Ron Paul's Statement on H Res 568 Regarding Iran

Statement on H Res 568 Regarding Iran - By Ron Paul

Mr. Speaker: I strongly oppose H Res 568, a resolution "expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the importance of preventing the Government of Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability."

Once again we see on the "suspension" calendar, which is customarily reserved for non-controversial legislation, a resolution designed to move the US toward a military conflict with Iran. Sadly, it has become non-controversial for Congress to call for US attacks on foreign countries that have neither attacked nor threatened the United States.

We should not fool ourselves about the timing of this legislation. Next week, high-level talks between Iran and the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany (P5+1) will resume. Those who seek US military action against Iran must fear that successful diplomacy will undermine their calls for war.

Disturbingly, some of my colleagues have suggested this resolution can be read as a form of ersatz Congressional approval for the use of military force against Iran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has the authority to monitor the Iranian nuclear program to determine whether nuclear material is being diverted from civilian to military uses. The IAEA has never reported an Iranian violation. This legislation attempts to scare us into believing otherwise, but that fact remains. And the US Intelligence Community agrees with IAEA conclusions on this matter.

The most dangerous aspect of H. Res. 568 is that it dramatically lowers the threshold for conflict with Iran by replacing the prohibition against acquiring nuclear weapons to a prohibition against a "capability" to develop nuclear weapons.

However, as former senior Bush administration official, Flynt Leverett, has stated:

Iranian efforts to develop a "nuclear weapons capability"...may make American and Israeli elites uncomfortable. But it is not a violation of the NPT....While the NPT prohibits non-nuclear-weapon states from building atomic bombs, developing a nuclear weapons capability is, [allowed] under the NPT... It is certainly not a justification—strategically, legally, or morally—for armed aggression against Iran.

But this resolution states that the House "rejects any United States policy that would rely on efforts to contain a nuclear weapons-capable Iran." That makes it very clear that the intent of the House is to authorize force against Iran not if it acquires a nuclear weapon, but if it has a "capability" to acquire them some time in the future. The term "capability" is left undefined, of course, leaving it open to very broad interpretations by this and future administrations.

Mr. Speaker this is incredibly dangerous legislation. I urge my colleagues in the strongest manner to reject this stealth authorization for war on Iran.

A Very Important Statement from Japanese American Citizens League

Ron Paul posted the message below to his Congressional Facebook Page today:

Especially poignant coming from the JACL:

"Why is the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) Opposed to Section 1021?

We don't want to repeat history's mistakes. During World War Two, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This authorized the illegal detention of 120,000 Japanese Americans, most of them U.S. citizens, in internment camps across the Western United States. These men, women, and children committed no crime against America; they were locked up simply for being Japanese. They too were held under the premise of the "law of war". The US government now admits that the internment was a grave mistake. In the 1970's, JACL spearheaded a movement to gain redress from the US government. This eventually resulted in a Congressional report that admitted the internment was "unjust and motivated by racism rather than real military necessity" and the passage of the 1988 Civil Liberties Act, which granted each internee financial reparations and affirmed that the internment was rooted in prejudice. However, the federal government opens the door to repeat its mistakes in the passage of NDAA FY 2012.

Even though President Obama said in his signing statement that he will not enforce indefinite detention, the provision is still legal and written into federal law. Both the United States Senate and President Obama had the chance to invalidate this unlawful section of NDAA, but both parties chose to let it through. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John McCain (R-AZ), and Carl Levin (D-MI) wrote Section 1021 and are especially supportive of indefinite imprisonment. Senator Graham even admitted that detainees "[won't] get a lawyer" in a speech on the Senate floor. While President Obama may have vowed not to enforce Section 1021, there is no guarantee that future presidents will do the same. This is particularly concerning when one considers the recent racial profiling and attacks against our Muslim, Arab, Sikh and South Asian American brothers and sisters.

Stand with JACL in opposition of indefinite detention. Policies guided by fear and unsubstantiated claims will not make us safer. Section 1021 of NDAA FY 2012 abandons core American values such as due process and regard for human rights. We must work to uphold these principles and repeal the indefinite detention provision in this bill."

The Fed: Mend It or End It? - Essay by Ron Paul

Hear Congressman Paul read his weekly Monday morning column aloud at 888-322-1414
The Essay is updated every Monday morning.

The Fed: Mend It or End It?
Essay by Ron Paul for week of May 14, 2012

Last week I held a hearing to examine the various proposals that have been put forth both to mend and to end the Fed. The purpose was to spur a vigorous and long-lasting discussion about the Fed's problems, hopefully leading to concrete actions to rein in the Fed.

First, it is important to understand the Federal Reserve System. Some people claim it is a secret cabal of elite bankers, while others claim it is part of the federal government. In reality it is a bit of both. The Federal Reserve System is the collusion of big government and big business to profit at the expense of taxpayers. The Fed's bailout of large banks during the financial crisis propped up poorly-run corporations that should have gone under, giving them a market-distorting advantage that no business in the United States should receive. The recent news about JP Morgan is a case in point. JP Morgan, a recipient of $25 billion in bailout money, recently announced it lost another $2 billion. If a corporation shows itself to be a bottomless money pit of "errors, sloppiness and bad judgment," the Fed shouldn't have expected $25 billion in free money to change that or teach anyone a lesson in fiscal discipline. But it determined that this form of deliberate capital destruction was preferable to one business suffering bankruptcy. Clearly, some changes need to be made.

