Posted on 10/12/2009 11:15:56 AM PDT by pissant
This interview is a first in a series of weekly interviews that former Congressman Duncan Lee Hunter will be conducting with bloggers and media types in order to help get his message out to the American people and to his former colleagues in congress. That message is that we must all fight to derail the foolishness, cowardice and socialism that is being pushed by the Obama administration, the democrats, as well as by some republicans; an agenda that threatens to undermine the very foundations of our Republic.
Mr. Hunter is currently finishing up a book on Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Today, Mr. Hunter called in from the road, returning from a hunting trip in Idaho on his way to visit his son in Colorado (who is serving in the Army).
PA: Hello congressman Hunter, thanks for calling back, I really appreciate that.
DH: Absolutely.
PA: Well I guess we'll probably hit some turbulence in our cell connections, so let me start off by asking you what you think about the news today that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize?
DH: He won the WHAT now? I'm having a little trouble hearing you.
PA: Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.
DH: (long pause) Is that right?
PA: Yes.
DH: I didn't know that. When did he win it?
PA: I just read it this morning, today in the news.
DH: Well look, I just came out of the mountains, and I haven't had any news at all. They gave him the Nobel Peace Prize??? For What?
PA: I haven't a clue. For being Obama, I guess.
DH: *silence*............uh, that's remarkable. (Laughs). But you'll have to ask someone else about that. (laughing loudly)
PA: But it’s a funny one, isn't it?
DH: It's simply remarkable.
PA: OK let me go to some of the other questions that I had ready for the other night. We'll make this pretty quick.
DH: okay, (laughing) sorry that I don't know anything about Obama's Nobel peace prize. But, tell you what, I can tell you what I think we should do about Iran, how's that?
PA: Yeah, absolutely. Considering...
DH: (laughing) That's something I actually understand, that I have some information on.
PA: OK. ‘Cause right now it's not looking too promising on that front either, based on what Obama's doing.
DH: Well, here's what we are going to have to do in Iran. I think it is now clear that we are going to have to take out the enrichment facilities at the Nantaz and at the plant they just discovered where they have plan to locate some 3000 centrifuges.
PA: That was the one at Qom?
DH: Yeah. The point is that the only possible reason for having a secret enrichment facility, one that was undisclosed, is the development of a nuclear weapon. That totally belies their earlier statements that they only want enriched material for domestic, for energy purposes.
The problem that we have right now is this: the chain of production for a nuclear weapon is most easily broken at the enrichment stage. That's when you require very large facilities like the one at Qom and the Nantaz - very large facilities, huge buildings, and thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium ore to the point were you can make an optimum nuclear weapon. That's usually at the 90% enrichment level. Now there's discussion among the scientists that you don't need to have 90% to build a sub-optimum weapon, but but for an optimum weapon you need 90%. The enrichment part of the weapons production chain, is the most obvious. It is the dimension of production that is most evident, and takes the largest facilities. Therefore it is the easiest to target. Once you have produced enough material for a couple of nuclear bombs, the conventional components - the trigger mechanism and the weaponizing features can be attached at very small, remote, hidden places. So if you were going to compare the production chain of a nuclear weapon to a shooting gallery, right now the very large targets are going right on by, while the western world watches.
I think the second message that we should derive from the discovery of the second facility is that the sanctions we have managed to leverage so far, managed to emplace so far, aren't working. That Iran is determined to build these capabilities. They are following what I would call the 'North Korean model'.
PA: It sure sounds like it.
DH: The North Koreans talked, and built. Talked and built. And didn't care about whether or not the West was irritated with them. And in the end, they've built a couple of weapons; and if you look at North Korea's statements, they clearly feel they gained more world prestige - and leverage - as a result of having these weapons.
PA: In a sense they have. Now S. Korea, Japan, all it's neighbors are very scared to attack or even pressure them, so prestige or not.....
DH: They seemed to have gotten as much engagement out of the West, with the weapons, and possibly more, than they did before they had the weapon....
PA: All the more reason for Iran to move ahead and do the same thing.
DH: Yes. Yeah, so in my estimation Iran is going to push forward, and at one point, once they have enough weapons grade material from these large facilities, they can then go to small, secret facilities. And our ability to interdict this chain of production of their nuclear systems will have greatly diminished as they...
PA: I agree.
DH: put them out in small places to weaponize the systems...
PA: Including right across Israel's border..
