U.S. Rep. Ron Paul | al Qaida |
al Qaida
Congress Abandoned its Duty to Debate and Declare War
February 4, 2004 2004 Ron Paul 1:1
There is plenty of blame to go around for the mistakes made by going to war in Iraq, especially now that it is common knowledge Saddam Hussein told the truth about having no weapons of mass destruction, and that Al Qaida and 9/11 were in no way related to the Iraqi government.
al Qaida
Federal Intelligence and Terrorism
20 May 2002 Texas Straight Talk 20 May 2002 verse 4 ... Cached
Clearly the President did not know anything about particular dates, or that hijacked planes would be used as missiles and flown into buildings. In fact, it appears that many of the terrorists themselves did not know the true nature of their mission until the planes were in the air. The administration did know that Bin Laden rabidly hated the U.S., and that Al Qaida had threatened terrorist action, but this vague and generalized information could have applied to dozens of terrorist organizations. What exactly would we have the President do with this knowledge? Do we really think he should he have shut down the nation’s air travel system and caused widespread panic? Had he done so, the same politicians criticizing him now would have accused him of overreacting. Hindsight gives us easy wisdom now, but our focus should be on preventing terrorism in the future. We should take the present opportunity not to criticize the President, but rather to take a hard look at both our intelligence practices and our foreign policy.
al Qaida
Federal Intelligence and Terrorism
20 May 2002 Texas Straight Talk 20 May 2002 verse 5 ... Cached
It is perfectly reasonable to question the failure of our federal intelligence community to detect and prevent the September 11 attacks. We should remember that the most of our knowledge about the Al Qaida threat was gathered, or should have been gathered, by the Clinton CIA. Both the CIA and the FBI knew Bin Laden was active during the 1990s, particularly after our bombing of his facilities in Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998. Yet despite the $40 billion annual intelligence budget, our convoluted system of intelligence gathering has not made us more secure.
al Qaida
Will We Bring bin Laden to Justice?
23 September 2002 Texas Straight Talk 23 September 2002 verse 2 ... Cached
A year has passed since the terrible September 11th terror attacks, yet still we seem unable to locate Osama bin Laden or his al Qaida associates.
al Qaida
Will We Bring bin Laden to Justice?
23 September 2002 Texas Straight Talk 23 September 2002 verse 3 ... Cached
President Bush has made it clear that he intends to use "all appropriate means" to oust Saddam Hussein, although everyone concedes that Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th. So why is the same approach not justified for the al Qaida criminals directly responsible for 3000 American deaths?
al Qaida
Will We Bring bin Laden to Justice?
23 September 2002 Texas Straight Talk 23 September 2002 verse 4 ... Cached
We seem to have forgotten that our primary objective in the war on terror is to capture or kill bin Laden and his henchmen. One year ago, the desire for retribution against bin Laden was tangible. President Bush referred to finding him "dead or alive." And while the hunger for vengeance was understandable, the practical need to destroy al Qaida before it mounted another terror attack was urgent. Yet we have allowed the passage of time and the false specter of an Iraq threat to distract us from our original purpose. We’re preoccupied with an invasion of Iraq, which actually will benefit bin Laden by removing a secular regime led by his enemy Saddam Hussein. This vacuum may well lead to a more fundamentalist Kurd government in Iraq that aligns itself with al Qaida.
al Qaida
The Price of Delaying the Inevitable in Iraq
04 June 2007 Texas Straight Talk 04 June 2007 verse 5 ... Cached
All of this hyperbole came while ignoring the precise warnings by our intelligence community of the great difficulties that would lie ahead. The chaos that this preemptive, undeclared war has created in Iraq has allowed the Al Qaida to establish a foothold in Iraq and the strategic interests of Iran to be served.
al Qaida
The Price of Delaying the Inevitable in Iraq
04 June 2007 Texas Straight Talk 04 June 2007 verse 10 ... Cached
Most Americans do not anticipate a military victory in Iraq , yet the Washington politicians remain frozen in their unwillingness to change our policy there, fearful of the dire predictions that conditions can only get worse when we leave. They refuse to admit that the condition of foreign occupation is the key ingredient that unleashed the civil war now raging in Iraq and serves as a recruitment device for Al Qaida.
Texas Straight Talk from 20 December 1996 to 23 June 2008 (573 editions) are included in this Concordance. Texas Straight Talk after 23 June 2008 is in blog form on Rep. Paul’s Congressional website and is not included in this Concordance.
Remember, not everything in the concordance is Ron Paul’s words. Some things he quoted, and he added some newspaper and magazine articles to the Congressional Record. Check the original speech to see.