Several reforms for the Fed were discussed at the hearing. One was a call for the full employment mandate to be repealed, in order to allow the Fed to focus solely on stable prices.

Another reform calls for changes to the composition of the Federal Open Market Committee. Still another proposal was for outright nationalization of the Fed or of its functions. But if what the Fed does now is bad and inflationary, allowing the Treasury to print and issue money at-will would be even worse, and could possibly lead to a Weimar-like hyperinflation.

The problems and advantages of the gold standard were discussed at the hearing. The era of the classical gold standard was undoubtedly one of the greatest eras in human history. For a period of several decades in the late 19th century, the West made enormous advances. However, the gold standard was still run by government. The temptation to suspend gold redemption reared its head again with the outbreak of World War I. Once the tie to gold was severed and fiscal restraint thrown to the wind, undoing the damage would have required great fiscal austerity. Instead, the Western world proceeded to set up a gold-exchange standard which lasted not even a decade before easy money led to the Great Depression.

While returning to the gold standard would certainly be far better than maintaining the current fiat paper system, as long as the government retains the power to go off gold we may end up repeating the same mistakes.

The only viable solution is to get government out of the money business permanently. The way to bring this about is through currency competition: allow parallel currencies to circulate without receiving any special recognition or favor from the government. Fiat paper monetary standards throughout history have always collapsed due to their inflationary nature, and our current fiat paper standard will be no different.

It is imperative that the American people be educated on the dangers of the Fed and the importance of restoring sound money. The laying of the groundwork must begin today, so that the American people will be prepared for the day when the mirage the Fed has created evaporates completely. The full hearing footage is available on my website and I would encourage every American to take a look.

Ron Paul on Gay Marriage

Opinion by Greg Chamberlain

As someone who is deeply against The Police State, having a government tell me who I can and can't marry fills me with a bit of contempt. Which brings me to another reason why I support Ron Paul, the true candidate for personal freedom of association. Ron Paul's answer to issues surrounding Government and Gay Marriage is basically that the federal and state governments have no business involving itself in the issue of marriage, and only did so for bureaucratic health reasons starting about 100 years ago, and is overstepping it's boundaries. He calls marriage a religious or church issue. I humbly agree and appreciate the fact that Ron Paul is not pandering to any group of people on a whim for campaign cash or unearned votes.

If the government was not involved and neither sanctioned or prohibited marriage, gay or otherwise, all gay couples would need to do is find a minister who would marry them... plain and simple. Thank you Ron Paul!
Peace Love Groove, Greg Chamberlain

Ron Paul in October 2007 Presidential debate, explains his view on Gay Marriage.


Ron Paul articulates his position again, with more detail on States Rights, in the 2012 Presidential Debate on Fox News.

Enduring Commitments Abroad

Enduring Commitments Abroad
by United States Congressman Ron Paul

Last week President Obama made a surprise pre-dawn trip to Afghanistan to mark the one year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden and to sign a document further extending the US presence in that country. The president said, "we're building an enduring partnership...As you stand up, you will not stand alone." What that means in practice is that the US will continue its efforts to prop up the government in Afghanistan for another ten years beyond the promised withdrawal date of 2014.

To those of us who believe the US should leave Afghanistan immediately, the president retorted, "We must give Afghanistan the opportunity to stabilize." But how long will that take, when we have already fought the longest war in our nation's history at incredible human and economic cost to the nation and no end is in sight?

There is little evidence of any sustained increase in stability in Afghanistan and, in fact, April saw the loss of 34 more American troops and an escalation of violence and upheaval. Within 90 minutes of the president's departure, seven more people were killed in Kabul by a suicide bomber. It is clear that our presence in that country is not creating any real stability. With Osama bin Laden dead and the al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan virtually non-existent, we are reduced to nation-building in a nation where there is no real nation to build.

We should ask ourselves why Obama's trip was a "surprise" visit rather than a normal state visit. The reason is that after ten years it is still far too dangerous to travel in or out of that country. Does that not speak much more loudly than the president's optimistic words about the amazing progress we have made in Afghanistan?

What does our enduring commitment mean? Ask the South Koreans, where the United States has maintained an "enduring commitment" of US troops more than fifty years after hostilities ended. By some estimates the United States taxpayer is saddled with a 40 billion dollar annual price tag for our "enduring commitment" to maintaining a US military presence in Korea. Polls suggest that particularly younger Koreans are tired of the US military presence in their country and would prefer us to leave. The same is true for the residents of Okinawa, who have argued strongly and with some recent success for American troops to leave their island.