DH: after they've achieved enrichment. So that is why the West must move quickly. I think the United States needs to destroy those facilities. Hopefully in concert with concerned allies, including the Germans, the British and the French.
PA: We'd hope so. Now switching to an even more problematic, at least in my view, problematic regime, and that is in China. I remember, Congessman Hunter, during the debates for the nomination process last time round, that you basically warned us about China; what they were doing militarily, and...
DH: We're going through a canyon right now, but keep on talking, I think I'm getting most of...
PA: OK, I'll keep on talking. You warned about China. What they were doing economically to us, what they were doing by taking our manufacturing jobs from us, and taking our manufacturing technology, often with our blessing, and the dangers of them becoming our 'banker', and all that has come to pass. And I want to know what should we do about China right now?
DH: The problem with our present relations and trade now with China is that our trade policies are delivering a large part of our industrial base to China. We are allowing them to cheat on trade, and that is presenting a choice to the remaining American industry within our shores. The choice is, either go under in the face of unfair competition, or join them in China. That means packing up and moving operations, production operations, to China. As the US industrial base shrinks - and recently it was announced that we actually have fewer manufacturing workers in America at this point than we have government employees - so as the industrial base shrinks, so does the ability to defend ourselves. The chinese are leveraging their newly acquired industrial base to weaponize, and to develop a very significant military. They are producing the F10 multi-role fighter, they are out producing the United States 5 to 1 in submarines right now, and they are using American trade dollars to acquire military hardware like Sovremenny class missile destroyers that the Russians designed to kill American aircraft carriers. The chinese are exploiting space. They believe very strongly that space is a very important part of any future battleground. And they are also building about one hundred medium range and short range missiles per year.
So while we are involved in campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, one of which we've won - that's the Iraq campaign, and one of which we are fairly fully engaged or are increasing engagement - that's Afghanistan; the storm on the horizon is clearly China.
PA: And they are not just cheating on trade. Some more people just got convicted, chinese nationals, of stealing military secrets again. And they do it over and over and over again, and we sit here and take it, and we don't do anything, we never retaliate in any significant way.
DH: Yeah. China's theft of American military technology is a continuing trespass. It has been going on for a long time, and it's fairly effective. But beyond that, which is quite possibly more effective, is the technology that they are scooping up when they get these American companies to move their production to China, especially in the high tech area. And that technology at one point will likely be manifested on the battleground, as they produce weapons that will shoot very effectively at young American troops at some point in the future.
PA: Well they already have the weapons that can and I think we are moving towards conflict. So what do we do? The next time we catch them red handed stealing stuff - I'm all for rethinking the entire relationship with those people. Because right now they are our banker too.
DH. Exactly. You know if Ronald Reagan came back now and asked us what had happened while he was gone, and we told him that China was now our banker, I think his jaw would drop. He'd say "you mean those guys who were eating bark off of trees when I left?" And we'd explain to him that this nutty idea of so called 'free trade' which in reality with China is 'one way trade', allowed them to pour massive government subsidies into their industry to unfairly knock out American competition, and also allowed them to access American technology that they should NEVER have access to; those things have all contributed to this massive swing of the worlds industrial base from our shore to theirs. So the first thing we need to do if you are seeking solutions, and we MUST seek solutions...
PA: Absloutely have to...
DH: is to stop them from cheating. And that means that the bill I offered with Mr Ryan, that would sanction them for artificially devaluing their currency to defeat American competition. Also, their unfair use of the VAT tax, the value added tax, which in China is 17%. They add that to the cost of our goods going there and they subsidize their good to the tune of 17% being exported to the United States. We should eliminate that imbalance.
PA: Militarily, do you think there should be some more, I guess, severe punishment for their espionage transgressions. More severe sanctions on trade?
DH: Certainly. I think the (past) trade sanctions have always been fairly anemic because they are always, or typically, developed by committee, whose first rule is to not make anybody mad. But we should have very severe sanctions on any chinese company or agent which is moving technology illegally. But we should stop this vast flow of technology which now is taking place under the law, pursuant to the law. Simply because it is not in the interest of the United States. We are defeating our own economic and security interests by allowing China to become the new industrial giant in the world.
PA: Yep. And another thing we need to do, and I think you agree because I've heard you talk about it before, is to fund our military. Not only the ships and the airplanes and new bombs, but also missile defense, and space defense...and space offense.
