Back Door War: SecDef Admits US Troops In Gaza May See Combat
In a fascinating exchange US Rep. Matt Gaetz probed US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin about the role of the estimated 1,000 US troops involved in building a floating pier to deliver aid to Gaza. Austin insisted that they were not "boots on the ground" although he admitted they would be armed and would respond to incoming fire. Injecting US troops into a warzone requires a Congressional vote, Gaetz warned Austin. Also today: Pro-life activist meets US "justice" system. Finally: Cheating on mail-in ballots? Say it ain't so!
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing fine.
We have a couple of things that we want to visit our audience with.
But the first one is going to have something to do with foreign policy and having to do with that little war that has been going on for a while, because which little war?
We're in a couple of them always and always preparing for others.
But the one we want to start off with is we're going to talk a little bit about what's going to be going on in the Middle East and Gaza, because there are plans there, and we have spotted some things that look like things could be dangerous.
But there was another little clip in the news this morning, sort of related to this that I want to mention.
The headline was, Israel prepares to send delegation to Cairo for last chance Gaza ceasefire talks.
Well, should we have to think that's a good news and we don't have to warn people about it?
Say, peace is breaking out.
Unfortunately, I wish we could, but I don't think that's what it is.
I mean, we can never discourage even when you don't know what's going to happen.
If they want to talk about peace, good.
But right now, I would be skeptical of that, especially since what we want to do is talk about something going on that looks like it could be increasing the danger in the area.
And that has to do with what's going on in Gaza and the building of a landing area for ships coming in.
And at first, I think I heard, well, we have to have this Gaza to go in and help the people of Gaza because a lot of people are suffering humanitarian help.
But I think there's something else going on there because it's dangerous.
And the one person that brought this out pretty well, and we'll be talking about that is Gates ask, you know, the Austin Secretary of Defense a little bit about this, because in this landing area, ship landing area or boat landing or whatever it is, they're going to have a thousand American military personnel.
Wow.
And then, but Gates says, well, couldn't this be dangerous?
And the interview is not very enlightening.
And the concerns that we have, we'll talk about that because there's just no need for that.
It's going to cost, what, $300 million?
And it's nothing more than looking for more trouble.
And ever since 2014, you know, Daniel, you and I have been preaching that watch out, watch out, this is going to escalate.
And I think you have a pretty strong opinion on the danger of this war escalating with what they're doing right now in Gaza.
Daniel?
Yeah, it's a really volatile situation.
And hats off to Matt Gates, representative from Florida, for putting Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on the hot seat and saying, will you clarify what's going on here?
Because as you said, Dr. Paul, they're sending a thousand U.S. service members to build a pier off of the Gaza coast to deliver aid to Gaza.
Whereas we've always just sent it on an over-the-road route.
That's always been the preferred way.
It's the more efficient way.
There's no reason why, I mean, we've given Israel now another $26 billion to say, hey, we're going to deliver some aid to Gaza.
Don't shoot us.
Doesn't seem like a big ask.
But nevertheless, Netanyahu apparently came up with the idea and said, Hey, why don't you build a pier?
And so the U.S. said, fine, that sounds great.
So as you pointed out, the cost now is $320 million.
It's double the initial estimate.
Does anyone want to bet that it's going to double again in cost to build this massive pier out there?
But what we really want to talk about are these 1,000 American troops that are going to be building and operating the pier system.
Because as Gates mentioned, and I'll just very briefly summarize what he said.
He said, are these guys going to be armed?
And Austin said, yeah, they're going to be armed.
He said, well, if someone shoots at our service members, can they shoot back?
And Austin says they have the right to fire and protect themselves.
And he said, do you think there's a chance that someone on land in Gaza might shoot at our service members?
And Austin said, yeah, that's possible.
Yeah.
And then Matt Gates said, that's a very telling moment, Mr. Secretary, because you said something that's quite possible that could happen.
Shots from Gaza on our service members.
And then the response, our armed service members shooting live fire into Gaza.
That's a possible outcome.
And Austin said, that's right.
And I expect will always have the ability to protect themselves.
But then here's just the last couple of points Gates made.
Well, you know, basically, President Biden said, we're not going to have boots on the ground in Gaza.
And so how do you just, how do you, how do you justify this?
And Austin says, we don't have any boots on the ground.
And Gates says, basically, what are you guys talking about?
You're parsing the distinction.
You guys seem to be saying the boots on the ground, connected to the ground, connected to service members shooting into Gaza don't count as boots on the ground.
And Austin says it doesn't.
It doesn't count.
And just one last line, because this is the whole reason I think we wanted to bring this up today, Dr. Paul, is that Gates said, I think you're going to find the American people have a different perspective on that.
