Want to be President? Don't tell the truth...

Want to be president? Truth-tellers need not apply

by Bob Livingston

Sen. Rand Paul is not qualified to be president.

At least, that’s what GOP establishment spokesman — and president wannabe — Bobby Jindal said last week.

And what did Paul do to disqualify himself? Have an affair? That doesn’t get one disqualified — see Bill Clinton. Run a pay-for-play scheme? That doesn’t get one disqualified — see Hillary Clinton. Promote blanket amnesty for illegals? That doesn’t get one disqualified — see Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush. Bankrupt four companies? That’s a plus, apparently, because it gives one “business credentials” — see Donald Trump. Hang out with terrorists? That doesn’t’ get one qualified — see Barack Obama. Fail to qualify under the Constitution’s “natural born citizen” clause? That doesn’t get one disqualified either — see Obama, Rubio and Ted Cruz.

No, what Paul did was utter a truth, or something too near it for the establishment’s liking, about the war party’s enabling of ISIS.

While appearing with Joe Scarborough on MSNBC last week, Paul laid the blame for the rise of ISIS at the feet of the GOP’s war hawks and neocons (read John McCain and the presidential aspirants from chickenhawk Lindsey Graham to Cruz).

Scarborough suggested that Graham would say ISIS exists because of people like Paul, who said, “Let’s not go into Syria.”

Paul replied:

I would say it’s exactly the opposite. ISIS exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party, who gave arms indiscriminately, and most of those arms were snatched up by ISIS. These hawks also wanted to bomb Assad, which would have made ISIS’s job even easier. They created these people. ISIS is all over Libya because these same hawks in my party loved — they loved Hillary Clinton’s war in Libya. They just wanted more of it, but Libya’s a failed state, and it’s a disaster. Iraq really is a failed state, or a vassal state now of Iran. So everything that they’ve talked about in foreign policy, they’ve been wrong about for twenty years, and yet they have somehow the gall to keep saying and pointing fingers otherwise.

But while Paul correctly indicts the neocon/perpetual war wing of his own party, he doesn’t go nearly far enough. It is official U.S. policy, and has been since at least 2012, that an Islamic State (ISIS) is desired in Syria to affect the West’s policies in the region.

Now the GOP establishment has gone apoplectic and conservative talk radio is abuzz with callers from the Republican rank and file claiming that Paul has disqualified himself by bucking the party line.

I first told you about the true nature of ISIS last fall in “Assad is the target; ISIS is the excuse,” after connecting the dots from several mainstream media reports about the Syria war.

I can hear you now, Republican voters. “You’re a crazy conspiracy theorist, Bob. ISIS is just those radical Muslims doing what they do — beheading infidels and all that stuff. ISIS is Obama’s fault for pulling out of Iraq and appearing weak. And those Muslims hate us because (insert latest meme here) and they’re just itching to come over here and behead us. We’ve got to go kill them over there before they come kill us.” The regime’s propaganda machine and Republican “hawks” now running for the GOP nomination are promoting this theme ad nauseam.

But newly released classified documents paint a much different picture.

On May 18, Judicial Watch released formerly classified documents it obtained from the U.S. Department of Defense and the State Department. Brad Hoff of the Levant Report has combed through the documents looking beyond Judicial Watch’s agenda — which is to focus on the White House’s handling of the Benghazi attack — into the deep politics involved in the Middle East chaos. One of the documents states:

THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY [WHO] SUPPORT THE [SYRIAN] OPPOSITION… THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME…

The declassified report from the Defense Intelligence Agency, dated Aug. 12, 2012, was sent to a number of government agencies including the CENTCOM, the CIA, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the State Department. It shows that in 2012 U.S. intelligence predicted the rise of Islamic State in Iraq and saw it as a strategic asset to be used to cripple Syria’s Bashar Assad.

Hoff pulled out the following bullet points from the documents:

•Al-Qaida drives the opposition in Syria.
•The West identifies with the opposition.
•The establishment of a nascent Islamic State became a reality only with the rise of the Syrian insurgency (there is no mention of U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq as a catalyst for Islamic State’s rise, which is the contention of innumerable politicians and pundits).
•The establishment of a “Salafist Principality” in Eastern Syria is “exactly” what the external powers supporting the opposition want (identified as “the West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey”) in order to weaken the Assad government.
•“Safe havens” are suggested in areas conquered by Islamic insurgents along the lines of the Libyan model (which translates to so-called no-fly zones as a first act of “humanitarian war”).
•Iraq is identified with “Shia expansion.”
•A Sunni “Islamic State” could be devastating to “unifying Iraq” and could lead to “the renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena.” (See last non-redacted line in full PDF view.)

Recall that it was McCain and his lapdog Graham who promoted arming so-called “moderate” Muslims opposing Syria, with McCain actually posing for photos with ISIS fighters in Syria. It was McCain and Graham and their ilk who sought to use the specious claims by Obama that Assad had used poison gas on the opposition (when in fact it was found that it was the opposition that deployed the gas) to try and gin up support for a U.S. attack on Syria. Recall that it was McCain and Graham and their neocon cohorts who backed — and in fact wanted to expand — Obama’s and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s war on Libya, which granted ISIS an early launch pad and a conduit through which the CIA ran guns and funds to ISIS. (For a detailed review of how the Syrian mess was started, go here.)

So Paul was both right and wrong, but he was more right than wrong and now he’s been declared “unqualfied.” The hawks in his party did support the policy to make ISIS stronger. But the arms weren’t given out indiscriminately. The war machine was very discriminating in locating former al-Qaida, and al Nusra Front and Muslim Brotherhood and anyone else they could find to advance their agenda.

It’s made for good business for the war machine. America is the world’s biggest arms dealer and the military-industrial complex is making a killing (figuratively and literally).

And the spying agencies are reaping a whirlwind as well, as government gains a tighter grip on Americans through NSA snooping, TSA traveler fondling, DHS checkpoints, FBI terrorist making, etc., all to make Americans clamor for increased security at the expense of their liberties.

For, as the New York Post editorial department posits as it chastises Congress for not passing a new (un)Patriot Act: “[T]he jihadis haven’t quit. Al Qaeda’s still out there, and ISIS is on the rise. If US counter-terror agents are stripped of these vital Patriot Act weapons, Americans will become sitting ducks. Again.”

And — gasp! — Paul wants to “scrap the anti-terror laws altogether.” Can’t have that. Osama bin Laden might rise from the grave one more time and take down another tower… or make a video or something.

And after all, we’ve been bombing “them” over there since at least 1991. And that policy has worked so well… for the banksters, the globalists and the military-industrial complex — not so much for America’s military men and women, the U.S. economy and those poor Middle Easterners/North Africans who have been beheaded, whose homes have been bombed and who have seen their loved ones killed and maimed on behalf of U.S., Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel and deep politics.

Link:
http://personalliberty.com/want-to-be-president-truth-tellers-need-not-apply/