Nice crackpot history lesson.
Saudi asked for our help since they feared Saddam overrunning their country too with one of the largest armies in the middle east. I guess you thought it was ok for Saddam to invade his neighbor over debts he couldn't pay back and over their oil he wanted to steal.
As for UBL, he was a religious nut that took advantage of us being in Saudi for his own political advantage. We were on remote bases in Saudi but UBL was telling the idiots we were pillaging Mecca, of course they also believe we rape their women and flush the Quran down the toilet.
Ron Paul is just like UBL, someone taking advantage of lies and half-truths with morons that will follow him off a cliff. UBL in the end loved people like Ron Paul that would pull out of the middle east leaving a hole for him to fill and build up his army of terrorists to eventually destroy big and little Satan.....
Ron Paul actually blames the Clinton Administration as the most proximate cause of 9/11. Big picture-wise, he correctly points to our entangled economic/military involvement in the region and there's really no debate as to whether he's right when you consider the historical reality of the situation. Take Saudi Arabia, where most of the 9/11 hijackers as well as Bin Laden himself were from. It's not anyone's opinion but rather fact that the Saudi Royal Family since 1973 has agreed to accept the $USD as the only payment for Saudi petroleum in exchange for major US military presence and protection from foreign invasion and domestic coup. For the majority of Saudis, the Saudi Royal Family is an authoritarian monarchy at best and the US military is what stands between the people and revolution. 1+1=2. When Saddam invaded Kuwait with sights set on Saudi Arabia, Bin Laden offered his protection in hopes of breaking the Saudi-US oil-for-military arrangement but the Saudis ignored Bin Laden and the US got to showcase their military might. This sent a clear message to Bin Laden that the Saudi Royal Family had zero intentions of ending their relationship with the US, so Bin Laden then shifted his focus to dissolving the relationship from the US' side and the only way he could do this was by making the petrodollar hegemony gained by the US via exporting its military to the ME not worth the threat of terror and civilian casualties inside the US.
Ron Paul is right about foreign policy and anyone who knows the factual history agrees.
Nice misdirection.
It's not relevant why Saddam wanted to invade Saudi Arabia or why specifically Bin Laden wanted the US military out of the ME. UBL pulled the religion card but I think we both probably agree it was likely UBL trying to use his forces as protection to leverage a power grab. In any case though, it doesn't matter why he wanted the US military out of the Middle East; the operative fact is that he was hellbent on making it happen. So the real question is how he could break up the US-SRF military/economic alliance, and the logical answer given UBL's line of work was to offer protection to the SRF eliminating their need for the US military. Call it the 'competing services' option. UBL had recent proven success vs the Soviets so if he was ever going to steal the US' job as SRF bodyguard, it was when Saddam made his move. Whether the SRF should our shouldn't have rejected UBL's offer is for another debate; what matters here is that UBL would never get a better opportunity to drive out the US military via the 'competing services' option.
It wasn't hard to guess what UBL's next approach would be. If he couldn't convince the SRF to end their relationship with the US, he could try to coerce the US to end it which is what he attempted. And I don't know how much clearer he could've made it either; he literally said multiple times that he would use terrorism against US civilians until the US withdrew its military from the ME. I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand. Understanding your enemy's motive =/= justifying your enemy's motive.