Former Rep. Ron Paul isn’t buying that NSA surveillance of private American citizens is necessary or has prevented as many terrorism plots as officials claim it has, as was unveiled by hearings today.

“I don’t really believe that because I think they fudged the figures. Of those 50 plots that they stopped, I think 40 were minor plots overseas, for all we know. So they stretched the point. And even these hearings today were a bit of a sham…because they had already decided what the results would be,” Paul said on Fox News on Tuesday. “They have to try to justify their existence of destroying the freedom of and the privacy of the American citizens, otherwise they’re out of work.”

The Texas Republican was referencing the House Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday where National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander said communication surveillance programs have thwarted more than 50 “potential terrorist events”. Paul also wasn’t amused by the NSA trying to pass the intrusions off as an attempt to save Americans and the American way of life.

“It’s sort of like the old story about you have to burn the village to save the village. They want to burn the Constitution to save the Constitution,” he said. “And even today, [James] Cole, the Deputy Attorney General says, the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply to this. Where did he get this brilliance to know when it applies and when it doesn’t?”

“If we can go to war and do all these other things and throw the constitution out the window so casually, you better be sure if you give them an inch, they’re going to take a mile and paint themselves as heroes,” Paul added. “The one thing they don’t do is ever ask the motivation for people wanting to kill us. If we don’t ask that question we can’t stop these problems by just taking more liberties away from the American people. We’re going in the opposite way. We’ve taken away the constitution, we’re supposed to be fighting to save the constitution. It’s completely turned on its head.”

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Did the White House’s remarks about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons sound familiar? Former congressman Ron Paul says the build up to a likely strike on Syria reminds him of the days before the invasion of Iraq.

Paul, the longtime Republican lawmaker from Texas who retired last year following an unsuccessful attempt to gain the GOP nomination for the presidency, published a statement on his website this week criticizing the White House for their latest remarks regarding Syria.

US President Barack Obama said months ago that any proof of Assad using chemical weapons against Syrians would constitute the crossing of a “red line” that would spur American intervention. Last week, the White House said evidence linked Assad’s government to using chemical warfare to kill as many as 150 opposition fighters during the bloody civil war that has so far costs more than 90,000 Syrians their lives, according to United Nation estimates. Washington is now likely to begin arming Syrian rebel fighters and is pondering a possible no-fly zone over Syria.

According to Paul, the latest rhetoric from the White House is something he’s seen before.

At the top of his afternoon Fox show Tuesday, Neil Cavuto invited former congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) to share his thoughts on the House hearing held earlier today with leaders from the NSA and FBI on the United States’ controversial surveillance programs. Paul was not impressed with the “sham” proceedings and castigated his former colleagues for failing to ask the right questions about how our country can prevent terrorist attacks.

Paul told Cavuto he doesn’t “really believe” that NSA surveillance prevented over 50 attacks, as the officials have claimed, accusing them of “fudging the figures.” He said “the hearings today were a bit of a sham hearing because they had already decided what the results would be” and added that the NSA has to “try to justify their existence of destroying the freedom and privacy of the American citizen, otherwise they’re out of work.”

“It’s sort of like the old story of you have to burn the village to save the village,” Paul continued. “They want to burn the Constitution to save the Constitution.” He appeared to put equal blame on Congress for passing the Patriot Act as he did on the Obama administration for continuing the surveillance programs started under President Bush. “If we can go to war and do all these other things and throw the Constitution out the window so casually,” he said, “you better be sure, if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile and they’re always going to paint themselves as heroes.”

“The one thing they don’t do,” Paul said, perhaps referring to both Congress and the agencies in charge of keeping America safe, “is ever ask the motivation for people wanting to kill us.” He didn’t deny the “danger” of “another 9/11,” but he argued rather than “taking more liberties away from the American people,” we should be asking why terrorists are “willing to commit suicide and kill us.”

Paul concluded, “if you never ask the question, what motivates these people to do this, you’re not likely to stop them.”

Watch video below, via Fox News:

–

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Former Rep. Ron Paul isn’t buying that NSA surveillance of private American citizens is necessary or has prevented as many terrorism plots as officials claim it has, as was unveiled by hearings today.

“I don’t really believe that because I think they fudged the figures. Of those 50 plots that they stopped, I think 40 were minor plots overseas, for all we know. So they stretched the point. And even these hearings today were a bit of a sham…because they had already decided what the results would be,” Paul said on Fox News on Tuesday. “They have to try to justify their existence of destroying the freedom of and the privacy of the American citizens, otherwise they’re out of work.”

The Texas Republican was referencing the House Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday where National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander said communication surveillance programs have thwarted more than 50 “potential terrorist events”. Paul also wasn’t amused by the NSA trying to pass the intrusions off as an attempt to save Americans and the American way of life.

“It’s sort of like the old story about you have to burn the village to save the village. They want to burn the Constitution to save the Constitution,” he said. “And even today, [James] Cole, the Deputy Attorney General says, the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply to this. Where did he get this brilliance to know when it applies and when it doesn’t?”

