“...why, in a free society with a supposedly..."

“...why, in a free society with a supposedly independent media, did arguably the most influential in the United States keep Americans in the dark about a program like this?  The answer we were given involved unspecified national security concerns that the Times supposedly did not want to jeopardize.  But that explanation does not hold water at all.   We may safely assume that terrorists are clever enough to realize that our government is listening in on their conversations, even without the Times telling them so.  The very name of the Foreign Intelligence Act (FISA) of 1978 is a dead giveaway.  

As far as we have been told, the only way that this program, administered by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), diverged from previous intelligence efforts is that this one operated without FISA warrants- warrants issued in secret by special courts, in conformity with the 1978 Act.  Awareness of this aspect of the program would have done nothing to aid terrorists.  FISA warrants are issued in secret anyway, so neither under FISA nor under the NSA program would a terrorist know for sure that the government was eavesdropping on his conversations. 

It looks very much like the old story:  the government says “national security” and the natural and normal skepticism that our Founding Fathers taught us to have toward the government is promptly abandoned.  The simple and straightforward reason the executive branch wanted the program kept secret, its consistent obfuscation notwithstanding, seems to be that it violated the laws. 

The reasons we were given for why the program was necessary were at least as unconvincing as the Time’s defense of concealing it.  On the one hand, we were told that only targets of the program were people with links to terrorist organizations like al Qaeda.  At the same time, we were told that the sheer number of targets made FISA warrant applications impracticable. 

I believe that constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald has identified a fatal contradiction in these claims.  It is is true that the executive branch knew the locations of so many people with al Qaeda links, why were they seeking merely to eavesdrop on their conversations?  Why were they not arresting them instead?  This, after all, is an administration that has detained people indefinitely, without charges, on the basis of sometimes shaky evidence of an al Qaeda connection.  This time, we are supposed to believe that the administration had knowledge of countless al Qaeda figures and decided to let them remain free?  Not plausible, and that is why it seems likely that the targets of this surveillance included many Americans who had no ties to al Qaeda or terrorism at all.”  -Pages 109-111 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"The Israel Lobby and U.S Foreign Policy"

This book was NOT written by Ron Paul but it is directly related to Ron Paul's message.  I urge anyone wanting to understand more about this subject read this book.

You can find it on Amazon by clicking HERE.

Review from Publishers Weekly:

Expanding on their notorious 2006 article in the London Review of Books, the authors increase the megatonnage of their explosive claims about the malign influence of the pro-Israel lobby on the U.S. government. Mearsheimer and Walt, political scientists at the University of Chicago and Harvard, respectively, survey a wide coalition of pro-Israel groups and individuals, including American Jewish organizations and political donors, Christian fundamentalists, neo-con officials in the executive branch, media pundits who smear critics of Israel as anti-Semites and the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, which they characterize as having an almost unchallenged hold on Congress. This lobby, they contend, has pressured the U.S. government into Middle East policies that are strategically and morally unjustifiable: lavish financial subsidies for Israel despite its occupation of Palestinian territories; needless American confrontations with Israel's foes Syria and Iran; uncritical support of Israel's 2006 bombing of Lebanon, which violated the laws of war; and the Iraq war, which almost certainly would not have occurred had [the Israel lobby] been absent. The authors disavow conspiracy mongering, noting that the lobby's activities constitute legitimate, if misguided, interest-group politics, as American as apple pie. Considering the authors' academic credentials and the careful reasoning and meticulous documentation with which they support their claims, the book is bound to rekindle the controversy.


An excerpt.....

"More important, saying that Israel and the US are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around. Support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel’s presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to attract recruits.

As for so-called rogue states in the Middle East, they are not a dire threat to vital US interests, except inasmuch as they are a threat to Israel. Even if these states acquire nuclear weapons – which is obviously undesirable – neither America nor Israel could be blackmailed, because the blackmailer could not carry out the threat without suffering overwhelming retaliation. The danger of a nuclear handover to terrorists is equally remote, because a rogue state could not be sure the transfer would go undetected or that it would not be blamed and punished afterwards. The relationship with Israel actually makes it harder for the US to deal with these states. Israel’s nuclear arsenal is one reason some of its neighbours want nuclear weapons, and threatening them with regime change merely increases that desire."

"James Bamford observes that the leadership of al Qaeda...."

"James Bamford observes that the leadership of al Qaeda hoped to lure us into a "desert Vietnam," an enormously expensive war that would deplete our resources and help their own recruitment by stirring up the locals against us.  And that is just what happened.  The war's ultimate cost is being estimated in the trillions.  The dollar is collapsing.  And more terrorists are being created.  According to a study by the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya, Israel, the vast bulk of the foreign fighters in Iraq are people who had never been involved in terrorist activity before but have been radicalized by the U.S. presence in Iraq - the second holiest place in Islam. 

The terrorist, in short, have played us like a fiddle.  With the unnecessary and unprovoked attack on Iraq, our government gave them just what they wanted.

