Daily Archives: May 14, 2013

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Former Texas Rep. Ron Paul criticized Democrats and Republicans Monday for ignoring what he sees as the true cause of the Benghazi attacks: their mutual support of military interventionism overseas and its unintended consequences.

The libertarian and former GOP presidential hopeful wrote in an op-ed Monday that the post-Benghazi discussion on Capitol Hill has been more of a sideshow than an honest investigation of what motivated the attacks that left the U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead.

SEE RELATED: McCain senses Benghazi cover-up, wants more Clinton testimony

Neither side wants to talk about the real lesson of Benghazi: Interventionism always carries with it unintended consequences, Mr. Paul said. The U.S. attack on Libya led to the unleashing of Islamist radicals in Libya. These radicals have destroyed the country, murdered thousands, and killed the U.S. ambassador.

Mr. Paul said that both parties are playing a blame game.

Democrats, he said, are making the bogus claim that the attacks were somehow tied to Republican spending cuts. And Republicans, he said, smell a political opportunity over the Obama administrations scrubbing of the initial so-called talking points on the attack, which Mr. Paul said should not come as a shock because that is standard operating procedure for the U.S. government.

Republicans want to draw attention to the presidents editing talking points in hopes no one will notice that if the attack on Libya they supported had not taken place, Ambassador Stevens would be alive today, Mr. Paul said.

Mr. Pauls op-ed follows the high-profile testimony last week from Gregory N. Hicks, State Departments deputy chief of mission in Libya at the time of the terrorist attack, who said he was stunned that U.S. Ambassador Susan E. Rice said the assault appeared to have grown out of a spontaneous demonstration against an anti-Islamic video produced in the U.S.

It also comes days after his son, Sen. Rand Paul, a likely 2016 presidential contender, starting making the case in a Washington Times op-ed and at an appearance at a GOP dinner in Iowa that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should be precluded from holding higher office because of the way she handled the Benghazi attacks.

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Ron Paul: Benghazi a result of U.S. 'interventionism'

Ron Paul on Monday dismissed Republican and White House claims about Benghazi as a sideshow and said GOP criticisms on the issue are politically motivated.

Republicans smell a political opportunity over evidence that the administration heavily edited initial intelligence community talking points about the attack to remove or soften anything that might reflect badly on the president or the State Department, Paul, a libertarian-leaning former Republican congressman and presidential candidate, charged in a column posted on Monday.

His comments came as reports indicated that official talking points about the deadly Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, had been stripped of references to terrorism. President Barack Obama, for his part, on Monday rejected criticism over the talking points as a sideshow. Paul, too, used that word but in a very different context.

The real lesson of Benghazi will not be learned because neither Republicans nor Democrats want to hear it, he concluded. But it is our interventionist foreign policy and its unintended consequences that have created these problems, including the attack and murder of Ambassador Stevens. The disputed talking points and White House whitewashing are just a sideshow.

(PHOTOS: Ron Paul's career)

Pauls son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), on Friday took a different tack, laying responsibility with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

She is absolutely responsible, the younger Paul, considered a possible 2016 candidate, said last week. She was in charge of the State Department. She was asked repeatedly for increased security for Benghazi. Some of the media have been reporting that because she didnt read them shes protected she wasnt responsible because she didnt read them? I fault her absolutely for not reading the cables.

The elder Paul, a vocal critic of interventionist foreign policy, noted that many Republicans had supported the Obama administrations 2011 military actions in Libya that contributed to the fall of Muammar Qadhafi. Those steps, he argued, helped facilitate last falls attacks in Benghazi, which killed the American ambassador, Chris Stevens, as well as three other Americans.

Who can blame the administration for wanting to shift the focus? Paul wrote. The Islamic radicals who attacked Benghazi were the same people let loose by the US-led attack on Libya. They were the rebels on whose behalf the US overthrew the Libyan government. Ambassador Stevens was slain by the same Islamic radicals he personally assisted just over one year earlier.

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Ron Paul rips both sides on Benghazi