Solar, Wind, Renewables and More....Green Earl Goes Global

Solar, Wind, Bio, Energy News And Commentary By_Green Earl, 30 year Pioneer In Conservation & Solar Energy and Global Internet Marketer

Green Earl is now Global Green Earl. That's right,
we are going world wide and we'd like to take you
with us this time.  A trip around the globe starts
with the first step.  Please leave your name and
email below so we can start this journey together.

_Global Green Earl

Full Name:
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Obama Supporters, Administration! You want the truth on Afghanistan? You can't handle it._Green Earl

Solar, Wind, Bio, Energy News And Commentary By_Green Earl, 30 year Pioneer In Conservation & Solar Energy

Sorry about this commentary because there is nothing GREEN about War except the money
these son's of bitches can steal during one.  Volunteered Vietnam Military Police Sentry Dog
Army Vet Against The War. (All of em)


Green Earl

You are so right to talk about your experience and pain. Duping people into war is a crime. Watch our news and you see beautiful, richly dressed yuppies, talking heads. Watch al Jazeera, and you see dead bodies, civilians in other countries we have killed.

JaneAnne

*

On Dec 4, 2009, at 2:53 AM, Earl Allen Boek wrote:

WE called it Janeanne!  I hate it when I'm right about such things.

Al Boek, Redding, CA. 

530-549-4315 


http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/yeswecansolveit

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From: JaneAnne Jeffries <janeannej@mac.com>
To: Southern Californians for Obama <SouthernCaliforniansforObama@groups.barackobama.com>
Sent: Thu, December 3, 2009 6:15:10 PM
Subject: [SouthernCaliforniansforObama] Re: Re: Re: from the article you found

Here are my worst fears. It's long, so skim or delete.

ja

BUT REALLY WORTH THE READ IF YOU TRULY WANT TO KNOW
THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT'S HAPPENED IN WASHINGTON, DC.

*

Tomgram: Meet the Commanded-in-Chief

By Tom Engelhardt

Posted on December 3, 2009, Printed on December 3, 2009
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175172/

[Thursday Afternoon Update:  The Obama administration's surge math:  In his speech on Tuesday night at West Point, the president announced a surge of 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan in the coming months.  That sounded way higher than a lot of Democrats might have wanted, but still below the optimal figure -- 40,000 -- that Afghan War commander Stanley McChrystal had requested. (or, depending on how you read the various leaks and news stories of the last months, perhaps demanded).  Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post now reports, however, that the President granted Secretary of Defense Robert Gates the right to "increase the number by 10 percent, or 3,000 troops, without additional White House approval or announcement."  Think of it, in restaurant terms, as the equivalent of a surge tip.  In addition, DeYoung adds that an unnamed "senior military official" claimed "that the final number could go as high as 35,000 to allow for additional support personnel such as engineers, medevac units and route-clearance teams, which comb roads for bombs."  So now, in surge math, we're at 35,000 U.S. troops.  Add in the expected NATO contribution of about 5,000 extra troops and -- voilà -- you have 40,000 on the button.  No wonder the Afghan War comma nder is reportedly satisfied.  Tom] 

[Note for Readers:  Last week, I wrote an address for the president, "The Afghan Speech Obama Should Give (But Won't)," which got a fair amount of attention.  Now that the president has given a far more predictable speech, I thought some of you might still be interested in taking a look and thinking about what possibilities exist, even if only outside Washington's airless corridors of power, when it comes to the Afghan War.  Tom]

Victory at Last!
Monty Python in Afghanistan
By Tom Engelhardt

Let others deal with the details of President Obama's Afghan speech, with the on-ramps and off-ramps, those 30,000 U.S. troops going in and just where they will be deployed, the benchmarks for what's called "good governance" in Afghanistan, the corruption of the Karzai regime, the viability of counterinsurgency warfare, the reliability of NATO allies, and so on.  Let's just skip to the most essential point which, in a nutshell, is this:  Victory at Last!

It's been a long time coming, but finally American war commanders have effectively marshaled their forces, netcentrically outmaneuvering and o utflanking the enemy.  They have shocked-and-awed their opponents, won the necessary hearts-and-minds, and so, for the first time in at least two decades, stand at the heights of success, triumphant at last. 

And no, I'm not talking about post-surge Iraq and certainly not about devolving Afghanistan.  I'm talking about what's happening in Washington.

