President Obama announced late last week that the US intelligence community had just determined that the Syrian government had used poison gas on a small scale, killing some 100 people in a civil conflict that has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. Because of this use of gas, the president claimed, Syria had crossed his “red line” and the US must begin to arm the rebels fighting to overthrow the Syrian government.

Setting aside the question of why 100 killed by gas is somehow more important than 99,900 killed by other means, the fact is his above explanation is full of holes. The Washington Post reported this week that the decision to overtly arm the Syrian rebels was made “weeks ago” – in other words, it was made at a time when the intelligence community did not believe “with high confidence” that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons.

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

The process was identical to the massive deception campaign that led us into the Iraq war. Remember the famous quote from the leaked “Downing Street Memo,” where representatives of British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s administration discussed Washington’s push for war on Iraq?

Here the head of British intelligence was reporting back to his government after a trip to Washington in the summer of 2002: “Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

That is exactly what the Obama Administration is doing with Syria: fixing the intelligence and facts around the already determined policy. And Congress just goes along, just as they did the last time.

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

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

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

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

Transcript

James Clapper: The notion that we’re trolling through everyone’s emails and voyeuristically reading them or listening to everyone’s phone calls is, on its face, absurd. We couldn’t do it even if we wanted to, and I assure you, we don’t want to.

News Anchor: That, of course, was the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, during a sit down exclusive interview with Andrea Mitchell over the weekend, where she pushed back against the notion of a Big Brother government. But, as opponents say, that is exactly what we should be afraid of. Joining me now on the phone is the Chairman for Campaign for Liberty, but he’s more famously known for being a presidential candidate and former Republican member of Congress from Texas, Ron Paul. Congressman Paul, thanks for joining me on the phone this morning.

Ron Paul: Thank you, Chuck, it’s nice to be with you.

News Anchor: I want to start with this issue that you praised Mr. Snowden, and essentially said that he is a hero in this case. You’ve heard that there are a lot of senators, both Democrats and Republicans, who believe what he did was illegal and he should be treated as a traitor. Why shouldn’t he be treated as a traitor?

Ron Paul: Well, it is probably illegal, there are some laws against this, but what about the people who are breaking the law, violating the constitution, even using the PATRIOT Act extensively. According to (?) who wrote the law, said they didn’t act within the law: “Who’s going to punish them, why don’t we talk about those individuals who’re breaking the law”. And which one has the higher order: the constitution and the written law, or the authority of the executive branch who controls the enforcement of laws. So I would say the bigger the government gets, the greater threat the lack of knowing the truth of things is. So, really, my goal in life has always been to try to figure out what is the truth, and I would say individuals who are willing to take a risk and realize the danger of telling the people the truth, are real heroes. For instance, right now we have a CIA agent in prison because he told us the truth about torture. So I would say that we have to sort this out, both, in a moral sense and a legal sense. But to say that only the whistle blowers are the ones who are breaking the law … we should question the people in authority about breaking the law and what recourse we have. Evidently, they feel very frustrated and have to go to the public, because going to the FBI and other agencies to investigate themselves, doesn’t seem to pan out very well.

News Anchor: I had a law-maker say to me yesterday, that you get more protection from the media than perhaps going to an inspector general or the FBI. But I want to ask you this question about these two issues: one is the disclosure of these programs, and the other is whether the programs are themselves a violation of the 4th Amendment? So let’s start with the disclosure aspect and the transparency. Would you be potentially uncomfortably about accepting, for instance, the telephone database program? The idea that they gobble up, they vacuum clean, essentially, all telephone numbers. They collect the American telephone number, what calls they make to who (not necessarily the contents), and put it in a database. If the government was more transparent about that procedure, would you be more accepting of the procedure?

Ron Paul: Being transparent about breaking the law and violating the 4th Amendment doesn’t make me feel any better.

News Anchor: So you believe even the telephone, even that specific instance, is also a violation of the 4th Amendment?

