Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul bucked the Washington consensus on the Syria chemical weapons attack in a Tuesday appearance on CNN.
“Assad either must be the dumbest dictator on the planet–or maybe he didn’t do it.”
WATCH:
“I think before you talk about sanctions we ought to talk about what evidence was there that Russia was complicit in this attack” Paul said. “In fact, for that matter, I still look at the attack and say, you know Assad either must be the dumbest dictator on the planet or maybe he didn’t do it.”
“I have yet to see evidence that he did do it. The intelligence agencies claim they have that evidence, but think about it, does it make any sense? He’s been winning the war for the last couple of years. The only thing that would galvanize the war to Assad directly is a chemical attack.”
“It killed relatively few people compared to what could be killed with traditional bombs, traditional machine guns, traditional tanks, and so you wonder really what logic would there be for Assad to be using chemical weapons. So before we get to the Russians, we have to first determine that Syria was implicated and then really we ought to determine what the connection is between Russia and Syria on this attack.”