The Constitution and Responding to Terrorism
by Rep Ron Paul
It has been over 6 years since the atrocities of September 11 were committed and there are still some very basic measures that need to be taken to bring the perpetrators to justice and make America safer. I have proposed legislation to help with these efforts and will continue to fight in Congress for the safety and security of the American people.
My legislation entitled The Marque and Reprisal Act of 2007 (HR 3216) makes the surgical strike option available to the President in our mission to capture Bin Laden. Our military has been pursuing him without result for far too long now, and it is high time ALL constitutional tools were utilized in the hunt for this dangerous madman.
As an American it sickens me to know that Bin Laden and top leaders of al Qaeda remain at large and thumbing their noses at us, while we unravel the sacred fabric of our constitution out of fear. It is Osama Bin Laden and the perpetrators of terrorist attacks that ought to be afraid of us, not the other way around. The answers are found in the Constitution. We should boldly root out the perpetrators and not let them get away with their crimes against us. As the home of the brave we should use Letters of Marque and Reprisal to bring Bin Laden to justice.
Also, we need to take serious steps to prevent terrorists from gaining easy access to targets on our soil. Quite alarmingly, even with the knowledge that the 19 terrorist hijackers entered our country legally, and that 15 of them were from Saudi Arabia , student visas from terrorist sponsoring countries are still far too easily obtained. In a baffling move President Bush struck a deal with Saudi King Abdullah in 2005 to allow 21,000 more Saudi young men into the US on student Visas.
Of course, not all students from terror sponsoring countries are terrorists, but I place a higher premium on the security of the American people than the convenience of citizens of hostile countries. We should not be making the goals of would-be terrorists easier to accomplish, but rather should be vigilant about defending against enemies at every turn.
They should not be slipping through our doors so easily, using our immigration laws against us, and that is why I proposed the Terror Immigration Elimination Act (HR 3217) to toughen standards for VISAS from countries on the State Department’s list of terrorist sponsoring countries in addition to Saudi Arabia . Just as you decide who to invite to a dinner party in your home, we should be in charge of who we allow in this country, without apology.
A lot has been done to fight the War on Terror and much of it has been misdirected, but there are some tools still needed and more progress to be made. My bills The Marque and Reprisal Act of 2007 and The Terror Immigration Elimination Act are logical steps in the right direction.
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You fight a war against an army, NOT against a concept. The war on terror is a fraud. Any linguist will point this out.
Bin Laden was and still is on our governments payroll. Wake up. 9-11 was an inside job.
Ron Paul 2008
rEVOLution Hope & Freedom for American
There are those who said we needed three to five hundred thousand troops to do the job right. How long would we have been able to sustain a deployment of 400,000 troops in Iraq, and after four years where would we have gotten the 2,500,000 troops to replace them, without a draft?
Remember when Bush I attacked Iraq it was a hit and run he never entered Baghdad and didn’t stay in the region more than a year with a significantly large force. Bush I was in Iraq before Clinton cut military spending and reduced the army from 18 combat divisions to 10.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, according to Pentagon data as of Jan. 31, 2005, the exact figure was 1,048,884 U.S. soldiers have been deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. That was to maintain a level of 150,000 to 200,000, over 4 years. How many reports have there been about the army being on the verge of collapsing under the strain of multiple deployments. We would have needed over 2.5 million combat ready troops to patrol the streets of Iraq for those four years.
Remember Cheney knew what we would be in for.
Bush II, Cheney and Rumsfeld knew the only strategy, with our limited number of combat troops was to 1: Defeat Saddam’s army and take Baghdad. 2: Set up regional fortified bases of operation to launch attacks on insurgents and terrorist groups from, and retreat back to for safety. 3: Start to build a police force and national army under a provisional authority 4: Start the process of holding elections 5: make a strong push for security to hand over a relatively controllable situation to the newly rebuilt security and police forces. They knew it would take time and that we would not have enough American troops to hold the streets for five to seven years. This plan was designed to minimize our casualties, unfortunately it maximized Iraqi casualties, a fact could not have been advertised to the world.
The Iraqi losses from terrorists and insurgents would have been much less but the U.S. losses would have been ten times. As the only targets, easy to find patrolling every street corner. Also as the only force keeping the peace, once they left all hell would break loose.
Slowly building the Iraqis up from scratch was the only viable solution. We had to disband Saddam’s army, he was still on the loose. Also, having to survive suicide bombs at police and army recruiting stations is a good test of loyalty to the new Iraq government.
It would have taken 300 to 500 thousand troops to secure the country and that level would have to be maintained for at least the first 3 years, not possible unless we sent all of our combat ready troops in at once and kept most of them there on 2 and 3 year rotations without a draft or pulling all troops from around the world Afghanistan, Korea, Germany and all other reserves.
Four years into it our armed forces are hard pressed to maintain 150,000 with rotations over a year long. Debathification may have been a mistake, but we don’t know, what would have resulted if we left the Saddam loyal people in power especially since it took a year after the end of major combat to find Saddam. Besides the army doesn’t keep the peace on the streets, the police do, Saddam did it with brutal secret police, they did not stick around after we took Baghdad. The US army was too small to patrol the streets we needed to circle the wagons in the green zone and bases until we could stand up some Iraqi troops and police to control the streets, that took a long time and certainly could have been done better.
Now that we are close to the point that we can start to put the Iraqis on the front lines, some democrats want us to go back to the secure bases and launch attacks on terrorists but let the Iraqis fall into full on civil war, a position they strongly criticized when we were doing it.
First of all Mr. Allen Iwould like to say that you are one of the smartest civilians I have ever talked to. This is a first-class analyisis on the war in Iraq. Have you ever worked as an analyst?