Now I want to introduce our first speaker, Brian McClintchy. Brian is a good friend of ours.

He has just this past year in D.C., he was one of the lecturers for the Ron Paul Scholars Seminar,

which is an event that we do for upper division, undergrads, and grad students.

This is part of our educational mission, which to me is, I think, is the most important.

In fact, we have two former Ron Paul scholars here, T.J. I see you, where I can't see very well. There you go. Okay. There you are. So we have, they've actually come back, two of them have come back as host committee members, so they're helping support this event. So Brian was a speaker at this event. He is a great friend of ours.

And I think you're going to really be interested in what he has to say.

Brian, the floor is yours.

Thank you. I'm going to begin our examination of the U.S.-Israel relationship by taking you to an unlikely location,

thousands of miles from Tel Aviv or Washington. We're also going to be traveling 36 years back in time.

On December 20th, 1989, the United States invaded the Republic of Panama

to oust its leader, General Manuel Noriega, who had outlived his usefulness to the Empire.

At that point, it was the largest U.S. military operation by far since the Vietnam War. who had outlived his usefulness to the empire.

At that point, it was the largest U.S. military operation by far since the Vietnam War.

And it marked the beginning of this era of endless regime change wars that we find ourselves

in now.

Before Operation Just Cause was over, 23 American service members lay dead and 325 wounded.

At the time, I was a brand new platoon leader in the Army's 5th Infantry Division at Fort Polk, Louisiana.

Two of my fellow 5th ID soldiers, members of a battalion that was on a rotation to Panama at the time, were killed

as they engaged in the assault on the commandantia, which was the headquarters of the Panamanian

defense forces.

I was not part of the invasion, but soon after my military police unit was deployed to Panama,

with a mission of conducting joint operations, joint security

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