DH: Yeah. We have to have the ability to survive in space militarily. That means we are going to have - well China two years ago shot down a satellite - which basically was a declaration of, whether we like it or not, we are in a military competition with the Chinese in space. They recognize space with respect to the enormous value that it has both militarily and economically. And if we don't have the ability to protect our own space assets and to neutralize the space assets of an attacking nation, then we will be severely weakened from a national security standpoint.
PA: I hear ya. And this marxist that we've got pretending to be president right now sure seems to driving us down that wrong road.
DH. (laughs) Let me put it this way. The China policy has been bad for a long time. The 'Most Favored Nation' trading status that we afforded China, I think if you look up the vote, was in the late 90s and was a time, as I recall, we had a republican majority, but a democrat in the Whitehouse. You might look up the date of that.
PA: It was 1999 or 2000.
DH: The point is, that vote was passed by democrats and republicans. This has been a bi-partisan failure.
PA: I agree with that. But at least with George W. Bush and with the first George Bush in office, as opposed to the current occupant, we at least pursued our high tech defenses. Defenses that Obama is slashing. He's determined not to build military in space, offensive weapons, he's trying to gut the missile defense systems. So I'm concerned.
DH: Well the Bush Administration accomplished a lot regarding missile defense, and Obama has substantially cut missile defense. That accrues to the detriment of not only the United States but to our allies. That is a major mistake by this administration. And really, it is a disservice to any of our people whether they are wearing the uniform in military locations around the world or residing in an American city. In this age of missiles, when unstable nations are achieving greater and greater capabilities with offensive missiles, the idea we cut down our missile defense makes no sense whatsoever.
PA: And not just a disservice to the military and our citizenry, but a disservice to Ronald Reagan, Edward Teller, one congressman Duncan Hunter who along with Henry Hyde and company brought a lot of the democrats to align with you guys to get that stuff on the burner.
DH: Yeah, and thank you. Well we live in the age of missiles. Just as Billy Mitchell tried to convince us in the 1920s that we lived in an age of aircraft and that we needed to be able to bolster our aircraft capabilities and our air defense capabilities. And to a large degree we remained unready in a military sense to reap the whirlwind in the 1940s. Today, similarly, we live in an age of missiles where you have countries like Iran and North Korea which are plodding forward with what I would call mid level technology which is continuing to extend the range of their offensive missiles. And the idea that we are allowing that to happen while at the same time cutting the blueprint for America's defense against such missiles, again, it makes zero sense.
PA: OK. I'm going to switch gears on you briefly if you don't mind.
DH: Sure, go right ahead.
PA: OK. You probably have not had the chance to read most of these articles, but there's been a whole slew of articles in the paper from people like David Frum, who was a Bush speechwriter, Lindsey Graham, David Brooks, the NY Times' quote unquote 'conservative', and they are basically in a panic because they see that the more conservative wing of the party is ascendant again. And being led by people like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and others like Sarah Palin and some others that are pushing the conservative wing again, and they are very fearful that that is going to be problematic. What is your take on the moderates - the so called intellectuals - versus the rock ribbed conservative argument?
DH: So what is the point, I'm having trouble hearing you over the highway noise here. What is the point being made by these columnists? They don't like the crop of conservative leaders? Is that their main point?
PA: Well what they don't like is the rhetoric from, the push to the right, and the ‘sock 'em in the jaw’ rhetoric from people like Limbaugh, Beck, Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, Michele Bachmann. Basically they don't like the conservative wing that has had enough of this crap and is fighting back. And they feel queasy with the idea that these folks would be leading the party to a more anti-Obama, solidly conservative future.
DH: Well, I haven't seen their articles. I'd just say this: politics is a hard ball endeavor. And what we are going through right now is a blatant attempt to socialize this country. Which deserves tough rhetoric. Because lots of people laid down their lives for this country to earn our freedom, and later, to conserve that freedom.
And I think it is naive for those folks to think that the American people, and those that care about freedom and our Constitution, are going to go quietly into the night as we socialize America, and think we are going to give up those very hard earned liberties that are the trademark of this country. I don't think Americans want to become socialist Europeans.
PA: I don't think so either. And you see the Tea Parties and the townhalls - I'm not sure how much you've been paying attention to those- what is your take on these Tea Parties? Basically I consider these a re-awakening of the Reaganism model.
DH: Well I think its interesting where liberals complain when people get together to voice their opinions. (laughs). When liberals do it they call it demonstrating, speaking truth to power, and achieving noble goals....
PA: And the highest form of patriotism......
