Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/24/23 Dan McKnight on Defend the Guard’s Victory in Arizona and How You Can Help Keep the Momentum Going This Monday

Episode Date: March 25, 2023

Dan McKnight returns to the show to talk about Defend the Guard’s recent success in Arizona and how you can help bring about another victory this Monday in Texas. Defend the Guard is state-level legislation that bars Congress from deploying National Guard troops to foreign combat operations unless war is formally declared. In other words, it forces Congress to abide by the Constitution. McKnight lays the groundwork for where the fight stands right now after a victory in the Arizona Senate. Scott and McKnight then call for all listeners from Texas, or anyone who has friends or family in Texas, to take part in a phone bank operation this Monday, March 27th. McKnight provides the details on how you can get involved. Then, at the end, Scott plays the recording of his statement from the Defend the Guard hearing in Maine last Monday.  Discussed on the show: DefendTheGuard.us BringOurTroopsHome.us TenSevenClub.com Arizona Petition Montana Petition Maine Petition Texas Petition DefendTheGuard.us/phonebank/ Dan McKnight is the founder and Chairman of Idahoans to Bring Our Troops Home. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves, three years active duty with the U.S. Army and ten years with the Idaho Army National Guard, including a one-year deployment to Afghanistan in 2006. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show hey guys on the line i've got dan mcnight why he's the founder and the runner of bring our troops home dot us how you doing dan i am gray scott how are you doing great thanks for joining us on the show

So you guys have this project called Defend the Guard. What's that about? You know, Defend the Guard is our state-based legislation that we are taking all across the country that would require Congress to declare war before the National Guard of the state of Arizona or Texas or Idaho could be released into federal service to fight in an overseas war. It realigns the war powers that are identified in the Constitution and puts the onus of responsibility back on Congress to do their job before the men and women of the National Guard. guard going fight in a in a foreign war and that makes sense sounds like um so tell me what's been going on lately hey we've had uh some some great succession we've been pushing this build for several years you know pat McGeehan kind of started about five years ago in west virginia and we uh we grew the movement and spread across the country and developed sponsors in almost 40 states uh the biggest year we've ever had was this year with uh i think 26 actual uh named bill

that have been submitted into committees for hearings. And we had our first victory in the Montana House of Representatives. Excuse me, I'm sorry. The Arizona State Senate was the first victory. Followed up immediately with a victory in the Montana House of Representatives. And now we are back in Arizona again. And the bill has been transmitted to the House side. And the Speaker of the House is stonewalling us.

And he's trying to run the clock out. Their session ends here in a few weeks. Monday is the last hearing in the military affairs committee in the House of Representatives. And Speaker Toma is stonewalling the process, even though 10 of his Republican colleagues in the House co-sponsored the bill, and all 16 Republican senators in the Senate voted in favor of the bill. The Republican Speaker of the House is stonewalling the bill and subverting the process of civilian legislation. Man. All right. So first of all, rewind a little bit and focus on that. last point there for a minute, if you could. Not just did you get it through a committee in the Arizona

Senate. You got to pass the full Arizona State Senate. Is that correct? I buried the lead. You're absolutely right. We passed a full body, a deliberative body of elected senators in Arizona. The Arizona State Senate passed Defend the Guard with unanimous party support from the Republicans and unanimous dissent from the Democrats. And the one Democrat senator that dare to stand up and speak against the bill, she went on a tirade demonstrating just how much the left has absorbed the war party mentality in the last couple of years.

Yeah, what did she say? Well, she said all kinds of things. We can't do this because it would endanger the safety of Arizonans. It would restrict the ability for the United States to wage wars on multiple fronts. It would cost jobs. It would cost money.

It was a subversion of the Constitution. everything you could imagine to support sending more and more Arizona Guardsman off to war, she put it in her speech. It was the most disjointed argument, even a fourth grade civic student that has spent 10 minutes watching, I'm only a bill on Capitol Hill or some other PBS special, would understand that that's not how the system's supposed to work. It was a big disgrace. Yeah. All right. Now, so you think that barring the speaker here, you got a real chance to push through the house too yeah to with 10 10 sponsors in the house that's that's pretty good how many members do they have in their state house you know yep yep and uh no wait what's the total say again what's the

total in the house uh 63 or 64 62 62 we need 31 to pass all right and uh three of the sponsors sit on the military affairs and public safety committee where the bill will be heard first in the House. So three sponsors on a committee of, I believe, nine or ten or eleven representatives already favored the bill. I had a 30-minute conversation with the chairman of the Military Affairs and Public Safety Committee last night after we made his phone ring nonstop and his email must have crashed because we hit him with so many petition emails. He finally called me and we talked it out. And he, of course, didn't like the bill. He's been stonewalling it since January 9th, when the House companion of the bill was killed in his committee.

