Ron Paul speech in the House on energy prices and resolution on Iran

Ron Paul spoke in the House today about energy prices and Iran, and a new resolution likely coming up that he is completely against that, though not officially a declaration of war, is strict enough on movement of people and goods that it somewhere in the same league. Ron Paul has been right about a lot of things (Iraq War, falling dollar to name two) before they first happened, and he's immune to peer pressure so he's always the first person you want to listen to when trying to guess at the effect of an operation, a bill, etc.

Lest anyone think he opposes absolutely any use of force, let's not forget that he was one of the few people back in the early 80s that believed that Israel was right to send in bombers (Operation Opera) to take out Iraq's nuclear reactors, because those represented an imminent threat. At the time there was quite a bit of criticism of what Israel had done, but not from Ron Paul:

(from the New York Times)

Paul was in Congress when Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear plant in 1981 and — unlike the United Nations and the Reagan administration — defended its right to do so. He says Saudi Arabia has an influence on Washington equal to Israel’s. His votes against support for Israel follow quite naturally from his opposition to all foreign aid. There is no sign that they reflect any special animus against the Jewish state.

Here's the video:



Because I always think it's important that other people be able to copy, paste and automatically translate content into other languages, I've also typed out the five-minute speech. Here it is:

The Dow Jones average was down three hundred and fiftysome points, gold was up 32 dollars, oil was up another five dollars, and there's a lot of chaos out there and everybody's worried about four dollars a gallon gasoline. I don't think there's a clear understanding exactly why that has occurred. We do know that there's a supply and demand, there's a lot of demand for oil, the supplies may be dwindling. But there are other reasons for a high cost of energy. One is inflation. For instance, to pay for the war that has been going on and the domestic spending, we have been spending a lot more money than we have. So what do we do? We send the bills over to the Federal Reserve, they create new money, and in the last three years our government, through the Federal Reserve and the banking system, created four trillion dollars of new money. That is one of the main reasons why we have this high cost of energy and four dollars a gallon gasoline. But there is another factor that I want to talk about tonight, and that is not only the fear of inflation and future inflation, but the fear factor dealing with our foreign policy. And in the last several weeks, if not for months now, we have heard a lot of talk about the potentiality of Israel and / or the United States bombing Iran. And it's in the marketplace. It's being bid up. The energy prices are being bid up because of this fear. It is, has been predicted, if bombs start dropping, that you're going to see energy prices double or triple. It's just the thought of it right now that helps to push these prices, the price of energy up. And that is a very real thing going on right now. But to me it's almost like deja vu, all over again, as it has been said. We listened to the rhetoric for years and years before we went into Iraq. We did not go in in the correct manner, we didn't declare war, we're there, it's an endless struggle, we're in Iran, we're endlessly struggling there, and I cannot believe it, that we well may be on the verge of initiating bombing of Iran. Leaders on both sides of the isle, and the administration, that have all said so often no options can be taken off the table. Including a nuclear first strike on Iran. The fear is, they say, maybe someday they're gonna get a nuclear weapon. Even though our own CIA and our NEI says, a national intelligence estimate has said they have not been working, the Iranians have not been working on a nuclear weapon since 2003. They say they're enriching uranium. But they have no evidence whatsoever that they're enriching uranium for weapons purposes, that they may well be enriching uranium for peaceful purposes, and that is perfectly legal. They have been a member of the non-proliferation treaties and they are under the investigation of the IAEA, and Al Baradai has verified that in the last year there have been nine unannounced investigations and examinations of the uranium nuclear structure and they have never been found to be found in violation. And yet, this country and Israel are talking about a preventive war, starting bombing for this reason. Without negotiation, without talks.

Now the one issue that I do want to mention tonight is a resolution that is about to come to this floor if our suspicions are correct, after the July 4th holiday. And this bill will probably be brought up under suspension, it'll be expected to be passed easily, probably will be, and it's just more war propaganda. More preparation to go to war against Iran. And this resolution, H.J. RES 362, is a virtual war resolution. It is the declaration of tremendous sanctions and boycotts and embargoes on Iranians, very very severe. Let me just read what is involved in this if this passes and what we're telling the president he must do. This demands that the president impose stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran, and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials. I mean, this is unbelievable. This is, this is closing down Iran. Where do we have this authority? Where do we get the moral authority? Where do we get the international legality for this? Where do we get the constitutional authority for this? This is what we did for ten years before we went into Iraq. We starved children, fifty thousand individuals that was admitted probably died because of the sanctions on the Iraqis. They were incapable at the time of attacking us, and all the propaganda that was given for our need to go into Iraq wasn't true. And it's not true today about the severity. And they say yeah, but Ahmadinejad, he's a bad guy. He's threatened violence. But you know what, us threatening violence is very, very similar. We must, we must look at this carefully. We just can't go to war again under these careless, frivolous conditions.