I propose:

• End the Iraq War immediately
• Greatly reduce the Defense budget
• End foreign aid
• Stop supporting foreign tyrants.

End the Iraq War -There was only one good time to end the Iraq War: Years and years ago. It's too late for the right time. All we can do is bring our troops, their supplies and equipment, home as swiftly as transport facilities allow.

'Bring the troops home' includes our garrison forces in Europe and around the world. There are a very small number of places where our treaty obligations are best served my maintaining foreign military bases. In almost every case, the rationale for those bases has long since expired, and they should be closed.

The position of the twin War Parties position is rejected by the people.

President Bush and his Democratic Congress don't understand. John McCain foresees another century in Iraq. Barack Obama wants a much bigger army. George Bush thinks that in August 2008 we'll still have huge numbers of men and women over there. The Democratic Congress votes to keep funding that war.

House Republican Minority Leader Boehner claimed that nearly 4,000 American dead--nearly 5,000 if you count civilian employees--and 30,000 wounded was "a small price to pay."

What did we buy with that price, Congressman? We appear to have purchased an option, the Republican option of another century of Iraq war.

A small price? Thousands of our sons and daughters dead? Not to mention tens of thousands crippled for life? Not to mention an estimated half million Iraqis dead? Not to mention close to three million Iraqi refugees who fled their native land? If that's a small price, what would be a large price?

All these deaths are a testament. These deaths are a testament to the Republican Party, a party that will support every claim its leader speaks, no matter how absurd.

These deaths are equally a testament to the Democratic Party, an opposition party so craven that when George Bush says "jump!" his supposed opponents ask only, "How high?" The Democrats pay lip service to peace. At the same time, the Democratic Presidential candidates threatened to invade ally Pakistan and call for a larger army.

The American people want peace. They want an end to the war in Iraq. How can the American people bring peace?

Americans have three choices:

* The Republican War Party

* The Democratic Bait-and-Switch Party, the Party that campaigns against the war until it is time to vote.

* The Libertarian Party, which promotes peace, liberty, and prosperity.

If you vote for a Republican, any Republican, you're voting to build the Republican War Party's majority. If you vote for a Democrat, you're voting for the party that caves to the Republicans to keep the war going.

Americans who want peace have no alternative. In 2008, they can vote for more war, or they can vote Libertarian. Only the Libertarian Party will end the war.

As President, I'll bring our brave soldiers and their equipment home as quickly as possible.

Our Armed Forces - The purpose of the armed forces is to protect the United States from hostile external forces. A Libertarian administration will defend America in an efficient, inexpensive manner, keeping in mind both Ben Franklin's dictum 'Penny wise, pound foolish' and President Eisenhower's reminder "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. "

The cold war is over. The Soviet Empire has ceased to exist. When the Cold War ended, America should have contracted its military to match its defense needs. We maintain a huge fleet in the Atlantic, an ocean that borders only on friendly countries. That fleet makes no sense. Our military spending is half the world's total, and most of the rest is spent by our allies; that spending makes no sense. There should be massive cuts in defense spending.

We should take seriously FDR's laws on military reserves: As an organizational issue, States should put their main emphasis on their State Defense Force, not on their National Guard. Your State Defense Force will be there when you need it. Your National Guard may not. The search for Mr. Bin Laden needs groups of specialists, not shoals of tanks and clouds of aircraft that muddy the waters.

We should deploy an army appropriate to our actual defensive needs, an army far smaller than that which we now deploy. This change recognizes that the Iraq War should end as rapidly as possible. We must maintain the full 21st-century military skill set, because some day we may need those skills again. The force structure of the army should reflect credible threats, which do not include fighting other peoples' civil wars for them. Our superb airborne, ranger, and special forces are shining stars of military excellence; however, officer training for these branches should be limited to officers who will command them. This modest economy also represents a radical change in how we select our senior military officers.

While we are mindful of Mahan's demonstration of the enormous importance of naval superiority, which under modern conditions includes long-range air power, deploying a navy that is far more powerful than all of the other navies in the world, combined, is wasteful and irrational, particularly when most of those other navies belong to our friends and allies.

No plausible opponents border the Atlantic or Indian oceans, efforts to stir up paranoid fears of Iran notwithstanding. Our surface forces on those bodies of water should for the most part be mothballed. The Pacific Fleet is still much stronger than needed to meet credible contingencies. It should therefore be significantly reduced. Amphibious landing ships are of value to conduct invasions of foreign countries. Because we do not intend to invade foreign countries, these ships and their support groups should be put into long-term storage.

