The United States has spent tens of billions of dollars training the Iraqi army over the past 14 years. It’s also spent close to a billion dollars training the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq. Now, with the independence referendum passing in Iraqi Kurdistan and the resulting crackdown by Baghdad, we have the US-backed Iraqi army confronting the US-backed Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. Who’s happy? The weapons dealers! This is the folly of an interventionist foreign policy laid bare. What’s next? Tune in to today’s Liberty Report:

President Trump’s Iran policy speech on Friday was riddled with errors — the kinds of errors the neocons have been peddling for more than a decade. He did not out and out cancel the US participation in the Iran nuclear deal with claims that Iran has violated the agreement. Everyone knows — and it has been repeatedly certified — that Iran has not violated the terms of the 2015 agreement. Instead he claimed that Iran is not living up to the spirit of the agreement and punted the issue down to Congress — against the advice of most of his senior staff. Will Washington’s allies follow suit? Will the deal fall apart? What will Iran do if it is no longer bound by the nuclear-limiting treaty? Will President Trump follow his neocon whisperers down the path that George W. Bush followed in 2003 — to war? Tune in to today’s Liberty Report:

With each passing day, the mainstream media keeps printing and repeating ever more bizarre theories about Russian attempts to control not only our voting, not only our political system, but even our relationships with each other. They are trying to “sow seeds of dissent and confusion” in American society, we read almost daily in the New York Times, Washington Post, and elsewhere. How are they doing this? By taking out ads on Facebook to advertise pages like “Adorable Puppies.” Seriously. What’s happened to political debate in the United States and what’s happening to journalism? Today’s Liberty Report is joined by award-winning investigative journalist Robert Parry of ConsortiumNews.com to try and make sense of the mass hysteria gripping the country…

The media is having a field day with a supposedly leaked report that President Trump called for a ten-fold increase in US nuclear weapons in July. That is the occasion of Secretary of State Tillerson calling the president a “moron,” according to the media. It’s all supposed to point to how ridiculous President Trump is for wanting more nuclear weapons. But who’s idea was the current one trillion dollar nuclear weapons “modernization” plan? It was then-president Obama’s idea. And who appropriated the money to get started? Congress. More on the bipartisan support for military corporate welfare in today’s Liberty Report:

The CIA has been forced to declassify some 270 memos from its secret torture facilities in Afghanistan. The story these memos tell is horrific and jolting. The people tortured were not terrorists. They were suspects. Some may say this is all ancient history, but consider the current president’s view on torture. He said he’s torture in a heartbeat. Are we still “torturing some folks”? Tune in to today’s Liberty Report:

President Trump has unveiled his 70-point plan for immigration reform, which includes a massive public works project, “the wall” and a thousand more armed Federal agents on the street. The plan will also make the federal employment eligibility database known as “e-Verify” mandatory. Will Trump’s plan help secure the US borders against those who would enter illegally, or do both sides in the immigration debate miss the real point? Tune in to today’s Liberty Report:

Why was December 16, 2007 such an important date? It was the day when a grassroots group launched a mock Boston Tea Party money bomb in support of Ron Paul’s Republican presidential campaign. The fundraiser broke all online records at the time and suddenly everyone was talking about the Ron Paul Revolution. As we approach the tenth anniversary of that fateful day, Ron Paul has written a new book, The Revolution at Ten Years, taking a look back to those times, but more importantly taking a very sober look at where the spirit of the Revolution is today…and where it’s going. We discuss the Revolution and the new book in today’s Liberty Report. Don’t miss the special offer at the end of the program!

With Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act set to expire at the end of the year, Congress is scurrying to find a way to preserve the post-9/11 authority for the government to conduct mass surveillance of US citizens’ communications. They have come up with another Orwellian bill, the USA LIBERTY Act, which would fix none of Fourth Amendment problems of the original bill but would make the original unconstitutional bill permanent. So “Liberty” to Congress is a mass surveillance state. The Cato Institute’s Patrick Eddington joins today’s Liberty Report to discuss 702 and its possible replacement bill:

The Trump Administration has just expelled several Cuban diplomats in Washington and suspended visas for Cubans wishing to visit the United States over reports that US embassy personnel in Havana have been attacked by some kind of mystery “sonic weapon” that is leaving them everything from dizziness and hearing loss to brain damage. Are the Cubans really attacking American diplomats? Could the maladies be caused by some kind of virus? And who benefits by pushing the story? Our take in today’s Liberty Report:

After Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the media that the US does have channels of communication with North Korea, President Trump Tweeted from the golf course that Tillerson was wasting his time with diplomacy. Why would the president undermine his own cabinet for doing their jobs? Tune in to today’s Liberty Report…

Central banks have created a worldwide bond bubble that threatens to destroy economies and nations. US and global debt skyrockets. The financial system on life support. Investment advisor Michael Pento joins today’s Liberty Report to tell us what to expect and what we can do about it…

The Catalan push for independence from Spain appears to be part of a larger European — and possibly worldwide — movement away from larger, more distant governance and toward more local control. Elsewhere in Europe, the old order is slowly breaking down. New parties find success in German elections, Hungary continues to defy Brussels on immigration, talk of secession on all levels increases. Will the referendum in Catalonia take place as scheduled, or will the central government successfully crack down? Will a crack-down eliminate the growing demand for independence? What’s the US position? More in today’s Liberty Report…