Great Pods
Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex | Lex Fridman Podcast #478

Key Points

The military-industrial complex operates as a "self-licking ice cream cone" - creating problems it then claims to solve, perpetually justifying its existence and expansion
The "war on terror" cost $8 trillion and led to 900,000+ direct deaths and 3.6-3.8 million indirect deaths, while displacing 37 million people from their homes
America could have captured Bin Laden in December 2001 but chose not to, allowing him to escape to maintain justification for ongoing wars
Israel's interests often conflict with American interests, yet the Israel lobby has successfully influenced U.S. foreign policy to serve Israeli goals at American expense
NATO expansion eastward broke promises made to Russia and was a primary cause of the current conflict in Ukraine
The neoconservative movement, rooted in Trotskyist origins, has driven much of America's interventionist foreign policy since the 1990s
American foreign policy in the Middle East has consistently created more terrorism rather than reducing it, generating blowback that threatens American civilians
The Federal Reserve's inflationary monetary policy, used to fund wars without direct taxation, creates boom-bust cycles that devastate the economy
Intelligence agencies and the foreign policy establishment actively worked to undermine Trump's attempts at diplomacy through Russia-gate and other means
The ongoing genocide in Gaza, supported by American weapons and funding, is generating anti-American sentiment that will likely result in future terrorist attacks
Both Iraq wars were fought primarily to serve Israeli strategic interests rather than legitimate American security concerns
Nuclear weapons proliferation is an inevitable result of American aggression, as countries seek deterrence against U.S. military intervention
The Ukraine conflict could have been prevented through negotiation, but the Biden administration refused to engage in good faith diplomacy
America's support for various extremist groups (including Al-Qaeda affiliates) when it serves short-term strategic goals creates long-term security threats
The Pentagon Papers, leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, proved the government knew the Vietnam War was unwinnable while continuing to lie to the American people
Diplomatic engagement, rather than military force, offers the only realistic path to resolving conflicts with Iran, North Korea, and other adversaries
The American people consistently oppose foreign wars when given accurate information, which is why extensive propaganda campaigns are necessary to maintain support
Government secrecy and classification systems are used primarily to hide incompetence and criminal activity rather than protect legitimate national security interests
Full Transcript

Language: en
The following is a conversation with
Scott Horton. He's the director of the
Libertarian Institute, editorial
director of anti-war.com,
co-host of Provoked, and host of the
Scott Horton Show on which he has done
over 6,000 interviews since 2003.
He's the author of Provoked, Enough
Already, and other books and articles
that have over the past three decades
criticized US foreign policy, especially
in regard to military interventionism
and the military-industrial complex.
This is the Lex Frman podcast. To
support it, please check out our
sponsors in the description. And now,
dear friends, here's Scott Horton.
I think one of the darkest and most
disturbing chapters of modern American
history is everything that happened
around conducting the so-called wars on
terror. I think to me it was a wakeup
call. I think it was a wakeup call to a
lot of Americans in understanding and
seeing the military-industrial complex
and seeing what the government's
capacity is to mislead us into war and
to continuously erode basic human
freedoms. Uh if I can allow me to list
some of the estimates from the cost of
war project from Brown University just
so we understand the cost of these wars.
The post 911 wars in Afghanistan, Iraq,
Syria, Pakistan, and Yemen led to an
estimated 900,000 to 940,000 direct
deaths and 3.6 to 3.8 million indirect
deaths. And the cost in terms of dollars
was $8 trillion with 2.2 two trillion on
Afghanistan and 2.9 trillion on Iraq and
uh Syria and the result on every front
as we'll talk about I think it's fair to
say that did not accomplish its purpose
and in fact if we even just look at the
human toll of the people of Afghanistan
I was also looking at the the numbers
before the war and after the war percent
of Afghans facing food insecurity went
from 62% to 92% of children under five
experiencing acute malnutrition went
from 9% to 50% of Afghans living in
poverty went from 80% to 97%. So it was
extremely costly for Americans and it
was extremely costly for Afghans as you
do in your book enough already. Uh can
you lay out how the full history the
full context of how it is that the
American people were misled into this
war on terror that was so costly in so
many ways?
Yeah. First of all, thank you for having
me again. It's great to be with you on
the show. One important statistic uh
that you could have mentioned from the
cost of war project as well is 37
million people displaced from their
homes, right? And the same group um it
was Lex, I'm telling you was at least 5
years ago. God, it's the future now.
This maybe 7 8 years ago that they did a
study that determined that 30,000
American servicemen had blown their own
brains out since then. Well, one way or
the other, deliberately crashing their
motorcycle or whatever it is. So, talk
about the cost of war. That's far
beyond, you know, the actual deaths in
the war. We had about 4,500 in Iraq and
about 2500 in Afghanistan of just
official airmen, marines, and soldiers
on the ground killed, plus contractors
and all that. So, that's speaking not
just to the things that could be
measured, but you can just imagine the
the scale of suffering that's going on
in the veterans minds.
Yeah. And you know what too, like you
would have guessed this probably, right?
You probably know more about this
subject than me. It was a New York Times
headline, I think yesterday, was, "Oh my
god, look at or maybe it was the Wall
Street Journal. Look at this insane list
of the kinds of drugs that all these
depressed soldiers get put on. Here's 15
different psychoactive drugs, all to
temper the side effects of the others
and whatever where
you know, and then they say that this
could lead to suicide because of course
we know that, right? They even have to
say that on TV sometimes that some of
these drugs cause suicidal or homicidal
obsessions and this kind of thing that
we know that's one of the side effects.
So some percentage of these guys might
have made it if the government health
care system hadn't helped them in the
end is another bitter irony. You know um
the whole thing is just you know you
said we got nothing out of it. I I said
half inest but it is serious but it's
also it shows by relief what a disaster
this is that the only thing we did get
out of it like literally was
advancements in prosthetic limbs for
whether if they lost their limb in war
or otherwise like if you want to boil it
down what did anyone get out of this
other than you know some people got a
dividend check from Lockheed or that
kind of thing but that's not to the
benefit of the society whatsoever so
that does not count you I'm talking
about what society got out of it, what
America got out of it. We have better
Luke Skywalker hands than before. That's
I don't think there's any more clear
illustrations of the complete failure of
the military-industrial complex. How did
this begin? How do we get into this?
Yeah. Well, so I'll try to tell the
somewhat fast version. Although, Lex,
that's a kiss of death every time I say
we'll go through.
Please go the slow version.
Okay. So, the slow version is
we'll start with the end of Vietnam.
Okay. So one major aspect of the end of
Vietnam was that Richard Nixon felt like
he had to bribe the military-industrial
complex some other way. And so one of
the things that he did was he turned to
the sha resopi in Iran and asked him to
increase arm sales. Now I guess I could
go back. I think everybody knows that
the CIA uh helped with the coup of 1953
to reinstall the sha who was the son of
the last dictator and had already been
in for a while and they put him back in.
And so now this is uh and that was in
53. So now this is in the early 70s, 20
years later. And Nixon saying, "Hey, you
know, really help me would be if you
would buy a bunch of fighter jets." So I
think it's kind of notorious, right,
that Iran still has F4s and F-14s.
That's where they got him from was the
Nixon and Ford administration in this
push to do that. And the Shaw was
apparently pretty obsessed with looking
very first world with his very fancy
first world army that he couldn't really
afford. And it helped to destabilize his
regime somewhat. And then I don't know
the full extent of America turning on
him before the revolution, but I know
that by the time of the revolution in
1979, he was sick with cancer and very
sick. And the Americans secretly knew
that. CIA knew that, you know, but it
was not public knowledge that it was
whatever stage 4 or whatever. He was
doomed. And so they knew the revolution
was coming and they were trying to
figure out how to handle it. And there
was the revolution was coming anyway.
And it wasn't just there's going to be a
change of leadership. When we say
revolution here, we mean mobs in the
street demanding an end to the old
regime in huge numbers, right? A very
large-scale popular revolution. And
they're trying to figure out how to get
the handle on it. Some of Carter's
critics said what he should have had
done was had the military just massacer
all those people. That'll shut him up.
Or like, you know what I mean? They're
trying to figure out what to do. Well,
the CIA and the State Department told
Jimmy Carter, listen, this Ayatollah
Kmeni, he's not so bad. We know this
guy. He was part of a group of Shiite
clergy who helped to agitate against
Mosedc in 1953. And so we have at least
some contact and we think that we can
deal with him.
Did they actually believe that?
I I think so. Is this incompetence or
malevolence? Like how does this whole
process happen that you go into this
process of regime change and keep
installing people that are creating more
and more
uh instability and destruction in the
world and then you use that to then
justify invading and starting wars. How
does this happen?
Well, there's a lot of things and the
whole time we in our discussion here,
we'll be talking about a massive
conspiracy of interests at play all the
time. But this is and I've never read a
bunch of books about this. I probably
should at least interview these guys. Uh
you'd be interested in this if you don't
already know the subject is public
choice theory. It's kind of a branch of
libertarian political economy studies
that says that essentially one of its
major aspects is that there really is no
national interest the way you and I
might think of it sitting here hashing
it out across the table because what
becomes the national interest is the
interest of the people in charge of
making the decisions for the nation. And
so they all ultimately are private
choices, aren't they? And the national
interest becomes subsumed by what's good
for me now. And so telling all my bosses
they're all wrong is not good for me
now. And on the very basic level, you
know, I've read quite a few books just
from former insiders like Daniel Ellburg
and other people like that. Ellburg
tells a story of where he's the deputy
under secretary of state for making up
nonsense or whatever it is or defense of
the no state, I believe. and his whole
job is making his boss look good whether
he agrees with him or not. And then the
hope is that next year he'll be in his
boss's position and his boss will move
up one and then he'll his job will be
making his boss look good then and how
and he explains how the truth and
reality just gets washed out of this.
Right? Um another famous one or should
be famous is my friend David Hardy who
wrote the best book about the Waco
massacre. He is a great lawyer and he
had been a former Interior Department
cop and he said there's truth and
there's falsity. Like that's the world
we live in. But in government work
there's our position and our position
takes place on an entirely different
plane than truth and falsity. Our
position is the thing a bunch of people
in a room agreed that they would say and
do as they can in committee like come to
a consensus and then a lot of times once
those decisions are made now to go back
on that decision means that you are
attempting to disgrace the people who
led the decision-making on that thing
and say that they were wrong and they
shouldn't have done the thing they did.
Now they got to do this instead. And so
you see just an absolute unwillingness
to make change. And this is something
that capitalism ultimately like
everybody's got ego problems, but
ultimately the boss has to look at an
accounting sheet and say this isn't
working. So I'm going to have to swallow
my pride or go out of business. Right?
In government it's not like that. The
worse they do the better off they are.
This is why it was the soldiers in
Vietnam called the military itself, the
army itself the self-licking ice cream
cone because it means that they cause
chaos but then chaos is their job is to
go and fix that. And so, you know, and
and if you're a government bureaucrat
getting paid way above the market, then
what do you want to do? Go get a job? U
a great example of this I cite in the
book is at the end of the Afghan war,
there are multiple military uh officers,
like not too too high, but like high
enough to be quoted by the news saying,
"Well, now that that's over, we're
looking for other things to do. So,
we're going to pivot to Africa and go
find some Islamists there because we are
looking for ways to stay globally
engaged because of course that's their
interest to do. Whether that's good for
Africa or good for the American people
is just it's kind of a separate question
that they're not really dealing with.
And so, I think that's a huge part of
it. I mean, one of the things was
William Sullivan said that, well, Kmeni,
he's like the Iranian Gandhi. Well,
first of all, he's not a pacifist. But
second of all, didn't Gandhi kick the
British Empire out of India? So, what
are you saying? You're deliberately
putting in a guy who's going to limit
your influence there and it's going to
declare independence for you from you.
How are you going to handle that? Like,
they don't seem to think this through.
And I I have to say that one of the
great disappointments of growing up is
you find out that the rest of the adults
aren't so smart. They're just regular
dudes like you. And I think a lot of
times state department people might have
very advanced knowledge doesn't mean
they have very advanced wisdom. You know
this is something else Danielle Ellburg
talks about is when you have access to
classified information then you don't
pay any attention to anybody who doesn't
because what do they know? You know all
these things that they couldn't possibly
be taking into account. So you
immediately close your circle of people
who you listen to. And I'll tell you
great example of this from my own
experience was I interviewed a CIA
analyst uh apparently a pretty important
executive at one time in the terror war
named Cynthia Stoer and I asked her I
forget if it was in the interview or
not. I hope I'm not like speaking out of
school. I believe it was in the
interview that I asked her about well I
can't remember the exact context but I
asked her about well don't you read
Patrick Coburn? And she goes who's
Patrick Coburn? And I go who's Patrick
Coburn? Patrick Coburn is the most
important Anglo in Iraq. He's the one
who understands all of this stuff more
and better than all of y'all. And he
writes in the Independent. You can read
it for free. Just register with your
email address for God's sake, man. I
can't believe. And she's like, "Who even
is that?"
So, a lack of basic curiosity, uh, rigor
of research, understanding the
situation. and she could know a lot of
secret things but without understanding
what he understands she does not
understand what she needs to know. I can
promise you that much. You know I think
it's a basic lack of humility. The ego
grows the power grows. Then you to
self-preserve to maintain power. You
start deluding yourself in that in those
closed rooms. You start shutting
yourself off from the reality of the
world. And then as as your own delusion
drifts, you're more incentivized to grow
that delusion, incentivized to hide, to
do secrecy, and then it just goes off.
And that's that's why I was hoping you
could speak to uh more to Daniel
Ellburg. So the importance of somebody
like that. So it sounds like if we think
about the machinery of how this happens,
it feels like heroic whistleblowers are
essential to this process. If we talk
about Snowden and Assange and uh one of
the OGs is Daniel Ellburg
who uh just reading here was an American
military analyst, economist and renowned
whistleblower best known for leaking the
Pentagon papers in 1971. Can you tell me
about who he was and the importance of
Oh yeah. Well, he's an absolutely
brilliant guy. I I'm proud to say I was
a friend, you know, for 10 15 years
there. I don't know, quite a while. So
he endorsed my first two books. I'm very
proud to say. and um and he did not have
a chance to read Provoked unfortunately,
but I know he would have liked it cuz we
were email buddies and I know that he uh
thought very much along the same lines
as me and John Mirshimer and others, you
know, as as people are probably
familiar. I think we'll get more into
that, but um on that issue, he was
great, but um he was a brilliant genius
and and he was a nuclear war planner.
That was his second book was called The
Doomsday Machine, Confessions of a
Nuclear War Planner. And he had
liberated a bunch of documents about
nuclear war as well. But he had decided
with his quote unquote co-conspirator
that they should just focus on Vietnam
first. That's the thing that it matters
the most right now. And that was the
Pentagon Papers. And then all the papers
that he had hidden away, he gave them to
his brother and his brother lost them.
And so then he decided later, you know
what? I remember enough of this stuff
that I can go ahead and just write it
from memory. And he was so brilliant,
dude. I mean, I don't know what his IQ
was, but I know his father built the
first u assembly line for the atom bomb
and they asked him if he would do the
same for the H bomb and he refused for
moral reasons. So, that was his
background in the first place and he's
just such a great guy, man. So, he's a
person who was able to see the situation
like you mentioned like that room and in
that room understand that there's some
shit that's wrong that's going on here
and to be able to speak up. and he was
at Rand, right? His job was writing and
this was when Rand I guess was much more
important and very closely tied to the
Pentagon and their whole thing was like
writing up game theory nuclear warfare
plans. One of the things he did was he
found out and and Jack Kennedy had to
fight like mad. They had to go back and
forth over and over and over to even get
the war plan from the Pentagon and they
finally got the war plan from the
Pentagon and it said that if we have a
nuclear war with the Soviet Union, we
nuke every single city in the Soviet
Union and China. So that would be I
don't know if that includes all the
Warsaw pack, but it includes all the
republics and China. And the thinking
was that if America and the Soviet Union
destroy each other and Europe, well,
we'll be damned if we're going to leave
Earth to those dirty chiccoms. So we're
going to kill all them, too. And that
was the thinking in the thing. And it
was Ellberg told Kennedy that. And
Kennedy told Ellburg to make sure and
forced the Pentagon to rewrite the plan
and narrow that thing down. So, I mean
that's part of the guy's background
where he comes from. I beg people to
read the pen uh it's called Secrets, a
memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon
Papers and then also the doomsday
machine. And by the way, his first book,
Secrets, begins with his first day on
the job. I was joking around earlier.
He's deputy under secretary of state for
whatever it was. Was it I can't remember
if it state or defense. Maybe it was
defense. It had to have been defense.
Forgive me for before. And then the
first thing that happens when he clocks
in that day for his job is the thing
starts coming across the teletype. Ships
attacked in the Tonkan Gulf. And then
he's reading, "Oh, never mind. That was
a mistake." And then he sees the
president run with it anyway. And now
the historian Gareth Porter says that
actually Magnamera lied to BBJ and he
can prove it. I can't cite all the
chapter and verse, but I trust Gareth.
He's great. And he says that actually it
was McNamera lied LBJ when they knew
that it was a mistake.
And the same thing happened again and
again. You take a little piece of
information
and run with them in order to justify
war. That's right. That's going to be a
theme. Absolutely. What what was what
was uh important in the Pentagon Papers?
What are some key ideas?
Okay. So, so the Pentagon papers first
of all was and and he wrote this while
he was working at RAND that he had full
topsec clearance and they were
commissioned by secretary of defense
magnamera to write a real secret top
secret history of the Vietnam war in the
entire history of our involvement in
Indochina since the end of the second
world war. And so that was what they did
was they wrote like eyes only for the
secretary of defense type material. So,
it had everything in there and Ellberg
was in charge of writing it along with
Leslie Gelb who shut his mouth and went
along and later became the chairman of
the Council on Foreign Relations and was
a good dog, right? But anyway, um they
were the ones who wrote it together and
Nellsburg was brave enough to liberate
the thing and he tried to leak it to the
Senate over and over and over again.
Mike Grall eventually started reading it
into the record and then finally the New
York Times got the courage to start
publishing the thing and it showed that
they knew that they couldn't win all
along. They knew that the South
Vietnamese government could not stand.
they did not have popular consent that
the insurgency in the south was not just
based on support from the north but
their own indigenous revolution against
what they see you know as intolerable
foreign intervention and and wanted to
force us out and it's funny cuz McName
later says that I guess he didn't read
the Pentagon papers that no we were just
sure that it was the capitalists versus
the communists like all this stuff about
they didn't want to be ruled over
foreign white devils and that never
occurred to us, you know, like come on.
Um, you know, as Chsky said, come on.
America invaded South Vietnam. That the
government that was inviting us to stay
was the government that we put in there
or at least after we overthrew the one
we didn't like, the one we put in there.
No different than, as we're going to
talk about, uh, Hammed Carzi inviting us
to please stay in Afghanistan. It's
like, come on, who's zooming who here?
Um but um so it showed and that was the
deal and that was why it was such a big
deal and how he made Nixon's enemies
list and all these things even though it
didn't really expose Nixon it exposed
LBJ and and the predecessors but um it
was a huge shock that they have been
lying to us and lying us and lying to us
deliberately knowing that this is got to
be somebody else's problem. Right?
There's a phone call of LBJ saying to a
Republican senator friend of his that I
can't be the first president to lose a
So, right, he's just going to retire
first and make it Nixon's problem,
right? Same as George W. Bush said, "Oh,
the end of Iraq, well, that'll just have
to be up to other presidents to decide.
Not my responsibility. All I did was do
You know, and that's how they are. And
they have that's their is this is also
part of the economics of democracy too
where they have uh such and I'm not
arguing for the opposite but I'm just
saying the reality is you have such
short terms of office you have very high
time preference right instead of like
working on long-term projects about
what's the future of mankind going to
look like a 100 years from now you're
looking at a much shorter time horizon
you know including who's going to
finance your next election so that
you'll have any say so whatsoever and as
Yoda and Palpatine agree that like all
who have power are afraid to lose it
because what if the other guy had it
instead? It would be worse. Everybody
knows that which is of course a huge
part of the story of the American empire
here, you know. Well, but fundamentally
that's cowardly, right? So what what we
want from leaders from great leaders is
courage. And courage means making
difficult decisions that are going to
make the world a better place long term,
the country a better country long term.
And that means if you start a war, that
means understanding the full cost of
that war and how it's going to have to
end. And then if if you understand the
full cost of war, you're not going to
start it.
Right. Uh so how does how do we go from
the CIA 1979 the Shaw Ayatollah
What is the thread that now starts
inching towards the '9s and
towards 911 in Iraq? I know there's so
much, but we're going to do it, man. Um,
so here's what happens. America goes
ahead and allows Ayatollah to get on the
plane in Paris, France, and go home.
Now, I remember even as a kid saying,
"But aren't the French our friends?
Wouldn't they have checked with us
before doing that?" In fact, I just
recently found the clip of Peter
Jennings interviewing him. And the
smartest thing Peter Jennings can think
of to say is, "So, how do you feel on
your triumphant return, Mr. Ayatollah?"
Right? Which USA is just completely
aiding in a betting, right? These are
shots they called and made happen,
right? they sent him home to inherit the
thing and then they did work with him.
Uh people forget man and I was just very
young at that time. Um but I you know
was raised kind of in the atmosphere of
all of this and even back then people
conflated the revolution itself with the
hostage crisis as just one story. It all
is spoken in one breath. But in fact the
revolution was in February of 1979 and
the hostage crisis didn't break out
until November. So what was happening in
the meantime? Well, one of the things
was the Americans were warning the new
Iranian regime about threats from the
new dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein,
who had just overthrown the government
in a bloody coup d'eta. No revolution
there. And you can watch the video of
this. Have you ever seen the video?
Saddam's overthrowing Iraq. And he he's
got a huge stadium of guys and he just
starts calling names and everybody whose
name he's calls has to go out back and
get shot. Like it's gnarly, man. I think
that video is a
dark study of human nature. It's
terrifying.
Oh, it is. That's ugly, man. That's
because everybody is afraid and of
there's a disgusting face as Satan has.
I don't know. I don't know if if there's
a sadistic.
Sure. He was a psychopath, man. No
question. He was a brute of a dictator,
right? There's a lot of El Presidentedes
in the world. Not all of them like train
their sons to torture people from the
time they're young and stuff. Oh fuck.
All the cowards in that room. But then
you have to ask yourself, what would you
do if you were in that room?
Yeah. You've already been bested at that
point. I mean, they could all rush the
stage, but that ain't going to do them
any good, you know?
But before you, how did you get to that
And then that's why you have to give
props to whistleblowers. You have to
give props to people that stand up and
risk their life in situations like that,
which in those parts of the world is
even harder than it is in the United
States of America. And you know, by the
way, I usually forget to mention this
when I tell this story. Takes another
few seconds to mention that Saddam
Hussein had been groomed by the CIA
since the 1950s on and off. And he had
been part of different dictator regimes
on and off. He'd been in exile in Cairo
for a little while and this kind of
thing. And then in the 70s leading up to
the coup, I think it was really closer
to the Soviet Union. And um and so we'll
get to the I guess I'll mention it now.
The huge irony of the fact that in the
Iran Iraq war
it was America supporting Saddam Hussein
and his Soviet military versus Iran and
it's American one, right? Um
the absurdity of this is insane.
Well, I'm skipping ahead a step, but I
just like that part. Um but so okay, so
America supports the revolution in 79 in
They're warning this guy, hey, you
better look out for Saddam Hussein and
his intentions. And we're going to get
back to that in one moment here. Um, and
they were also warning him about the
threat from the Soviet Union. Now, why
is that? Well, that's because,
skip over Iran. Now, we're talking about
Afghanistan and Zabin Brzinsk's policy
that let's support the mujaheden in
Afghanistan in order to try to provoke
Soviet intervention there. And so
there's a memo and people can find this
at scorton.org/bear use if you want to
look at it. It's um from You want to go
ahead pull it up?
So if if you allow me to read uh
President Jimmy Carter's July 3rd, 1979
finding in quotes authorizing covert
support for the mujahedin in Afghanistan
secret sensitive
and the important part is provide
unilaterally or through third countries
as appropriate support to Afghan
insurgents. This is now a finding is an
order from a president to the CIA to do
something. That's what a finding means.
So this is an order to CIA to do this.
Now on that order they did start pouring
in support to the mujadine. Now I have
to tell you that my best uh experts on
this like Eric Margalles and I got this
also from reading Andre Sakurov the
famous Soviet nuclear physicist and
dissident that they both said that it
wasn't American support for the
mujaheden that really provoked the
Russians into invading Afghanistan
because what it was was the sock puppet
dictator was a basket case and he had
created so many enemies that he just
couldn't hold it together. So the first
thing the Soviets did when they invaded
in December of 79 was take him out back
and shoot him and replace him with a new
guy. So that was really the cause of the
Soviet intervention there. They had a
commi sock puppet regime. It was not one
of the Soviet republics, right? But they
had a sock puppet regime there, but they
they wanted to, you know, um maintain it
and it was falling apart. So they rushed
to intervene. However, Lex, the point
still remains that the United States of
America was trying to bait the Soviet
Union into invading Afghanistan. And
we're going to get back to why this so
relevant to the Iran thing in just one
second, but let's stop and talk about
this for a second. Why would they do
that? And they would do that also
because of Vietnam. Because at the end
of Vietnam, Americans had what the
government considered to be a mental
illness, Vietnam syndrome. That meant
that Americans didn't want to do this
anymore. contain communism at this cost
and who really cares if Vietnam goes
commie we do business with them now you
know and so um people weren't into it
anymore so this is where Zign Brzinski
and his uh he was national security
adviser under Jimmy Carter and uh his I
guess counterpart at defense a guy named
Walter Sloum they came up with this
brilliant idea that what we'll do is we
will bait the Soviets into overexpansion
Now, we don't want them to invade West
Germany, but the Afghans are expendable.
So, if we can bait the Soviets into
Afghanistan and bog them down, we will
be adding straw to the camel's back.
This is a way to inflict because by
then, think of it, the word Vietnam,
that's not even the name of a country
over there somewhere anymore. Vietnam at
that time, that word means some
horrible, stupid, no wind quagmire thing
that you shouldn't have done. you shot
yourself in the foot and the leg and
lost your friend Jimmy down the street
and everything and for we don't want to
do that. You know, that was what Vietnam
meant to America was like, "God dang,
what a mistake that was." So now they're
saying, "Let's do that to the Reds."
Okay, we'll bog them down, bleed them to
bankruptcy, and force them out the hard
way and and hurt them in doing that. So
that's what they were trying to do. That
was the wisdom behind the operation in
the first place. And now if you go click
back one to Brazinski, you'll see where
and he later misprinski
national security advisers big new
Brzinsk's memo to President Carter on
December 26th 1979 regarding the Soviet
invasion of of Afghanistan.
And the important part here I mean
there's a lot it's a bit but if you go
down you will see where oh here this
could become a Soviet Vietnam while it
could become a Soviet Vietnam. In other
words, see they're already talking about
in that context here in writing. We see
and it's from Robert Gates's first
memoir, by the way, where he says it was
Brazinski and Sloukum, by the way.
That's my source for that when I say
that those two were the ones really
innovating this policy. Um, and he says
the initial effects of the invention are
likely to be adverse for us for the
following reasons. And then he says that
it'll make the hawks talk about how we
better do something about Iran. And he
says this could bring us into a
head-to-head confrontation with the
Soviets. So this is very interesting,
Lex, because well, one, this is why
America's passing intelligence to the
Ayatollah about threats from the
Soviets. We think that now that Iran is
essentially destabilized because of the
revolution and we just deliberately or
at least were trying to and apparently
succeeded in a sense in baiting them
into invading Afghanistan. Now we're
worried that they're too expansionists
and that they're going to roll into
Persia next and then they'd be right on
the Persian Gulf and we can't have that.
So that was when Jimmy Carter announced
in his speech in 1980 the Carter
doctrine that said that the Persian Gulf
is now an American lake and we will take
any move by any power read the USSR to
move into the Persian Gulf as an attack
on the United States itself. Right? were
like bringing the Gulf those waters into
NATO, right? Giving a full war guarantee
to keep the Soviets. They And by the
way, a regime Oh, I'm sorry. I'm
skipping one. See, go back. I'm forgive
me for the It's hard to to stay in line
here. The hostage crisis breaks out in
November 79 because David Rockefeller
from of course Standard Oil of New
Jersey aka Exxon and Aramco and all
those things. Um the chairman of the
Chase Manhattan Bank at that time, he
was very close with Jimmy Carter and he
convinced Carter to let the Shaw into
the United States for cancer treatment.
That was what caused the riot at the
embassy and the seizure of the hostages.
Now, I don't know and and I'm sure there
are books about this that I just haven't
read yet, you know, kind of thing that
explain whether it really was the IRGC
that took the lead in that or whether it
was the students who did it or what, but
obviously the government held the
hostages and kept the thing going. So,
they bear responsibility for that. But
the point being that America had been
trying to work with the Ayatollah up
until then. The idea was not that, oh,
Shiite fundamentalist Islam says that
all white Christians from North America
must lay down dead right now because
that's their religious belief. Look at
them ranting, we're the great Satan and
burning our flag. And then but so when
so many people when the story begins
with they're calling us great Satan and
burning our flag, then well, they just
hate us and so we're just going to have
to do something about that. And you
know, I I remember meeting a guy one
time who said, "Listen, Al Qaeda hates
us for all these complicated reasons."
And he explained them. And then he goes,
"But not Iran. They just hate us." I
remember when I was a boy, they were
burning our flag and calling us Satan.
So it's like, "Yeah, but well, they had
a reason, too. Not that it justifies
them doing anything sinful or criminal,
but I'm just saying they also had
reasons for reacting the way that they
reacted." America had launched a coup in
53 from that same embassy. And by saying
that they were going to cure the Shaw's
cancer seemed to be an indication to
them that we were going to try to
reinstall him in power and cancel the
revolution. And so they were preempting
that. Again, not a justification for
everything that happened there or
whatever, but just to tell the whole
story in a way that I've told that story
people before. Like I never knew that. I
always thought that it all happened in
one big show, you know. And never do
they admit unless sometimes the
Republicans accuse Carter of this.
They'll tell the part about that Carter
was so naive as to send the Ayatollah
home. although that's usually always
left out. Um, but so now he announces
the Carter doctrine, giving a war
guarantee to Iran that he now officially
hates and is holding our hostages and
completely humiliating him. Right. And
there's Operation Eagle Claw where they
sent forces into Iran and that was a it
was supposed to be a rescue mission that
ended up in disaster where the planes
and the helicopters crashed into each
other. They were already leaving anyway
cuz it was going to be botched. and then
they crashed on the way out. And so that
was a big humiliation for Carter as
well. And then, oh, and I should also
tell you that um Gareth just found this.
is a classified document um that he only
found in the State Department records
that showed that just after the Carter
doctrine speech, Brazinski in a private
meeting with the Saudi foreign minister
and also with his deputy Warren
Christopher who was later Clinton's
secretary of defense, he admitted that
we don't think there's really a Soviet
threat to Iran.
Bazinski himself admitted that. So the
pretext for the Carter doctrine was fake
and he admitted it himself. They weren't
really afraid of that even though they
were pretending to be afraid of that as
a result of the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan that they were trying to
And we should also give a shout out to
Gareth Porter. He has uh written about
the Vietnam War books including Perils
of Dominance and Balance of Power and
the Road to War in Vietnam.
I have to say I believe that he is the
most important journalist of the war on
terrorism era. I call him Gareth the
Great. He's a good friend of mine. I've
interviewed him 300 something times on
my show about essentially everything
he's written since 2007. He is the best
of the best of the best.
It's not just the war in Vietnam. It's
he he writes also about the continued
absolutely specialized in Iraq,
Afghanistan, exposing the entire fraud
of David Petraeus and his career. He
wrote the book manufactured crisis on
the Iranian nuclear program. That is by
none the the very best book on that.
You're absolutely right. Vietnam,
Cambodia, Syria, Iran, and uh the war on
terror. All things he's written
extensively about
Gareth Porter the Great, man. Absolutely
I learned so much from him. I I couldn't
begin to explain.
Fair enough. So, the story continues.
So, another aspect of the Carter
doctrine was that Carter gave the green
light to Saddam Hussein
to invade Iran. Now, first thing is why
Saddam Hussein want to invade Iran? It
ain't just because he likes doing what
Jimmy Carter says. He had his own
reasons. Now, picture your map over
Iraq. I know you got one in your head
there. Everything from Baghdad over east
to Iran and down to Kuwait. That is what
you could call Shiastan. Predominantly
Shiite Iraq, right? And then there's 60%
of the population. Super majority. In
the north you have the Kurds who are
Sunnis but their Kurds a separate
ethnicity than the Arabs. And then you
have the Sunni Arabs who are another
20%. Well, Saddam Hussein was a secular
Sunni Arab leading essentially like like
on the Simpsons the Kami Nazis, the Both
party who are like sort of both a little
just a fascist state essentially, right?
With Arab characteristics or whatever.
Um and but uh and and not an entirely
sectarian one. He had Christians and
Kurds and Shiites in his government and
things like that. It was not, you know,
like just a caricature or whatever. It
was a balance of power act. But after
the Iranian revolution, Saddam had real
reason to fear that the Shiite
revolution was going to spread to Iraq
and that Iraqi Shiites, at least the
armed and convinced ones, would choose
their religious sect and their alliance
with Iran on that basis over their
national and ethnic sect as Iraqis and
Arabs, right? Separate from the
Persians. So, and he had real reason to
believe that, including that members of
the Dawa party and people loyal to the
Hakeim family were uh Abdul Aziz
al-Hakim and his people. They left to go
to Iran and they chose Iran's side in
the war. So, Saddam Hussein's solution
to that was to conscript all these
people and force them into his army and
march them east against Iran and use
them in that way. And this led to an
absolutely brutal World War I. maybe
Russia Ukraine style trench warfare
tanks artillery and there's planes and
and ships and it was a hell of a war for
9 years all through the 1980s as the
United States almost entirely backed
Saddam Hussein except for when they
backed the Ayatollah remember Iran
Contra and during Iran Contra what did
they do they went to the Israelis and
they said hey you're still friends with
the government in Iran you guys don't
mind the Ayatollah one bit and have
maintained your friendship there. We
want to sell them some missiles and try
to get the hostages out and then take
the rest of the proceeds from the
missiles and give them to the Contras in
Nicaragua. And this is what became the
great Iran Contra scandal.
And so we should also say and and you
highlight the importance of
understanding Iran Contra. So this here
reading a major political scandal in the
United States during the mid1 1980s
senior officials in President Ronald
Reagan's administration facilitated the
secret sale of arms to Iran which was
under an arms embargo with the proceeds
being used to find uh Contra rebels
fighting the Sandinista's government in
Nicaragua despite Congress explicitly
prohibiting such funding.