Ron Paul: Yes, the big question is, why should they do it? They say, “We’re not listening, we’re not going to use it, and we’re not going to ever use it”. Well, why do it? And if they’re looking for ten people, why do they have to look at 300 billion people’s activity? So it makes no sense whatsoever, and it’s such a blatant violation of the clear language of the constitution and the 4th Amendment. And the founders knew what this was about, the British did it to them, and they wanted to try to prevent this. And yet now, we have the heroics of the politicians saying, “The persons who are telling us the truth are the ones who are committing the treason”. So it’s been turned on its head. And even the political foolishness of the Republicans running to rescue Obama … the American people are sick and tired of all this snooping and prying and surveillance. So the Republicans run to the rescue saying, “Oh no, we passed those laws, we want to preserve these laws”. So it doesn’t even make political sense, it doesn’t make good moral sense, it doesn’t make good constitutional sense.

News Anchor: And very quickly, do you believe the only way we can resolve this debate is by having the Supreme Court weigh in on the constitutionality of these procedures?

Ron Paul: I think that’s a tool that we have to use, and hopefully it gets there. But I think the ultimate test is education, the people understanding this and the people being determined that they believe in liberty and they want limited government. And when you have big government, you have this kind of abuse, you have big government taxation, you have abuse. So the abuse comes from big government, and the natural tendency of individuals who hold this power to abuse it. So no, the biggest issue is the acceptance by the people of big government to take care of us from cradle to grave and make us safe and secure in our houses by having policemen investigate and have all this surveillance, as well as economic security. If we expect the government to be the nanny state, it will be big, it will be abusive and that, to me, is the most important issue.

News Anchor: Ron Paul, I’m going to leave it there with the Campaign for Liberty, Congressman Paul, thanks for coming on this morning.

Ron Paul: Thank you.

Transcript

News Anchor: Joining me now on the phone is former Republican Congressman, Ron Paul. Congressman, it’s great to have you back on the show. Where do you think he is right now, are you worried about that?

Ron Paul: You have no idea. I’m worried that somebody in our government might kill him with a cruise missile or a drone missile. We live in a bad time where American citizens don’t even have rights, and they can be killed. But the gentleman is trying to tell the truth about what’s going on, he’s not defecting, there are no signs of that happening. It’s a shame that we’re in an age where people that tell the truth about what the government is doing, get into trouble. We have a CIA agent in prison today because he told us there was torture going on in Guantanamo. So this is not good that the American people are being spied on. The government is secret, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be the other way round, they’re supposed to protect our privacy.

News Anchor: You heard the quote that we played at the very beginning, where he talked about the fact that it would be easy for him to sell secrets to Russia, and that is a major concern as well.

Ron Paul: Yes, but you also heard him say that that wasn’t his intent.

News Anchor: He can say anything, though, you feel confident that he’s not going to do that?

Ron Paul: Absolutely, that would be my assessment. He wouldn’t be doing it this way, he wouldn’t make himself so vulnerable. No, I don’t think for a minute that he’s a traitor. Everybody is worried about him and what they’re going to do and how they’re going to convict him of treason and how they’re going to kill him. But what about the people who destroy our constitution, what kind of penalty is for those individuals who just take the second or fourth amendment and destroy it? What do we think about people who assassinate American citizens without trial and assume that that’s the law of the land? That’s where our problem is. Our problem isn’t with people who’re trying to tell us the truth about what’s happening.

News Anchor: You’re asking how people feel about this. According to the Washington Post Poll, 56% of Americans find the NSA program acceptable, and one of the greatest fears Snowden said in that same interview, was that he was going to go through all this and the America public wasn’t going to care about the fact that the government was spying on them.

Ron Paul: Yes, but you pick and chose. There are some pretty good statistics out there that the American people are sick and tired of this overreach. And yes, the propaganda is out there, that if you’re not for NSA spying on people, then you’re un-American, you’re unpatriotic, and you hate America; that’s all the propaganda. But what if you’re a strict constitutionalist and a civil libertarian, you’d have a different opinion. What about obeying the constitution, what’s so horrible about that?

News Anchor: You think the majority of Americans are disturbed by what they found out, and do you think they will react and do something about it?