The Soviets believed the road to their goal for a universal form of government ran through Afghanistan. They were also wrong and paid an enormous price. However, after nine years and 15,000 Soviet lives lost, the communist regime in Moscow realized its mistake and withdrew from that country. The Soviet withdrawal was complete in early 1989. The Soviet Union by that time had further plunged into economic crisis, fueled in great part by its commitment to maintain a global empire of client states. Later that year, the Soviet world began crashing down, with first the collapse of Eastern European regimes and then the Soviet Union itself. That collapse produced an economic calamity for the successor states from which most have not yet fully recovered. It is not too late for the United States to learn what the Soviets discovered too late, back in 1989. Mr. President: the time to leave Afghanistan is today, not in 2024.

The Costs of War

The Costs of War
by United States Congressman Ron Paul

This month Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki announced the addition of some 1,900 mental health nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers to its existing workforce of 20,590 mental health staff in attempt to get a handle on the epidemic of suicides among combat veterans. Unfortunately, when presidents misuse our military on an unprecedented scale – and Congress lets them get away with it – the resulting stress causes military suicides to increase dramatically, both among active duty and retired service members. In fact, military deaths from suicide far outnumber combat deaths. According to an article in the Air Force Times this month, suicides among airmen are up 40 percent over last year.

Considering the multiple deployments service members are forced to endure as the war in Afghanistan stretches into its second decade, these figures are sadly unsurprising.

Ironically, the same VA Secretary Eric Shinseki was forced to retire from the Army by President Bush for daring to suggest that an invasion and occupation of Iraq would not be the cakewalk that neoconservatives promised. Then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who is not a military veteran, claimed that General Shinseki was "wildly off the mark" for suggesting that several hundred thousand soldiers would be required to secure post-invasion Iraq. Now we see who was right on the costs of war.

In addition to the hidden human costs of our seemingly endless wars are the economic costs. In 2008, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote "The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict." Stiglitz illustrates that taking into account the total costs of the war, including replacing military equipment and caring for thousands of wounded veterans for the rest of their lives, the Iraq war will cost us orders of magnitude greater than the 50 billion dollars promised by the White House before the invasion. Add all the costs of Afghanistan into the mix, wrote Stiglitz, and the bill tops $7 trillion.

Is it any wonder why our infrastructure at home crumbles, healthcare is more expensive and harder to come by, and unemployment together with inflation continue their steady rise? Imagine the productive power of that seven trillion dollars in our private sector. What could it have done were it in private hands; what may have been discovered, what diseases might have been cured, what might have been built, how many productive jobs created?

With the bills coming due for our decade of reckless military action, the cuts rarely come from the well-connected military industrial complex with their lobbyists and powerful political allies. In President Obama's 2013 budget, troop strength is to be cut significantly while enormously expensive and largely superfluous weapons systems emerge essentially unscathed. As defense analyst Winslow Wheeler wrote this month, costs of the "next generation" fighter, the F-35, will increase by another $289 million. This despite the fact that the fighter is badly designed and already outdated, a "virtual flying piano" writes Wheeler.

The military contractors building monstrosities like the F-35 are politically connected and thus protected. Unfortunately, returning military veterans are less so. In the same 2013 budget, the White House proposes to increase medical and pharmaceutical costs paid by veterans while reducing their cost of living increases. And how many years of increasingly alarming mental illness and suicide statistics has it taken for the modest increase in resources to be made available?

Those who predicted the real costs of our decade of global military conquest were ridiculed, scoffed at, and fired. History has now shown us that much of what they warned was correct. America is clearly less secure after a decade of unnecessary wars. It is more vulnerable and closer to economic collapse. Its military is nearly broken from years of abuse. Will we come back to our senses?

My heart goes out to this man, who served the slave masters in Afghanistan...

posted by Greg Chamberlain

My heart goes out to the family of this man, who while serving in Afghanistan, may have lost his life. I am especially sad for those all other U.S. soldiers who are forced to act as occupational forces not for the reasons fed to the public, such as the spread of freedom and liberty or to spread democracy. You see, most soldiers know the truth and are forced to live the lie to survive, or else find themselves isolated by their commanders and vulnerable in a war zone. It's a fight to survive in a lame war that is not a war at all. We are simply occupiers who act as overzealous policeman and incite hatred so deep, that people are willing to die to get our soldiers and installed puppets out of their country.

My anger goes out to my so called leaders, who are elected, but are hacks. They are beholding to their masters, (not we the people, but a secretive group of military industrial and corporatist leeches) who use the military as slaves in their corporatist and Zionist wars upon people who are not terrorists, but resisting endless occupation and tyranny at the hands of resource thieves who promise freedom and liberty, but deliver death, destruction and indentured servitude. Who are the terrorists? We freedom loving Americans must look ourselves in the mirror and think when we vote, for someone other than RomBama. Both are evil from the same Bilderberg cloth.

A Citizen Journalist Reports on HR347 - The Anti Occupy Law

I seriously do not know this gentleman narrating this clip below, nor have I visited his website or called his phone number, however, I would like to use this space to thank him for breaking down HR347 and how 388 members of our United States Congress is basically protecting themselves from those who have the courage to challenge the status quo. Politicians who supported such a law are chickenshit traitors, in my humble opinion. GC