But after a nice conversation, a civil conversation, I was able to educate him on the unconstitutionality, even of the War Powers Act of 1972. He now sees the light. He understands now that he has a responsibility as an elected representative of the people to do the will of the people and not to do the will of the lobbyist groups or the National Guard Bureau or what the Speaker of the House in the. the leadership in his own party tell him to do. And we had a really good conversation.

It was very constructive. It started off hostile and it ended on very good terms. And he ultimately agreed that if the speaker will send the bill to his committee, he will work with the sponsors for an acceptable solution. And in my mind, that means a hearing. And that's all we're asking for is a hearing. And then we will do the convincing. We will do the educating and we'll make sure that the boat goes the right way.

Yeah, man. All right. So tell me, what do you know about the National Guard and war and stuff? I know a little bit. You know, I'm a 13-year veteran of the military. I served in the Marine Corps. I served in the United States Army. And I served in the Army National Guard, where I deployed to Afghanistan for 18 months, 2005 through 2007. So I know a little bit about those three branches. But I do know quite a bit about the National Guard. I know where they get their authority. I know where they come from. I know what things they're allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do. And this bill is meant to realign the use and the purpose of the National Guard with the with Article 1, Section 8, Clause 15 of the Constitution, which is the Militia Clause, that says that the National Guard can only do three things, really, when they're federalized. Enforce the laws of the Union, repel an invasion, and put down an insurrection. It doesn't say anything about going overseas and fighting undeclared wars.

And we think that the National Guard should fight America's wars when properly declared. And so all we're trying to do is to give the National Guard or the state militia that constitutional protection that they've sworn their law. lives to defend. All right. So tell me about the organization here and how you guys are so effective at getting people to get this bill introduced. Who's running the phone bank? What difference does it make, Dan? Yeah, let me tell you, we've got an army of millions and three people at our at our disposal. We are a ragtag, a bunch of combat veterans, but primarily we've got the great Diego Rivera is leading the ground effort. He's our field director of operations. D.A.

Diego is a master at applying pressure through grassroots activism. He has been leading the phone banking effort. The petition drives the signatures, the phone calls, everything that you need to apply that pressure to an elected official, Diego is the master at it. And he's leading that effort with members of different coalitions from across the country. You know, the Republican Liberty Caucus, the Libertarian Party, the Mises Caucus have come to bat for us. You know, the great Michael Heist put out a call.

And Angela McArdle from the LP has put out a call for assistance. And Liam McCollum up in Montana, the list is so long of the coalitions that are working together on this effort. And it's all under kind of Diego's tutelage and mentorship. He's got some fantastic programs that make it easy for people to give us five minutes. You give us five minutes and get on the phone bank. And Diego will show you how to make 15 effective phone calls and put pressure in the right spot. It's not about applying pressure. It's about applying the right pressure.

And Diego is really, really good at it. And then our communications director that puts out all of our comms is someone, I think you know fairly well. The great Hunter Dorenzis, he is the goat, right, the greatest of all typewriters. And we love Hunter. He puts out all of our written content. And then I've got some activists in each state that just take the bull by the horns and really do the groundwork in each of the states. Because you know this.

We can't be everywhere all at once. and we are really on a fool's errand, to borrow the name, sorry about that, of trying to pass this bill in every state all at the same time. Everybody told us we'd be crazy to do it, and there's something people should know about combat veterans. We're a little bit crazy. We don't see anything as impossible. We see everything, not as an obstacle. We see everything as a stepping stone, and we attack it that way. There you go, man. Spinning that traumatic brain injury to you. advantage there. Dan, good going. Listen, so I got to admit to you, and I'm speaking on behalf of my audience, too, we don't believe in democracy and stuff. Like, I guess we'd all prefer this

constitution to a complete commie or fascist dictatorship, but it sure doesn't seem to control our government very dang much. And things like run for office, join a lobbying firm, Make a phone call especially. You know, random citizen out there in your neighborhood. Call your congressman. Man, it just rings so hollow. It's hard for me to, and I try my best to help you guys all the time. But in my gut, it just seems like pissing up a rope.

