All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and introducing antiwar.com's man in the house of representatives, Congressman Ron Paul represents the 14th district of Texas.
He's the chair of the banking committee subcommittee on domestic monetary policy.
He's also on the foreign affairs committee.
And, uh, did I mention already he's running for president of the United States?
Oh, also read his books of foreign policy of freedom, the revolution of manifesto and the fed and the brand new one Liberty defined.
Welcome back to the show.
Ron, how are you doing?
Thank you, Scott.
Good to be with you.
I'm very happy to have you here.
Big doings in the house of representatives this morning.
I have to tell you, I'm beside myself.
I can't believe the debate about war going on in the Congress right now.
Give us an update.
Well, there are two resolutions on the floor.
We'll be voting shortly.
And of course, uh, Kucinich has a good resolution that said the president should buckle down, obey the law, and tell us what he's doing and get the troops out of Libya, dealing with Libya.
But the speaker took it and he wanted to take that, uh, away from Kucinich.
So he introduced his own and believing he can pass it.
And it's very much watered down.
It has no force of law and, uh, allows the president to continue to do what he's exactly doing.
So it's not even the kind of authorization that they had, say for the Iraq war.
Yeah.
So Obama, I mean, I, I, and you and everybody else complained about the Iraq war and the lack of necessity to go into that and the way they did.
And it wasn't a declaration of war, but at least the president did come and got some type of authority where under these circumstances, Libya, he just has gone in, he's, uh, flaunted it.
He, uh, said he got the authority from the United Nations.
It's very, very bad.
And if the house doesn't do anything in the, in the Senate, of course should too, uh, it's a very, very bad precedent.
And it's an unusual coalition that we built here.
Some very, very conservative hockey's Republicans are supporting us.
And, uh, I was saying, look, enough is enough that presidents are going too far and we should, uh, exert our authority and our responsibility.
So it's a healthy, uh, redirection for the Congress instead of just sitting back and, uh, hopefully, hopefully, uh, the Kucinich amendment would pass, but it's going to be close.
Well, if I understand it right, when they, they pulled the Kucinich bill cause they thought it might pass.
And then Brad Sherman succeeded in proposing or didn't succeed, but he proposed a resolution or an amendment to the Homeland security bill, uh, that basically said more or less the same thing.
I think it wasn't as strong language as a Kucinich bill.
And that one, that amendment only failed by five votes.
And, uh, I was talking with Eric Garris about it and he said the parties were pretty much split 50, 50, the Republicans and the Democrats.
There's a, there's a big shift in sentiment here.
Website must be catching on.
A lot of people must be reading it.
And so I sure hope that's right.
Antiwar.com/Paul, everybody.
Yeah, no, it, uh, the sentiment, the sentiment is changing and that resolution that was put into the DOD budget may or may not survive, uh, but it wouldn't be as strong as what we're doing today.
And so even though Boehner pulled, uh, Kucinich, um, what it was supposed to be doing and should have had an hour debate yesterday, just on that.
He decided to bring it up along with his, what he's doing is giving cover to the Republicans.
So they're going to vote for this very, very weak resolution.
It has no force of law.
And then they can vote against Kucinich and say, oh, well.
We really care, but we don't want to go quite so fast.
We don't really want to undermine the president.
The it's a political stunt, uh, to have the two up there.
The only thing that really counts will be the Kucinich vote.
I'll probably vote for the other one because it's, even though it's so weak in token, it, uh, doesn't, doesn't make things worse.
It just doesn't do much good.
And now, um, I interviewed Seymour Hersh the other day about his new piece in the New Yorker magazine, where he reveals that the, uh, 2011 update national intelligence estimate on Iran's nuclear program confirms after four more years of intelligence, the conclusion of the NIE from 2007.
And that is that there is not a nuclear weapons program in Iran that, uh, they have not made the decision to start one.
The last they even were looking at paperwork along the lines was in 2003.
And, uh, the white house said they're rolling their eyes about it was the best debunking they'd have.
But I wonder if, uh, there's any way, you know, when they, when they came out with the NIE in 2007, Bush and Cheney ordered the declassification of the summary.
It turned out to be against their best interest to do so at the time.
Uh, but I wonder if there's anything you can do on the foreign affairs committee to push for the release of at least a declassified summary of the new 2011 NIE on Iran's nuclear program.
Well, at least the effort should be made whether or not they're going to respond is another question.
I see they're trying as usual, uh, to, uh, you know, blast Seymour Hersh and, you know, uh, you know, make sure he loses credibility, but no, I think getting some concrete document, uh, officially like that would be very good.
And, uh, we should do that.
Yeah.
It's funny.
You know, they try to attack her, but they don't attack the central premise of the article, which is the NIE is done.
