HUME: Congressman Paul, what if this happens again?
PAUL: I would certainly urge a lot more caution than I'm hearing here tonight.
It reminds me of what happened in the Gulf of Tonkin. We went to war there, then, later on, found out there was a lot of false information.
So here we have -- let's put it in perspective. We have five small speedboats attacking the U.S. Navy with a Destroyer? They could take care of those speedboats in about five seconds.
And here we're ready to start World War III over this?
And now, guess what, today, the Navy commander of the Fifth Fleet was on ABC and announced that, you know, that voice might not have come from those vessels.
So what does that mean?Was there a rush to judgment on this, ready to go to war?
And you know there are people in this administration and in Washington, D.C., that are looking for the chance.They were so disappointed with the national estimate on intelligence. And they were disap-pointed that there's no attempt to build weapons in Iran since 2003.
HUME: Congressman...
PAUL: So what --
I just don't see this rush to judgment.
HUME: Well, wait a minute. All of these people I've asked this question to so far have said they supported the decision to be passive. What are you responding to?
PAUL: I'm very sorry, I can't hear a word you said.
(APPLAUSE)
You'll have to speak up.
HUME: Every one of these -- of your fellow candidates have said they supported the commander's deci-sion to respond passively. I just wonder what you're reacting to.
PAUL: Well, I didn't hear that. Of course we want caution.
But I'm worrying about the policy of why we're looking for a justification. Now there are no weapons, actually people are looking around for an excuse to bomb Iran.
I mean, we're already, with our CIA, being involved in trying to overthrow that government, and we don't need another war. And this incident should not be thrown out of proportion to the point where we're getting ready to attack Iran over this.
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