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March 22, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
27:54
Cluster Bombs And Abrams Tanks: US Moving Closer To Hot War With Russia

The takedown of a US unmanned aerial vehicle near Crimea earlier this month may signal that Russia has had enough of US involvement in the Ukraine war. But Washington keeps pushing for new "wonder weapons" to be fast-tracked to Ukraine. How much further can DC push before a big push-back? Cluster bombs, Patriot missiles, and Abrams are all being readied for transport. This time will new weapons turn the tide?

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Stopping Another War 00:15:11
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel Wick Adams, our co-host, Daniel.
Good to see you this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing well.
Just trying to stop another war.
Wars just keep it coming.
And then they last for a long time, too.
You know, I guess we're finally out of Iraq, or we're pretending it ended after 20 years.
Yeah, even when they end, they don't end.
As long as the empire thinks it's alive, it's going to continue.
But we want to talk about one item that's going on right now.
This is a rather, you know, on top of the list.
It has to do with Ukraine.
And we're in a lot of places, but we couldn't, we didn't want to miss the opportunity by being involved in Ukraine.
So we certainly got into action, especially in 2014.
We wanted to be a participant, and we had our orders, you know, from the military-industrial complex that get involved, folks.
There's business to be held.
But what I want to mention today is something come out from anti-war, and DeCamp wrote this.
He brings up a vote, no, a letter, a letter sent to the president.
Republicans, though.
And, you know, and we talk about this a lot.
You know, Democrats, they're the peacenakes.
They wanted to get out of Vietnam.
And they're the progressives, and they're civil libertarians.
And the Republicans are all the warmongers.
But now we have, you know, a budding pro-war element in the Democratic Party.
Oh, yeah.
And but the Republicans haven't won, you know, the House of Representatives, they have a little bit more political clout, but, you know, it's still pretty much bipartisan.
They haven't, if anything, the bipartisanship of the neocon Democrats and neocon Republicans is about as strong as ever.
But the Republicans wanted to show that they were in charge and they wanted to get a leadership position in this.
So the headline is, four leading Republicans urge Biden to send cluster bombs to Ukraine.
You know, bombs are bombs and killing is killing and the policies are policy and they don't deal with any of that.
But the cluster bomb is a political indicator because that can kill citizens.
You know, private citizens.
Of course, it's the private citizen that gets killed most of the time.
But anyway, they're sending a very strong letter of support to Biden.
Biden, I bet you, I haven't heard him complaining about it.
What are these Republicans trying to do?
Because I think they're going to play up on this because they want to urge Biden to send the cluster bombs.
So my guess, it's not a prediction, but my guess is they'll probably get cluster bombs and more civilians would be killed than they otherwise would be.
But wait and see.
Yeah, I mean, I think this is another sign of desperation because obviously if Kiev was winning, you wouldn't be constantly trying to put in the new weapon.
Here's the new wonder weapon.
Remember, we had the javelins.
That was going to change the tide.
That didn't.
And then we had the Stingers.
Then we had the High Mars.
On and on and on we go with the new wonder weapon and this is supposedly the new wonder weapon.
Now, over 100 countries have banned cluster bombs because of the very simple reason that they don't always completely explode when they land.
And so children in a field, et cetera, et cetera, can come across these, and it's very, very grisly, very, very gruesome what it does.
There's a reason that they are banned.
Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S. have not signed the treaty to ban them, however, but there are enormous risks.
We can actually put up that first clip.
There are enormous risks to the civilian population.
But there doesn't seem to be very much concern about that among the West because, and we hadn't talked about this, but what the UK said yesterday is they're going to provide depleted uranium munitions for the tanks that they're sending.
And of course, Russia said it would consider that a dirty bomb if they send these.
And we all know what happened in Iraq with depleted uranium.
We had generations of birth defects, cancers, all sorts of things.
It poisons the earth forever.
And that seems to be the intent.
But this letter was sent by, and I think you can put that next one on.
It'll tell you who sent it.
It was sent by the four hawkish, most hawkish members of the Republican on both sides of the both houses of Congress.