“If we can go to war and do all these other things and throw the constitution out the window so casually, you better be sure if you give them an inch, they’re going to take a mile and paint themselves as heroes,” Paul added. “The one thing they don’t do is ever ask the motivation for people wanting to kill us. If we don’t ask that question we can’t stop these problems by just taking more liberties away from the American people. We’re going in the opposite way. We’ve taken away the constitution, we’re supposed to be fighting to save the constitution. It’s completely turned on its head.”

Published time: June 18, 2013 18:07

Did the White House’s remarks about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons sound familiar? Former congressman Ron Paul says the build up to a likely strike on Syria reminds him of the days before the invasion of Iraq.

Paul, the longtime Republican lawmaker from Texas who retired last year following an unsuccessful attempt to gain the GOP nomination for the presidency, published a statement on his website this week criticizing the White House for their latest remarks regarding Syria.

US President Barack Obama said months ago that any proof of Assad using chemical weapons against Syrians would constitute the crossing of a “red line” that would spur American intervention. Last week, the White House said evidence linked Assad’s government to using chemical warfare to kill as many as 150 opposition fighters during the bloody civil war that has so far costs more than 90,000 Syrians their lives, according to United Nation estimates. Washington is now likely to begin arming Syrian rebel fighters and is pondering a possible no-fly zone over Syria.

According to Paul, the latest rhetoric from the White House is something he’s seen before.

“Because of this use of gas, the president claimed, Syria had crossed his ‘red line’ and the US must begin to arm the rebels fighting to overthrow the Syrian government,” Paul wrote. But at the same time, Paul called into question a previous report from the Washington Post, in which the paper cited White House officials as having decided “weeks ago” to arm Syrian rebels.

“[I]n other words, it was made at a time when the intelligence community did not believe ‘with high confidence’ that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons,” Paul said of that decision. “Further, this plan to transfer weapons to the Syrian rebels had become policy much earlier than that, as the Washington Post reported that the CIA had expanded over the past year its secret bases in Jordan to prepare for the transfer of weapons to the rebels in Syria.”

On his website, Paul wrote that things are starting to seem all too similar to what preceded the invasion of Baghdad in 2003.

“The process was identical to the massive deception campaign that led us into the Iraq War,” Paul claimed.

Just like under President George W. Bush, Paul said the Obama administration is “fixing the intelligence and facts” so it can justify an already determined policy.

“And Congress just goes along, just as they did the last time,” Paul wrote.

Congress has not formally decided how it will heed any calls to arm Syrian rebels just yet, but a number of influential politicians on the Hill have raised their voices already, particularly in light of the White House’s recent claim.

Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona), an outspoken supporter of the efforts to aid the rebels, said last week that the United States’ failure to act already in the civil war is “disgraceful.”

“For us to sit by, and watch these people being massacred, raped, tortured in the most terrible fashion, meanwhile, the Russians are all in, Hezbollah is all in, and we’re talking about giving them more light weapons? It’s insane,” he said. “Frankly, every day that goes by and we don’t get rid of Bashar Assad, it becomes more and more complicated and difficult.”

Indeed, even Pres. Obama has said that removing Assad from office has been a priority within Washington for quite some time now. But just as with a decade earlier, he’s already finding some opponents in Washington uninterested in opening up another war.

Speaking on CBS’ Face the Nation over the weekend, House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) equated the news coming out of the White House as a lot of huff.

"It seems to me they have a great media strategy," Rogers said. "They don't have a great Syrian strategy, and I don't believe any of our members - and we had both Republicans and Democrats on the committee - express concern about where they think we are today, and where we think the administration wants to go.”

"What is the plan? Where are we going in Syria? And what do you want to accomplish?" Rogers asked. "Some of the things that they've told us - told the Intelligence Committee - in the past doesn't comport with what they're presenting as the direction they want to go. So we've asked them to come up and say if we're going to move in this direction, you're going to have to come up with a more comprehensive plan."

"They've got a lot of explaining to do to come up and say, 'Here's our comprehensive plan on how we move forward on what is a catastrophic situation that's getting worse every single day in Syria,'" Rogers said.

Speaking to PBS host Charlie Rose in an interview that aired late Monday, Pres. Obama dismissed the claims from the likes of Mr. Paul that the unrest in Syria would spark another war for his administration to be entwined in.

"It is very easy to slip slide your way into deeper and deeper commitments," Obama told Rose, referring to the possibility of another war in the Middle East. 

"Now, on the other side there are folks who say, you know, 'we are so scarred from Iraq. We should have learned our lesson. We should not have anything to do with it,'" Obama said. "Well, I reject that view as well because the fact of the matter is, is that we've got serious interests there."

"The goals are a stable, non-sectarian, representative Syrian government that is addressing the needs of its people through political processes and peaceful processes," added the president. "We're not taking sides in a religious war between Shi'a and Sunni. Really, what we're trying to do is take sides against extremists of all sorts and in favor of people who are in favor of moderation, tolerance, representative government - and, over the long-term, stability and prosperity for the people of Syria."

Mr. Obama is currently overseas discussing the Syrian situation with other world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the Russian parliament’s International Affairs Committee, said in a tweet last week that the White House’s information about the usage of chemical weapons by the Assad regime “is fabricated in the same way as the lie about Hussein's weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq.