And yet, I know that's not right, because I've seen just very recently here, as you say, under the leadership of Diego Rivera, I've seen the phone calls really make a difference. we're not talking about the U.S. Senate. We're talking about the 50 states in the union. Seems like they're a little bit more accessible to this kind of mass public pressure as opposed to special interest pressure if we can bring it to bear here. And we're talking about against what the Pentagon wants.

That's a pretty special interest. No, you're right. I agree with you that calling your congressman or your United States senator is, it's foolhardy. There's no leverage there. There's no return on the, on the two-minute investment, none at all.

And we know that because that's how we started. We started by taking 100 veterans and some sympathetic lawmakers from the states to Washington, D.C. for a veterans event in 2019 on Veterans Day. And we scheduled these appointments for everybody to go meet their congressmen and senators and plead their case asking them to advocate for an end of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. We thought, man, they just don't know. They just don't know what it's like, and that's why they haven't done anything. And so we went into their offices, and every one of them did the photo op.

You know, hey, this is me taking a picture with a veteran. And then they posted it to their social media. Every one of them thanked us for our service. The only thing they didn't do was give us a free meal at TGI Fridays or Applebee's like everybody else does on Veterans Day. But they listened to us, thanked us for our service, and then shoot us out the door like an annoyance. And then they went back and did nothing. In fact, Liz Cheney told us that we were in error even being in her office because she had no intention on ever letting America come home from Afghanistan ever, ever.

And so we left with two goals. One, to never play in Washington, D.C. again until we understood the game. And two, to remove Liz Cheney from office. Well, we accomplished one right away. It took us a couple of years, but we got it done. And now we're back in the states applying the same leverage to the state legislators who are, are our neighbors, right? They're the people we see at church. They're the people that we would run into at the grocery store or when our children are at the same school together. We know

these people. There are elected representatives, but there are neighbors. And we thought, how can we affect change by going to the people that we know and putting really uncomfortable pressure on them? And that's where we found this, defend the guard bill. We thought of the idea and kind of crafted the idea and went looking for the solution and found it. The 10th Amendment Center, You know, the brilliant Michael Bolden and Michael Mahmahari at the Tenth Amendment Center have been working on this bill for 11 or 12 years now, and it kind of disappeared for a few years. Then it came back with Pat McGeehan, and then we've taken it and pushed it across the country and now, you know, through the state houses. And we agree. Don't waste a time.

Don't waste one minute in Washington, D.C. Don't write them a letter. Don't sign their email newsletters. Don't thank them. Don't praise them. don't follow them on social media. There's not one of them in Washington, D.C. That isn't a crook.

Every one of them. They're there for one reason. They're narcissistic and they love the attention. And they're never going to change. And as evidence of that, we saw two AUMF repeal votes in Washington, D.C. in the last 30 days. How did both of those votes go, Scott? Not very good, right?

They voted to keep the AUMF in place indefinitely. And so we know Washington, D.C. is lost. But these state houses, they're sympathetic to us. They know us. They know who we are. They hear, they know the cost, human cost of war because their neighbor has a brain injury or their neighbor has PTSD or, you know, someone that they attend church with is, is struggling to, you know, reacclimate into society after coming home from war.

And so we take our stories into the legislature and that opens the door. Once the door is open, we hit them with the facts. We hit them with the receipts and we show them the constitutionality of the defend the guard movement, and we appeal to the right, the Republicans from the right. They claim to be the constitutional party and the party of order and rule and law. So we hit them with that message. When we talk to the left, to the Democrats, we talk about the history of the Democrats being the anti-war party and that this bill would restrain America's ability to fight endless and undeclared wars. And so we use your concept, the Horton Rule, right? You beat them from the side from which they

come and it's been very effective for us and we've been good students of it and we're good stewards of it and we hope to pass it on on other issues besides this one oh yeah well and listen um you know i really appreciate the momentum here it seems like people are really getting excited too do you have more more veterans joining all the time every day every day we have um hundreds of new signatures on our petition and uh of those hundreds of signatures maybe thousands some days uh we ask are you a veteran and if they identify as a veteran they go into a special pool where we lean on them because we like to remind the veterans that when they left the service they were not relieved of their duty they were not relieved of their oath and that means something to veterans when we raise