A Symbolic Surrender of Civilian Authority

You may not think so, but on Tuesday night from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, in his first prime-time presidential address to the nation, Barack Obama surrendered.  It may not have looked like that: there were no surrender documents; he wasn't on the deck of the USS Missouri; he never bowed his head.  Still, from today on, think of him not as the commander-in-chief, but as the commanded-in-chief. 

And give credit to the victors.  Their campaign was nothing short of brilliant.  Like the policy brigands they were, they ambushed the president, held him up with their threats, broug ht to bear key media players and Republican honchos, and in the end made off with the loot.  The campaign began in late September with a strategic leak of Afghan War commander General Stanley McChrystal's grim review of the situation in that country, including demands for sizeable troop escalations and a commitment to a counterinsurgency war.  It came to include rumors of potential retirements in protest if the president didn't deliver, as well as clearly insubordin ate policy remarks by General McChrystal, not to speak of an impressive citizen-mobilization of inside-the-Beltway former neocon or fighting liberal think-tank experts, and a helping hand from an admiring media.  In the process, the U.S. military succeeded in boxing in a president who had already locked himself into a conflict he had termed both "the right war" and a "necessary" one.  After more than two months of painfully over-reported deliberations, President Obama has now ended up essentially where General McChrystal began. 

Counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine was dusted off from the moldy Vietnam archives and made spanking new by General David Petraeus in 2006, applied in Iraq (and Washington) in 2007, and put forward for Afghanistan in late 2008.  It has now been largely endorsed, and a major escalation of the war -- a new kind of m ilitary-led nation building (or, as they like to say, "good governance") is to be cranked up and set in motion.  COIN is being billed as a "population-centric," not "enemy-centric" approach in which U.S. troops are distinctly to be "nation-builders as well as warriors."  

And as for those 30,000 troops, most expected to arrive in the Afghan combat zone within the next six months, the numbers are even more impressive when you realize that, as late as the summer of 2008, the U.S. only had about28,000 troops in Afghanista n.  In other words, in less than two years, U.S. troop strength in that country will have more than tripled to approximately 100,000 troops.  So we're talking near-Vietnam-level escalation rates.  If you include the 38,000 NATO forces also there (and a possible 5,000 more to come), total allied troop strength will be significantly above what the Soviets deployed during their devastating Afghan War of the 1980s in which they fought some of the same insurgents now arrayed against us. 

Think of this as Barack Obama's anti-MacArthur momen t.  In April 1951, in the midst of the Korean War, President Harry Truman relieved Douglas MacArthur of command of American forces.  He did so because the general, a far grander public figure than either McChrystal or Centcom commander Petraeus (and with dreams of his own about a possible presidential run), had publicly disagreed with, and interfered with, Truman's plans to "limit" the war after the Chinese intervened. 

Obama, too, has faced what Robert Dreyfuss in Rolling Stone calls a "generals' revolt" -- amid fears that his Republican opposition would line up behind the insubordinate field commanders and make hay in the 2010 and 2012 election campaigns.  Obama, too, has faced a general, Petraeus, who might well have presidential ambitions, and who has played a far subtler game than MacArthur ever did.  After more than two months of what right-wing critics termed "dithering" and supporters called "thorough deliberations," Obama dealt with the problem quite differently.  He essentially agreed to subordinate himself to the publicly stated wishes of his field commanders.  (Not that his Republican critics will give him much credit for doing so, of course.)  This is called "politics" in our country and, for a Democratic president in our era, Tuesday night's end result was remarkably pr edictable.   

When Obama bowed to the Japanese emperor on his recent Asian tour, there was a media uproar in this country.  Even though the speech Tuesday night should be thought of as bowing to the American military, there is likely to be little complaint on that score.  Similarly, despite the significance of symbolism in Washington, there has been surprisingly little discussion about the president's decision to address the American people not from the Oval Office, but from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.   

It was there that, in 2002, George W. Bush gave a speech before the assembled cadets in which he laid out his aggressive strategy of preventive war, which would become the cornerstone of "the Bush Doctrine."  ("If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long -- Our security will require transforming the military you will lead -- a military that must be r eady to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world. And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives.")  But keep in mind that this was still a graduation speech and presidents have traditionally addressed one of the military academies at graduation time. 

