OK, Ron Paul Foot Soldiers: ….please damage-control and rationalize away this one.
From John Ziegler's KFI AM 640 interview on 9/11:
Paul:No, because we're over there and they get to kill us so much easier, while we're over there in their yard.
Zig:Wait, wait a minute. Get to kill…That's an insult to our military, Congressman. Get to kill us? You don't think that our military…
Paul: It makes it a lot easier to kill Americans when we're in their country than it is to come over here.
Zig:Wait a minute. It's a hell of a lot easier, to use your terminology, to blow up a mall, if they could pull it off, because people in a mall aren't armed.
Paul: But we have security…
Zig: So you're saying security guards in a mall do a better job than U.S. Marines in Iraq?
Paul: So far. So far they're doing pretty well.
Explain pleeeeease.
(This oughta be good….)
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
I would tend to agree. After All I’d hate to see the Compusa here busted up by and airstrike. I think the 3 guards they have with handguns is pretty sufficient. Plus there is a security booth with about 8 officers in the main office. They pretty tough and professional and I think they will respect the private property enough to only destroy it as a last resort.
So, I agree, dont send the Army to do a policeman’s job.
Well, I think comparing the job the Marines are doing to the one mall security guards have is kind of stupid. But if you want to compare them, one facile way to say the mall guys are doing better is to say: 3000 soldiers have been killed in Iraq (plus many more with serious injuries), while the malls in America have been quiet. Of course the mall security guard job is ten thousand times easier, which is why the comparison is lame; it’s like saying my daughter is way better at finger painting than you are at brain surgery.
The dialogue does show Paul’s tin ear pretty well. ‘Get to kill us so much easier’ is a really poor choice of words, and I think it was that phrasing that really set Ziegler off. Paul needs to take lessons from Pat Buchanan’s run in 1992.
But as for the statement: “It makes it a lot easier to kill Americans when we’re in their country than it is to come over here.“, I see nothing to disagree with. It’s doubly true if we have good border security, so that we can screen out and capture the minority of terrorists that actually have the means and the motivation to come after us at home.
Keywords here “in Iraq”. Our military is awsome, its the best in the World, but having our boys in Iraq does absolutely nothing to imporove our security here in the United States. For all of their hard work and heroism the Marines IN IRAQ, have done nothing to make America safer. This is not THIER fault, its the fault of a bad policy by the United States which serves to do nothing but piss off a bunch of nutty Arabs and puts us all at a greater risk of terrorist attack.
Its the policy, not the Marines.
“But as for the statement: “It makes it a lot easier to kill Americans when we’re in their country than it is to come over here.”, I see nothing to disagree with. It’s doubly true if we have good border security, so that we can screen out and capture the minority of terrorists that actually have the means and the motivation to come after us at home.”
That’s interesting given that 70% of American casualties in Iraq are the result of IraNian action.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010593
Kinda makes the debate moot for those 70% of killed and wounded Americans since they weren’t killed by Iraqis in Iraq, but by foreign fighters (lest we completely ignore that tens of thousands of foreign fighters have been killed in Iraq, and none by mall security in Akron, Ohio).
Look, it’s pretty plain and simple. They can’t go after his record. They can’t go after the fact he had 3 wives, they can’t go after him for any reason, but for poor choice of wording to get an idea across. If I was drilled over and over and over and yelled at for the same issue, which I was correct about in the first place, I’d probably make a few wording errors aslo.
THey are just looking for attack points, plain and simple, you can’t touch Paul’s resume.
What does the Iranian meddling in Iraq have to do with this question? Are you claiming that their Qods force or Revolutionary Guard or whoever would be supplying EFPs to terror cells in the USA proper if they weren’t trying to murder us in Iraq? I doubt this very much. And for what it’s worth, ‘70% of casualties caused by Iranian-backed forces‘ is not the same thing at all as ‘70% of American casualties in Iraq are the result of IraNian action‘. Iranian-backed forces sounds to me like ‘any violent Shiite organization’, even if Iran’s backing constitutes two crates of rifles and some instructions on how to build IEDs.
As for the tens of thousands of foreign fighters killed by our armed forces, I don’t measure success in enemy body count. The reduction in violence in Anbar and Baghdad: *that* is success (of one very important kind). Killing tons of people is ambiguous. It could be a good thing or not depending on the situation.
Ron Paul is not a very smart guy.
The Marines in Iraq have made the US safer by preventing a terror supporting dictator from regaining the WMD he once had and by building democracy in the middle east.
I seem to remember several massive attacks and some failed ones (not stopped by Klingto, but by the stupidity of the terrorist) between the first attack on the WTC and 9-11. I haven’t heard of one attack since we took the fight to the terrorists. They too busy catching rats to eat while hiding in a hole. If the terrorists start attacking the malls you will see the saturday night cowboys (hourly hire cops) disappear and National Guard troops take over. First the terrorists get a free shot at killing several thousand.
I seem to remember several massive attacks and some failed ones (not stopped by Klingto, but by the stupidity of the terrorist) between the first attack on the WTC and 9-11. I haven’t heard of one attack since we took the fight to the terrorists. They too busy catching rats to eat while hiding in a hole. If the terrorists start attacking the malls you will see the saturday night cowboys (hourly hire cops) disappear and National Guard troops take over. First the terrorists get a free shot at killing several thousand.
What’s the argument? A civilian in a shopping mall in the US is clearly safer than a Marine in Iraq. The death toll proves it.
Ron Paul said it’s easier to kill Americans because they are in Iraq instead of at home. It’s rediculous to argue otherwise. Ziegler tried to turn it into a slam on Marines which was just nonsense and a pathetically cheap shot.
