Just. To follow up, you said Iran was behind the attack. What does that mean? Have you seen evidence of financing or directing anything specific to this attack, not just generally, but specifically? So maybe I need to clarify further from what Lita had mentioned. We know that Iran funds these groups like Kitab Hezbollah. We know that these IRGC backed militias are the ones responsible for attacks on our troops in Iraq and Syria.
Beyond that we're we're doing an intelligence assessments we don't have. I don't. I can't give you today that, this. Attack Thinking it to Iran. We just know that Iran funds these groups like Kitab, Hezbollah and other groups that have attacked our forces. But I don't have more to share on as a general matter, yes. There was an incident in 1983 Beirut barracks bombings, when according to this source here, I believe there were 241 U.S. military personnel killed in
this. What can you tell us about this and what happened? Did we have to declare war on Lebanon after this happened? How were we able to get out of it without being Neville Chamberlain appeasers who just want to give the world away? Yeah, great question. Yes, you're right. It was 241 American Marines were killed. Along with I think it was 37 French soldiers also were killed.
They were killed in their sleep by the suicide truck bomb, crashed through the front of their barracks and detonated by, I guess what you could call, like a proto, Hezbollah. It wasn't exactly Hezbollah or the Amal militia. I'm told it was, you know, some sort of unnamed group of Shiites who did it, but along the lines of, you know, what became Hezbollah a couple of years or maybe the next year after that, 84. But, you know, first of all,
this is important. I guess it's not absolute proven fact, but I think it's a very credibly claimed fact. Viktor Ostrovsky, the former Mossad spy, wrote in his book By way of Deception that the Israelis had an informant that warned them that there was a big Mercedes truck that was being packed full of explosives, and that the Israelis immediately knew that there were only a couple of targets that would
possibly require that. And one of the obvious ones would be the American Marine barracks out there at forgot if it was a hotel or wherever they had stationed up there. And then the decision was made to not warn the Americans and to not tell them. And in fact, let me, let me read you. I have the quote here. Dude, no, we're not there to protect Americans. They're a big country. That was what he was told. Why not to warn the Americans CIA that's their job, not us to
warn them. And then after it happened, quote hey, they wanted to stick their nose into this Lebanon thing. Let them pay the price. Is this from his book by way of deception? Right. Which is the slogan of Mossad. So that's you know how the what the Israelis think of us, refuse to warn us when a truck bomb is coming to kill hundreds of our guys and give a damn about that. And then? And then? So what is Reagan's response to
this? Well, so here's the thing about it. A better story even than what Ostrovsky adds here is about our hero Ron Paul. And you can read this Keith in his great book A Foreign Policy of Freedom, which is collection of his foreign policy speeches.
And the speeches go, Mr. Reagan, don't listen to the Hawks, whatever you do. Oh by the way, people know Ron Paul went to Congress in 97, but he also went in like 77 or somewhere around there and and stayed in Congress until he ran and then lost for Senate. And I think 84, possibly 88. No, no, no, because 88 he ran as a libertarian, so he was in 84, he ran for Senate in Texas and lost to Phil Graham in the primary. Phil Graham. But anyway, before that Ron had been in the Senate.
Then Doctor Paul had been in the, pardon me, in the House before and so anyway, he gives a speech and he says, Mr. Reagan, don't listen to the Hawks. Do not put our guys in Lebanon. You do not want to intervene in this war. It's such a crazy situation. All the different factions over there and the Israelis intervening now the way they are and all these things. And if you do, it's just going to lead to conflict. And then worst conflict from
there, just don't do it, please. And then the next speech. This is again Foreign Policy of Freedom by Doctor Paul. The next speech in line, you know, in his House speeches. Oh, Mr. Reagan, you didn't listen to me and you did the wrong thing. And you put our guys on the ground in Lebanon. Please get him out of there before it's too late. Don't kill anybody. Don't escalate. Don't give him a mission.