And if we're going to have people shooting into Gaza, we probably should have a vote on that pursuant to our war powers.
You know, they're talking about boots on the ground, and that is important, but it is sort of unnecessary to think that is the big problem.
How about our money landing over there, the stuff we buy, the weapons we buy, the financing of all the violence over there?
That is where the real problem is.
So yes, we don't have the soldiers with their boots on the ground.
We're going to put them on a pier to make sure that we don't look like we're vacillating and not knowing what we're doing.
But the whole thing is, is, you know, I think ever since 2014, we've had money on the ground and influence on the ground.
And we've sent a lot of weapons over there.
And I think we have to assume some responsibility for a lot of people that have died because we've been there.
Because one way a lot of this could have been avoided is for us not to have gotten involved in the coup and not being involved in any of these areas over these last several years.
And I think that it would be so much better.
But we've been involved, of course, in the Palestine area and Gaza, you know, for years and years.
And yet we are looking for a fight in Ukraine as well.
So we have boots on the ground, but I think sometimes we have them on our head or in our ears or something.
We have blindfolders on, and they just march on and play with words.
And this whole idea of what I open with, I think that's rather rather naive.
This is their last chance.
Well, I think, unfortunately, I think they've had their last chance of really having this happen.
But good.
I hope they go there.
I hope I'm 100% wrong on that and peace breaks out and all of a sudden they'll come to common sense and the president changes his mind and everybody in our government that's really, really wanting to send more money into the Palestinian area that they wise up and say, look, what we really need is to prevent these problems.
One is to follow the rule of non-entanglement.
We shouldn't get entangled in these international laws, you know, whether it's NATO or United Nations or whatever, or having an empire.
Believe me, the world would be happier.
We would be better off.
And we would have saved a lot of lives if we had been following that since World War II.
The thing about this, Dr. Paul, is that there are a couple of very important things to remember.
U.S. troops, 1,000 U.S. troops are going to be sent there.
The United States is definitely a party to this conflict.
I don't think anyone would deny it's the United States government that provides the weapons to Israel.
It provides the money to Israel to finance the weapons.
It provides the political cover for Israel and international organizations.
The U.S. is definitely a party to this conflict.
So putting U.S. troops in such a situation where it's clear that they are affiliated with the hostile government is insane.
I don't think anybody in his or her right mind would put U.S. troops in a situation where they were clearly, clearly a party to the conflict and then say, well, if someone shoots at them, they'll shoot back.
I mean, without air cover, these guys are sitting ducks.
Guys and gals are sitting ducks to people who, whatever you feel about the Palestinian cause, people are angry that the U.S. provides weapons to their adversary.
And we would feel the exact same way if the shoes were on the other foot.
So without air cover, these guys and gals are sitting ducks.
So what does that mean?
The next step is going to be an escalation.
It's going to be U.S. air cover.
We've already took a huge role in shooting down the Iranian missiles that were going into Israel.
We've all been very actively involved.
This is a way of sucking the United States into Israel's war on Gaza.
I don't think there's any other way of seeing it.
This is a way to suck us into the war.
You know, there are some people on the Democratic side that are close to Biden.
And I think their advice to him is, you know, if this gets out of hand and there's a real war, you're not going to be re-elected.
Well, lo and behold, maybe that's going to be the case anyway, because I don't think they're going to be able to back out.
But that's getting their attention because it's becoming a political issue.
It's divided the Democrats on the issue, as well as I think the Republicans are more organized on it.
When you see the votes that come up for funding, I mean, it just seems to overwhelm.
But there certainly is a group of Republicans that are for it.
So we have groups, the two groups that we have, if we can get them together, and that would be, you know, the people who are more pro-peace in the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party.
It seems like there's a base there that could be cultivated where we'd have less of that.
But the way when I see these things happening over a period of time, I keep thinking sooner, sooner, don't wait so long.
Don't wait for the killing.
Don't wait for this stuff to backfire.
And yet, right now, we're so embedded.
And when you look at being embedded into a lot of nonsense, just look at Ukraine, how much we've been involved there, how many dollars there.
And we're always looking for more.
This recent budgeting permitted by the Republicans is stirring things up with Taiwan and China unnecessarily.
So bad policies give us bad results.
I'm afraid that's what we've been talking about a lot.
But what we I would like to see, and I would get other people to agree with us, Daniel, that we're our policies and what we're talking about, much different.
Unfortunately, they're different because we're thinking about what were the traditions that we were introduced with when we had a constitution.
And that was an empire and endless spending and endless debt to promote special interest politics and letting the military industrial complex, you know, be king of the hill.