It was signed by Michael McCall.
Now we know how hawkish he is.
He's very much in favor of this war.
Republican from Texas.
Mike Rogers, he's the Armed Services Committee, a Republican from Alabama.
Roger Weicker is a senator and member of the Senate Armed Services City.
And Jim Risch Reich, who's a ranking member in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
So these, I would call them, these three are old line Republicans.
We've seen the emergence of new Republicans who are much less enthusiastic about this war.
We've talked about Matt Gates.
We've talked about Marjorie Taylor Greene.
We know people like Thomas Massey who are opposed to it.
So there really is, and we did a show on this a while ago, the Civil War in the Republican Party.
And I think this just shows where the old guard is.
The question is, Dr. Paul, is the Republican rank and file voter in tune with this old guard?
And I would put forth that no, because I looked up a poll that Quimpiak University did.
They do a lot of polls.
They did it just a month ago.
And if you'll indulge me, Dr. Paul, I just want to show a couple of numbers to people of where the Americans are on the proxy war with Russia through Ukraine.
If you could put that next one up.
Now, this is straight from the Quimpiak poll, and this was done less than a month ago, I think earlier this month.
The question 17, do you approve or disapprove of the way Joe Biden is handling the response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine?
Now, in total, you have 45% approve and 47% disapprove.
So of all Americans, you have a net disapproval.
But among Republicans, you have only 18% approval and 76% disapproval.
Republicans massively disapprove of the way Biden is handling it.
And how do they disapprove?
Well, this will give us an indication if you do the next one.
If you can put that next one up, this is another question on Ukraine from the Quimpiak poll.
Do you think the U.S. is doing too much, too little, or about right to help Ukraine?
Now, this is interesting because you see, among Republicans, the very, very strongest number is doing too much.
47% believe that the President and the U.S. is doing too much to help Ukraine.
So I would just say, Dr. Paul, I think if looking at these numbers, which are consistent with what we've shown recently, the Republican voter is swinging in our direction, while the old guard thinks it's going to gain by maintaining these deeply unpopular positions.
Yes, and I think your points are very well taken, but I like to think we should be cautiously optimistic because of the experience we had in trying to stop the Iraq war.
Remember when they initially started it, the Americans didn't want to go to the war.
Sort of like they didn't want us to be in Syria.
They still don't, but it always happens.
And also, the Biden factor is a big deal.
So the most important thing is the non-Republican vote, too.
you know, maybe a generalized vote.
But when they say, you know, if you go to the Republicans, it's sort of Republicans hate Democrats and Democrats hate Republicans.
So that skews it a little bit differently.
But we have many times now mentioned these polls and I want to just cross my fingers and hope the polls are really leading us.
Because if you recall, at the beginning of right after 9-11, Bush was ready and rearing to go.
And then it was over a year, probably a year and a half before we marched in and got the so-called authority to go to war.
Congress didn't declare war, but it took them a long time.
But it changed.
You know, they were able to do it, and it was disgusting.
So that's, to me, the big question.
Are the people in this more alert now?
One condition that would be a lot different is our economic status is different.
I don't think anybody back then was mainly worried, you know, about our economy.
Today, that's probably the biggest number there is out there with inflation, the deficits skyrocketing, and people being very, very nervous about the banking system.
And they see the relationship.
So that's why I think we should be hopeful.
Yeah, the billions that have spent, I think the 100 and some billion that we've spent, or at least authorized, is very is very powerful.
It is depressing.
They do the same thing over and over again, which is to lie and use propaganda.
And it does seem to work.
But we'll see.
So that letter is out.
We'll see if they send the clusters.
And we'll also see what the response will be if Russians start being killed with American cluster bombs.
Put on the next one.
Now, here's basically the same theme.
This is the second article if you're ready to move on.
And it's basically the same thing.
And this is about the Patriot system.
We brought a bunch of Ukrainians over to Utah, no, no, Oklahoma, to train on the Patriot missile system.
And here's good news from Politico, and it was written up by our friends in anti-war as well.
Quote, absolutely a quick study.
Ukrainians mastered the Patriot system faster than expected.
