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July 29, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
29:15
Israel To Attack Lebanon Tonight?

The long-awaited Israeli expansion of its war on Gaza and Syria to include Lebanon may begin as early as tonight, sources are suggesting. How would such a move escalate throughout the region and how deeply and directly would the Biden Administration become involved? Also today, US has delivered nearly 30,000 bombs to Israel. Finally: Good news for Navy SEALs.

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Hezbollah's Rising Influence 00:15:06
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Happy Monday, Dr. Paul.
How are you today?
I'm doing well.
We saw some sunshine.
Maybe we're going to get rid of all that trash from our hurricane.
It's time for another hurricane.
So keep working on your yard, like everybody in town's doing.
Anyway, at least all we have to worry about is a hurricane now and then.
And yet, we spend a lot of time being concerned of the demolition around the country and around the world from our military.
And, you know, it's such a shame, I think, and it's all done in the name of national defense.
We have to defend this country and get the people worked up.
And unfortunately, the war machine is pretty good at getting people to shift their opinion.
They will shift, but we keep looking for signs that there's more and more people that are thinking differently.
And we like the at least argument and debate going on in the Democratic Party.
But we have more people in the Republican Party probably than when I was in Congress.
But nevertheless, we have a long way to go.
There's too much money and financial power that is anxious to keep the wars going on.
Now, Netanyahu came to town.
I wasn't invited to visit with him because he told somebody that he really wanted to get Ron Paul's opinion on what we should do.
What does he mean by bringing the troops home?
Does that mean from Israel?
Don't send us any more weapons?
So I waited at the phone.
I never got the call.
But there are other people getting the call and they realize what we're talking about.
But Netanyahu walked away.
I don't know how these things work, but he walked away and the account is that he understood that he was getting backing to expand a war on Lebanon.
And of course, that's things we've mentioned many times on this program that has been a goal.
I don't think Israel hides their feeling about what they'd like to do.
So he walked away from that.
But our government really is in flux because the one that's leaving, fortunately, has gotten weaker.
But confusion doesn't mean that we're safer.
And also with the new administration coming in and the one that is supposed to come in, we have a gist of what the foreign policy is like.
But even from the record of the previous administration when Trump was in office, I don't think we got only good messages.
I think we got a couple, but I think we got a few signs that there's confusion and that he has a ways to go before he becomes a non-interventionist, which is our goal, that we stay out of these things because it's easy to, much easier to get involved than it is to get out.
So there is talk and whispers.
The Israelis would like to be involved in that.
And so this is a dangerous opinion if it's true.
I don't think they make it up.
I think most Americans believe that we'll bail them out if we get up and involved.
That doesn't mean that the next administration will do the same thing.
But right now, I think most Americans, unfortunately, would say, well, if Israel really gets into trouble, we should go.
But then again, we see a split on that idea because there weren't many Americans 5, 10, 15 years ago in this country that would speak up and say, maybe you ought to consider the Palestinians a little bit.
So the money flows, the weapons flow, and it looks like the conflict is getting closer because I suspect there will be a conflict and a final settlement on what the border will be between Israel and Lebanon.
Yeah, and the storm clouds are definitely gathering for an expansion.
On one hand, this is very illogical because Israel has clearly had a lot of problems defeating Hamas in Gaza.
Now, they killed a lot of innocent people, but they don't seem to have killed a lot of Hamas because Israel keeps taking casualties.
They keep getting attacked there, and they have not suppressed the Hamas movement.
So normally, I would think a country, when they're losing a war, or certainly not winning it, they would try to shore things up on that front.
But for Israel, what they're doing is they want to open a new front, which is to expand the war into Lebanon, to expand the war with Lebanon.
People are speculating that's because they're hoping with a larger war, something that's harder for them to get a handle on, that the U.S. will jump in and put the weight of the U.S. into a very large Middle Eastern war.
That seems to be what they're banking on.
And I think if you can go by Congress, which gave Netanyahu 58 standing ovations, at one point he had to tell them, you guys stop clapping.
I'm going to try to tell you something.
They were clapping so much he couldn't get his speech out.
So I'm sure he takes that as a green light.
But now something happened over the weekend that some people think may be a trigger for a war that may start as soon as tonight.