our right hand as idealistic as it may sound we promise to honor that oath and we're willing to pay for it with and including the value of our own life and so we lean on the veterans to share that message when they call into the state houses, when they show up for hearings, when they testify. And I'll tell you, if you want to ever feel a sense of pride or even nationalistic love of country or whatever you want to call it, watch a hearing on Defend the Guard. You've participated in a few. You know this. Yeah, well, I mean, at the very least, it turns the entire thing. Hearing the veterans talk in those hearings changes it from. pretty much any other kind of political hearing like that in the typical sense of just

are we passing this resolution or not and what's the technical articles of the uh the difficulty of the subsidiary arrangement there at the article 10 and 35 and the thing and then this guy gets up there and is like listen my friends are dead in a box because you guys sent them off on this thing and you know this kind of deal and all of a sudden it just changes the context, you know, to the very real reality. Because even still, you know, through all of that, big part, a huge part of all this generation of war is just how far away it is from home where none of those people on the committee ever heard anybody dying, ever had to smell a burning body or have to deal with running

like hell for, you know, their life or any kind of thing like that. It's all like a Marvel movie to them as far as they know. and then they hear you guys show up and it's not funny and they go oh i see all of a sudden we're having a conversation that's much more serious somebody died and this actually matters instead of your typical crap so it's interesting that's the part to me that's the most interesting is kind of the the um the space there that they have to travel from their typical BS to what you guys are talking about. You know what I mean? It's like a real kind of shift in the room, in the attitude of everyone and the reality of the whole thing. Well, folks, sad to say, they lied us into war.

All of them. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Libya, Syria, Yemen, all of them. But now you can get the e-book, All the War Lies, by me, for free. Just sign up the email list at the bottom of the page at Scott Horton.org or go to Scotthorton.org slash subscribe. Get all the war lies by me for free. And then you'll never have to believe them again. Hey, y'all, Scott here. Let me tell you about Roberts and Roberts brokerage, Inc.

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That's 800, 8749760, or check them out at rrbi.com. That's rrbi.com. You'll be glad you do. Yeah, it absolutely changes the tone of the confrontational nature of politics, right? So when we go into these hearings, and if you're in front of a committee of nine elected senators or representatives, most of them won't look up from their microphone or from their desk until the real human part of the testimony begins. So you can stand up there and you can state your credentials, your rank, the amount of time you spend the military, where you deploy to, what kind of weapons. systems you're trained on and what kind of awards you were presented, and they couldn't give

a rip about it. But you start talking about how the man next to you took one in the head and how you returned fire and you were involved in an engagement that took the lives of several young children. It's hard for them to stop and lean on the money argument or lean on the, this isn't the proper role of the state government argument. It's hard for them to say anything other than And dear God, war is terrible. You are right. What can we do to stop this? And that's where you can, that door's open.

You know, the egg, the hard, the hard candy shell has been cracked. And once you get that crack open, you can plant a seed. And you get that seed inside there and you start talking to them again about how we should never send us to fight in these undeclared and wars that have no bearing on us in the world at all. and we start, you know, saying that it could be your grandchild, it could be your son, your daughter, you know, next. Let's do something to restrain the president's ability because the president, all presidents want to go to war. And it's, it helps us plant that seed. And once the legislatures of the state realize that really the rules that we call the constitution, the rule book, it's stacked in their favor. Once the state legislatures realize this, we can restrain a lot of what the federal government does.

But until they do, until they understand that the rules are, literally written in their favor, we're going to have more of this. We're going to have more federal oversight, more federal overreach, more of the Patriot Act, more, more, more from the federal government. And it's just got to stop. Right. Now, so tell us, especially veterans in the audience, of which I know there are many, how they can get involved and really help this movement. And I want to emphasize really there. I mean, we've seen it just in the past few weeks with these successes, the phone banking and the organization, the invocation of the combat, veteran status by you guys here. It really is working. So it's, we're only at the beginning

and have a long way to go. But this seems like something that people might really want to participate in, I think. Absolutely. So there's a couple things that you can do. One, if you're so inclined, you know, the social media presence is where we put out a lot of instant information. You know, on Twitter, it's at troops home US. On Facebook, it's look for bring our troops home and you'll find us there. But most importantly, I would say go. go to one of two websites. The first one is Bring Our Troops Home.us. That's our organization's website. And that's where we have our overall mission as a veterans organization lobbying for restrained war powers. That is our organizational website. But our project website, defendtheguard.