Obama is not a man who appears in prop military jackets with "commander-in-chief" hand-stitched across his heart before hoo-aahing crowds of soldiers, as our last president loved to do, and yet in his first months in office he has increasingly appeared at military events and associated himself with things military.  This speech represents another step in that direction.  Has a president ever, in fact, given a non-graduation speech at West Point, no less a major address to the American people?  Certainly, the choice of venue, and so the decision to address a military audience first and other Americans second, not only emphasized the escalatory military path chosen in Afghanistan, but represented a kind of symbolic surrender of civilian authority. 

For his American audience, and undoubtedly his skittish NATO allies as well, the president did put a significant emphasis on an exit strategy from the war.  That off-ramp strategy was, however, placed in the context of the training of the woeful Afghan security forces to take control of the struggle themselves and the woeful government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to turn over a new nation-building leaf.  Like the choice of West Point, this, too, seemed to resonate with eerie echoes of the years in which George W. Bush regularly intoned the mantra:  "As Iraqis stand-up, we will stand down." 

In his address, Obama offered July 2011 as the date to begin withdrawing the first U.S. troops from Afghanistan.  ("After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.")  However, according to the Washington-insider Nelson Report, a White House "on background" press briefing Tuesday afternoon made it far clearer that the president was talking about a "conditions based withdrawal." It would, in other words, depend "on objective conditions on the ground," on whether the Afghans had met the necessary "benchmarks."  When asked about the "scaling back" of the American war effort, General McChrystal recently suggested a more conservative timeline -- "sometime before 2013" -- seconded hazily by Said Jawad, the Afghan ambassador to Washington.  Secretary of Defense Robert Gates refers to this as a "thinning out" of U.S. forces.

In fact, there's no reason to put faith in any of these hazy deadlines.&nbs p; After all, this is the administration that came into office announcing a firm one-year closing date for the U.S. prison in Guantanamo (now officially missed), a firm sunshine policy for an end-of-2009 release of millions of pages of historical documents from the archives of the CIA and other intelligence and military services (now officially delayed, possibly for years), and of course a firm date for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops, followed by all U.S. forces from Iraq (now possibly slipping). 

Finish the job in Afghanistan?  Based on the plans of the field commanders to whom the president has bowed, on the administration's record of escalation in the war so far, and on the quiet reassurances to the Pakistanis that we aren't leaving Afghanistan in any imaginable future, this war looks to be all job and no finish.  Whatever the flourishes, that was the essence of Tuesday night's surrender speech. 

Monty Python in Afghanistan

Honestly, if it weren't so grim, despite all the upbeat benchmarks and encouraging words in the president's speech, this would certainly qualify as Monty Python in Afghanistan.  After all, three cabinet ministers and 12 former ministers are under investigation in Afghanistan itself on corruption charges.  And that barely scratches the surface of the problems in a country that one Russian expert recently referred to as an "international drug firm," where at least one-third of the gross national product comes from the drug trade.  In addition, as Juan Cole wrote at his Informed Comment blog:

"Months after the controversial presidential election that many Afghans consider stolen, there is no cabinet, and parliament is threatening to go on recess before confirming a new one because the president is unconstitutionally late in presenting the names. There are grave suspicions that some past and present cabinet members have engaged in the embezzlement of substantial sums of money. There is little parliamentary oversight. Almost no one bothers to attend the parliamentary sessions. The cabinet ministries are unable to spend the money allocated to them on things like education and rural development, and actually spent less in absolute terms las t year than they did in the previous two years." 

In addition, the Taliban now reportedly take a cut of the billions of dollars in U.S. development aid flowing into the country, much of which is otherwise squandered, and of the American money that goes into "protecting" the convoys that bring supplies to U.S. troops throughout the country.  One out of every four Afghan soldiers has quit or deserted the Afghan Na tional Army in the last year, while the ill-paid, largely illiterate, hapless Afghan police with their "well-deserved reputation for stealing and extorting bribes," not to speak of a drug abuse rate estimated at 15%, are, as its politely put, "years away from functioning independently"; and the insurgency is spreading to new areas of the country and reviving in others.

Good governance?  Good grief!

Not that Washington, which obviously feels that it has much to impart to the Afghan people about good governance and how to deal with corruption, has particularly firm ground to stand on.  After all, the United States has just completed its first billion-dollar presidential election in a $5 billion election season, and two administrations just propped up some of the worst financial scofflaws in the history of the world and got nothing back in return. 

