PAUL: No, I see nothing imminent. He doesn't have an air force. He doesn't have a navy. He can't even shoot down … he didn't shoot one of our airplanes down in twelve years … and his army is 1/3 of what it was twelve years ago. So, you know, this fictions that he's Hitler and that he's about to take over the Middle East … I think it's a stretch.
Paul thinks that the Iraqi air force, navy and army are the biggest Iraqi dangers to the U.S. With his above answer to Moyers question, he avoids completely the dangers of WMD and terrorism.
Just as you avoid the danger of initiating a war against another sovereign nation. No matter how much we have been trained to hate Saddam Hussein, does he even compare to Hitler? To Mao? To Samoza, fer crysakes?
This war is all about geography, not human rights or democracy or terrorism or any other excuse that might be thrown up. Just as the last (unfinished) war was not all about jobs, jobs, jobs.
It's about oil.
Perhaps I'll wait to respond to you again until you've read the piece more closely.
Paul is making the point that there is NO Iraqi navy or air force to speak of, they have not shot down a single plane in the 12 years since we lost the Persian Gulf War and the army is a 1/3 the size it was when we fought them last.