That has to be changed if we want to live in a peaceful world.
And the thing is that the Palestinians may shoot at the troops.
That's very possible.
As I said, the U.S. is considered a party to the conflict, so that could escalate it.
But you certainly can't discount the possibility of a false flag.
You may well see the Israelis shoot at the American troops because they want to suck the Americans into their war.
They're not doing very well.
I wrote an update to RPI subscribers last week, I think it was, where I quoted some senior, former senior military officials from Israel saying, we're not winning this war.
It's not going as well as we'd hoped it would.
So they may want to bring in the U.S.
So there's the incentive for a false flag.
There's incentive for the Palestinians to shoot at us because we're providing weapons to their enemies.
The only thing that there's not an incentive to do from our perspective is to put American troops in the middle of it.
That seems like the most insane thing, especially if you care about the troops.
Yes.
And I think ready to go on to the next item, Daniel, unless you have a comment on this one.
Nope, sounds good.
Okay.
The next one deals with our Department of Justice.
Oh, I'm sorry, our Department of Injustice, because it seems like there's a total disaster in the Department of Justice.
And it's not by one party right now.
The party in charge is certainly divvying out all the injustice, but it's been going on for a long time.
Of course, I think there's been a lot of injustice and that the taking over of the system.
And I dated back into the 1960s when we had the three assassinations and an endless war in Vietnam and all, and that we lost a lot then.
But systematically, this is all continued and it's gotten worse, really.
And the one point that I want to, you know, that people have in their mind, and it's affecting the campaign now, is the J6 event where people are still suffering.
There was no rule of law.
There are people in prison for a long time.
And it's just way out of control.
But there's one incident I want to bring up, Daniel, that speaks because it's the whole idea of the Department of Justice.
And for this individual that we're going to talk about, there's probably many more, just like there's a lot of people sitting in prisons for political reasons that we haven't heard about yet.
We do hear about the Assange type problem, but our Department of Justice is nothing to brag about.
Arrested for Speaking Out00:03:24
And also our intelligence services have backfired and have done more harm to Americans than protecting us.
But the story, Daniel, that I wanted to bring up has to do with a right-to-life person.
And she was arrested because she was speaking, or she was standing just making a point and was arrested.
Exclusive, jailed pro-lifer says she was kept in solitary confinement for 22 days with lights on, 24 out of 7.
And it is so, it's a really sad story, but she showed a lot of courage.
But there has to be others like this too.
But this point, I mean, the motivation for punishing her was the fact that she had views where she was, she was felt, and I agree, she was trying to protect life.
She wasn't committing violence.
Just look at the people committing all the violence and killing.
And they hardly get a slap on the wrist.
But here, this punishment is going on, and she is a long sentence.
And there's now people seeking to try to get her some help.
But this is just another example, Daniel, I think, of the deterioration of our judicial system.
Yeah, her name is Heather Idoni.
And I hope that's the right pronunciation.
She was arrested because she violated the Bill Clinton era freedom to access clinic entrances, the FACE Act.
And apparently what that is, is you cannot interfere with people who are trying to get into an abortion clinic.
And I guess, as you say, as a right to life activist, apparently she was attempting to counsel people on the entrance to an abortion clinic and trying to dissuade them from getting the abortion.
So she has been arrested and as you say, she's facing a serious sentence.
She was dragged into the courtroom in shackles.
Her hands were shackled.
They were shackled to her waist and her ankles were shackled.
This is a late middle-aged, peaceful woman, and she was treated as if she was Charles Manson or something, brought into the courtroom.
So that and the other ways that she's being treated, as you say, Dr. Paul, really calls into question whether we have a blind justice system in the U.S. or whether, like under the Soviet Union, we have political justice.
Political prisoners are treated much differently than those who are in the favor of the state.
But the government had to justify this severe punishment.
And the reason she went into solitary confinement, she was sharing food with fellow prisoners because she felt sorry for them too.
They were probably in a similar condition.
But think of that vicious crime, sharing food and protecting life.
And that's the thing that motivates our government to really punish those people because they're really bad people.
What if truth breaks out?
Then they won't have control of the whole system if people start telling the truth and making justice a little bit more just.
Truth vs. Control00:05:44
Yeah.
And for this nonviolent protest that she was doing or nonviolent action, it is civil disobedience because there is a law, whether or not it's just is one thing.
It's civil disobedience.
But she faces over 50 years in prison and a million dollar fine for simply standing on the sidewalk and trying to discourage people from getting an abortion.
And we got the story from Life Side News, and they point out that if she does get the sentence that she's facing, it will be the single longest prison term in history of the United States for civil disobedience.
So she's a dangerous criminal.
