Y Kant Rudy Read?

Two hours ago Ron Paul teamed up with Michael Scheuer –the former CIA operative and analyst author of Imperial Hubris–for an entertaining event at the National Press Club. Paul walked up to the podium clutching Scheuer's book, Robert Pape's Dying to Win, Chalmers Johnson's Blowback and the 9/11 Commission Report and assigned them to Giuliani for, basically, homework.

"Since Mr. Giuliani is the expert on 9/11–he talks about it, he gets paid to talk about it–maybe he ought to read this," Paul said. Around 25 TV and print reporters chuckled at the sarcasm. And as Reuters reported, yes, Paul claimed that Giuliani isn't qualified to be president (but he could be if he does the homework).

Scheuer didn't endorse Paul, but he came pretty close: "There are now 10 Republican candidates in the field and there are eight Democrats. Seventeen of them are not at all worried about Osama bin Laden and what he represents. Dr. Paul, on the other hand, has hit on the only indispensable ally that bin Laden and their allies have, and that's U.S. foreign policy."

Paul repeated (with more detail, obviously) some of his debate lines, while Scheuer tried to knock down the "they hate us for our freedom" dogma. "Ayatollah Khomenai tried for a decade to instigate a jihad against the United States on the basis of our degeneracy and our debauchery, our movies, our women in the workplace. It didn't work. No one blew themselves up because of R-rated movies. Al Qaeda and its like have gone to school on the abject failure of the Ayatollah. They have focused on U.S. foreign policy and they've found it to be a glue of unity, a glue of cohesion across the Islamic world."

I chatted with David All and Jerome Armstrong of DomeNation, who set up their camera after the event, so expect a Paul interview there pretty soon.

Terrifying headline explanation here.