This is great news.
It's a wonder weapon.
And then put on the next one.
This is the one where I start scratching my head, Dr. Paul, and I start wondering, is this a snow job?
Are they blowing smoke?
Because listen to this.
The Patriot is a highly complex system to operate and typically takes U.S. soldiers up to a year to learn.
But after just a few weeks, the Ukrainians were already able to independently set up and operate this system against a simulated threat in under 45 minutes, which is the Army standard.
So I wonder, Dr. Paul, whether our soldiers are just really, really dumb or these Ukrainians are amazingly fascinating and brilliant.
I have an idea.
You know, we're having trouble in our educational system here.
Maybe we have to go to Ukraine and find out how these Ukrainians are so smart.
But there was one paragraph, a little sentence dealing with this, and they were talking about the Chancellor of Germany.
And Schultz previously, this is quote, previously ruled out sending Ukraine tanks and explained his reasoning by saying he was trying to prevent a direct war between NATO and Russia.
Don't send the weapons.
This will be aggravation, you know, it's sure.
But the U.S. and its allies are less concerned about escalation, I can believe that, and continue to ramp up support for Kiev, including Poland and Slovakia, pledging Soviet-made MiGs.
You know, at one point they said, well, the Americans said, we have to go and repair some of the old stuff.
We can't get the new stuff ready soon enough.
And I mentioned to you, I think that's sort of, don't ever let that tank go to waste.
Patch them up, get them out there, and let them start shooting.
And they talked about sort of that attitude about B-52s.
And unfortunately, they figured out a way to really test the B-52 with dropping a lot of bombs on Vietnam.
They had to fly a couple thousand miles to do it, but they proved they could do it.
Well, the assumption is because the Russians have not directly responded to the continuous flow of weapons from the U.S. and our European allies into Ukraine, since they have not yet responded, they won't respond.
The question is, is the price for being wrong worth it?
Is it worth the possibility that Russia finally will say this is enough, we've had enough.
I think they gave an indication in a subtle way by shooting down the Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle the other day.
They didn't shoot it down.
They forced it down essentially.
I think that was a warning that we're reaching the limit.
So what is the cost benefit?
What is the benefit versus the cost of a nuclear war with Russia?
And I think the calculation in DC is not right.
But here's another thing that makes me wonder about this miraculous Ukrainians learning the Patriot missile off the back of a matchbook in 38.2 seconds.
Put on this next one.
This is another thing that makes me wonder if this is from Politico, if they're kind of not spinning this a little bit to the advantage of the administration.
It's that a group of Ukrainian soldiers smiles and gives thumbs ups to reporters as they trek back across the field speaking Ukrainian.
They say they are ready to go.
And then it says, the language barrier initially made instruction difficult.
So you basically get a bunch of Ukrainian guys over here who don't speak any English, and somehow miraculously in a couple of weeks, they mastered these weapons that Americans train on for years.
I got an email from our friend Doug McGregor this morning, and he pointed out that this metric that they measured that they can set this up and fire it and basically in a vacuum in 45 minutes, that's one thing.
But as he pointed out, there are so many other aspects to using these very complex weapon systems in the field.
He talks about repair.
He talks about actual combat operations.
He talks about something called fault isolation, which I don't know what it is, but it sounds pretty scary.
So obviously, all of the factors of war are not in there.
It's basically here.
Give these guys some missiles to say we're doing something.
Shove them onto the field.
This will do it.
This will finally do it.
You were talking about, isn't it a shame they never admit that they did anything wrong?
And they always keep pursuing.
But that is not atypical.
That is typical.
That is typical of a politician, whether it's economic policy, spending problems, deficits, war policies, going to war.
I mean, the diehard still wants us in Vietnam.
Yeah.
And they certainly think that it was a total disaster leaving Afghanistan.
You know, the one thing I was thinking there is leaving Vietnam was actually worse.
Worse than that.
We left everything, and we couldn't get the people on the helicopter.
That to me was more disgraceful.
It's all wrong.
But going in is disgraceful.
That's the part that they have to understand.