Yep. And this is of course supposedly a
side story, but a huge part of the side
story is it absolutely was true, as the
great Gary Webb reported in the Dark
Alliance series and in his great book
Dark Alliance, that and many other great
journalists as well, that the CIA had a
massive operation to bring cocaine into
the United States by the truckload and
plane load to sell it to poor Americans,
blacks especially in LA. But also, yes,
it's true. They even made a Tom Cruz
movie after years of calling us
conspiracy cooks and all this. The movie
is about a guy named Barry Seal whose
job it was to fly guns and money down
there and cocaine up here uh for the
Contra for the CIA and into Bill
Clinton's Arkansas where he was read in
on this. And the operation was run out
of the vice president's office, George
HW Bush. And that much is true. in the
same they had the I know less about but
they had this is where all the cocaine
from Miami Vice was coming into uh
Florida in the same way and this is
where the crack epidemic came from in
South LA and throughout the country
really in in many places and they just
don't give a damn about us man Congress
said you can't have any money to fund
the contress and they said yeah but we
want to anyway so this is how they did
so the CIA would help orchestrate this
kind of transport of drugs
absolutely right and And then they
completely destroyed the heroic Gary
Webb for exposing this. And they didn't
murder him, but they drove him to
suicide. And you know, his his good
friend Robert Perry, the great
journalist, verify that. No, it really
was a suicide. People thought it was
suspicious cuz he shot himself twice,
but that does happen sometimes where
people flinch on the first one, but it
was his father's gun and he was totally
depressed and he signed his house over
to his wife and somebody stole his
motorcycle and he was like at the at the
and but they had run him out of his job
at the San Jose Mercury News. They first
ran him to the Hollywood beat and then
he eventually he just quit and went to
become an investigator for the
California state legislature.
So the CIA doesn't have to kill you
directly. They can psychologically
destroy you.
That's right. Yeah. They put the gun in
his mouth either way um for doing the
right thing. Uh but anyway, and and
didn't get any facts wrong. The only
thing that anyone had to attack him on
was like the graphics editor put like a
phrase out of context big on the page or
something in the newspaper. You know
what I mean? It was like something silly
that made it sound like he was saying
the purpose of the mission was to
destroy the black community when that he
never said that. What he said was they
didn't give a damn about those people. I
don't even know if he addressed that,
right? But he certainly wasn't saying
that was what it was about. It was about
funding the Contras. But anyway, so they
found their separate ways of doing it.
And this is one of the things that made
me like this is I don't even have any
idea where I first learned this, but I
knew this while Reagan was still in
office or at least by the time Bush
Senior was in office when I was still
just like maybe a freshman in high
school or younger than that. I knew that
Ronald Reagan was a dope pusher. The
same guy with the just say no and the
same guy with the massively increased
penalties for people engaging in just
simply the possession much less the sale
and trade and drugs. And so there are
people who went to prison for decades
for life essentially and literally for
just possession of the same drugs that
the government was bringing in. And so
how are you ever going to believe in a
security force like that again? I never
have. I don't know why you'd even need
to see a Waco massacre or any other or
an Iraq war or any other thing to detest
these people. That's who they are. You
know, I had this um it's the only part I
really remember about it, but uh there's
this great film producer named Kevin
Booth. He was Bill Hicks's best friend
and producer and he did a documentary
about the drug war where they show this
guy and he goes, "Oh, they're all in
prison and they're filming them through
the gate and they're all yelling and
whatever. You can't really make out
much, right? They're all like yelling
over each other." And one guy finally
like makes everybody be quiet and he
looks at the camera and he goes,
"Listen, I'm doing 35 years cuz I had a
few rocks in my pocket. Does that sound
right to you?"
I was like, "Dude, it was Ronald
Reagan's cocaine in his pocket." Like,
that guarantees a full pardon, man.
Right. What are we talking about? That's
not fair. It's a dark aspect of human
nature that the people that try to, if
we talk about drugs, to ban drugs.
And really, anyone who tries to ban a
thing are often secretly participating
in doing that thing.
Bootleggers and Baptist, you know. Um,
just on a small tangent, sure. Have you
ever since you're a Texan, have you ever
met Bill Hicks?
No, man. I learned about Bill Hicks like
a month after he died and so they
started playing Sane Man on the Access
Channel all the time and I was like, "Oh
my god, who's this guy?" And then
they're like, "Oh, he just died."
But I he has been a huge influence on
me, you know, in in a lot of ways. So,
I'm very much a Hixon. I apologize for
that. It's good to do a shout out back
to the drug war and that involvement
from Carter and on and Reagan and uh
Well, yeah, let's go back to Iran cuz
the cocaine is really tied up in the
contra end of the scandal. Point being,
America's back in Saddam, except when
they're helping Israel back Iran and by
selling them these missiles. And there
even I don't have my footnote anymore,
but it's findable, I'm sure, where they
did talk about, you know, what we do is
we support one side till they start
getting ahead a little bit, then we
support the other side a little bit more
and go or we authorize the Israelis to
increase support for Iran and play them
back and forth against each other. So
that's just not just, you know, offshore
balancing and peace time. That's
balancing in wartime, encouraging them
to keep killing each other, which is
some pretty horrific policy to do.
Could you also comment during this stage
and this thread will continue? What role
does Israel have to play in this in this
part of the story with Iran?
Well, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know
much about what they were saying about
America's Iraq policy during that time,
but I know that they were still friends
with the Ayatollah, and we're not going
to get to them switching gears on the
Ayatollah until Rabbine in 1993. So hold
that thought. So the the war is still
going on. We have to mention the
chemical weapons too.
America bought them. Taxpayers bought
them. There was a huge Iraq gate scandal
it was called where people were put on
trial for the money but then they their
defense was but the government made me
do it. What are you talking about? This
was a whole thing to do and they were it
was German chemical weapons I believe
and maybe some French but that were
bought with supposed agricultural loans
from the United States to Iraq. And they
had a sophisticated biological weapons
program too uh with anthrax and the
rest. And the Americans sent them the
precursors for the germs that he would
need. During the Iran Iraq war in 1980
to 1988, Saddam Hussein's regime used
chemical weapons extensively against
Iranian forces and Kurdish civilians.
Most notably in the 1988 Halabja attack
that killed an estimated 5,000 people
and injured 20,000 more. There is
substantial documentation that Western
governments, especially the US and some
of its allies, provided Iraq with dual
use technology, intelligence, and
materials which facilitated Iraq's
chemical weapons program. Y and it goes
let me drop two good footnotes for
people here. The first one would be
Shane Harris, who's now at the
Washington Post, you know, very official
national security beat reporter. He
wrote a piece about this at foreign
policy.com a few years back where he
goes into extensive details. So, as far
as like authoritative sources, there you
go. Okay. Nothing conspiratorial about
this narrative at all. But then you want
to do a deeper dive onto it, then go to
and it's this is the future freedom
foundation and there they have a page
and I'm sorry I always get the headline
wrong, but it's something like where did
Saddam get his WMDs or where did Saddam
get his chemical weapons? Um, you know
what you can do? You can go site
fff.org or and then that way you search
just that site and then you can do
chemical weapons Iraq and I bet you'll
find it.
Yeah, right there. Where did Iraq get
its weapons of mass destruction and I
had mentioned this I I guess on the
Tucker show and so I I actually talked
with Hornberger and I I went back and I
found and I made sure that all of those
links are up to date and work for each
of those stories. So people can go
through and and take a very close look
at those are just articles, never mind
all the books about it and stuff which
there are plenty. So, this is a set of
links uh assembled by Jacob
Hearnburgger. The title is where did
Iraq get its weapons of mass destruction
on fff.org
that people should check out.
And then, oh, there's the there's the
Shane Harris and Matthew M8 CIA files
prove America helped Saddam as he gassed
The US knew Hussein was launching some
of the worst chemical attacks in history
and still gave him a hand. And now, by
the official rules of confirmation bias,
when Shane Harris admits something that
I'm accusing, that means it's definitely
true. If I ever disagree with him, well,
he's a liar from the post. Got that?
Okay. Good to know. That's how truth
works. Good.
Of course. Um,
I'm so there there's your authoritative
source, everybody. Shane Harris from the
All right.
And that's a a special inside joke for
fans of where the Buffalo roams too.
Remember Harris from the Post? You ever
seen that?
Mm-m. It's the original Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas with Bill Murray.
I didn't realize there was original Fear
and Loathing in Las Vegas with Bill
Murray. What?
Where the Buffalo Romes? I promise you
will have a good time. And there's a
joke in there about I'm Harris from the
Post. He's pretending to be Harris from
the Post and he's hanging out in the
bathroom with Richard Nixon.
And I forgot the conversation. It's
funny as hell though.
Similar type of wild journey of Fear and
Oh yeah. Yeah. I I got to admit I don't
remember the story that well. It's very
different than Fear and Loathing, but
it's also very good. Well, I know what
I'm doing tonight. Okay, cool. Uh,
we're in the Buffalo Rome. It's good.
Everyone will like it. I promise.
Underrated Bill Murray.
He's forever underrated, actually.
Genius actor. Okay. Uh, and so back to
Chemical Weapons and and uh Hussein,
Saddam Hussein.
So, okay, the war finally comes to an
end in 1989
and uh at the same time the Soviets are
withdrawing in Afghanistan. and we're
going to get back to them in a minute.
But uh the war comes to an end and for
the next couple of years Saddam Hussein
is in a struggle over war debts with his
creditors Kuwait, Saudi and UAE who are
demanding all their money back that they
gave him for the war they loaned to him
for the war. Now, of course, he feels
like he bought that war partially in
their defense. And so, and also at this
time, oil is trading at $12 a barrel.
So, he has no ability to repay them,
rebuild his country, or do any kind of
thing. And they're completely putting
the screws to him. And on top of that,
this is disputed whether they were
literally the Kuwaitis literally slant
drilling under the border or whether
it's really that's kind of shorthand I
think usually for they were
overproducing from shared oil wells that
straddled the border. And when you have
a contract that where your property and
my property but up next to each other
and we got mineral rights but we have a
shared oil well down there then we have
a quota how much we pump and you're not
allowed to cheat and pump more out of
our shared well than me in any given
month or whatever as per the contract.
That's kind of how that thing works. So
in this case it's the same thing over an
international border. in the Kuwaitis at
least. They're also accused, and I know
less about this, but they're accused
also of using slant drilling techniques
that they've been taught by Americans to
drill that way and steal Iraqi oil, you
know, from the margin. So, Hussein's
pissed about this at the same time
they're putting the screws to them over
calling in the war debts. Now, um I
don't believe that this was a deliberate
trap, but in effect, it was. I think
what happened was it was a matter of in
you know the left hand didn't know what
the right hand was doing. There was no
real unified policy that had been sent
down from on high how to handle this
evidently and so the CIA and sentcom
were encouraging which had been created
as part of the Carter doctrine were
encouraging Kuwait to be intrigent
against Saddam and tell him to go to
hell. Well, the State Department James
A. Baker through Ambassador Glasby and
through Margaret Tutweiler and John
Kelly were sending signals that actually
go ahead, we don't really care. And we
just celebrated April Glasby Day the
other day we do every year July 25th
where she told Saddam Hussein, "Listen,
it's the same thing as when I was the
ambassador to Kuwait, the Iraq issue and
your border dispute is not associated
with America and we have no position on
this. You're going to have to settle
it." And now we always had the Iraqi
version of that story published in the
New York Times, but then we got from
Manning and Assange, we got the State
Department's version of that document.
And so it's a little less explicit as
far as how it makes the Americans look,
but it's essentially the same. And in
there, she says, "Now listen, George
Bush wanted me to emphasize to you that
he does not want a war in the Gulf." And
so Steven Walt from Harvard University
at foreign policy.com
he said now listen in diplomatic
you know these things are are you know
mathematical formulas. You got to be
very careful how you say these things.
Saddam Hussein wasn't anticipating a
war. He knew he's going to roll right
into Kuwait. They couldn't stop him. He
was counting on a coup domain. So when
she says the president doesn't want a
war, it sounds like she's saying the
president won't go to war with you if
you do this and that he very well could
have read it that way. And that was at
the very least a flashing yellow light
if not a green light to go right ahead.
And we know that um again John Kelly and
Margaret Tutweiler also made statements
essentially plan downplaying American
concerns about what was happening. I
should give a quick shout out since you
mentioned him Steven Walt. I had a few
email exchanges with him. He's a
co-author uh with John Mirshimer on one
of his books.
He's a prominent just reading here
prominent American political scientist
and currently professor of international
affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School.
He's the best of them man. He's Mir
Shimemer's partner on a lot of things.
They're basically considered like the
co-ans of the realist school of foreign
policy in America. So they're like, you
know, Henry Kissinger, real politique
only without the bloody hands and the,
you know, the hawkish instinct. They're,
you know, I think both would be relative
hawks on China compared to me, for
example. They're not libertarian
non-interventionists, but they're very
skeptical of a lot of this misuse. You
know, both of them oppose the Iraq war,
for example, in the first place and that
kind of thing.
If I may, uh, I can never sing enough
praises to John Mir Shimemer. Of course,
his work is very important. Uh he's
fearless as an as an academic, as a
writer, as a historian, but also as a
human being. I got a chance to know him.
Uh we had dinner. We had many
conversations. We've exchanged a lot of
emails and he's a sweetheart.
Yeah, he's a great guy. I email back and
forth him, too. I'm trying to get him on
next week, but and he just killed it on
Tucker the other day, too. He was
fantastic on there. He set such a great
example, you know.
Well, it's just a good human being.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, like a real deep compassion. Yeah.
And sometimes when you cover these
topics and you just like you said, you
realize the adults in the room.
Yeah. And people call him some kind of
hater and it's like come on. That's cuz
that's all you got. That's the only
reason you could call him that is cuz
you got no other thing to say, you know.
Yeah. A real heart of gold. This is a
really special guy. Anyway, sorry.
Yeah. Yeah. No problem. So, um, Iraq
war. So America gives like a flash and
yellow light to Saddam Hussein, their
that to go ahead and take back the
northern oil fields. And oh, I left out
one piece was when I was talking about
the left hand and the right hand.
Wolfwitz worked for Dick Cheney at the
Pentagon at that time and he was always
an Iraq hawk and he had warned maybe not
knowing that the CIA or or that Carter
was encouraging it explicitly, but um uh
he had warned that Saddam was going to
attack Iran back in 1980. So he was
always an Iraq hawk and he was very
worried that Iraq was going to invade
Kuwait and he convinced Dick Cheney that
we should make a statement telling
Saddam not to do it. But then um oh, I'm
going to think of his name in just one
moment. Pete Williams, who later became
the NBC news reporter, he was the
Pentagon spokesman at that time. Isn't
that funny how that works? Uh if you go
back in time, that's how it worked. Um
he was Pentagon spokesman. He made a
statement where he seemed to walk back
their warning, which was probably just
incompetence, right? He didn't know
exactly what he was doing, but the way
that he phrased it was softer than the
way they had phrased it. So then they
were like, "Oh man." and they tried to
get George Bush to write a letter. I
believe it was like this that Bush sent
a letter but then they thought I believe
Cheney and Wolawitz thought it's too
consiliatory. It's not clear enough that
we're saying don't you do it so send
another letter but by then it was too
late and Hussein went ahead and rolled
in. So this is from all very elite
accounts of the story from the inside
you know these different books and
whatever I read and all that um this
version of the story and then you can
see if you check the timeline where for
the first few days they weren't
threatening to do anything about it.
Colon pal chaired the national security
council meeting he was chairman of the
joint chiefs of staff and they announced
the first day well they better just not
move on Saudi Arabia. You roll into Riad
you got trouble with us bub. But they
were essentially prepared to accept the
invasion of Kuwait. It's crazy that
Cheney was involved with all this
because then the story continues.
So yeah, he's he's secretary of defense
at that time.
So wild.
Um he um
and he was the only one in the
government at that time who was not from
the Reagan administration. He had been
in the Congress. All the rest of these
guys were Reagan's guys. The vice
president was now the president. Coen
Powell had been national security
adviser for Reagan. He's now chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And then you
have James Baker was Treasury Secretary
is now secretary of state. Like this is
Brent Skraftoft. I forgot maybe he was
deputy national security adviser under
Reagan. Now he's national security
adviser under HW Bush. So this is the
third Reagan term without Reagan
basically is and Cheney would have been
the newer guy and tended to be more
hawkish. And in this case was like
hawkish trying to stop the war from
breaking out in the first place in that
sense was more concerned about the the
danger of the thing and whatever. Sorry
if this is a distracting question, but
when we talk about the the birth and the
evolution of the neocon movement, how
does it connect to this?
Yeah, we can mention here that, you
know, there are when I go through and
and look like who were all the worst
hawks on Iraq war one. Many of them were
the neoconservatives. So, we probably
shouldn't get into that whole like
biography of a movement here or
whatever, but they certainly were very
much in support of this intervention in
Desert Storm or Rock War as I call it.
I'm trying to get that to catch on cuz
we're a rock war 3 and a half or four
now. So, like going to have to keep
these things straight somehow.
But some of the same characters that
were responsible for Iraq War 2.
That's right. Because of course
Clinton's in there for a while, but then
it's President Bush's son. It's the next
president. He brings Cheney and Powell
with him and then all this other stuff.
Behold your be patient. So what happens
is Margaret Thatcher comes to town and
she gives, this is her people's term for
it, she gives Bush Senior a backbone
transplant
and she says to him, "Don't you go
wobbly on me now, Bush." In other words,
calling out his manhood and she's a
woman so and from a smaller, weaker
country. And so what's he going to do
now? And that's when he says, "Yeah,
this will not stand." Just out of his
own personal embarrassment. Speaking of
Bill Hicks, this was a Bill Hicks joke
that this was the wimp president. It was
a cover Newsweek wimp president and
apparently that's stuck in this guy's
craw a little bit. I'll show you who's a
wimp. And he had to go and really feel
like he had to do something about that.
And when Margaret Thatcher called him
out instead of being prudent as he would
say and patient and conservative, he
went, "Nuhuh. I'm tougher than you,
lady. I'll show you how tough I am. I'll
do a big tough thing." But meanwhile,
what did America care about Kuwait?
Right? They had uh Britain had interests
in Kuwaiti oil and the Kuwaiti royal
family, his highness Aljabber had
investments in British debt. But what do
I care about that Lex Friedman? Not one
bit. You know what I mean? But that was
a big part of how the war started. So
after the first three days, they said,
"We're not going. It's we're going to
they're not going to invade Saudi. We're
warning them. They better not invade
Saudi or whatever." And it was after
that that they decided, "Okay, now we
are going." And then once they decided
that they refused to negotiate in good
faith for the rest of the time. And Nam
Chosky did the best of documenting this.
But what did he document? He documented
like 10 different sources from the
summer of 1990 through January 91 where
the Americans refused the the Bush
administration in Washington DC refused
time after time after time after time
after time to negotiate in good faith
with Saddam to get him out of there
peacefully because once the gauntlet was
thrown down now we have a big set piece
battle. Now we're going to go in there
and we're going to rock him. And I have
the quote from Brent Skraftoft in there.
This was long an accusation from some
liberal types that you might dismiss,
but it is true. It was literally an
explicitly stated part of their thinking
was we have to defeat
Vietnam syndrome. The reluctance of the
American people to do things like this.
We got to give them one that we can do,
that'll be short, that'll be sweet,
that'll be fun, that'll be easy, that we
can hold a big ass parade and be
victorious again like the old days.
rebuild that Marshall spirit and make
that normaly in America, not the
postvietnam anti-militarist malaise that
you remember from the 70s and 80s. Now
it's time to get back to work remaking
the world and give give the American
people something to believe in again.
And Bush Senior then after the fact
said, "By God, we've kicked Vietnam
syndrome once and for all." This is a
huge part of it. And if you think about
Iraq war one to this day, people still
think of it as like short and sweet and
we use all this space age technology and
and we whooped them good, right? And
Colonel McGregor and Daniel Davis and
and General McMaster then of lower rank.
They went in there and won the big tank
battle of 73 Easting and showed the
superiority of American tanks versus
Soviet tanks and all of these things
that were so much fun for them, such a
big deal for them at that time that they
wanted to again for our nation's overall
long-term interest or what was good for
them, their donors, their benefactors,
and the the the essentially the
psychological warfare campaign they
wanted to wage against the American
people that this is what we're here for.
We go and rescue helpless little
countries like his royal highness al
Jabbers's monarchy in Kuwait so we can
reinstall the monarchy because everybody
knows how much superior they are to
fascist dictatorships like the Iraqis
have that we've supported for the last
decade by the way including helping him
gas people not just while he gassed
people while he's gassing his own people
supposedly the Kurds and the Anfall
campaign and the along with the Iranians
and and the rest. Um, but now he's
Hitler. Now he's going to roll on Saudi.
He's going to take over. Next thing you
know, he's going to take over all of the
Middle East resources. He's going to
build up a thousand-year Reich and roll
on Paris.
Huh? Saddam Hussein is. And that was the
way that they put it. And they
absolutely lied us into war. They
claimed that he had lined up his massive
armored tank divisions on the Saudi
border and was preparing to roll on
Riad. And that was a lie. It was a St.
Petersburg, Florida Times, uh, hired a
Soviet company to or maybe the Soviet
government to provide the satellite
photos and show that there's nothing but
empty desert out there. You know, they
had sent a couple patrols near the
border, whatever. There's nothing like
armored divisions preparing to expand
the war into Saudi Arabia. They knew
they were lying about that. And in fact,
the St. Petersburg, Florida Times
published that like a week and a half
before the invasion. and AP Reuters, CS,
CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, whatever, all
refused to run it and just buried it.
Then the other thing was a major part of
this was, and it's amazing, it sounds so
silly now after everything going on uh
and that's gone on since then, but it
was a huge deal. They did the Iraqi
incubators hoax where they brought in a
girl who claimed to be a nurse who said
that she was in the hospital in Kuwait
City when the Iraqi soldiers came in
there, stole the incubators, threw the
babies out of the incubators onto the
cold floor to die and then ran off with
the incubators. Whether to just destroy
them out of sadism or to bring them back
to Baghdad because they have a big
incubator shorter in Baghdad, she didn't
say. But it turned out she wasn't a
nurse and she wasn't even in the country
at the time of the invasion. She was the
daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador and
the thing was a 100% hoax. 0% of it ever
happened. But Amnesty International
vouched for it and said it was true and
so that was all you needed. So George
Bush repeatedly brought this up and
said, "See, this shows that Iraq was
determined to systematically dismantle
Iraq. That this isn't just an invasion.
It's these horrible crimes against
humanity. and what would we do if they
were doing it to us and oh we have to
help the poor people and they that was a
big part of what they used to beat
people over the head about that war and
the other one was and they learned this
from the focus groups was we have to
threaten the American people with nukes
that even with moral atrocities like the
incubator hoax going on that Americans
are still like I don't know you know um
like Richard Prior said in 1986 he had a
bit where he stops joking and he just
says it weird like we stick on Germans
and the Soviets and now we're bombing
Libya. Does that sound right? Like they
can't fight back even like it's just
weird. Seems weird. So people needed a
real reason to go and that was atom
bombs and the and so people forget this
now because it Iraq war takes the place
in their memory, right? But in Iraq war
I one, they also alleged repeatedly that
Saddam Hussein was working on nuclear
weapons or he very well could be. And
this was one of the reasons why we had
to go. Now here's the screwed up part
about that. They were lying, but they
turned out to be telling the truth
accidentally because in fact what they
found out in the aftermath of the war
when they occupied southern Iraq was
there was a bear but a beginning of the
beginnings of a nuclear weapons program
there very very early we're talking ' 91
right early 91 at the end of Iraq war I
so what happened was people always cite
the Israeli strike on the Osarak reactor
in 1981 and say what a great success it
was no that was a IAEA safeguarded
facility that was not producing weapons
grade anything of any kind. And when
they bombed it, all they did was drive
his program underground. Now it became a
nuclear weapons program. And it was only
a coincidence that America after
launching Iraq War I found his secret
program that the CIA had no idea about.
And so this became a major consequence.
And here's why. Because Dick Cheney
would later cite this and go, "Well, if
the CIA can't find it, that doesn't mean
it's not there. Remember that one time?"
And so it became a big part of the Hawks
talking points after that. If the CIA
claims like confirmation bias again, CIA
agrees, then they're right. CIA
disputes, then yeah, well, we don't have
to listen to them, right? Even when
they're the ones that they cite as the
authoritative source for every positive
claim they're making. So, the playbook
even with uh Iraq War I is you try to
look for different stories, whether it's
anecdotal stories with nurses or it's
anecdotal or it's stories about nuclear
weapons, you're trying to find a way to
justify war.
That's right.
And the same playbook was applied. Yeah.
In the second Iraq war.
Yeah. And and and and back to Nam Chosky
for one second about them refusing to
accept Hussein's surrender was that by
the end of the thing like he had been
demanding come on let me keep these
uninhabited islands at the north of the
Persian Gulf where I could make like a
oil shipping facility there or something
like that. You know he dropped all those
demands. Here were his final demands.
Right? He wasn't just going to turn tail
for nothing. He had to save some face.
So his final demands were promise that
America will leave the Middle East and
that Israel will leave the occupied
territories
Right? In other words, nothing. He's
demanding nothing. He's demanding please
let me keep the skin on my face only is
the only face he's saving. Right? And
they wouldn't give it to him because
that would have stopped the war from
happening. Lex, I'm sorry, man, but
that's the history of how that happened.
I mean, think about the relative power
of the United States of America with the
entire UN Security Council on board,
too. Telling Iraq for
6 months, 5 months, you better give in.
And they couldn't figure out a way to
get him to give in, huh? Yeah, they
could, too. They didn't want him to give
in. You know, they had all of these
chances. And there were reports in News
Day and the New York Times and whatever
and that had all the stories where he
kept making all these offers and they
would just reject them out of hand. In
fact, Nam Chomsky talked about how it
would be in the business press in
England that oh look um oil prices fall
because they think there's a peace deal
and and the business press knows that
this is happening. Oh, it looks like
they're going to have a peace deal and
so the price of oil falls from the
relaxed tension and then nope, right?
And then they cancel the thing and they
go on anyway. You mentioned the part
which I think is fascinating about
defeating Vietnam syndrome and
reinvigorating Marshall spirit.
Can you just psychoanalyze the state
department, CIA, people in government?
Why did they want to reinvigorate the
Marshall spirit? Is it money? Is it
power? Is it just coming up with a
narrative age-old narrative of
nationalism is good and one of the ways
to achieve nationalism is to invade
somebody. What what is the motivation in
a room these folks sitting together? Why
do they want to reinvigorate the
Marshall spirit?
So they could enforce what they called
the new world order which was again I
borrowed this from Chsky but I found two
original citations for it. As George
Bush senior himself said, what we say
So this is what Biden and them call the
liberal rules-based international order
of global governance. What it means is
forget the UN charter. Forget the UN
Security Council. There's the US
National Security Council and
everybody's going to bow down and do
what we say. It's our unipolar moment as
Charles Crowutamemer put it in foreign
affairs and we're going to take full
advantage of it. But don't worry, Lex.
Again, as Bush Senior said, the world
trusts us with this power because they
know that we are good people and we know
what we're doing and we only have their
best interest at heart. We care about
them so much. And so the world allows us
to be the global police force to enforce
the law and make sure everything's fair
because man, what if we stopped holding
the world together? Boy, it would all
just fall apart.
So just clamoring for power.
It'd be Germany and Japan. And I don't
know if you remember this, but when the
Soviet Union fell apart, oh my god,
Germany and Japan are going to rise back
up and take back over the world again.
The messaging.
And before the before the war on
terrorism, they tried for a while, they
made, you know, Harrison Ford movies out
of it and everything to try to build up
the war against the Mexican drug cartels
and the Peruvian drug cartels because we
got to have somebody to fight in the '9s
while we're trying to get something else
going on here basically. you know, um
that they don't want to have to get a
job. And yet, like Bush Senior, you got
to give him credit for this. He
absolutely slashed military spending,
slashed the bomber fleets, slash the
military, slash army divisions and and
and ships and everything. We don't need
an antis-siet military for a world
without the Soviet Union. And he really
cut it way way back and especially on
nuclear weapons. In fact, I hate to say
this cuz I never was a HW Bush guy and
I'm so critical of the all of his Middle
East policy and all these things, but in
a way you could say he's the most heroic
guy who ever lived in the sense of
working with the Russians, the Soviets,
and then the Russians on these treaties
to bring the global stockpile down from
approximately 70,000 down to where we
have about 7,000 each, which is way more
than enough to do you. But when the
Soviets had 40,000 and we had 30, come
on. Somebody's got to do something. And
Bush Senior is the man who did something
about it. And as I show in the book, he
well, we're skipping ahead of the other
Cold War book here, but he did um make
unilateral cuts because he didn't have
time to do negotiations. So you said
made massive unilateral cuts in hopes
that Gorbachoff would respond in kind.
Or was it Yeltson by then? And then I
think it was Yeltson by then. And then
Yelson did respond in kind and made
these drastic cuts on his own unilateral
basis just without even an agreement.
But you know what? We'll get rid of our
class of those same kind of weapons too.
So got to give credit where it's due at
he handled the end of the cold war um
you know a lot better than he might have
I guess you could say you know.
Yeah. Anybody who's trying to decrease
the number of nuclear weapons in the
world is
it requires some degree of heroism to do
Yeah. And he wasn't a neocon, right?
He's an old waspy guy from the older
establishment and he called the
neoonservatives the crazies and he had
told General Skraftoft to keep the
crazies in the basement. In other words,
they're allowed to kill people down in
Latin America, but you keep them away
from Middle East policy, right? They're
not allowed to mess around with what
we're doing over there. And I guess
here's where let's start talking more
about bringing Israel into our narrative
here because um
as I said the Israelis had stayed
friends with Iran through the Iran Iraq
war. They had no problem with
fundamentalist Shiite Islam then sold
these guys weapons. In fact tree parsy
shows in his absolutely excellent book
treacherous alliance which if you
haven't read that you'll absolutely love
it. I'm so good. Um you want to pull
that up. He's one of the co-founders of
the Quincy Institute for International
Statecraft. Treacherous alliance to
secret dealings of Israel, Iran, and the
United States by Tria Parsy. This work
examines the complex, often
contradictory relationship between
Israel, Iran, and the US. Countries
whose alliances and rivalries have
repeatedly shifted since the mid 20th
century. Oh, it's just fascinating. Of
course, the poor Iraqis are stuck in the
middle of this thing is a big like
subtext of the story, right? But what's
so great about that book is it's all
there's no news cycle stuff in there
anywhere. It's all told from the point
of view of the highest level military
strategists in all three countries. And
it started out I believe as his PhD and
became this thing. But it is just a
masterpiece. But uh anyway, he's the
best guy to read about this and the way
that all this transpired that
essentially when the Ayatollah the mean
old Ayatollah Kmeni who died in '89 uh
when he would be threatening the
Israelis like oh we're going to destroy
you one day or whatever they would be
shipping him missiles that day right so
this was this covert relationship that
was going on behind the scenes even when
they were you know saying very malicious
things about each other in public that
was really cover for the extent that of
their covert relationship that was still
ongoing at that time. And so now it in
uh we got to put this off one second.
I'm sorry I I left out it's important to
go back to the Shiite uprising of 1991
because in the aftermath of Iraq War I
Saddam Hussein
um crushed the Shiite uprising which
George Bush Senior had encouraged. And
I'm not sure if you've ever seen the
movie Three Kings. I like to bring this
up as kind of a touchstone for people
because a lot of people learn history
just from movies, you know. So, the
movie is Ice Cube and Marky Mark and
George Clooney
and they're soldiers on a gold heist,
but they're in southern Iraq occupying
Iraq in the aftermath of the first Iraq
war. And in the background, Saddam
Hussein's forces are murdering
everybody, crushing the Shiite uprising.
And that's what's going on in the
background. So, people remember that
movie. That'll be probably the most they
ever learned about the crush Shiite
uprising of 1991. That's fair. You know,
that's how it is. Yeah.
Um they didn't make that big of a deal
at of it at the time because it was a
horrible Bay of Pigs type situation
where America told them to do it. George
Bush, his own voice on Voice of America
encouraged them to rise up and finish
Saddamy saying the Air Force dropped
leaflets over uh predominantly Shiite
army divisions and and the rest of them
I guess too, and saying now's
everybody's chance to rise up and
overthrow this guy. But let's then they
changed their mind. And the reason they
changed their mind was remember when I
said in 1980, why Saddam invaded Iran?
Cuz some Iraqis were choosing Iran's
side in the war. And he was afraid they
all were and that the Iranian revolution
was going to come for him, right? So he
conscripted the army and sent them to
war against Iran instead. Well, now in
the Shiite uprising, those very same
Iraqis who've been living in Iran for 10
years and fought on Iran's side in the
war, they're now coming across the
border to lead the uprising. Does that
make sense? Mhm.
Okay. This is namely and most
importantly the Brigade B AR. The
Brigade is the militia of the Supreme
Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq
which is run by at that time a guy named
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim who's now dead but
he's a very important guy and he's going
to come back up in our story here.
Mhm. So when the bottom brigade started
coming across the border was when George
Bush, Brent Skraftoft and the boys all
flinched and said, "Uhoh, we cuz again
this is the third Reagan term
essentially, right? So we just spent a
decade supporting Saddam to contain the
Iranian revolution. Now we're the ones
importing it into Iraq. That is a
mistake." And so he called it off. He
was more cautious and said, "Let's not
do that." And but the problem with that
was one 100,000 Kurds and Shiites were
killed. But also that then became the
excuse for America to stay in Saudi
Arabia. They had promised the king, you
let us get rid of Saddam and drive him
out of Kuwait. And and we have this on
Dick Cheny's word himself. It's so
funny. There's a podcast that of Bill
Crystal's podcast. Do you know Bill
Crystal has a podcast? And he and he
interviewed Dick Cheney. Somebody put
this on archive.org before it's gone
forever, man. And it's great because
they talk about everything except Iraq
War II. They don't say a word about it
either of them the whole time. So Dick
Cheney explains in that interview to
Bill Crystal that he was the one, never
even mind James Baker, the Secretary of
State, that as Secretary of Defense, he
promised King FA of Saudi Arabia that we
promise we'll leave as soon as the war
is over. And now
uh we should I really screwed this up,
man. I'm sorry. When we talked about
Afghanistan before, I should have
dwelled a little longer on the fact
that, as we all know, when we talked
about bogging them down into their own
Vietnam, the Soviets in the 1980s, that
America supported not just the Mujaheden
of Afghanistan, but what became the
International Islamic Brigades,
meaning Arabs and other Muslims from all
around the world, especially from Arab
lands, to go to Afghanistan to fight on
the side of the mujaheden against the
Soviets. And this included Egyptian
Islamic Jihad and what was called then
the Isam Group which was the main group
that was controlled by the Saudi
intelligence services during the 1980s.
And that was a thing that United States
Yes. So Brazil was trying to bait Russia
into invading Soviet Union into invading
Afghanistan and then they wanted to
extend the war. So America had a deal
with Saudi Arabia. We would match them
dollar for dollar. We would work with
their intelligence services and the
Pakistanis to support local mujaheen
like Gubald Dean Hecmachar and Jalala
Hakani who later became America's
enemies in our Afghan war. Um but then
and and various other postune warlords
of different descriptions.
Wait. So US is uh essentially helping
train up these militia groups.
