is Rand Paul the new Ron Paul?

[Willie99]

is that who all the internet buzz will be about until results start flowing?

Like his dad, I like the man and I love his conservative fiscal positions. I love his message about individual responsibility and rights (nobody seems to concerned about the rights of productive white men, I believe them there god given rights extend to everybody)

But I disagree with his isolationists positions, and please don't tell me he's not an isolationist.

I also believe we need social safety nets, and if he's like his father on that issue than he's too far to the right.

For me it's all about

1) fiscal responsibility
2) growing business
3) shrinking the federal government
4) states rights
5) and a very strong national defense.

I cannot support somebody who will gut our defenses. And yes, I believe his policies if enacted would gut our national defenses

If he comes across like his father did on welfare issues, he can't win anyhow (and I'm no PC guy)

 

[Willie99]

I'm still looking for new blood, it's just not there

 

[RenoChazz]

How is he an isolationist when he wants to fight ISIS, secure our embassy with our Military in Iraq, use our military to protect our interests abroad ect.. His foreign policy is no where near Ron Paul, who wanted to close shop and bring all our troops every where home. He's also not against safety nets like Ron. Rands way more mello. When it comes to the middle east he's just a realist. If we send a quarter million troops back into Iraq like the hawks want, then what? Do we stay forever, will the Sunnis magically accept shiite rule when we leave this time. He wants to get rid of ISIS in a real way that lasts so we're not back there in again in few years. Instead of just reading headlines maybe watch the actual interviews.

 

[Willie99]

How is he an isolationist when he wants to fight ISIS, secure our embassy with our Military in Iraq, use our military to protect our interests abroad ect.. His foreign policy is no where near Ron Paul, who wanted to close shop and bring all our troops every where home. He's also not against safety nets like Ron. Rands way more mello. When it comes to the middle east he's just a realist. If we send a quarter million troops back into Iraq like the hawks want, then what? Do we stay forever, will the Sunnis magically accept shiite rule when we leave this time. He wants to get rid of ISIS in a real way that lasts so we're not back there in again in few years. Instead of just reading headlines maybe watch the actual interviews.

maybe I'll have to do a little research about him and not make assumptions

but what you're describing is radically different than his father, and I thought he was much closer to dad with respect to defense

 

[RenoChazz]

He thought the Iraq war was a bad idea, he has that in common with his father, but so does most of the public including 50% of Republicans. He wants to fight ISIS he just doesn't want to send in our troops to do it. He wants the civilized Sunni nations to do the ground work (not the shiite Iraqis, and Iran who are doing it now) with us backing them up in the air in other limited operations. I'm still waiting hear what he thinks about three state solution, because there's no way these groups can coexist without a ruthless dictator, they absolutely hate each other.

 

[neverbend]

I'm for Paul, my wife also votes the same as me but I'm having a hard time convincing her on Paul. Secular Dictators
were the only ones that can subdue Islamic radicals & if Khaddafi & Saddam were still in charge of Lbya & Iraq terrorists
would not be ravaging those lands. I think Paul can carry the young vote to the Republican side more than any Republican
& the idea that Paul is an isolationist because he did not approve of the Libyan or Iraq invasion is nonsense. He'll go after the
enemies of the US in a more prudent manner. He certainly won't try to dispose Assad like McCain, again a secular dictator
opposed by radicals & he'd tread lightly on Russia over Ukraine, that suits me!

 

[Willie99]

^^^^^^^

both of those dictators financed terrorism, condoned terrorism, rewarded terrorism, encouraged terrorism and provided safe harbors for terrorists

Qaddafi's activities were curtailed somewhat after RR bombed his house (that's what gets their attention)

They're also both responsible for hundreds of thousands / millions of deaths and they're both guilty of some of the worst crimes against mankind in the modern era

to suggest they're part of the solution and not a very large part of the problem is just wrong, and this is the type of history rewriting I can never understand (it's all done to place blame somewhere it don't belong, it's all political)

 

[superbeets]

I'm for Paul, my wife also votes the same as me but I'm having a hard time convincing her on Paul. Secular Dictators
were the only ones that can subdue Islamic radicals & if Khaddafi & Saddam were still in charge of Lbya & Iraq terrorists
would not be ravaging those lands. I think Paul can carry the young vote to the Republican side more than any Republican
& the idea that Paul is an isolationist because he did not approve of the Libyan or Iraq invasion is nonsense. He'll go after the
enemies of the US in a more prudent manner. He certainly won't try to dispose Assad like McCain, again a secular dictator
opposed by radicals & he'd tread lightly on Russia over Ukraine, that suits me!