Ron Paul: I think the majority are disturbed because they now know that the government knows everything about them, they keep all these records. And also, why can’t this be connected to the IRS? Just think of this overreach with the IRS, AP reports that now they have evidence that they spy on every single American to ‘make us safe’? No, people are starting to realize this.

News Anchor: Your son called for a Class Action Lawsuit against the federal government over this scandal, do you support that, do you think that’s a good idea?

Ron Paul: I think anything like that to call attention to it, is good. I have not been overly confident about the court system, but I emphasize the fact that the most important thing is that the American people wake up and understand what liberty is all about, what the constitution is about. And if they don’t understand that, nothing will change it, because the government is a reflection of education. Whether it’s the courts, whether it’s the presidency, the executive branch or the congressional branch, they reflect the clichés and the teachings that they’ve had for a hundred years. And, unfortunately, it has undermined our system of liberty and the constitution. As I was told once, when I said we should never go to war without a declaration: “That part of the constitution is an (?)”, that’s what we’re facing. So, to me, educating the American people and getting confidence back in their minds and hearts to believe that freedom can work and the government can’t take care of us and we should not depend that the government give us perfect safety and perfect security at the sacrifice of our liberty. It’s a foolish trend, and I think episodes like this do a lot to wake up a lot people.

News Anchor: I hope you’re right, Congressman, thank you so much for coming on, we appreciate your time.

Transcript

Piers Morgan: Ron Paul, if you had been President – which you could have been, you ran for office this time, and you could have won – are you in all seriousness telling me that you would have stopped all of this tracking of data in the way that the NSA has been doing it?

Ron Paul: An awful lot of it, but it wouldn’t be stopped, you would still have your intelligence gathering, but it would be done under the law. You would have probable cause, and you would have courts. This idea that you can go to the FISC court and get a warrant is ridiculous. The monitoring by the President, saying, “We are going to pick and chose who we’re going to assassinate, whether they’re an American citizen or not. But we have monitors, we’re going to study this”, is the rule of law? What he’s doing is repealing the Magna Carta. You can’t just do these kinds of things, and this one is not only repealing the principles of liberty, but it’s destroying the constitution. So, my question should be to all of you who defend this nonsense: why should the penalty be for the people who destroy the constitution? They’re always worried about how they’re going to destroy the American citizens who tell the truth to let us know what’s going on, but we ask the question, “What is the penalty for the people who deliberately destroy the constitution and rationalize and say, ‘Oh, we have to do it for security’”. Well, you know what Franklin said about that, you end up losing your security and your freedoms, too. So I think we’ve embarked on a very, very dangerous course, the American people are with us on this, it’s totally out of control. And I would say, if you’re confused about what we should do, just read the constitution, what’s wrong with that? Get people to repeal it and change the constitution, but not just to deny it. We go to war without a declaration, we totally ignore the constitution. That is what our problem is today, we have no rule of law, and people say, “Just let secret courts do this, and the government has to know everything, and the American people have to have no privacy”. That reflects an intimidation, people are insecure and think that we need more authoritarianism. You’re justifying dictatorship, that’s what you’re doing.

Piers Morgan: Okay, Ron Paul, I have to leave you there, in full flow.

Transcript

News Anchor: Welcome to Newsmax TV, I’m Kathleen Walter. With us now is former GOP presidential candidate, and the current chairman of the Campaign for Liberty, Congressman Ron Paul. Representative Paul, thanks so much for joining us today.

Ron Paul: Thank you, it’s nice to be with you.

News Anchor: You’ve condemned reports that the Obama Administration is secretly collecting data from the phone calls of millions of Americans. What’s your main concern here?

Ron Paul: The right to your privacy and enforcing the 4th Amendment, that’s what concerns me. I think it’s a very, very serious matter and it’s very, very dangerous. And I think the abuse has been going on for a long, long time, nobody should be surprised. But it seems incremental, it’s got a lot worse in the last 10 years, and it’s ongoing. And the way I see it, if the people don’t wake up, it will get a lot, lot worse.