I've seen some rumors on Twitter X about that.
But put on the first clip, if you can.
This is from Middle East Eye.
This happened yesterday.
Israel-Lebanon tensions intensify after deadly Meid El Sham's rocket strike.
A rocket killed, I think, 12 young kids playing soccer in Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The Israelis blamed it on Hezbollah.
Hezbollah said, we didn't do it.
Why would we shoot a missile and kill Arabs in a place that you occupy?
We don't know exactly what happened.
Some people speculate it might be an Iron Dome, which is the Israeli missile defense system that may have gone up and knocked back down.
But nevertheless, that has served as kind of a focal point now for the increasing tension.
And as you mentioned, our friends at anti-war put this on, I think, yesterday.
This is from the cradle.
So if you go to the next one, Washington gives Netanyahu full backing to expand the war on Lebanon.
So at least the Israelis consider it the U.S. have given them a green light.
But we don't know what a green light means.
President hasn't talked to us.
Vice President hasn't talked to us about it.
So we have no idea if it was a green light and what does it mean?
Are we going to get involved?
You know, the fatigue that is obvious with the war in Ukraine, you know, against Russia is evident.
And the NATO war in alliance with Ukraine is getting exhausted.
And yet, I've heard statements in the midst of the campaign that's going on is, well, what we'd like to do is really decrease our presence and get out of Ukraine.
And it's time to take a rest.
Because in the statement, the individual was mentioning, well, we need to put more tension on Taiwan.
Taiwan already is Taiwan.
But it could be that they could pay more attention to the Middle East and what's going on with the Gaza war going on.
So that's the big thing.
But they hardly get one settled.
They seem to, our policy is to get in and show how tough we are, but without a purpose and without an understanding.
Of course, we understand it a little bit better because there's money involved.
Well, you've got to give them credit.
They want to test their weapons, see how well they work.
So they do this.
But once again, now, and I've been concerned and speak out against, you know, the policy in the Middle East is going to store up trouble with Lebanon.
And my first suggestion to anybody that said, yeah, we need to do that.
We need to help Israel.
There has to be a fight.
I suggest a, you know, because since the time we had Reagan and president, he's become, you know, a model and a hero and unquestioned.
And I've admired Reagan for the one great statement he did because he admitted that he really goofed on putting those Marines in Beirut.
And over 200 Marines were killed.
And it made no sense that he knew it and he wrote it up.
He never denied it.
And I would suggest anybody that thinks, any American that thinks that we ought to sacrifice even more people, more Marines, and going in and spending more money and that Ukraine hasn't taught us a lesson, the Middle East.
But I would say, reading exactly what Reagan's feelings were about this, they may say, well, he's right.
And the whole thing was, Reagan's point was, I didn't think things through.
I didn't understand how terrible the situation was.
Well, evidently the people that have been in charge on our foreign policy, both Republicans and Democrats, for sure, they haven't quite understood the danger being there.
I don't know what their final goal is because it always is bad.
It always works badly.
And so this whole idea now that people are hinting that we're approaching that time where we're going to see more effort to get into Lebanon.
And that's maybe why this bombing that occurred in Golden Heights might be a warning signal to us to be more alert.
Yeah, and you know exactly what the neocons are doing.
They're telling everyone, this is going to be a cakewalk.
Don't worry, guys.
This war is going to happen.
Exactly what they did with Iraq.
They're doing it right now.
They're trying to gin the whole thing up.
But here are a couple of troubling tweets I think that lead us in the direction kind of why we're putting up the story today as kind of a warning as to what might happen.
Go ahead and skip this one and go on to the next one.
Now, this is an AP report that Resistance War News has put up.
Hezbollah has started moving dangerous precision missiles to battle positions, according to the AP.
So it looks like Hezbollah is anticipating an Israeli strike and is moving its precision missiles closer.
Now the next one, this is from Elijah Manier, who is a long-time journalist based in the Middle East.
If you can put this next one up, now the question is, what will be the perception of the U.S. in there?
Well, according to Elijah, the U.S. has sent a message to Iran saying that it has no intention of escalating a wider war in the Middle East.
But Iran responded through a third party, and I highlighted this, that any Israeli war on Lebanon would be considered a U.S. war on Iran and that Lebanon would not be left alone.