And all 17 now, apparently, uh, intelligence agencies agreed unanimously on its conclusion and that it's the same one as before, no one's ever really attacked that assertion.
They just attack him personally.
Yeah.
But I guess the various countries involved probably haven't endorsed it yet.
And our neocons haven't endorsed it.
So, but whether or not they're as powerful as they were in the Bush administration, where they could, you know, do like Cheney did just, uh, squelch those things, I don't know.
I just hope we can get that information out.
And do you guys at least, I think at least we can start quoting that and saying, well, why don't we, you know, that's in the public domain now.
Well, now I don't know exactly how it works with the intelligence committees and the oversight committees and the foreign affairs committee, but is it, would that be within your jurisdiction to subpoena that document?
Somehow?
Yes, but, um, it's not going to happen because, uh, the speaker and the chairman of the committee controls the subpoenas, so unless you had a truly, truly, uh, anti-war, uh, coalition in the Congress where they really were determined, uh, then the subpoena might be issued and then they would have to, of course, say that it was, they would say, oh, well, too much top secret in there than that, you know, through all those shenanigans, but the sentiment here in the Congress to demand that is not that strong.
All right.
And now, um, on the issue of, uh, well, actually let's, uh, stick with foreign policy for a second.
There was a vote, uh, about a week ago on Afghanistan that also came very close.
I wonder if, uh, you know, you think there's a real sea change going on where this anti-war sentiment in, in the country is finally getting through to the house of representatives.
Is it just political games or what is it?
It isn't that the house of representatives are all of all of a sudden enlightened, but the people become enlightened and they send this message.
So they're reflecting what they're hearing in their districts.
And I would say that this may change the whole nature of this presidential primary race now, not only in the foreign policy, but on the monetary policy and the huge debt and those problems that the discussions are completely different.
I think the views that so many of us have expressed for so long are much more credible now than they ever were.
I don't think they'll be able to dismiss, uh, the content and the contentions that we have about, you know, the stupidity of our foreign policy and how dangerous our monetary policy is.
Well, and you know, it's, uh, just next month that Obama said would be the beginning of the end of the surge in Afghanistan, the beginning of the drawdown, and I guess probably a lot, uh, depends politically on whether that happens on the ground.
Yeah.
And I, I don't have much faith in that.
Sort of like, uh, you know, it's all over in Iraq and we're all, we just don't, you're just about ready to come home.
And then all of a sudden you hear how many more people were killed and what's happening to the Christians and, and why it's a haven now for Al-Qaeda when it wasn't under Saddam Hussein.
So they're, and they, they, they wouldn't build those embassies and those bases if, if they actually, uh, want to go home or, or, uh, you know, plan to go home there, they're planning to stay.
There's just no doubt about it.
So they might try to fool the people for a while, but in this age of, of communications that we have, uh, even from over there that the information gets out and, uh, they won't be able to, uh, get away with it.
Well, and they've actually been pretty public about trying to get Nouri al-Maliki to so-called invite us to stay too.
They haven't made much of a secret about it.
Please, please invite us.
And if you don't, we'll take all your money away from you.
Right.
All right.
And now, um, this is extremely important, but, uh, you know, in this show foreign policy first, uh, but, uh, I was amazed to see this clip from your hearing, uh, on the monetary policy committee, uh, where I believe the bureaucrat from the fed, uh, was it confirmed to you that 88% of the feds bailout money went to foreign banks?
Is that right?
Well, not, not the whole thing, but there was one particular at the height of the bailout, you know, there's several weeks it was really going.
And, uh, in one, uh, of the, uh, uh, programs that they had 88% did in a, in a shorter period of time, but it was a lot overall, it was more like a $3 trillion that went up, but, but, uh, they, but the other thing was, is the, the one section that I dealt with was 370 pages.
Of course, there's 29,000 pages called, uh, the dump, but out of those 327 pages, 80% of everything was blackened out is redacted and we couldn't even read it.
So we got after that with a little bit, he claimed that if, if we were specific and made those requests, uh, that, that, uh, send it to us, I said, well, why don't you just send the whole thing?
Let us read the whole program.
Yeah.
Well, uh, don't hold your breath for that one, I guess.
All right.
Well, listen, I know you've got to go and vote for peace.
So, uh, I want to thank you very much for your time on the show as always.
Good to talk to you.
All right, everybody.
That is the heroic Congressman Ron Paul.
He's running for president of the United States.
He wrote the book, Liberty Defined, a foreign policy of freedom, the revolution, a manifesto in the fed, and a bunch more before that, the case for gold and, uh, economic prosperity and, uh, against the police state and all kinds of wonderful things.
Check them out at lourockwell.com original.antiwar.com/Paul as well.
And we'll be right back after this.