Meanwhile, the money flowing into Washington political coffers from Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, the pharmaceutical and health care industries, real estate, legal firms, and the like might be thought of as a kind of drug in itself.  At the same time, according to USA Today, at least 158 retired generals and admirals, many already pulling in military pensions in the range of $100,000-$200,000, have been hired as "senior mentors" by the Pentagon "to offer advice under an unusual arrangement":  they also work for companies s eeking Defense Department contracts.  

In Congress, a Senate maneuver which only a few years ago was so rare that the response to it was nicknamed "the nuclear option" -- needing a 60-vote majority to pass anything of significance -- has, almost without comment, become a commonplace for the passage of just about anything.  This means Congress is eternally in a state of gridlock.  And that's just for starters when it comes to ways in which the U.S. government, so ready to surge its military and its civilian employees into Afghanistan in the name of good governance, is in need of repair, if not nation-building itself.   

Airless in Washington

It's nonetheless the wisdom of this Washington and of this military that Obama has not found wanting, at least when it comes to Afghanistan.

So here's a question:  Why did he listen to them?  And under such circumstances, why should we take the results seriously?

Stop for a moment and consider the cast of characters who offered the president the full range of advice available in Washington -- all of which, as far as we can tell, from Joe Biden's "counterterrorism-plus" strategy to McChrystal's COIN and beyond, was escalatory in na ture.  These are, of course, the wise men (and woman) of our era.  But just a cursory glance at their collective record should at least make you wonder:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now said to be the official with the best ties to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and so the one in charge of "coaxing" him into a round of reasonable nation-building, of making "a new compact"with the Afghan people by "improving governance and cracking down on corruption"; and yet, in the early 1990s, in her s ingle significant nation-building experience at home, she botched the possibility of getting a universal health-care bill through Congress.  She also had the "wisdom" to vote in 2003 to authorize the invasion of Iraq.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, reputedly deeply trusted by the president and in charge of planning out our military future in Afghanistan, was in the 1980s a supposed expert on the Soviet Union as well as deputy CIA director and later deputy to National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft.  Yet, in those years, he couldn't bring himself to believe that the Soviets were done for even as that empire was disappearing from the face of the Earth.  In the words of former National Security Council official Roger Morris, Gates "waged a final battle against the Soviets, denying at every turn that the old enemy was actually dying."  As former CIA official Melvin Goodman has put the matter:  "Gates was wrong about every key intelligence question of the 1980s... A Kremlinologist by training, Gates was one of the last American hardliners to comprehend the changes taking place in the Soviet Union. He was wrong about Mikhail Gorbachev, wrong about the importance of reform, wrong about Moscow's pursuit of arms control and détente with the United States.  He was wrong about the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan..."

Vice-President Joe Biden, recently described as potentially "the second-most-powerful vice president in history" as well as "the president's all-purpose adviser and sage" on foreign policy, was during the Bush years a believer in nation-building in Afghanistan, voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq, and later promoted the idea -- like Caesar re:  Gaul -- of dividing that country into three parts (without, of course, bothering to ask the Iraqis), while leaving 25,000-30,000 American troops based there in perpetuity, while "these regions build up their state police forces." 

General Stanley McChrystal, our war commander in Afghanistan and now the poster boy for counterinsurgency warfare, had his skills honed purely in the field of counterterrorism.  He was a Special Ops guy.  The man who is now to "protect" the Afghan people previously won his spurs as the head of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in Iraq and Afghani stan.  He ran the "manhunters" - essentially, that is, he was the leader of a team of assassins and evidently part of what reporter Seymour Hersh has termed an "executive assassination wing" of that command, possibly taking orders directly from Vice President Dick Cheney.  His skills involved guns to the head, not protective boots on the ground.  

Ge neral David Petraeus, the general leading everything, who has been practically deified in the U.S. media, is perhaps the savviest and most accomplished of this crew.  He surged into Iraq in 2007 and, with the help of fortuitous indigenous developments, staunched the worst of the bleeding, leaving behind a big question mark. His greatest skill, however, has been in fostering the career of David Petraeus.  He is undoubtedly an advisor with an agenda and in his wake come a whole crew of military and think-ta nk experts, with almost unblemished records of being wrong in the Bush years, whom the surge in Iraq recredentialized.   

