Ukraine Hits Crimea With US Targeting And British Missiles
Yesterday, Ukraine hit targets in Crimea, damaging or destroying one kilo-class Russian sub and one landing ship. The missiles used were StormShadows from the UK and the targeting was from the US Pentagon. How soon until Russia strikes back at increasingly direct NATO/US involvement in the war? Also today: too little too late - the Pentagon suddenly develops an interest in where the money to Ukraine is going. Finally - Agent Orange 2.0? US to "defoliate" Asian jungles to prepare for war with China.
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Ready and raring to go.
So good shape.
The world is in worse shape than we are in Lake Jackson, Texas.
But we're going to talk about it because we'd like to see peace and prosperity spread around rather than just in the peaceful Lake Jackson, Texas area.
And the story we want to start off with is a headline in anti-war who does an excellent job in gathering this information for us.
Ukraine hits Russian shipyard in Crimea with cruise missiles.
My first response is, why in the world are they, why in the world are we doing it?
Oh, no, it's the Ukrainians are doing it.
Yeah, but they couldn't have done it without a little bit of electronic engineering and direction and information.
So the United States was probably involved.
Yeah, well, whose missiles were they?
Oh, they were Ukrainians.
We gave them to the Ukrainians.
We saved money taking care of American citizens.
We spent it on some of these missiles and all.
But it wasn't exactly that.
We were involved, but so are the British involved.
They have a military industrial complex, too.
But why are they doing all this stuff?
If we're on the side of Ukraine and we're trying to save Ukraine and destroy Russia, why are they so secretive about it?
But there really isn't any secret.
What they're trying to do is avoid political blame.
Everybody knows what everybody's doing, but there's lines, political lines.
There are military lines, but there are political lines too.
So this is to protect the political line of we really didn't do it.
It's not our fault.
These missiles just happened to be in the hands of Ukraine, and they went and they bombed a shipyard, damaged a couple ships.
But symbolically, I think it's a big deal.
I think there's always a danger.
You can't say this is a decline in the problems they have over there.
But maybe it's a decoy.
Maybe they're trying to, you know, so much what happens in the news is to present something.
And you always, I imagine you frequently do it too, is you say, oh, this is a big deal.
But I wonder what they're hiding.
And maybe they're hiding something here because I'm sure if we decided we didn't want Ukraine to jeopardize even more so the Ukrainian people or our standing in the world, they wouldn't have done that.
So there's a chance, just a chance, that there's something else going on here and maybe there's some political maneuvering.
Yeah.
Well, it is a pretty significant development.
And here's the zero hedge write-up on it, if you can put that up.
And this happened in the early hours of the 13th on Crimea.
Ukraine used British cruise missiles in devastating Sevastopol attack UK confirms.
Devastating is a word.
I don't know that I would use that exactly, but what they took out was a Kilo-class submarine.
I think the next clip will show you the sub that was actually taking out the Rostov-on-Dawn, if you can put that on.
The Rostov-on-Don was taken out.
It was in there for repairs and satellite photos, which I don't have here, show that it looks like it was either pretty damaged or completely out.
And a landing ship was taken out.
More significantly, perhaps, is that apparently a S-400 air defense system was taken out, and those cost a couple of dollars.
So that is certainly pricey.
I would just say, Dr. Paul, that there are no coincidences.
Ultimately, taking these ships out, I mean, Russia has something like what I have, 24, they have 24 kilo-class subs, and they took out one.
So I'm sure they're not happy about it.
But as I say, I don't think there are any coincidences.
We're talking about this $24 billion request for more money for Ukraine.
And we'll talk about this in the next segment.
But just keep that in the back of your mind, because while this is a significant and costly blow to Russia in Crimea, it's not a strategic shift.
It won't change the outcome of the war.
And I think everyone pretty much agrees with that.
It's a tactical victory, not a strategic victory.
But what it is, and this is the first thing you said when you started talking about it, it's pretty good PR.
And they're going to come back after this and say, look, we took out their most significant targets in Crimea.
How could you withhold this $24 billion just when we're really starting to show some promise?
So I think because we know that the missiles came from the U.K. and we know that the intelligence and targeting came from the U.S., this was all very carefully put together.
You know, when they come for the money, the Ukrainians or the supporters here, the lobbyists that lobby for weaponry, and also the political lobbyists that are involved, they couch it in such a way where that if you don't go along with this, this technique is used all the time, you're not patriotic.
I mean, this is really serious stuff.
Why aren't you defending, you know, truth and justice?
Well, it's because people are becoming leery.
They're not ever sure of it.