Asaad's forces are on the verge of total collapse.

As for Sadam

		Up to 5,000 died at Halabja, northern Iraq
UN experts confirmed in 1986 that Iraq had contravened the Geneva Convention by using chemical weapons against Iran.

Iraq is known to have used the blister agent mustard gas from 1983 and the nerve gas Tabun from 1985, as it faced attacks from "human waves" of Iranian troops and poorly-trained but loyal volunteers. Tabun can kill within minutes.

This baby in Halabja was born with deformed fingers There is no doubt that the Iraqis have been using chemical weapons The BBC's Keith Graves, July 1988

In 1988 Iraq turned its chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds in the north of the country.

Some Kurdish guerrilla forces had joined the Iranian offensive.




On 16 March 1988, Iraq dropped bombs containing mustard gas, Sarin and Tabun on the Kurdish city of Halabja.



Estimates of the number of civilians killed range from 3,200 to 5,000, with many survivors suffering long-term health problems.



Chemical weapons were also used during Iraq's "Anfal" offensive - a seven-month scorched-earth campaign in which an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 Kurdish villagers were killed or disappeared, and hundreds of villages were razed.





A UN security council statement condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons in the war was issued in 1986, but the US and other western governments continued supporting Baghdad militarily and politically into the closing stages of the war.

 

[superbeets]

As for Sadam

Saddam drains the life of the Marsh Arabs: The Arabs of southern Iraq cannot endure their villages being bombed and their land being poisoned, and are seeking refuge in Iran. Michael Wood reports from Huwaiza Marsh on the death of a 5,000-year-old culture





MICHAEL WOOD


Saturday 28 August 1993







BEYOND Susangerd the road heads westwards and straight for 50km to the Iraqi border. By mid-morning the heat and humidity are barely endurable. Soon the scrubby desert gives way to intermittent pools, and then suddenly the marsh opens out on both sides of the causeway - a great sheet of water stretching to the horizon, dotted with clumps of reed. This is Huwaiza Marsh.


'Wait until we enter the reedbeds,' says the driver, 'it's like hitting a wall of heat.' Finally you reach a place called Himmet - not really a place at all, just a spot on a dirt road raised a few feet above the swamp. This is where the Iraqi refugees live, Marsh Arabs who have fled Saddam's terror. Their shelters straggle along four kilometers of road to the last military post. There is not a drop of shelter here, but the Marsh Arabs are adept at making something out of nothing and they've thrown up reed shanties all over the levees.


In the haze on the horizon, Iraqi military vehicles and dump-trucks can be seen raising clouds of dust; they are building a massive new dyke running north-south through Huwaiza which will cut off the last line of escape from Iraq to Himmet. President Saddam Hussein's slow genocide of the Marsh Arabs is reaching its climax.


The encirclement and destruction of the Marsh Arabs and the annihilation of their 5,000-year-old culture have been brought about by the deliberate draining of their unique habitat - the 6,000-square-mile marshes of southern Iraq. This environmental and human disaster has been long in the planning. The Iraqi regime continues to deny it. It claims the draining is part of an agricultural improvement plan which will benefit the people of the region.


Documents captured during the Kurdish uprising show that President Saddam approved the plan for the marshes in December 1988. Burning, terror, murder and starvation of the marsh people, poisoning the water, economic blockade and damming the rivers - were all part of the plan. When the Shia revolt had been crushed in the cities, President Saddam turned his fury against the people in the marshes.


According to the Iraqi army, in December 1991 and January 1992 over 70 marsh villages were destroyed and 50,000 people removed. The assault continued throughout 1992. There are records of attacks almost every day. Huge tracts of the marshes were drained by using earth barriers to block the tributaries of the Tigris which feed the Amara marshes and by damming the Euphrates below Nasiriyah.
Satellite photos taken last August showed the big lakes shrunken and a 1,000-square-mile rectangle of marsh dried out north of Qurnah and west of the Amara-Basra highway. When an Iraqi engineer was captured by the mujahedin last October with his plans and maps of the earthworks, they confirmed the scale and objective of President Saddam's campaign. New satellite photos and eyewitness accounts show that the whole of the central marshes between the two rivers are now dry.
Meanwhile, with the water receding, the people have been forced to move - first to find drinking water, then to escape the area altogther. The exodus had begun.
In the last two months 5,000 Marsh Arab refugees have arrived at Himmet - to add to the ten times as many Shia who have lived in nearby camps since their failed uprising against the regime after the Gulf war. The newcomers live on the road, and more refugees are expected soon, as President Saddam's ring of steel closes. No one knows how many are still trapped inside: estimates range from tens of thousands to a quarter of a million.


