The white boy.

Sanjaya.

Yes, still.

"Rudy won tonight, if for no other reason than the well-deserved bitch-slapping he administered to Ron Paul. Everybody else lost, Paul doubly so."

Yeah, let's listen to the brilliant Rudy Guiliani:

MR. GOLER: Congressman, you don't think that changed with the 9/11 attacks, sir?

REP. PAUL: What changed?

MR. GOLER: The non-interventionist policies.

REP. PAUL: No. Non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right.

We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)

MR. GOLER: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?

REP. PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They have already now since that time -- (bell rings) -- have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary.

MR. GIULIANI: Wendell, may I comment on that? That's really an extraordinary statement. That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th. (Applause, cheers.)

So Rudy Guiliani has never heard that Muslims were upset when the U.S. Secretary of State said on a "60 Minutes" interview, about 500,000 children dying in Iraq due to economic sanctions, "We think the price was worth it"?

And he doesn't understand how Muslims could be upset when the U.S. government bombed Iraq every time Bill Clinton needed to look "presidential"?

Or that some Muslims have found the U.S.'s general support of the repressive regime in Saudi Arabia offensive?

Well, I guess general ignorance isn't a barrier to the presidency...

Guess I was wrong about the white boy.....

Stephen, how can you call it "bitch-slapping" when Mr. Paul says a true and obvious thing, Mr. Giuliani gets his panties in a twist, and (later) Mr. Paul sticks to his guns, and points out how Mr. Giuliani should know this all already?

That's not how we bitch-slap where I come from.

Oh, please.

NRO article on The Barbary Pirates:

...Take, for example, the 1786 meeting in London of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Tripolitan ambassador to Britain. As American ambassadors to France and Britain respectively, Jefferson and Adams met with Ambassador Adja to negotiate a peace treaty and protect the United States from the threat of Barbary piracy.

These future United States presidents questioned the ambassador as to why his government was so hostile to the new American republic even though America had done nothing to provoke any such animosity. Ambassador Adja answered them, as they reported to the Continental Congress, “that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise....”

Oh, they want Spain back, too!

And a pony.

Sandy,

Which part of that makes the idea that US foreign policy played a role in terrorist motivations absurd? It may be right, it may be wrong, but Paul's statement is certainly not absurd.

I'll try to make this simple:
I think that Giuliani was pointing out that, chronologically, 9/11, 2001 precedes 2003, therefore our war in Iraq could not have retrospectively caused 9/11- therefore that is, truly, an absurd explanation for the attack on the Towers. Understood?

He was pointing out this trend in recent political analysis which uses present events to analyze the decisions preceding them. Hindsight is 20/20, and blaming ourselves helps no one. I've gotta say I'm with Rudy here.

"I think that Giuliani was pointing out that, chronologically, 9/11, 2001 precedes 2003, therefore our war in Iraq could not have retrospectively caused 9/11-..."

I'll try to make this simple, Deb.

No one--not Ron Paul or anyone else--was claiming that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 caused the 9/11/2001 attacks.

Ron Paul said that the U.S. had been bombing Iraq for 10 years before the 9/11 attacks. Have you heard about that?

And Ron Paul also said:

"George Bush won the election in the year 2000 campaigning on a humble foreign policy -- no nation-building, no policing of the world."

And...

"I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem."

Apparently, no one has ever introduced to Rudy Giuliani the thought that the U.S. government's various interventions in the Middle East (e.g. installing the Shah, the bombing and the economic embargo of Iraq, U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia) might have adverse consequences.

I say:

Thompson/Bolton '08

Yes, but does Ron Paul think that the 9/11 attack was justified? This we do not know because the moderator was too stupid to ask it.