So if this is accurate, a pretty clear statement that Iran would view U.S. action in Lebanon as an attack on Iran.
I think they should take heed to that warning.
And one final one, if you can put this up.
Now, this is from Dan Cohen, who knows the Middle East very well.
I think he's lived in Israel for a while.
He's a filmmaker and a journalist.
He retweeted this article from Israel News.
Top U.S. general warns, harder for U.S. to assist Israel in confrontation with Hezbollah.
And it starts by saying, unlike the support the U.S. provided against Iran's April attack on Israel, the general warned that America will be limited in its ability to help Israel against escalated attacks by Hezbollah, which he said would likely involve Iran.
And if you can leave that up, Dan commented saying, seems that the appropriate false flag, Midal Shams, is pointed at the U.S. as much as it is Lebanon.
Israel can't fight Hezbollah and Iran without the U.S.
So it resorts to deceptions to convince Washington to fight on its behalf.
Who needs enemies with an ally like that? said Dan Cohen, who clearly believes that the Midal Shams bombing was a false flag designed to suck the U.S. into the war.
You know, when I see all these announcements and what we pursue, and we never back down, the military budget keeps going up.
And now the race is which is going to be the highest, the interest on the money we borrow to give them away.
And yet nobody seems to be that worried about the dollar.
Yeah, people talk about it and they whisper it on the business station.
But if the American people and the country understood the size of this bubble, maybe they wouldn't be so anxious to continue it.
They believe we'll never run out of money.
And because we have the weaponry, we have a lot of military strength, and we have the reserve currency of the world.
But we see signs of all that cracking and readying to burst.
And right now we don't have a Ronald Reagan around to reassess things and remind them.
But I keep saying we ought to remind ourselves of the failure of all these events.
And that's the problem.
Now, there's other things.
There's a lot of preparations going on in Lebanon.
Iran's paying a lot of attention.
The Russians are rather silent about this, but they're involved very much.
But here we are.
How many Americans do you think realize that we occupy maybe a third of Syria?
And it just happens where the oil wells are.
But you can't say that.
That makes you unpatriotic.
But my argument is you're more patriotic if you tell the truth about what your own country is doing and that you can criticize your own country and your own government.
But I tell you what, that's getting more difficult all the time because you can be silenced if you don't speak the party line.
But just the weaponry is amazing.
I want to mention about the weapons we have done since the October attack, 7th attack.
Bombs Since October 00:03:16
And here was an article that says the U.S. has delivered 25,000 bombs and 3,000 missiles to Israel since October 7th.
So don't we have a moral responsibility on where those bombs went?
You know, as far as I'm concerned, and I try to use it as often as I can, it's all stolen money.
And they're getting away with it.
It's fraud.
It's destroying our middle class.
They don't want to see the connection.
We can keep doing it, but because we have a responsibility to bring peace to the world, it's such a force, and the people go along with that.
I don't know what it's going to take to wake up more, even though we have recognized that we see and meet and know of the enthusiasm building, and they're sick and tired of it all.
Yeah, I mean, all administrations lie.
We know that.
But this administration seems to really have a knack for it.
You know, they really lie with a straight face.
Now, you mentioned the bombs, but you remember when Biden was on TV last week, he said, you know, I'm the first president in this new century that has the U.S. not in any wars.
And literally, as he was saying that, he was bombing Yemen.
You know, we're not in any wars.
We have a president who's literally emptied out the armories of the United States and given them to Ukraine.
And they say, well, we're not a party to that war either.
And now you have what you just mentioned.
Put this next one up.
This is Kyle Enzloan on the Libertarian Institute.
He reports on this.
U.S. delivered 28,000 bombs and missiles to Israel since October 7th.
Now, if you remember what I said just a couple of minutes ago, where the U.S. said to Iran, hey, we don't have anything to do with this.
We're not involved in this at all, but you can't deliver 28,000 bombs to someone and watch your way.
So put on this next one.
This is what Dr. Paul was talking about.
The U.S. delivered 25,000 bombs and 3,000 missiles to Israel since October 7th.
The majority of those are 2,000-pound unguided bombs that Tel Aviv has used during its onslaught in the Gaza Strip.
