ED SCHULTZ: What evidence do you have, congressman, and why do you believe that Al-Qaida would be less aggressive to kill Americans if we weren’t doing international intervention and going and fighting them on their soil and going after them?

RON PAUL: Well, they didn’t exist till we got over there. We helped create them. As a matter of fact, our CIA helped radicalize the Madrasah schools because we were allies with them when we were trying to fight the Soviets and put them out of Afghanistan. So yes, we helped initiate that because they understood our argument. “Hey look, these communists are bad people and they’re invading your country, they want to take over.” So they accepted this idea that we’ll use religion to radicalize. And I don’t happen to believe that Al-Qaida is one unit. I think they’re just a scattered number of Muslims who have been influenced by the radical element of the Muslim religion, which I think is rather minor just like there is in the other religions, including the Christian religion.

ED SCHULTZ: Do you agree with him on the 14 countries that he put on the list?

RON PAUL: Yeah, matter of fact I had made a suggestion. Interestingly enough, I had something passed right after 9/11 that we ought to be very careful with those countries that we have put on a list. And I think there were four at that time. And that bill passed in the House and in the conference they removed that. They didn’t want to do that. I thought, “Well, if you use your logic, this is a lot better than putting us through the harassment and taking our shoes off and our belts off and stealing our new toothpaste and all these things.” We spend 75 billion dollars trying to get intelligence. And then when somebody comes with a hot lead, we can’t even handle it.