Americans have the right to defend themselves against attack; that is not at issue.  But that is very different from launching a preemptive war against a country that had not attacked us and could not attack us, that lacked a navy and an air force, and whose military budget was a fraction of a percent of our own.  A policy of overthrowing or destabilizing every regime our government dislikes is no strategy at all, unless our goal is international chaos and domestic impoverishment. 

It is time for us to consider a strategic reassessment of our policy of foreign interventionism, occupation, and nation building.  It is in our own national interest to do so and in the interest of world peace.  This is a message that resonates not only with the American people at large but also with U.S. military personnel:  in the second quarter of 2007 our campaign raised more money from active duty and retired military than did any other Republican candidate in either party.  Then in the fourth quarter we received more money in our military donations than all Republicans put together.  This message is popular, and it is based on American security, fiscal sanity, and common sense."  Pages 38 & 39 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"The interventionist policies that have given rise to blowback...."

"The interventionist policies that have given rise to blowback have been bipartisan in their implementation.  For instance, it was Bill Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, who said on 60 Minutes that half a million dead Iraqi children as a result of the sanctions on that country during the 1990s were "worth it." Who could be so utopian, so detached from reality, as to think a remark like that- which was broadcast all over the Arab world, you can be sure- and policies like these would not provoke a response?  If Americans lost that many of their family members, friends, and fellow citizens, would they not seek to hunt down the perpetrators and be unsatisfied until they were apprehended?  The question answers itself.  So why wouldn't we expect people to try to take revenge for these policies?  I have never received an answer to this simple and obvious question. 

This does not mean Americans are bad people, or that they are to blame for terrorism-- straw-man arguments that supporters of intervention raise in order to cloud the issue and demonize their opponents.  It means only that actions cause reactions, and that Americans will need to prepare themselves for these reactions if their government is going to continue to intervene around the world.  In the year 2000, I wrote: "The cost in terms of liberties lost and the unnecessary exposure to terrorism are difficult to determine, but in time it will become apparent to all of us that foreign interventionism is of no benefit to American citizens, but instead is a threat to our liberties."  I stand by every word of that.

To those who say that the attackers are motivated by a hatred of Western liberalism or the moral degeneracy of American culture, Scheuer points out that Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini tried in vain for a decade to instigate an anti-Western jihad on exactly that basis.  It went nowhere.  Bin Laden's message, on the other hand, has been so attractive to so many people because it is fundamentally defensive.  Bin Laden, says Scheuer, has "spurned the Ayatollah's wholesale condemnation of Western society," focusing instead on "specific, bread and butter issues on which there is widespread agreement amount Muslims.

What bin Laden's sympathizers object to, as they have said again and again, is our government's propping up of unpopular regimes in the Middle East, the presence of American troops on the Arabian Peninsula, the American government's support for the activities of governments (like Russia) that are hostile to their Muslim populations, and what they believe to be an American bias toward Israel.  This point is not that we need to agree with these arguments, but that we need to be aware of them if we want to understand what is motivating so many people to rally to bin Laden's banner. 

At a press conference I held at the National Press Club in May 2007, Scheuer told reporters: "About the only thing that can hold together the very loose coalition that Osama bin Laden has assembled is a common Muslim hatred for the impact of U.S. foreign policy.... They all agree they hate U.S. foreign policy.  To the degree we change that policy in the interest of the United States, they become more and more focused on their local problems."  That's not what a lot of our talking heads tell us on television every day...

Phillip Giraldi, another conservative and former counterterrorism expert with the CIA, adds that "anybody who knows anything about what's been going on for the last ten years would realize that cause and effect are operating here - that, essentially, al Qaeda has an agenda which very specifically says what its grievances are.  And its grievances are basically that 'we're over there.' " The simple fact is that "there [are] consequences for our presence in the Middle East, and if we seriously want to address the terrorism problem we have to be serious about that issue."

The point is a simple one: when our government meddles around the world, it can stir up a hornet's nest and thereby jeopardize the safety of the American people.  That's just common sense.  But hardly anyone in our government dares to level with the American people about our fiasco of a foreign policy."  -Pages 16-19 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"What the Founding Fathers have to teach us about...."

"What the Founding Fathers have to teach us about foreign policy became all the more important, and yet all the more ignored, in the wake of the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001. 

In the weeks that followed that fateful day, most Americans' focus was on identifying the sponsors of the attacks and punishing them.  That was sensible enough.  I myself voted to track down al Queda in Afghanistan.  But people were bound to start wondering, eventually, why we were attacked- not because they sought to excuse the attackers, of course, but out of a natural curiosity regarding what made these men tick.  Looking for motive is not the same thing as making excuses; detectives always look for the motive behind crime, but no one thinks they are looking to excuse murder.

Seven years later, though, our political class still refuses to deal with the issue in anything but sound bites and propaganda.  The rest of the world is astonished at this refusal to speak frankly about the reality of our situation.  And yet our safety and security may depend on it."  -Page 15 of The Revolution, A Manifesto