The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, pro-war neoconservative think tank in Washington issued a report that the U.S. arms transfers to Israel since October 7th.
Israel has received 14,000, 2,000 pound bombs, 8,200, 500-pound bombs, 3,250-pound bombs, and 3,000 hellfire missiles and many classified weapons that we won't know about.
And that's why Gaza is literally uninhabitable today.
You know, since Vietnam, we don't, infrequently, we will frequently hear how many bombs have been dropped, and they cite the number of bombs that were dropped in World War II, which was terrible, killed a lot of people.
But it seems like we're always having a new record because there's so many wars fought, which we don't call them wars.
They're just little police action to bring peace and prosperity to these countries to teach them democracy because we have an ideal democracy here.
Navy SEALs: The Shot and Consequences 00:03:24
And that's our goal.
But our goal is not peace and prosperity.
I think that's what our goal is.
Peace and prosperity.
And it will never be fully achieved.
But if you don't have a target, you won't even move in the right direction.
So there are times when there is more peace and prosperity by following better politics.
And there's time when there's world wars.
And the way they're building up, you keep thinking, how did World War II ever come about?
People, why were they preparing?
But you could ask that question.
Why are so many countries preparing now?
And we're all over Europe, but other countries are doing it too.
I mean, even Norway and Sweden, Switzerland, all those places have become war preparators.
They're preparating.
Some of them would try to be neutral.
But there's less and less of the neutrality that we need.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, let's keep an eye on this.
Let's hope it doesn't happen tonight.
It'd be bad for Israel, be bad for Lebanon, be bad for innocent civilians above all.
But let's kind of end with, I would call it a bittersweet good news story because we like seeing justice done.
And this is about the Navy SEALs.
You remember now, Dr. Paul, about the COVID, where if they didn't want to take this shot, of course, they were told if you take the shot, you won't get COVID.
Well, that wasn't true.
Turns out if you do take the shot, you're going to have a lot of other problems.
But the Navy SEALs and other military personnel who did not take the shot were brutally, brutally attacked by the U.S. government.
You know, support the troops, support the troops.
No, they didn't do that.
Put up the next clip.
This is the good news story, though, Dr. Paul.
Navy SEALs fired for refusing COVID vaccine for religious reasons, score major win against the Biden administration.
Now, we're talking about Dr. Paul.
8,000 service members refused the shot on moral and religious grounds.
But these Navy SEALs, they fought back.
And they were, here's what happened to them.
And I'll put on the next clip.
And I remember when we talked about this, but it's good to refresh how horrible the U.S. government and the Biden administration was.
These Navy SEALs, they were fired, denied trainings to advance in rank, and in some cases, even forced by the military to pay back their initial signing bonuses between $4,000 and $7,000.
SEALs and other special operations warfare troops were told that they would have to pay back the cost of their training by the federal government, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and hand over their hard-earned trident pin.
Nevertheless, they sued and they won.
If you go to the next one, so they won the case.
The Navy backed down.
They admitted that they lost.
The Navy agreed to post a statement affirming the Navy's respect for religious service members.
That's a little late.
But it's going to provide some more training for the commanders who destroyed the lives of these people.
So I guess we should rest easy.
Yeah, in general, people have read now of the stupidity of COVID lockdowns.
Chaos and Government Growth 00:02:55
And there's a large number of people that are very much aware of this.
And yet, back then, of course, we knew the people and we talked to the people who saw what was coming.
And they said, this is an insane policy.
Not only is something that's not scientific, it's going to cost a lot of money.
It's going to cost personal liberty, size of government, the budget's going to go up.
And they knew all this.
And then it created a lot of chaos.
Everybody, we're still suffering from it.
Kids haven't caught up from school yet.
And the whole thing was disruptive.
So if the goal was something other than health, what was the goal?
And I think it was chaos.
I think that, you know, the far left and the Marxists literally admit that for them to bring about the real revolution they want, they have to destroy the remnant of the principles of liberty under the Constitution.
And that's the only way I can come to any understanding of this making any sense or why would they do it.
And it isn't that they keep making the mistakes and mistakes.
I didn't want it to do that.
We made a mistake, but we can fix that.
Some people are that way.
We just didn't do it the right way.
We'll change managers.
We'll change the regulations or something.