News Anchor: The chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, says that the PRISM surveillance program has foiled multiple attempted terrorist attacks inside the United States, including a 2009 plot to bomb New York City subways. She says it played a role in the case against an American who scouted targets in Mumbai, India, before a deadly terrorist attack there in 2008. Representative Mike Rogers says that PRISM has indeed prevented a terrorist attack. Do you believe this program has protected national security?

Ron Paul: Well, if they can find one incident, they’d be lucky; they’re exaggerating. But even if they did, is that an excuse to throw the whole constitution out of the window? You can have a lot of safety by a lot of security, you could stop all child beating and wife beating by having a camera in everybody’s house, but you give up total privacy. Nobody is proposing that, but that’s essentially what they’re saying, that in order to maybe catch somebody, all Americans have to give up all their privacy. And, besides, the statistics they cite are grossly exaggerated, because I think it was New York Times that reported that 14 out of 22 of these so-called incidents where they saved us from these horrible attacks, were actually sting operations, they were entrapments and the FBI was involved and they get out of hand, and then they announce, “Oh, we just saved you”. I think that’s all to build fear and intimidate people and make them willing to sacrifice their liberties at the expense of thinking they’re going to be safer. We were warned a long time that if we develop that attitude, not only do we sacrifice our liberty, we’re actually less safe.

News Anchor: Yes, so how do we balance U.S. National Security while protecting civil liberties at the same time? Should we throw out this program all together, or should we just impose more restrictions?

Ron Paul: Sure we should throw them all out together, the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Courts, secret courts. We should obey the constitution, the constitution provides ways for getting a search warrant. But these blanket searches of everybody giving up all your privacy, is insane. And it’s the position of an authoritarian dictatorship that wants this type of power. So get a legitimate warrant, there should be probable cause, why do we give up on this? So I think this whole idea that you have to have a balance and give up so much of your freedom for more security, is a very dangerous notion.

News Anchor: President Obama has come out saying that the programs are approved by Congress, they’re overseen by the courts, and are carefully constrained. How do you respond to that, and do you believe him when he says to Americans, “We are not listening to your phone calls”?

Ron Paul: Well, I wonder what they’re doing if they’re not listening. In order to make use of all of this, if they’re not listening, then why are they doing it? They have to listen to find out who the bad guys are that they think they’re going to catch, but they have to listen to them. What they’re saying is as we speak on the phones today, that they’re not literally listening right now, but there’s a recording of this made, and there will be flags and then they can go back and listen to what they want. But then they go back and say, “Then we’ll get the proper search warrant”. From where, from some secret court? These FISA courts are just totally secret, and it’s just not the way a free society operates, it’s not proper under our constitution, it doesn’t make us safer, and it’s just such a dangerous notion to think that the governments have this prerogative. Our constitution was designed to make sure the government was open and the people have their privacy, today, the dominant theory with the people in Washington is the government has to be secret, and you and I have no privacy. So they’ve turned this whole thing on its head, and we’re doing exactly the opposite of what we should be doing in a free society.

News Anchor: In light of the recent scandals involving the IRS targeting of conservative and religious groups, and in light of the AP phone records scandal and the targeting of Fox News’ James Rosen, are you especially concerned that this program could be abused?

Ron Paul: Well, I’m concerned that we have an income tax that always leads to problems. Matter of fact, even if they obeyed all the so called rules of the income tax, it’s devastating, because it’s so vicious in its destruction of wealth. So the income tax is the culprit. The fact that they abuse the income tax and it becomes politicized, is a natural tendency, that’s what governments do. And it’s not just the Obama Administration, this has been going on for decades. It’s not a new history, everybody knows that Nixon and others did it, and they have their enemies list and they prosecute their enemies. So there is a natural consequence of giving too much power to government, whether it’s eavesdropping or the IRS or whatever, people are blinded by the fact that they think government is going to take care of us. And governments can’t take care of us, they can’t provide perfect safety, and they can’t provide perfect economic equality and prosperity. People have to do that for themselves, governments are supposed to be designed to provide liberty and protection and due process of law, but not to try to provide this perfect society where everybody is perfectly safe and everybody is taken care of in an absolute manner, that is a course to disaster.

