Listen to Ron Paul Institute Academic Advisor Hillary Mann Leverett on the always-terrific Robert Wenzel Show discuss the intricacies of the Middle East. Ms. Mann Leverett is a rare breed of international affairs expert: she knows the region like nobody else, her expertise both inside and outside government is unquestionable; yet she retains a realistic rather than messianic view of what should be the US role in the world. How lucky her American University students are to have such a professor! And we greatly value her friendship as well.

Don’t miss Ron Paul on the Geraldo Rivera radio show on 9 Sept.

Watch Ron Paul once again make a powerful case for staying out of another disastrous war.

Fox News transcript:

Welcome, everybody. I’m Neil Cavuto. How solid is it? Well, the secretary of state saying that the information has been scrubbed and re-scrubbed, that the use of chemical weapons is now beyond all doubt, and that Syria has used this recklessly and inhumanely, and it’s up to the United States to do what must be done to protect Syria and to protect our interests in the Middle East.

But it is an uphill battle. At a time these congressional hearings are lining up like planes at La Guardia, this is among the first that will be seen as Congress itself makes its way back from vacation, including on the House side, where they’re going to be exploring this. We have a number of top guests to look at the pros and cons of all this.

But I do want to — before I get to that next fellow Ron Paul, who is against our getting involved in this, I do want to take a look at the corner of Wall and Broad, and show you what was going on today. We were up about 23 points. I hasten to add, earlier in the day we were up well north of 100, and when they got word that John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, was all of a sudden saying that he would be for the president’s mission, limited, if it had to be that, for going and striking Syria, all of a sudden that combined with the likes of John McCain, Eric Cantor, Lindsey Graham, in other words, key Senate and House Republican leaders going along with a strike on Syria, that sort of brought out the sell signal on Wall Street.

We are going to get into that in more detail.

But earlier the view had been that that would not be the case. Now, when it looked more likely that it could be the case, well, these guys got worried because it just added to the uncertainty. All right, well, it leaves me speechless, but it does not leave Ron Paul speechless, who joins me, watching these hearings very, very closely.

And, Congressman, right now, we’re told that if things were to be voted on now, it would be a close vote, but it would be a yay vote for getting involved in Syria. You say that would be a mistake. Why?

RON PAUL, R-TX, FORMER U.S. CONGRESSMAN: Oh, obviously, because we don’t have any business there. It’s just going to cause more trouble. But you also cited this — the polling is pretty good. The American people don’t want to go into this — into this war. And the people in Britain didn’t want to go in and they had a positive vote for peace. So, I would say, Neil, I’m feeling pretty good. I have been in some lonely battles before, whether it be one, or two, or three, or four, arguing the case for minding our own business, but I think there’s a sea change. There’s a shift.

The American people are waking up. They’re tired of it. They don’t have the money. The world — they keep talking, well, the world has to stand up to this guy. Who is the world? It’s not the British. It’s not the U.N. It’s not NATO. It’s not the Arab people. It’s not the Russians. It’s not the Chinese. But the world has to stand up to them. That means Obama, he has to save face because he drew a red line. And…

CAVUTO: Well, do you think that if he did not make that red line statement, Congressman, we would even be here today, we would even be debating this today?

PAUL: That’s quite possibly, because politicians are pretty naive. They think if they don’t follow through — they’re very insecure people, and I think lack of security in making a decision is the biggest problem with politicians.

And right now those who are in the middle don’t have the sense of security and understanding of why they’re on the right side, because they believe that you have to listen to the propaganda. Then they weigh it, oh, what if something happens and I will be blamed for it? And they’re very insecure people. And I think Obama was very insecure. He made that statement sounding like a tough guy, and then the Republicans played into his role and made it a partisan thing, said, look, yes, you drew a line.

The McCainites and the Lindsey Grahams, they love this stuff. They have been screaming for war for two years.