Why We Left Vietnam 00:08:58
And, of course, looking for people saying, you know, I've looked at this and I've changed my mind.
We've met a couple and I keep thinking about our friend, you know, Walter.
He was one of the few.
But there were several that had a changed attitude, you know, on it.
But partisanship is so partisanship and money, partisanship and political power, and then the money that flows through the military-industrial complex, that's pretty hard to overcome.
And that's why I keep emphasizing, and you emphasize, that's why we have the organization, is deal with foreign policy on a basic principle on what we should do and how we should treat our neighbors and our friends and how to work with trade and what we should do for national defense.
Completely different.
There's not many things that we would want to preserve in the form it's in right now, thinking that, oh yeah, it says had a few shortcomings, but a few innocent people died.
And it cost a couple dollars.
It might have contributed to the $32 trillion deficit.
But we still have to be, we have to be the kingpin.
But this is one thing where I see the crack getting bigger and bigger, is in the foreign policy it is, but the whole thing about our reputation around the world, whether it's economic or military or morally speaking around the world, we do not have the same ratings that we've had over the years.
It never was perfect, always some problem, but right now I would say that there's lots of crack and there's not many people who are going to fill the cracks.
And then I see this as good because I don't like empires that are based on violence and political dictators.
Well, before we move on to the next one, Dr. Paul, I do want to thank the sponsor of our show this month, and that's 4patriots.com, the number 4patriots.com.
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Our third topic today, Dr. Paul, is related.
This is all about ramping up the war.
And again, I would say this does not suggest confidence that Ukraine is winning.
To me, this smacks of desperation.
Send some cluster bombs.
Send some Patriots.
Send some Abrams tanks.
Send some leopards.
Send some Jaguars.
Some lions, whatever.
It smacks of desperation.
If we could put up the next one, and this is from our friends at Libertarian Institute have written about it, but I've taken a piece from AP.
U.S. speeds up Abrams tank delivery to Ukraine war zone.
We were under the impression or given the impression that it would take a lot of time to get these new M1A2 Abrams tanks over to Ukraine.
And if you put on the next clip, that is the case.
So what they've decided to do is send some older M1A1 tanks out of our own stocks, depleting, by the way, our own military.
We've already depleted all of our ammunition, all of our missiles, all of our weapons.
Now we're going to give them all of our tanks.
I'm sure this will turn the tide.
I don't know, Dr. Paul.
What do you think?
Well, I think they're blowing a lot of smoke.
They have talked now about several months because there's always a plan for a better day.
And the better day was to come in the spring.
They're preparing for the spring, more training and more weapons, and they're ready.
But I think today I read where, and I think we mentioned it too, and that is they're trying to get ready for the fall.
They've already shifted.
Oh, the fall, that's when all the bad weather comes in.
And so, this whole idea, well, we're preparing for the springtime, and it looks like we will be prepared.
And the gullibility is the amazing thing.
And the willingness to just cave in because we're discussed it because nobody really ever gets converted.
But I think they just rationalize, they're able to take it.
And patriotism works in because they identify anything you say that is weak on a military spending or a military operation, it's construed.
And I think they have sort of this gut reaction: if you aren't, that you're unpatriotic.
It's sort of like if you didn't take the shot, you were unpatriotic.
You're able to do that.
This whole idea of trying to put a guilt trip on people.
And unfortunately, I think it has a lot of effect.
And that's why we continue to do all these dumb things.
And that is why I think it's going to get in because you can't have endless financing to run a world and run our economy and run up the deficit.
So it's coming to an end.
And that could be good, but it also could be bad because the big guy, the bad guys, are lining up to take over.
Because some say, well, what we really need is chaos in the streets, and they're doing a pretty good job.
When the chaos gets out of control, that's when they'll say they need us to bring about calm on the street and help the people.
Now, a few people who were defunding the police are all of a sudden saying they're on the receiving end.
Maybe we need more police.
Yeah, there was a city council.
I don't know what that means, but it means they're nuts, I guess.
There was a city councilwoman in San Francisco.
I was just reading about yesterday.