Yes. And including bringing them to the
United States and having our special
forces train them in car bombs and
sabotage and assassinations and
everything. Yes. full-scale US support
for building up the bin Laden movement
as long as they're killing Soviets.
And those same people then come back and
become the enemies of the United States.
So when we talk about al Qaeda, what
we're talking about is eventually the
merger of Egyptian Islam and Jihad and
the Isam group after Isam was killed and
I don't think anybody really knows who
killed him. Osama bin Laden took over
his group and Osama bin Laden. So then
this is the main reason and there are
many but this is the main reason that
al-Qaeda turned against the United
States was that Somin was outraged that
the king had allowed the United States
to liberate Kuwait instead of him and
his men. It's not like they have a bunch
of mountains to hide out in in Kuwait,
but he wanted to try it uh to to kick
Saddam out. And then he was just driven
crazy by the fact that the king allowed
white Christian combat forces to come
and occupy this holy land. It's not just
their country, but their holy land where
Mecca and Medina, the birthplace of
Muhammad and the birthplace of the
religion of Islam are and the the two
holy places bin Laden called them. I
guess they all do. And that then we
didn't leave. This is the ultimate
outrage, right? And this is the main
overriding reason for the bin Laden.
Well, at least for his jihad, which was
really based on the idea of trying to
get all the desperate groups from around
the Middle East. These are more or less
stateless groups. They're in some cases
backed by Saudi, you know, more or less
at different times, but they're
jihadists from all over the place, you
know, Egyptians and Saudis and Syrians
and and you know, AAM himself was
Palestinian, raised in a refugee camp in
Kuwait. Um, but um you had all these
different people. And then so bin
Laden's genius was to figure out the one
thing we can agree on is let's attack
the United States because America is at
the root of all of our problems. And
just like we had helped them to bog the
um Soviets down in Afghanistan, they
wanted to do the same thing to us. And
so um this was the beginning really of
al-Qaeda's war against the United States
began at this time in reaction to the
declaration of this new world order. The
permanent uh stationing of troops in uh
Saudi Arabia and what became the
permanent the unrelenting full global
embargo United Nations Security Council
full global sanctions regime against the
Iraqi state which led to at the very
least 300,000 excess deaths. Although a
UN study later embellished that and Bin
Laden would embellish the numbers even
higher than that to 600,000 or a million
but whatever it was uh it was a ruthless
economic war of collective punishment
against the entire uh people of the
country even though they had their
chance to overthrow him. USA encouraged
it and then let Saddam keep his
helicopters and tanks while we were
standing right there and let him crush
the insurrection. Now, the Bush
administration and later the Clinton
administration's position was the
sanctions stay until Saddam is gone. But
he's still young and in pretty good
health and no one in Iraq is in any
position to do anything about this. So,
it's just this policy that Clinton
inherited from Bush and ended up
keeping. Can we go to Can you link on
Bin Laden? So, this gave enough
fuel for Bin Laden to construct a
narrative where America
That's right. the bad guys.
And and this is such an important thing.
Um there's this great book uh by Michael
Shyer, who was the former chief of the
CIA bin Laden unit. It's called Imperial
Hubris. And I will say that he went a
bit crazy in later years and said really
mean things like we ought to help all
the Muslims kill each other and we ought
to have a civil war over Russia Gate and
which I'm very very opposed to Russia
Gate Lex, but I wouldn't go that far. So
he went a little nuts later on, but he's
a very bright guy and a very honest guy
for what it's worth. A very
straightforward guy, I should say. I
don't know if he's ever told a lie or
what. Purely hubris, why the west is
losing the war on terror by Michael
Shore. And I should also say, echoing
that statement that some of the smartest
people I know are walking the line
between genius and madness.
It happens. And and when you study the
dark aspects of human nature and and
geopolitics, sometimes it's easy to lose
yourself in the madness.
Yeah, it's totally true. Um but so in
this book, he makes it so clear. There
are six overriding reasons that bin
Laden cited for why the United States
should be attacked. Okay? And he
compared this directly to the Ayatollah
Kmeni who would relentlessly criticize
our culture and you know lentiousness
and Hollywood R-ratedness and all of
that kind of stuff as like the
degenerate society but he can't recruit
people for a war over that. You know
what I mean? Not that he was really
trying to but that only spires inspires
so much resentment, you know? And
conservatives don't like um
libertineism,
right? Like that's okay, but it only
goes so far, right? Bin Laden on the
other hand said they occupy the land of
the two holy places. They help Israel
kill Palestinians and Lebanese. They
support the dictators, especially in
Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but around the
Middle East. They put pressure on those
dictators to keep oil prices
artificially low to subsidize our
economy at their expense. Just think of
all the times you've heard presidents
say, "I'm telling the Saudis they better
ramp up production and get the price of
gas down for election day, right? As
blatant as can be." But what does that
sound like to the poor person in those
countries? Isn't that money supposed to
go to them? Um, and then as Bin Laden
would say falsely turning a blind eye to
Russia, India, Kazakhstan, and China in
their persecution of Muslims. So they
say they love us so much, but they don't
really because they don't say anything
when this group or that group are the
ones killing us. So these were the
things and look let us stipulate Lex
okay that Osama bin Laden is a mass
murderer and by tradition I don't take
the word of mass murderers for meaning
very much and I don't expect you to okay
that's not the point the point is
what did he say that got anybody to
listen to him and do what he said he
wasn't in charge of a government he had
no coercive apparatus at all his
organization is purely volunteer
volunteer fear based and he's asking
people to blow themselves up over
something important enough to blow
yourself up for it. It's not virgins.
It's we have a policy.
I should stipulate virgins after you
die. It we have a policy and we're
trying to provoke a war with the United
States of America and you're going to
help us do it. Why? Because of these six
reasons. That's why. And that was what
worked to recruit people to attack the
United States of America. Okay, major
important case in point and well
whatever the timeline jumps around here
a bit but major case in point is in 1996
when Israel under Shimon Perez invade
reinvaded Lebanon and what was called
Operation Grapes of Wrath and during
that invasion
it's hard to believe this wait don't
Google yet search this part it was
Naftali Bennett called in the artillery
strike on on a UN shelter and killed 106
women and children in Kana. That's Q A N
A in 1996.
Nathan Bennett, while serving as an
Israeli army officer in 1996, commanded
a commando unit during Operation Grapes
of Wrath in southern Lebanon. During
this operation, his troops came under
mortar fire near the village of Kana. Uh
Bennett radioed for artillery support,
so on so on so on, killing 106 people
and injured many others.
in a UN shelter.
This humanitarian tragedy is widely
known as the Conor massacre.
Mhm. So when Shimon Perez launched that
war, Muhammad Ata, the ring leader of
the September 11th plotters in the
United States, pilot of flight 11, I
believe he and his buddy Ramsay bin
Alshe, they were Egyptian engineering
students studying in Hamburg, Germany.
And when this invasion started, they
both signed their last will and
testament, which their friends and
family and neighbors and whatever said
was their expressed intent that like
they're joining the army. They're
deciding, forget engineering. I want to
join the mujahaden and go fight the good
fight somewhere, whatever. Then just a
couple of months later, bin Laden put
out his first declaration of war against
the United States. It's called
declaration of war against the Americans
occupying the land of the two holy
places. Pretty subtle, right? And then
on the first page, he goes on and on
about the Kana massacre and says, "We'll
never forget the he the severed heads
and arms and legs of the babies and the
children in Kana." He told Robert Fisk,
I believe, how come our how come your
blood is blood, but our blood is water?
Well, we'll see about that. That's a
strong reminder that there's a cost to
killing people.
Oh, yeah. So what happened was Muhammad
Ata and Ramsey bin Alib, they read that
declaration of war and that was when
they decided to join al Qaeda was based
on the Kana massacre that Israel had
perpetrated in Lebanon. So again, we're
skipping ahead in the story. We're going
to do the whole '90s here, but literally
on September 11th, you had Egyptians
volunteered for a Saudi chic to
slaughter Americans by the thousands as
revenge for American support for Israel,
killing people in Lebanon.
That, my friend, is why George Bush said
they hate the Taliban did it because
they hate your freedom, right? Because
they couldn't tell you that6
people. It's a reminder that killing can
cause uh immeasurable escalation,
trillions of dollars,
all of it.
Yep. And here's the other thing.
Um, Bill Clinton, I think foolishly said
something about how he would like to
normalize relations with Iraq or at
least look into it or something. And
boy, he should not have said that
because people got all upset and tried
to figure out how to stop it, including
the Kuwaitis. And what happened was, I
know you're familiar with this. We all
are. And virtually everyone gets this
The myth that Saddam Hussein tried to
murder George HW Bush with a truck bomb
assassination attempt in Kuwait in 1993.
Total hoax debunked by Seymour Hirs by
the end of the year in a article for the
New Yorker called Case Not Closed. He
shows it was just a whiskey smuggling
ring that they embellished into this
plot against Bush. And then it was
Martin Indic who was Bill Clinton's
adviser. Who was he? He was an
Australian who'd been working for Yetsak
Shamir, the Lakood party uh well former
terrorist murderer and then lood party
prime minister of Israel and Indic had
gone from there to go work in uh I don't
know exactly the time off a year or so
um he stopped and went to work for
Clinton. In the meantime, he founded the
Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, WINP, which was directly a
spin-off of Apac. Apac put up the money.
That's the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee, the heart of the
Israel lobby. They put up the money for
the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, which you have heard that name a
million times and you're going to
continue to hear it because they are
always cited as middle-of the road
scientific experts on American foreign
policy when they were and this is not
the same about all neocon think tanks,
but this one was literally created by
the Israel lobby in the United States.
him. Then he became an adviser to Bill
Clinton and he was insisting on this
policy of essentially continuing the HW
Bush policy of staying in Saudi Arabia
in order to patrol the so-called no-fly
zones over Iraq to keep Saddam Hussein
from killing the Iraqis and enforce the
blockade which was enforced by world law
anyway, right? Like there's some
smuggling going on or whatever, but no
nation state is violating the embargo
against Iraq here. So it's completely
unnecessary on both counts. But the
Israelis, and this is Rabbine's
government, Yetssak Rabbine's government
is I guess in agreement with this Lakud
guy Indic on this. They're pushing for a
policy that they called dual
containment. And the point was that
Iraq, now that we beat them up so bad in
Iraq War I, Desert Storm, first Gulf
War, now they're not powerful enough to
balance against Iran.
So now America has to stay in Saudi
Arabia to balance against them both. And
Bill Clinton resisted this and resisted
this until the big fake assassination
attempt against Bush Senior, which
again, I don't have any reason to
believe the Israelis were behind that.
It was the Kuwaitis who rigged up. Oh,
did I leave out that it was the girl who
pretended that she saw the babies thrown
out of their incubators. It was her
father was the one who spun up this
story. So, in other words, the same guy
who spun up that story was the same guy
spun up this story about the
assassination attempt against Bush
Senior, which everybody still believes
and which I'm sure Bush Jr. believed at
the time that he launched that war
probably. Was he re Seymour Hersh? He
doesn't know and and it was just
conventional wisdom and I was still just
a teenager in the 1990s but I don't
remember wow that assassination against
Bush thing was debunked. I don't
remember that ever getting around. You
know what I mean? I don't know who was
reading Hirsh at that time. It was pre-
internet times by a year, right? It just
wasn't it just wasn't a hot enough
topic. You know what I mean? How do you
fight those false narratives that uh the
military-industrial complex tries to
produce in order to get us into war?
The main thing is speak up.
I think the most Yeah. The most
important thing is read anti-war.com
every day for a long period of time in a
row and you will have a very good handle
on what the hell is going on in the
world. Was founded by Eric Garrison and
Justin Roando who are both a couple of
libertarians. Roando was a student of
Murray Rothbard's or at least one of his
um mentees you know learned a lot from
heir of his foreign policy thought
Murray Murray and Rothbart the best
libertarian and so that's where we come
from is that tradition and um you know
Ron Paulian non-interventionist types
and but the news is and and but our
opinion pieces come from all over the
spectrum as long as we're anti-war we're
not sectarians at all it's a oneisssue
thing and really we just do the hard
news more than anything we have a lot of
great editorials as well but it's Eric
Garris and Dave Damp and Kyle Analone
who get the lion share of the credit for
the actual work that goes into the site
every day
and that goes to every single war in the
Everything every day we have our top
news, we have a frontline section and
then at the bottom we have every region
uh of the world where there's conflict
breaking out.
Trump sends two nuclear subs towards
Russia. So obviously Russia
that's reassuring God.
And you see our spotlight article is by
Bronco March teach and he's a leftist
but we love him. He does absolutely
fantastic work. So it doesn't matter if
you're left or right.
That's right. And we're very close with
the American conservative magazine for
example. Pat Buchanan is a good friend
of ours and we ran his articles for many
years. Ron Paul of course as well the
greatest American ever.
Ron Paul is amazing. And you give love
and respect to Ron Paul all the time.
Uh he absolutely deserves it. We spoke
of heroes. He's one of the legend.
That's how I knew anti-Word.com was for
me. The first day I laid eyes on it, my
friend said, "Look, they run Ron Paul."
And I went, "All right, I like these
guys." Can we take a quick pause for
Bath and Break? Sure.
So, before we get too far into Bill
Clinton, I should say, cuz I did say
these words. I I know the new world
order thing that was a very popular
conspiracy theory in the '90s and even
before that, which was about building a
one world government under the United
Nations and subsuming the United States
under it and all that. That's not what
I'm talking about. And I actually was a
New World Order cook in the 1990s, but I
was a kid. It's fine. I grew out of it.
But point being, Bush Senior did use
that phrase repeatedly. And what he
meant by it was,
you know, in the guise of the United
Nations, baby blue flag and all of that
for like PR purposes more than the real
agenda. He was saying American power is
the guarantor of world peace and we will
enforce it through war. Right? And
that's the deal of it. Nobody's allowed
to bite or we will intervene. Right? So,
it's just essentially it's it's the the
irony, right, that any government
powerful enough to keep the peace
between the 50 states is powerful enough
to try it for the rest of the world as
they can. They do this. We're just
extending our security umbrella.
Everybody who joins up with us is
guaranteed nobody's going to ever mess
with you or else they'd have to mess
with us except for everyone on the
right? who now are put in the position
of having, you know, not just the United
States but all their allies lined up
against them and feel that much, you
know, more threatened, namely, of
course, Russia and China, the other
major, uh, you know, potential
adversaries and nuclear weapons states.
And I think the lesson there is if you
think you can run the world by
threatening everybody with military
power, considering all the very cultures
and peoples and histories of the world,
you're going to fuck things up. You're
going to create a lot of hate. You're
going to create a lot of increased uh
war, increased terrorism, increased
threats to America versus decreased.
Yeah. So more on the neocons here too
before we get too far into Bill Clinton
is in 1992 a year after the end of Iraq
war I one under deputy secretary of
defense Paul Wolfwitz his deputies
Scooter Libby and Zme Khalilzad wrote
what was called the defense planning
guidance for 1994 for fiscal year 1994
and it caused a huge upset. It was
leaked to the New York Times and it
became a really big deal because what it
said was America is essentially world
police. We're not going to tolerate the
rise of any nearpeer competitor against
us in the world. Like we'll fight them
before we allow them to get powerful
enough to even be one. We will not let
any nation or group of nations become
powerful enough to ever even be able to
think about challenging our military
dominance on the planet. And of course,
we're doing all this in the interests of
world peace. And that means that we have
to have total military dominance in the
Middle East. We have to expand NATO and
have total military dominance in Eastern
Europe. And of course, we have to
maintain our position with Japan and
Korea and the rest in order to maintain
total dominance in Asia as well. And
this is what Charles Crowutamemer called
our unipolar moment again and said we
should stop short of nothing less than
total world domination. That was the
quote. And at that time, Jean
Kirkpatrick, who had been a
neoconservative, she was a member of the
Young People's Socialist League of the
Social Democrats USA, which were the
Troskyites under Max Shockman, who was
Trosky's most important guy in the
United States. And this is something
that Mark Dubowitz tried to deny and
argue with me about of whether she was a
neoconservative or not. Well, she was
like James Wolsey, a Presbyterian. Now
most neoonservatives are Jewish and or
Catholic although you have Pame Khalil
Zad and Francis Fukiyama and others who
are of other you know uh different u uh
you know um cultural inheritances you
might say there um and so the defining
characteristics and and he was saying
well she didn't believe in democracy as
the single most important thing in the
whole world and of course she had
written this article um in the national
interest in that had gotten Reagan's
attention in the first place, saying
that it's okay to support authoritarians
as long as they're right-wingers and
anti-communists. That anti-communism is
more important than democracy. And so we
should put, for example, we should
support people like Samoza in Nicaragua
and things like that in order to keep
the commies at bay. That that's number
one. And so some of the neocons
disagreed with that. Dubowitz was trying
to say that's what makes her not a
neocon. But that's really not true
because neocons there's about a hundred
of them or something and they disagree
about all kinds of things. They sure do
work together on lots of things but sure
they disagree on things. I'll give
another example on democracy where
Robert Kagan said in 2013 that we should
allow the Muslim Brotherhood to rule in
Egypt because they won fair and square
Parliament and the presidency just
barely. They won in fair elections. And
after all we've done in the name of
democracy, don't we have to allow them
to have a chance? Well, Frank Gaffne was
like, "Are you kidding me?" Like, I'll
go overthrow him myself right now. Are
you crazy? He's got a Hbomb going off
over his head. Is any going to deny that
Frank Gaffne is a neoconservative just
cuz he differed with Robert Kagan on his
order of importance in democracy in this
or that instance? Give me a break. Jean
Kirkpatre came from the neoconservative
left. She wrote for Commentary magazine
with Norman Pod Hortz and all the guys.
And I don't mean again just a leftist.
She was with the Troskyites, Max
Shottman and the Young People Socialist
League and the Social Democrats USA. So
she's like a card carrying
neoonservative. This is what it means to
be a neocon. And she wrote and then she
was Reagan's second ambassador to the
United Nations was widely respected by
the Republicans as a conservative hawk
and a very like American interest
oriented type. and she would even rail
against the UN itself in almost a
bircher sounding kind of way that
appeals to me. Um although she didn't
really mean it. She was just mad that
they would ever get in our way rather
than that they really are threat to our
independence in any way. But the point
is this man that I'm trying to get to is
at the end of the cold war a year before
the Soviet Union was even gone in the
fall of 1990. So she must have written
this in the summer of 1990. This is a
year before the failed kami coup and the
final unraveling where the Russians
overthrew the last of the Soviet Union
government at that time at the end of
91. This is a year before that. And she
importantly right on the confirmation
bias trick again. It's Jean Kirkpatre
right not Susan Sarandon. It's Jean
Kirkpatre who wrote this piece in the
national interest called a normal
country in a normal time. The only place
you can find it is on my website
scotthorton.org/fareuse /f fair use and
I won't tell you where I got and it's
and don't ever sue me national interest.
I love you guys. Um,
and the thing is,
so it's it's in there somewhere. You
have to page down. I'm not Oh, there it
is right there. Normal country in a
normal time. March uh Oh, that's the
date I published it. Fall 1990.
A normal country in a normal time. You
published it on March 23rd, 2022. Is by
Jin Kopatrick, the National Interest
Fall 1990. It's the first time since
1939 that there has been an opportunity
for Americans to consider what we might
do in a world less constrained by
political and military competition with
a dangerous adversary. I am pleased that
the national interest has provided a
forum for this discussion. And it goes
on, American purposes are mainly
domestic. Our purpose in the world are
merely human, not transcendent. To be
legitimate, the American government's
purpose must be ratified by popular
majorities.
Here's what she says in here. She says
we should isue the burdens of superpower
status. She sounds like George
Washington. She's saying okay the
commies are gone. The Cold War is over.
The emergency is over. So now we can go
back to being what we were supposed to
be what we used to be before that we put
on hold because we had to wage the cold
war. Now we can have a real return to
normaly meaning
28 right before the the permanent world
empire was built for the purposes of
destroying the Nazis and then containing
the comm.
So she was very anti-communist and
neoconservative perspective. She had a
significant role in the Reagan
administration and then be after she
evolved in saying we need to let go.
That's right. In other words, she is
here. She's aligning with Pap Buchanan.
Now, for people who aren't familiar, Pat
Buchanan, he is a Catholic
paleoconservative. He was Nixon's speech
writer and Reagan's speech writer. To
this day, he's retired sweet old guy
now. But, uh, he's lifelong cold warrior
and doesn't regret it. The commie threat
absolutely had to be contained. Vietnam
had to be done. He's a wonderful guy. He
really is. Um, and he's written just a
grip of great books. I mean, I don't
know, uh, eight or 10 of them. So
there's an evolution here. There's some
of the folks really saw Russia and the
Soviet Union as a major threat.
Oh yeah.
And then they've evolved saying, "Okay,
now that the Cold War is over,
we need to calm down."
And and see Pat is the perfect avatar
for this. Him and his buddies, you know,
Scott McConnell and Jude Waniski.
Waniski himself had been a former
neoonservative. Um, but there's this
whole group of paleoconservatives who
nobody can question. They're patriotism.
This is Ronald Reagan's guy. This is a
guy that puts words in Ronald Reagan's
mouth, right?
And he's saying, "Okay, you guys
The empire was a defensive measure,
right? We don't want an empire." Chmer
Johnson is another one. Chmer Johnson
was a professor at USC who was a
hardcore ardent cold warrior. You're
familiar with him. I'm sure he wrote the
book Blowback and then Sorrows of Empire
and Nemesis or the trilogy that he wrote
about the American Empire then and
he was adamantly cold warrior until the
Soviets were gone and then the empire
continued to expand and then he went
wait a minute now I taught a generation
of students that we were holding the
tide back. What's all this about we're
the tide now? That's not right. And in
fact, I like to cite this because it's
just so astonishing to people that
William F.Buckley, one of the major, not
that he was a neoconservative. He
wasn't, but he was one of their main
godfathers. Basically, um the founding
editor of the National Review, he wrote
an article in 1952 in Common Wheel
magazine. Again, you can find this at
scottton.org/fareuse.
Um it's called The Party in the Deep
Blue Sea. It's about the Republican
Party, I guess, is what it means. Party
in the Deep Blue Sea. And in there he
says, "We must accept a totalitarian
bureaucracy on our shores for the
duration of the emergency,
even with Truman at the reigns of it
because of the need to face down the
Soviet threat. And you need a powerful
domestic empire that's capable of
forcing the American people to enforce a
world empire to contain the threat of
Stalinist Soviet communism. That's
horrible, right?
Totalitarian bureaucracy. The same one
we still got. And see, Pat said, "Okay,
look, I was buying it when the enemy was
in Moscow, but now that there's no enemy
in Moscow and world communism, the
threat of world revolution is dead and
gone." Well, I don't want to hear it
about why we have to suffer this
anymore. We're supposed to be And then
again, this is why I cite Jin
Kirkpatrick. I could just cite Ron Paul
to you all day long here, right? But
everybody knows that Ron Paul is good on
everything. The point is here is these
are people who are very hawkish when
they feel like it needs to be. You might
even your your readers might or your
listeners viewers might think that Ron
Paul is just too biased for peace. Well,
Pat ain't okay. Pat is willing to fight.
But not if there's not a good reason to.
And that's the big qualification. Why
would a guy like Pat be anti-war? We
know he's not a hippie. There must be
another explanation. And the other
explanation is he is learned. He knows
more about this than you. And he knows
why you shouldn't do this because this
is what's going to happen if you do. And
that's the kind of guy he is. And that's
why he and his paleoconservative friends
said, "Okay, enough. We want to come
home." And so Jin Kerpatrick, she didn't
really join with the Paleocons, but she
was certainly aligning with him on this
issue at this time that now's our chance
to go back to being a limited
constitutional republic with a free
economy, an a usually successful
commercial republic, I believe she says
in the piece. Um, and which had a typo
because it said unusually, but she
couldn't have meant that. Go ahead.
I don't know. I think I I leaned towards
Ron Paul a little bit. I don't think
totalitarian bureaucracy is justified
ever. I mean, you can come up with a
really extreme case, but really you're
going to get into trouble. This is why
the Birkers turned against the Cold War
in this during Vietnam. Robert Welch, I
mean, you can't get more anti-communists
than that guy, the leader of the Bur
Society. But he goes, "Wait a minute.
Why are we turning our country into a
communist country in the name of
containing communism over there?" and he
was being very liberal with the use of
the word there. But meaning why are we
building a a total state here when
that's everything that we're trying to
oppose in Vietnam but we're building it
here at home is crazy. We need to save
this money. We need to build our country
and lead the world by example not by
force was the obvious thing. If it was
that obvious to Robert Welch and to Ron
Paul during the Cold War, then after the
Cold War, you got to make up a bunch of
crap about Saddam Hussein as Hitler and
he's killing all the babies in their
incubators and these kinds of Belgian
babies on bayonets and related hoaxes to
keep the thing going because again, as
Richard Prior said, that doesn't make
any sense to me, right? Like if it
doesn't just sound right to your average
guy. You tell me we had to face down
Hitler. All right. We had to face down
Stalin and Mao. That makes sense. We got
to bomb Gaddafi. There's not a better
way that we USA number one can handle
that. You know, same kind of thing going
forward here. This is why, you know,
these, and I like to emphasize this so
much, is that in the aftermath of
Vietnam, people think that, oh, peace is
just hippies and leftists and
anti-Americans of one stripe or another,
people who are just no good in a fight
anyway. So, what do they know about
security, right, Jack Nicholson? I stand
on that wall. Even think about what a
joke that was. He was down in Guantanamo
Bay keeping Castro at bay for me. Yeah,
thanks a lot, dude. I can't handle that
truth, whatever you're burying down
there. um a lot of torture later. But
so you're saying like it's really people
that were hawks for a time woke up.
That's right.
The reality of the ridiculousness, the
absurdity of a what a totalitarian
bureaucracy does is it expands and
creates momentum and then you're now
become the thing you were fighting,
right? But Francis Fukyama knew better.
He said, "No, it's the end of history."
And America has proven that more or less
democracy and more or less free market
capitalism as like Bill Clinton would
define them or something of that era
that that's the future of mankind. We
proved it. They tried every other way of
having a modern successful society and
this is the one and only way to do that.
And not only that then, but that's
obviously America's mandate. and all his
neocon friends took it as America's
mandate that we're going to force the
world to accept our ways in that same
way. Of course, the British justified
their obviously very self-interested
empire in the very same way that we're
going to teach you to have a separate
independent judiciary at any cost,
right? Um it's all, you know, I hate to
say it, but the white man's burden type
of argument that, and they say this to
this day, look, if it wasn't us, it
would be the Russians. If it wasn't us,
it would be the Chinese. If it wasn't
us, it would be somebody else and it
would be worse. And so that's it. And so
it is our responsibility. We're the most
mature and adult and responsible
stewards of global power. And so it has
to be us to do this. And that was what
it said in the defense planning
guidance. And now it's true that Bush
lost that election and the Clintonites
came in. But as Paul Wolawitz bragged
again in the national interest by the
end of the decade that they all adopted
the Wolawitz doctrine anyway that you
know like for example Bill Clinton going
right around NATO to do the war in
Kosovo in 1999 because he wanted to and
Russia had a veto on the UN security
council and so well forget that we just
go around that that's straight out of
the wolf wits doctrine right that it's
what m what's good for us and our
predominance of power in those regions
of the world is what matters the most
and these other considerations will have
to take a backseat to make sure that we
can be the guarantors of our world order
regardless of what the treaties
everybody signed up for say. And so, um,
that really is what they call the
wolfawitz doctrine. It's not just, hey,
let's go to Iraq for Israel, although
that's a huge part of it, but it's let's
our military power is always beneficial
compared to the alternative. And so, we
should be the ones to guarantee the
peace or the war. But in in our case, if
it's war, it's only because the
alternative was worse. We promise. And
so that's the doctrine. And and there is
an ideology of American empire here. I
don't want to dismiss the corruption.
It's a huge part. I mean, if if
hopefully we have time later and talk
really about the new cold war with
Russia. We talk a lot about the role
that Lockheed and the other
military-industrial complex firms played
in pushing all these uh policies
forward. Is true with Iraq too.
Committee on the Liberation of Iraq was
sponsored by Bruce Jackson from Lockheed
Martin and and he also financed the
project for new American century of Bill
Crystal and Robert Kagan. He financed
the Weekly Standard magazine and the
agenda was like let's sell NATO planes
in Europe and let's push for war in the
Middle East. And there's so there's a
lot of self-interested reasons there.
But I think overall like you got to take
these people at their word when they say
we know we're heroes. We know we're
doing the right thing. We know
everybody's better off without us. We
know that we have to. This is our
morality based foreign policy. We just
can't allow that bad thing to happen any
longer. We have to do something worse to
stop it. And this kind of thing is very
like you could tie it back to like
whatever. I'm not this smart to talk all
about the influence of of the pilgrims
and their glorious mission, you know, in
ancient Massachusetts to create the new
city on the hill to to be like the new
Zion and and ultimately determine the
fate of mankind. But there's a lot of
Yankee busy bodyhood that is built into
this. And of course, the ScotchIrish
like to get drunk and get into fist
fights for fun. And I take
responsibility for that as a bit of my
background, too. I'm not being a racist
bigot, but like that's part of our
culture is like being a tough guy and
being able to get in a brawl and win one
or even suffer a defeat and and not cry
about it. You know what I mean? And like
yeah, some of that which is the dual
it's a double-edged sword of human
nature is the ScotsIrish. I mean,
they're so and I had a great
conversation with Saga and Jetty about
this uh are so foundational to the
individualism that makes America great.
But then you get into trouble when you
start to believe you're
tell there's a bad guy out there. Yeah.
And you start and then you have the
biggest military in the world and
there's Locky Martin's the military
industrial complex and now you think
you're better than everybody and now
you're creating wars all over the place.
Creating enemies all over the place.
And see, of course, there's partisanship
is all built into this is everybody
supports their guy cuz the other guy is
you. We can't let them win. So we can't
undermine even when we disagree with our
own guy, we can't undermine him or we're
helping the other guys are going to bid
him get him in the mid midterms or
they'll get him in the next election. So
people close ranks around things they
even disagree with just because they
consider again the alternative worse.
That's even from the point of view of
voters a lot of times that like you know
even Murray Rothbart endorsed George HW
Bush who had just done the Iraq war
because Rothbart's like well at least he
hates Yets Shamir and at least he's not
bringing Hillary Clinton and the leftist
cultural revolution with him right so
I'll just you know um people got to make
these choices and and make their
comparisons of you know what they favor
or what they value at any given time and
make those compromises you know
and that's why you said anti-war
com is nonpartisan, right?
That's right. Yeah, we're reaching out
to everybody. We're here to inform
everybody. Again, uh uh as I was
mentioning during the short break there,
that hawks read our website, too,
because if you want really the best
briefing of what's going on in the
country, like we do hear from them from
time to time that like I got to admit
those guys really do have the most
comprehensive coverage of the stuff I'm
interested in, even if from their point
of view, the wrong point of view. If uh
before we go to Iraq War II, I if it's
okay take a brief aside uh since you
mentioned it, we did an Iran debate a
few weeks ago.
Uh where about actually 20 minutes was
cut toward the end where I went a bit
off the rails and uh you agreed with the
description that I wrote on X. I hope
it's cool if I read it. I try hard to
avoid editing. That's why I do four,
five, 6, 7, 8 hour podcast. I wonder how
long we go today. Uh the part I cut cut
in the Iran debate was where it went off
the rails after 4 hours. Not
contentwise, but tone-wise, mockery,
interruption, etc. Both had very little
sleep the night before and were tired
and not their best selves as they both
said. I cut not because of the content,
but the style. I try all I can to avoid
having that kind of drama on the
podcast. instead. I thought the first 4
hours had a lot of strong rants, which
it did, and you were continuing the
rants very well today. Uh, I'm enjoying
it. Uh, so you wanted to echo that
description and that the edit made
sense. Uh, maybe can you speak to that?
And then also, can you please, it would
be great now that you're fresh, full of
Dr. Pepper, say anything and everything
you would like to say that went
unresponded to maybe uh that is left to
be said.
Thank you. Yes. So, first of all, I'll
take my responsibility for that part. I
literally had a long drive and a long
flight and four hours sleep and no food
in my stomach whatsoever. And I quite
honestly absolutely despise Mark
Dubowitz and I have for a very long
time. And so it was I I really had
thought about this beforehand. I really
should have rejected your terms at the
beginning where we're all friends here
having a friendly discussion. I had
already kind of rehearsed in my mind
what I wanted to say to you was actually
no, right? this is just business and I
know that I really do regret that and
and I'm sorry to you personally for that
cuz I what I should have said was this
is just business. What's going to happen
here is he's going to lie the whole time
because he has to. And so then I'm going
to spend all of my time telling you why
what he just said isn't actually true
and how you can go verify that for
yourself, etc. Which is what ended up
happening. But it made it much more
acrimonious because it was like and for
you it was more frustrating because
you're trying to hold things in the
conception that you had it where
we're all just going to be friends here
when that just was never going to really
last. And part of that is look I'm just
I'm Luke from Empire. I'm not quite all
the way grown up Return of the Jedi
Skywalker here myself. So I get angry
and and say angry things. As far as how
bad it went, I take my responsibility
for my part of that. Except the reality
was it was just cuz I was up against a
horrible foreign agent lying his ass off
trying to get my fellow Americans killed
and their dollars wasted and I got a
problem with that. Um, and now on the
edit though, this is where we had a
problem and I do accept from you that
this part was inadvertent. I know that
you didn't mean to do it this way. What
happened was there were two instances of
him saying, "Oh, Scott Horton thinks the
Jews control everything and dictate
everything and blah blah," which I never
said at all. And he said twice. And yet
my response was completely deleted, but
him saying that against me was still in
there. And I thought like on one hand
it's completely silly and stupid, but on
the other hand that's also like a pretty
ruthless and horrible thing to try to do
to somebody, not you, him, to try to put
those words in my mouth and say all
those facts that you just heard for 4
hours. Nah, this guy just hates Jews. So
if you're on my side, you don't have to
listen to him. You don't have to believe
him. Anything like this. And then our
discussion about that's not true, dude.
Just cuz I was talking about the
neoconservatives doesn't mean I was
talking about the Jews. Because for
example, Jen Kerpatrick and Jim Wolsey
are Presbyterians and and Michael Novak
and uh oh what's his name are Catholics
and Francis Fukyama I guess is a
Buddhist and and Zame Khalil Zad is a
Muslim and so I didn't say the Jews at
all did I? I was talking about this and
that and my very good response to that
went to the cutting room floor. And so I
thought, well, that was kind of lame.
And then I thought I was going to come
back sooner. And so I I apologize for
kind of putting you on blast in that
interview where I mentioned it, but I
was waiting to hear back from you where
we were going to make up for that by
doing this interview. And so I was like,
yeah, I'm kind of disappointed. Now it's
uh nearly August and I hadn't heard from
the dude and I thought we were going to
do that. And so and because it is
important that and it goes to my overall
point that I'm trying to make here is
obviously the American empire is very
much against the interests of the
American people but also and most
especially our support for Israel the
great albatross around our neck you know
what they do or millstone is maybe
better right albatross was a symbol of
good luck before you shot it down but
Israel's interests are vastly different
than America's interests.