And I was mentioning to you a little while ago that, interesting enough, Grassroots America has sort of had a shift.
I said, I wish we could take credit for that, but I don't claim that.
But we contribute to people thinking about this more so and earlier because it took 10 years of bloody conflict and thousands killed in the 60s for people to wake up and say, you know, it's undermining the social fabric of the people in this country.
There were riots going on.
We had economic problems and this whole mess.
But now, I think that people are sending a message to Congress, and it may lead to, they had a little trouble passing the budget the first go around, and there's been lots of division now in the Republican Party over.
So the Democrats have their division, but it's not over money because the Democrats all say, you just print it.
Everything will be okay.
And deficits don't matter.
But they do, and I think our foreign policy matters.
I think that we plant a lot of bad seeds out there.
And the weeds are growing.
And we have a mess here.
And we don't pull out the weeds.
What we do is we just fertilize them more with bad things.
And this is just another example.
And you point out the one possibility is that it's not an accident.
It's strategic.
And it might help to get the next bill passed because the people are waking up.
And I like them to wake up and not tinker around on the edges of policy or the money and just say, why don't we just accept this old-fashioned policy and so strange of non-interventionists?
We ought to just mind our own business.
But that's a shake-up.
That's going a little bit too far for some of them.
And I say, what do you mean?
What would we do with all those bombers and submarines?
We have to test them.
And literally people have suggested that that's good that you have these little wars going on.
You can always test them because a big war may come.
And I think some of them would just as soon be happy with a big war.
And some say, no, we can just build weapons.
And we'll never have to worry about the big war.
Well, at times I worry about, you know, the nasty little wars and the big wars.
Yeah, well, as you say, the numbers aren't there.
We know that we've talked about the polls.
Republicans overwhelmingly reject any more aid to Ukraine.
Overall, the United States rejects any more aid to Ukraine.
So the numbers aren't there.
So what they're trying to do is tempt them with these kinds of circuses.
And I think that's what it's all about.
But, you know, the Biden administration, we talked about it just yesterday.
The Biden administration's rationale is very simple but very dangerous.
Because the Russians haven't responded as we increase our participation, they won't respond.
And so far that's proven correct.
But it's an enormous gamble.
And what if they're wrong?
You know, that's the big question.
And so I had a couple of things on the U.S. participation in the targeting.
The first one is General Milley.
He was on, he was in a TV interview.
It's actually the video clip.
We'll do that before we do this one.
Here, let's listen to Milley.
Here's on a video clip.
And here he is talking about, you might want to put your headphones on, Dr. Paul.
Here he is talking about how the U.S. provides the targeting data to Ukraine, tells them what to hit and how to hit it.
Are you helping Ukraine select targets?
Target selection and authority to strike is with Ukraine.
What we do is provide them situational awareness.
But you tell them there's a command post over there, there's an ammunition dump over there.
We'll give them the situational awareness as best we can tell.
So this really is a proxy war.
You don't have boots on the ground.
You're not making decisions.
But you're helping Ukraine kill Russians.
We're helping Ukraine defend themselves is what we're doing.
So there's the admission there that we are telling them where to do.
And so this occurred before the Crimea strike.
So we can only assume that the U.S. said to Ukraine, okay, there's a sub.
Here's how you hit it.
Here is the S-400.
Here's how you hit it.
And we actually have proof of it here because if you go to the next one that you had on just a second ago, this is someone tweeted this out.
NATO air power in the Black Sea after overnight strikes on Ukrainian ports.
A Bombardier Challenger 650 Artemis radio reconnaissance aircraft flying over Romania and an RQ-4 Global Hawk high-altitude reconnaissance drone has been spotted just south of Crimea.
So we are over the Black Sea with our surveillance.
We're watching, we're targeting, we're passing it on to Ukraine.
And the age-old question that we always ask is, what if someone were doing it to us?
What if someone were helping the Mexicans or the Canadians target DC or something?
How would we feel about it?
You know, I was sort of thinking the same thought as we go along.
And I was looking at that map and I thought, what if those lights were at the Gulf of Mexico?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
And us occupying like that.
But, you know, this is true all over.
That's why I think America is on the wane, because I think we burn a lot of bridges and we burn a lot of money and we're not so rich and we're not so powerful anymore.
And the only good benefit from this negative aspect of what's going on is people are more willing to question.
Like the last time they told us about COVID, everybody wanted to trust and be patriotic along.
But now that they're hitting, they want to test us again.
So maybe the people will be more resistant.
And I think this is the case that this hope, you know, it took a long time when they were going into Afghanistan.
We complained, why and how long?
