# Ron Paul: Honest or Nuts? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 14, 2011, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ron-paul-honest-or-nuts/596249 "2011-09-14T03:58:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ron-paul-honest-or-nuts/596249/101 "2011-09-18T01:38:07Z")
> [@So Will The Sky Fall If The UN Declare Palestine a State?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-will-the-sky-fall-if-the-un-declare-palestine-a-state/595182/95): > > I said over 100,000, not 100,000. 100,000 is an unreasonably low-estimation for arab civilians dead before 9/11. No, you said hundreds of thousands, implying at least 200,000. You really have a hard time keeping things straight; this, Arab/Muslim, decades before 2001 with years after 2003, did OBL claim responsibility for 9/11 or didn’t he, which thread you’re posting to. > [@](#): > > This is not even counting Israel, which by the pro-Israeli’s own arguments is a US base and outpost in the middle east. I don’t know why you’re throwing off the idea that Israel is a proxy state of the US… that’s what the US claims it is… their number 1 ally in the middle east. And the difference between ally and proxy state. > [@](#): > > Nobody has proved they used dirty bombs in Vietnam yet, but with the amount of horrific birth defects, cancer, disfigured and deformed people in Vietnam, it would be very hard to believe that there weren’t dirty bombs used. The UN are still trying to deny that they are using dirty bombs in Libya. And now you show that you don’t know the difference between a [dirty bomb](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_bomb) and [depleted uranium munitions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium). Kudos for your ‘proof’ that the US dropped dirty bombs on Vietnam -“its very hard to believe that they weren’t”. Actually no, it’s very hard to believe that they did. I’d actually say impossible to believe without some evidence, of which you have produced none. > [@](#): > > At first humans fought each other with their hands or wrestling. There was nothing wrong with that sometimes. Later they moved on to swords, and even often guns. > > At least there was a bit of honour, a bit of courage involved in fighting sword to sword with someone, or being involved in a duel or a shoot-out. The people involved knew the risks, they took their chances. They didn’t kill men, women or innocent children. I see your understanding of the history of warfare is on par with the rest of your knowledge of history. No innocent civilians were killed? I guess Tacitus was wrong when he said of Carthage that Rome made a desert and called it peace, Timur didn’t sack Delhi, Japan didn’t create a mound of ears from slain Koreans in 1597, the Thirty Years War didn’t kill 1/3 of the population of the Germanic States… damn, history books are going to need an awful lot of rewriting. > [@](#): > > There is no justifiable defence to say that 9/11 was worse than the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians the US killed abroad then and now. I can think of one. The US didn’t kill hundreds of thousands of innocent Arab civilians in the decades before 9/11. ---
**Author:** ![ModernPrimate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85e7bf/32.png) [@ModernPrimate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ModernPrimate)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ron-paul-honest-or-nuts/596249/102 "2011-09-18T02:03:56Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > 1. You’re going to hang your hat on Stephen “The Zionists Are Hiding Under My Bed!” Walt’s back-of-the-envelope math that’s uncited, unsourced, and unsubstantiated? Okay… Yes, he’s not inventing these figures. He repeatedly claims he’s using the low-end ones. It’s not complete bs that he’s writing, he has a reputation to maintain. He has published the figures, his “back of the envelope math” was referring to his arithmetic and possibly his remembering of established figures (which he either double-checked or knows without a doubt). I am sure FinnAgain that these figures can be derived from authorative sources (whatever that means). > [@FinnAgain](#): > > 1. Even then, the total for pre-2001 deaths among Muslim civilians is actually set at about 3800 by Walt, That’s not true, though your point isn’t complete nonsense because in truth he doesn’t say without any doubt that there were over 100,000 deaths in those 12 years. The “at least” 100,000 deaths of Iraqi civilians range from 1992 stretched all the way to 2002. The Iraqi war didn’t begin until 2003 and is accounted for elsewhere. I think we can safely say that whatever way you look at it, during the whole of the 20th century, over 100,000 Arab civilians were killed by the US, which was all I claimed to begin with. > [@FinnAgain](#): > > At best, bombastic bluster and bullshit. > Nobody who has clue 1 calls Israel a US base or a US outpost, as it is neither. One might note that you’re also using fictional “pro-Israelis’ “ arguments to bolster your bluster. > You’re also egregiously abusing language to the point where you claim that saying a nation is our strongest ally means that it’s our “proxy state”. That’s an absurdity heaped high on counter-factual claims, and it evinces that your argument cannot be taken at face value. So if Russia were to claim tomorrow that it’s Iran’s number 1 ally and will stand by it, that wouldn’t cause any international