And people try to lie even to themselves
and say that that's not true. But they
are very different. For example, when
Israel killed those women and children
in Kana in 1996, that's what brought our
towers down. Right? So this is something
very important that we have to grapple
with as a country that we're not just
talking about Israel being a nice Jewish
boy minding its own business over there
kind of like in some cliche or
narrative. We're talking about an
absolutely ruthless state that is in the
process of trying to get rid of millions
of people they wish they hadn't
kidnapped back in 1967 and we can do a
whole bit on that but they are put
themselves in a very difficult position
and so they need our help to a very
great degree now from all that we
discussed here today does it sound like
I'm saying the Israelis and their lobby
are behind every single thing in
American policy and what we're doing
here like that's not at all what I'm
talking about Brazinski it's not the
Israel lobby at all. He's Rockefeller's
guy and that's a separate group of guys,
right? Um and so go ahead.
Just a um I'm really sorry for missing
the two mentions that you're referring
to. You know, people can search in the
transcript the word Jew. It appears I
guess a couple times and that's what
you're referring to.
Um your back and forth argument actually
came about 15 minutes after that moment
because you kind of were patiently
waiting. and I had to get back to it
kind of thing. Yeah.
Yeah. And you know there is no
disrespect, Matt, and I really apologize
if there's any uh hurt or any anything
like that.
And and it's true that the thing did
really turn into an argument at that
point. I mean, he called Jim Loe of all
people a vicious anti-semite, which is
just completely hilarious considering
how Jewish Jim Lo is. And what an
extraordinarily
sweet and kind and decent gentleman he
is. It's the most ridiculous thing in
the world. when we were on the curb
outside arguing, he said JJ Goldberg of
the Jewish Daily Forward also is a
vicious anti-semite
because he wrote something that
explained the difference between
Netanyahu and Ariel Chiron's positions
on Iraq and Iran. In other words, Mark
Dubious, Mark Dubowitz is very dubious.
He is uh not a serious man and he's in a
sense not really a man as much as just a
foreign agent representing a position on
behalf of a foreign power. And as I said
in that debate, do you think, and I mean
this honestly for anyone listening, you
don't have to answer, but does anyone
think that Mark Dubowitz really regrets
that Americans died on September 11th
because of what Israel was doing?
He would hide behind, no, they hate us
cuz we're free. No, maybe he'd say they
were mad about our presence in Saudi
Arabia, but he would never say, "Yeah,
but that's cuz Martin Indick said so."
And that's because and and the Kana
massacre helped motivated Muhammad Ata.
He just elied that point just like all
Israel lobbyists would. How could they
justify? You know, I wish I knew the
animosity you have for Mark Dwis cuz I
was part of my I'm not very good at this
the moderator thing, but I was very
confused by the animosity in the room.
Well, it's the dishonesty to even if I
just met him that day like everything
out of his mouth was some kind of
twisted fact. Like, yes, there was a
Kobar Tower attack, but you going to
blame that on the Ayatollah when it was
Bin Laden that did that. And we all know
that that's true. So, don't sit here and
try to give me some pro-Israel,
you know, my truth. There's only the
truth. And Mark Dubowitz is not
associated with it. He has an agenda.
And but you're right that I should have
made that clear that what this is is
this is a foreign lobbyist trying to get
America to serve a foreign nation. And I
am the guy from America and anti-war.com
trying to fend him off. And look, and I
I I accept too that I ain't so mature
for a 49year-old, whatever. 48 then. I
was I was a very immature 48 at the
time, but I lose my temper very quickly
when people lie. I just can't stand it.
I just don't have time to listen to
people being willfully dishonest to me
or in front of me, you know?
Yeah. And I'm glad we got a chance to
clear that up. We're going to go hard
and and uh for as long as needed.
Great. And yeah, I no hard feelings at
all, man. I'm glad we worked it out,
Do do we go to Rock War to first?
Well, let's do Wait, let's let's stay on
Bill Clinton in the '90s for a minute
you know, we're talking about the
neocons got brought up in the in the
sense that they did help to encourage
Iraq war I although I don't think they
were the real, you know, kingpins behind
it or whatever in the way that they were
in Iraq War II. Um and then the doctrine
of global dominance that Wolf Witz
developed you know in '92 that became
more or less the standard for foreign
policy thought in through the '90s. Um
and then but during the Clinton years
it's really important to mention that
Bill Clinton backed the Mjahedine even
though they were already attacking us in
the United States and American targets
overseas. Bill Clinton kept backing them
in Bosnia, Kosovo and in Cheschna and to
a greater degree than I understood. Now,
mostly this means working with the
Saudis and the Brits to support them and
including Bin Laden himself was seen by
at least four credible journalists in
Isovich's office, the president of
Bosnia in Sievo in 199 I guess four. um
and and his men fought there and Bill
Clinton knew it and Richard Hullbrook
said we could have never won without
their help and all these kinds of
things. I got all the sources in the
latest book provoked I go into much
further detail about this even than in
the terror war book enough already. Um
and and and the same was true in Cheshna
too. And essentially and as we've seen
and you know this from just your own
recent memory, right? That as we've seen
in Syria as well, that as long as the
bin Laden are killing Serbs or Russians
or Shiites, then it's cool. And that's
what America and Britain and Saudi use
them for. And so even though their first
attack in the United States was Rabbi
Kahane in 1990, the leader of the Koch
party, who's a very right-wing Israeli
rabbi who advocated for the
extermination or expulsion of all
Palestinians from all of historic
Palestine and his party had been banned
by the Israeli Supreme Court for being
fascist and was banned from Israeli
politics, but he was a radical rabbi,
lived in New York, I believe, and he was
assassinated in 1990 by a guy who was
part of Egyptian Islamic Jahad. Now,
this is that was their first hit. Then
in '92, they hit us at a hotel in Aiden,
Yemen. Then in '93, they did the first
World Trade Center attack. Now, it's
worth dwelling on this one for a second
because Bill Clinton had just been
present for a month and a week. It was
the end of February, February 26, 1993.
And the truck bomb, they parked it in
the wrong place. It could have toppled
one tower over into the other. It could
have just that truck bomb without
another one. If they had put it in the
wrong place, it could have toppled one
tower over into the other at 5:00 in the
afternoon, right? And so, and then from
there into more and more towers. Who
knows? Like there could have been tens
and tens and tens of thousands of people
killed. And it almost worked.
And the thing is about that, a couple
things. First of all, the CIA had
allowed these guys into the country when
INS wanted to keep them out because they
said, "We know these guys. They are
friends from the Afghan war. We don't
mind them. And let them in. So they're
all living in Brooklyn in dangerous
terrorists. Then the second thing was
that the FBI had a walk-in informant, a
guy named Immad Salem, who was an
Egyptian army intelligence officer,
former one, and he had been recruited by
them, and he allowed them to recruit him
to be the bomb maker. "You can trust me.
I'm a military guy. I can make the
bomb," he said. Then he went to the FBI
said, "I've been recruited by some
terrorists to make a bomb." And there
were two agents who believed him. Floyd
uh and Antisf Nancy Floyd and John
Antisf were the agents working the case.
And the plan was they were going to use
him to use an inert powder, make a a
fake bomb, and it' be a perfect sting.
But the thing is, their boss was a guy
named Carson Dunar. And he would not he
in fact demanded they cut his pay the
informants pay from $500 to $300 a week
and demanded he wear a wire on the floor
of the mosque where he you know while I
stand he's sleeping on the floor of the
mosque with these guys he can't wear a
wire right so he ends up bugging out and
says I think the FBI's on to me and bugs
out then they brought in Ramsay Yousef
the guy who built the bomb the real bomb
the real terrorist who came in and uh
again almost topple one tower over the
end of the
problem is a couple of things. Only six
people died. That's a lot of people if
you're one of the six or the survivors
of the six, right? I'm not saying that.
But I'm just saying in the imagination
of the American people, it was kind of
just not that big of a deal. And New
York City's pretty far from here and
just people were not feeling it nearly
as much as say for example both of them
collapsing with 3,000 people inside
still, right? So
then also 2 days later the ATF raided
the branch devidians and thus began a 6
weeks long siege of this religious group
100 miles up the road from here who
ultimately the FBI and the army delta
force massacred uh on April the 19th 93.
So the American people's attention was
just completely diverted and Clinton's
too. This is his whole first hundred
days is all bogged down in Waco and this
kind of thing. So, and who wants to
learn a bunch of Arab names and all of
this stuff? It just to the FBI agents,
they didn't do a very good job of
following up and and and preventing the
same group from carrying out things.
Now, they had I think I don't really
know enough about this. I need to go
back and reread about the Holland
Tunnels plot, the UN building and all
that. I think that was the setup where
they were trying to get the rest of
these guys in a sting basically on that
pl that that part of the plot. Um but um
in 1995
the bin Laden attacked and killed
Americans training the Saudi National
Guard. And in 1996 they blew up the
Cobbar Towers
in um Dan, Saudi Arabia. And that was a
truck bombing that killed 19
American airmen who were stationed there
to bomb Iraq. and that was who was the
target. But then what happened was the
Saudi kingdom in alliance with the
corrupt criminal Louis free of course
the director of the federal intelligence
agency uh federal bureau of
investigation um they who were in charge
not CIA they had the the mandate to
treat all these al-Qaeda attacks as
crimes as they are crimes under federal
code. So his FBI took the lead at that
time and Louis Free wanted to believe
the story that somehow it was
Iranianbacked
Shiite Saudi Hezbala that had done the
attack because of course the Saudi
monarchy hates their Shiite majority and
they just happen to live right on top of
where all the oil is and they didn't
want to blame it on Bin Laden who was
you know adjacent to the royal family
and who they wanted to take care of
themselves etc. And so they blamed it on
Iran. But it was Bin Laden who did it.
And the FBI agent in charge, John
O'Neal, knew that it was them who did
it. His enemy, Michael Shyer, from the
CIA, also knew that it was bin Laden who
did it. And bin Laden himself bragged
about it to uh uh Abdel Bari Atwan, the
editor of Alud's Alarabi in London, and
named the names of the martyrs and
celebrated them and said, "That's
exactly right. Are you listening now?"
And all of these things about it. It was
al Qaeda that did that. Then in 1998
they hit the African embassies and in um
2000 they hit the USS Cole. They had
bailed on an attack against the USS the
Sullivanss. Uh the dinghy sank and then
they hit the coal killed 17 sailors in
Aiden in 2000.
So this is uh these attacks are building
up in
these are building up and building up in
the runup to September 11th. And then
the whole time they're saying exactly
why they're doing this. So, we know
their motive and they're also saying
their strategy, their strategy is to
provoke us into invading Afghanistan.
They're going to replicate, they're
going to give us our own Afghanistan the
way we gave the Soviets their own
Vietnam in Afghanistan. And bin Laden
said repeatedly, "The point was to
provoke us into overreacting, to bog us
down, bleed us to bankruptcy, break our
empire on the rocks of Afghanistan the
same way we had helped them do to the
And so then W. Bush when he was elected,
his son, Bin Laden's son gave an
interview to Rolling Stone in 2010 where
he says, "I was in Afghanistan with my
father and when Bush was elected in
2000. My father was so happy." He said,
"This is the kind of president he needs,
one who will attack and spend money and
break the country." He said, "This is in
2010, so Bin Laden's still alive." He
says, "Bill Clinton sent missiles after
my father and didn't get him. But now
you spent 10 years in Afghanistan and
you still haven't gotten him. America
used to be smart, not like the bull that
runs after the red scarf."
Okay, so that was the strategy was to
get America to kill itself, to get us to
strap on the suicide vest.
Get the irony of the whole thing? How is
a group of 400 bandits hiding out in
Nangahar province supposed to bring down
the Empire? The answer is you give the
Empire an excuse to exploit.
It's not that George Bush is stupid and
innocent. It's that he's stupid and
guilty, right? You know, it's not that
Bin Laden thought, "Oh, here's a guy
who's such a super patriot that he'll go
the extra mile." He looked at Bush said,
"Here's a guy who's a corrupt, evil,
narrow-minded, shortsighted idiot of a
criminal who will exploit a crisis to
the nth degree if I give him one." And
that's what I'm trying to do. And which,
by the way, consider the collectivism of
Osama bin Laden, who considers that
there's no limit apparently on the
number of Afghans that he can get killed
and his plan here when he ain't from
there, right? He's trying to provoke a
war with a superpower against a regime
that's allowed him to stay and against a
people who did nothing to him or to us,
right? A people, I hate that, but some
people, millions of people who did
nothing to us whatsoever. And he put
them in our crosshairs on what? The
idea, well, God will sort them out.
They'll go to paradise if they believe
well. And so, who cares about them? And
which was something that was a big
problem with Mullah Omar where Mullah
Omar despite the narrative actually
hated and feared Osama bin Laden and
wanted rid of him and was trying to
negotiate to get rid of him because as
Marie Rothbart says a radical becomes a
conservative the day he captures the
capital city. Right? And so Mullahar
didn't want a world revolution like you
know uh Osama bin Lenon, right? He
wasn't interested in that. He was
interested in holding down Afghanistan.
He'd already won most of the country. He
hadn't finished winning it all yet. And
he wasn't trying to get in a fight with
America, which Bill Clinton had
supported the rise of the Taliban in
1996. Had encouraged Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan to encourage the Taliban to go
all the way to Kabell. And in fact,
wanted them to not even settle with the
Northern Alliance. wanted to see an
outright victory against the northern
alliance because they wanted the Taliban
to have total control, a monopoly on the
entire state so they could build a oil
pipeline from Tajikhstan across
Afghanistan to Pakistan. Now, they
abandoned this project after 98, after
the embassy bombings of 98. People
sometimes say that's why Bush invaded in
'01 or whatever. No, that wasn't it. But
but that is why Bill Clinton supported
the rise of the Taliban in 1996 in the
first place. They said, "Well, we figure
there will be an Amir and no parliament
and lots of Sharia law. We can live with
that." That was the Bill Clinton
administration is what they said about
that, right? It's in Ahmed Rashid's
book, The Taliban, has all that stuff in
it, and I quote him at length in my
books. Um, and so what was the point of
that? Screwing the Russians, figuring
out a way to get hydrocarbons out of the
Caspian Basin without having to go
through Russia or Iran. And so that was
part of that whole game, which we'll
have to talk about that in later in the
Cold War segment here. Um but that's
part where these stories overlap a bit.
Now um so it's important to bring up too
that during this time the cliche in the
Pentagon among the joint staff who are
the most important policy planners for
the Pentagon.
They had a cliche that said terrorism is
a small price to pay for being a
superpower.
Right? What are they going to do?
They're going to set off a truck bomb
here or there. They're going to kill a
few hundred people here or there. Look
at the African embassies. It was mostly
Africans who died.
And so
the I don't think that they thought that
losing a couple of towers full of a
couple of thousand people would be a
small price to pay. I think they were
not imagining that level of consequence.
But after all, they did have to hijack
our airliners to have something to crash
into anything. We are talking about a
stateless group of essentially penniles
bandits, right? who have millions of
dollars, not billions, much less
trillions, right? These are these were
criminals, right? Outlaws, terrorists.
So, they had no ability to truly bring
us down. They had to And of course, the
analogy to Pearl Harbor is perfect
because 3,000 people died in a sneak
attack. What more do you need to know?
And I kind of like to harp on this. Not
that I ever really like studied
psychology more than a couple semesters
in junior college, but it seems probably
meaningful, right? that in the images
the planes literally come out of the
clear blue sky, right? And so jeez, I
guess I don't know what's behind this.
Someone explain it. It's just like
Tabula, man. Go ahead and let me know
what I'm supposed to think about this.
I'm shocked and I'm completely surprised
said you know of course people who knew
a lot about this were very worried about
it of course but for the average
American and this was the meaning of the
term blowback by the way as Talmer's
Johnson explained and it was coined in
Donald Wilbur who was a CIA historian in
his afteraction report against about the
coup in Iran he said we CIA officers
going to have to be very careful about
blowback coming down the line from
operations like this and then as Johnson
explained What it really meant was not
just consequences because you can just
have a funny term for consequences, but
blowback meant the long-term
consequences of secret foreign policies.
So that when they come due, the American
people don't understand what it means.
Why are the Iranians burning our flag?
Why are the bin Laden crashing into our
towers? Somebody tell us cuz we don't
know. And when the answer is, well, it's
actually all our fault, then the
security force, our national government
will not tell us that. In fact, they'll
make up a lie and say, "Islam makes them
hate us because we love our mamas and
Jesus so much." And then people go, "Oh
man, what a terrible psychopathic, I
didn't realize Islam was that bad of a
religion. We better have to fight all of
them now." If that's what it does to
you, it's radical Islam. See, once you
believe in Islam hard enough, it turns
you into a suicide bomber. It makes you
hate North Americans. There is no other
cause and effect that you guys need to
be aware of. And
people might not remember this, but boy
did they push it that fall that the
Taliban had done it. Al Qaeda was the
Taliban. The Taliban was Al Qaeda.
You mean 2001?
Yeah. Yeah.
That they was Taliban, then they were an
Al Qaeda and then
they conflated them together so
powerfully that then this became a
reason why people were just so doubtful
about the entire narrative because
they're going, "What do you mean a bunch
of cavemen from the town of Bedrock out
there in Kandahar Province? did this to
us because they don't like that we have
a bill of rights. Like that obviously is
not true. So what is the truth? And then
people come up with endless answers
other than the obvious one, which is
America has a really bad Middle East
policy and Israel is a real big part of
that. That's the answer is blowback.
Again, Egyptians volunteering for a
Saudi to kill Americans as revenge for
what Israel is doing to the Lebanese.
It's a little bit complicated, but not
that complicated if you want to be
honest. But at the end, what is it? It's
all George Bush's fathers and Bill
Clinton's fault, right? And so, what are
they going to do? I remember being I was
sitting in Chicago when 911 happened. I
remember being really confused in the
months after in the hours and the days
and the months after with all the
narratives that were coming out. It
didn't quite make sense. A lot of the
thing it almost felt like they're
improvising with different stories that
will convince the American people.
And I remember being extremely confused.
Iraq. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Saddam Hussein.
Here's they're trying to see who can we
the evil guy out of
Al Qaeda, Taliban,
and then they just ran with it.
I mean, can you can you just
can you break that down? what the
different lies that end up sticking that
were used to mislead us into the war.
Yeah. Well, so on Afghanistan, it's
clear that the CIA and Connies Rice, and
we know this, not that Bob Woodward is
really trustworthy, but he published
supposedly verbatim verbatim transcripts
from the National Security Council
meetings in his book Bush at War. And so
we know from those National Security
Council meetings that Connies Rice and
the CIA were advising that we try our
best to divide the Taliban from al Qaeda
and let the Taliban know we don't have a
fight with you. We're just after these
Arabs that hit us.
In fact, it's very important. The
Taliban tried to warn us that the attack
was coming and were essentially turned
away. They warned the UN in Pakistan and
they sent a guy to the United States and
he was denied a meeting at the State
Department at all and went home and they
only knew it was true because that an
attack was coming because they had
learned it from a Tajik jihadist or a I
believe a Tajik who was one of their
informants basically told them bin Laden
didn't tell Mullah Omar in the summer of
2001 Moola Omar had told uh Arnode
Deborra from the Washington Times he
said bin Laden is like a chicken bone
stuck in my throat. quot I can neither
swallow him nor spit him out. And Milton
Bearden, who had helped run the CIA
covert or in the 1980s, told the
Washington Post, we've been negotiating
with Mullah Omar over Bin Laden since
98. After the Africa embassy attack,
Omar said, I got to get rid of this guy.
And he ordered Bin Laden, don't you do
any more attacks against the United
States. And bin Laden had promised him
that he wouldn't. And then kept
attacking anyway. And um so Mullah Omar,
this is the dictator of the Taliban
ruling regime in in in Afghanistan. Uh
Milton Bearden said that the Taliban
would tell the CIA, "Oh, Bin Laden. Gez,
you know, we lost track of him today.
He's out falconing in the countryside
somewhere. We don't know where he is."
And then the Americans would pound their
fist on the table and say, "We said hand
him over." when that's what he just said
was go ahead and kill him. He's outside
of our protection right now and if you
were to murder him, it would not be our
fault. Take your best drone strike. Take
the best hint. That's Milton Bearden
talking about. That's where I got this
from. Okay? The Taliban hated this dude.
He was nothing but trouble and they
wanted rid of him. And remember what
Bush said. No negotiations. Hand him
over. They said, "Well, come on. Give us
some evidence and we'll hold a
proceeding here." And Bush said, "No
way. give them over. And Coleman Pal at
one point said, "Well, we will come up
with evidence. We will accuse them of
this. We'll show you." And then they're
like, "Nope, no evidence." Um they the
Taliban said, "Well, tell you what. Let
us give them over to any Muslim country
in the world." Which of course, you
know, could be Malaysia or Indonesia or
Jordan or Egypt who are going to do
exactly what they're told by the United
States. He's going to land on the tarmac
and he's going to go straight to
Virginia. Give me a break. Right. Um
nope. Not good enough. Then he started
bombing on December the 8th and the
Taliban said, "Okay, we have no more
conditions. We're willing to give them
up if you'll just stop the bombing."
Bush said, "Too little, too late. No."
And kept the war going then. Why? Why?
Why? The AAMS razor answers. You can't
read the guy's mind. There's so much
circumstantial evidence about the
thinking at the time. And this was going
to what I was saying about CIA and Rice
said we should just bomb al Qaeda and
not the Taliban. Donald Rumsfeld
overruled them. said, "No, we need to
take the fight to the Taliban. We need
to keep the Afghan war going on because
we want the American people to
understand." He actually proposed that
we should bomb Baghdad now so that the
American people understand the war on
terrorism is not over if we kill Bin
Laden. And it ain't lost if we don't.
The war is much bigger than him and is
going to take place over a vast space
and a vast period of time. And we want
the American people to know that this is
not ending anytime soon. We're going to
Baghdad. It's going to take a while to
build up the force in Kuwait and they
hoped Turkey, which didn't work out, but
in in order to go. And so if we kill Bin
Laden now, or even if we do, we want to
make sure the American people know that
the war is not over yet. And I believe
and I make the case in both books and
probably better in the second one um
fool's air and enough already that they
let Bin Laden go. The CIA and the Delta
Force on the ground were begging for
reinforcements and reinforcements were
available. There were tens of thousands
of Rangers or at least what 10,000
Rangers or something at Bram Air Base
north of Kabell. The Green Berets were
fighting the Taliban up in Mazzari
Sharif. The 75th Airborne Rangers who
are top tier special operations forces
considered right with Delta and Navy
Seals were available in Kandahar
province and General Mattis was there
with 10,000 marching marines and he
could have told them 10 hood go now and
they had helicopters but even then they
were like 40 mi away. Yeah, it's
mountains so what? Right. and they were
not allowed to go and to seal the
border. And the CIA and the Delta Force
are like, "Man, we got them cornered on
three sides. The fourth side is the
Pakistani border. They're going to get
away. We need more men." And the
military, they did a congressional
investigation. They said they had a
plan. It's called block and sweep and
make sure you get everybody in between
here and here, right? And that's exactly
how you do it. and the Delta Force guys
in the CIA guys uh namely uh Thomas
Greer aka Dalton Fury in his book Kill
Bin Laden and Gary Bernson in his book
Jawbreaker talk about how they just
could not understand why they could not
get the support that they wanted. And um
and um Bernson talks about how his boss
at CIA went and laid out the desk in uh
the map and on the desk and Ron Suskin
writes about this too that they showed
Bush the map and said we need more men
for this and they were denied the men
that they needed and then what and think
about this your whole life ever since
then talk about confusing narratives
from that time. How about this one dude?
How about as soon as Bin Laden and his
friends cross the border into Pakistan
on December the 17th? Delta Force is not
allowed to chase them. Why? They always
say the same thing. I bet you do like a
Lexus Nexus thing from back then and
find how many times they use the term
Bin Laden and his men slipped across the
border. And then once that happened,
it's like they jumped into hyperspace
and got away. Once that happened, they
crossed this semi-permeable membrane
that only terrorists can cross, but that
the Delta Force top tier army special
operations forces cannot cross into a
friendly allied country of ours,
Pakistan. And where we know from Robert
Gier, the CIA station chief in Islamabad
in his book 88 days to Kandahar, he had
already made arrangements with the
Pakistani army and Frontier Corps that
we expect the Bin Laden to come fleeing
across the border and we expect
Americans to be hot on their tail in
pursuit. And so they set up deconliction
so that the Pakistanis would not
accidentally kill the Americans because
they were expected to come. They were
not allowed to cross the border and give
chase. and Daltton Furious. Man, this is
amazing, too. And maybe someone in your
audience can find the full thing, but I
went on a deep dive trying to find the
full 60 Minutes episode with Dalton
Fury, and I can only find severely
edited ones. But his name is Thomas
Greer is his real name, and he's wearing
a disguise and everything. And he does a
thing with Scott P. And man, they edit
it because the important part that I'm
looking for is where he says, "We had
all these plans to follow them into
Pakistan. We have Chino helicopters. We
were going to go over them and then meet
them coming back the other way. We were
going to drop landmines and there were
only three valleys out of there that
they could have taken. We were going to
drop mines that was going to slow them
So they knew exactly how to kill and
they were told to stand down
and they were not allowed by Donald
Rumsfeld in the military to go further.
And and even we have W. Bush and Dick
Cheney both implicated this too in that
Suskin book where they and Bernson I
believe talks about this in his book too
where Thomas Greer is the guy who wrote
Kill Bin Laden and was on 60 Minutes. He
was the lieutenant colonel in the Delta
Force in charge there and then Gary
Bernson was the guy on the scene who
wrote the book Jawbreaker and then his
boss was Henry Crumpton and he was the
guy who had laid the map out onto Bush's
desk and said we need more men and was
denied by Bush himself. So it might be
nice to blame just Rumsfeld, but it was
the president himself who refused to
commit the forces necessary to get Bin
Laden in. And it is just a
circumstantial a circumstantial case. I
don't have a direct quote of any of
these people saying this, but it seems
pretty clear to me that they decided
that they would prefer that Bin Laden go
so that like in the book 1984, they
would have Emanuel Goldstein, the enemy,
the wrecker, the sabotur out there, the
danger who could still kill you. He's
not gone yet. Wy Bush used to love to
say, "Imagine Saddam Hussein
giving Bin Laden's hijackers chemical
weapons. Imagine September 11th only
this time armed by Saddam Hussein. Well,
Bin Laden's already dead. And the
American the American people by and
large believe that that's what you get
for messing with us, pal. We win, you
lose, and it's over by Christmas. Well,
then how the hell are we going to go to
a Baghdad? It's going to take us a year
and a half to build up the forces and to
make people's mom and dad scared enough
to think that we need to do this. We
have a massive propaganda campaign to
wage here. And here's where we get right
back into the neoonservatives again. In
March of 2002, Justin Roando wrote a
piece at anti-war.com and it's called
our hijacked foreign policy. Neocons's
take Washington, Baghdad is next. Mhm.
And Justin was a brilliant genius. And
because he was a libertarian, he had a
longtime ideological axe to grind and
personal enemy relationship with these
neocons. You know, us libertarians, we
really are their polar opposite on so
many things. And he called it the axis
of crystal there, the little lenin of
the neoconservative movement. and he
he's here citing benevolent global
hegemony is the actual quote. He kind of
got that a little wrong. It's Bill
Crystal and Robert Kagan wrote this
article in foreign affairs in 1996
toward a neoraganite foreign policy
where they say we have to have
benevolent global hegemony and that's
what he's talking about there. And he's
talking about the few people and I have
to tell you man I was really interested
in foreign policy politics and all these
things for many years leading up to
this. But if you just asked me what's a
Republican I would have said Houston,
right? James Baker III, right? Dark Lord
of the Sith, lawyer for Exxon.
That's what conservatism is. Is big
business, right? It's, you know, I don't
know what else what. I knew who Bill
Crystal was, but I didn't know who he
was, right? I knew there was the Weekly
Standard. I knew they were crazy after
Saddam Hussein. I didn't know why. And I
didn't look enough into it leading up to
It's so interesting to uh sorry to
interrupt, but
Sort of the lens of this analysis in
2002. I need to go back and read some of
You need to go back and read all of
Justin from 1999 all the way through the
whole day.
Get yourself a rainy day. You can stop
about halfway through Obama probably.
But man, at this time he was the most
important writer for America. As
neglected as he was, there was nobody
better at what was happening to this
country at that time.
Even from just a brief glance, I could
see the cutting wit and the brilliance
and the humor.
You know what he was? He was a big gay
Pat Buchanan. He's big gay Archie Bunker
from San Francisco, right? He was he he
was a right-winger and a paleo
libertarian, but like Buchananite
leaning. He gave Pat Buchanan's
nomination speech for the Reform Party
in 1999.
And and he's, you know, a right-wing
libertarian, but he is what he is. He's
at where he's at. And so it sounds kind
of ironical or whatever. Why would a gay
guy like Pat Buchanan so much? And it's
because Papuchan at that time his
reputation was very much the culture war
and very much like gay people should
still stay in the closet and things like
that. And so Justin was like I don't
care about that. What matters is the
world empire. And then even here he's a
right-winger too. It's not that he's a
liberal and he founds found a
right-winger that he likes. It's that
Patrick in Canada is like the perfect
kindred spirit even though you might
think not. But Justin was from Queens
and he was from that era, you know,
raised in the 1950s and60s. He was a a
crusty old paleocon in his way. And um
and that was why he was so good. And
when I first started reading him, I
remember saying even to my friends, how
does this guy know all this stuff? It's
just unbelievable how plugged in he is.
And he lives out in San Francisco, but
he knows everything happening at every
important think tank in Washington. And
he knows the difference between them
all. He knows who all these guys are and
what their role is and who is whose
mentor and student and all of these
things in a way is just unbelievable.
And he had the neocons's number man. And
yes, Iraq war I was their war and it was
mostly for Israel. I'm severely
distracted by how how hilarious his
writing is. Uh I'm glancing.
No, it's all right. It's all right. I I
won't it'll be a rabbit hole that will
go into but he goes hard against the neo
conservatives.
Oh, so bad. And look, his first article
was about the Kosovo War in 1999. And he
goes after the neoconservatives right
then and there from the very get-go. He
used to love to quote this guy um uh I
believe David Tall in the Weekly
Standard said about Slobon Malloich that
he better do what we say or he knows
we'll kick their skulls in. And he's
like, "Yeah, this is who the
neoconservatives are, dude. They're
barbarians essentially, Bill Crystal's
Quick pause. I'm sorry. I need another
bathroom break. Uh, and then maybe you
can get back to military-industrial
Oh, yeah. Okay. So, before we get too
far into Iraq War 2 and the
neoconservatives, we need to decide
whether we want to talk about the
Afghanistan war now or whether we want
to come back and talk more about
Afghanistan later or maybe not even at
all or whatever. You got to make that
call because there's plenty to talk
about there as a hugely important thing.
On the other hand, of course, and this
is the same dilemma I faced when I was
writing enough already. It's like how
much can I tell you about Afghanistan
before I got to bring you to Iraq which
is the heart of the story that
everybody's so interested in where most
of the action takes place. It's on the
other side of Iran from Afghanistan and
Afghanistan remained on the margin
throughout the whole thing even though
it's in itself it was its own huge
thing. So, but I leave that to you to
like how far you want to get into that
and when
I I think uh Iraq specifically is a is a
the deepest the most thorough case study
of the military-industrial complex and
the abuse of power. So, as much as we
can explore that great and I think it
was really insightful we described that
right there in Afghanistan
uh we could have gotten Bin Laden.
There's a lot of places where this did
not have to go as long as it did. And
that that was that highlights one clear
Yeah. But real tragedy. It really is.
They could have negotiated and they
could have killed him and the whole
thing really could have been over by
Christmas. And by the way, Gary Bernson
said that. He said that to the reporter
Michael Hirs in 2016. He said, "It's
really sad when you think about it. How
this thing could have all been over by
Christmas."
So that ain't just me. That's them.
That's him. That's the guy who was the
second CIA officer on scene in charge
who wrote and you read his book. You
know how editors do this sometimes when
a CIA guy writes a book, they'll lead
the redaction marks in the big black
boxes because it's like good
salesmanship to do that, right? So when
you read Gary Bernson's book, he goes
and there I was and me and my fellow CIA
officers were talking about how
frustrated we were that we could not
understand why they wouldn't give us
reinforcements while he's getting away.
And then the next four sentences are
blacked out. That's like,
you know, and then and same thing for
for Dalton Fury, uh, Thomas Greer. So,
how do we get to Iraq?
Let's do Iraq. Here's where we're going
to start Iraq. First of all, Wolawitz
and all them wanted to go all the way to
Baghdad in 1990
and senior told them no and stopped
short of that. Also, let Saddam crush
the Iraqi up the Shiite and Kurdish
uprising. Then of course we have the
status quo of Bill Clinton's containment
policy, dual containment policy from
Iraq, from Saudi Arabia against Iraq and
Iran through the 1990s, sanctions,
no-fly zone bombings and all of that. So
in and by the way, there were two failed
CIA coups in 1995 and 1996 against
Saddam. Um, one of them was the one that
got Robert Bear in so much trouble cuz
he was working with Ahmed Chalaby the
Iraqi exile to try to overthrow Saddam
and it all went to hell cuz it Chalabi
was basically selling them uh Chalabi
was basically making a bunch of promises
to them about how it would go. That of
course did not work out at all. And so
this is where the CI first put their
burn notice on him. So Ahmed Chabi is
this important Iraqi exile. He was a
banker in Jordan who then fled the
country because he was want wanted for
embezzling money. And here he was
selling the CIA on all of his promises
about what he could do in Iraq and then
he was not coming through. And so that's
sort of a minor part of the story. But
then in 1996,
David Wormser, who's an important
neoonservative
uh in alliance with the more important
neoonservative, Richard Pearl, and also
Douglas Fe, their fellow traveler. And I
think there were two more people signed
it. It may have been Charles Fairbanks
Jr. and one other guy signed it, too. I
think um it was really worms and pearl
talking. Okay. And it's called a clean
break, a new strategy for securing the
realm. Oh man, you know what? Hell, as
long as we're doing this, we want to do
this, right?
Hell yeah. So, we want to talk about
Rockward 2. What we got to do is let's
go back to
the early 1990s in Yeak Rabbine.
Now, Israel had a strategy, as I said,
being friends with Iran. At the same
time, they're friends with Turkey and
friends with Ethiopia. Why? This was
called the strategy of the periphery in
Israel. It meant if you picture the map,
okay, from Israel's perspective, want to
support Turkey to divide Syria's
attention. We want to support Iran to
divide Iraq's attention. And we want to
support Ethiopia to divide Egypt's
attention. Does that make sense
geographically speaking?
So, Rabbine says, "Nope, we're going to
turn that upside down." And what we're
going to do instead is we're going to
negotiate with the Arabs, the closer
states. And we're going to even make a
deal with Yaser Arafat. And this is the
Oslo peace process that were being
started. Now, they weren't really going
to give them an independent state. They
were going to give them something like a
shining on pseudo sort of kind of
independent state, which actually
probably would have been the best
solution, right? Would be you have your
local police forces, but we are in one
country together kind of a thing. There
are lots of states that are have kind of
complicated arrangements like that and
pull it off. Um, but anyway, this was
Rabbine's plan. But then a Netanyahu fan
murdered him in 1995.