DH: Yeah. And when conservatives do that they feel that it’s somehow un-American when they band together to make their points known. So I think that Americans becoming involved, becoming active, and becoming energized is not only commendable, but it is absolutely necessary if we are going to block this attempt to socialize this country.
PA: And socializing they are trying. I've never seen anything like it.
DH: Yeah, well I think all of Obama's men look at presidencies past and they understand the importance of driving an agenda before the shine wears off.
PA: Exactly. And we are going to have to band together, Congressman, to defeat this Cap and Trade crap that's coming up right around the corner. It's next.
DH. Yes we are. Well listen, I'm going into another area right now where I'm breaking up. But thanks alot for calling up. You got enough material here for awhile?
PA: Yeah, I do. Let me get one more quick question in before you fade away. Your friend Joe Arpaio, out in Arizona...
DH: Yeah, I don't know Joe very well. I've heard of him, and I’ve heard him, and I think he's going to be coming in to do an event for one of my friends, Jay LaSer (sp?), who is gonna be running for Sheriff in San Diego County.
PA: Exactly. That's why I figured you knew him. Well, he's the Sheriff from Maricopa County and the Justice Department just told him he can't be dealing with illegal aliens like he's been doing it. They are trying to put the brakes on his arresting of illegal aliens.
DH: I haven't been closely following Joe and his exploits as of late. But I know his operations have been subject to review just like any detention facilities in America, with respect to whether people are getting good food, exercise, access to their legal rights, counsel, etc. And I haven't seen anything, any successful lawsuits, and certainly if he was violating the rights of any of the detainees, there would certainly be many, many court actions filed because he is very well known. I haven't seen any that have prevailed? Have you?
PA: No, but what I have seen is that the ACLU and hispanic rights groups running to the Justice Department filing complaints and finding people to file complaints on their behalf, etc etc. So the Justice Department just last week told Joe 'We are curtailing your ability to arrest illegal aliens'. It all has to do with illegal aliens.
DH: Well, I haven't read their complaints. But once again, the proof is in the pudding. If the ACLU had a good case, they'd be able to file that case in court of law without the administration becoming involved and have a federal judge render a judgment modifying or terminating the operations of the sheriff in that county. I haven't seen such a case filed, and if it was filed, I haven't seen one succeed. If they simply have an attitude problem with Maricopa County, that's one thing. If they actually have legal grounds then they should file a case.
PA: I agree. But I like that man, I think he is an American hero.
DH: Yeah, well I've heard good things about him. What he's doing is doing something that has been missed and neglected by a lot of Administrations: He's upholding the law.
PA: Exactly. Can you believe it? Our heroes are now just the guys who uphold the law. Well, I'll let you go and I'll call you next week. And we can go forward with this thing.
DH. Hey, sounds great. And thanks for all the help.
If Ollie North has never held public office, I’m not sure he’d want to have to take 4 showers a day just to try to get things done.
I stand corrected. Thanks.
He’s almost 10 years younger than my grandfather. He’s a WWII and Korea-era vet. Didn’t fight, but served during those wars.
Yes, please put me on this list - but is there some way we can designate whether it’s the senior or junior ..?? I’m never sure which Duncan Hunter we’re talking about.
This guy is so great! When I went with Roger Hedgecock to D.C. in March of 2001, it was Duncan Hunter’s office that provided us activists with a resting place (his office), and while we were there, his staff fed us great sandwiches, chips, cookies and soda; the stuff never ran out.
No other congress person ever offered us anything.
Thanks for the ping. B4DH.
LOL. I always use Duncan D. Hunter for the younger. I’m more interested in the old man though, at least for the next few years.
grassy-ass
It is our intention to do just that starting now.
He is a gentleman in every sense of the word.
BUMP
Okay - now that I know the formula .. Hahahahaha!!
Yeah, I love the old man too! He’s the real deal.
I said show me, not make shit up
I would love to spend some time in the field with this man. I am a full time freelance photographer and one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made over the last few years was to miss a chance to photograph Ollie when he was here for a book signing. When I’m not tied down by a paying shoot, a lot of time some days, I like to look for things and people I like or respect and get pictures of them.
You said it.
I knew we needed him before, but I never realized how much. How I wish he were POTUS, but I’m glad he’s still fighting for us.
BUMP. He’s just about done writing his book on Iran and afghanistan, so he’s itching to get his voice back out there.
That is a book that I will want in my Christmas stocking.
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