This speech was given today by Rep. Ron Paul from the US HOuse of Representatives.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees things as they really are.
This is about 10 minute speech:

Statement By Rep Ron Paul -
'A Sad State Of Affairs'
Rep. Ron Paul
US House Of Representatives
10-27-1

Mr. Speaker, it breaks my heart to see what is happening to our
country today. All Americans have grieved over the losses served
on 9-11. The grief for those who lost loved ones is beyond
description. These losses have precipitated unprecedented giving
to help the families left behind. Unless one has suffered directly,
it is difficult to fully comprehend the tragic and sudden loss of
close friends and family.

There are some who, in addition to feeling this huge sense of
personal loss that all Americans share, grieve for other serious
and profound reasons. For instance, many thoughtful Americans are
convinced that the tragedy of 9-11 was preventable. Since that
may well be true, this provokes a tragic sadness, especially for
those who understand how the events of 9-11 needlessly came about.

The reason why this is so sad and should be thoroughly understood
is that so often the ones who suggest how our policies may have
played a role in evoking the attacks are demonized as unpatriotic
and are harshly dismissed as belonging to the ``blame America
crowd.''

Those who are so anxious to condemn do not realize that the
policies of the American Government, designed by politicians and
bureaucrats, are not always synonymous with American ideals. The
country is not the same as the Government. The spirit of America
is hardly something for which the Government holds a monopoly on
defining.

America's heart and soul is more embedded in our love of liberty,
self-reliance, and tolerance than by our foreign policy, driven
by powerful special interests with little regard for the
Constitution. Throughout our early history, a policy of minding
our own business and avoiding entangling alliances, as George
Washington admonished, was more representative of American ideals
than those we have pursued for the past 50 years. Some sincere
Americans have suggested that our modern interventionist policy
set the stage for the attacks of 9-11, and for this, they are
condemned as being unpatriotic.

This compounds the sadness and heartbreak that some Americans are
feeling. Threats, loss of jobs, censorship and public mockery have
been heaped upon those who have made this suggestion. Freedom of
expression and thought, the bedrock of the American Republic, is
now too often condemned as something viciously evil. This should
cause freedom-loving Americans to weep from broken hearts.

Another reason the hearts of many Americans are heavy with grief
is because they dread what might come from the many new and broad
powers the Government is demanding in the name of providing
security. Daniel Webster once warned, ``Human beings will generally
exercise power when they can get it, and they will exercise it most
undoubtedly in popular governments under pretense of public
safety.'' A strong case can be made that the Government
regulations, along with a lack of private property responsibility,
contributed to this tragedy, but what is proposed? More regulations
and even a takeover of all airport security by the Government.

We are not even considering restoring the rights of pilots to
carry weapons for self-defense as one of the solutions. Even
though pilots once carried guns to protect the mail and armored
truck drivers can still carry guns to protect money, protecting
passengers with guns is prohibited on commercial flights. The U.S.
Air Force can shoot down a wayward aircraft, but a pilot cannot
shoot down an armed terrorist. It will be difficult to solve our
problems with this attitude toward airport security.

Civil liberties are sure to suffer under today's tensions, with
the people demanding that the politicians do something, anything.
Should those who object to the rapid move toward massively
increasing the size and scope of the Federal Government in local
law enforcement be considered un-American because they defend the
principles they truly understand to be American?

Any talk of spending restraint is now a thing of the past. We had
one anthrax death, and we are asked the next day for a billion
dollar appropriations to deal with the problem.

And a lot more will be appropriated before it is all over. What
about the 40,000 deaths per year on government-run highways and
the needless deaths associated with the foolish and misdirected
war on drugs? Why should anyone be criticized for trying to put
this in proper perspective?

Countless groups are now descending on Washington with their
Hands out. As usual, as with any disaster, this disaster is being
parlayed into an opportunity, as one former Member of the Congress
phrased it. The economic crisis that started a long time before
9-11 has contributed to the number of those now demanding Federal
handouts.

But there is one business that we need not fear will go into a
slump: The Washington lobbying industry. Last year, it spent $1.6
billion lobbying Congress. This year, it will spend much more.
The bigger the disaster, the greater the number of vultures who
descend on Washington. When I see this happening, it breaks my
heart, because liberty and America suffers, and it is all done in
the name of justice, equality and security.

Emotions are running high in our Nation's capital, and in politics
emotions are more powerful tools than reason and the rule of law.
The use of force to serve special interests and help anyone who
claims to be in need unfortunately is an acceptable practice.
Obeying the restraints placed in the Constitution is seen as
archaic and insensitive to the people's needs. But far too often
the claims of responding to human tragedies are nothing more than
politics as usual. While one group supports bailing out the
corporations, another wants to prop up wages and jobs. One group
supports federalizing tens of thousands of airport jobs to increase
union membership, while another says we should subsidize corporate
interests and keep the jobs private.