us, again, that's defend the guard.us. That is our specific website that is for the purpose of passing Defend the Guard legislation. So if you're a veteran and you like to be involved in just the legislative part, go to Defend the Guard. U.S., click on the state in which you live, and it'll take you to a page, and if we have a bill sponsor already there, you can see who it is, you can familiarize yourself, and if we don't, you can, there's a little form that you can fill out and it'll put you in contact with us. I would also suggest going to states that we have active fights in right now, Arizona, Montana,

Maine, Texas, and Idaho, click on those states, and you will see a petition that will come up, sign that petition. It is so important. These petitions do actually have some weight and value. And we don't just use petitions to gather signatures either to put them on our mail list. We actually take these petitions. We print every single one of them out and we deliver it to the statehouse and where we're having these fights. And walking in with 5,000 signatures and slapping them down on the desk of a representative is an impactful optic. And you tell them that we're going to turn 5,000 people that sign these petitions loose on their office if they don't do the things that we want them to do, you'll see some buttholes puck are pretty fast and got

I, sorry, I probably shouldn't have said that. Go ahead. No, it's, it's, that is our activism. Those are the two sites. And I would encourage anybody to, to come on over, join, sign up. And I promise you, we will not flood your email with a bunch of nonsense. You'll get a newsletter from us a week every 10 days. And it's always current, topical, and let you you know what's going on with the movement. Yep, absolutely. And, all right, listen, Texas, this is the big deal. It's coming up.

And in fact, Diego had me record a little video to encourage people to join up. And now we're recording this Friday. I hope this will, I'll try to remember to ask Connor to put this one out first. So people get the message in time that, especially in Texas, you know, for Texans, everybody else too that on monday we have a massive phone banking operation that is uh so by the way i'm sorry uh we're recording this on the 24th so we're talking about monday the 27th right of march uh we're gonna have a massive phone banking operation i'm sorry i'm not sure the name of the committee um but it's the house committee in texas to get it through there and so um uh you know i'll get

get this, I'll try to get this podcast out as fast as possible toward that end, but then so people can go to defend the guard.us to find out about that. And also, you know, I saw him saying this on Twitter a few times and things like this. I think it's okay. If people are serious about this, you can email Diego at defend the guard.net. Diego at Defend the Guard.net. Diego at at bring our troops home.net. Oh, really? Oh, I screwed that up. That's okay. That's all right. If you email him at DefendtheGuard.net, we've got that set up now. It'll auto forward to them. Oh, there you go.

Well, that's good. Thanks for covering my base there, man. Sorry, I was good. And we got you. We got you. So, yeah, Representative Terry Wilson in Texas, he's the chairman of the committee, the Defense and Veterans Affairs Committee. He is a retired Army colonel, and he is absolutely opposed to this bill because we know

what happens to officers when they get above the rank of lieutenant colonel right they all are driving for that star so that they can get one of those million dollar um pentagon contractor jobs this man loves the military industry complex and he is stonewalling this bill even though our representative that sponsored Brian Slayton sits on the committee and if you know anything about Brian Slate he's a bulldog and he is fantastic and so he's not done fighting but if you go to defend the guard dot us forward slash phone bank you can can sign up for the phone bank right there, and Diego will be in contact with you and let you know what we need and when we need it. And again, five minutes of your time is the minimum.

Some people are giving us a couple hours a week, but we're asking for five minutes, five phone calls. Yeah. And seriously, man, it's just like with any of these protests, but especially with the phone calls, by the power of multiplication tables, get your wife to help, get your boyfriend to help, get your next-door neighbor and a couple of co-workers and your mom and dad, and all of a sudden you got seven people all making calls to seven people on the list. And this is noise. And if everybody listening who's really committed can get a few people who are friendly to participate in a thing for just one day.

That's all we're talking about. We need you to just do some work for a few minutes and then go about your day again. Then that's, first of all, reasonable ask. and second of all is, you know, hugely effective, makes it so much more effective. Yep. How many millions of people live in Texas? I don't even know the number. Is it 21 million, 22 million?

