Paul on the Government and 9-11

Speaking in Sioux City, Iowa yesterday, Ron Paul told an audience of supporters that had the government not been in charge of airline security, the attacks of 9/11 would likely have been prevented. The Daily Telegraph's Washington correspondent, Toby Harnden, isn't entirely convinced of Paul's plan to turn in-flight security over to Blackwater-in-the-sky, but he is clearly intrigued by the candidate's libertarianism:

My first reaction was that Paul's theory was a bit nutty. But then I thought about it further and I reckon there's something in what he says - or certainly the bit about federal regulations leaving the pilots with no easy means of fighting back. Here's my piece from Iowa on the Paul campaign and here's what the popular hero of the Ron Paul revolution said about 9/11. 

"If the responsibility had been on the airlines to protect their planes and their cargo, which it should have been rather than the government, the conditions would have been quite different.  The pilots would have been allowed to have weapons on the airplanes. At the same time, we wouldn't have been told we never should have resisted hijackers. 

"The government was in charge and unfortunately we haven't moved in the proper direction. What we have done is turn over all the security to the government and unfortunately it hasn't made travelling any more pleasant. It's an awful lot less pleasant.

Whole post. Harnden's most recent dispatch from Iowa, re: Paul's online supporters, from the Telegraph print edition.