Scrapiron said “They too busy catching rats to eat while hiding in a hole.”
It only took 19 guys to pull off 9/11. Do you honestly believe that Al Queda can’t spare a couple of guys to blow up a shopping mall because we’ve got every single terrorist pinned down in a hole in Iraq?
I’m hearing alot of “he really meant this” and “he really meant that” when these few sentences says it all:
NO excuses for this guy. He is specifically asked if he thinks minimum wage security guards do a better job then our Marines….answer: SO FAR.
This guy can go to hell for all I care. You liberals pretending to be conservatives can go with him if this is the way you think. What idiocy.
I mean you see this exchange?
Timothy McVeigh is comparable to fanatical islam?
What a fruitcake.
I haven’t heard of one attack since we took the fight to the terrorists.
You’re ignoring the Madrid and (second) Bali bombings. I do accept your broader point that our counterterrorism efforts have been very effective since 9/11, and that the absence of successful attacks in the US is because of this. However, there is a long list of measures we have taken – improved airline security, increased surveillance, grants to local police departments, attacking Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and so on. If I had to guess where ‘attacking Iraq’ ranks in cost effectiveness (as a means to combating terrorism), I would say abysmally low.
Ah, the sequel to “OMG! Kerry said that our troops our dumb!”
The point is that from one perspective it’s a difference between how many lives lost here/there, and on the other side is the how many ENEMY lives taken here/there. One is a judgement falsely aimed at focusing on defense, and the other is a judgement aimed at offense/ Oone defeats an enemy in time of war, by killing the enemy, and while it’s not the only measure of success in the global war on terror, it is one of them. Make no mistake about it, opponents of the war would be screaming from the high heavens if there were no enemy killed in Iraq (too many already believe this is the case ala deliberate misleading from the left).
The truth is in the words, not people’s understanding of them. He’s being more articulate that some of you understand. Understand this; US soldiers in Iraq are about as useful as a mall security guard. How useful is that? Not very. The. Troops. Aren’t. Doing. Anything.
For the purpose of the argument, if you were to quantify a scorecard of how a security guard in a mall assists with loss prevention, compared to how your sons and daughters are ‘liberating’ Iraq, I’m sure the security guard would come out on top.
This surge is a complete and total failure. Your country needs to stand together and get your people out of there. Nobody wants more American flags returning home to those families. Nobody wants US interventionism anymore in the foreign affairs of other countries. Israel, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia.. The middle east, and every country in it are all sovreign nations that should be defending *themselves*, not being defended by, and depending on, the United States.
Laughing out loud at that one. You are in complete and total denial….must be too much KOS and Maher. Cut down a bit, you may do some thinking on your own young grasshopper.
No damage control necessary, because the only damage that exists in this piece is the brain damage the radio host is suffering from.
“Zig: So you’re saying security guards in a mall do a better job than U.S. Marines in Iraq?”
All I see here is yet another opponent of Paul’s interrupting his statement and putting words in his mouth. The conclusion he reached had absolutely nothing to do with what was said.
Paul says that its easier for terrorists to kill Americans (troops, contactors, etc.) when we’re over there, and this DJ somehow tries to compare it to terrorists killing people in a mall because they’re not armed. When Paul mentioned that malls have armed security to help identify and eliminate such threats, the host automatically starts sticking words in Paul’s mouth.
Yes, Mr. “Zig,” it is easier for terrorists to kill us over there than over here. When we’re in their backyard, they don’t have to come all the way over here to kill our citizens and troops. When was the last time terrorists killed our troops on American soil? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
The host had clearly already made his mind up that he wasn’t going to listen to a word of what Paul had to say, opting instead to reject sound reasoning to try and defame Dr. Paul by putting words in his mouth and talking crap.
Drive by assault on Ron Paul. Kind of lame. He wants to save the Marines lives by pulling them out of the Sunni Shia towel-head shooting gallery and a prick host tricks him into saying what is true: Mall security is better at keeping malls secure than the US military is at keeping Iraq secure.
Just gave $1000 dollars to the Ron Paul campaign. It felt great!
Money talks, bullshit walks… Ron Paul supporters tend to be smarter, better educated, better paid and more passionate than supporters of the other candidates in the GOP. Just look at how Ron Paul is recieved At Google on youtube, if you need an example! With no clear standout in the GOP frontrunners, who do you folks think will win the money race?
Oh yeah, another thing about the money race, GUESS WHO THE MILITARY is supporting?
“The truth is in the words, not people’s understanding of them. He’s being more articulate that some of you understand. Understand this; US soldiers in Iraq are about as useful as a mall security guard. How useful is that? Not very. The. Troops. Aren’t. Doing. Anything.”
Oh, I dunno, killing/capturing 10-20,000 Al Queda in Iraq since the invasion….that seems like a lot more than the Rolling Acres Mall security staff can accomplish imo.
“For the purpose of the argument, if you were to quantify a scorecard of how a security guard in a mall assists with loss prevention, compared to how your sons and daughters are ‘liberating’ Iraq, I’m sure the security guard would come out on top.”
The war in Iraq isn’t about stop/loss prevention…it’s about fighting Al Queda and building an ally to fight al Queda with us.
“This surge is a complete and total failure. Your country needs to stand together and get your people out of there. Nobody wants more American flags returning home to those families. Nobody wants US interventionism anymore in the foreign affairs of other countries. Israel, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia.. The middle east, and every country in it are all sovreign nations that should be defending *themselves*, not being defended by, and depending on, the United States.”
“Your country….” Welp, now we know….thanks for pointing out that Ron Paul doesn’t represent your country, just your foreign ideas on how to defeat the US. Nice one.