Envy and power drives both sides, the special interests of big
business and the demands of the welfare redistributionists.

There are many other reasons to make one sad with all that is
Going on today. In spite of the fact that our government has done
such a poor job protecting us and has no intention of changing
the policy of meddling overseas, which has contributed to our
problems, the people are more dependent on and more satisfied
with government than they have been in decades, while demanding
even more government control and intrusion in their daily lives.

It is aggravating to listen to the daily rhetoric regarding
liberty and the Constitution while the same people participate in
their destruction. It is aggravating to see all the money spent
and civil liberties abused while the pilot's right to carry guns
in self-defense is denied. It is even more aggravating to see our
government rely on foreign AWACS aircraft to provide security to
U.S. territory. A $325 billion military budget, and we cannot even
patrol our own shores. This, of course, is just another sign of
how little we are concerned about U.S. sovereignty and how willing
we are to submit to international government.

It is certainly disappointing that our congressional leaders and
administration have not considered using letters of marque and
reprisal as an additional tool to root out those who participated
in the 9-11 attacks. The difficulty in finding bin Laden and his
supporters make marque and reprisal quite an appropriate option
in this effort.

We already hear of plans to install and guarantee the next
government of Afghanistan. Getting bin Laden and his gang is one
thing, nation-building is quite another. Some of our trouble in
the Middle East started years ago when our CIA put the Shah in
charge of Iran.

It was 25 years before he was overthrown, and the hatred toward
America continues to this day. Those who suffer from our
intervention have long memories.

Our support for the less than ethical government of Saudi Arabia,
with our troops occupying what most Muslims consider sacred land,
is hardly the way to bring peace to the Middle East. A policy
driven by our fear of losing control over the oil fields in the
Middle East has not contributed to American Security. Too many
powerful special interests drive our policy in this region, and
this does little to help us preserve security for Americans here
at home.

As we bomb Afghanistan, we continue to send foreign aid to feed
the people suffering from the war. I strongly doubt if our food
will get them to love us or even be our friends. There is no
evidence that the starving receive the food. And too often it is
revealed that it ends up in the hands of the military forces we
are fighting. While we bomb Afghanistan and feed the victims, we
lay plans to install the next government and pay for rebuilding
the country. Quite possibly, the new faction we support will
be no more trustworthy than the Taliban, to which we sent plenty
of aid and weapons in the 1980s. That intervention in Afghanistan
did not do much to win reliable friends in the region.

It just may be that Afghanistan would be best managed by several
tribal factions, without any strong centralized government and
without any outside influence, certainly not by the U.N. But then
again, some claim that the proposed Western financed pipeline
through northern Afghanistan can only happen after a strong
centralized pro-Western government is put in place.

It is both annoying and sad that there is so little interest by
anyone in Washington in free market solutions to the world's
economic problems. True private ownership of property without
regulation and abusive taxation is a thing of the past. Few
understand how the Federal Reserve monetary policy causes the
booms and the busts that, when severe, as now, only serve to
enhance the prestige of the money managers while most politicians
and Wall Streeters demand that the Fed inflate the currency at an
even more rapid rate. Today's conditions give license to the
politicians to spend our way out of recession, they hope.

One thing for sure, as a consequence of the recession and the 9-11
tragedy, is that big spending and deficits are alive and well.
Even though we are currently adding to the national debt at the
rate of $150 billion per year, most politicians still claim that
Social Security is sound and has not been touched. At least the
majority of American citizens are now wise enough to know better.

There is plenty of reason to feel heartbroken over current events.
It is certainly not a surprise or illogical for people working in
Washington to overreact to the anthrax scare. The feelings of
despondency are understandable, whether due to the loss of lives,
loss of property, fear of the next attack, or concerned at our
own frantic efforts to enhance security will achieve little. But
broken or sad hearts need not break our spirits nor impede our
reasoning.

I happen to believe that winning this battle against the current
crop of terrorists is quite achievable in a relatively short period
of time. But winning the war over the long term is a much different
situation. This cannot be achieved without a better understanding
of the enemy and the geopolitics that drive this war. Even if
relative peace is achieved with a battle victory over Osama bin
Laden and his followers, other terrorists will appear from all
corners of the world for an indefinite period of time if we do not
understand the issues.