But no, I think when you look at what's happening, they can come up with all very highfalutin moral reasons why we should be more generous with people coming to our country.
And it isn't just generous coming to our country.
It's to open up the door and have an invasion.
An evasion of that sort is to me like invading every one of our homes and saying, I'm sorry if you move out, because they're stealing the wealth and the liberties of the American people to do all these things.
So the chaos they have achieved is just another justification to continue with increasing size of government unless the people wake up.
And I keep thinking, you know, we're seeing this.
Here's something we're calling this good news.
At least it was a stop, hold on here.
You know, why do we punish?
Why do we punish the military that if we truly had a war, these are the people who are well trained and could provide a service like that.
And they go under with very good intentions, and yet look at what they did to them.
What about the military now that has been retired or handicapped or something?
They get pushed to the back of the line to get benefits from our own government.
And the illegal people that come in and are very a great deal of them participating and breaking the law.
Of course, they break the law when they come.
And then it gets a lot worse as time goes along.
Why Freedom Matters 00:04:18
Yeah.
Well, according to the article, they're not finished.
They're going to try to go after the senior people like Mark Milley who have already retired and see if they can get some sort of punishment for them.
And I hope they're successful because they deserve to be punished.
One of the things we didn't mention, I'm going to close out here, but we did mention that we had kind of a madcap adventure on Saturday.
We flew out to Nashville.
We got delayed.
I know it seems like a weird dream, fever dream, but flew out to Nashville.
We went to the 2024 Bitcoin conference.
You had a great interview there.
It was projected on the main stage before Trump showed up.
We met a lot of great people there, a lot of super nice people there.
I wish I would have put the photo.
We had a crazy like 45 minutes sitting on a couch waiting for the speeches, and everyone just came up and mobbed you.
And it was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed it, even though it was stressful.
But I ran into our old friend Luke Rakowski there, and I like we know Luke, he's a great guy, he does We Are Change.
And we got to talking, he asked me about our conference, and I said it's going to be a little bit different this year, not just foreign policy and civil liberties, but kind of a broader sort of look at liberties.
And I mentioned food freedom.
And he said, I've been really interested in a lot in that lately, and I think it's really one of the keys, one of the real battles for liberty.
And so Luke was absolutely right.
And so I'm going to use that as a segue to let everyone know if you put on that final clip that our conference on August 31st is going to feature.
And many of you know this already.
Probably the number one fighter for food freedom, and that is Joel Salatin, whose great book is Everything I Want to Do is Illegal.
He will be speaking live at the conference.
I do have a link already in the description where you can get your tickets August 31st, sorry, in Dulles, in Dulles, Virginia, near the Dulles Airport.
It's going to be a great event.
Joel Salatin, Dr. John Mearsheimer, and many others.
So get those tickets right away, and we'll see you in a few weeks.
Dr. Paul?
You know, I had a good time at the convention, but I did have a question for the supporters because I know so many of them.
And it was a huge crowd, and they kept embellishing and overstating.
They said, a lot of people are here just because of our campaigns in the past.
And I said, well, I don't quite understand that.
I've been friends of the crypto movement, and I think it's very important.
But I said, you know, I'm not the average person promoting crypto because I'm not directly engaged in it.
And I said, you know, what I talk about are the problems and why we need to get rid of the Federal Reserve and all these things.
They still say that that message incited and encouraged people to look for an alternative and they found it in this crypto.
So I don't understand all that.
And so I never campaigned, you know, that one issue was crypto.
Of course, that wasn't going on so much when I was in office.
But it reminded me of the statement I would give people when somebody would come up to me and maybe challenging me, they'll say, Oh, well, are you the congressman that wants to get rid of the drug war and legalize marijuana?
And I would say, no, that's not me.
I says, I'm for legalizing freedom and freedom of choice.
And so that fits this.
So if there are controversial things, I'm just changing who's going to police it.
Is it going to be private sources policing it, or are you going to have regulators and powerful people lobbying in Congress and all this sort of thing?
So that's why it's a blanket answer, but I believe in it strongly.
If you legalize freedom and permit it and emphasize voluntarism, believe me, we're going to have a much more peaceful world and society, and we're going to have a much more prosperous society as well.
So that's why we keep plugging away at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity because we really believe in our message.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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