Ron Paul: deather?

Ron Paul has given an interview in which he questioned whether Osama bin Laden was actually killed on Sunday, or if it was a deception produced by a government conspiracy designed to promote the war effort. The interview took place on Tuesday, and was conducted by Diane Rehm of WAMU. (View here.)

Congressman Paul actually chuckled while his interviewer asked him:

What would you say to those who are doubtful that this assassination actually took place, that Osama bin Laden was buried at sea, that we do have photographs, and so on? What would you say about that?

To that he answered:

The question I have is why does our government invite conspiracy theories all the time? Why don't they show a picture? I mean, nobody questions Saddam Hussein's death. They showed pictures, and pictures of his son [sic], and I don't hear any conspiracy theories about that. I mean there was a teeny bit at the beginning. But, why does our government do that?

And I have a medical question -- trying to confirm the timing. I understand he was killed Sunday afternoon, and Sunday, like, 9 o'clock, it was announced that the president would speak and that they had DNA proof of the individual. To my knowledge, I didn't know that they could do DNA proof that quickly. Then they came back and they said, well, we have facial features and we'll get the results of the DNA in later. It's that confusion. And I just sorta talk about it in detail until we get the information. You know, every day you get more information.

When Rehm asked as a follow-up question:

So would you consider yourself among the doubters?

Paul answered:

Well, I wouldn't want to say -- you say "doubter" and all the sudden you're in the conspiracies. I would say that I'm looking for a lot more information, you know. Governments tend to fib. Some people call it "lying" when it comes to war. Sometimes we got to war, in Vietnam or Iraq, with a gross distortion of the reality. So the war propagandists are very much into distorting information to get a consensus with the people. So I'd like to see all the information come in. And look how long it took us to sort out the real cause of Vietnam -- the Pentagon Papers -- that didn't happen. And I was in the service at that time. I didn't know about the Pentagon Papers. So, it was only later on, history has come back to show what really happened in Vietnam.

So Paul is unwilling to directly answer the question as to whether he doubts that bin Laden was killed, but he's more than willing to enumerate his doubts and raise the specter of the entire event being disinformation designed to promote war. That sort of answer is one reason why Ron Paul has such a wide following among the lunatic fringe of conspiracy theorists. He not only won't tell them that their ideas are loony, he frequently holds those ideas himself.

The exchange takes place at 5:30 of the below-embedded video.