She voted to defund the police, and now she's pleading some police.
Well, New York's doing it too.
Where are the policemen?
Where are them when I need them?
Well, this is the thing that I scratch my head when I read this article.
If we can put this next one up, and I know we're veering toward a close here, but this is all about the Abrams tanks.
Now, the Abrams tanks, and I'm not an expert in tanks, Dr. Paul, but I listen to people who are like Colonel McGregor.
They use a jet engine essentially, and they've been deemed not appropriate for this particular terrain.
But here's from the article: the Biden administration announced in January that it would send the tanks to Ukraine after insisting for months they were too complicated and too hard to maintain and repair.
The decision was part of a broader political maneuver that opened the door for Germany to announce it would send its Leopard II tanks to Ukraine and allow Poland and others to do the same.
So this was a political decision.
And I would suspect, and people that I listened to with their ears closer to it have said there is a real conflict now between the people in the Pentagon that know what's really happening and they understand and the people in the White House and State Department that are politically committed to this project and will not back down.
And I just wonder about that clash, how far it will go, because military people insist this tank is not appropriate.
It won't work properly.
Colonel McGregor, who's been in some of the most famous tank battles in the history of the country, knows a little bit about tanks, and he said the same thing.
So I just wonder what the purpose here is and how far the political will will take us toward a military conflict.
Yeah, there's two different things.
I don't think they're worried about it.
Because I think activity and action and spending money and training troops and buying new airplanes and fixing up old tanks, that's their job, you know.
But I think they don't really worry about it, and yet they should.
But we should avoid it.
Avoidance is the secret to trying to change our policy.
Yeah, I'm going to just close by thanking our viewers.
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Very good.
And Daniel, I mentioned to you, I had a nice little message from our friend Norm Singleton.
A Loan from Several Decades Ago 00:03:28
He's worked with us and with me in particular in campaigns and in the congressional office for several decades.
Several decades.
But we stay in touch, and he sent me an article because he knew it would catch my attention.
And I had missed it.
But I think it's very interesting because the title is Ukraine Clinches $15.6 billion IMF Loan, a first for a nation at war.
So it's different.
Now they're passing out money.
It used to be an unwritten rule, but I don't believe in it because when the crisis occurs, financial crisis, money found its way into the IMF.
It didn't go through budgeting.
It went through the Federal Reserve and central banking.
They got all that they need.
But this was up front.
They had a preliminary meeting and they said they're going to loan Ukraine $15.6 billion.
And I got to thinking, well, it's a loan.
That means they're going to pay it back.
Where did this money come from?
Oh, it comes from the IMF.
Who are they?
Well, basically, it's more Americans, taxpayers, than anybody else, or anybody that holds a dollar, or anybody who has to pay more at the store for food.
The people who suffer from the inflation, they're the ones who get stuck with it.
But I thought it was interesting that, you know, this whole recent update with Ukraine came out of the coup of 2014, where we participated in the coup and throwing out of an elected leader of Ukraine.
But our close ally there was NATO.
But it was never listed that there was a coup, except in a few things we read about.
There was never a coup.
America didn't start the war.
It was the Russians invaded Ukraine and started this whole mess.
Well, there's a little bit more to that story than that.
But NATO definitely was involved.
NATO was supposed to represent Europe, all of Europe, the countries coming together.
And it was there originally, and I could understand their desire, is they were very concerned about the Soviets invading Europe, which they did, and they had a lot of control.
So they were too sympathetic, but now it's not a sincere sympathy that they have.
And the IMF is getting the finances.
But NATO, you know, was the one that originally had, you know, really started the war, but we're essentially NATO.
And yet the people who should have them, if we'd have stayed out of there, which was my position, the people closest to Russia, they knew that Russia had a history of getting nervous when anybody gets close to their borders.
But that's their business.
It's sort of like maybe the southern border of the United States is our business.
And yet, what do we do?
We take all our money and send it to Ukraine and help the Ukrainians fight the Russians.
So it's a mess.
But anyway, I thank Norm for sending this to me.
It just is another emphasis of the stupidity of our foreign policy and our financial system.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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