The history, thousands, maybe, hundreds of years, thousands of years.
It never gets conquered.
Yet we did it in that way.
It still lasted 20 years.
So the lessons learned don't seem to be very good.
But right now, you point out the best thing is the American people are waking up about this, not exactly for a libertarian reason, but for just common sense.
Why waste lives and money while the people are suffering more and more here in this country?
Maybe that's a sign of our weakness and us getting poorer because the wars and things like this took a while for the people to really suffer.
But they're starting off with a budget deficit of $1.5 trillion in a year.
I mean, so that's, I think people are waking up to this effect, but I just think I hope we can help contribute to what the answer is, what you can do.
And it doesn't need to be this way.
And you do this, problems are going to get worse.
Well, I mean, I'm just pure speculation, but what would a Russian response look like?
I don't think they're about to nuke Berlin.
But I could see, you know, if that Global Hawk is targeting Crimea, I could see the Russians taking down the Global Hawk, which would be it's an unmanned aerial vehicle.
And I'm not saying I hope it happens.
I hope it doesn't happen.
But I'm saying that's, I'm just speculating that's something they might do to send a message: look, we're tired of you flying over here and targeting us.
We've had enough.
If you want to play games, if you want to be part of the war, well, this is what war is all about.
That could be, and I don't know what the response would do.
Maybe they'd have to change their skivvies over there in D.C.
Yeah, and the big thing is, how are we going to respond to figuring, oh, and it says show that the Russians were the aggressors.
Oh, yeah.
All along, you're right.
They started all this stuff now, and we have to stand up to them.
You know, they'll argue that case.
And that's where it comes from.
And the patriotic zeal is what they want, and that's built first on fear.
And right now they're running into a roadblock over this immediate problem that they have of coming up with another $25 billion for Ukraine.
It actually goes back to the famous story.
Well, they were shooting at our planes while we were bombing them.
A great Iraq story that you tell, you know, that we remember so well.
Well, as usual, there's a bit of common sense.
It's not coming out of the Biden administration.
It's coming out of RFK Jr.
He had a couple of tweets on this.
They're not called tweets anymore, but whatever.
Here's what he had to say.
And it wasn't specifically about this attack, but it was in general.
This came out on the 11th.
And of course, as always, he makes perfect sense.
First, he starts, 2022, President Biden, quote, not prepared to provide long-range missiles to Ukraine, given the key goal of avoiding the road toward a third world war.
2023, Biden administration preparing to send long-range missiles to Ukraine.
And so he asked in the next tweet, I guess avoiding World War III is no longer a key goal.
Did Biden change his mind or has he lost it?
And then the next one, as he continues this thread, if we go to the next clip, he makes perfect sense.
He says, let me explain why these missiles, and they're talking about the ATACOMs, why these missiles are perhaps the most dramatic escalation of the war to date.
They will allow Ukraine to conduct missile strikes on Crimea and Russian territory.
Goodbye Crimea Bridge.
Biden's Move: Escalating Ukraine Conflict00:07:19
Moscow would mount a massive retaliation.
If you want to provoke a full-on war between Russia and NATO, this is exactly how to do it.
Once again, spot-on.
Democrats are buying about Robert F. Kennedy.
What are we going to do with this guy?
But the one thing they decided on, there's no question, he ain't going to be president.
Yeah, we got to say that.
Which is a tragic thought when you think about the Kennedy deals.
That is just horrible.
But I think it's a big deal in what's happening there and getting people to agree to this.
But I think that the good part about all this is that more and more people are starting to understand this.
And I'm always, we could see things in the narrow, and that's the way they do it to us.
You know, the Russians are coming and attack and build up the fear, the virus is coming.
But they never look at the big picture.
In medicine, it might be, should government be running our medical care?
You know, should they be in charge to do this?
And then in foreign policy, should we be dealing with how many dollars we're going to waste and going sent to, no, I was going to say sent to Ukraine.
But, you know, it's been made very clear by other people than us that the money probably doesn't ever get to.
It doesn't go through the Ukrainian banks.
It probably goes directly to pay the bills into the coffers of the military-industrial complex.
Remember when Max Blumenthal spoke at our conference a couple of weeks ago?
He said, right around these corridors, this is where all the money goes.
That's where all the military governments are.
They have nice houses too, don't they?
They have nice houses over there.
Well, the next story is a related story because it really is, and I think very strongly about this $24 billion, because as we point out, the numbers aren't there.
Americans are against it.
We've got to do something to manipulate people to accept it.
And so here's the next one.
You might say too little, too late.
You might say, finally, I'm a little more suspicious.
