Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) shot back at his “juvenile” critics who he said were members of the “neocon community” during an interview broadcast on Tuesday’s “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel.
Rand responded to an attack ad that played a clip of him saying Iran wasn’t a threat to the US’ national security by stating, “things do change over time. Also, I wasn’t campaigning for myself, I was campaigning to help my father at the time. But I would say that almost every element of the ad’s a lie. I mean, they say I’m helping the president. I’m actually one who has said to the president that this deal, when it becomes final, has to be finalized by Congress, and I said I’ve done that to actually strengthen the president’s hand. But I do want him negotiating from a position of strength,” which he said Obama isn’t, and expressed his concern over Iran’s “lack of sincerity” due to their rhetoric, sponsorship of terrorism, and threatening of Israel, and his belief they should never be trusted with a nuke.
He continued, “I have no idea really who these people are [behind the ad]. But I think that they’re–I would say they’re part of the neocon community. The neoconservatives sort of believe, these are the same people who wanted to give arms to Gaddafi, and then the next years, wanted to topple Gaddafi. They’ve been on both sides of every war, they only thing consistent about their message is, ‘we should always be at war.'”
“Here’s what separates me from –sort of the naivete of the neocons is, they don’t want to negotiate with anybody, they just want war. The difference is, is I want negotiations from a position of strength. I’m a Reagan Republican. He believed in peace through strength, but he did talk to the Russians…and you know when Reagan did, many of the neocons that are still around today, criticized Reagan for talking to the Russians. So, realize the sort of loud, sort of, I think, juvenile voices putting pictures of bombs on ads, these are the people who are so reckless, it would be gravely a danger to our country to have these people in charge in our country” Rand added. And “the people who did that crazy ad against me. These are the people who also want to bomb Assad. they want to bomb Assad and ISIS simultaneously. Had we bombed Assad–I was one of the leading opponents against bombing Assad. Why? Because I thought ISIS would grow stronger, and that I guarantee you right now ISIS would be in Damascus ruling the whole country had we bombed Assad.”
He also responded to Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) saying anyone in Congress except for Rand could have gotten a better deal with Iran by declaring “almost anyone in the Congress would better defend the Bill of Rights than this particular senator, so, touche.”
Paul did say that his comments regarding Dick Cheney’s motives for the Iraq War were “over the top” and “mean-spirited,” but criticized some of Cheney’s foreign policy views.”
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