But Paul’s opposition of Clinton ka paul ka paul

But Paul’s opposition of Clinton is about more than policy. It’s personal.
Paul says that in August 2011, during Clinton’s time as secretary of state, he spent 27 days in Libya negotiating with the Gaddafi regime to accede to America’s demands regarding the Libyan civil war. He describes Gaddafi, the notorious dictator who was eventually killed in October of that year, as a “changed man” during the last decade of his life.
“[Gaddafi] was evil. He was a dictator. Ruthless. But he was a born-again believer, you could say. He did whatever America wanted. Finally, during the war, he agreed to every condition Hillary Clinton asked for through her friend, General Wesley Clark, who was on the phone with me at least two or three dozen times when I was in Libya,” Paul recalls.
Paul’s team provides me with a letter (click here to read it) dated Aug. 19, 2011, from then-Libyan prime minister Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi to President Obama. Copying Paul and his fellow American negotiator in Libya, former member of Congress Walter Fauntroy, on the letter, Mahmoudi writes that Libya, in “joint cooperation with the United States,” will “work jointly in the newfound spirit of cooperation between our governments.” According to the letter, Gaddafi was prepared to “immediately” cease fire in the civil war, give Libyans a chance “to choose their government and the way of governing based on freedom,” and agree to the principle that a political solution in Libya would be reached “without interference” from Gaddafi.
The White House, the State Department, and Clark all did not respond to JNS.org’s requests for comment on the letter.
Paul says he emailed the letter to Clark, who mailed and faxed it to the White House and the State Department. He says Clark relayed messages that Obama and Clinton were both pleased with the letter. But Paul claims the Obama administration never followed through on a promise to send a helicopter to Libya to bring Paul and Fauntroy home. Instead, Paul says that with the help of a CIA operative, he managed to escape Libya on a 39-hour boat ride to Malta. At the time, media outlets in Paul’s native India had presumed he was dead.
Yet here Paul is on a rainy day in Texas, speaking with me about his international adventures, which he continues to undertake despite the Bush administration’s alleged grounding of his private 747 plane a decade ago. Today, he says, the plane remains grounded in Tijuana, Mexico. (Click here and here for the most recent documentation of the whereabouts of Paul’s “Global Peace Ambassadors” plane.)
So why does Paul meet with world leaders — dictators and democracy practitioners alike — and what makes them willing to meet with him? The evangelist says his success derives from his peace rallies.
“We don’t take money, like every other evangelist or preacher or rabbi takes,” he says. “We don’t sell books like everybody else sells. I don’t promote just a religious agenda, but a peace agenda. Therefore, everybody who has got nothing to lose, who is hungry for peace, comes to my rallies.”
When “millions of people” attend your rallies, Paul says, you have the ear of presidents and prime ministers.
“The message of peace resonates with everybody,” he says. “Go to the Middle East. Go to Israel and Palestine. You’ll see how many people want peace. It is the leaders that need to be changed.”
Paul supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but says he isn’t sure that will ever happen “because now, nobody trusts American leadership. Without proper American leadership, it’s not going to happen.”
In 2000, when Ehud Barak was Israel’s prime minister and Arafat was the Palestinians’ leader, Paul says he “had hopes” that peace was achievable. I ask Paul for his impressions of Arafat. He responds, “Why talk about a dead man? But [he was] a very unique person. That’s all I can say right now.”