relation implications between them and the US? Okay buddy… The US ships arms and resources not only to Israel but to all their key strategic points in the Middle East. They also interfere hugely with trade, nobody wants the US to be against them. The US is like a world economic bully. > [@FinnAgain](#): > > Your uncited, unsourced, non-statistical, non-medical, non-epidemiological analysis is certainly compelling. Even if we were to accept that there were mutagenic, carcinogenic compounds introduced into the environment, that’s still not proof of your original claim, which you have yet to cite or substantiate. > > If you cannot cleave to basic factual accuracy, then your entire argument is tainted. DU is not a “dirty bomb” any more than a close ally is a “proxy state”. You’re also wildly incorrect about the actual health risks of DU. > > [ I give up. I present you with experts in the field telling you straight out what this stuff does and you ignore it. I show you pictures of children so mutilated and so grotesquely deformed that they are extremely hard to look at and you show no emotion. The type of studies you’re asking for are there, you can find them on places such as pubmed. I never claimed to be an expert in all this who could cite studies verbatum… should I be? Over the years, huge flaws have been found in epidemiological studies. See The China Study for an example of how it can all go wrong. I think it’s extremely sad and people are going down a very bad path if everything has to be done using a 20 year epidemiological study of people who’ve inhaled Agent Orange… when you see the damage it has done. Epidemiological studies can never prove causation… it cannot prove that a specific risk factor actually causes the disease being studied. I suppose you’ll need a source for this also, here you go: [URL=“[http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/TIB/epidemiology.html](http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/TIB/epidemiology.html)”][http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/TIB/epidemiology.html](http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/TIB/epidemiology.html)]([http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs257/en/](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs257/en/)) True science has been twisted and distorted by some people who are trying to push their viewpoints, in such a way so that no evidence will be enough. Science that tests things can be a wonderful thing if done properly, but I think it’s pretty rotten to demand “proof” that it was the smoking gun that the trigger was just pulled in that killed someone. It’s like you’re trying to twist the great idea of epidemiological study into something you must have or you will deny anything. Whenever they say “there is no evidence” that something can cause you to get cancer and die then you know they’re (almost certainly) full of shit because there is also no evidence or no reason to think that this thing WON’T cause you to get cancer and die. ---
**Author:** ![ModernPrimate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85e7bf/32.png) [@ModernPrimate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ModernPrimate)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ron-paul-honest-or-nuts/596249/103 "2011-09-18T02:18:44Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > No, you said hundreds of thousands, implying at least 200,000. You really have a hard time keeping things straight; this, Arab/Muslim, decades before 2001 with years after 2003, did OBL claim responsibility for 9/11 or didn’t he, which thread you’re posting to. Aha… what thread I’m posting in, okay good one. But I have for a long time insisted on saying Arab rather than Muslim, and Israelite rather than Jew. I just don’t see the need to bring religion into it. If you were talking about an American you wouldn’t call him/her Christian or Catholic, etc. I have no “dissonance” at all between decades before 2001 with years after 2003 or did OBL claim responsibility or not. > [@Dissonance](#): > > And the difference between ally and proxy state. Is there some special formal definition I’m not aware of? > [@Dissonance](#): > > And now you show that you don’t know the difference between a [dirty bomb](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_bomb) and [depleted uranium munitions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium). Kudos for your ‘proof’ that the US dropped dirty bombs on Vietnam -“its very hard to believe that they weren’t”. Actually no, it’s very hard to believe that they did. I’d actually say impossible to believe without some evidence, of which you have produced none. The dirty bomb and depleted uranium are both radioactive and can be extremely dangerous, they can hang around for a really long time and cause incredible deformaties, irreversible and inheritable genetic damage etc. > [@Dissonance](#): > > I see your understanding of the history of warfare is on par with the rest of your knowledge of history. No innocent civilians were killed? I guess Tacitus was wrong when he said of Carthage that Rome made a desert and called it peace, Timur didn’t sack Delhi, Japan didn’t create a mound of ears from slain Koreans in 1597, the Thirty Years War didn’t kill 1/3 of the population of the Germanic States… damn, history books are going to need an awful lot of rewriting. I did not say that no innocent civilians were killed throughout history, I