He's retiring, so it's not like he has to reach out and play the nice guy with Romney and the GOP establishment.

But this is just beyond the pale and shows why Ron Paul -- and anyone who agrees with him -- should be kept at arms length by the GOP and frozen out of any positions of responsibility.

At a speech today in the Sun Dome at the University of South Florida ahead of the Republican convention, the Libertarian former Republican presidential candidate said if he had been in charge 9/11 wouldn't have occurred. "Somebody - rather nationally -- said the other day on the Internet 'if those Paul people had been in charge Osama Bin Laden would still be alive.' But you know what I think the answer is? So would the 3000 people killed on 9/11 still be alive!"

That's total nonsense. Ron Paul is too ignorant to have been commander in chief as 95% of the party believed all along. It's no different than liberals saying that if Al Gore had been president, 9/11 wouldn't have happened. The fact is, Ron Paul would have been so paranoid about our own government, he would have kept the Gorelick Wall between the CIA and FBI which three different commissions have agreed led directly to the attacks being successful.

Would Ron Paul have forced the CIA to tell the FBI that Atta was in the country? Would Ron Paul have forced the Phoenix FBI office to share data on terrorists going to flight schools? Would a Ron Paul FBI or CIA been successful in connecting the dots to prevent the attack?

The attack was successful because of institutional roadblocks that prevented information from being processesd, shared, and analyzed by those agencies responsible for American security. This is the conclusion reached by people who know a helluva lot more about national security than the dunce, Mr. Paul. It takes a monumental amount of hubris to say otherwise -- something the meglomaniacal Paul has in abundance.

From the Gothamist:

A former Paul staffer claimed that Paul "engaged in conspiracy theories including perhaps the attacks were coordinated with the CIA, and that the Bush administration might have known about the attacks ahead of time. He expressed no sympathies whatsoever for those who died on 9/11, and pretty much forbade us staffers from engaging in any sort of memorial expressions, or openly asserting pro-military statements in support of the Bush administration"-all of which Paul called poppycock.

The Paulbots may have organized themselves to take advantage of the arcane rules regarding delegate selection in some states, but that doesn't make Paul one whit more popular, or agreeable, to the vast majority of Republican voters. They lost by a huge margin, and now like two year olds, they are throwing a tantrum because no one agrees with their far out, loony leader.

Paul's "liberty" agenda may have its good points, but the man is toxic waste and deserves to be escorted to the wings and given the boot out the door.