Jim writes:
“Hi Scott,
“Bob Murphy was asking about the context of the Rand Paul quote about the Iran deal. Your name came up. And someone replied with this (in part).
In fairness to Rand (and I am bending absolutely backwards here), he did not appear to be making the point that Iran is working on the bomb and won’t be stopped by this deal. I believe what he was getting at is that the Obama administration’s rhetoric about “this deal is the only way to stop the Iranians from getting the bomb other than war” is phony, since the Ayatollah himself says the deal had no impact whatsoever on any such plans. Though, being Rand, he was trying to play every side of the fence simultaneously, and made a mess of things.
“If you’ve addressed this on your show then I apologize for not being aware.”
“I want to believe that Rand isn’t as bad as he seems, not because I want to vote for him or have any hope in politics, just because I don’t want Ron’s legacy to be so thoroughly defaced. If Rand was really trying to make a complex point and there was one to be made and he’s simply inept at making it, well, that is a different criticism.”
My response: Yeah, no, sorry, that is a totally bs excuse worthy of an Obamabot (The guy does admit he’s bending over backwards to spin it). The context was Rand was trying to say the deal is lousy and doesn’t have any teeth to it, and the Ayatollah is saying he can still build nukes if he wants — which is a damned lie, there’s no other way to put it.
Remember, he’s coming up with excuses for opposing the deal, and the argument that “the deal is unnecessary because Iran isn’t making nukes anyway,” was most certainly not the point he was making. Watch the whole clip for the quotes in context here. Worst part starts at about 5:00.
Here’s the actual quote of the Ayatollah:
“The Americans say they stopped Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. They know it’s not true. We had a fatwa [Islamic edict], declaring nuclear weapons to be religiously forbidden under Islamic law. It had nothing to do with the nuclear talks.”
I originally blamed Rand for just being stupid and lazy and “wrong” for this misquote. But then it was pointed out to me that he repeated it on Dobbs after being corrected by Kerry, and so there’s no spinning that. He’s LYING in order to excuse opposing the deal.
He lied when he first came out against the deal too, claiming that the sanctions get lifted before the restrictions are implemented (a total falsehood, and one he repeated in the debate on Thursday, though watering it down the second time to restricted enough for long enough, a meaningless and still dishonest distinction); that it’s possible to keep the interim deal when he knows it is not (the EU for example is lifting the sanctions for their part, and couldn’t be made by President Obama, Rand or Jeb to keep them); and that they’re being left with a nuclear program at all, when he knows the only alternative to that is a full scale invasion, regime change and occupation. In truth their civilian program is being vastly scaled back. (He also claims to worry about the lifting of the embargo on conventional arms, which isn’t to even take effect for five years, and is obviously just another red herring excuse, not a real reason. If he had to admit the rest of his excuses are bogus, would he still try to hang his opposition all on that?)
So there are three DAMNED LIES, and two just really weak excuses, that he has invoked to explain his opposition to this peace deal — that we all know shouldn’t even be necessary because Iran has been within the NPT this whole time, and weren’t even making nukes in the first place. This deal is just the US finally lifting the sanctions Rand helped put on them in the name of driving them to the table to work out this deal to make sure they keep not making them.
And never even mind how badly Rand has blown his opportunity to attack all three Iraq wars and tell the truth about the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or the thousand other things he’s horrible on. For time and space limitations this has just been about the lies he tells to excuse himself for opposing the Iran deal.
And you know what, I really do hate to have to do this. I about worship Ron Paul, the greatest American hero in all of history, including back before Columbus and all, I assume. I’m only so hard on Rand because of the possible present and future that he’s throwing away for his own petty — and obviously ridiculous — ambitions.
See, here’s me trying to be constructive just the other day.
UPDATE: Oh yeah, by the way, in case you missed it: Iran Agreement Boosts Peace, Defeats Neocons by Ron Paul