This was when Shimone Perez took over.
Now Shimone Perez had been the
president. He's now promoted to prime
minister and he continues the same
policy. This is why Oh, I'm sorry. the
in the re I should have mentioned in the
reversal of the periphery doctrine and
negotiating with the Arabs part of that
was now turning on Iran and demonizing
Iran because just for domestic political
reasons in Israel they rabbin had to be
tough against somebody so now it's Iran
that's the problem and that's why we
need to negotiate with the Arabs even
right so um he makes that change in 1993
three. In fact, there's a funny anecdote
in Treacherous Alliance by Treat Parsy
again where the Clinton people were
surprised and even laughed because what
do you mean you hate Iran now? Last week
you were demanding that we like Iran
along with you. Now you've changed your
mind. But what happened? And all that
happened was Israel changed their mind.
They just had a different policy now. It
wasn't any particular thing that Iran
had done at that point to cross their
line. And so they just decided that this
was important to do now. And so
somebody's got to be the enemy. So now
the enemy is going to be Shiite
fundamentalist Islam revolutionary
Iranian uh threat. Um and in fact as one
of one important Israeli strategist told
Parsy, we needed new glue for the
alliance with the United States now that
we don't have the Soviet Union anymore.
Why does America need us? And the answer
is radical Islam. And of course that's
great because you could be anybody as
long as you're Muslim. You can be called
radical Islam. And it doesn't matter how
radical or which sect or whose side
you're on or anything, right? You can
just do anything with that, right? For
you apply that to Palestinians or
anybody else. So that's a great one like
for propaganda wise from the Israeli
point of view. Um and so then when
Shimon Perez took over after Rabbine was
assassinated, he launched Operation
Grapes of Wrath reinvading Lebanon as
part of that same doctrine. See, we're
going after the Shiites now. And that
was again the operation that motivated
the lead hijacker of September 11th to
join the jihad against us right there.
That was why he did that was part of
that same strategy. Right? But then
Shimon Perez's rule was shortlived and
Benjamin Netanyahu first came in and
became the prime minister of Israel for
the first time in 1996. Okay. Now David
Worms and Richard Pearl write this study
for him. It's called A Clean Break, a
new strategy for securing the realm.
Again, you can find that at
scottton.org/bear. /bearuse. And in
fact, I'm sure there are archive.org
versions of it. You can find it. It was
the this Israeli think tank published
it. It wasn't an American think tank. It
was the Israeli Center for Strategic
Study or something like that. Um, posted
it there. Um,
yes, it's posted at scotthorn.org/fair
use, a clean break, a new strategy of
securing the realm by David Warser,
And the the companion piece, as it says
there, is called coping with crumbling
states. coping with crumbling states, a
western and Israeli balance of power
strategy for the Levant by David Wars in
1996. And both of these, well, certainly
the first one is officially signed off
on by Richard Pearl. And then I should
have hot links on those. I'm not sure
why I don't, but there are three related
articles here by Loenberg, Worms, and
and Pearl promoting the same agenda in
the newspapers there um in the
Washington Times and the Wall Street
Journal. Okay? Okay. And they're called
uh the ultimate peace process prize.
Justice Adam Saddam's power is under
assault. The balance of power all three
pieces. Yeah. And now there's even a
book. It's called Tyranny's Ally by
David Worms with a forward by Richard
Pearl. They all say the same thing.
Okay. What they say is that we're
Israeli agents and Ahmed Chalabi sold us
a bunch of crap and we bought it. And
it's this magic theory about how
overthrowing Saddam is going to be good
for Israel. Now, oh, don't let me leave
out that as part of Israel's secret
relationship with Iran through the 1980s
or their friendship continuing through
the 1980s and into the 1990s, they had a
secret oil pipeline from the port of
Aaba, which I never say that right. I
forget how to pronounce it right, but
it's we're talking about the Sinai
Peninsula in the in the Red Sea. Now, on
the western side of the Sinai Peninsula
is the Suez Canal in the gate to the
Mediterranean Sea. On the eastern side
of the Sinai Peninsula is the port of
Aaba there. Okay. And there was a secret
oil pipeline that was run by Mark Rich's
company, the guy that Bill Clinton
pardoned on his last day in office, who
is this corrupt financeier and uh oil
industry guy.
and he his company had this secret
pipeline where Iranian ships would come
and drop off oil and it would then go
through this pipeline to Israel, right?
Well, once Rabbine turned on Iran when
he turned the periphery strategy upside
down, then the Iranians quit sending
oil. In fact, it may not have been till
95 that they quit sending the oil
because um
treats explains that Iran didn't start
backing Hamas until 95 or at least maybe
they had given them a little bit or
something. It was uh they had given them
very little until then and so it was it
was provocations by Rabbine against Iran
had finally after a year and a half of
this or more I believe if I'm
remembering it right. I don't think it
was 93. I think it wasn't until '95 that
Iran finally said fine then if you guys
are going to be that way and stopped
shipping the oil in. So now this becomes
a major interest of the neoconservatives
and the lood party and Ahmed Chali
understands very quickly that this is
what these guys want to hear is that if
America will put him and his friends in
power in Iraq, they'll be friends with
Israel. Now, in the original clean
break, they say they want to use the
cousin of the king of Jordan, and
they're going to put a Hasheite kingdom
in their legs to rule Iraq. Now, the
magic theory here is that, let's do a
very, very elementary divide of the
Sunnis and the Shiites here, history
lesson. Okay, the Shiites went off with
Muhammad's family after he died. The
Sunnis picked their own imams, right?
So, there's like kind of one hierarchy.
It's a very very very inept but very
crude comparison between the Protestants
and the Catholics. There's one Shiite
church basically right under the
Ayatollas and their system and they
they're inherited power through the
bloodline and all of that. On the Sunni
side they pick their own ministers right
like the Protestants they have their own
and do their their many more sects and
different kinds of Sunnis and that sort
of deal. If that makes sense on the most
basic level here. Okay. So, um, not that
I'm saying the Shiites claim to be
priests or anything like more analogous
with the Catholic Church. I'm not saying
that. I'm just saying there's this order
of Ayatollas the same way there are of
the cardinals and whatever, if you
understand. So, the deal is this. Yes,
the Shiites do rever their clergy
leadership who are descended from
Muhammad and evidently can prove it. I
don't know. Apparently, right, and wear
their black turbans and that means that
they share his bloodline and all that.
Okay. Well, the Hashemites also declare
themselves to be his descendants.
Whether that's true or not, whatever,
fine. Take it for face granted and it
is. But they're Sunnis. So, the thing is
about the Shiites revering people with
the blood of the prophet. They're
they're Shiite clergy. It doesn't mean
that they consider them to be infallible
dictators whose will is their law and
all of these things. Like even the pope
says some things are my opinion. Some
things I'm speaking for the Lord, but
sometimes I'm just saying I think this
is how it should be your way. You know
what I mean? So, so the ayatollas do not
exercise like a spellbinding power over
these people through mysticism and and
like irrational demands of religious
feely to their every order or whatever,
right? Like there's it's a much more
consensual relationship than that or
whatever. You know what I mean? It's not
completely top down sort of thing like
that. and like where they have this
magic spell of their bloodline then is
like acts as hypnosis or whatever or or
demands total obedience. It that's just
never been the implication of the thing.
So Chalabi is just telling these guys
whatever they need to hear. that if we
put a Hashemite king in there, then he
will be able to tell the Shiite clergy
that they better stop being friends with
and that they better tell Hezbala to
stop being friends with Iran and then
Hezbollah will be friends with Israel
and then the Israelis
can finish stealing Palestine without
having to worry about Hezbala causing
them problems on their northern flank.
That's the clean break.
Now, here's the thing about this, man.
Picture the region in your head a little
bit or pull up the map again if you need
to. You got here's David Wormser's
argument, okay? He's saying Iran backs
Hezbollah in southern Lebanon by way of
So, what we want to do is get rid of
Saddam Hussein,
the secular Sunni who's the roadblock to
all this, right?
Huh? Well, again, magic wish. What's
going to happen is our Sunni king will
just enslave the will of the Shiite
supermajority and they'll be our cat's
paws and do whatever we want and will
lord them over Iran. David Worms said,
"Chalaby assures us that a democratic
Shiite Iraq will be a nightmare for Iran
because the Iranians will want to live
like the Iraqis in their wonderful new
awesome supermajority Shiite democracy."
And so under the rule of their
benevolent king or however because they
end up changing it a little bit I guess
and emphasizing the democracy part more
later but still it would be a nightmare
for Iran because what happened was I
think the king of Jordan died and was
replaced and they said okay forget that
we'll just put Chalabe in power himself.
He'll be the guy that we put in. Now,
um, they also promised, Chalabi promised
the neoonservatives, we'll build a oil
pipeline from northern Iraq to Hifa,
Israel to make up for the pipeline that
they just lost with the Iranians.
Netanyahu bought this and David Wormser
and Richard Pearl bought this. And this
was one of the reasons, one of the major
reasons that 4,500 Americans and a
million Iraqis died in Iraq War II was
so Israel could save a nickel a barrel
on Iraqi oil because their own policies
had cost them their access to Iranian
oil. And so they were paying this extra
premium after losing that source. And
this oil pipeline to Hifa was a big
deal. And you'll want to pull this up
cuz you'll want to read it later. and
laugh and weep. It's called How Ahmed
Chalabi Conned the Neocons.
Okay, now for your audience, they need
to know. Disclaimer, a long time ago,
salon.com did journalism.
I know it sounds absurd and you probably
don't believe me even though I know you
kind of like me and trust me, but this
guy John Dazard is from the Financial
Times. He is a solid guy. I have a very
brief acquaintance with him emailing
back and forth and he is no slouch and
this is not some woke ridiculous
propaganda. This article is very good
stuff. Go ahead. May 4th, 2004. John
Thazard how Akmed Chalabi conned the
neocons. The hawks who launched the Iraq
war believe the dealmaker exile when he
promised to build a secular democracy
with close ties to Israel. Now the
Israel deal is dead. He's cozing up to
Iran and his patrons look like they're
on the way out. Yeah. So, in this
article, man, it's brutal. In there, he
quotes Douglas Feith. Douglas Feith was
again the third signatory on the clean
break, although I believe he now disowns
it and says, "Well, I never agreed with
that part in this kind of thing, but
whatever." and he helped run the he was
the deputy secretary of defense for
policy in the first Bush term and ran
the office of special plans with Abram
Scholski that lied us into war using
lies funneled into the intelligence
stream by Mid Chalabe. It's a huge part
of how they lied us into war. I'm kind
of skipping ahead. I'm going to come
back to that in a minute. Okay, but in
this article they quote Douglas Fe's law
partner Mark Zel and people might follow
him on Twitter. The guy's a riot, dude.
And meaning he's completely insane and a
lot of fun if you're into insane
Zionist, war hawk, genocidal lunatics.
But anyway, so he has these quotes in
here, okay? And like this is not me
talking. I'm very careful with my words.
I'm a libertarian. I'm an individualist.
I'm not a collectivist. And I don't go
around categorizing people by their
religion and ethnicity and all this
crap. I just don't. I want to raise that
way. It's just it is what it is. This is
Dard talking to Chaliby's friends. Okay,
I'm quoting a guy, quoting a guy,
quoting a guy. Okay, forgive me. I said
to Akmed, "What are you doing running
around with all these Jews?" And he
said, "I just need them
until I can get my war
and then I'm going to stab them in the
back and we're going to get what we
So, in other words, Richard Pearl is as
stupid as he is evil. and David Wormser
and Richard Pearl and Paul Wolawitz and
the neoconservative group Douglas Fe
Scooter Libby Hadley and Joseph and and
Adelman and all of these guys who lied
um did I say Hannah and Edelman and and
um Abrams Scholski
that's what these idiots believed
these are all neocons
these are the neocons in the W Bush
administration
in the vice president's office, in the
State Department, in the defense
department that lied us into war. Coon
Powell called them the Ginsa crowd.
Ginsa is the Jewish Institute for
National Security Affairs, which at that
time, I believe, was run by David Worms.
He was one of the most powerful guys
there. and they were part and parcel
with the American Enterprise Institute,
the Project for a New American Century,
the Center for Security Policy, and the
other of the major neoonservative think
tanks that pushed for that war at that
And they had power that influence
they had all the power and influence
they needed because they got it from
Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. And what
Powell said was this was a separate
government inside the government that
was run like a cell that was run by Dick
Cheney. Worms was known as Cheny's
agent, his plant at state where his job
he and John Bolton who is not a
neoonservative because he's never any
kind of leftist. He's just a
conservative nationalist type but one of
their fellow travelers very close with
them. Bolton and Wormser's job was
preventing Powell and Armmitage, his
guy, from preventing the war to keep a
leash on them in whatever ways that they
could obstruct their efforts. And then
um so in the vice president's office,
you had Scooter Libby and Eric Edelman
and Elliot Abrams. No, no, pardon me.
Elliot Abrams was on the National
Security Council with Zay Khalilzad, the
same guy who was the primary author of
the 1992 defense planning guidance along
with Libby. um and Steven Hadley who was
the deputy national security adviser.
Then you had in on the defense policy
board you had Gene Kirkpatrick who again
was from the Social Democrats USA and
the Young People's Socialist League
before she converted to commentary
magazine and Reaganism making her a
classical definition oh and as a
hardcore Zionist of course a classical
definition neoconservative along with
Kenneth Adelman and Richard Pearl was
the chair of the defense policy board
which is you know very important
position advisory board and he was
really the power behind the scenes major
ring leader of the group there. Then um
Nuke Gingrich was another fellow
traveler, the former speaker of the
House of Representatives, um Republican
who you could consider him sort of like
John Bolton in a way where he's like
more or less one of them, but not
exactly. But for example, you may have
heard the stories about how Dick Cheney
and Scooter Libby made 14 trips to CIA
headquarters to beat them over the head
and say, "We need more against Iraq.
Come up with it." And they wouldn't come
up with it enough. Well, Nuke Gingrich
did the same thing. went to CIA
headquarters over and over and over
again saying, "Give us the goods. We
don't have enough. We need more."
That's really dark. Yeah. So then under
Wolawitz, the deputy secretary of
defense was Douglas Fe, who was deputy
secretary of defense for policy. And
under him was Abram Schulski. And
Scholsky was a guy who ran the office of
special plans, which sounds innocuous
enough, but this was the core of the
neoconservative plot to launder lies
from Ahmed Chalabe's exile group, the
Iraqi National Congress, into the
intelligence stream along with whatever
they could dig out of the CIA's trash
that the CIA had decided already to
ignore. And they were they had Michael
Rubin and Michael Leadine and a whole
group of I used to know all of their
names, the guys at the office special
plans. There's six or eight of them. And
across the hall was the policy
counterterrorism evaluation group which
was led by David Wormser. Again, he's
traveling around. He's vice president's
office, he's state, he's defense,
wherever they need him. And that's
Wormser and a guy named Michael Maloof.
And their job was to dig through the CI
trash and the exiles lies and try to
come up with anything to connect Saddam
to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
These guys all had this agenda and man
it was Zionism is at the core of it all
and there's really just no denying that
and in many cases they admitted it and
there are very authoritative sources on
this. For example, Thomas L. Freriedman
of the New York Times for a very long
time a reporter and is now of course the
famous columnist wrote the Lexus and the
olive tree and the world is flat. Bill
Clinton said he's the most important
public intellectual in America. He's is
a somewhat conservative Jewish Zionist
New York Times writer and Iraq war
supporter. Okay. But he gave an
interview to he's not a neoonservative
and not really a fellow traveler of
theirs. He's a guy who just lives in the
same world as them, but he knows a hell
of a lot. He's extremely plugged in.
Okay, for people who don't know, look
him up. Okay, Thomas El Friedman. Thomas
Friedman gave an interview to Harets
where he goes, "Let me tell you
something." Okay, there's nine guys
within a mile of here and they're the
ones who did it. I'm sorry I'm getting
the quote wrong. I think the nine guys
was Seymour Hurst said it was nine guys.
Um but Freriedman said something very
close to that to Harets that it was the
neoconservatives.
It was this very small group of guys.
This was their war. They plotted it.
They planned it. They made the
advertising push to make it acceptable.
It was their war and they got it. That's
what it was. Philip Zelico who is not a
neoonservative. He was more of a Council
on Foreign Relations type with Conna
Rice and um Robert Blackill and some of
those other guys who were not part of
the neoonservative set in the same
government. Zelico, you might remember
was the principal author of the 911
Commission report. A lot of people don't
like him for that for whatever reasons,
good and bad probably. Um but Zelico
said, "Let me tell you something, okay,
about the motivation for the Iraq war."
And this is not something that you'll
hear very much, okay? But Saddam Hussein
paid the families of Palestinian suicide
bombers. Saddam Hussein would pay any
family who lost anybody in to Israeli
violence, no matter what or on no matter
what. So that meant if the Israelis
bulldozed some old lady in her home and
murdered her, then Saddam Hussein would
pay a bounty to her survivors. But it
also meant if some guy went and did a
suicide attack and blew up a pizzeria
full of kids on a Friday night, Saddam
Hussein would pay a bounty to his
survivors too. So this was quite clearly
incentivizing terrorist attacks against
Israeli civilians. Right. So that is a
real security problem
for Israel.
And as Philip Zelikau said, this was a
hard motivating factor for the
neoconservatives to want to launch this
war. So how does the military-industrial
complex now start stepping into this
whole picture?
Great place for this question. So Andrew
Coburn is a great author. His brother
Patrick Coburn, I mentioned previously,
is the most important or at least in in
our era, has been the most important
Western journalist, especially in Iraq,
I would argue. Um um Alexander Coburn is
the leftist agitator founder of
Counterpunch who died of cancer years
ago. Um and Andrew is the author who
writes the books and uh his wife Leslie
Coburn wrote the great book Out of
Control about the Iran Contra scandal
and and then Andrew wrote Rumsfeld his
rise fall and catastrophic legacy and
killchain about the terror wars
especially the drone wars and all that
stuff. Brilliant guy. So he told me
years ago, he goes, "Listen, here's the
best way to understand the
neoonservative movement. They're the
cross between the Israel lobby and the
military-industrial complex, right? So
we already have banking and oil, and
banking and oil already has the Council
on Foreign Relations since the end of
the First World War. That's their center
of gravity, right?" Well, the neocons
weren't all that welcome there, right?
So they said, "Well, screw you guys.
We'll make our own think tanks." and
they made their alliance with the
military-industrial complex who had a
lot of money at stake but not so many
egghheads to write the studies about why
their products needed to be purchased by
their captive audience the Pentagon. So,
this is where the neoconservatives come
in very handy to the military-industrial
complex. And of course, what's the
center of America's relationship with
Israel? Military support and security
guarantees, right? That's what it all
comes down to is America guaranteeing
Israel security militarily. So, how do
we do that? We do that by making
Lockheed Ridge, making Israel armed. And
so, you have this perfect alliance
between these factions. So in the 1980s
it was really with this money it's how
they took over and there and the
organization it provided was how they
took over the Olan and Melon and SCAF
foundations they took over the American
enterprise institute and heritage then
they created their own forest of all the
new ones. Washington Institute for
Near's policy. Um I think the committee
on the present danger was previous to
this but um the I guess they recreated
the committee on the present danger.
they had uh PANAK and the Center for
Security Policy again that's Frank
Gaffne and his guys and uh whatever a
handful of others there that helped to
boost that whole and and and created
that echo chamber and of course along
very importantly with again the weekly
standard magazine and Bruce Jackson from
Lockheed is really the exemplar of this
because he came in in the 1990s and he
put up all the money for the committee
on NATO expansion and the committee for
the liberation of Iraq and they focused
mostly on humanitarian excuses for going
in and helping the Iraqi people, but
they were working handin glove with Bill
Crystal as you know, one of the agents
of the Axis of Crystal, as Justin called
it, the guys lying us into war with the
Weekly Standard leading the charge and
Jonah Goldberg and the uh National
Review right behind him, doing
everything they could to push us into
that war. Michael Leine would write and
Jonah Goldberg would publish over and
over and over again. Michael Ladine
demanding faster please. We have to keep
going to the rest of the terror masters
especially Tyrron as soon as possible as
Jonah Goldberg wrote Baghdad denda est
meaning must be destroyed right like
Carthage must be destroyed and and
Baghdad dinda est part two where he says
it's the leine doctrine he approvingly
quotes the leine doctrine is that
America every 10 years or so we have to
take some small country and throw them
up against the wall just to show the
world that we mean business.
That's conservatism in the hands of
these essentially bastard children of
Leon Trosky, the founder of the Red
right? And and Justin, when you read
when you get into Justin Roando and you
read Trosky Strauss and the neocons and
all this, you can see where he's talking
about there were art there were
arguments in the pages of the National
Review about Trosky and his legacy from
some of these neocons at that time. And
Justin talks about like how baffled must
the readership of the National Review be
right now that these are your leaders.
They're trites. This is who controls the
Republican part party and American
foreign policy. The the world won't be
safe till the revolution is complete.
And by the way, we got to start with all
Israel's enemies first. It's nuts. So
underpinning this kind of ever growing
bureaucracy that's connected to the
military-industrial complex is this kind
of collectivism thinking
and money you know market so much money
and you know as I show we'll talk about
this more in the cold war section when
we get to it later but
it was a real crisis at the end of the
cold war for the military-industrial
complex and they were open about it
like what's going to happen to us now he
tried to get in to administering welfare
payments and stuff they're like They're
they are not a free market operation.
They're a government-connected regime.
they trying to pivot, you're saying?
Yeah. They're trying to figure out,
yeah, what are we going to do in the
world, right? And then but the idea is
clear that look, if we control the think
tanks and the think tanks decide the
policy, then that we can decide what
kind of weapons we need to develop to
have for sale. So, are we building
jungle gear or are we building desert
gear? What kind of tanks? What kind of
helicopters? If we set the policy, then
we get to save money by developing the
by making good guesses about what kind
of weapons the Pentagon is going to need
cuz we're the ones deciding. It's so I
just remembered a great footnote for
this. You guys will love it. Lockheed
stock and two smoking barrels by Richard
Cummings. And it's at my site again
scottton.org/bearuse.
And you can also find it at corpatch as
well. It was originally written for
playboy.com. And I interviewed the guy
that was one of the first interviews I
did when I started the show full-time in
January of 2007. And he says, "Guess
what? All those neocons who were such
lacunics and who were ping around with
Netanyahu and talking about oil
pipelines to Hifa, they were all on
Lockheed's payroll. The only one who
wasn't was Hadley. But Hadley worked for
a law firm that had represented them.
But the rest of them had had or not all
the rest of them many of and I don't
just mean the think tank guys but like
the guys in the W. Bush administration
had some direct connection to Lockheed
including Dick Cheny's wife sat on the
board of directors. Not that he's a
neoconservative you understand but c can
you actually speak to that? I'm sorry to
zoom out again on human nature.
No you should.
Do do you think
so? I I should actually mention I don't
know much about Lockheed but to the
degree I've interacted with folks that
are locked or engineers and it's it uh
there's some incredible engineering
that's going on there.
And I wonder like do they all believe
in what they're doing? They have a
narrower problem set that they're
It's just no different than a soldier. I
mean if you ask them I know what they'll
tell you. That ain't my job. My job is
making sure this gizmo works.
But does anyone at any place in Lockheed
think like it is their job to think
about the big picture ethics of all of
Yes. But their customer is the US
government. And the US government is a
democracy that represents the will of
the consensus of the majority adult
population of this great free land. And
always outsourcing their ethics.
Yes. And listen, I got to tell you, man,
this is so important. I'm so glad that
you mentioned this because you do have
in fact like direct quotes from for
example Rathon is one coming straight to
mind where they say listen I mean these
policies are decided by the government
our job is to make sure that they have
what they need and that's to be decided
by other people right but then no Rathon
will directly intervene in policy to
make sure that the policy is what they
want for example Barack Obama started a
genocidal war against the people of
Yemen in 2015, which Donald Trump
continued. I'm jumping way ahead in our
narrative here, but the House and only
because of peace activists. There's no
Houthy lobby in America, believe me. It
was only Quakers and hippies and
libertarians said, "Please stop this."
And got Congress to pass a war powers
resolution twice to try to force Trump
to end the war. They passed the wimpy
kind that he's allowed to veto instead
of the other kind that he can't. And so
he vetoed it twice. But then guess what?
Pete Navaro, his trade representative,
we're talking Trump one term here. Pete
Navaro, his trade representative,
told the New York Times that the reason
that they kept the war going and vetoed
and and refused to end the war was to
pay Rathon because Rathon wanted the
Yemen war because it was making them a
bunch of money. And the Trump people
since they had done these tariffs that
were frustrating big manufacturing firms
in America, they said we have to find a
way to put talk about collectivism. We
have to find a way to put manufacturing
on welfare. So what we'll do is we'll
commit genocide against the people of
Yemen because that's what Saudi and UAE
want. Not because of anything that has
anything to do with America's national
interest. The Houthies were helping us
kill al Qaeda guys a month before that.
Um, but we're going to do this for them
and because
wants free money because they're mad
that we put these tariffs on China and
disrupted some of their supplies and
whatever. So, they're going to put this
one big company on the dole and that's
going to make somehow all of
manufacturing in America happy. That was
their reasoning for doing it because
Rathon was demanding it. Then Rathon
will turn right around and go, "Hey,
listen, Lex, don't come crying to me."
It was the democratically elected people
of this country who demanded that we
make these wares to provide your
security, pal. I don't know what you
want to say. And they they pretend that
they're not dealing with the devil, but
they are. Somehow they know it.
Somewhere they know it. Somewhere this
department knows that that's that
department's job. Like we do hire
lobbyists to to advocate for policies,
don't we? Yeah, of course we do.
But it's very uncomfortable to think
about that. So they
You know what gets me, man, is this is
how the Hbomb lobby works, too. It's no
different. Honeywell makes and Lockheed,
they make hydrogen bombs and they will
send a salesman to Capitol Hill talking
about, "Senator, Senator, let me tell
you, I got to get rid of some Hbombs
here. What kind of deal can I cut? What
do I got to do to get this Hbomb in your
driveway by tonight?"
They are like uh supply side. You might
have some you probably didn't think it
all the way through, right? But
somewhere in the back of your mind is
this like half articulated fantasy that
nuclear weapons are a demand side
business in this country where the
military comes to the Congress and says
we need exactly this many and then the
Congress says to industry we need
exactly this many. What do you mean the
industry is trying to push Hbombs
because of their awesome profit margins
and that we run the Hbomb supply
business the same way you would expect
with M4 rifles or combat boots? Yep,
that's exactly right. And that's exactly
what's meant by the military-industrial
complex. So, there's a real strong case
to be made that it's a supply side. War
is a supply side.
uh entity in our era. It sure as hell
is, isn't it? It's the era of the phony
wars, man. What do I got to do to put
this war in your driveway today, Lex? I
tell you that they hate Islam. I tell I
the Islams hate your religion. They hate
your mama. They hate freedom. They did
this. Did I ever tell you about the
Beirut bombing in 1983? What do I got to
do to get you mad enough to do this with
me? Right? That's why it's a constant
bombardment of propaganda. They don't
have a real case to make. They got to
try to scare you and lie to you.
And that's from their perspective. From
the industry perspective, the
Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan,
Yemen wars are a success. 8 trillion
It's a self-licking ice cream cone. It's
the military-industrial complex. Hey,
you know what? Don't you criticize it,
Lex. It's called now the defense
industrial base. And if you ask the
Democrats, they'll tell you it's the
number one best and most important
reason for the Ukraine war is because
it's a good subsidy for our in our
defense industrial base. They ran out of
arguments and they settled on that and
they did not know how absolutely demonic
they sounded that that's why we want to
have a war is just literally like in
your crazy conspiracy theory. You're
crazy when you say it and you call it
the MIC, but now it's the Defense
Industrial Base and it's awesome. It's
spectacular and you better get on board
for it. It's the best reason to have
these wars. In fact, and we're not
embarrassed to tell you. You can go read
it in Politico. I don't know what else
to say. This is straight out of the
Democrats mouths on the last war in the
last presidential term there. How do the
American people fight this? Well, the
first thing would be to get used to the
idea that they're lying to you next
time, too, right? They've done nothing
but take advantage this whole time.
There's no reason to give your
government the benefit of the doubt that
that they care what's true or that they
want you to understand the truth. That's
not what they're about. They're trying
to get you I mean, just think about how
they operate always. They're trying to
get you upset so that then you'll let
them do something, right? like I'm
detecting a pattern here. And it doesn't
mean that everything is a false flag or
anything like that, but it's just they
do nothing but create crises and then
exploit them. They It's a monopoly on
security services. So when George W.
Bush is on the job for 8 months before
September 11th, his approval rating goes
up to 90%.
Because we can't fire the national
government and replace it with another
one. We're not having another election
for another 3 years. And so this is the
security force we got. And so we better
support it because what? We're trying to
send a signal to the world that you
better know that we're all one for all
and you better not mess with us or
whatever. But what are we really doing?
We're telling George Bush that he has a
mandate to do anything he thinks he can
get away with. And that we do nothing
but support him after the greatest
failure of any president in all of
American history. For that to be allowed
to happen on his watch. when we all
know, of course, that they knew it was
coming and that at least parts of the
CIA were warning and trying desperately
to get the White House to pay attention
to the fact that this attack was coming
and that Bush refused to pay attention,
I think, because he didn't want to be
distracted with going after Osama bin
Laden in Afghanistan when he was trying
to go to Iraq. And which is another
important point point to bring up back
to our the debate with Duboitz there
where oh the Jews this the Jews that and
the neoconservatives and whatever. Well
to be perfectly clear as everyone knows
George W. Bush is a Methodist, right?
He's the son of Episcopalian wasps from
Connecticut. And Dick Cheney is some
kind of redneck from Mountain Wyoming.
And I mean that in a in a complimentary
way. Yeah. No, I I I appreciate
working-class folk. I've done plenty of
that kind of work myself. Um, but he
like climbed electric poles and stuff
like that. He's uh from out west and as
a cowboy and a conservative and a
right-winger and a nationalist and a
tough guy. That's his problem. Donald
Rumsfeld was previously the secretary of
defense and had his own plans for there
was this whole debate back during that
era of the transformation of the
military. Everybody knows now that the
Soviet Union's gone and it's the whole
new order, what order is it and what
should the military look like? What sort
of weapon system should we focus on?
This and that. And Romsfeld had his own
Like generically speaking, he wanted to
stick it to big army and give their
money to the air force and the special
operations forces instead. again the
Lockheed promo video where what we do is
we send in special operations forces and
air power to whoop anybody in a few
weeks and then move on to the next one.
We don't we want to stay light and fast
and not get bogged down. That was one of
their excuses for letting Bin Laden go.
Well, we didn't want to get bogged down.
Oh, what? Killing Bin Lad and Zawahi,
the two most important guys that you
could possibly target in the thing who
were both there. You know, come on. But
that was part of their excuse. Light and
fast, keep it going. W. Bush, I think,
wanted to prove he was tougher than his
father. In a sense, probably wanted to
avenge his father and from the fake
assassination plot, but also the
humiliation, again, Bill Hicks was so
wise about this that the humiliation of
HW Bush being voted out of office while
Saddam Hussein was still in the chair.
And he he says they had to wait a couple
of days for Saddam Hussein to quit gut
laughing to get his quote. And then he
goes, "We have nothing against America.
We just want to see George Bush beheaded
and his head kicked down the road like a
soccer ball. And then Bill goes, "Wow,
me and Saddam Hussein, we're like this.
Who would have thought it?"
So some of it is personal, too, right?
And in fact, Crystal said, "I remember
seeing Crystal on TV." Say, "Well, of"
and see, wait, wait, before Crystal, I
said this to my math teacher in 11th
Were you Scott Horton?
To your math teacher? in in 1994
when the day that they announced or the
next day after they announced that W.
Bush was going to also run for governor
just like his brother Jeb is running for
governor in Florida. I said to my math
teacher, "Oh, you see what they're
I was 17. I said, "You see what they're
doing? They're making sure that one or
the other at least of these guys will be
a secondterm governor in the year 2000.
then they can run for president and go
back to Iraq. Which means the Democrats
are going to I mean which means the
Republicans are going to run a weakling
in 96 and throw the election for Bill
and let him win again so that they can
run a fresh Bush in 2000. Nailed it,
dude. And why? Because of the
humiliation. That was my high school
thinking at the time. Because of the
humiliation that Saddam's still there,
but Bush is gone. Bush lost after only
one term. And then so that's got to be
avenged. And that's clearly what they're
doing here. And then Bill Crystal said
the same thing. Now Bill Crystal is
bullying W. Bush, right? Bill Crystal
ain't me. He's him up there. And he's
saying, "Well, I just can't imagine that
W. Bush would risk being unelected after
only one term with Saddam Hussein still
in charge over there. So I think that
it's just an obvious matter of course
that he will have to invade Iraq in his
first term. and I encourage that and
think it's great and he should. And I
saw Crystal say that probably during the
campaign before he was even elected
president somewhere around there. And
again, I wasn't quite sure who Crystal
was and I surely didn't know who his
father was in the neoonservative
movement yet, but I knew that this is
the guy from the Weekly Standard that's
always on about Saddam Hussein. And so
that was the way that he was trying to
frame it to W. Bush himself that of
course you can't take the risk of
running for reelection in '04 with
Saddam Hussein still sitting there. What
if you lost just like your dad? Your
family could never live that down.
Saddam still in the chair after two
Bushes got unelected after only one
term. Perish the thought. That makes me
realize that when you're in the seat of
the president, it takes real courage to
resist the military-industrial complex.
And W Bush had no courage or insight or
depth or humanity.
And so there's something about our
political system that doesn't make it
easy for truly courageous singular
figures to win the presidency, right?
And you'd probably be terrified of them
if they did. You know what I mean?
because you got people like that or
they're going to use that courage.
Again, this is sort of the irony of the
neoconservatives is they say, you know,
Henry Kissinger is a monster. His amoral
foreign policy that says, well, if the
Indonesians feel like killing all the
tea, I guess they have to or whatever
that not like us, we're a moralitybased
foreign policy. That's why we have to
invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein is so
immoral and we have to go and bring
light and goodness to the world by doing
the right thing by starting another war.
And so that's right. Those are your two
choices. You have amoral and immoral in
the name of morality you know and using
that excuse. And as they would always
put it the Straussians cuz he was one of
the former Troskites that then a lot of
these guys studied under. and he would
say, "Oh, no. We're all philosopher
kings." See, and unlike Lockian or
Jeffersonian type American principles,
our principles are that elites, you
know, like David Wormser and Richard
Pearl who are so smart that uh only they
can understand the real truth and the
subtext of the truth. and everybody else
is some idiot who has to be lied to with
noble lies by their philosopher kings
because they won't do the right thing
for the right reasons. they have to be
told false reasons to make them do the
right thing and all these things and
they got to justify all their lies by
wrapping it up in all those
justifications that they know what
they're doing when of course these
people are just clowns dude there's no
different and and I know look at the
time I was driving a cabin this town on
this up and down this street okay and
the average idiot around here knew
better than all of this right and it
wasn't because they had special
knowledge but they just knew you don't
start a war knows what could happen you
have no idea dude how many Just regular
people told me I don't think Saddam
Hussein is friends with Osama bin Laden,
you know.