Changing our current foreign policy with wise diplomacy is crucial
if we are to really win the war and restore the sense of
tranquility to our land that now seems to be so far in our distant
past. Our widespread efforts of peacekeeping and nation-building
will only contribute to the resentment that drives the fanatics.
Devotion to internationalism and a one-world government only
exacerbates regional rivalries. Denying that our economic interests
drive so much of what the West does against the East impedes any
efforts to diffuse the world crisis that already has a number of
Americans demanding nuclear bombs to be used to achieve victory.
A victory based on this type of aggressive policy would be a hollow
victory indeed.

I would like to draw analogy between the drug war and the war
against terrorism. In the last 30 years, we have spent hundreds of
billions of dollars on a failed war on drugs. This war has been
used as an excuse to attack our liberties and privacy. It has been
an excuse to undermine our financial privacy while promoting
illegal searches and seizures with many innocent people losing
their lives and property. Seizure and forfeiture have harmed a
great number of innocent American citizens.

Another result of this unwise war has been the corruption of many
law enforcement officials. It is well known that with the profit
incentives so high, we are not even able to keep drugs out of our
armed prisons. Making our whole society a prison would not bring
success to this floundering war on drugs. Sinister motives of the
profiteers and gangsters, along with prevailing public ignorance,
keeps this futile war going.

Illegal and artificially high priced drugs drive the underworld to
produce, sell and profit from this social depravity. Failure to
recognize that drug addiction, like alcoholism, is a disease rather
than a crime, encourage the drug warriors in efforts that have not
and will not ever work. We learned the hard way about alcohol
prohibition and crime, but we have not yet seriously considered it
in the ongoing drug war.

Corruption associated with the drug dealers is endless. It has
involved our police, the military, border guards and the judicial
system. It has affected government policy and our own CIA. The
artificially high profits from illegal drugs provide easy access
to funds for rogue groups involved in fighting civil wars
throughout the world.

Ironically, opium sales by the Taliban and artificially high
prices helped to finance their war against us. In spite of the
incongruity, we rewarded the Taliban this spring with a huge cash
payment for promises to eradicate some poppy fields. Sure.

For the first 140 years of our history, we had essentially no
Federal war on drugs, and far fewer problems with drug addiction
and related crimes was a consequence. In the past 30 years, even
with the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the drug war,
little good has come of it. We have vacillated from efforts to
stop the drugs at the source to severely punishing the users,
yet nothing has improved.

This war has been behind most big government policy powers of the
last 30 years, with continual undermining of our civil liberties
and personal privacy. Those who support the IRS's efforts to
collect maximum revenues and root out the underground economy,
have welcomed this intrusion, even if the drug underworld grows
in size and influence.

The drug war encourages violence. Government violence against
nonviolent users is notorious and has led to the unnecessary
prison overpopulation. Innocent taxpayers are forced to pay for
all this so-called justice. Our eradication project through
spraying around the world, from Colombia to Afghanistan, breeds
resentment because normal crops and good land can be severely
damaged. Local populations perceive that the efforts and the
profiteering remain somehow beneficial to our own agenda in these
various countries.

Drug dealers and drug gangs are a consequence of our unwise
approach to drug usage. Many innocent people are killed in the
crossfire by the mob justice that this war generates. But just
because the laws are unwise and have had unintended consequences,
no excuses can ever be made for the monster who would kill and
maim innocent people for illegal profits. But as the violent
killers are removed from society, reconsideration of our drug
laws ought to occur.

A similar approach should be applied to our war on those who would
terrorize and kill our people for political reasons. If the drug
laws and the policies that incite hatred against the United States
are not clearly understood and, therefore, never changed, the
number of drug criminals and terrorists will only multiply.

Although this unwise war on drugs generates criminal violence, the
violence can never be tolerated. Even if repeal of drug laws would
decrease the motivation for drug dealer violence, this can never be
an excuse to condone the violence. On the short term, those who
kill must be punished, imprisoned, or killed. Long term though, a
better understanding of how drug laws have unintended consequences
is required if we want to significantly improve the situation and
actually reduce the great harms drugs are doing to our society.

The same is true in dealing with those who so passionately hate us
that suicide becomes a just and noble cause in their effort to kill
and terrorize us. Without some understanding of what has brought us
to the brink of a worldwide conflict in reconsidering our policies
around the globe, we will be no more successful in making our land
secure and free than the drug war has been in removing drug
violence from our cities and towns.

Without some understanding why terrorism is directed towards the
United States, we may well build a prison for ourselves with
something called homeland security while doing nothing to combat
the root causes of terrorism. Let us hope we figure this out soon.
We have promoted a foolish and very expensive domestic war on drugs
for more than 30 years. It has done no good whatsoever. I doubt our
Republic can survive a 30-year period of trying to figure out how
to win this guerilla war against terrorism. Hopefully, we will all
seek the answers in these trying times with an open mind and
understanding.