Update: a bit longer clip is available here.
Soledad O’Brian, filling in on CNN 360, just introduced a clip of her new interview of Dr. Paul by invoking the proverbial “some say,” with “Ron Paul is eccentric, others say he’s just flakey.”
She then played a clip of an interview to play tomorrow night in which Ron calmly and eloquently denies the “threat” from Iran, explaining that they are a third rate nation which is not going to attack us. He said that if the US would back off it would remove their incentive for wanting nuclear weapons, cited nuclear powers around the world that we don’t attack and said the true threat is all the war propaganda being used to incite hatred to justify war just as before the invasion of Iraq.
Pretty flakey huh?
Update: here‘s the transcript:
O’BRIEN: Quick programming note for you. Tomorrow on 360, candid talk from Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. Some call the die-hard libertarian eccentric. Some people say, no, he’s just flaky. But he’s been drawing impressive crowds. He’s raising lots of cash, even while he’s really trailing in the polls. He’s also stirring the pot with some of his controversial views.
So, one of the things I asked him was whether he would be OK with Iran having nuclear weapons. And here’s what he told me.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. RON PAUL (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I would prefer them not to. And I think, if we had a different foreign policy, they wouldn’t have an incentive.
But, if they did, I wouldn’t — I wouldn’t do that much about it. I wouldn’t bomb them. I mean, they’re a third-rate nation. They’re not going to attack us. They are incapable of even attacking their neighbors. They are incapable of and they have no history of doing this.
So, to stir up hatred that’s so unnecessary and needless just doesn’t make any sense. I mean, the Pakistanis have them. There’s a lot of nuclear weapons floating around in the old Soviet Union. So, it isn’t the nuclear weapons. We’re just looking for an excuse.
This is war propaganda to give us — get the American people behind the bombing of Iran, just like the war propaganda got us all worked up and thought we had to go get Saddam Hussein, which was absolutely unnecessary.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(Note: Dr. Paul is not included in the “we” that thought war with Iraq was necessary. Here’s one of his speeches in opposition to the war. His nice manners apparently keep him from mentioning that he wasn’t one of the fooled in front of a fool.)