Those who have managed to get out describe artillery attacks by the Iraqi army. Many say they travelled through the night with their children and hid during the day. 'We covered ourselves with mud and hid in a fetid pool at one point so they wouldn't see us,' said an elderly woman from Al Agger.
Most of the people at Himmet have witnessed President Saddam's atrocities. The story of one village - Al Agger, in the Amara marshes - can stand for hundreds of others. The people were shelled several times in October 1991 and April 1992 before the notorious attack of 20 May last year, when two helicopter gunships rocketed a wedding. At least 13 people were killed, including the groom and his nine-year-old sister. More than 20 others were injured. Several members of the two families have escaped to Himmet and have recounted what happened.


But this was not the end of the suffering of the people of Al Agger. In July last year 30 people were killed by an attack with shells and firebombs.
A witness recalls that by early August last year 'We were brought under by drought and lack of water. The farm animals were dying and the rice crops were lost. Then the people started to leave, to follow the water and stay alive.' Those who remained were ferociously attacked again for two days in December when the temperatures were below zero.


By February of this year, Al Agger was deserted, the houses burnt, the school and clinic smashed. In the centre of the village were graves marked by a lettered black flag on which were painted in Arabic the words 'Redeemer Save Us'.
'We used to be people who gave to others,' said one old man of the village. 'We were always generous to people in need. This was our tradition. We had a guest hut where we fed strangers and travellers. Now we have no buffalo, no cows, no boats. Now we have to sit here and wait for someone to come and give us enough flour to make one piece of bread. Now we have to search the marsh shore to find some drinkable water for our children.'
Many of the refugees are women with their children whose menfolk have been killed. One day a volunteer working with the refugees was crossing Um al Naj lake in Iraq and spotted a young woman with three small children, struggling to pole her canoe. When he got closer to her, he saw a newborn baby in the bottom of the boat which she had just delivered. Though exhausted and bleeding profusely, she had rigged a cloth to shade her baby from the burning sun and was trying to get across to Iran. He was able to help her, to guide her to one of the passages through the marshes. He fetched a pick-up truck to meet her at Tabr, the nearest levee on the Iranian side. From there his colleagues got her to hospital in Susangerd.
There is a strained atmosphere here in Himmet. People who have lived in freedom are now confined. There are occasional fights, there is anger and much frustration. People queue at the medical tent; many of the young children have bloody diarrhoea or amoebic dysentry; there's a six-month-old girl with bad conjunctivitis. Most of the mothers have trouble giving milk, and of the 250 nursing infants here a dozen have died in the last few weeks.


In a shelter near the tent, a group of women quietly mourn a dead three- year-old girl with the beautiful laments which are at the heart of the Shia faith. Below them, in the marsh, two women punt towards the shore, their boat stacked with green reed stalks to make a roof for their hut.
Around eight o'clock in the evening there's a distant rumble of artillery, like a far-off roll of thunder. A spurt of flame leaps on the horizon - the rush of dried reedbeds going up. The Iranian border troops say the Iraqis are attacking one of the passages by which the refugees escape through Huwaiza. According to the refugees this happens most days, morning and evening. The fire in the reedbeds flares for a while and then dies down, leaving a smudge of smoke on the darkening skyline. We prepare to head back to Susangerd for the night.


'Please take us with you,' laughs one of the boys. 'Just help us to get out before the rest of our babies die,' says a woman from Al Agger.
Twenty supporters of the Marsh Arabs and their environment began an indefinite hunger strike on Wednesday outside the American Embassy in London.

 

[superbeets]

As for Sadam

Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, on August 2 1990,

More than 100,000 Iraqi soldiers backed up by 700 tanks invaded the Gulf state of Kuwait

The death toll at about 1,000,
After the Iraqi victory, Saddam Hussein installed Alaa Hussein Ali as the Prime Minister of the "Provisional Government of Free Kuwait" and Ali Hassan al-Majid as the de facto governorof Kuwait.

The exiled Kuwaiti royal family and other former government officials began an international campaign to persuade other countries to pressure Iraq to vacate Kuwait. TheUN Security Council passed 12 resolutions demanding immediate withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, but to no avail.


Following the events of the Iraq-Kuwait war, about half of the Kuwaiti population, including 400,000 Kuwaits and several thousand foreign nationals, fled the country. The Indian government evacuated 111,711 overseas Indians by flying 488 flights over 59 days. It was the largest civilian evacuation in the history.

Alaa Hussein Ali was placed as head of apuppet government in Kuwait, prior to its brief annexation into Iraq.


