00:00Do something else. We need to go on the offense and offer an alternative vision for this country as to where we want America to go.
00:16And at the top of that agenda, at this moment, is to say no to the Netanyahu-Trump war in Iran.
00:46Let me just tell you a story, if I might. Back in the mid-1960s, I was a young man. Yes, I was young at one point.
01:01And at that point, the American government, then under Democratic leadership, lied to the American people and took us into a terrible war in Vietnam.
01:19I know a lot of young people, young people might not be familiar with that war, but the American people were lied to about what South Vietnam was doing and so forth and so on.
01:35And we went into that war. In that war, 58,000 young Americans died and over 300,000 were wounded.
01:49The Vietnam War devastated my entire generation. It will never leave my mind because those were my friends, people my age who went off to Vietnam.
02:04My wife had a couple of good friends, went off to Vietnam, never came back.
02:09And for those who came back, it's not just 300,000 who were wounded. Many of those came back wounded in spirit, in mind.
02:21They were devastated by what they saw. They came home to a country that was divided because many people opposed that war.
02:29And that war not only caused so many American casualties, it killed millions of Vietnamese and it brought instability to that entire region.
02:42And the result of that is a crazy group of people called the Khmer Rouge rose to power in Cambodia and waged a genocide in Cambodia which killed over 2 million Cambodians.
02:56The cost of the war to the American taxpayer was many, many hundreds of billions of dollars.
03:03In other words, a lie caused massive, horrible death and suffering. That was what my generation went through in the 60s.
03:15And then years later, in 2002, I was a second term member of Congress from Vermont, just elected to the Congress.
03:28And we heard the rhetoric in 2002 get stronger and stronger about the need to go to war against Iraq and its leader, Saddam Hussein.
03:43We were told by all kinds of people in the establishment and much of the media that Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction and that if we did not act, if we did not act quickly and decisively, nuclear weapons would be dropping on America.
04:06A lie.
04:07And I want you to hear this, because this tells you a lot about what is going on today.
04:11Among those back in 2002 who told us that we had to go to war in Iraq was none other than Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel.
04:27And this is what, and I quote, this is what Netanyahu stated in a congressional hearing, and I quote,
04:40There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking nuclear weapons. If you take out Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations, end quote.
04:56And he argued for a preemptive attack saying, quote, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, which could come in the form of a mushroom cloud, end quote.
05:21The United States Congress, against my vote, went to war in Iraq, and we became involved in a terrible regional civil war there.
05:36No weapons of mass destruction were ever found. That war was based on a lie. A lie which cost us 4,500 young Americans, 32,000 wounded, and trillions of dollars.
06:02I will never forget going to funeral after funeral in my small state of Vermont for young men who died in that war.
06:14As a result of the war, the entire region was destabilized. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis also died in that war.
06:28A few months ago, in terms of what's going on right now, Trump's own director of national intelligence told Congress, this is his national director of intelligence, said, quote,
06:50Congress continues, the intelligence community continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, end quote.
07:09The Netanyahu government of Israel started this war with an unprovoked attack against Iran.
07:19This is the same government, this is the same government that is currently starving and shooting down innocent people in Gaza.
07:31Brothers and sisters, we cannot allow history to repeat itself.
07:41The United States faces enormous problems here at home.
07:47We should be spending our money and our manpower rebuilding America, not going into a war against Iran.
07:59I am not going to tell you that the fight against the oligarchs and the war makers is not going to be easy.
08:24It is not going to be easy. They have enormous wealth. They have enormous power. They control much of the media.
08:34But this is what I do know. The American people do not want a government of billionaires.
08:41They want healthcare as a human rights. They don't want tax breaks for oligarchs.
08:55They want the rich to start paying their fair share of taxes. They don't want a war with Iran.