News Anchor: Edward Snowden has revealed himself as the whistleblower behind the NSA leak, knowing full well he faces jail time. NSA director, Mike Clapper, says such a disclosure was reckless, and the Justice Department has launched a criminal enquiry. Does Snowden’s leak hurt U.S. national security, and what, if anything, should happen to him?

Ron Paul: Well, he should be hailed as a hero for releasing the truth about our government. The most important thing is knowing the truth about things, you can’t act if you don’t. This idea that governments should be totally secret and we shouldn’t know the truth, I think is the most dangerous that we can have. So yes, he knows he’s broken a law, but they have broken the constitution, which is much worse. He’s trying to save us from ourselves by telling us what is going on, and it is excessive. So he knows the risk and he knows that he’s a target now, he suspects they’ll try to kill him, they’ll try to put him in prison, or execute him. But he felt so strongly about telling the American people what’s going on. But I’ve used the saying that ‘in an empire, truth becomes treason’. He tells us the truth about what our government is doing, so he’ll be charged with treason. We passed laws to protect people who tell us the truth about government, but if we find out somebody has told the truth about government, whether it’s the CIA agents that told us about torture … that CIA agent is now in prison. So we have lost the fundamental purpose of what government should be in a free society, and, for that, we are suffering economically, we’re suffering from the constant wars, and we’re suffering from the loss of our liberties.

News Anchor: In these next few weeks, the Senate will debate bipartisan immigration reform legislation. If you were still in the house, could you vote for this legislation, does it have any chance of passing the House?

Ron Paul: Well, I haven’t yet looked at that in detail, as I would if I were getting ready to vote on it. But Campaign for Liberty, our organization, has coming out making some points about some very, very dangerous parts of the immigration bill. And that’s the biometric national ID identifier/card, which I think is very, very dangerous. Even without looking at all the details of the other things, which I’m sure have some pros and some cons, the national ID card, or the biometric identification, I think is very bad. Once again, it’s another intrusion in our privacy, and I think it’s very detrimental.

News Anchor: Turning to Syria, White House officials say the Obama Administration could decide this week to approve lethal aid for the Syrian rebels, and will weigh the merits of a less likely move to send in U.S. air power to enforce a no-fly zone over the civil war wracked nation. You have always been very cautious about U.S. involvement abroad, what do you make of the Obama Administration’s handling of Syria?

Ron Paul: It’s crazy. We have all these wars that we’re losing, we’ve lost in Afghanistan, it’s total chaos in Iraq, there was no Al-Qaida in Iraq, and now there is. The Al-Qaida is over there helping the rebels in Syria, and now we’re joining the Al-Qaida and helping them out to overthrow Assad. It makes no sense whatsoever, and it doesn’t make good sense for our national security, it makes no economic sense. And why should we support a bunch of guys about whom we have no idea who they are or what they’re doing. Have we improved things in Libya, have we improved things in Egypt? I think ultimately this policy is going to backfire not only on the United States, but it’s going to back fire on Israel, because I think these countries end up taking over. The rebels that take over are using radical Islamists who are going to be more anti-Israel, and yet we’re supporting them as well as Israel supports this. So I think it’s a foolish policy, and I think the policy that the founders talked about is of non-interventionism, minding our own business, no nation-building, stay out of the internal affairs of other nations. So that, I think, is fantastic, I think that’s the foreign policy that Americans should endorse, and more and more people are starting to realize the foolishness of these past ten years of endless war and how there’s a perpetual war against global terrorism, and they’re not even able to define it. And they don’t even want to realize that our drone warfare and our arbitrary killing of people around the world is the reason people want to kill us. And unless we realize that, this is going to go on for a long time, it’s going to get a lot worse, and it will only end with our bankruptcy, which is not too far off.

News Anchor: Alright, the GOP in 2014, what shape are Republicans in, in your view, and can they win back the Senate?