During the 7-month occupation, the forces of Saddam Hussein looted Kuwait's vast wealth and there were also reports of violations of human rights.

A 2005 study revealed that the Iraqi occupation had a long-term adverse impact on the health of the Kuwaiti populace.

 

[superbeets]

As for Sadam

IRAQ IRAN WAR


Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq, quite deliberately started the war.


During the eight years between Iraq’s formal declaration of war on September 22, 1980, and Iran’s acceptance of a cease-fire with effect on July 20, 1988, at the very least half a million and possibly twice as many troops were killed on both sides, at least half a million became permanent invalids, some 228 billion dollars were directly expended, and more than 400 billion dollars of damage (mostly to oil facilities, but also to cities) was inflicted, mostly by artillery barrages.

 

[superbeets]

As for Sadam are we now up to speed.

 

[neverbend]

As for Sadam are we now up to speed.

Absolutely, thanks for keeping me on my toes. Iraq is so much a better place to live now that Saddam was beheaded by the
Shiite government that was DEMOCRATICALLY elected & turned Iraq into a cesspool of religous sect rivalries. Yikes!

 

[neverbend]

As for Assad:

He's a secular leader not a religious fanatic who has the support of the minority Drues & Christians in his country.
His army is the only thing interfering ISIS from taking over the entire country. I pity the Drues & Christians who
sided with Assad if ISIS triumphs. Nobody is saying that Assad, Khaddafi or Saddam were great guys but they
kept the Islamic fundamentalist in check & history is clearly showing that despots who keep order should never
be overthrown by our government. As a matter of fact there are hundreds of Sadam & Khaddafi wannabees vying
for power at this moment but I doubt no one for a long while will be able to put the genie back in the bottle.
Adopting the war policies of Crazy John McCain is simply a bad idea.

 

[superbeets]

As for Assad:

He's a secular leader not a religious fanatic who has the support of the minority Drues & Christians in his country.
His army is the only thing interfering ISIS from taking over the entire country. I pity the Drues & Christians who
sided with Assad if ISIS triumphs. Nobody is saying that Assad, Khaddafi or Saddam were great guys but they
kept the Islamic fundamentalist in check & history is clearly showing that despots who keep order should never
be overthrown by our government. As a matter of fact there are hundreds of Sadam & Khaddafi wannabees vying
for power at this moment but I doubt no one for a long while will be able to put the genie back in the bottle.
Adopting the war policies of Crazy John McCain is simply a bad idea.

Assad is done, he is on the point of military collapse.

 

[neverbend]

Assad is done, he is on the point of military collapse.

That was what Obama was saying a year and a half ago. From your posts I get the impression that your candidate
is Lidsey Gramnesty!

 

[The Guesser]

As for Sadam are we now up to speed.

He had got rid of all the WMD's long before idiot W Bush invaded him because idiot W Bush lied about him having WMD's. NOW we are up to speed about Sadaam, but more importantly the idiot that invaded his country and handed it to Iran, and made it ripe for ISIS to be created and thrive.

 

[The Guesser]

Assad is done, he is on the point of military collapse.

As he was in August, 2012? http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2012/08/syria-on-the-verge-of-collapse/100352/

 

[akphidelt]

I'm all for blowing up the middle east, I just find it funny how conservatives are all about building democracies and philanthropic policing efforts these days. Going in to Iraq literally did nothing to protect American's. And the only reason ISIS is a "big deal" is because they show the world how evil they are. As if Saddam and his chronies didn't kill people in despicable ways. Conservatives need ISIS to be dangerous so they can blame it on Obama. It's always sickening how cowardly they are. Iraq was a disaster that accomplished nothing.

We were there for 10 years and you're blaming Obama for ISIS? Lmao. How long were we supposed to be there to satisfy your democracy building efforts?

I always just find it humorous because you know if Obama wanted to go democracy building they would probably start rioting in the streets. But, gotta stick up for the cult no matter what.

 

[superbeets]

As he was in August, 2012? http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2012/08/syria-on-the-verge-of-collapse/100352/

2015 March -Opposition offensives push back government forces. New Jaish al-Fatah (Army of Conquest) Islamist rebel alliance, backed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, captures provincial capital of Idlib.
Southern Front alliance of secular and Islamist groups take Jordanian border crossing at Nassib.



2015 May - Islamic State fighters seize the ancient city of Palmyra in central Syria, raising concerns that they might destroy the pre-Islamic World Heritage site. They also capture last border crossing to Iraq.Jaish al-Fatah takes control of Idlib Province, putting pressure on government's coastal stronghold of Latakia.