We should be planning for the future, not maintaining a living museum to the past. In planning for that future, we should recognize that satellite reconnaissance and long range homing missiles leave surface forces decreasingly effective against major powers. Submarine and shallow-diving auxiliary craft, including radical designs such as the 'arsenal ship', will be increasingly important in naval warfare. Their research and development should be emphasized.

Piracy suppression, however archaic it sounds, remains a significant mission in the 21st century. The custom of arming freighters against pirate attack remains important in several parts of the world. We should vigorously pressure our allies and trading partners to permit armed merchantmen to use their ports. Piracy suppression operations are the first and sometime best line of tool for defense of property on the high seas.

Our Air Force enjoys enormous technical superiority over any credible foe. Investments to expand this superiority should be limited to design and test of new aircraft and novel manufacturing methods. The manufacture and deployment of new aircraft decreases American security by reducing the capital and engineering talent available to civilian manufacturing. In large parts of the world, any war will rapidly lead to American air supremacy. We should carefully analyze options for using inexpensive low-tech aircraft under these conditions.

Libertarians have long urged reductions in world stockpiles of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons. Our policy recommendations are now seeing fruit.

Service academies were a brilliant innovation at a time when America lacked engineering schools. This time is past. Service academies risk propagating a false message of separation between our citizens in the military and the remainder of the American people. We should reconsider how our military officers are trained.

The Iraq War has shown the Root Reforms of the militia to be extremely unwise. Under those reforms, the National Guard supplies autocratic Presidents with additional military forces that can be used abroad in foreign adventures. State Militias should be returned exclusively to the states. As an intermediate step, states should avail themselves (and nearly three dozen already have) of the option under current law to institute a State Defense Force as a replacement for the National Guard.

The founders of this country justly and vehemently condemned the use of mercenaries. Because mercenary forces are one of the greatest threats to the liberty of a free people, the American government should neither use nor subsidize mercenary forces, nor should it permit such forces to enter the United States.

We should eliminate restrictions on the private participation of American volunteers in foreign wars on foreign soil. Such volunteers should be advised that they are removing themselves from the protection of the United States and that they may be at risk of trial, imprisonment, or execution by foreign governments as spies, pirates, or traitors.

We can and will reduce the cost of national defense through sensible mutual defense agreements with other free nations

Recalling that electronic warfare is a part of warfare, warrantless wiretaps are felonies. Federal officials and private co-conspirators who committed these crimes should receive fair trials and, if convicted, extended prison sentences. Federal officers who urged the performance of these deeds and participated in putting them into effect levied (electronic) warfare against the United States, and should be tried for that crime.

The title 'Commander in Chief' refers purely to the Presidential power to give orders to members of the armed forces. Legal advisors to the President who claim that the President gains extraordinary powers to violate the law in wartime, if followed by acts putting these claims into effect, should be prosecuted for their criminal acts.

End foreign aid The best foreign aid Americans can offer is buying goods produced in foreign lands. That money, instead of being funneled into the coffers of corrupt dictators, actually goes to people doing real work.

Stop propping up corrupt foreign tyrants When we support tyranny, we work against our long-term self interest and engender just hatred in people who might otherwise like us.

Terrorism - I have routinely condemned domestic political violence such as the recent Times Square bombing. We are not under foreign military occupation. In most of America, there is legitimate access to the ballot box for minority political parties. Most Americans thus have access to the soap box and the ballot box. Given that those boxes are available, Americans should use them and not resort to political violence.

A large-scale domestic terror campaign is ongoing in America. Since 1977, we have had by good count 'seven murders, 17 attempted murders, 41 bombings, 100 acid attacks, and 175 arsons', and that's only counting attacks on abortion clinics. We've also had attacks on members of minority religions, at least one using biological warfare, and that's not counting Congressman Barr and cohorts trying to use the Army to block minority religious services. As President, I will vigorously condemn those attacks and ensure that we end interstate criminal conspiracies to deny Americans their civil rights.If elected, I will work vigorously to protect Americans against terrorist attacks. Mind you, the best protection against terrorists remains an armed citizenry. I'll work vigorously to help Americans choose that protection, notably Washingtonians who were left disarmed by a do-nothing Congress.

There will always be foreigners who hate us. The single best way to avoid this hate is to apply the golden rule, and not do to foreign countries things that we would not like here. Most Americans would hate a foreign country that propped up a corrupt dictator in the White House, or whose Air Force bombed our cities. Mindful of the golden rule, we should stop propping up foreign dictators.