Karl Eikenberry, our ambassador to Kabul, in his previous career in the U.S. military served two tours of duty in Afghanistan, and as the commander of Combined Forces Command Afghanistan was the general responsible for building up the Afghan army and "reforming" that country's police force.  On both counts, we know how effective that attempt proved. 

And when it comes to key figures with well-padded Washington CVs like Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or James Jones, present national security advisor and former commandant of the Marine Corps, as well as the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, a close friend of Senator John McCain, and a former revolving-door board member of Chevron and Boeing, remind me just what sticks in your mind about their accomplishments? 

So, when you think about Barack Obama's Afghan decis ions, imagine first that the man considered the smartest, most thoughtful president of our era chose to surround himself with these people.  He chose, that is, not fresh air, or fresh thought in the field of foreign and war policy, but the airless precincts where the combined wisdom of Washington and the Pentagon now exists, and the remarkable lack of accomplishment that goes with it.  In short, these are people whose credentials largely consist of not having been right about much over the years. 

Admittedly, this administration has called in practically every Afghan expert in sight.  Everyone involved could now undoubtedly expound on relatively abstruse questions of Afghan tribal politics, locate Paktia Province on a map in a flash, and tell you just which of Hamid Karzai's ministers are under investigation for corruption. 

Unfortunately, the most essential problem isn't in Afghanistan; it's here in the United States, in Washington, where knowledge is slim, egos large, and national security wisdom is deeply imprinted on a system bleeding money and breaking down.  The president campaigned on the slogan, "Change we can believe in."  He then chose as advisors -- in the economic sphere as well, where a similar record of gross error, narrow and unima ginative thinking, and over-identification with the powerful could easily be compiled -- a crew who had never seen a significant change, or an out-of-the-ordinary thought it could live with -- and still can't. 

As a result, the Iraq War has yet to begin to go away, the Afghan War is being escalated in a major way, the Middle East is in some turmoil, Guantanamo remains open, black sites are still operating in Afghanistan, the Pentagon's budget has grown yet larger, and supplemental demands on Congress for yet more money to pay for George W. Bush's wars will, despite promises otherwise, soon enough be made. 

A stale crew breathing stale air has ensured that Afghanistan, the first of Bush's disastrous wars, is now truly Obama's War; and the news came directly from West Point where the president surrendered to his militarized fate. 

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), an alternative history of the mad Bush years.

[Note on Further Reading:  In preparing posts like this one, I rely on various newspapers, magazines, and websites (not all of which I see eye-to- eye with) for help, analysis, and information.  I wanted to mention just three here without which most of my dispatches would be far harder to write.  I've mentioned them many times before, but credit, when due, is worth repeating endlessly:  I find Juan Cole's Informed Comment blog always lucid, intelligent, and deeply informed.  It's simply a daily must-stop for those keeping up on events in "the greater Middle East"; so is Antiwar.com, which collects more war-related information of value than any site I know, and Paul Woodward's the War in Context, which has an eye for the telling p iece and the sharp comment.] 

Copyright 2009 Tom Engelhardt

© 2009 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175172/

On Dec 3, 2009, at 10:43 AM, Kiku Botura wrote:

Here's an article that speaks to some of the points Ken is making:


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/obama-progressives-and-af_b_378605.html




In the end, Ken and I disagree. I see a threat that needs to taken seriously. I trust Obama, I trust that he will consider all the issues, and try to find the solution he thinks best for the American people, given everything he has to consider.

On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 9:13 AM, Kiku Botura <kikubot@gmail.com> wrote:

The quote goes on to say that they fear pushing US troops will push the Taliban back into Pakistan. 


Bush left things a mess. Obama is trying to fix them. Criticizing Obama with issues from Bush is not appropriate.


This is a problem that is going to require coordination with Pakistan and Afghanistan. Everything that Obama has said, and that Hillary has said indicates that he is coordinating with both of these countries to find a solution that works toward solving this, including sending economic and farming experts to help people learn to help themselves.


You are right, it's a complex problem. That doesn't mean the right solution is to walk away. Maybe the right solution is to enter carefully, as Obama is doing.

