Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Rand Paul's First Ad: National Security

Dr. Rand Paul has released his first campaign ad, and like Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell's speech earlier today, it focuses on terrorism.

Paul flatly contradicts Trey Grayson's repeated attacks that Paul is "dangerously" naive on how to treat enemy combatants and fight Islamofascists.

In the ad, Paul says that he would keep "prisoners" off U.S. soil. Earlier in the campaign, Paul had said that Gitmo's enemy combatants should be returned to their country of origin. The Obama administration recently proposed moving Gitmo's enemy combatants to Illinois, a policy Grayson has criticized.

Paul also said that "prisoners of war, enemy combatants and terrorists captured on the battlefield should be tried in military court and not brought to the U.S. I do not believe they should be tried in civilian court." Grayson has made that point forcefully and repeatedly; Paul, not so much.

It is unclear from Paul's ad whether Paul approves of the Obama administration interrogating the Christmas Day Bomber like a common criminal, reading him Miranda rights and providing him with a taxpayer-funded attorney. The Christmas Day Bomber was captured by fellow passengers on a flight bound for Detroit; does that constitute the "battlefield" in Paul's analysis?

That Paul felt the need to respond to Grayson's attacks is implicit acknowledgment that foreign policy and national security are the two issues that distinguish the front-runners in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate -- and are the issues on which Paul is most vulnerable.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Paul has never said just return guilty detainees to their county. He supports the punishment given to them by the legal system.

The quote the Grayson campaign has smeared, dealt with what to do with detainees we decide to release, either because they are innocent or for other reasons. We've been releasing detainees from GITMO since 2003 for many different reasons.

Paul believes those we release should be dropped off where they were captured, not America!

Where does Grayson propose we send those detainees we release? Kentucky?