Don't do nothing. Just turn around and go before it's too late, man, Let's get the hell out of there now. Next speech I told you. Now 241 Marines are dead and what do we get out of it? Why are we in Lebanon, Mr. Reagan, for God's sake, listen to reason. Get our boys out of Lebanon now. And then the next speech, Thank God you finally listened to reason and you did the right thing, Mr. Reagan. And you got our guys out now, at least while we're only this far behind instead of much worse.
So thank goodness for that. Because imagine if we decided to go to war against the Shiites there, now allied with Israel in that mess in Lebanon. We'd never get out again and on and on like that. And it's just the brilliance of Doctor Paul and you know, finally, at least too late, the at least the wisdom of Ronald Reagan to listen to that sort of advice. I don't know if he listened to Doctor Paul or not, but he decided that he wanted to get
out of there. There's no way it was worth it for America to get involved there. And he shouldn't have been involved there at all. And I I don't know. He must have given the orders for the battleship New Jersey to join Israel and shelling Shiite neighborhoods at some point. But I forget exactly when that was. But I know that later on there was a hijacking of a airplane. Or was it a ship? It may have been the Achille Laurel ship.
I think it was an airplane. And then in the terrorists were running up and down the aisle going New Jersey, NJ and they were looking for Americans to kill, you know, and they're going New Jersey, NJ And the people on the plane were like, what the hell is he talking about?
Why are they saying that? Well, that was the name of the battleship that had been shelling the neighborhoods, the suburbs of Beirut. And so that was what the terrorist attack was, was backdraft terrorism, as we would call it, direct blowback from from that, you know, atrocity. They're bombing neighbor. They don't, they don't know who they're killing, shelling neighborhoods. They're killing innocent people, obviously. And then, you know, Reagan did get sick of all of this stuff.
And I have the quote I I tweet this from time to time, A quote from Ronald Reagan from 1982, where I guess was previous to that, where he had called the knock and bag and told him, you got to cut this out, 'cause there was a massive Israeli bombing campaign against a neighborhood in East Beirut, I believe it was. And and Reagan said in his diary he wrote, I told beggin that I advisably used, I deliberately used the word Holocaust. And I told him this has to stop.
The symbol of this war is going to be a 7 month old girl with her arms blown off. And that was Reagan said that. And then it's a different anecdote from it's the same anecdote but from a different source. And I need to go back and find this one, but I know that this had happened. Where then the bombing stopped in 15 minutes and Reagan said, whoa, I didn't realize I could do that. And that was it.
Which is another huge lesson for our current situation, that Joe Biden could pick up the phone right now and in this war he absolutely could. But he doesn't have anything like the integrity of Ronald Reagan, unfortunately. One more incident. In 1983 there was a flight that was going from Alaska, I believe it was Anchorage, AK to Seoul, South Korea and it was shot down by the Soviets. It was a civilian airline killing 269 passengers.
It the sources I have say 62 of them were Americans and Reagan did not declare war over this and the Soviet Union came crumbling down within a decade. What was the response to this in general 'cause there was a sitting Congressman, Larry McDonald, on this flight? Who happened to be the head of the John Birch Society at the time.
It's caused a lot of conspiracy and scandal and the idea that the plane had been forced down and that they all lived, which I think is not credible, unfortunately. But I think what happened there, Keith, and this may have had a lot to do. I mean, depending on what they told him, I don't know. This may have a lot to do with his lack of response was it was the Air Force's fault.
They had been on a spy mission inside the Soviet Union, and then when they were getting the hell out of there, when they were being pursued, they hid in the shadow of this civilian airliner and then bugged out. So in other words, on the radar, they conflated their dot with the Korean airline double O 7 flight and then they dove out of there. And then when the Soviets caught up to him, they didn't catch up to them. They caught up to the double O 7 flight and blew it out of the sky.
So it was the Air Force who had put him in that situation and got him killed. So it could be that they told Reagan that. And Reagan was like, Oh, well, hell, it's kind of hard to crack down on them that bad over what was really, you know, a situation we put them in. I don't know whether that's. And I, and honestly, I was a boy, very young boy at the time, 81. I was in, you know, preschool. So I don't have any memory of
that. I do remember the day Reagan was inaugurated when I was 4, but I don't remember you know exactly how that was handled then. Well, it it's. Just incredible. They didn't kill the world over it. When they could have escalated. He could have just started pounding his first on the table and made everything worse. You know, I don't know enough about this guy. I should probably read this guy's autobiography or whatever the hell if there is one.