She's got to be off the street, right, Dr. Paul?
There's a need to be a correction.
You know, I talk a lot about the bankruptcy we have, and I talk about the financial bankruptcy, but I also talk about a moral bankruptcy.
And I think this is a pretty good example of a moral bankruptcy on where our society is going.
And yet, in spite of all that, we still do meet a lot of nice people who are aware of this.
And we still have enough ability to get this information out.
Although, you know, the propaganda machine in both political parties is pretty strong, but at least there's some discussion.
And the internet has a lot of shortcomings, but there's a lot of benefits from it too, because we like to get our message out this way, encouraging other people to join us in our effort.
Yeah, well, the final one we want to talk about, Dr. Paul, is something that you noticed also in LifeSight News.
And it's a fascinating story.
You're not supposed to talk about it, but there was a Ras Musen poll recently about write-in ballots.
And the headline of the story is one in five mail-in voters admitted to committing voter fraud during the 2020 election, according to a recent Ras Muson poll.
21% admitted to illegally filling out the ballot on someone else's behalf, and 17% admitted to voting from a state where they were not a legal resident.
So unless they're lying on this poll, Dr. Paul, we've got an election problem here.
Right.
You know, the 2020 election is still being talked about.
And the Trump people really lost because the media was able to portray this as a takeover of the government, insurrection going on, even though they could never charge anybody with it because it really wasn't.
But, you know, it was dramatically, you know, described to that big insurrection.
Very, very serious matter.
But, you know, if that would have only been, I want to recount.
We should have a recount.
And not this idea that we want to cancel the election.
We want to just recount.
It should have been that way.
And maybe it would have been a little different.
Then some people said, it's over and done with, which is true.
And you're not going to change it.
Nobody's going to throw the president.
And that's true.
But you know what?
I still believe in articles like this because it's revealing the truth.
And even though it might be slow and tedious, but someday people are going to put this together and maybe rewrite the story about the 2020 election.
But if it's the case, people should have a right to the truth of the matter, and be able to not pretend, oh, next week we're going to reveal this and we're going to change it and all the courts are going to agree.
No, they had that all sat in place.
The judicial system was on the sides of the people they wanted to keep in office.
But I still think getting to this information that there was a lot of fraud going on.
And I happen to believe that.
You know, I witnessed that in an election that I was in, and it was very clear, but there wasn't, you just can't, you can't be overwhelmed with trying to defend oneself.
So this is another thing about arguing the case for pure democracy.
And there's a lot of arguments to be made against pure democracy.
But some of it is, it motivates this voting sort of thing.
And so whoever has control of the strings, whoever has control of the media, that's how we control democracy.
Oh, we've got the people on our side.
So this, but I still think the goal ought to be seeking out the truth, you know, and finding it and recording it and maybe be of benefit to some people later on or trying to correct the next election.
But right now, I don't feel like, you know, I think there were a lot of shortcomings in the last election, but I'm not at a point where I say, boy, I'm glad they caught it.
Now the articles are coming out.
I'm sure this next one will be perfectly clean.
So I haven't gotten to that point yet, but I don't to give up on the idea.
There are truth seekers out there and truth finders, and we should do our very best to make sure the people know exactly what went on and what we might be able to do about it.
Yeah, it's just hard to imagine in our day and age with all the high tech and everything we have around us, we can't just have a simple election.
I mean, it doesn't make any sense.
But so anyway, I think I'm going to, if you're done, Dr. Paul, I might just sign off and thank our viewers for bearing with us.
Our studio tech is out for a vacation, so we are in somewhat rudimentary situations.
Why Viewers Matter00:01:33
But we certainly appreciate you sticking with us despite that fact.
And we hope you'll come back soon.
Dr. Paul, over to you.
Very, very good.
And I too want to thank our viewers for tuning in today.
We talked about foreign policy and some other things, but I look at all the problems we've had in foreign policy, continue to do it.
And we have all this war breaking out around the world, and we pay for it all.
We're morally responsible for a lot of it as well.
But prevention is better than a tough cure.
And it's hard after the wars break out or to back off when people become dependent on the corruption.
But the one principles the founders promoted, and I think that is a very powerful issue.
And we should talk more about it.
And that is to prevent problems that we face so often in foreign policy, why don't we follow the rule of stay out of entangling alliances?
And they say, oh, that's isolationism.
You don't want to trade or talk to anybody.
It's exactly the opposite because look at the world today.
There's entangling alliances that bring us to fighting wars, protectionism, and all the problems that we have.
So I think that staying out of entangling alliances promotes trade and promotes peace.
And that certainly is a worthy goal.
I want to thank our listeners and viewers for tuning in with this program today.