CAVUTO: Well, apparently, what got them thinking along the president’s lines, Congressman, was this idea that it would not be just sort of an in-and-out, non-regime-change move, that this would do something to incapacitate the regime. I’m paraphrasing there. But that’s a little further than the president first wanted to go, right? So what does this tell you? Does it worry you? What?

PAUL: Well, it means that it’s just talk, because it doesn’t mean much, because, once we get into it, all kinds of things can happen. There’s always unintended consequences. There’s always going to be blowback. There’s always going to be costs. There will always be deaths.

So if we’re trying to save face because we have to stand firm, you have to say, well, if we’re not going out all war and sending 600,000 troops in there, how many people do we have to kill? Well, no, we don’t want to kill anybody. We just want to blow up the airfields. But people are going to die, and a lot of innocent people are going to die.

CAVUTO: So, you don’t think this will be like a Bill Clinton Bosnia strike deal, where that never got any congressional approval? The difference was, of course, it did have some NATO cover it to. But here we would be going alone, with or without congressional approval. Right?

PAUL: Well, that makes it worse, but that doesn’t justify what Clinton did either, and we will read about that for a long time. And a lot of people died then too. And were they all guilty of war crimes, the people who died?

Why do we have to always solve these arguments within a country’s civil strife, civil wars with our military? That’s the only thing we have to offer is our military and our goodness, our greatness, that we know what is best for everybody and we can speak for the whole world. It’s getting old. The people don’t like it. We can’t afford it. It’s going to cost billions of dollars.

CAVUTO: Well, what do you think changed, Congressman? Last week at this time, the president seemed pretty strong about going on his own, and then maybe it was the British vote in Parliament, I don’t know what, but then he kind of pulled back and dumped this in Congress’ lap, which maybe constitutionally obvious as the thing to do, but something must have happened. Something changed. What was it?

PAUL: Well, I think the vote was a big thing. I think the polls in this country showed it. I think he has difficulty making decisions. And he backed down. And he really threw it back at the Republicans. The Republicans were going, yes, we have to have a say. We have to say on this.

CAVUTO: Right.

PAUL: And they’re going to get their say, and unfortunately I think there will be some type of authority given, and it won’t matter. He doesn’t say he needs it.

And if they give a little bit or a lot, they will abuse it. Just think about what has been going on for 12 years under the global war of terrorism. We have killed thousands with our drones, and here we are joining up with a group of thugs who kill Christians. A thousand Christians have been killed over there with the rebels, and that’s whose side we’re going to go on. So, the thing… (

CAVUTO: Though we don’t know for sure which rebels we would be siding with. Right? There is some confusion.

PAUL: Well, that’s a big problem. CAVUTO: Gotcha.

PAUL: That’s what makes my argument.

And it’s really easy to be a noninterventionist, because we don’t have to have this all-knowing wisdom to sort out three groups of rebels…

Ron Paul discusses Syria with Wolf Blitzer:

RPI Academic Board Member Hillary Mann Leverett absolutely destroys the conventional wisdom-mongering and regime lapdog “journalists” on Obama’s march to war on Syria. Watch the smug bootlickers discount the sole voice of reason — an expert on the region rather than a  talking head:

Thanks to Travis Holte for link.

Video of Ron Paul with Neil Cavuto yesterday discussing the blowing winds of war, the incompetence and moral bankruptcy of Donald Rumsfeld, and the “false flag” chemical attack in Syria:

Ron Paul on Larry King’s Politicking Program — Audio only but well worth listening:

Watch RPI Chairman Ron Paul on Neil Cavuto today discussing US policy on Egypt, the incomprehensible US foreign policy, and the futulity of politics in the US one-party state. And doesn’t his new Ron Paul Channel studio look great?