But his Secretary of State was George Schultz, who was apparently not the most psycho out of all these guys, although he was a war profiteer and and did have his problems. I don't want to go on a whole tangent about him. He apparently at the time was one of the least worst of Reagan's advisers and would preach caution when some of the other guys were going off half cocked and that kind of thing.
Well, it's just incredible because we get all this hawkish talk because of a fake Russian interference event in 2016. We get more hawkish talk when we hear that Putin has put bounties on the head of soldiers in Afghanistan. So all these fake things are getting people so hawkish, but these were real things that took place. And Ronald Reagan, Mr. Conservative, didn't declare war, and the Soviet empire came crumbling down after it's it's just unbelievable. That we have.
We have real examples. Yeah, And and look, let's go further than that. What ended the Cold War? It wasn't America just defeated the Soviet Union, drove them into bankruptcy. Just simple as that. Something like that. That's not what happened. What happened was Gorbachev ended the Soviet Union, ended the Cold War, and he actually did try to hold on to the last vestiges of the Soviet Union, but by then it was too late.
But the only reason that any of the was, in hindsight, especially like this virtually magical transformation of the the Velvet Revolution throughout Eastern Europe in 1988 through 91, in the fall of the Soviet Union and the freedom of Eastern Europe and the rest of the Soviet Empire, too. That that all happened because Reagan treated Gorbachev with respect. That all happened because they were partners working to build trust and end the Cold War
together. And Reagan said, look, all the old guys who'd fought in World War 2 and had worked for Stalin and all that, all those guys were finally gone. Gorbachev was the first guy who was 45. And Reagan walked right up to him, shook his hand and said, you know, if the aliens attack, you and us are going to have to team up and fight them off. And Gorbachev was like, what? Yeah, what? And. But, you know, Reagan's like a foot and a half taller than him.
And he's wearing his cowboy hat and his big trench coat and whatever. And he just pulls alpha dog. Hey there young man shakes his hand and is like you're my guy now and and the and the dictator of the Soviet Union is like I guess I'm your guy now like he just did so he just that was how he did it and again trust but verify never meant trust. Trust but verify meant hey I really like you.
Let's get along very politely here in our diplomacy and sign a deal on what we can agree on. And as part of that deal, we are going to have a vast and intrusive inspection regime to guarantee that it all comes true, right? That that's what trust. But verify means. Means no. Trust means be polite during diplomacy and call it trust because it's polite to call it trust. That's it, right? Ronald Reagan was not a pushover, you know, called him a
pushover. Norman Podhoretz and the neoconservatives said he was Neville Chamberlain selling out to Hitler at Munich. But he was Ronald Reagan and he didn't make a deal with the devil. He made a deal with a bureaucrat and it paid off, man. He destroyed the Soviet empire through goodwill, Not through covert action. Through. Hey, man, come on. There ain't no reason we got to keep doing this. Isn't that what you think too?
And then look, it's right as the election of 88 is taking place, right as Reagan is on his very last lame duck months, The wall starts coming down. Immigrants start breaking out. I believe someone corrected me on this. And then I didn't go back and check.
The way I remember it was the first border that broke open was from Hungary into Austria, and Austria was neutral and free, not aligned with the West, but neutral and not occupied by the Soviets. And when people started escaping from communist Hungary into Austria, the border guards didn't machine gun them all the death. They sat there and left. And the Soviet Union kids, for real, the border guards were there to keep you in, and they would murder you if you try to escape the country.
That's very real. Not just the Berlin Wall situation in West Berlin, but the entire border of the communist world with the free world at that time. You can't exaggerate or make that up. That's for real. You try to escape with your family. They will murder you all in cold blood. And that was what that was for. And all that just fell apart. And it was an atmosphere of trust and decency. And this world, in fact, is big enough for both of us. So let's figure it out.
They figured it out, Keith.