Yeah. There's a deep wisdom in that
common sense.
Of course.
And that's what makes America great is
for the longest time the people had
And so to the degree that the people
have power and that wisdom can speak
through its representatives, then then
we'll be all right. But the more and
more the bureaucracy grows, the more the
military-industrial complex gains power,
then that common sense wisdom of the
people is silenced.
Mhm. Well, and I like telling this
story, too. So, I'll go ahead and rattle
on the guy to YouTube, too. I had a guy
in my cab.
Who was like a Mr. Fancy Pants man about
town. I dropped him off at some very
swanky bachelor pad apartments off of
South Mopac there.
And he was a real nice guy. And we had a
long conversation because I wouldn't let
the poor so go.
And I'm beating him over the head. And
I'm telling them, damn it, I swear to
God that this is true. Okay? George W.
Bush, Connie Zice, Coen Powell, George
Tennant, none of them have said that
Saddam did 9/11. Now, Dick Cheney did,
but he's a damn liar. But there's a real
important reason why Bush and Powell are
not saying that. Okay? They're perfectly
happy to leave you with that impression
that that must be what they were trying
to imply and that's what you thought you
heard them say, but you didn't. and you
promise me you go inside and you Google,
you look hard, you will not find them
directly saying that. And he says to me,
"Ah, but come on, man. I mean, if Saddam
Hussein didn't do 9/11, then why are we
attacking him then, right?" Which is a
good question. But to him, the answer
was built into the thing that actually
the cab driver couldn't possibly be
right. Because the people in Washington
would not lead me to believe that this
has anything at all to do with avenging
that innocent dead Americans slaughtered
on September 11th, airplanes full of
little kids on their way on vacation.
That what do you mean this has nothing
to do with that? What's more likely?
your cab driver knows better or that no,
you are right to disbelieve and believe
in authority that swears that they're
doing this to protect you from the enemy
that attacked you. And so that's the
kind of cognitive dissonance that is
always baked into these kinds of things.
It's the same thing with Israel now.
Well, if this is the most barbarian
society on the planet, how come we're
their best friends? Yeah, again, a very
good question, but it's not answered by
they must not be. they must be really
great otherwise we wouldn't be which is
what the cognitive dissonance would try
to have you explain to yourself I guess
yeah by the way everyday people like
just like we said often have a deep
wisdom that the government lacks and
more than almost any other career I
think cab drivers really have that
wisdom I don't know what it is about cab
drivers but they really get it because
they get to talk to a lot of people get
to think through a lot of it you get to
like think through it
hey I think all the time about I I mean,
there's a lot of cabar I don't remember,
but the there are a few that I do where
it was I got something wrong and the guy
goes, "No, no, no. It's not like that.
It's like this and he was right and I
was wrong and I ah, you know, I really
picked up something there." You know
what I mean? Like one of the good I said
I was kind of a new world order cook
back then. And and one of the good ones
I I still remember where I was on Mopac
where the guy said to me that like
listen man, it ain't conspiracy. It's
just politics, okay? It's the game over
who controls the power. You don't need
secret societies. You just need oak
tables, man. It's this is business and
that's how it goes. And and if you take
that click with you
even Yeah. And even the most
conspiratorial type thing, if you just
leave out the secret society crap and
just focus on Lockheed and the Israel
lobby and the Republican party and oil
interests and whatever where all these
things come together, it's all very
clear. You know what I mean? And you
don't have to be a Chskyite leftist to
see it that way at all. Like I'm a
libertarian and we're pure free market
types, which means we find it morally
criminal for any company to get a
government contract for anything, right?
Like we want no public private
partnerships of any kind. When we say
privatization, we don't mean government
contracts. We mean privatization. Get
government out of it and let free people
figure it out. Any corporation on
welfare deserves to be destroyed to a
libertarian. though it's you don't have
to like identify somehow as like well
only an anarcho syndicicalist from in
the chskyite mold would think that we
have this problem with these crony
corporations. No indeed we do. And in
fact again not again but go back who
coined the term military-industrial
complex. This is Dwight David
Eisenhower, the five-star Army general
who was the commander of all United
Nations forces in Europe in World War II
and then came home and was the two-term
Republican president of the United
States of America, who is the one who
did the coup in 53 in Iran, who's the
one who built as many nuclear missiles
as he possibly could. But why? To try to
hold the army at bay. Eisenhower said,
"God help the next president of this
country who doesn't have the experience
with the army that I do to try to keep
these men from their demands where they
were constantly demanding more
divisions, more divisions, more
divisions." And he said, "No, I'm going
to build more missiles instead. You guys
get away from me." And only he had the
power to do it at the time. I'm not
taking a stance on this, but widely
believed that these same forces blew the
head off of his successor for getting in
their way. Um, you know, which is at
least possible if not likely, right?
That that was what happened in Dallas
by by these force and we don't really
know the full
meaning the military and the
intelligence agencies, right? Is was the
It's like a network of people that work
Yeah. the black access program, special
access program in the military goes
Fletcher Prrowy and them uh their
argument about the thing which whatever.
Um whether that's true or not, it's
believable enough because and and what
Eisenhower said that on his last day in
office. Sorry, Charlie. I did the best I
could. Maybe this is half my fault. Good
luck to you. And then quit and was out
the door. And then but we have we ever
had a major reckoning since then where
what oh after Vietnam and Nixon was
impeached that was when we destroyed the
military-industrial complex. No right
that never happened after the end of the
cold war. Is that what happened? No. We
went to Bosnia and then we went to Iraq.
We went to Bosnia and stay in the Middle
East and expand wherever we can.
Easinau speeches are haunting.
Yeah. There's the other one is the cross
of iron speech where he calculates the
cost of battleships compared to schools
and grocery stores and things. It's not
all public good or you know so-called
public goods like public schools but he
talks about like private investment and
the comparisons that every bit of money
that we spend on this is wealth that
comes from the American people that the
government then denies to us takes from
us and destroys like if you ever read
1984 in the part
I read it many times of course
in there's part of the book where
Winston Smith is um being brought under
the wing of his future torturer O'Brien
and O'Brien gives him the manual for how
we do it, right? And he holds up in his
bedroom and reads the book of How We Do
It. And it says in there that listen, we
keep them in a permanent state of war at
all times to keep them on edge, to keep
them insecure, to take any excess wealth
that the people would otherwise spend
improving their own lives. And we sink
it into the ocean in the form of the
floating fortress. Or we blast it off
into space in the form of these missiles
and rockets that we're building so that
the people can't have it. so that we
cannot build up our society to protect
our own needs and interests. Now, of
course, anyone leaning left listening to
this would prefer that the government
spend this money on public school and
healthcare and infrastructure. Anybody
right leaning listening to this says
that's my money. Stop printing money and
inflating the money supply. Stop taxing
me. Leave me alone. Me and my buddies
will invest in private businesses and we
will produce the wealth society needs.
Fine. What we all have to agree is that
this has to all come to an end where we
let them take trillions and trillions of
our dollars. What they can't tax, they
borrow. And what they can't borrow, they
inflate. And with the inflation, this is
the absolute crisis of confidence.
Again, Bin Laden invited our government
to do this quote self-inflicted wound,
meaning really our government wounding
all of us. And this is the absolute
crisis of our era is price inflation.
It's why people can't pay the rent. It's
why they can't afford to feed their
family. It's why they're forced to send
their children to government school like
a German or a Russian. It's why they are
are broke. It's why young men and women
can't start families and buy homes. It's
because of price inflation which is the
result of monetary expansion. the
expansion especially of bank credit
although in our very current era because
of Donald Trump and Joe Biden's massive
stimulus bills that they signed during
co and you can trace that back to wars
and it's almost entirely like well big
government overall relies on
inflationary money but then yes this is
a massive part of our budget is the uh
annual you know militarism for the
global empire and and so like to turn it
around Jonah Goldberg from the National
Review, Mr. Leine Doctrine. He says,
"Well, we can't have a gold standard cuz
what if there's a war, right?" But then
that's Ron Paul's point. That's why we
should have a gold standard. So Jonah
Goldberg can't have a war, right?
Because they have to print the money. If
they had to raise your taxes to go stop
Tojo, maybe even then they had to print
money and and and borrow money. But
people sure as hell took Nazi Germany
and Imperial Japan seriously enough to
fight and they still had to conscript
millions of people to do it. But
whatever, at least you got a credible
threat there. But you're going to tell
the American people, "Hey, we're going
to have to raise everybody's income tax
in every bracket by 6% so that we can
launch an aggressive war against Iraq so
that Israel can save a nickel a barrel
hopefully if they can get their silly
pipeline they want built." American
people say hell no. when they print the
money, remember this, George Bush sent
people, anyone who paid income taxes,
got a refund check of an extra three or
$400, depending on your bracket, in 2003
and 4. This was meant to look like,
well, I infer this, it was meant to look
like your dividend. It was meant to fool
you into thinking that the Iraq war is
profitable, that America is making money
off of this. like in the cliche that you
would hear from people in the
neighborhood. Well, war is good for the
economy and look, we're all directly
benefiting from this. Apparently, we all
get an extra three or $400. But, of
course, they just printed that money.
And all that inflation during the W.
Bush years is what led to the giant
housing bubble and the crash of08 and
the absolute decimation that came after
that. And then what Obama do? Came and
printed even more money, built up an
even bigger bubble to try to deal with
that. Then of course the COVID lockdowns
essentially played the role of high
interest rates and just crushing the
economy and forcing a massive recession
on people. But then what did they do?
They didn't just have the Fed ex like
lower interest rates and lower reserve
ratios so that they could expand money
even more. They literally just mailed
everybody checks of brand new money from
the Treasury. All brand new money. And
by some measures they created twothirds
of all US dollars that were ever created
were created since 2020. And so that's
Trump's fault. and Biden's fault for
doing those giant uh monetary expansion
acts and that's what has led to the
giant inflationary crisis today is this
absolutely incompetent managers of our
economy and this is the thing where if
people aren't libertarians at all if
people lean any degree left or right
from me and from Austrian school
libertarian things is totally fine
disagree with me on whatever you want
warfare welfare anything but it's just
true man it's just true the Austrians
are correct about the cause of the
business cycle, the boom and bust. Now,
of course, if the frost wipes out all
the oranges, then that's going to cause
disruptions in that one market or
whatever. But what caused what Ludig Bis
called the cluster of errors where all
these businessmen are making all these
bad bets all at the same time that then
leads to these terrible crashes and
resets and corrections. And the answer
is it's inflationary money and
artificially low interest rates. Because
what it does is it's manipulating the
price of money, artificially valuing
money with government control and
leading producers to follow false price
signals and to mistakenly believe that
there are more resources available in
the economy for use than there really
are. If you had free market interest
rates, then the more capital you use to
invest, the more it costs to borrow more
capital, right? And when savings are low
and capital is low to invest in new
things, then interest rates would
naturally go up. But when the Federal
Reserve Bank holds interest rates low,
then that doesn't happen. And so you
have especially in the higher order
goods like mining and quaries and
machine tools and the kinds of things
that are then used to sell the other
business to businesses to make other
things and these kind of things. They
make long-term farmers or other ones.
They make long-term loans at
artificially low interest rates that
then they end up getting screwed later
because they're not able to produce to
keep up when the crash comes. Now, let's
say you own a quarry and you're Austrian
school guy and you see what's going on
here. Well, Allan Greenspan's just
printing a bunch of money and so all my
competitors are hiring new workforces
and they're they're buying new machine
tools and they're getting way ahead of
me in their productive capacity, but I
know that they're screwed cuz they're
going deep into debt for all this stuff
and the music's going to stop. However,
if I don't if you the core owner, if you
don't play the same game,
yeah, you're also
you're going to lose sooner than them.
You're going to lose before they have a
chance to get screwed. So, even if you
know better, you still have to expand
beyond what you really know that you do.
So, like one example that Austrians like
to use, I think, is like if the circus
comes to town for a month or whatever
and this the local Dairy Queen is really
busy and then the guy builds a giant
extension onto the thing that like this
is how it's going to be now, but no,
this is just temporary. This is a boom
followed by a bus, right? Well, so this
is the the artificial value of those
customers in that time induced by the
traveling circus. But in our case, we're
talking about money artificially
inflating the value of certain firms and
certain banks, investments and these
kind of things. This is what leads to
the cluster of errors that leads to the
collapses. And people can read the of
course the brilliant Lisa's in his
theory of money and credit from 100
years ago. Then of course there's Murray
Rothbart, what has government done to
our money and the case against the Fed.
And then there's all of the brilliant
guys of the Austrian school, especially
Robert Murphy and Tom Woods and all the
guys at the Lit Biscus Institute and
imperialism and militarism are at the
heart of this. David Stockman, Ronald
Reagan's former um uh budget adviser
calls this the great deformation. And he
says all these little bubbles like 87
and 92 and 99 and '08, these are the
little bubbles on top of the big bubble
of America's overall inflationary
monetary policy since the end of the
Second World War in order to make the
militarism seem artificially cheap to
make it seem more imagine how deceived
people would have to be to think that
war is good for the economy because they
notice the Russian spending and the
immediate stimulative effect when this
is the difference between the scene and
the unseen. Where's all that wealth
coming from? And now where's it going?
It's going to make tools of death and
destruction, net losses in property
values all the way around in, you know,
and a lot of times goods that can never
be reused again. The plane can fly
again, but the bombshirt can't. F-35s
fall out of the sky all the time in the
headlines again today. Um, and so this
is all a net loss
um, in terms of all of this capacity
being directed into militarism and then
uh, going away. But people get fooled
into thinking that this is what's good
and this is what's necessary. And of
course, Locky does things and the rest
of them too, Boeing and the rest. They
have explicit um gerrymandering type
policies where they will have one small
part of every weapon system made in as
many factories as possible all across
the country so that if Congress ever
wants to roll back anything, they will
have an army of lobbyists to threaten
them that we're talking about 600 jobs
in your district. Congressman, is that
what you're willing to do? And then they
all just snap right into line. You know,
again with they say, "Hey, we're just
supplying the weapons that the Congress
demands." No, they're not. They're
rigging the whole game. So, we have no
choice but to give into them
essentially. If I can just take an
aside, you mentioned you used to be a
cab driver.
I would love to understand the story of
somebody that was a cab driver that
eventually became one of the most
prolific libertarians, anti-war
intellects of the modern era.
Who are you?
I'm just talking.
I'm a I mean, look at this.
Look at this. Right.
The number of citations here breaks
7,000. Look, I mean, how
and why were you driving a cab? And what
how did you come to be this this person?
Well, I mean, I'm a skateboarder type
and I'm just anti-government type. Like
I say, I I learned about Ronald Reagan
being a dope pusher when I was a child.
Bill Clinton burned the branch of
Indians to death in front of my eyes and
called it a suicide when I was 16.
Covered up the Oklahoma bombing, blamed
it on one guy two years later, which
there's still they're no longer getting
away with that. There's a brand new book
out called Blowback and I haven't read
it yet, but I know the fact checker and
I know that it's right that McVey had
friends. They were undercover FBI
informants. At least two of them, Roger
Moore and Andre Strawmeer were agent
provocators and they covered it up
because it was their own guys who did
it. I'm not saying the government did it
on purpose, but I'm saying the FBI was
essentially a sting that they were meant
to stop it and they didn't stop it. And
they covered that up and they got the
whole media to go along with that. And
then, you know, I was a big fan of like,
it's kind of funny, but I'm kind of
angry at them, so I'll put them on blast
anyway. I don't care. When I was young,
I read Reason magazine, and I thought, I
hate these guys. That's what a
libertarian is. That they think their
job is debunking Gulf War illness. They
think their job is debunking the number
of Iraqis starving to death under Bill
Clinton's sanctions.
and and they don't give a damn about the
branch dividians. They don't give a damn
about any of this, right? I don't know
what they're good for. Lower taxes and
maybe guns. Not that they're doing
anything important about it. And so I
shied away from the libertarian movement
for a long time because that's what I
thought the libertarian movement was.
And I would rather pile around with a
bunch of right-wing militia guys because
at least they care about the branch
dividians. There's in in Austin at that
time there's kind of a thriving what
they call the patriot movement which is
like the civilian side of the militia
movement basically and it's all like
yeah right-wing conspiracy guys who are
right about everything then about who
started that fire in Waco about who
helped blow up Oklahoma City about the
sanctions in Iraq killing kids about the
Gulf War illness that they were covering
up illnesses I should say that they were
covering up and saying oh drink a beer
and chin up and don't be a wimp and all
this these guys were dying of cancers
and other diseases that they got from
what the Pentagon did to them and
exposed them to in Iraq War I one. And
so, you know, the neo the the the
conspiracy cooks were batting a hundred,
batting a thousand, whatever. I'm not a
baseball guy. I'm a skateboarder.
They're batting a thousand. Yeah.
You know, during that era, they're
they're really right about a lot of
things and I would have rather hung
around them even though I wasn't
culturally right-wing like them. But
William Norman Grigg at the New American
Magazine was really a great and of
course Ron Paul came back to Congress in
97. Was Ron Paul the the person that
sort of convinced you that
libertarianism could be a powerful
Yes. Ron Paul convinced me of a lot of
things, man. He's he's really been a
northstar to me this whole time. Ever
since then, I was so excited from the
I'll tell you the first time I ever saw
Ron Paul was 10 years before everybody
else got their big Giuliani moment when
Ron Whoop Rudy Giuliani in that debate
in March, pardon me, May of 2007 where
they fought over the motivation of Osama
bin Laden to attack us on 911. And Ron
said, "It's cuz we were bombing Iraq
from bases in Saudi for 10 years."
Everybody knows that. And Giuliani
flipped his lid. And Ron was of course
heroic, right? But my Giuliani moment
was a decade before I saw Ron in the
middle of the night on C-SPAM.
Dr. Paul on C-SPAN. The middle of the
night speaking to an empty Congress
uh except whoever was filling in in the
speaker chair. Mr. Speaker, I have here
in my hands reports from the British
press today about how George Bush was
selling chemical weapons to Saddam
Hussein leading right up to the invasion
of Kuwait. What's up with that? And now
and we still have all these sanctions
and doing all these things and we're so
responsible for this guy's evil in the
first place after we had backed him all
that time and all these things and this
is not wise foreign policy, Mr. Speaker.
We ought to come home. And I'm like,
"Wow, that any congressman would say
anything that honest on the record
inside the Capitol building like that, I
couldn't believe it." And I looked at
the bottom of the screen, it says Ron
Paul, R Texas. And I'm like, "No way."
Cuz you know, Bush Senior himself is
nominally from here, right? He's from
Connecticut really, but he made his
fortune here in oil and lived here for a
very long time and, you know, has raised
his family in West Texas for much of the
time and that kind of thing. So, he's an
extremely important guy in Texas
politics. So, for this congressman to
dare to say that, he's essentially
accusing Bush of treason. Um, okay. This
is I'm interested in this guy. And then
I'm reading the New American magazine,
which is the John Burchers magazine.
They have a very bad rap as racist and
stuff, which is totally not true.
They're conspiratorial, and I don't
agree with them on everything, and
they're more conservative than me, but
they're good people. They're George
Washington's Constitution guys and and
mostly Protestant and Catholic
Christians and American patriotic folk.
They're good people. And the editor of
their magazine at that time was the
great William Norman Grigg. And he would
run Ron Paul stuff constantly. He would
cover Ron. Um, and then I used to be a
pirate radio guy. So I had I would call
his weekly update. I don't know if he
still does this. It was 888 3221414. And
then I would just play the Ron Paul
weekly update and put that out over the
air. And it was always just killer
stuff, dude. Financial, you know,
monetary policy and boom and bust and
and the evils of war. I would drive
around in my cab and I would have
printed out Ron Paul speeches. And there
was one that was called a republic if
you can keep it. And then which is the
famous Benjamin Franklin quote to the
Baker lady about what do we have a
monarchy or a republic? A republic if
you can keep it. And then the sequel was
called I'm sorry Mr. Franklin, we are
all Democrats now. And it was just so
good. I And I would give this to people
in the cab. Hey, did you know there's
one good congressman? One. And he's not
good. He's better than Thomas Jefferson.
Read this and read this and read this.
And this is the light and the way. And
the thing is is all I'm selling you is a
peaceful foreign policy. I'm not saying
like or well and and freedom overall as
this is what Ron Paul emphasized. If if
you if he's asking for your trust or
your faith in anything, it's just that
you trust in freedom that it does work.
It's why we have all this stuff is
because of liberty in the first place.
And so you can count on that, you know,
but otherwise he's not selling you
anything. He delivered like a third of
the population of his district when he
was a baby doctor, right? He's not going
anywhere. He didn't have he wasn't
soliciting donations. He wasn't asking
you to join his cult or his sect of
Protestant Christianity. He was just
saying, "We don't have to do this stuff.
We don't have to believe in this. They
say these things, but gez, that doesn't
seem right cuz what about this thing?"
And he's just so wise and so good. And
and his his aids, by the way, his his
right-hand men all that time were also
really great guys, too. Especially Jeff
Dy, Danny McAdams, has been his
right-hand man and his great, you know,
adviser this whole time. and another
just really good human being.
Yeah. Well, he is and and he's a doctor,
not a lawyer. He delivered 4,000 babies.
And you know, I met his sister-in-law
who married his older brother Wayne. And
and she says to me, "Yeah, well, when
you guys say that Ron Paul delivered
4,000 babies, well, I did, too, cuz I'm
his head nurse and I delivered every one
of myself too along with him and all of
that thing." So, that's where he comes
from, man. He's a decent, sweet old
country doctor. He's married to his high
school sweetheart since her sweet 16
party. Okay. No scandals, not a hint of
it. He's got, I don't know, 150
grandchildren or whatever he is. It's
the American dream. It's perfect, dude.
And nobody's got nothing on him. Yeah.
Right. He's just He's the best.
I wish we lived in a country where a guy
like that can have a chance of being
president.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
It could have been. Dude, listen. The
Republicans of the United States of
America nominated John McCain and Mitt
Romney instead of him. You explained
that to me when we got George Washington
himself only without the slaves and
without the bloody hands. The only vet
in the race, but he was a doctor in the
Air Force.
The only one. He got up on stage and
quoted Jesus and they booed him.
He's the guy that's supposed to be
president. That's I mean, you say George
Washington, one of the greatest
Americans ever. That's the guy. Hey,
that's the guy, dude. Could have been.
Hey, and if you doubt me, just go to
anti-war.com/paul and read the last 30
years of everything he's had to say
about everything. What can I tell you,
Uh, but the the aspect, the the rigor,
you talked about the motivation, like
what you discovered, like how the hell
did you do this?
Okay, I I could think of an answer to
that, which is that like unlike all your
your Harvard professors and all of this
stuff, like the burden of proof is
really on me, right? like it's because
I'm just a skater cab driver from Austin
who didn't go to your fancy pants
college. I don't have there's no reason
that you're supposed to defer to me. And
that book is about how everybody's wrong
except me.
So, if I'm going to tell you that, then
I better be able to really demonstrate
it. And I want you to go, "Oh, yeah.
Well, but what about that coup in
Montenegro in 2016?" Well, turn the
page. I got a whole section on that. I
didn't leave out nothing. And I wrote it
in in that kind of defensive posture.
People are going to not like this.
They're going to say I don't know what
I'm talking about. Now, when I wrote
Enough already, the war was over. Enough
already came out in January 21 and I was
in a race to get it done cuz Joe Biden's
going to be inaugurated on on January 20
and the era is over. The Bush Obama era
capstone with Trump won is just at an
end on Jan and after all the true
beginning of the decade is January 21,
right? And so I knew that this book has
to come out now, but this is really
about the terror wars that are over
mostly. Not that we're completely done
in the Middle East, you understand? But
that's a bit after the fact. This is
written, Provoked is written in the
middle of the war.
Yeah. And I'm trying to change people's
mind and really get them not just to
regret the stupid things they believed
in a minute ago, but to change their
mind and get on board and let's see if
we can bring this thing to a more
reasonable conclusion sooner than later
and and get it done. It'd be like if I
wrote enough already in 2005 or six. Um,
and so I knew I wanted it to be as
bulletproof as it just possibly can be
because I don't have argumentation from
authority. I don't have like, oh yeah,
I'm from here and I can tell you that.
I'm a reporter. I'm a I'm a linguist and
I've read 10,000 Russian newspapers
going back to whatever, whatever. I
don't have any of those things. What I
do have is I've been working for
anti-war.com this whole time. I've done
6,000 interviews with the best experts.
We covered the orange revolution when it
happened. We covered the Maidan
Revolution when it happened and
everything in between and all of these
things. So, um, just like with the book
about Afghanistan and the book about the
Middle East, I was already ready to
write the book before I started writing
it. I already know the whole story.
Obviously, I had to do a lot of research
and fill in a lot of information and
correct myself on things I had wrong or
oversimplified or whatever and learned a
lot while I was writing it, but I
already knew the story overall cuz I've
been working on it for a very long time.
What are the main things that Bush,
Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden
did to cause the new cold war with
Russia and the war in Ukraine? I already
know those things. I already have the
bullet points. I that book started as a
speech I gave in 2020.
Um, in fact, it was leap day 2020, Carol
Paul's birthday, um, and the day that
Donald Trump signed the peace deal with
the Taliban to get us out of
Afghanistan, I gave a speech to the
Libertarian Party of King County um, in
Seattle, Washington called the cold the
new cold war with Russia is all
America's fault. And that that's
published at anti-war.com. And then two
years later, I spent I stayed up all
night doubling the length of the speech
and gave it again. And this is it's a
4-hour speech I gave in Utah on I think
March the 2nd, 2022, right after the war
started, explaining all the same stuff.
And then that became the nucleus of that
book basically. And then it's just a
matter of filling it out. And sorry to
ask a silly detailed question, but this
is a gigantic book. extremely detailed,
extremely wellsighted. What's your
writing process like? What how do you go
through it? So, you it started a speech
and now you have this this manifesto,
this tome.
Yeah. Well, as you can see, the chapters
are just HW Bush, Clinton, W. Bush,
Obama, and and you know, when you if you
ever get the chance to read the thing,
you'll see that it this is really just a
giant collection of citations. I don't
do too much writing in the book. Um much
unlike Justin Romano. I'm really not
that smart and have a lot to say. I'm a
great on names and dates and I hold a
grudge real well, but Justin could write
a thousand words just of like wisdom and
understanding and opinions about things
that I'm I'm just not really like that.
So, this book in a way is 7,000 note
cards arranged by your maestro here to
be hopefully to tell the story in a way
that everybody can understand. And you
know, whatever. There's pros in there.
I'm I'm writing to you, but I'm I'm
mostly I'm marshalling evidence is the
point of the whole thing that this is
what these guys did. Here's what the war
party says. And I don't straw man my
arguments. I link when I say 7,000
citations. A third of them are to the
bad guys. And this is their point of
view. And I'm telling you, here's what
they admit that they're lying. You know,
that's basically how it's written. And I
cite very little Ron Paul and very
little Pab Buchanan in there because as
much as I rever them, I don't need them.
I can quote the apparatics in charge
themselves explaining how stupid the
things that they are doing are and then
show why they did them anyway and all
the consequences and whatever. So I
don't I don't need to site the good
guys. I can site the involved. So
basically going to the primary sources
versus citing the quote unquote experts.
Yeah. and and just spending a hell of a
lot of time going through the archives.
And I am an obsessive typer. Like I
there are absolutely times where I spent
four days hunting one footnote that I
know exists and I want to make this
claim and I can't make it without my
citation. I'm going to find this thing
and I have gone to the ends of the earth
in some cases for these especially like
about the Balkan Wars and stuff. Some of
those articles are so hard to hunt down.
But then, you know, I'm reading all
these books and then all those books got
all their own citations. And a lot of,
you know, I learned this a long time
ago, but this was reinforced in this
book. Um, and this is no slam against
them. It's just against everybody is a
lot of times the people that I agree
with are wrong. And they will cite
something and then I go and read that
something and it does not say what they
said it says. And I can see why they
misunderstood it even that they're not
lying and not exaggerating, but that's
not really the the implication there.
It's really something different. So, I
double, triple, quadruple check every
goddamn thing I can until I'm like I I'm
terrified of being caught out being
wrong on a fact. And I have um
the book is 477,000 words and I it's if
if it was 6 by9 and if the font was
regular size it would be,200 pages long.
That's how long the book is. Um, and
it's but it's not well, first of all, a
major portion of that is like literally
hundreds and hundreds of pages of that
is footnotes. Although I keep them all
at the bottom of the page where you can
see them. And damn anyone who doesn't do
that. That's exactly how a book like
this should be. Um, but then so a lot of
that space really is citations. But then
also, um, I don't dwell too long on any
one topic. don't think the only two
exceptions to that are in um when we
talk about the NATO promises against
expansion and the Nazis in Ukraine
because these I believe are the two most
controversial subjects or you know
stances or whatever in the book and so I
go absolutely to the ends of the to beat
the dead horse all the way to death to
prove the absolute fact of the position
that I'm taking there. Um, and then
there's still probably a lot of overkill
on a lot of things, but as far as like
the writing goes, when I I mentioned the
Montenegro coup of 2016. It's just a
short little thing. It's called the
vaudeville coup and it's kind of funny
and it's a little mysterious and then
the different poisonings by the Russians
or at least alleged ones. I have, you
know, Lit Venenko and the Scripples and
whoever. And I just I was thinking it
from the point of view of my accusers
like, "Oh, yeah. Well, what about this?
Well, what about this? Well, what about
that? I bet you left that out." And
like, "No, I didn't, dude. I have it all
in there." And I tried to write it in a
way to satisfy my worst critics as best
as I could. The, as the Declaration of
Independence says, with a decent respect
to the opinions of mankind that like, so
I should assume that you don't agree
with me and in good faith. And so, how
in the hell am I going to fix that?
Like, I'm going to have to make you
accept that I'm not lying to you when I
put these things together. If you if
when you read that you feel like I I'm
trying to get away with something,
you're gonna put it down. I said, I
didn't write it for you to put it down.
Think I wrote a thousandpage book for
you to put it down. I want you to get
through all the way to the end going,
"God dang, man. I didn't really realize
it was as bad as all of that."
So to convince the critics.
That's that's what it is for as opposed
to enough already, which I really wrote
enough already for my people, my fans to
give to their brother-in-law and their
dad and whoever. It's a little bit after
the fact. As I said, I was in a real
rush to get it done. So, I don't have
the citations. I do have the citations
in fool's error and about Afghanistan.
And actually, we're working on now, me
and one of my guys at the institute, uh,
we're working on putting the footnotes
back into enough already and doing like
the ultimate scholar edition with the
overkill on the citations there. But I
actually I had footnotes on most of it.
I turned them off and I just raced to
the end cuz I was out of money and I was
out of time. I had to go. And so friends
of mine rationalize it like, well, you
think Bill O'Reilly has footnotes in his
books? You know, get that thing out
there, man. And so I did. And but I did
try to write it in a way where I either
cite my citations in the pros or at
least I wrote it in a way where it's a
very specific claim. On November the
9th, they held a meeting and these five
people were there and this is what they
decided. So you can go and Google that.
You know what I mean? It's not it's it
should be specific enough that people
can double check me. But but then yeah.
So why I'm like this? Um I'm just a Ron
Paul guy and I can't stand being lied to
and and I can't stand all this violence
and I want to live in a free society and
the empire's ruining it and then and
then so why do I write? Why am I like
that meticulous about it all is I don't
want to be caught being wrong. I'll tell
you one funny story and then we'll stop.
One time I lost an argument about Waco.
It was these three people in my cab and
the one of them was this real jerk and
the other two were on his side because
it was his friends and I was arguing
with him about everything. But the thing
was he was like the son of a federal cop
and he knew their side of the story like
down pat and he really knew his stuff.
And so even though I was right and he
was wrong, he won. And they got out of
the car going screw you branchian boy
and whatever. And oh man, that never
happened to me again. You know why?
Cuz I read like six books about Waco. I
already knew more than enough about it.
And then I decided that yeah, no,
actually no one's going to ever beat me
in an argument about that ever again.
Really thoroughly articulate the the
evidence for your claims.
And you're just like me too, dude. When
when you read a 300page book, it tasted
what? Like if you want to read this
thing, it's not like a chore, but like,
oh, I want to read that. You're done in
a day and a half or two. Like it's easy
to do once you set that precedent a few
times. It's pretty easy to read a thing
and jot down some notes and learn
something from it and then teach it to
somebody else and whatever. Well, yeah.
Listen, welcome to adulthood or
whatever. That's what we do. So, like
that's all it is. It's just that's my
only job is compiling reasons to resent
these liars and and why to know better
than all their false promises.
Yeah. But also be able to uh to
articulate it.
And see, also I'm a talk radio guy, man.
I grew up in the radio of Rush Limbo.
I'm driving for a living in the era of
Rush Limbbo and G. Gordon Litty and all
the local guys and I mean the I'll go
ahead and say this on the record too.
The local hosts on KOBJ AM in Austin all
suck and always have. All of them since
Raleigh James in 1996 love her.
Everybody since then, I mean I don't
know who listens to Kelly Jam at all.
How they even stay in business at all.
Their hosts suck. the the the content of
their words or the actual raw skill of
how they talk and what they talk and
all of it and mostly how stupid and
wrong and horrible they are about
everything, but also just how like
meaningless their dril is, right? You'd
be in the middle of the world's worst
crisis and they're like, "The liberals
are trying to take God out of the pledge
of allegiance." Like, dude, I would
prefer that you just shoot me in the
face to listen to this for the love of
God, please. Anyway, but I I love the
potential there. And in that era before
the internet was what it is today, this
was the real town square where you can
have a host who knows something. You can
have a guest who knows something. And
you can have callers who know a lot more
than you think they would, dude. And I
remember listening to them talk about
like the Texas Homesteading Act that
said you weren't allowed to take out a
second mortgage on your house and
whatever because it was to protect the
little old ladies. And they were
debating over whether they should have
that law or not. And I remember
thinking, "Wow, all these people know so
much about this topic that I've never
heard of before." And all of these
callers are just so deep on their
knowledge of what they know. And whether
on that issue or so many other things.
The first real time I heard real AM
radio in Austin, I was 16. I was wait, I
might have been I might have been 18.
No, no, I would have I was 16. It was It
was Yeah, it was the same year that the
Devidians were killed. I was driving my
first car down 183 and I said, "You
know, I've lived in Austin my whole life
and I've never listened to the AM band.
I wonder what it is." And the first
thing I hit was KOBJ AM and it was
Johnny Walker, the great Johnny Walker,
the FM
uh rock and roll DJ.
Was subhosting
and his whole thing, he was a great guy,
by the way. RIP Johnny Walker. Um but he
goes, "Look, I don't know anything. I'm
literally just hosting this show. The
guest is this guy, a surviving branch
devidian and we're taking your calls.
And this hit me like what? There's even
a branch devidian alive and they have a
point of view and you can hear it and
he's live right now and he's talking and
people can call in and they can what?
