Ron Paul, Apologist for Dictators

Aside from the distraction of waiting to see of his eyebrow would slip and fall again, I listened to Chris Wallace's interview with Ron Paul on Fox News Sunday. Aside from his glossing over the isolationist charges against him by narrowly focusing only on trade, he revealed how the US would "intervene" in foreign affairs in a Ron Paul administration.

He doesn't want to use predator drones, because he claims that collateral damage "creates ten times as many enemies" for the US than they take out.

He doesn't want to use troops, but rather bring them all home. All of them.

He doesn't want to use sanctions, because, as in Iraq, "little kids couldn't get medicine".

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Back the truck up! This is the same argument liberals used back when Uncle Saddam was in power, to try to get the US to lift sanctions against Iraq, and it was a lie then, too.

In those days, most of the reporting in Iraq came with a price. Aside from the cash that "journalists" would pay for access to the country, a representative of Saddam's repressive government would accompany any journalist or documentarian and monitor the answers to any questions asked. This was also a time when the rape rooms and Abu Ghraib were run by people who genuinely tortured and killed the prisoners there. So, the sampling was "skewed" to say the least. People did not tell the truth for fear of their lives. Even CNN bravely admitted (after the dictator was gone) that they had censored themselves lest Saddam proclaim them persona non grata.

But let's examine the leftie lie that Ron Paul seems to have bought into, that "little kids couldn't get medicine". Was it that there was no money to buy medicine for children? U.N. Security Council Resolution 986 allowed Iraq to sell enough oil to buy medicine. We know that Uncle Saddam, dear grandfatherly Uncle Saddam, had millions of dollars to build and furnish lavish new palaces. Millions for luxury but not one thin dime for sick children? This was a political calculation of a ruthless and heartless dictator. He used the suffering of sick children, giving copious access to allow photos and video of sick children to leave the country, to tug on the heartstrings of the West and try to manipulate the West into lifting sanctions. (Videos of suffering children may have been Iraq's second biggest export during the sanctions.)

Was it that there was no medicine to be found that could be made available to sick children? After the liberation of Iraq, there was at least one warehouse that was found stacked to the rafters with medicine set aside for Saddam's so-called Republican Guard.

From a Department of State report in 1999:

*Iraq is actually exporting food, even though it says its people are malnourished...

*Baby milk sold to Iraq through the oil-for-food program has been found in markets throughout the Gulf, demonstrating that the Iraqi regime is depriving its people of much-needed goods in order to make an illicit profit.

*Kuwaiti authorities recently seized a shipment coming out of Iraq carrying, among other items, baby powder, baby bottles, and other nursing materials for resale overseas.

Saddam Hussein’s priorities are clear. If given control of Iraq’s resources, Saddam Hussein would use them to rearm and threaten the region, not to improve the lot of the Iraqi people.

There is ample proof that lifting sanctions would offer the Iraqi people no relief from neglect at the hands of their government

*Sanctions prevent Saddam from spending money on rearmament, but do not stop him from spending money on food and medicine for Iraqis.

*Saddam’s priorities are clear: palaces for himself, prisons for his people, and weapons to destroy Iraq’s citizens and its neighbors. He has built 48 palaces for himself since the Gulf War. He would not use Iraq’s resources to improve the lives of Iraqis. Saddam Hussein would use them to rearm and threaten the region.

This ain't bean bag, Mr. Paul. If you want to strengthen your flaccid reputation on foreign policy, you might want to start by getting your facts straight. How much "medicine for little kids" could you get for the price of 47 of those 48 palaces? If children did not have medicine in Iraq, it was because a brutal dictator denied it to them. A dictator who was removed, by the way, by the use of force, by those troops you never would have sent. But, according to you, you would have traded with Saddam and would have been his "friend". Yeah. That would have worked!

You can't have it both ways, Congressman. If you want to tug on our heartstrings about little kids who can't get medicine because of our big mean sanctions, how about we mention the kids' mothers who were raped by Saddam and his sons, their fathers who were killed because they did not toe the tyrant's line, and their playmate who were gassed because they were born to the wrong parents?

The report card on Ron Paul still stands: Domestic policy A+, Foreign policy F- .

My apologies to all you Ron Paul fans out there, but cold hard facts are cold hard facts.

Cross posted at LCR, Say Anything.