Ron Paul: Well, they have this tremendous opportunity because the American people now are sick and tired of Obama, especially on this surveillance and spying on all Americans, and we have Republicans now who are the best champions of Obama. It’s crazy. They get the best political issue, but they’re wrong philosophically, and they come down on the side of saying, “Oh, this is what we like about Obama”. As long as they keep doing this … Actually from my viewpoint, it’s irrelevant. Whether you have Republicans in there that endorse perpetual war on global terrorism and perpetual war against American civil liberties, it doesn’t matter whether you have Obama doing it or George Bush doing it. The American people suffer nevertheless. So what we need is a revamping of the basic understanding about what the constitution says, and have a better understanding and better desire and determination to live in a free society.

News Anchor: Last question for you, Congressman Paul, your son, Senator Rand Paul, is said to be considering a presidential bid in 2016. Can you give us some insight into his plans and what, if any, words of encouragement have you offered him?

Ron Paul: We haven’t talked about it.

News Anchor: Alright, we’ll leave it there. Do you hope he throws his hat into the ring?

Ron Paul: Well, I want him to do what he wants to do.

News Anchor: Alright, we’ll be watching. Congressman Ron Paul, thanks so much for being with us today.

Ron Paul: Alright, very good.

News Anchor: Thank you for watching Newsmax TV.

“The Fourth Amendment is clear; we should be secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects, and all warrants must have probable cause. Today the government operates largely in secret, while seeking to know everything about our private lives – without probable cause and without a warrant.

“The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing.

“We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald who see injustice being carried out by their own government and speak out, despite the risk. They have done a great service to the American people by exposing the truth about what our government is doing in secret.”

by Ron Paul

Last week we saw dramatic new evidence of illegal government surveillance of our telephone calls, and of the National Security Agency’s deep penetration into American companies such as Facebook and Microsoft to spy on us. The media seemed shocked.

Many of us are not so surprised.

Some of us were arguing back in 2001 with the introduction of the so-called PATRIOT Act that it would pave the way for massive US government surveillance—not targeting terrorists but rather aimed against American citizens. We were told we must accept this temporary measure to provide government the tools to catch those responsible for 9/11. That was nearly twelve years and at least four wars ago.

We should know by now that when it comes to government power-grabs, we never go back to the status quo even when the “crisis” has passed. That part of our freedom and civil liberties once lost is never regained. How many times did the PATRIOT Act need renewed? How many times did FISA authority need expanded? Why did we have to pass a law to grant immunity to companies who hand over our personal information to the government?

It was all a build-up of the government’s capacity to monitor us.

The reaction of some in Congress and the Administration to last week’s leak was predictable. Knee-jerk defenders of the police state such as Senator Lindsey Graham declared that he was “glad” the government was collecting Verizon phone records—including his own—because the government needs to know what the enemy is up to. Those who take an oath to defend the Constitution from its enemies both foreign and domestic should worry about such statements.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers tells us of the tremendous benefits of this Big Brother-like program. He promises us that domestic terrorism plots were thwarted, but he cannot tell us about them because they are classified. I am a bit skeptical, however. In April, the New York Times reported that most of these domestic plots were actually elaborate sting operations developed and pushed by the FBI. According to the Times report, “of the 22 most frightening plans for attacks since 9/11 on American soil, 14 were developed in sting operations.”

Even if Chairman Rogers is right, though, and the program caught someone up to no good, we have to ask ourselves whether even such a result justifies trashing the Constitution. Here is what I said on the floor of the House when the PATRIOT Act was up for renewal back in 2011:

“If you want to be perfectly safe from child abuse and wife beating, the government could put a camera in every one of our houses and our bedrooms, and maybe there would be somebody made safer this way, but what would you be giving up? Perfect safety is not the purpose of government. What we want from government is to enforce the law to protect our liberties.”

What most undermines the claims of the Administration and its defenders about this surveillance program is the process itself. First the government listens in on all of our telephone calls without a warrant and then if it finds something it goes to a FISA court and get an illegal approval for what it has already done! This turns the rule of law and due process on its head.