Because in my world that I lived in what
you know about the branch of Indians is
what you read in the Austin American
Statesman or what you're told by Ted
Cppel and Dan Rather and that's all you
get. Mhm.
What do you mean? I can interact with
And then the callers are brilliant. The
callers know all they're not cooks. They
know exactly what they're talking about
and they'll be like, I'll tell you what
happened was on March the 19th, blah
blah blah. Oh, okay. So, this is why I'm
like this. This is talk radio to me is
it's like if you believe in the idea of
like any kind of like so-called popular
government, like if we have to settle
for any sort of statism at all, you want
the people to be able to have one big
ass conversation with each other, right?
That's why your show is so important.
You get hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds of thousands of views and
listens, maybe millions if you include
all the podcasts. And so for a guy like
me, it's like, yeah, it's a chance to
talk to a whole bunch of people, to get
a bunch of people having the same
conversation together instead of
everybody just all spread out having
their own little separate arguments and
not interacting with each other. So to
me, that was the brilliance of talk
radio. And then where Rush Limbbo and
Gordon Litty were all polished and had
their little programs, the guys on 550
AM in San Antonio, especially Carl
Wigglesworth was my favorite, but him
and all those guys, even Ricky Wear, who
was the John Hyite lunatic, but he was
still such a sweet guy. And their talk
radio, their version of talk radio was
all right, it's Cole Woosworth show,
everybody. We were talking about Bill
Clinton selling cocaine down there with
Dan Lacader and mean Arkansas. And we
got Terry Reed on the phone. Tell us
about your book, Compromise, Clinton
Bush and the CIA, Terry. But everybody's
kicking back. Yeah. Everybody's got this
front porch attitude and they got all
the time in the world. We're here every
day for three hours a day. Ain't no
thing. And we're talking about and and
they're just the nicest guys. Come back
from commercial and go, "It's Carl.
We're talking with Terry about the
thing." and no bumper music, no fanfare,
no last name. You just jump jumped in
the middle of a conversation, tune in,
figure it out, and it's just beautiful.
It's perfect. And then I modeled myself
in the way I do my show on beginning on
Free Radio Austin in '989 and then on
Chaos Radio Austin from 2002 through
2010. I guess I was on Chaos although it
wasn't Yeah, it was 2010 before they
seized our last transmitter from Chaos,
wasn't it? I think it was. So yeah, I
did chaos for like yeah a long time. And
then so that was my whole attitude was
look, I am a regular guy. I ain't got to
bake that. I didn't go to college. I
dropped out of ACC.
And my message ain't for elite policy
makers. My message is for my peers. Look
at what they're doing. That's it. And
and this is why the, you know, the
Rothbartian style of libertarian
populism really always appealed to me is
because that's who it's geared toward.
The Kato Institute wants an audience
with the Senate. the Mises Institute and
the Libertarian Institute and
anti-war.com. We want an audience with
the population of this country, right?
That's who we're trying to talk to.
That's who we are. That's where we come
from. We're not Washington DC folk.
We're from out here and are we're
speaking in the third person about them,
you know, rather trying to be part of
the regime. I I just want to say briefly
that the you said the people that call
in are usually brilliant and that's the
experience I've had. Uh, I've recorded a
few conversations just on the street.
Like I went to the West Bank and I
interviewed a bunch of people on the
Uh, and I really want to do that a lot
more because I didn't meet a single
person who's not brilliant in their own
It's like it's remarkable. It's
remarkable the brilliance that comes
from people.
You ever listen sports radio?
Not not as much as I probably should.
Yeah. Well, look, you know what? Well, I
don't know if this counts anymore, but I
spent a little bit of time in Denver
listening to sports radio in Denver.
These people are fanatics, man. But the
point being that,
you know, Jimmy, the air conditioner
repair man is smarter than you, dude.
And he knows everything that every
baseball team ever achieved and win and
who and everyone on the teams, all their
stats, all their everything and why it
mattered. And it mattered a lot to them.
And the level of expertise there is no
different than in your highest applied
sciences or history or any other thing.
You know what I mean? It all just
depends on what you're interested in and
what you want to know that much about.
And this is Nam Chomsky's thing that he
talked about where
look, if you're a primate that's
intelligent enough to speak, then you
are a genius,
right? Then you are absolute miracle.
Unbelievable. Impossible,
you know? circumstance
um situation of your very existence and
so we all ought to be taken like at that
very level you know what I mean like no
matter who you're dealing with there's
something special in there you know
yeah and usually it comes with humility
because people with PhDs and Harvard and
so on they usually have this
overinflated ego that comes from
authority but sports radio people on the
street everyday folks they don't have
that and so they could just speak their
expertise without the ego Yeah. Well,
and that's my thing, too, is I don't
have nothing to sell you other than I
mean my coffee sponsor and whatever, but
like my my sincerity is like all I got.
I don't have any other argument from
authority that I can invoke other than
people listen to me. They know I'm not
lying and they can tell what my biases
are. I wear them absolutely on my
sleeve. You know what I mean? Is every
day I only try to quantify whether I
hate Bill Clinton or George W. Bush
And it's and that's where I'm coming
from and everybody understands that and
they know that I'd never deliberately
try to make them think one thing instead
of another. And if I did, they would
obviously catch on to that and then I'd
be completely ruined and have to just go
get a job delivering auto parts or
something and which would be fine. In
fact, I like delivering auto parts. I've
had that job before. Um although I'd
rather drive at night if I got to drive.
I rather I guess drive a Uber at night.
But if you still have energy
Oh, I'm not even halfway done. What
about you? All right, got all the energy
in the world. Maybe a quick bathroom
A good place to pick up our story here
would be uh John Mirshimer and Steven
Walt's book. We've talked about Mir
Shimemer and Walt previously. Now their
book is called The Israel Lobby and
American Foreign Policy. It came out in
It started out as an essay that they
wrote first for the Atlantic Monthly
that commissioned the story and then
refused to run it. And they ended up
running it in the London Review of
Books. We also ran it at anti-war.com.
People can find it there. It's called
the Israel lobby and American foreign
policy. It's a fantastic article and
then they made it into a book. And now
these guys are again the co-ans
basically of the realist school of
foreign policy. One from the University
of Chicago, the other from Harvard. Both
highly respected. Neither of them haters
or ideologues or any of these things.
They were ruthlessly attacked as
anti-semmites for this, which is
completely preposterous. And what they
did though was say that look man,
Israel's interests are very different
than ours. And that's why they spend so
much money and effort lobbying in the
United States to try to obuscate that
fact that what's good for them ain't
necessarily good for us at all. Well,
they have to make sure it's at least
good for the people in charge here, if
not for the country itself. And that's
their object. And as Walt Mirshimemer
say in the essay and in the book that
you can't blame the whole Iraq war on
them. George W. Bush was the one sitting
in the chair behind that desk calling
that shot. He could have changed his
mind at the very last moment. It was on
him. And now it's the Congress's
responsibility, but they passed that
responsibility to him with their
unconstitutional authorization that they
passed in October of 2002. But like
ultimately who pulled that trigger?
George W. Bush did. and inconspiracy
with his vice president and his
secretary of defense and the rest of
them. So the neocons, yes, they were the
deputy secretary of defense and the
deputy secretary of defense for policy
and the, you know, staff in the vice
president's office, the staff of the
National Security Council. They were
there operating really, as I said, as
that, as Coen Pal called it, that
separate government and operating mostly
for Benjamin Netanyahu's goals. Um, this
is part of what we argued about uh me
and Mark Dubowitz on your show last time
was he insisted somewhat partially
correctly here that Ariel Chiron wanted
Bush to hit Iran, not Iraq. And Ariel
Chiron, not Netanyahu, was the prime
minister. And that was the occasion of
him accusing JJ Goldberg of being an
anti-semite. Um because he had written
in the Jewish Daily Forward about how
Netanyahu wants to hit Iraq. Chiron
would rather hit Iran. And JJ Goldberg,
as long as I'm citing him, let me tell
you, he says in there very clearly that
he is not saying that the neocons bear
even the lion's share of the
responsibility for the war. Of course,
he blames George W. Bush for launching
the war. And of course, he's not
pedaling in some anti-semitic conspiracy
theory and the pages of the forward for
God's sake, right? He's he's extremely
conservative in his statements and in
his accusations. But what he's saying is
that the Lakunix in America are closer
to Netanyahu than Chiron. And of course,
George W. Bush wants to go to Iraq. He
wants to go to Baghdad, not Tyrron. And
so it and and Wolawitz of course always
especially was an Iraq hawk. And so the
confluence of interest here was to go to
Iraq. Now Chiron was smart enough to see
that Iran you know the clean break
wasn't him. That was Netanyahu and his
buddies. Chiron I think was skeptical
about what's going to happen when we
overthrow Saddam Hussein and the Shiites
take over. And this is where he tried to
insist and John Bolton did echo him in
this and promise him that yes, and then
we'll go to Iran and Syria and Lebanon
and everywhere else next because we
can't just get rid of Saddam. That's
going to change the balance of power in
a way that's going to benefit Iran in a
way that Chiron did not prefer. However,
Chiron absolutely did go along with the
program and help lie us into war. and he
had his own office of special plans that
he created in the the prime minister's
office in Israel where they manufactured
fake intelligence in English to
stovepipe into the intelligence stream
to help lie us into war. And here's
three authoritative sources on that.
Julian Borer in the Guardian, the spies
who pushed for war. And it's not the
spies, it's the neoconservatives is who
he's talking about, not CIA officers.
The spies who pushed for war by Julian
Borger. Then there's more missing
intelligence by Robert Drifus in the
nation. Then is a pretext for war. 9/11
Iraq and the abuse of America's
intelligence agencies by James Bamford,
the great book by the great James
Bamford, the guy that wrote the puzzle
palace and body of secrets and the
shadow factory about the National
Security Agency. Best author on the NSA.
Pretext for War focuses on the neocons
and the CIA and how the neocons lied us
into war for Netanyahu and and Israel. I
don't remember. Oh, and the whole first
part is about 9/11 and how 9/11 happened
and how the government failed to stop
it. And then the shadow factor is really
insightful on those lines because we
often hear about the infighting between
the FBI and the CIA. But the NSA also
hoarded all their information and would
not share with the FBI or CIA. And the
CIA at one point and and Michael Shyer
also tells the story, CIA had to create
their own listening station on
Madagascar to try to spy on al Qaeda
hiding out in Yemen, the switchboard
house in Yemen because the NSA would not
give them the intercepts. They had to
get their own, but they could only get
half the conversation and not the other
half talking to the terrorists in
Afghanistan. And as Shyer put it to me
on my show, I don't know, 15 years ago
or something, he said, "Yeah, cuz George
Tennant didn't have the moral courage to
just walk down there and demand the damn
intercepts." Because at that time the
head of the CIA was also the director of
central intelligence which meant the
boss like the DNI is supposed to be over
all the other intelligence agencies. So
George Tennant had the authority to
command NSA to do what he said. He
didn't have to ask nicely.
But according to Shyer, he didn't have
the courage to just go down there and
say, "Give me the damn intercept."
Why not?
You know, he came from staff in the
Senate. I think just wanted to please
the real spies. you know, like he was
kind of the new guy and didn't really
fit in and was trying to like be cool or
whatever and I don't know, who knows
these people. But um so importantly,
you know, the Ariel Chiron government
did help to push this thing even though
Duboitz is right that Chiron first said,
"No, Bush, you should go to Tyrron
first." Because that was his problem. It
was I guess I don't know if I'd have to
go back and and see if anybody ever
wrote about this, but I never saw like
Chiron's opinion of the clean break, but
it's easy to see how anyone could see
through how stupid the plan was. We're
going to weaken the Shiites by getting
rid of the most powerful Sunnis standing
in their way. That's pretty dumb, right?
And especially if you really know about,
for example, the history of the Iran
Iraq war, the history of the post Iraq
War I Shiite uprising, you might have
real reason to worry. Justin Armando at
anti-war.com wrote in 2002. He said,
"Hey, look everybody. The Supreme
Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq,
the CIA tried to give the money and they
said, "Piss off. We don't need you. We
got Iran." And Justin said, "Better
watch out. Here's who's coming to power
when we invade Iraq a year from now."
And then that's exactly what happened is
the the again the bottom brigade was the
militia of the Supreme Council for
Islamic Revolution in Iraq. And that was
exactly who George W. Bush took all the
way to power in Baghdad. So for the guys
who fought in that war, who are
listening to this, who still don't know
why they fought in that war, ultimately
they fought on the Shiite side of a
massive civil war against the minority
Sunni ruling regime and to replace them
with a new essentially Islamist
theocracy sort of pseudo republic like
in Iran. And that that's what it was
for. It's not for freedom. It was for
one faction over the other. And in this
case, it was the Shiites. And then of
course the most powerful fact, it's
worth explaining, not of course, that
the most powerful um Shiite groups that
came together to form the new Iraqi
government was the Supreme Council for
Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Skiri, which
is now called ISKY because we won their
revolution for them. So now it's just
the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the
Dawa party, and Mktata Assad and his Mi
army. Now Dawa and Skiri have been
living in Iran and they were kind of
more higher class types whereas Maktad
Al Solder is like the son of important
guys. It was much more like a street
ruffian type and the ghetto the Shiite
ghetto in eastern Baghdad was called
Saddam City. As soon as America invaded,
they renamed it Solder City after his
father, but he inherited a lot of that
street credibility as like the the most
legitimate of the Shiite leaders on the
ground there. So these three groups
under the guidance of the Ayatollah Ali
al- Sistani who lived down in Najaf
under his leadership or guidance or
whatever they formed what was called the
United Iraqi alliance. That was the
group that wrote the constitution in the
fall of 2004. That was a group that won
the elections, the big purple fingered
elections of 2005. And that's what
kicked off the real civil war started
after that. Now, there was already a
predominantly Sunni- based insurgency at
that time. It was not exclusively Sunni.
It started out much more nationalist and
mixed, but very quickly it was the Sunni
tribal leaders and former Baist and and
military leaders realizing that they
have everything to lose now and that
they have the super majority of the
country backed by the United States is
now taking power. And then so this
pushed the Sunnis into the arms, the
Sunni insurgency into the arms of the
Bin Laden who were coming from all over
the place just like it was Afghanistan
or Bosnia or Cheschnney again or Kosovo
coming to all chip in to fight the Holy
Jihad this time against us instead of
with our help although still backed by
our friends the Saudis. um and they came
in there and America and the Shiites
pushed the Sunni insurgency into the
arms of the Bin Laden. And um in fact,
I'll tell you an anecdote about how that
Um and so much of this is tied up in
what's happening in Israel at this time
as well.
In January of 2004, Shik Yasin, who was
the founder of Hamas, which was a
breakoff of the Muslim Brotherhood, it
was originally like a charitable type
organization that ended up growing into
this militia with the aid and comfort of
the Israelis. And there's some really
great articles that you might like to
peruse about this, including uh by
Richard Sale in UPI. If you just type in
uh Richard cell UBI Hamas, I'm sure
it'll just come straight up there.
Israel gave major aid to Hamas. This is
an in-depth study. It's based on CIA as
well as Shinbet and MSAD sources.
Richard Sale, if people aren't familiar,
UPI is the news agency most closely tied
to the Washington Times, which would be
the Reaganite Conservative uh newspaper
in Washington. It's funny because it's
the Washington Post and the New York
Times are the liberal papers and the New
York Post and the Washington Times are
the conservative papers if you got that
right. So, so basically this this
article details how Tel Aviv, Israel
gave direct and indirect financial aid
to Hamas over a period of many years.
And the purpose was to build them up to
divide and conquer the Palestinians to
create a religious right-wing
alternative to the secular nationalist
sort of pseudo kami PLO under Yaser
They wanted to divide and conquer the
Palestinians. And so what they would do
is they would finance directly finance
Hamas while at the same time arresting
all of their competitors and holding
them in prison, disarming them,
weakening them while bolstering the
Hamas government. So they did not create
Hamas, but they did very deliberately
bolster its rise. Now Hezbollah is a
different story where Hezbollah just
really grew up in reaction to their
invasion of Lebanon in 82 without any
direct support from them in that sense.
Although maybe I don't know enough about
that, but certainly in this case with
Damas, that's true. And you can also
read Andrew Higgins in the Wall Street
Journal wrote a great piece along the
same lines.
Want to pull that up for us here? How
Israel helped to spawn Hamas. Andrew
Higgins 2009. So I can also recommend
Robert Drifus' book Devil's Game: How
the United States helped to unleash
fundamentalist Islam. Masterpiece. Also
again, Tree to Parsey's Treacherous
Alliance. Cannot recommend that book
highly enough. That thing might go into
its third printing just because of me.
I'm telling you, everybody's got to read
that book. And then, Obstacle to Peace
by Libertarian Institute fellow Jeremy
R. Hammond wrote a masterpiece about
Israel and Palestine and the fight over
the occupied territories and America's
role in making it all worse and the
rest. It's fantastic book. Goes in deep
study about this. Now, back to our our
In January 2004,
old Shik Yasine with his big Santa Claus
beard and his wheelchair says, "I give
up. I give in. We need to go ahead and
negotiate with the Israelis and settle
for our measly stinking 22% of historic
Palestine, just as Arafat had done in
2 months later, the Israelis killed him
in a missile strike just so they could
lie to you, Lex, and say, "We have no
partner for peace."
Somehow a missile blew up his car and
they're the ones who killed him. And
when they killed him in March of 2004,
that's what touched off the riot in
Fallujah where the four Blackwater
guards were murdered and burned and
their bodies hanged from the bridge
outside of town and they had a giant
pray the great war journalist was there
and saw they had pictures of Yasine in
their windshields. They called
themselves the al-yasin brigades. And it
was this impromptu protest against
Israel's murder of the leader of Hamas.
And that's what caused that riot that
killed those Blackwater guards. And then
George W. Bush sent General James
Madison there with his Marines,
including now a couple of friends of
mine, who had to go in there and fight
that thing and declared that thing a
free fire zone like Vietnam and killed
hundreds if not thousands of innocent
civilians. in the first battle of
Fallujah which they claimed that Zarqawi
the bin Laden knight who wasn't even
really a bin Laden knight yet he didn't
declare his loyalty to Bin Laden until
the end of 2004 a year and a half into
the war um but they pretended so 6
months later but they pretended that he
was already tied to Bin Laden he was one
of the lies in in Coen Powell's UN
speech that there's this guy named
Zarqawa and he's tied to Bin Laden and
he's tied to Saddam well he wasn't tied
to Bin Laden he had told Bin Laden no I
don't want to join your group and he
wasn't tied to Saddam unlike the lies of
Ahmed Chalabi and the exiles. He was not
operated on by Saddam Hussein and given
a peg leg in the Baghdad hospital. That
was a hoax perpetrated by the Weekly
Standard and the neoconservative set um
to tie those two together. In fact, he
wasn't tied to either. And then only
after the war and America made him
famous and claimed that he was a bin
Laden did Zarqawi raise and stature.
Zarqawi was like more apocalyptic and
revolutionary and and even nihilistic
and destructive than Bin Laden's
doctrines ever were. And he was
notoriously sectarian against the
Shiites where Bin Laden, you know, I
don't think in and I have not read
everything the guy ever wrote, but I
have read a lot of his stuff and I never
saw where he really seems to focus on
problems against the Shiites. Again,
Muhammad Ata and Ramsay bin Alashe, they
were mad because of Shimom Perez and
Naftali Bennett killing Shiite
Palestinians in Lebanon. The fact that
they were Shiites didn't make them less
valuable as far as wanting to avenge
their deaths as far as that goes.
Zarqawi, on the other hand, thought,
"No, the only good Shiite is a dead
Shiite. God says so." and this kind of
like cra bring on the apocalypse kind of
deal and went for you know madness
suicide bombing Shiite pilgrims and
doing like just absolute atrocities
against civilians which of course like
the guy may be good at making bomb vests
but he's not good at math because
there's just way too many Shiites and so
by boycotting the election refusing to
participate in the new order which they
got the American superpower occupying
the country with 300 100,000 troops or
at that point maybe 200,000 but still um
and in alliance with the supermajority
those Sunni chiefs should have figured
out a way to deal saying no way let's
fight was a huge mistake from them and
then entering into alliance with the bin
Laden only made it worse because and
this is it is directly because of Israel
killing Yasine and then the battle of
Fallujah that helped drive a bunch of
refugees out of Fallujah who then went
to Baghdad who drove people out of their
areas and then you had a lot of tit
fortat back and forth as refugees from
the different cities are being cleansed
out. So in the predominantly Shiite
cities they're kicking all the Sunnis
out and in the predominantly Shi Sunni
areas they're kicking all the Shiites
out and people are being displaced.
Darl, I swear I I looked and looked and
maybe I still could find it somewhere.
But I think the last time I tried to
find I couldn't find it anymore. But it
was Dar Jale had this most brilliant
article where he traced the cause and
effect through the wars from the
beginning of the you know the war began
in 03 of course but like the real
worsening of the insurgency in '04 and
the chain of events from this city to
this city to this city where these
different refugees are displacing other
people and causing these worse
consequences to go through and where
more and more then the Sunnis especially
being cleansed from Baghdad and they're
being pushed into the arms of the bin
Laden. nights again all touched off by
Israel assassinating their own pseudo
sock puppet you know terrorist frontman
excuse for uh an imperialist policy that
they had supported when he was finally
ready to completely capitulate to them
they killed them so he couldn't and that
was what caused all this problem for
America or you know not caused but
contributed significantly to the
problems during the war also during that
same time. This was the first time that
Mktatada als
Shiites and pickup trucks to Fallujah to
go help in the name of Iraqi nationalism
uh to help the Sunnis at that time. And
they had a whole separate little war
with him in Solder City in eastern
Baghdad at that time which was a real
problem because as I said Solder had so
much street credibility there among the
the people and where to this day he is
still one of the most empower one of the
most important and powerful kingmakers
uh in Shiite politics in that country
right now. And so they were, you know,
essentially blowing up and sabotaging
their own ability to use diplomacy to
work with this guy. And he became the
most intrigent part of the Sunni
insurgency. There's so many different
parts of this, but one of the things
that's really important, I think, to
talk about is that David Petraeus, his
first job was up in Mosul trying to
train up a militia to be our guys, and
they just took the money and guns and
joined the insurgency against us. It was
an absolute catastrophe. He gave him a
bunch of weapons and money and then was
humiliated and kicked right the hell out
of there. His next job, right, after
empowering the the Sunni insurgency up
in Mosul, was to go to Baghdad and to
turn the bottom brigade of the Supreme
Islamic Council. The same guys who
Saddam feared in 1980, which is why he
started the war. The same guys who
George HW Bush be feared in 1991, which
is why he betrayed their uprising. Same
guys that W. Bush is now taking all the
way to Baghdad. David Petraeus is now in
charge of building them into the Iraqi
army. And that's who was going around
torturing everybody to death. And I
don't know if you saw the movie American
Sniper about Chris Kyle directed by
Clint Eastwood. And I'm a real big Clint
Eastwood fan. I'm really disappointed in
this in this fact. It's really bad. What
he did in that movie was he portrayed
the Sunni insurgents torturing people to
death with power drills and portrayed
Chris Kyle saving them. But that's not
true. It was America's guys, the bottom
brigade of the Supreme Islamic Council.
They were the ones torturing people to
death with power drills through the
shoulder, through the heart, through the
eyeball, through the ear, through the
temple. So at that time the America was
supporting the Brigade. that time
America is building the bottom brigade
into the Iraqi army as we know it today.
And David Petraeus, this is where we
have what's called the El Salvador
option, which what does that sound like?
Paying right-wing desks to go around
killing commies in the case of El
Salvador, preventing it from becoming a
Nicaragua, right? In the 1980s, it was
John Negroponte who had worked for
Ronald Reagan in El Salvador as the
ambassador then on this covert action
killing all these people who was then
brought in to be ambassador to run what
they call the El Salvador option of
empowering the Shiite militias to
finally finish crushing the Sunni
insurgency which of course they
absolutely failed to do. They simply
radicalize them and made it that much
worse and worse and worse. And this was
all on David Petraeus. He was the one in
charge of this thing. So that made the
civil war just absolutely horrific
through 20056
and then coming into seven. Now in '06,
James Baker says we got to get out of
there. Old guard brought in to say we
need to figure out a way out. That's
embarrassing for Bush. Bush decides no,
he wants to double down instead. He's
going to do the surge at David
Petraeus's recommendation. He fired
Rumsfeld who now wanted out. Said I I
told you light and fast. Let's get out.
He said, "We got to take the training
wheels off. Let the Iraqi democracy
figure out a way to work on its own
without us now." Which was, you know
what? Hell, take it, right? Cut and run.
This ain't working. And he's really
right. They're like, if they're going to
figure this out for good or for ill,
through blood or through handshakes and
bribes or what? It has to be up to them
ultimately. And so, yeah. So, what did
Bush do? Kick him right out the door.
It's the first time he said something
reasonable. And he brought in Robert
Gates, who's supposed to be like a old
James Baker type, his father's guy, who
had been the head of the CIA, whose
fault it was that the CIA didn't know
that the Soviet Union was falling apart,
right? Because they were too busy
pretending that the Soviet Union was 12t
tall at the time. Same guy Bush Jr.
brings him in and he oversees the surge.
And this is where they do the massive
escalation in the beginning of 2007.
And it's funny because they dropped all
the propaganda about Iran's nuclear
program for a little bit because they
had a new line. And the new line was
that whenever a Shiite sets off a bomb
in Iraq, it's an Iranian bomb. And this
is where you and your audience have
heard a 100 times, a thousand, that Iran
killed 600 of our guys in Iraq. That's
what they say. Well, here's the truth of
that. It was 500 guys, not six. And it
wasn't Iran. Those bombs, they were a
new and improved kind of IED, improvised
explosive device. Our guys called them
explosively formed penetrators, EFPs.
And they were shape charged and they had
a copper core. And that copper core when
the explosive went off would melt and
that molten copper would then slice
right through armor. And that was what
made it the new and improved bomb. Now
the propaganda at the time was even
though it was David Petraeus who at this
time decided to attack McTara Alsader in
the name of claiming that he was an
Iranian agent. In fact, Mktata als
talked about this a little bit on the on
a tangent I shouldn't have taken on the
last time I was here. But Todd Al Solder
was the least Iranian
puppet of the major Shiite faction
leaders because where Dawa and Sciri had
lived in Iran for 20 years at this
point, he hadn't. He'd stayed. And he
was insisting that Iran and the United
States butt out and leave Iraq to
Iraqis. So you see the problem there.
Even though he wants Iran to leave and
wants to limit their influence, he also
wants to limit ours. The Bush
administration's idea is no, we're going
to bet that the government of Iraq,
mostly made of Dawa and Skiri, that they
will need our money and our weapons more
than they need Iran next door. So if we
stick it out and even compromise
repeatedly with Iran on who should be
the prime minister like Ibrahim Jafari
and Nuriel Maliki from the Dawa party
and we come to this is the only time we
talk to Iran at all is sort of secretly
quietly agreeing on who the Iraqi prime
minister should be as we're doing this
right so Matad Alsader even though he is
trying to limit Iranian authority he
also wants to limit ours so So the
Americans decide they want to target
him. So it wasn't Solder that picked
that bite. It was David Petraeus in the
service of Dick Cheney working to try
and and with uh with in conspiracy with
Michael Gordon of the New York Times to
try to lie the American people into war
with Iran then in the name of these
bombs. And they made a massive
propaganda campaign in the spring of
2007. Every time a bomb goes off in
Shiite territory, that was Iran that did
it. They claimed over and over. said the
point is and the problem is and I cite
in the book by names of the journalists
and their um affiliations
at least eight or 10 different American
and other foreign reporters there.
Nobody with a you know Iranian dog in
the I'm not citing Press TV here. I'm
citing the New York Times. Um Michael
Gordon, he's now at the the Wall Street
Journal, but he was at the New York
Times. He's he is the guy who bylinined
with Judy Miller every story where they
lied that Saddam Hussein is seeking a
bomb parts and Saddam Hussein is making
nuclear weapons and wants germs and
chemicals and all these things. Judy
Miller took the rap for the whole media.
But her co-author Michael Gordon lived
to still lie to us to this day in the
Wall Street Journal, but he was the one
in charge of this um this essentially
just this conspiracy to lie the American
people into war through the pages of the
New York Times. But I show that his
colleague, Alyssa Rubin, proved that
he's a damned liar because she was there
with soldiers. Printed it in his same
newspaper. She was there with American
soldiers when they found an EFP factory
in Solder City, I'm pretty sure. But
there was a bunch wherever it was, it
was in Shiite territory in Iraq. And it
was Iraqis working in a machine shop
making these bombs. And now they go,
"Okay, well, but the parts all came from
Iran." Oh, yeah. No, they had to. The
Iranians thought, "You know what we'll
do? will ship the parts into Iraq for
them to make bombs out of instead of
just sending them bombs. Like whatever,
man. It was obviously just a bunch of
propaganda. And I site in there, the
Christian Science Monitor was there when
they did Operation Eagle Claw found
another factory making EFPs. And then I
site also Wired magazine, the brilliant
Andrew Coburn, and a bunch of other
great sources that just show these bombs
were made in Iraq by Iraqis. I don't
care what you say. And I I disprove this
over and over again on the blog at
anti-war.com in 2007. over and over and
over again. So if in fact if you just
search my name anti-war.com especially
if you search antiwar.com/blog
and EFPs you will get a bunch of hits
because we went over this all at the
time making me feel extra old right now.
Yeah, that's years ago.
Holy shit.
Yeah, EFPs are made in Iraq by Iraqis.
Scott Hordon, August 12th, 2007.
And there's a bunch of them. That's just
one of many that I did at the, you know,
during that era. And um, again, citing
solid proof for those who listen to N2
you know, I refute this lie every single
day. Citing Reuters and this Christian
Science Monitor,
Operation Black Eagle. I'm sorry I got
the name of the Eagle thing wrong. I
said Eagle Claw, didn't I? Operation
Black Eagle was where the Christian
Science Monitor was tagging along.
But there's a bunch of these.
Um, and so now Dubowit said, "Oh yeah,
well Iran taught him how to do it then."
No, Gareth Porter showed that it was the
IRA, the Irish Republican Army that
taught Lebanese Hezbala, and it was
Lebanese Hezbala that taught the Shiite
Iraqis how to do it. So when I said it
was Lebanese Hezbollah, Dubo goes, "Aha,
Iran." Nope. They got it from the Irish.
So sorry, Charlie. nice little
propaganda campaign you got there. But
then what happened was they did a big
press conference where they laid out all
the EFP bombs uh and the parts and the
reporters started milling around and
they go, "Well, that's funny. That one
says made in Haditha on it," which is a
city in Iraq. And that one says made in
UAE and all this and then so what do we
have here? Do we have any evidence that
any of this stuff came from Iran? No.
And then what did they do, Lex? They
cancelled the press conference, closed
it down, embarrassed, and Steven Hadley,
the national security adviser himself,
admitted we didn't have the proof that
we needed to make the case. Just
promising, "Oh, we're going to prove it.
We're going to prove it. We're going to
prove it." And kicking that can down the
road for months until I think it must
have been May or June when they finally
did this press conference that fell
apart and started to back down. Was that
the major justification for the
escalation? It was not the justification
for the escalation of the surge overall.
The escal the rationalization there was
we are going to send an extra 30 or
40,000 troops to Baghdad. We are going
to secure the capital city and once we
have peace in the capital city, the
peace of desolation where we kill every
last Sunni who resists by putting a
power drill through his eyeball. Um then
um we'll be able to negotiate peacefully
in the setting of our new democratic
republic that we've built here. That was
the justification there. And at the same
time, David Petraeus, and this is the
only victory that David Petraeus ever
won in his entire stupid, stinking
failure of a pathetic lying life. And
that is when he convinced George W. Bush
to surrender to the Sunni insurgency.
Mr. President, you're not going to
defeat the Sunni insurgency. Read me
loud and clear. All this victory you've
been promising all these years, all the
people that you've killed trying to
bring it, sending the desert ox Ray
Odiero in there to kill every last
living fighting age male in the Amar
province. We've lost, Mr. President. And
so what we're going to do is we're going
to bribe the Sunni insurgency right now.
They've they have
Well, okay, I I overstay that. We didn't
lo We didn't lose. We failed to beat
them, but they did lose much territory
to the Shiites. So they were licking
their wounds at that time. The Sunni
insurgency, the Iraqi Sunnis had too
many enemies. They were fighting the
Shiites. They were fighting the
Americans and they had to deal with the
Bin Laden. And they hated the Bin Laden.
They didn't want to live like Saudis and
a bunch of Egyptian weirdo suicide
bombers trying to outlaw women from
buying cucumbers at the market because
it's some kind of sexual innuendo. and
what are these people like get these
people out of my face and I show in the
book and there are plenty of reporting
about plent there was plenty of
reporting about this that beginning at
least in early 2005 it was the local
Sunni population this is 2 years before
David Petraeus runs to try to get to the
head of this parade two years previously
in the beginning of '05 was when the
local Sunnis started killing the bin
Laden themselves and saying you can't
tell us what to do you're more harm than
good you're making our insurgency into a
counterproductive war by killing all
these Shiite civilians and and
generating all new uh support for our
crushing at their hands and all of that.
So they were isolating and and and
killing these guys off and you got to
figure dude I mean this is like a magic
wish come true okay George W. Bush comes
and he turns all of western Iraq, right,
Fallujah to Cree, um much of Ramani and
and obviously Mosul into Bin Laden into
jihadi university bigger and better and
worse than Afghanistan, Bosnia,
Cheschna. This is all those combined and
it's in western Iraq right on the on the
border of the Levants in Mesopotamia not
Nangar province out there in no man's
land between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
This is this is what made America, as
Michael Shyer said, bin Laden's only
indispensable ally, right? That you
could do like a reverse 9/11 trutherism
where all the Americans are actually al
Qaeda agents all this time cuz all
they're doing is exactly what Bin Laden
wants them to do. Michael Shyer said
that, oh, of course, Afghanistan was the
plan, but Iraq, that was the hoped for
but unexpected gift to Bin Laden. Bin
Laden said on the eve of the invasion,
"Rise up, Iraqis. Kill the socialist
infidel Saddam Hussein. And then resist
the Americans when they arrive."
Okay. One guy's got a beret and a
mustache. The other guy's got a beard
and is all wearing a funny robe like
Obi-Wan Kenobi. And and they clearly are
extremely different men with extremely
different sets of priorities, right?
Couldn't be more different. And of
course, Saddam Hussein was terrified of
Osama bin Laden and had no connection to
his regime whatsoever. And in fact, we
know now that he had kicked himself
upstairs and was semi-retired writing a
romance novel at the time of the
invasion is uh that's how determined
Saddam Hussein was to attack inside the
United States. to paraphrase the CIA
warning George Bush about al Qaeda on
August the 6th, 2001 when he told
Michael Morurell, his briefer, the guy
who later helped frame Donald Trump for
treason with Russia and everything. He
told Michael Morell, "Oh, okay. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. You've covered your ass."
Uh, can you clarify? I said was writing
a romance novel at the time of the
invasion. Is that real?
that's real.