This is CNN reporting that the Pentagon watchdog establishes new team in Ukraine to monitor U.S. aid, to which you would say, what took them so long?
You know, you're closing the barn door when the horses are out.
But what they're doing is they're sending some people on the ground to now, after we've already authorized $100 billion and spent at least $43.7 billion on military assistance, you're finally going to send someone over there to look around and say, well, where did it all go?
But, you know, this is not an exception.
The rule is that you don't monitor and you don't have audits of the Pentagon.
It's sort of like the Fed.
You don't audit the Fed in the true sense that we're going to find out what all these people are doing with the money supply and who gets all the benefit.
So the Pentagon, you know, is generally not monitored and they're not audited.
But this is more like the exception that a few people have spoken out.
And now it's starting to make sense.
This is another reflection that the people are more demanding and they want to know and that they don't trust the regular reports.
And I think it has to be rejected.
You know, when the Soviet people, the Russian people were being abused by the Soviet system, they knew the resistance was always growing.
It was always, you know, when am I going to speak out and get shot?
You know, and eventually the things got so bad that the whole thing fell apart.
And that's what they're facing there, too.
How long are they going to be able to pursue this?
But I think this is just great that the people want to know where the money is going.
And maybe some good will come of this.
It's already in the discussion.
And your perception here is that the fact that they're actually trying to pander or satisfy the people, the question is, is will a bunch of Republicans roll over and say, well, they're going to watch the money.
I don't think these hardcore in the Congress will even buy into that.
But we'll have to see because politics is a strange creature.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's almost useless now that we've spent so much money.
It made sense when Senator Paul was saying, okay, before we authorize this money, why don't we put an inspector general with it, a special inspector general with it, and through the whole process, we'll at least have some oversight.
Everyone said, well, you're just Putin's puppet.
You can't do that.
So it made sense then.
At this point, you do have to wonder why they would do it.
And I think you touched on it too, because we're seeing a lot of Republican hawks who want to vote for this money.
They're all gung-ho for the war.
We got to kick out those Chinese or those Chi-Coms or the Russian comms.
They're all for the war, but they're hearing a lot from their districts because as we see, the Republican electorate is absolutely against escalating this war and against spending more money there.
They're hearing it from their constituents, and they're telling the administration, we want to vote for this money.
You've got to throw us a bone so that we can go back to our constituents and say, oh, well, this time it's all taken care of.
I really think this is what it's all about.
This is all about this $24 billion, this next request, which they think may be their last, who knows?
And Republicans who want to vote for it under pressure, being able to say, look, okay, you know what?
You guys were right all along, but now we have an inspector general.
We're going to watch this money.
I'm going to vote for it now.
And it may be a key move made by the administration to get this money.
You know, on occasion, this was the main article we were looking at with CNN.
So on occasion, they might even talk about some of the things that we agree with, and they're accurate.
And one sentence here, there's a few Republicans going to agree with what they're writing.
But it says, Republican calls for more oversight are not unanimous.
Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell has said Tuesday that there was already unprecedented insight into how nearly 30 types of Western weapon systems and vehicles are being used by Ukraine, often down to the serial number.
Should we challenge him?
I mean, he's had experience, and he's well known, and he has a lot of clout.
But he didn't learn a lesson unless he learned a lesson of obedience to the deep state.
Well, how does he explain that javelin we showed on the show with the Mexican cartels?
They got it from Ukraine.
And it's going to be an ongoing nightmare, these weapons that haven't been accounted for.
So we'll see what happens.
Again, we had called for it from the beginning.
It may sound silly for us to be skeptical of it now, but the point is that the money has been spent, and this looks more like about how to get that $24 billion than anything else.
Well, I guess we should move on now because it's war, war, war on the Liberty Report today.
We don't even have a good news story.
I'm going to fire myself.
I should have come up with a good news story, but let's look up this third one.
This is also from our friends at antiwar.com.
Monster in the Jungle00:02:47
Shout out to them.
They do such a great job.
U.S. Air Force clearing out jungles in the Pacific for new airfields.
Dave DeCamp wrote this.
The head of the U.S. Pacific Air Forces said Monday that the Air Force was clearing out jungles in the Pacific to build new airfields and restore old ones and get this, Dr. Paul, as part of the branch's preparation for war with China in the region.
I mean, I had to read that three or four times.
It's just blunt.
Well, maybe somebody here at home or some citizens will get up and say, that'll take a lot of concrete, won't it?
I wonder if we have any highways or bridges that ought to be checked out in this country.