With the recent allegations by the White House of Syria’s use of  sarin gas on 100-150 people and the President’s subsequent decision to get the United States “involved” in the Syrian civil war by supplying “small arms” to the rebels, there are varying views on this move.

Image/CIA

Of course, those such as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), not surprisingly think supplying the rebels (despite really knowing little about them) with small arms is not nearly enough. The duo calls for more “decisive action”, “That alone is not enough to change the military balance of power on the ground against Assad. The President must rally an international coalition to take military actions to degrade Assad’s ability to use airpower and ballistic missiles and to move and resupply his forces around the battlefield by air. This can be done, as we have said many times, using stand-off weapons such as cruise missiles.”

President Obama expressed his thoughts on the matter with Charlie Rose this weekend saying we have “serious interests” in Syria.

“Now, on the other side there are folks who say, you know, ‘we are so scarred from Iraq. We should have learned our lesson. We should not have anything to do with it,’” Obama said. “Well, I reject that view as well because the fact of the matter is, is that we’ve got serious interests there.”

Obama said that [unspecified] lethal assistance  must be done “in a careful, calibrated way”.

Discussing the “evidence” of chemical weapon use, the President said, “The goals are a stable, non-sectarian, representative Syrian government that is addressing the needs of its people through political processes and peaceful processes.

“We’re not taking sides in a religious war between Shi’a and Sunni. Really, what we’re trying to do is take sides against extremists of all sorts and in favor of people who are in favor of moderation, tolerance, representative government, and over the long-term, stability and prosperity for the people of Syria.”

Not everyone is on board with the President’s recent sarin gas revelations, in fact, one former congressman says it smells of Iraq and Vietnam.

Retired Texas Congressman Ron Paul said in a “Texas Straight Talk” Monday that the process [alleged sarin gas use and the "red line"] was identical to the massive deception campaign that led us into the Iraq war. Remember the famous quote from the leaked “Downing Street Memo,” where representatives of British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s administration discussed Washington’s push for war on Iraq?

Here the head of British intelligence was reporting back to his government after a trip to Washington in the summer of 2002:

“Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

This is exactly what Obama is doing with Syria–fixing the intelligence and facts around the already determined policy the Congressman writes.

“We found out shortly after the Iraq war started that the facts and intelligence being fixed around the policy were nothing but lies put forth by the neo-con warmongers and the paid informants, like the infamous and admitted liar known as “Curveball.” But we seem to have learned nothing from being fooled before”, Paul said, also noting that Congress just went along for the ride.

Paul closes out his article by saying:

“So Obama now plans to send even more weapons to the Syrian rebels even though his administration is aware that the main rebel factions have pledged their loyalty to al-Qaeda. Does anyone else see the irony? After 12 years of the “war on terror” and the struggle against al-Qaeda, the US decided to provide weapons to the allies of al-Qaeda. Does anyone really think this is a good idea?

“The Obama administration promises us that this is to be a very limited operation, providing small arms only, with no plans for a no-fly zone or American boots on the ground. That sounds an awful lot like how Vietnam started. Just a few advisors. When these few small arms do not achieve the pre-determined US policy of regime change in Syria what is the administration going to do? Admit failure and pull the troops out, or escalate? History suggests the answer and it now appears to be repeating itself once again.

“The president has opened a can of worms that will destroy his presidency and possibly destroy this country. Another multi-billion dollar war has begun.”

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"The president has opened a can of worms that will destroy his presidency and possibly destroy this country. Another multibillion dollar war has begun," Paul wrote in a column posted on The Free Foundation.

The three-time presidential hopeful, registered Republican and champion of libertarian values, likened American involvement in Syria to both the Iraq and Vietnam wars.

"This plan to transfer weapons to the Syrian rebels had become policy much earlier than that, as The Washington Post reported that the CIA had expanded over the past year its secret bases in Jordan to prepare for the transfer of weapons to the rebels in Syria," wrote Paul.

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"The process was identical to the massive deception campaign that led us into the Iraq war."

He also said "the Obama administration promises us that this is to be a very limited operation, providing small arms only, with no plans for a no-fly zone or American boots on the ground."

"That sounds an awful lot like how Vietnam started.

"When these few small arms do not achieve the pre-determined U.S. policy of regime change in Syria, what is the administration going to do? Admit failure and pull the troops out, or escalate?" Paul asked.

"History suggests the answer and it now appears to be repeating itself once again," Paul said.

Obama's decision last week to arm rebels in the Syrian civil war came after heavy pressure from advisers and former President Bill Clinton, and in spite of Obama's own lack of confidence that U.S. intervention would have an effect on the two-year war, The New York Times reported.

Paul, who retired from Congress in November, said Obama's decision is particularly irresponsible, given that "main rebel factions have pledged their loyalty to al-Qaida."

"Does anyone else see the irony?" Paul asked.

"After 12 years of the 'war on terror' and the struggle against al-Qaida, the U.S. decided to provide weapons to the allies of al-Qaida. Does anyone really think this is a good idea?" he asked.

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