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Transcript:

Bill Weir: “We turn to politics now and the story of a bonafide grassroots sensation. Ron Paul is the only Republican to post notable fundraising gains last quarter. [He] managed to pull in five million dollars, mostly online, a lot of it from the troops and it puts him on par with John McCain. [The] Congressman and doctor now joins us from Dulles airport in Virginia. Good morning to you sir.”

Ron Paul: “Good Morning. Thank you for having me.”

BW: “Our pleasure. So, why do you think you are the only Republican to call for an end to this war? To break from the president.”

RP: “Well, uh, I think its a message that people want to hear and, uh, I’ve been talking this way for a long time and now we’ve finally got some attention and the people are rallying behind us and they’re willing to put their money where their mouth is and the campaign keeps growing so we’re very pleased with whats happening.”

BW: “You don’t do any hand ringing when it comes to how we leave Iraq and what it means for our future and our relations in the Middle East.”

RP: “I-I’m sorry I didn’t that last — that sentence.”

BW: “[There is] so much concern about how we pull out and the Iraq we leave…”

RP: “Oh yeah, I don’t think its complicated. I mean, we just went in, we went in erroneously, we went in without the proper authority, we went in under a false pretense and all the conditions that were claimed didn’t exist — its just going badly. So I think we should just leave because staying there makes things worse. It endangers us, it increases the dangers of terrorism. There used to be six hundred Al-Qaeda [in Iraq], before we went in there, now theres probably six thousand. We don’t know. So everything we’re doing there is backfiring on us. It’s, uh, theres too many unintended consequences. So the very simple thing is that we ought to come home and mind our own business and save a lot of money and take care of problems here at home.”

BW: “You are an old school libertarian. You want to do away with Social Security, the Department of Education, the Drug Enforcement [Agency], and Abolish the IRS. How do you pay the bills then?”

RP: Well, you just spend a lot less money. You know, how did we pay our bills before 1913? We didn’t have a warfare state. We didn’t have an empire to take care of and we didn’t have a welfare state that was undermining our prosperity. So, I would say, why don’t we look to our history and look to our traditions and look to see how markets work and look to see how freedom works and pay attention to the Constitution? We really don’t need an income tax. I mean, if you didn’t have an income tax, you would have the same amount of income you had about seven years ago. So its not like its the end of the world. But you do have to cut back spending. The easiest place to cut back politically is overseas. We are spending over a trillion dollars overseas maintaining an empire which does nothing more than get us in trouble and undermines our national defense.”

BW: “Well you can see why you are a big hit on Facebook. You’re right below Paris Hilton and right above Mario Lopez on blog searches. How do you take this to the next level? How do you compete with the big money guys?”

RP: “Well we keep staying on the trajectory. I mean we’re, uh, we doubled the amount of money we raised last time. We had about 40,000 new donors. The average donation was forty dollars. So we keep doing this and we run a frugal campaign. The other campaigns are wasting their money. We have less personnel and we have more money in the bank than what we raised last quarter. We have five point three million dollars [in the bank]. If we keep doubling this we’re going to have plenty of money to advertise in the primaries. So I would say, keep doing what we’re doing. And the more people that here this message, the more they rally around us. It’s such a great message, the message of freedom and what America is all about and prosperity and hop.”

BW: “Thank you congressman, we appreciate your time. We’ll let you catch your plane”

RP: “Thanks you.”

BW: “Ron Paul. Thanks”

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During that time period the military was attempting to rebuild Iraqi forces that had recently disbanded amid increasing attacks from Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias.

Since 2004 the military “has not consistently collected supporting records confirming the dates the equipment was received, the quantities of equipment delivered, or the Iraqi units receiving the items,” the report said.

“Since 2006 the command has placed greater emphasis on collecting the supporting documents. However, GAO’s review of the January 2007 property books found continuing problems with missing and incomplete records.”

The US government has, in the past, accused countries like Iran of supplying weapons to enemy militia groups in Iraq yet they can not locate 190,000 weapons of their own. Weapons that may be in use by the aforementioned illegal militias against American soldiers.

The government of Turkey has recently expressed concern over cross-border raids from enemy forces who used US issued weaponry.

Is the US government selling these arms to countries that are hostile towards us and our allies? Are the Iraqi soldiers selling the weapons? Why is the US government not watching what the Iraqi special forces are doing with US issued weaponry?

The answers to these questions are beyond me, but they need to be answered. Hopefully, someone will be held accountable.

digg it

A military jury at Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base sentenced Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III to 15 years in prison for the murder of an Iraqi grandfather. Hutchins, a U.S. Marine squad leader, had bragged to his colleagues that he had “got away with murder.”

Hutchins was charged with unpremeditated murder, larceny and other crimes, along with receiving a reprimand and dishonorable discharge.

When the verdict was read his wife and mother sobbed; Hutchins’s face conveyed no emotion or guilt. He lowered his head to the table once.

The former U.S. Marine leader is the father of a 2-year-old daughter was also in the courtroom. He was allowed to spend a short period of time with his family before he was transported to a military brig.

The sentence related to an April 2006 incident in which seven Marines and a Navy medic captured and shot 52 year old Hashim Ibrahim, a father of eleven and grandfather of four. Ibrahim was captured in the dead of night when the Marines could not find his neighbor who was a terrorism suspect.

According to witnesses, the gang of armed men planted an AK-47 and a shovel next to his corpse to make it appear as though he had been planting a road side bomb.

Hutchins applauded his men saying, “We just got away with murder.”

Hutchins convictions makes him the eight person to be sentenced in relation to the crime. He was the only one convicted of murder.

shout it

Three armed robots, nicknamed SWORDS, have begun patrolling the streets of Iraq. The robots “haven’t fired their weapons yet,” says Michael Zecca, the SWORDS program manager, “But that’ll be happening soon.”

Robots on the streets of Iraq is far from a new occurrence. In fact, they have been there since the beginning of the occupation. This is, however, the first time in the history of armed conflict that the patrolling robots have been equipped with weaponry.

SWORDS, an acronym meaning “special weapons observation remote reconnaissance direct action system”, are equipped with M249 machine guns.

Robots, in the past, have mainly been used for surveillance and bomb-disposal.

The SWORDS were originally declared ready for duty in 2004 but safety concerns kept them off the streets. Some of the machines had a problem where they would inexplicable spin out of control.

Hopefully these problems have been fixed.

The ‘bots now have kill switches and electronic and manual safeties to help prevent any disastrous mistakes.

The sadistic dictator is finally dead:

This actually came as a bit of a surprise to me. I figured he would appeal the verdict for years before he was actually executed. Turns out Iraq’s government does not work that way. Oh well, one more evil bastard dead is never a bad thing. At least the United States government ended one evil regime. Too bad we can not seem to replace it with anything too much better. When will we learn to stay out of the business of other countries?