I was going to say, yeah, 25 or 30, but I haven't checked, honestly. Yep, 25 million. Let's just say, if 10%, if one percent, if a half of a percent of Texans made one phone call into the Capitol building to tell their legislator that they wanted this bill to be heard and to move forward, the system would crash. it would crash we're not asking for a half a percent of the entire state to do this we're asking for a handful of dedicated people to make five phone calls and share with their friends and we can also crash the system and by crash the system i don't mean bring it down in the form of

anarchy and disorder i mean crash the system melt the minds of the people that that control the gates and when the gatekeepers lose their proverbial bearing the the representatives that they work for tend to hop into line and do things the right way. It's what's old as new again, right? This used to be the way to do it. If you wanted to influence legislation, you would have grassroots efforts and phone calls, letter writings, postcards. All those things went away with social media tweets and memes. And what's old as new again, this stuff is effective and we're using it and we've got the receipts to show that it's effective. Yeah, that's great. By the way, what did I just say? Here it is, 29.53 million.

Well done. So, all right. I don't know how I did that. I just felt it kind of from my fellow Texans around me. Listen, this is the most important thing going on in the world right now in terms of anti-war activism, trying to roll back the empire, limit it in any way and in such an effective way. And using the power of nullification and interposition in the constitutional federal order, as you should and you know it's just great anyway and and being led by guys like you and

Diego and all the rest of the combat vets that make up the leadership of bring our troops home dot us and defend the guard and the whole movement there it just sets such a great example and um well as we said got it through the full senate you guys with the help of a bunch of phone calls got it through the state senate in arizona working on the the house. All right. So Monday is Texas and then, but it's Arizona too Monday? Or we? Hey, Arizona, the big push is Monday. Texas is Monday. Maine is Monday. We're getting to the end of the legislative session. So, you know, the timelines are starting to get compressed. Gotcha. Okay. Well, listen, everybody check out, defend the guard.us and especially

defend the guard.us slash phone bank. So you can sign up, participate. in this thing, and then, of course, email or otherwise contact the guys at defend the guard.us and bring our troops home.us. All right. Anything else? Visit the websites, get involved, and just one last receipt to show that this stuff works. Three weeks ago, we had four senators in Arizona that supported our bill. Three weeks ago, four senators. And it passed with the unanimous consent of the Republican Party in the Senate after we applied pressure. Yeah, and that was 16? that 16 all we got all 16 of the republicans in the senate so in three weeks we converted

educated and broke down that barrier on the remaining 12 and converted them and that was with the help of windy rogers the great senator from Arizona but this stuff works you find a champion and then you put all your efforts behind them hell yeah all right awesome congratulations uh thanks very much and keep it up dan appreciate you you bet scott thank you and hey you guys want to hear it This is the speech I gave to the Maine State Senate last week. Next up, we will hear from Mr. Scott Wharton. Hello there. Thank you all so much for the opportunity to testify before you today.

I'm Scott Horton from Austin, Texas, Director of the Libertarian Institute. As Mr. Steinhauer said, today is the 20th anniversary of the beginning of Iraq War II. The consensus now is that we should not have done it. Iraq was not manufacturing on conventional weapons and was not in league with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda. Many representatives and senators from that time have excused themselves for voting for this disastrous war by claiming they did not vote for war at all, but for authorization to let President Bush decide whether to launch one. This war would not have happened if Congress had insisted on their constitutional obligation to declare war. Representative Ron Paul introduced a declaration. of war in the Foreign Affairs Committee.

He, of course, voted against it and urged his colleagues to as well. But he was challenging them to take responsibility for their decision instead of delegating it to the president. Chairman Dennis Hastert told him, we don't go by that part of the Constitution anymore. It's an anachronism. Hastert might have cited the U.N. charter there, but it does not supersede the Constitution,

and Bush did not get a resolution authorizing. the war from the UN Security Council either. The simple fact is that if Congress had been forced by the people in the states to declare war if they wanted one, Iraq War II would never have happened. That means there would have been no war in Libya, Syria

or Yemen either, as they were all consequences of the war in Iraq. More than 2 million people have been killed. $10 trillion have been wasted. The conservatives now agree with the progressives. None of this should have ever happened.

If only a few states had had to fend the Guard legislation at the time, it would not have. By passing this measure now, you can help to stop the next unnecessary war. It's the patriotic thing to do. That's why, as you heard, the American Legion supports this legislation. Frankly, this should not even be controversial at all. The U.S. Constitution is the law. Congress is in defiance of it. they must be made to obey the charter which delegates authority to them in the first place.

The men who have testified before you today have given everything they have, including their best friends, in service to their oath to that Constitution. I know it means everything to them. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Horton, for your testimony here today. Are there any questions from the committee for Mr. Horton? Seeing none, thank you very much. Thank you.

The Scott Horton show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.