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 6:25 PM, "KEN LUSKIN, INTRINSIC VALUE ASSE" <kluskin@bloomberg.net> wrote:

<<<"Pakistan's worst nightmare
> at the moment seems to be that if the United States were to increase troop
> deployment and military activity in the Afghan areas across FATA through a
> planned 'surge',...">>> http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/IslamicRadicalisminPakistanFromFATAtoSouthPunjab_pkupadhyay_301109 Kiku, You can criticize me, but when your own research contradicts what you suggest is the reason we are escalating a losing war.....Then you have a real problem. Our presence is DESTABALIZING and CAUSES the MORE terrorism in Pakistan. There are millions of young men who are happy to replace their fallen brothers to fight the infidels that are seen as backing the Pakistan Govt. We are CAUSING more problems than fixing them. Our mere presence in killing Muslims c
auses more terrorist activity. Our mere presence gives millions of people in ALL the STAN countries, and there are many of them, to pour money and men into fighting the infidels, and those who back them. We are NOT helping the moderates in Pakistan, by waging war next door to them against their fellow Muslims. We have killed hundreds of innocent people in Pakistan with our drones, and the Pakistani people know it.


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Federal Reserve, Solar, Wind, Renewable Energy News and Commentary By Green Earl

Solar, Wind, Bio, Energy News And Commentary By_Green Earl, 30 year Pioneer In Conservation & Solar Energy

Help me "rout out" the enemies of freedom!

...

Mon, November 30, 2009 5:42:18 PM

From:	Congressman Ron Paul ... Add to Contacts
To:	Green Earl

---

Congressman Ron Paul
Foundation for Rational Economics and Education

Dear Friend of Liberty:

The Founders' inspired vision of limited government has been kept alive by the hard work and generosity of Americans who truly cherish individual Liberty average people like you and me.

In the toughest times times like we are facing right now in the life of our nation freedom fighters have always stepped forward for America—armed with whatever it takes and at whatever sacrifice—to answer the call to defend our liberty. That's how America was born and how we, as a free and sovereign nation, have survived.

I have not known a time when the threats to our Liberty and the Founders' vision have been greater than they are today. For Liberty to survive, it is imperative that we confront these new threats, in all of their ugly forms, both foreign and domestic.

We continue to see a major economic crisis unfolding in our nation. New government programs are started daily, and future plans are being made for even more costly government expansion. All are based on the belief that we're in this mess because free-market capitalism and sound money failed. The obsession is with more spending, bailout of bad investments, more debt, and further dollar debasement. Many are saying we need an international answer to our problems with the establishment of a world central bank and a single fiat reserve currency.

These suggestions are merely more of the same policies that created our mess and are doomed to fail.

At least 90% of the cause for the financial crisis can be laid at the doorstep of the Federal Reserve. Their manipulation of credit, the money supply, and interest rates caused the various bubbles to form.

Congress added fuel to the fire by various programs and institutions like the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, FDIC, and HUD mandates, which were all backed up by aggressive court rulings.

The Fed and US Treasury have perniciously doled out trillions in subsidized loans to troubled banks and other financial institutions, and that number is growing through a revolving TARP slush fund which the Feds are using to bail out their huge corporate buddies. The Federal Reserve and Treasury constantly brag about the need for "transparency" and "oversight," but it's all just talk — they want none of it. They want secrecy while the privileged are rescued at the expense of the middle class.

It is unimaginable that Congress could be so derelict in its duty. It does nothing but condone the arrogance of the Fed in its refusal to tell us where the trillions in bailout money have gone. All Members of Congress should be outraged that conditions could deteriorate to this degree. It's no wonder that a large and growing number of Americans are now demanding an end to the Fed.

The Federal Reserve created our problem, yet it manages to gain even more power in the socialization of the entire financial system. The whole bailout process this past couple of years has been characterized by no oversight, no limits, no concerns, no understanding, and no common sense.

Similar mistakes were made in the 1930s which ushered in the age of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Great Society and the supply-siders who convinced conservatives that deficits didn't really matter after all, since they were anxious to finance a very expensive deficit-financed American empire.

All the programs since the Depression were meant to prevent recessions and depressions. Yet all that was done was to plant the seeds of the greatest financial bubble in all history. Because of this lack of understanding, the stage is now set for massive nationalization of the financial system, and even the means of production.

The Feds not only own and control car companies and financial institutions, their lust for power and control now extends to their malevolent scheme to nationalize our healthcare system and thereby take over one sixth of our entire economy. This will be a disaster if it happens!

I could go on but I know that you understand the crisis that we face and agree with me on what must be done to turn our nation around.

