with the thought of US intervention.

RT: Washington is sending a small contingent of troops to Iraq. How far will America go to deal with sectarian tensions there?

EM: I believe there are as many as 5000 US troops already in Iraq. Many of them are not in uniform, they are not called troops, they are called contractors, technical assistance. They are manning two airforce bases that the US still controls inside Iraq, or they are clustered inside the green zone, the huge fort of an embassy in Baghdad. So there are troops there.

Air strikes discussed may not be enough to stop ISIL group, and also we have to add the old Baath party of Saddam Hussein has risen up against the Shia dominated government. And if the air strikes do work, they would be a very blunt instrument because it is hard to know who to attack. The US may be forced to send more ground troops in.


read on...

Iraq, Foreign Policy, Amnesty, John Bolton: Ron Paul Interviewed By Mike Church

Thursday June 19, 2014

Ron Paul Interviewed on the Mike Church Show, June 19, 2014.

Mike:  What would you say or what do you say to people that are now rattling the sabers yet again: We gotta get back in there.  We gotta re-stabilize Iraq.

Paul:  I’ve made a statement: Don’t send one single thing or person or money or dollar into Iraq.  Just come home.  I said don’t go and after they went I said come home.  We just marched in and we can march home.  It’s none of our business.  We make things worse.  It looks like things are much worse.  The irony of all this, it’s amazing people don’t wake up.  We expended all those lives and money to take over Iraq and delivered it to the Iranians.  It proves the case that it’s a close ally to Iran.  They’re the ones who are coming in now to try to rescue the Shiite government.  Who knows what that will lead to?  We’re going along with this.  One week we want to nuke Iran and then the next week we say: That sounds like a pretty good idea.  Come in and help us.  We’re not going to send any more troops in.

We’re going to do everything else to aggravate people.  We’re still likely to drop bombs and we’re going to have our aircraft carriers out there.  We’ll have our threat of drones and our special forces.  We’ll send in a few Marines, which still aggravates the whole situation.


read on...

The Blair Peace Project: Serial Warmonger’s Call For New Iraq War Will Have Opposite Effect

Wednesday June 18, 2014

Tony Blair

Being a warmongering neocon, and in particular being a warmongering neocon called Tony Blair, means never having to accept responsibility for the consequences of your actions.

What it does mean is shifting the blame on to others and trying to rewrite history.

You might have thought that someone who launched an illegal, disastrous war against a sovereign state that has led to the deaths of up to 1 million people and who made claims before the war which proved to be false, might show at the very least a measure of contrition when the country in question is overrun by radical Islamist groups who had no presence in the country before the illegal invasion took place. But Tony Blair’s 2,800 word essay on Iraq and Syria and the Middle East is so full of distortions and ludicrous claims that it’s hard to know where to begin.

The man who repeatedly told us that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in the buildup to the war in 2003 now tries to justify it on the grounds that another Middle East leader, President Bashar Assad of Syria, used chemical weapons in 2013 and that if left in power, Saddam would have gone back to using them.

If you’re confused by that, you’re not the only one. Even if it were to be conclusively proved that the Syrian government did use chemical weapons at Ghouta (and it most certainly hasn’t been) the fact remains that Iraq did not possess WMDs in 2003.
read on...

Subscribe

Authors

Tags