Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, perhaps the most dovish of GOP presidential hopefuls on foreign policy, said that toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has not stabilized the area, and has possibly made it worse.
Appearing Sunday on
"Meet the Press," Paul said that the Islamic State group (ISIS), which has now taken control of much of Iraq and Syria, is "more of an aberration than even Hussein was."
Republican White House hopefuls have been getting questions about whether they would have handled Iraq differently than former President George W. Bush did ever since Bush's brother, former Florida Gov.
Jeb Bush,misheard the same question from Fox News' Megyn Kelly on Monday and answered he would have done nothing different.
He later clarified he would have acted differently "knowing what we know today."
Bush has called the question a "hypothetical," but Paul disagreed.
"I think it's a recurring question in the Middle East," Paul told "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd. "Is it a good idea to topple secular dictators, and what happens when we do?"
The toppling of Saddam produced "chaos," which hasn't abated with the rise of ISIS, he said. The move also "emboldened Iran," which the United States and Arab allies believe is pursuing a nuclear weapons program, Paul argued.
He said former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democrats' frontrunner for the Oval Office, should be asked the same question since she was involved in the invasion of Libya, which toppled Moammar Gadhafi, leaving that country in "chaos."
Paul said he isn't saying that the world would be a better place if Saddam still were in charge in Iraq, but did say the United States is "more at risk for attack from people who are training, organizing and fighting in Iraq than we were before."
The military option should always be on the table, Paul said, but added he would rather see negotiations continue with Iran over its nuclear program.
"Once you are done with negotiations, the choices are war or they get a weapon," he said. "We negotiated with the Soviets for 70 years, and we ended up coming to a peaceful outcome."
Paul also talked about the soon-to-expire Patriot Act. He has said he would filibuster an attempt to extend the law, which allows for bulk collection of Americans' phone data.
"The court ruled that the collection of all phone records all the time is illegal," Paul said. "Really, it ought to stop. If the president is obeying the law, he should stop it immediately."
Congress has looked at replacing the collection by the National Security Agency by allowing phone carriers to keep the records. Paul said he doesn't like that idea either.
"The warrant should have someone's name on it," he said. "It shouldn't say Verizon."
Instead, he said more effort should be placed on keeping track of potential terrorists.
"I think if you're not spending so much time and money collecting the information of innocent Americans, maybe we could've spent more time knowing that one of the Tsarnaev boys, one of the Boston bombers, had gone back to Chechnya," he said.