I hear from Americans like you who are up in arms about what is going on in our nation. Messages come into my congressional office morning, noon and night. Taxpayers are outraged by the huge bailouts, the massive expansion of government and the refusal by Congress and the leaders of both parties to follow the Constitution.

Many Americans are frustrated—many are outright angry—about failed government policies that just tighten the government's noose around our necks. Many millions of fed up taxpayers have taken to the streets and town hall meetings in recent months to make sure their voices were heard by the uncaring Washington elites.

Since the financial crisis has become more and more apparent, and the attempts by the Fed and Treasury and Congress to solve the problem have become more desperate, my phone has been ringing off the wall with calls from media outlets wanting interviews and to get my opinions about what is going on and how we need to deal with it.

Several books that I have authored with the help of FREE have become instant best sellers as patriotic Americans search desperately for the intellectual and political ammunition they need to fight for the future of our country and to take back our freedom from the fascists who despise our Constitution and those of us who defend it.

During the presidential election, do you remember how the media scoffed at my suggestions that we were facing economic disaster? They laughed at my calls for limited government, for abolishing the Fed and the IRS, for cutting federal spending at home and abroad to balance our budget, and my call for a sound monetary system. Today, we are well into this economic crisis and they are not laughing any more.

The time is ripe for us to be at the forefront of offering workable solutions of calling for a return to limited, constitutional government, the need for honest money and low taxes, and the absolute need to expose and abolish the Federal Reserve which has done so much to undermine our currency and destroy one of the most productive economic systems in the history of the world.

My bill to audit the Fed has made tremendous progress. Together we have led the fight to get congressional hearings, 308 cosponsors, and unprecedented attention around the country for this legislation. Yet the banksters and a few of their weasel allies in Congress continue to do everything they can to water down or outright kill our movement to audit this monstrous institution.

I'm outraged at every such attempt to stop our bill in order to enable the secrecy and disruptive power of the Fed to continue. Some days I am so angered by the banksters' underhanded shenanigans that I'm reminded of the famous battle cry of central bank foe Andrew Jackson as he moved to abolish the central bank: "By eternal God I will rout you out!" Jackson shouted as he demonstrated the courage to go against Congress and the Fed.

The task before us is huge. Our challenge is both political and philosophical, but either way, the solution must begin by properly educating Americans as to why our current out-of-control, misguided political and financial systems have failed, and what must be done to turn things around.

My Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE) has been waging such an educational effort for several decades. We have had a great deal of success publishing newsletters and books and producing radio and TV programs teaching people about the Constitution and free markets and sound money.

FREE has done much to educate patriots like you and to win the battle for the hearts and minds of Americans young and old.

FREE is publishing books like my popular Foreign Policy of Freedom, and we have printed and distributed tens of thousands of Pocket Constitutions to students and groups nationwide.

Today, given the severity of the crisis we face, we must do even more in our battle to spread the truth It is imperative that we redouble and expand the work and scope of FREE's educational effort. Right now, while people are still looking for answers and even the media is trying to figure out what in the world is going on, we must step in to fill the void that exists and to provide answers and solutions for the problems that we face.

You have been a faithful supporter of the cause of liberty. You understand the serious nature of the threats that confront us and the dangers posed to our freedom and our very way of life.

Our ability to lead this movement comes from your tax-deductible contribution to FREE. $50 or $100, or even $250 or more if you can afford it, is urgently needed to help fund the effort to turn our government and our nation around before it is too late. Please go to the FREE donation page now to contribute: http://www.free-nefl.com/html/contribute.html

Leadership is sorely lacking in Washington following the Democrats' recent victory. It is time for true leaders like us to step forward and offer the vision needed to point Congress and our nation in the right direction and to halt the assault on our nation's sovereignty.

This is a dangerous time. But it is also an historic opportunity. Please help today with your most generous, tax-deductible gift for freedom. We must act swiftly to counter the ongoing-attempt to socialize our nation and trample upon our freedom. The time is NOW and the need is urgent!!!

I'm counting on you.

In Liberty,



Ron Paul
P.S. If you can help with $50 or more, I will send you my "Freedom Report" newsletter for a full year as my "thank you" for your generous help. And for a gift of $100 or more I would like to send you an autographed copy of either one my books A Foreign Policy of Freedom or The Revolution: A Manifesto.