The Republican smear machine is revving up its motors, getting ready to launch a typically vicious campaign against Ron Paul, the only real threat to their death-grip on the GOP. Since the first assault, a piece by Ryan Sager in the New York Sun, failed — the charges of “racism” were based on tenuous documentation and fall apart when examined up close — the second wave has been launched: a piece in The Politico, headlined: “Ron Paul Warns of Staged Terror Attack.” It links to a clip of a radio interview with Ron, conducted by Alex Jones, and hosted on the Breitbart.com site — part of the neocon-Drudge propaganda network.
If you listen to the interview, one thing is clear: Paul said no such thing. Jones asked him a 5-minute-long question that melded together all sorts of disparate elements, including the possibility of a staged US government-sponsored terrorist attack and a US military attack on Iran. Ron focused exclusively on the latter, and said that the great danger comes from a “Gulf of Tonkin“-type incident involving Iran. No mention is made by Paul of a staged terrorist attack on US soil.
Ron spends the rest of the interview talking about what a disaster an attack on Iran would turn out to be, and then launches into his favorite subject: the economic consequences of our spendthrift ways, and the impossibility of maintaining our empire of debt.
The Politico is telling a lie: their headline is a lie. What’s amazing about this particular smear is that it is so transparently obvious: after all, in this day and age, we don’t need intermediaries and “gate-keepers” telling us what Paul said, we can refer directly to it by linking to it. And anyone who listens to what Ron says in this interview cannot come away thinking that he said the US government is going to stage a terrorist attack on its own people on American soil or anywhere else.
The smears are starting to come, just as some people feared: but there is no reason to quake and quail. The lies of the neocons are so brazen, so easily debunked, and so obviously motivated by people with an agenda, that they will boomerang on the smear artists — and wind up helping Ron rather than hurting him. The voters will begin to ask: who is taking out all the stops in an effort to destroy the candidacy of a good and honest man? Who is trying to frame him up on phony charges — and why?
Ask those bozos over at The Politico: (202) 289-1155.
UPDATE: Here the “Prison Planet” web site run by Jones complains that readers are writing in saying that Paul never said the words Jones tries to put in his mouth. Jones then — again — conflates Paul’s contention that a “Gulf of Tonkin” incident on the Iran-Iraq border is a danger with the wacked-out idea that the US government is going to stage a real terrorist attack against its own citizens. Apparently they believe their own readers are sooooooo stupid that they won’t notice they’re being lied to. Ditto, The Politico ….
