by Paul Balles
The Boston Globe called U.S. presidential candidate Ron Paul a “Republican maverick”.
The label has been attached to Paul primarily because he differs from the other Republican presidential candidates on foreign policy. Said The Globe after the presidential debate In Des Moines, Iowa on December 10th:
“While most of the Republican candidates are open to military action against Iran, Paul advocates diplomacy. While several of the candidates oppose cutting the defence budget, Paul wants to slash it. Paul was one of the only candidates in the debate to oppose extending the Patriot Act.”
For those unfamiliar with the Patriot Act, it was enacted presumably to help fight terrorism after 9/11 while sacrificing individual rights.
According to The Globe, “Dean Spiliotes, an independent political analyst from New Hampshire, said Paul’s foreign policy contradicts core Republican tenets of strong national security and defence. But it appeals to Americans who are tired of war and focused on economic issues.”
The foreign policy differences between Ron Paul and his adversaries make him an ideal candidate for those tired of America’s war hawks bankrupting the country.
During the Republican candidates’ debate, Paul didn’t believe Israel would actually strike Iran–but if it did, “we need to get out of their way,” he cautioned.
“When they want to have peace treaties, we tell them what they can do because we buy their allegiance and they sacrifice their sovereignty to us,” admonished Paul.
“They decide they want to bomb something?” asked Paul. “That’s their business, but they should suffer the consequences. Israel has 200–300 nuclear missiles and they can take care of themselves.”
For an American politician to make comments like that took courage. The one that followed would certainly upset American Israeli supporters:
“We don’t even have a treaty with Israel. Why do we have this automatic commitment that we’re going to send our kids and send our money endlessly to Israel?”
In the debate, the other candidates were falling all over themselves, attempting to show their dedication to Israel. The leading candidate, Mitt Romney groaned:
“There’s no price which is worth an Iranian nuclear weapon. And the right course is to show that we care about Israel, that they are our friend; we’ll stick with them.”
This is the same pre-emptive war hawk rubbish that Bush and Cheney and the Zioncons fed the public as the way to combat terrorism when, in fact, they were telling Israel and its lobbies that America will eternally fight Israel’s wars.
Promised Romney, “If I’m president of the United States, my first foreign trip will be to Israel to show the world we care about that country and that region.”
The Republican candidates, except Ron Paul, all go overboard in their attempts to prove to the supporters in America that they will serve the interests of Israel at any cost.
Of course, the rest of the world doesn’t need to be shown that the U.S. cares about Israel. The only politician unwilling to sacrifice America for Israel is Ron Paul.
The American Arab Anti-discrimination Committee (ADC) recently illustrated the problem with Republicans’ unabated support for Israel:
“Among politicians, Newt Gingrich called the Palestinian people an ‘invented people’, Eric Cantor said that Palestinian culture was ‘infused with hatred and resentment,’ and Mitt Romney said that he would consult with Benjamin Netanyahu in making U.S. policy toward Palestinians because, apparently, Israel does not have enough say in U.S. policy toward the Middle East.”
If Ron Paul miraculously receives continuing strong support, his voting public will be tired of sacrificing America on Israel’s altar.
Navy SEALs Want to Build Training Facilities in Virginia Beach, Va.
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News April 29, 2004 By Matthew Dolan, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News Apr. 29–VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Chesapeake Bay, the SEALs want to build a home away from home.
The Navy’s elite commandos based at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base plan to build a pair of multi-million-dollar training facilities deep inside Fort Story over the next decade.
New training sites in Virginia Beach could ease two chronic problems for locally based SEALs: time wasted by traveling great distances to find adequate training bases and not being able to use the ranges whenever they want.
Plans are still on the drawing board but officials expect to award a construction bid this spring for the first $5.2 million, three-story structure. see here navy seals training
Here, SEALs will train how to storm buildings using real explosives and hunt down the enemy hidden inside 6,000 square feet of individual rooms.
Lined with bulletproof steel walls and outfitted with removable walls, the Close Quarters Combat Trainer could be ready for SEAL training as early as August 2005 , said Lt. Cmdr. William W. Anderson Jr. , chief engineer for Naval Special Warfare Group Two at Little Creek.
A separate mock town with houses, shops and a church is planned for another 20 acres. Construction, estimated at $20.5 million, is not expected to begin on the SEAL’s Military Operations in Urban Terrain training village until 2011 .
When complete, Navy officials said, the ranges at Fort Story will offer the region’s most comprehensive training facilities for half of the nation’s Sea Air Land commandos known as SEALs.
The Navy has eight SEAL teams and 2,450 individual SEALs, about half of them based at Little Creek. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has increasingly called on SEALs and other special operations forces to man the front lines of conflicts around the world, including in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But training facilities have been tough to secure.
Today, Virginia Beach-based SEALs regularly travel hundreds of miles to Army forts in Arkansas, Tennessee and remote parts of Virginia to find appropriate facilities to practice everything from urban combat to prisoner of war rescues.
The distance is only exacerbated by the SEALs’ intense training schedule — often more than 250 days a year, said Chief Warrant Officer John Shellnutt, the acting officer-in-charge for training local SEALs.
“More than any other service, we rely on more training time as a team,” Shellnutt said. He expects about 350 SEALs to train at the Close Quarters Combat trainer once it’s up and running.
“We’d turn it into SEAL-world if we could,” he said of Fort Story. go to web site navy seals training
The Navy’s special operations forces have long struggled because there are few facilities solely dedicated to SEAL training.
“The buzz words around here are ‘assured access,'” he said. “At Fort Story, we’d have it.” Last-minute changes in how SEALs have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan has sometimes made it more difficult for Navy training officials to plan ahead, according to Shellnutt.
At Fort Story, the training facilities would be at the end of Shore Drive, a 6-mile ride from the SEAL headquarters at Little Creek.
The SEALs also will have first priority to use the training facilities tucked inside the base’s 1,451 acres, according to Lt. Col. Wesley L. Rehorn , Fort Story’s garrison commander.
“It saves money and time and reduces their operational tempo away from home,” said Rehorn, who formerly served as the operations officer for special operations at Joint Forces Command in Norfolk.
Rehorn added that the base also plans to build 248 new housing units within the next two years. The spate of new construction could help protect Fort Story during next year’s round of base closures.
The movement to secure additional training ranges is not only an East Coast phenomenon. By the end of the year, the Navy hopes to expand a 1,100-acre mountainous SEAL training range in southern California by 3,000 acres.
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