A great and very candid video of former Rep. Dennis Kucinich at a film premiere in Washington, D.C. this week. Rep. Kucinich is on the Board of Advisors of the Ron Paul Institute:

Though it made for sensational headlines last week, the 2,776 NSA violations of its own intercept guidelines over the course of one year are irrelevant. The millions and millions of “authorized” intercepts of our communications are all illegal — except for the very few carried out in pursuit of a validly-issued search warrant in accordance with the Fourth Amendment. That is the real story. Drawing our attention to the violations unfortunately sends the message that the “authorized” spying on us is nothing to be concerned about.

More on this in my weekly column out tomorrow.

Copyright © 2013, The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted provided full credit is given and a live link provided.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers and many other defenders of the NSA spying program warned critics that the mass collection of our electronic communications had already stopped “dozens” of terrorist plots against the United States. In June, NSA director General Keith Alexander claimed that the just-disclosed bulk collection of Americans’ phone and other electronic records had “foiled 50 terror plots.” These claims were designed to silence opponents by implying they would be partly responsible should another attack occur if they were successful in shutting down the programs.

Dozens of terrorist plots thwarted by the mass collection of billions of our phone calls and e-mails. It sounds very dramatic. But now we know it was not true.

Last week NSA deputy director John C. Inglis testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that far from the dozens of plots disrupted, “at most, one” had in fact been stopped. And even that one was by no means certain

I will write more about this deception and fear-mongering by the NSA and their backers in Congress in my weekly Texas Straight Talk column, out on Monday.

Copyright © 2013, The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted provided full credit is given and a live link provided.

Last week’s House debate on the Defense Appropriations bill for 2014 produced a bit more drama than usual. After hearing that House leadership would do away with the traditional “open rule” allowing for debate on any funding limitation amendment, it was surprising to see that Rep. Justin Amash’s (R-MI) amendment was allowed on the Floor. In the wake of National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about the extent of US government spying on American citizens, Amash’s amendment sought to remove funding in the bill for some of the NSA programs.

Had Amash’s amendment passed, it would have been a significant symbolic victory over the administration’s massive violations of our Fourth Amendment protections. But we should be careful about believing that even if it had somehow miraculously survived the Senate vote and the President’s veto, it would have resulted in any significant change in how the Intelligence Community would behave toward Americans. The US government has built the largest and most sophisticated spying apparatus in the history of the world.

The NSA has been massively increasing the size its facilities, both at its Maryland headquarters and in its newly built (and way over-budget) enormous data center in Utah. Taken together, these two facilities will be seven times larger than the Pentagon! And we know now that much of the NSA’s capacity to intercept information has been turned inward, to spy on us.

As NSA expert James Bamford wrote earlier this year about the new Utah facility:

“The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.”

But it happened anyway.

Over the last week we have seen two significant prison-breaks, one in Iraq, where some 500 al-Qaeda members broke out of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, which the US built, and another 1,000 escaped in a huge break in Benghazi, Libya – the city where the US Ambassador was killed by the rebels that the US government helped put in power. Did the US intelligence community, focused on listening to our phone calls, not see this real threat coming?

Rep. Amash’s amendment was an important move to at least bring attention to what the US intelligence community has become: an incredibly powerful conglomeration of secret government agencies that seem to view Americans as the real threat. It is interesting that the votes on Amash’s amendment divided the House not on party lines. Instead, we saw the votes divided between those who follow their oath to the Constitution, versus those who seem to believe that any violation of the Constitution is justified in the name of the elusive “security” of the police state at the expense of liberty. The leadership – not to my surprise — of both parties in the House voted for the police state.

It is encouraging to see the large number of votes crossing party lines in favor of the Amash amendment. Let us hope that this will be a growing trend in the House – perhaps the promise that Congress may once again begin to take its duties and obligations seriously. We should not forget, however, that in the meantime another Defense Appropriations bill passing really means another “military spending” bill. The Administration is planning for a US invasion of Syria, more military assistance to the military dictatorship in Egypt, and more drones and interventionism. We have much work yet to do.

Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.