The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing. We need to turn the cameras on the police and on the government, not the other way around. We should be thankful for writers like Glenn Greenwald, who broke last week’s story, for taking risks to let us know what the government is doing. There are calls for the persecution of Greenwald and the other whistle-blowers and reporters. They should be defended, as their work defends our freedom.

“I wish I could say I was shocked at the reports the NSA is secretly spying on the private phone calls of millions of Verizon customers. However, this is a predictable result of a government that continues to erode our liberties while promising some glimmering hope of security.

“The Fourth Amendment is clear; it says we should be secure in our persons, houses, papers and effects, and that all warrants must have probable cause.

“I opposed and continue to oppose the Patriot Act because I believe it throws the Fourth Amendment right out the window. It is certainly not patriotic to support warrantless wiretaps, blanket ‘metadata’ collection, and spying on innocent American citizens.

“Unfortunately, what is worse than the reports, is knowing that politicians of both parties will continue to defend this practice as necessary to supposedly keep us ‘safe’. We do not have to sacrifice our liberties for security. At times like this, the question must be asked, ‘if we are willing to change our way of life and our very definition of freedom while tolerating the invasive searches at our airports and now of our phone calls, have the terrorists already won?’”

by Ron Paul

May was Iraq’s deadliest month in nearly five years, with more than 1,000 dead – both civilians and security personnel — in a rash of bombings, shootings and other violence. As we read each day of new horrors in Iraq, it becomes more obvious that the US invasion delivered none of the promised peace or stability that proponents of the attack promised.

Millions live in constant fear, refugees do not return home, and the economy is destroyed. The Christian community, some 1.2 million persons before 2003, has been nearly wiped off the Iraqi map. Other minorities have likewise disappeared. Making matters worse, US support for the Syrian rebels next door has drawn the Shi’ite-led Iraqi government into the spreading regional unrest and breathed new life into extremist elements.

The invasion of Iraq opened the door to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which did not exist beforehand, while simultaneously strengthening the hand of Iran in the region. Were the “experts” who planned for and advocated the US attack really this incompetent?

Ryan Crocker, who was US Ambassador to Iraq from 2007-2009, still speaks of the Iraqi “surge” as a great reconciliation between Sunni and Shi’ite in Iraq. He wrote recently that “[t]hough the United States has withdrawn its troops from Iraq, it retains significant leverage there. Iraqi forces were equipped and trained by Americans, and the country’s leaders need and expect our help.” He seems alarmingly out of touch with reality.

It is clear now that the “surge” and the “Iraqi Awakening” were just myths promoted by those desperate to put a positive spin on the US invasion, which the late General William Odom once called, “the greatest strategic disaster in American history.” Aircraft were loaded with $100 dollar bills to pay each side to temporarily stop killing US troops and each other, but the payoff provided a mere temporary break. Shouldn’t the measure of success of a particular policy be whether it actually produces sustained positive results?

Now we see radical fighters who once shot at US troops in Iraq have spilled into Syria, where they ironically find their cause supported by the US government! Some of these fighters are even greeted by visiting US senators.

The US intervention in Iraq has created ever more problems. That is clear. The foreign policy “experts” who urged the US attack on Iraq now claim that the disaster they created can only be solved with more interventionism! Imagine a medical doctor noting that a particular medication is killing his patient, but to combat the side effect he orders an increase in dosage of the same medicine. Like this doctor, the US foreign policy establishment is guilty of malpractice. And, I might add, this is just what the Fed does with monetary policy.

From Iraq to Libya to Mali to Syria to Afghanistan, US interventions have an unbroken record of making matters far worse. Yet regardless of the disasters produced, for the interventionists a more aggressive US foreign policy is the only policy they offer.

We must learn the appropriate lessons from the disaster of Iraq. We cannot continue to invade countries, install puppet governments, build new nations, create centrally-planned economies, engage in social engineering, and force democracy at the barrel of a gun. The rest of the world is tired of US interventionism and the US taxpayer is tired of footing the bill for US interventionism. It is up to all of us to make it very clear to the foreign policy establishment and the powers that be that we have had enough and will no longer tolerate empire-building. We should be more confident in ourselves and stop acting like an insecure bully.