Rand Paul: “I rise today to call for an end to the U.S. involvement in the war in Yemen. There might be a good excuse for not…”

“I rise today to call for an end to the U.S. involvement in the war in Yemen. There might be a good excuse for not knowing there is a war in Yemen because the media seems to be preoccupied with other things, but we have been involved with supporting the Saudi coalition, the Saudi alliance with nine other nations, including Bahrain, which has been bombing Yemen. You might not know much about Yemen, either. Yemen is one of the poorest countries on the planet. There are about 17 million people who live on the edge of starvation there. This year they suffered an epidemic of cholera. Over 1 million people had cholera, and thousands of people died. This is a country so impoverished that even when there is no war in Yemen, they live on the very edge of being able to survive. The pictures are heartrending. If you see the pictures of the small children with their swollen bellies--swollen because they don't have enough protein so that the fluid literally drains from their blood system into their bellies. The pictures are heartrending, and your tax dollars are supporting this war. So I think there ought to be a debate. That is what I stand up today to do: to force a debate over whether we should be involved with aiding and abetting the Saudi coalition in this war in Yemen. Our Founding Fathers intended that Congress would debate war. It is very, very clear.…”