You know, bridges are falling down, highways are a mess, and they just go on and continue to do it, which is a real tragedy because I don't know when this stuff will stop.
But it's preparing, it's so blatant.
They're preparing it.
They're looking for that monster to destroy.
You have to have a monster to destroy to get the people to come along together.
It's all the same thing, a manipulation of the people to support it.
And they use fear and loyalty to patriotic ideals that they concoct out of thin air.
What makes you a patriot or doesn't.
I'm really glad you brought up the roads because I was going to talk about it on the show.
I drove back from D.C. and I have never seen the highways in the kind of shape they're in.
It is devastating.
It's potholes and it's just a disaster.
So yeah, how about paving some things here?
Yeah, that's for sure to clear out the jungles.
But you think maybe somebody from the environmentalist movement might talk about this?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What if they go through the forest down in Brazil or something one of these days?
Yeah.
It's amazing.
When I thought about it, I actually, if you go to the last clip, actually, this is the first thing that went in my mind.
And I know it's not what they're going to do, but that final photo clip, if you put that up, this is what I heard about.
They're going to deforest the jungles.
Look at this iconic photo, Dr. Paul, from Vietnam War.
Remember them flying over Vietnam and Cambodia, just pouring out millions of gallons of Agent Orange all over the country.
Now, I don't think they're going to, I don't know that they're going to use that when they're doing this, but that's the image in my mind.
And I remember when I worked for you on Capitol Hill, all of our local veterans down here who were injured from Agent Orange, just trying to get their coverage, you know, working with your staff down here just to get them some medical coverage for all the cancers and stuff.
And I thought, how tragic that we're going to do this all over again, take out their forests.
Ron Paul's Thousand Page Book00:03:48
I bet most of the time I was in Congress, it was still there, but in the early, probably for a 10-year period, you know, late 70s and the 80s, there was so much tragedy.
Besides, they denied it for a long time.
It was just trying to get them to pay attention to it.
And that's what is heartbreaking to me, whether it's seeing the suffering of Agent Orange or seeing people crippled.
And there's been a great response by a lot of people, sympathetic and compassionate, trying to help them survive and have artificial limbs and all.
But it just tears me up because my thoughts are it's all so unnecessary.
It doesn't need to be this way.
It's stupidity and greed and unwillingness to defend personal liberty and get our government properly placed where it's supposed to be protecting liberty, not trying to manage an empire which they have lost control of and we're facing the consequence.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I guess we prepare for war with Russia, war with China, war all the time.
But I'm going to close out if you think we're about ready.
And I'm going to do a preview because on Monday or early in the week, I'm not sure it'll be exactly on Monday, we're going to start doing a little autumn fundraiser for the Ron Paul Institute, which is the home of the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
And I'm super excited.
And we'll talk about this sometime next week when you're ready.
But we have an absolutely terrific premium for people who start to support us and participate in our fall fundraiser.
And that is a new book from Ron Paul.
It's not holding up well in our light.
But The Great Surreptitious Coup, Who Stole Western Civilization, a brand new book by Ron Paul.
That doesn't happen every day.
This is going to be something we provide as a thank you for those of us, for those of you who participate in our fundraiser.
We'll have more details on early next week, but I just wanted to give everyone a heads up.
Thanks for watching the show.
I hope you'll help us keep the show alive so we can give you something in return.
Very, very good.
You wrote about that book, didn't you?
Yeah, I heard something about it.
But you know, I have to admit, I'm a little bit hesitant when people say I have books.
And I do have a few, but I don't have as many as people say.
But I never want to deceive anybody.
But then somebody says, quit doing that.
You don't have to apologize because it's not a thousand pages.
If a thousand pages, nobody's going to read it anyway.
And some good stuff sometimes is not long and complicated.
So I like to think, I'm not going to say, oh, I wrote so many books.
I write booklets and I write sort of an opinion piece on what's happening because so many people have asked me, who stole Western civilization?
Has there been a coup?
What's happened to the American Republic?
I try to answer some of those questions because there's a lot of explanation that does come through to explain exactly what's going on now.
Because in one way, you know, I don't predict things happening on certain certain dates.
But I think instinctively, once one understands what the freedom movement is like and what the monetary policy is like and what government is like, the politicians, you can anticipate.
So if you look at the nonsense that went on in Congress, going into war in the Middle East and Afghanistan and then Syria and Libya, it doesn't take any great brilliance to realize, you know, it's probably not going to work.
It's probably going to be very costly and probably harm us more than ever.
But maybe it'll help destroy the empire.
And that might not be such a bad idea.
Anyway, I want to thank all our listeners and viewers that have tuned in.