Rand Paul: Fraud, Failure, Liar, by Justin Raimondo

Justin Raimondo at antiwar.org gives an appropriate farewell to Rand Paul:

As the smoke wafted up into the already smoggy Los Angeles air, a group of young libertarians watched as Jayel Aheram burned his “Stand With Rand” t-shirts. He had two of them, a token of his former esteem for the “libertarian-ish” presidential candidate and Senator from Kentucky, whose father had inspired young Jayel to identify as a libertarian and become active in the movement. A former Marine and Iraq war veteran, the now 31-year-old Aheram had phone-banked for Rand, and enthusiastically retweeted the Senator’s pronouncements on Twitter. He had even forked out $35 for those T-shirts – and now they were going up in flames as he and a group of young libertarians sat on the roof of Jayel’s Los Angeles apartment, drinking beer and glumly contemplating what had brought them – all former supporters of Rand Paul’s presidential campaign – to this point. As Charles Davis writes over at MondoWeiss:

“So what prompted such a fiery stunt on a Saturday night? Simple: The son of Ron opposes the deal with Iran over its nuclear program, faulting the agreement for lifting sanctions on the Islamic Republic before ‘evidence of compliance.’ Paul still insists he prefers peace to war – who doesn’t? – and that he favors a negotiated settlement to the West’s standoff with the Islamic Republic, he just doesn’t support the only one that will ever happen, functionally making him pro-war. Worst of all: He’s lying to do it.”

Aheram and his friends had stood by the Kentucky Senator for many months, even as Rand occasionally waffled and made some statements that didn’t sit well with them by any means: the military budget proposal that actually called for an increase in what is laughingly referred to as “defense” spending, and his signing of an “open letter” to the Iranian government authored by neoconservative warmonger Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Strauss), who made no bones about his determination to scotch the looming deal with Iran. These things had disturbed them, but not enough to extinguish all hope that Sen. Paul – who had, after all, been brought up by a father whose dedication to liberty and peace is unquestioned – could and would serve as an admirable spokesman for their cause.

But it was the lie that vanquished that hope.

In questioning Secretary of State John Kerry at a hearing on the Iran deal before the Senate Foreign Relations committee, Sen. Paul cited what he said were the Ayatollah Khamenei’s words:

“The Americans say they stopped Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. They know it’s not true.”

Claiming that this contradicts the administration’s contention that the deal “would prevent [the Iranians] from getting a nuclear weapon,” Paul averred that “the Ayatollah is saying the opposite.”

But what did Khamenei really say? Here’s the entire quote:

“The Americans say they stopped Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. They know it’s not true. We had a fatwa, declaring nuclear weapons to be religiously forbidden. It had nothing to do with the nuclear talks.”

This was no mistake on Rand Paul’s part. It was a lie, and he repeated the lie to Fox News in an interview with Lou Dobbs:

“I made a point that the ayatollah is now saying that the deal does not prevent them from having a nuclear weapon and I thought that’s precisely what the deal is supposed to do, so I don’t know how we can have an agreement that President Obama says means one thing, John Kerry says means one thing, but the ayatollah says doesn’t mean that at all.”

So Rand Paul is now repeating AIPAC’s dishonest talking points. This is reminiscent of the same sort of propaganda that led the US to invade Iraq: “factoids” ripped out of context and promulgated by the Bush administration and its pet neoconservative pundits to create an entirely false picture of an Iraq that was seeking nuclear weapons.

In short, the Rand Paul that we were all hoping for – someone who would stand up to the War Party and refute their propaganda – is no more, if he ever existed in the first place. Instead of refuting the lies he’s joining in the telling of them – and in doing so, he’s crossed the Rubicon as far as libertarians and all those who oppose war with Iran are concerned.

To continue reading: Rand Paul: Fraud, Failure, Liar