said that when a human fights man-to-man with another… that’s a fair and manly duel. And then I expanded this into saying that when you go in a fighter plane… that is at least some way manly. You’re putting your own life at risk for a cause. At least people can be pretty sure that you really believe in your cause, or you wouldn’t do it. When you are a fighter pilot, you have some sense of respect for your enemy and empathy for him. You may kill him, but you may shed tears for him. These guys sitting at home with their glorified playstations, are not manly. They are despicable. You know this is what I meant. Also I don’t come from the US, and yet I know a lot more than most people in the US about what their country is doing abroad. I’m sure many people in the US don’t even know they are spreading dirty bombs and the damage they did with Agent Orange at all. People talk about having “fought in 'nam” like it was a badge of honour. How deranged and deluded can you get? Vietnam was a joke, it was a case of the US trying to bully a little nation and thinking its powerful european buddies would play along in the bullying and massacre and they did not. In the end the US finally lost, then rewrote history to make it not sound so bad. > [@Dissonance](#): > > I can think of one. The US didn’t kill hundreds of thousands of innocent Arab civilians in the decades before 9/11. They at least killed 100,000. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ron-paul-honest-or-nuts/596249/104 "2011-09-18T04:20:21Z")
I am fast realizing that this is worse than worthless, so this will probably be my last response in this vein: > [@ModernPrimate](#): > > That’s not true Yes, it is, and the only way it even approaches 100,000, which is still not the ‘hundreds of thousands’ that you claimed, is to claim that UNSCR 661, which was not vetoed by any of the members of the Security Council, should fall at America’s feet in terms of resentment generated. > [@ModernPrimate](#): > > So if Russia were to claim tomorrow that it’s Iran’s number 1 ally and will stand by it, that wouldn’t cause any international relation implications between them and the US? I’m not sure if you realize that you’ve shifted the goalposts from a discussion of proxy states to the geopolitical impact of national alliances, but either whether you realize that fact or not it shows that your argument will not bear fruit along this branch, either. > [@ModernPrimate](#): > > I present you with experts in the field telling you straight out what this stuff does and you ignore it. No, you didn’t. I, on the other hand, provided a citation from the World Health Organization demonstrating that there are virtually no serious health risks associated with the use of DU as a weapon and that it does not, in fact, generally cause cancer in anything resembling real-world battlefield conditions. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ron-paul-honest-or-nuts/596249/105 "2011-09-18T05:58:20Z")
> [@ModernPrimate](#): > > Aha… what thread I’m posting in, okay good one. But I have for a long time insisted on saying Arab rather than Muslim, and Israelite rather than Jew. You claim to know that Arab =/= Muslim, yet here you say they are interchangeable, and that Israelite is the same as Jew. Oh, and there is no cognitive dissonance between say that OBL didn’t claim responsibility and then saying he did, or trying to use post 2003 events as the causation of a 2001 event. > [@](#): > > Is there some special formal definition I’m not aware of? Yes, you should consult a dictionary. > [@](#): > > The dirty bomb and depleted uranium are both radioactive and can be extremely dangerous, they can hang around for a really long time and cause incredible deformaties, irreversible and inheritable genetic damage etc. And this proves that the US dirty bombed Vietnam how? Or that a dirty bomb is the same thing as DU? > [@](#): > > I did not say that no innocent civilians were killed throughout history, I said that when a human fights man-to-man with another… that’s a fair and manly duel. You know this is what I meant. Indeed I know what you meant. That you have no comprehension of military history at all, you did indeed say innocent civilians weren’t killed. Fair and manly duels?:rolleyes: > [@](#): > > They at least killed 100,000. Repetition doesn’t make it true. You’ve not managed to produce any evidence to support this because it didn’t happen. > [@FinnAgain](#): > > I am fast realizing that this is worse than worthless. Something I should have realized myself a while ago. ---
**Author:** ![user\_hostile](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/user_hostile/32/474_2.png) [@user\_hostile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/user_hostile)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ron-paul-honest-or-nuts/596249/106 "2011-09-18T06:24:30Z")
Per the OP: Ron Paul is as nutty as a Texan Pecan Pie. How many insults are as mouth-watering as mine? ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2011, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ron-paul-honest-or-nuts/596249/107 "2011-09-18T06:54:16Z")
I am not an expert, but I am going to _guess_ that both more innocent Arabs _and_ more innocent Muslims have been killed by, respectively, other Arabs and other Muslims, in the past fifty years, than have been killed by America. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ron-paul-honest-or-nuts/596249.md?page=5)