Yes. No harm to us whatsoever. what they
could have done. Let me let me ask you
to stretch your engineers's imagination
here to like wild metaphysical type
concepts outside of your usual reach.
You know, you're maybe more of a right
brain guy or something, but like trip
out Lex Freedman. The Secretary of State
was Colon Powell, the fourstar general,
former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
You think he might have been tough
enough to just send over there and tell
Saddam Hussein, "Here's the riot act.
I'm going to read it to you and then
you're going to sign on the dotted line,
buddy boy." And and if you think that
Coen Powell wasn't man enough for that,
don't you think that mean old uh Donald
Rumsfeld his old friend from 1983 when
Ronald Reagan sent him to be special uh
emissary over there when he offered
Saddam Hussein support for his military
campaign against Iran and browbe him and
tried to get him to build a pipeline to
the port of Aaba for Israel? That's what
that famous picture of Rumsfeld shaking
hands with Hussein. That's what that
meeting was about. One, we'll give you
weapons, too. We want you to build a
pipeline for the Israelis. Um, you think
he could have sent gruff old Donald
Rumsfeld over there to tell Saddam
Hussein one thing? Your job is keeping
Bin Laden down. Read me. Okay. We have a
new priority in our foreign policy in
the Middle East. We don't want anyone to
be friends with Osama bin Laden or his
men. That sound reasonable to you? And
then Saddam Hussein of course would have
said of course. And in fact Saddam
Hussein and you can read this only
months later into the war, maybe a year
into the war, James Ryzen wrote it in
the New York Times that Saddam Hussein
sent an emissary to meet with Richard
Pearl in London and surrender to him and
say if this is about democracy, we'll
hold elections. If this is about Israel,
we'll stop funding Hamas. If this is
about oil, we'll give you the mineral
rights. If this about weapons of mass
destruction, you can send your army
and FBI wherever you want to look.
I give up. Please don't kill me. And
Richard Pearl told the emissary, "You
tell them we'll see him in Baghdad."
They refused. And Seymour Hirs had
another story just like that where
Hussein sent a Lebanese businessman to
again surrender to say we're willing to
negotiate on any and every term that you
could possibly name for us. And America
refused and went to war anyway. By the
way, when they did in 2003,
uh first of all, in 2001, they held a
million man candlelight vigil in Thran
on September the 12th and the Ayatollah
said, "Now's our chance to make friends
with the United States. They hate Saddam
Hussein and they hate the Taliban.
Great. Us too. So they said, "Now's our
chance to again try to reach out to the
United States." Did I skip and forget to
mention that in 1993?
Oh, this was going to be part of our
Cold War story, but it overlaps. In
1993, Zabna Brazinski, the right-wing
sort of hawkish realist national
security adviser for Jimmy Carter, and
Alexander Heg, who had been Kissinger's
right-hand man and was Ronald Reagan's
secretary of state. They both wanted to
build oil pipelines across Iran to the
Persian Gulf. one to make money and for
American companies, but also two to
bring in Iran from the cold and open up
an opportunity to normalize relations
between our country and their country.
The oil business is a great way to do
that. Later in the 1990s, the CEO of
Hallebertton, Dick Cheney, said the same
thing, that Bill Clinton's sanctions
are irresponsible. We should lift the
sanctions against Iran and we should do
business with Iran because after all,
God didn't see fit to leave all the oil
under wonderful Western allied
democracies and so we have to deal with
who we have to deal with. that was in
the interest of his company and quite
frankly it was in the interest of the
United States of America at the time
caused a little mini scandal because one
of the times that Cheney repeated
himself in these criticisms was in
Australia and that's supposed to be a
cardinal sin to criticize your own
country from the soil of another country
and he had been the former secretary of
defense. So that was a kind of a you
know um social uh you know error or
whatever that got him a little um more
controversy about those statements then
probably they would have got any uh
probably more attention than they would
have got otherwise for the substance of
them. Um but so we had every opportunity
to deal with Iran in the 1990s and then
Lex guess why Clinton didn't do that was
because the Israel lobby said no. That
was in the Washington Post. They did
this great series, Dan Otawway and Dan
Morgan, I think, well, whatever. Morgan
and Ottoay, I forget their first names.
They did a multi-part series all about
the oil politics of the Caspian Basin.
And it was Apac and the Israel lobby
that said, "No, you cannot normalize
relations with Iran. Veto." And so,
Brzinski and Hague backed down from
their plans and the companies that they
were representing in doing that and went
the other way. in the cold war with Iran
remained all through the rest of the
century again waged from basis in Saudi
getting our towers knocked down. Now
it's the new era. We go to war with uh
with the Taliban and Afghanistan. Iran
says we'll do anything that we can to
help you with that. Then you guys want
to get rid of Saddam Hussein? Not only
will we help you with that, guess what?
Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National
Congress's headquarters was in Thrron.
Guess who sponsored the Iraqi Shiite
exile to tell the neoconservatives that
the new Shiite supermajority regime will
build a oil pipeline to Hifa and tell
Hezbollah to stop being friends with
Iran and be nice to Israel.
And so they said we have these common
interests and yet there was a terrorist
attack in 2004 and the neocons just
lied. It was inside Saudi Arabia and the
neocons lied and said bin Laden and his
men had planned it from inside Iran
which was a total lie. Had nothing to do
with Iran but that was enough for idiot
W. Bush who doesn't know anything to go
along with oh okay then and so now Iran
is back on the enemy side of the ledger
of the war on terror where of course
they have no alliance with bin Laden.
The only time they backed bin Laden was
as a favor to Bill Clinton in Bosnia in
19 in the 1990s. And so um they had no
love for the bin Laden whatsoever. And
despite all the lies, Bin Laden was
hiding in Pakistan, not in Iran. And and
the bin Laden who did make it to Iran
were under house arrest. And the
Iranians were trying to negotiate with
the Americans to hand them over or at
least hand them over to their home
countries wherever they were from. and
they were offering to negotiate what was
then called they they submitted this
through the Swiss ambassador in the
spring of 03 either right before the war
or right after the war. I think it must
have been right after the invasion of
Iraq. It was called the golden offer.
And not only did Bush and his men reject
it, but they even gave I think John
Bolton gave a big dressing down to the
Swiss ambassador for daring to even
bring the proposal to them.
And again it just like with Saddam
Hussein the Ayatollah was showing his
willingness to negotiate essentially
anything of controversy including
support for Hamas and Hisbala including
their nuclear program which at that
point was just you could barely even
call it nent at all. Um they they had
not begun spitting a single centrifuge
at that point and they wanted to
negotiate over these bin Laden if we
would exchange them for members of the
mek, the mujaheden eculk communist
terrorist cult which was like some
Jonestown total kookery type of a cult
that um that level of kookery like
heaven's gate you know just comet
chasing lunatics and they had helped
with the Iranian revolution but then
they had betrayed it and had been kicked
out of Iran by the Ayatollah. But then
they went to work for Saddam Hussein.
They helped Saddam Hussein during the
Shiite and Kurdish uprising in 1991.
They helped crush the Kurds with their
tanks in that as special agents of
Saddam during that. And then they and
then the US inherited them when we
invaded Iraq in 2003 and Dick Cheney and
Donald Rumsfeld took control of them.
The again the MEK they're called the
Mujahadini Kulk and the Iranians are
saying look let's trade. We got bin
Laden, including Bin Laden's son and
including uh this guy Hamza who was
extremely dangerous al Qaeda terrorist
and we could have traded them but the
American u the neoconservatives and I I
guess you know Rumsfeld and Cheney
themselves said nope we want we would
rather keep the mek so that we can use
them for operations inside Iran which
they did. In fact, my now wife uh wrote
a story breaking that story for Ross
story back then that Rumsfeld was using
the MEK for intelligence inside Iran.
And a lot of times usually working as
cutouts for the Israelis nowadays. You
will hear um rumors about Iran that come
from the MEK. Now sometimes it's true.
It's also known as the NCRI, the
National Council for Resistance in Iran
is their front. And they'll, in fact,
right before the current war, in the
last few months, like uh in June,
probably in May, they put out a picture
of some buildings and said, "This is a
secret Iranian nuclear weapons site. We
just found it." And of course, it was
total propaganda. They do that all the
time. At one point they put out a stock
photo of a vault door from a vault door
company or a vault company and they said
behind this vault door that's where the
secret nuclear weapons program is and
they do that kind of thing all the time
and so America kept the mek when they
could have traded them with the
Iranians. So just one more thing about
that is on the NSC
were were two people who were now a
married couple Flint Leverett and
Hillary Man Leverett and I've
interviewed both of them at length and
they have talked all about how willing
the Iranians were to negotiate with the
Americans on essentially anything at
that time and how essentially the Bush
administration just refused to work for
them. And now think about, you know,
we're fighting for them in Afghanistan,
putting in power a coalition government
that includes the Hazaras, who are
Shiites and friends with Iran. And in
Iraq, we're putting their sock puppets
from Dawa and Skiri in power. We fought
a 8-year civil war for Iran's guys, but
refused to talk to them the whole time.
Refused to negotiate with them in good
faith when George Bush is the
Ayatollah's Aaron boy in this thing and
refuses to acknowledge it. likes to
pretend he's the emperor of the world or
whatever when he's serving their
interests and putting their guys in
power. And so that's why in at the end
of his presidency, they made him sign
the deal to get out by the end of 2011.
And he said, "Well, can I have 64
bases?" And they said, "No." And he,
"Well, can I 24 bases?" And they said,
"No." Can I have any bases? And Nuriel
Maliki said, "Well, let me go talk to
the guys. I'm not real sure." Sorry, I
talked to the guys. They said, "Beat it,
scum. Don't let the door hitch in the
ass on the way out." Didn't even say
thank you for fighting a gigantic 8-year
civil war for them to exterminate their
Sunni enemies and put them in power and
scones them in power there. And so that
was the sofa that Bush had to agree to
in his last year in office in 2008 was
that we had to withdraw because he had
fought the war for his adversaries, not
our enemies, but America's regional
rivals in the Middle East, the Iranians.
and their Shiite axis now including
Baghdad and also of course then uh
Damascus and um Hezbollah and southern
Lebanon. This is when the king of Jordan
coined the term the Shiite crescent. it
was America who made it. And in fact, in
I think January of 2006,
um the Sunni king of Saudi Arabia, uh
would have been King Abdullah
read the riot act to Zme Khalil Zad and
said, "Listen, this is in the Wikileaks.
He said, listen, it was always us and
you and Saddam against Iran.
Now you've given Iraq to Iran on a
golden platter.
So what are you going to do about it?
And Khalilad says, "I know, your royal
majesty. I'm so sorry about that. We're
going to do everything that we can to
try to fix it." This is the birth of the
policy called the redirection where
America under Bush before Obama ever
came to town where Bush accepted that he
had screwed up that he had scored like
in soccer an own goal for the other side
of the ledger the Shiite crescent
dominated by Thrron and that now he had
to make up for that by tilting toward
the Sunnis.
uh you you'd be nice to sort of linger
and and understand
to what degree is the Iranian regime and
the Ayatollah
are good and bad for the Iranian people
and then to what degree could they just
so we sort of clarify that uh and to
what degree could they have been
actual good collaborators with the
United States in fighting bin Laden?
Yeah, good questions. So
I would not ally with anybody to kill
anybody. The time of September 11th,
there were only 400 bin Laden hiding out
in Afghanistan. Any of the rest of their
associates around the Middle East could
be arrested by police forces.
Again, we could have negotiated over
them in the first place. And again, the
CIA and Delta Force could have finished
annihilating Bin Laden, Zawahi, and
their few hundred men in the White
Mountains in Nangar Province at the
Lion's Den hideout in December of 2001.
There's your whole actual terror war.
So, do we really need Iran to help us
other than what? Hand over a few
prisoners that they had captured who
were trying to hide out in their country
that they had put on house arrest. Yeah,
but that's that's all the help we
needed, right? We didn't have to have a
new alliance with them and we didn't
have to try to pretend that the
Ayatollah is a saint or that his
republic is a republic at all. Right? Um
if it's a republic, then how come he's
the supreme leader since 1989?
Doesn't sound like a republic to me. But
at the same time, you want to talk about
flawed republics, we're sitting in one.
And so um you know in this case lying us
into aggressive war after aggressive
war. You can't say the same for him
unless you want to again blame him for
sending Ahmed Chalibi to lie to Richard
Pearl to lie to George W. Bush. Um you
know and so
the we can and in fact I'm skipping
ahead but in Iraq War II we fought with
them again against the Bin Laden
caliphate. And so here we fought really
three wars for Iran against the Taliban
and against Sunni Saddam and against
Baghdaddy, the bin Laden califf um in 14
through 17 there. So why do we hate him,
Lex, so much if we keep fighting wars
for them? You know, like I used to joke
with Patrick Coburn that like, man, they
better sign this nuclear deal with
Obama. They owe us a favor after all
that we've done for them lately. You
know, despite all of the hatred and
vitriol when you listen to the Ludnik,
what you end up doing is empowering the
Ayatollah and his men.
Well, what do you think about the attack
of the United States on Iran that, as I
mentioned, had me so nervous there would
be another escalation into another
forever war?
What do you think about that situation?
Wait, let's hold that because let's do
Syria first and the redirection, then
we'll do the Iran war. Okay. Can you
talk about uh redirection? Okay. So the
redirection was from the policy was
really I think invented in late '05 and
then sort of discussed and implemented
in beginning in 2006 and the article is
called the redirection by Seymour Hirs
in the New Yorker magazine. So Hirsch uh
pardon me yes Hirs has an incredible
series from this whole year long. It
includes the coming wars, preparing the
battlefield, the redirection, and I
forget the fourth one, maybe the fifth
one. Had a bunch of great ones this
time. So, I might be combining these
articles a little bit here, but it's
along the same lines. Here's what you
need to understand about the
redirection. Okay? Oops. We screwed up
and we fought Iraq War II for the
Shiites. Now, to make up for that, we're
tilting back toward the Sunnis. But what
does that mean?
That means we're tilting back toward
Osama bin Laden and the suicide bomber
brigades. Saudis don't have an army. We
don't trust them with one probably. And
we're their army for the most part. And
so, how are we going to make it up to
the Israelis that we took their stupid
idiot advice and launched this war but
empowered their regional rivals? and how
are we going to make it up to the Saudis
who tried to warn us for the most part I
think against it but we ignored their
advice and did it anyway and empowered
their regional rivals the Iranians and
so how are we going to fix this and how
we're going to fix this is since we put
Thrron up two pegs in Baghdad we're
going to take him down a peg in Damascus
and so
they started in Lebanon backing a group
called Fatah al-Islam bin Laden suicide
bomber former head chopper, lunatic,
terrorist to fight against Husbala in
Syria. Elizabeth Cheney, who was then
working in the State Department, later
known as Liz Cheney, Dick Cheny's
daughter, she had the job of working
the Muslim Brotherhood to create the
first major government in exile to try
to use to uh overthrow Bashar al-Assad.
And I gotta tell you, man, we used to
joke on my show going back to I think
2004 or 2005 would have been probably
the first time that I had asked Eric
Margles, hey Eric, if they do cuz Eric
Margles was there just like Patrick, he
was there when Bashar al-Assad's father
Hafes al-Assad had crushed the Muslim
Brotherhood uprising in Hama in 1984 or
was it 82? and he crushed them and he
killed like 20,000 people in this
horrific thing to crush the Muslim
Brotherhood. Margles was there, knew all
about it, told me that story. And I says
to him, I says, "Well, if the neocons
get their way and they overthrow Bashar
al-Assad, then what organized force is
there in the country after the botist
that could possibly take over other than
maybe the Muslim Brotherhood if you're
lucky?" And Marley says, "Yeah, exactly.
Or it could be the Bin Laden could take
over." Now back to David Wormser in a
clean break and coping with crumbling
states. In coping with crumbling states,
Wormser says we have to expedite the
chaotic collapse to Syria.
Expedite the chaotic collapse to Syria
so that we will control the outcome
which will be more to our liking. And he
says and he's acknowledging bin Laden
terrorism is what he's referring to here
in with the recent history at the time
he's writing this in 96.
And he's saying now there's a lot of
talk about the dangers of
fundamentalism.
Meaning, okay, we're going to get rid of
these secular botist regimes. There are
fundamentalist terrorist wackos running
around right now. He acknowledges that.
And he says, but America will just have
to find better allies against
fundamentalism than the botists.
So now maybe some idiot could write that
as policy advice for the lood in 1996.
maybe before the Cobalt towers, but then
they kill our airmen at Cobalt towers.
And then they bomb the embassies. And
then they bomb the coal. And then they
hit us on September 11th. And then they
lead as the vanguard of the Sunni
insurgency that killed 4,000 of our guys
in Iraq War.
And now you're telling me that we still
better find better allies against the
Bin Laden than the Bais?
That Bashar al-Assad is worse than Osama
bin Laden.
Yes, that's what they're telling you.
Because Assad is friends with Ayatollah
and Assad helps Ayatollah arm Hezbala
and Israel as per the clean break.
What's the clean break? It's a clean
break from Oslo. Forget Rabbine and
Perez. We are going to steal all that's
left of the West Bank and Gaza Strip
sooner or later, but we don't want to
have to worry about Hezbollah on our
northern flank. We need to neutralize
them somehow. So Syria, Worms wrote, was
the keystone in that arc of Iranian
power, which was true, but of course he
was the one who added Saddam Hussein to
that same arc. Now they're saying,
"Oops, we have to fix this." this and it
was the neoconservatives Elliot Abrams
and Zay Khalilzad who came to W Bush and
said sir we really screwed up here we
have to turn this thing around now and
Bush understood now it's funny you read
the article and it's all Connela Rice
and her people trying to explain that oh
you know what it's not really about
Sunnis and Shiites legs it's about
moderates and extremists
uh and the Both are the extremists in
this you're saying right? Uh-huh.
The the multi-ethnic secular
dictatorship in Syria, the last country
in the Middle East where you can get a
drink. Those are the extremists
and we got to support the bin Laden
insurgency against them. Now, this is
the reason that Barack Obama supported
al Qaeda in Syria. It's not cuz he was a
secret Muslim terrorist with an
allegiance to bin Laden's goals. is that
he was a secret George W. Bush with
allegiance to the American foreign
policy establishment's goals, including
the neoconservatives and the Israel
lobby in this country, lude interests in
this country. And at that time, you
know, in Iraq War II,
for the average person, they'd have had
to read Mirshimer in '07 to know or read
Justin Roando at anti-war.com to even
know what is a neocon, what's the
difference between them and the rest of
the Republicans and what do they have
against Iraq so bad and what is that
agenda about? And what does it have to
do with the Lakood party in Israel? You
didn't think that. If you ask, you know,
like Dave Chappelle and his skit, it's
all like he tried to kill my daddy kind
of stuff, right? Cuz people just don't
know this deeper layer to it. Well, in
Syria, it was just as obvious as it
could be. The war party in America is
the Israel lobby, right? It is all
Zionists led by the Lakunix and the
neoconservatives, but on the so-called
liberal side too. People like Jaime
Rubin who had worked for Bill Clinton
wrote a giant thing in first it was a
secret memo that he wrote to Hillary
Clinton and they later published it as
an essay in Foreign Policy magazine. You
can pull it up right now if you want.
Jamie Rubin um I'm pretty sure it's
2011. If it's 12 I'm sorry, but I'm
pretty sure it's 11 in Foreign Policy
magazine and I don't know, type in
Syria, Assad, and Israel. The reason we
have to do this is for Israel. The real
reason to intervene in Syria. There was
a funny anecdote about this one too,
Lex, because I just happened to be
screwing around on Twitter that morning
that um Assange published the State
Department cables.
Maybe it was that morning or soon after
that. And I'm virtually certain it was
David Rothco who was then the editor of
foreign policy. And I can't remember who
else. one of his right-hand men at
foreign policy.com, the journal of uh
well, it's a journal, the foreign policy
journal. I forgot if there's a specific
think tank behind them. Anyway,
and they freaked out and they attacked
Julian Assange and they said, "Aha, we
caught Wikileaks posting a fake document
cuz this is not a State Department
document. This is an article that we ran
at foreign policy and you you obviously
copied and pasted it and are running it
at Wikileaks. And not only that, but
you've changed it. And then Assange
says, "No, you cooks. This is a memo
that somebody wrote to Hillary Clinton."
And apparently it was Jamie Rubin who
wrote it and then he submitted the same
essay to you to run at foreign policy.
That's what happened. And the article is
about, "Madam Secretary, we got to
support Bin Laden Knight head chopper
suicide bombers in the greatest act of
treason that you could possibly imagine
because Israel matters more than the
United States of America and the 3,000
killed on September 11th." That's why
I'm paraphrasing roughly. The real
reason to intervene in Syria, cutting
Iran's link to the Mediterranean Sea, is
a strategic price worth the risk. And
why? because Israel's foreign policy
interests, not those of the United
States of America. Now, what's the true
history of that war? They called it an
uprising. They called it a revolution.
We're skipping Libya here, but they
supported the bin Laden in Libya. Then
this was Hillary Clinton's bank shot to
take the Libyan Islamic fighting group
and Ansar al-Sharia, the same guys that
did the Benghazi attack of September 11,
2012, and send them on to Syria for the
next jihad. Now, in Libya, Gaddafi
wasn't a Shiite, and this wasn't about
that. Although the Israelis did hate him
and want him gone. Um, but in Syria, it
was all about this redirection policy
and continuing the redirection policy of
trying to weaken Assad as essentially a
consolation prize after America screwed
up so bad by putting the Shiites in
power in Baghdad. And so, this is why we
have to do this. And there was a whole
chorus around that time. And if you
remember the first major fake sarin
attack of August 2013 in Ghouta, which
the war party tried to claim that Assad
did it in order to launch a war there,
and they were trying to get us to do it
at that time. You know, first of all,
Barack Obama is the commander-in-chief
at this point. It's not the same as
George W. Bush and you know escalating
the Afghan war that was already going on
and we have to win it and that's the
consensus or whatever. That's kind of
one thing but Obama wants to start a new
war in Syria. Now the American right
said I don't think so and in fact on
this point all hail Steven Bannon
because it was Bannon and Breitbart that
led the campaign that said at that time
Breitbart was an incredible like much
more important I think than it probably
is now but whatever. I don't I don't
know how to measure that, but at that
time they were extremely influential.
And they led the charge. We do not want
to fight this war. And you might
remember this, Lex. You had Army
soldiers and Marines and Navy sailors
would be holding up pieces of paper in
still shots and in short video clips
that said, "I didn't join the Marines to
fight a civil war for al-Qaeda in
Syria." Remember that? And those were
going viral. It was a bunch of them.
What was this? 13.
This is August of 13. And at this point,
Barack Obama reaches out to Apac in the
Israel lobby and asks them to please do
everything you can to push this. Now, I
have to say, I don't know what was going
on there, but I actually thought that he
was being kind of sarcastic there. At
that point, there was nobody pushing for
war with Syria except the Israel lobby.
And Obama seemed to be saying, "Hey
guys, if you want this, you need to
really stick your neck out for it." But
the thing is they stuck their neck out.
It's almost like um remember in um that
Will Frell movie where he goes to
college and he's running naked down the
street and he thinks everybody's behind
him but he's just wasted old school.
Yeah. It's like that. They're like,
"Come on everybody. We're going to
Syria. We're running drunk down the
street." And then they look and nobody
else is coming with him. It's just the
Israel lobby. It's just as plain as day.
Whose interest is this in? Nobody else
cares. Nobody else wants to do this.
Nobody else believes the lies that oh
the day that the chemical weapons
inspectors arrive, Assad gassed a bunch
of people. Huh? Give me a break, dude.
This whole thing is so stupid. And then
so they couldn't do it. The Israel lobby
basically failed. And then importantly,
this is the one good thing I'll ever say
in my life about James Clapper. And by
the way, this was a secret. They didn't
tell us this. We only found this out
later from uh Jeffrey Goldberg in the
Atlantic. Um Thomas R. Goldberg, the
former prison guard. uh and ruthless uh
abuser of Palestinian captives. Um he
wrote in the Atlantic that James Clapper
told Barack Obama it's not a slam dunk
that Bashar al-Assad was behind the gas
attack and Dempsey who was then the
chairman Admiral was it general or
Admiral General Dempsey who was then the
chairman of the joint chiefs of staff
also gave a public statement who said I
don't know why we have to do this right
now and so at that point his own staff
was telling him Mr. president like,
"Hey, if anybody asks me, I'm going to
tell them that I told you that I can't
even prove that this is true."
Yeah. James Clapper was a director of
national intelligence, DNI, from August
2010 to 2017, acting as the principal
intelligence adviser to President Barack
Obama and overseeing all US intelligence
He also is the guy who planned Operation
Storm, where they cleansed the Creina
and Eastern Slovenia in 1995 of Croatian
Serbs. He's also the guy who lied that
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction. He could prove it from the
satellite pictures. He's also the guy
that lied that Vladimir Putin helped
Saddam Hussein move those chemical
weapons to Syria is why we can't find
them. He's also the guy that lied that
the NSA is not all up in your phone
seizing all of your data, which is what
motivated the hero Edward Snowden to
leak and tell the truth. And he's also
the guy that lied that Donald Trump was
a blackmailed suborin agent of Vladimir
Putin helped who helped to usurp Hillary
Clinton's rightful throne in a coup d'et
and take over this country. And of
course he's a paid analyst at CNN. And
if Donald Trump doesn't give him life in
prison, I'm going to really regret it a
lot. He deserves to suffer horribly. But
you did say a positive thing about him.
I did say a positive thing about him,
which was he told Barack Obama, "I'm not
going to vouch for this chemical weapons
lie here, buddy." No slam dunk. And that
was a reference to George Tennant
telling George Bush, "It's a slam dunk,
sir." Ain't no one else want to know
what's funny about that is that George
Tennant said, "Oh, that's not fair.
They're throwing me under the bus." I
didn't say that Iraq's possession of
chemical weapons was a slam dunk. What I
said was,
"You can convince the American people
with this story. That's the slam dunk."
In other words, I wasn't lying. I was
saying, "Mr. president, you'll be able
to get away with this lie. That's George
Tennant's defense of that statement.
Anyway, so Clapper was saying, "Well,
this ain't a slam dunk. I won't stand by
it." By the way, as long as we're
talking about uh Jeffrey Goldberg in the
Atlantic, it may be the same article.
Um, if you type in James Clapper and
slam dunk in Syria there, let me see if
I got this right.
The Obama doctrine. That's the article.
Okay. Not a slam dunk. Okay, I'm glad we
clarified this. It's a different
article. The article is called As
President I Don't Bluff. It's another
interview of Obama by Jeffrey Goldberg.
And um in this article is where Jeffrey
Goldberg Well, I'll tell you what. No,
no, no. Get the This is just the
political. Do the Atlantic. Yeah. Obama
to Iran and Israel as president of the
United States. I don't bluff by Jeffrey
Goldberg. March 2nd, 2012.
Okay, just so people understand, the
headline there is he is telling Jeffrey
Goldberg to please tell the Israelis
that they can trust me, that you trust
me, that I promise, that I really,
really, really, really, really, really
mean it, that if the Ayatollah breaks
out for a nuclear bomb, I will go to
war. I will not let him get one.
Jeffrey, please tell them I'm not lying
about this. Okay, that's what where that
comes from. That's what he's doing
there. But now, will they show you the
whole thing or your payw wall here?
Maybe if you put it in archive.is. Can
you copy and paste that and put it in
archive.is? Oh, you got to just sign in.
Um, so now I see if you can controlf for
classified
or clearance. Can we talk about Syria as
a strategic issue? Talk about it as a
humanitarian issue as well. But it would
seem to me that one way to weaken and
further isolate Iran is to remove or
help remove Iran's only Arab ally.
Obama. Absolutely.
Okay. This is why we want to weaken
Syria is a easier way to weaken Iran.
And as they continue to talk about here,
he's saying that we are intervening
there and this is a way to uh weaken
Iran in this way. And then Goldberg
"Is there anything you could do to move
it faster?" And Obama, on a less funny
version of the joke about, "I could tell
you, but I'd have to kill you," he says,
"Well, nothing that I can tell you
because your classified clearance isn't
good enough." In other words, and check
my date on this again. Was it 12 or 11?
I forget. No, no, this would have been
12. This is 12. Yeah, March 12th. Um,
and so he's saying, "It's already on,
Jeffrey. We're doing it, buddy. What's
he doing? He's working with Britain and
France, Turkey, Israel, Saudi, and Qatar
to back Osama bin Laden's suicide bomber
In fact, worse, Abu Musab al- Zarqawi's
suicide bomber brigades. Remember, we
talked about how the local Iraqi Sunnis
had turned on Al Qaeda. It wasn't
America and the Shiites that defeated al
Qaeda in Iraq. It was the local Iraqi
Sunnis that did so. And they're the ones
even who turned in Zarqawi to the
Americans to kill. I know the
interrogator. I I interviewed the
interrogator who without torture but by
being a nice guy got the information.
Tell us where Zarawi is. We'll get him.
And the guy told him and they got him.
This is in the summer of 2006. They
killed him. And at that time al Qaeda in
Iraq then renamed itself the Islamic
State of Iraq. And we all got a good
chuckle out of it because you guys don't
control a single county anywhere in
Iraq. there is no state. But at the same
time, we said, "Aha, though, look at
what they're talking about." Bin Laden's
policy always was just keep fighting.
There's no point in creating a caliphate
as long as the American Empire is here
to erase it again. So, we fight the far
enemy. We fight a long-term strategy to
bog the empire down, bleed them to
bankruptcy, force them all the way out.
Only then can we have our perfect
Islamic state we want to create. Sarawi
says, "No, I want that now." This was
his doctrine. And they called their
group, Islamic State of Iraq, just about
I forget it was just before he died, I
believe it was just after he died, they
started calling themselves that, but
very clearly, you know, betraying their
intentions if they were to have the
ability to take over anything. That's
their goal. And they have these that
level of ambition. Now, it's very
important to note that in Iraq War II,
when I say America bought that war as a
civil war for the Shiite side against
the Sunnis,
they didn't want the whole country. They
only wanted Shiastan. They only wanted
the land basically from Baghdad over to
Iran and down to Kuwait, down to Najaf,
right? Um down to the Saudi border. They
didn't so much worry about the Sunni
Iraqis of Fallujah and Toree and Mosul.
Uh, let them burn in the sun, man. Screw
them. Oh, I should have said this was a
big part of why the Sunnis fought so
hard in the first place was because,
remember, they're losing control of the
national government. Well, all the oil
is down in the south near Basra and it's
up in the north near Kirk Cook where
it's going to be controlled either by
the Shiites or by the Kurds now by the
Shiites. And so what does that mean for
the Sunnis? They have some oil, but it's
virtually all undeveloped oil and much
less of it in the predominantly Sunni
areas of the country. So when they lose
control of the national government, they
lose control over all the spoils, right?
And so they get nothing. And so the
Shiites idea is not by the Shiites I
mean the Supreme Islamic Council of
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the Da Party of
Nuriel Maliki and their murderous
forces. their idea. They're just as
chauvinistic as the Bin Laden. Screw you
guys, man. You can just burn in the sun.
We'll do nothing for you. We got nothing
for you. But what did that mean in
practice? And again, the heroic Patrick
Coburn, it meant that all Western Iraq
was wide open, no man's land, no
consolidated political authority
anywhere. Ongoing low-level Sunni
insurgency led by Bin Laden. Even when
the Americans leave by the end of 2011,
they still leave a few CIA guys and
drones there. And as we joked on the
show in real time, Lex, me and Jason
Ditz from anti-war.com would joke that
we're still doing drone strikes in Iraq
after the withdrawal, but we still got
spies there. We're still doing drone
strikes. Why? Not that we're killing the
Bin Ladites. We're aiming at their heels
cuz we're trying to chase them west into
Syria where they're heroes. In Syria,
they're the moderate rebels. in Syria.
They're just trying to fight for freedom
against the forces of evil bot this
tyranny. These are bin Laden's guys.
These are Zarqawi's guys. It's bin
Laden's uh agent in uh his main agent in
in Iraq was a guy named Abu Muhammad
Alani. And then later, you know, his
boss was this guy um Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi who was apparently the
second leader after Zarqawi. Some say
that the first leader after Zarqawari
was actually made up that there was no
leader and they just sort of put this
persona out there. Well, Abu Bakr, all
Baghdaddy sure existed. These guys had
all been locked up in Kamuka together
and had, you know, kind of reorganized
al Qaeda in Iraq and when America left,
they sprung them all loose. They're
ready to go. So, Baghdaddy tells Golani,
"Go to Syria." Galani, you know, as
Alshara, the self-appointed president of
Syria right now. That's Abu Muhammad Al
Jalani lets he join the jihad because he
was spire inspired by September 11th. He
told Frontline that you damn right he
fought and killed Americans in Mosul and
Ramani in Iraq war II. Then he went to
Syria to help lead the so-called
uprising revolution civil war in Syria.
No. Again, we have from 2011 that uh
Prince Bandar bin Sultan was emptying
Saudi jails and sending all the
jihadists off to Syria to fight. And
they were on the record. I have the
quotes where they say it's it's is it
Bandar? Bandar says we're sick and tired
of the Shiites and they're going to find
out whatever. I forgot the exact it's in
there. Um and then the other quote was
from uh a guy named Prince Turkey who
said dash that is ISIS that is al Qaeda
in Iraq
dash is our answer to your support for
the dawa
get it.
Why does why does Saudi Arabia in
conspiracy with Barack Obama and
Benjamin Netanyahu reserdawan and all
these guys why are they backing the bin
Laden in Syria? Because we put the Dawa
party in power in Baghdad. This is their
answer to that where so this is again
the redirection. We empowered the
Shiites so much now we got to move to
limit them again. mostly because that's
what our allies want so badly,
especially the Israelis and the Saudis.
And so from 2011, we knew this is not a
revolution. This is not an uprising. I
don't care if there's footage of
protesters on TV or even if Bashar
al-Assad's forces are shooting them,
which they were. I would note although
it's proven by Charmaine Al- Narwani and
the great journalist William Vanwagen
and whose book on Syria I'm going to
publish any day now at the Libertarian
um who's written these massive long-
form studies on the origins of the Syria
war um for the Libertarian Institute and
shows how yes you would have peaceful
protest but then the bin Laden would be
there and would snipe cops
of course for the direct purpose of
provoking a reaction. It's exactly how
they started the Kosovo war. They'd
assassinate police officers, forcing the
military to intervene to radicalize and
increase the whole situation was the
same thing that they were doing there.
It's how they got the whole thing
started. And again, it's literally al
Qaeda in Iraq thus taking the lead at
that time. Now,
remember hours ago when we talked about
truth, falsity, and our position? Well,
our position was we're supporting
moderate rebels. We're not supporting
Bin Laden. And in fact, the Bin Laden,
if they're not backed by Assad just to
make the protesters look bad, then at
least they're only benefiting cuz we
just won't give enough support to the
moderates. That was our position. But
that was not true. From the very
beginning it was clear these guys are
lunatics man. There was a boy in 2000
early 13 a boy had a a fruit stand and
one of the bin lad knights or just some
guy said hey give me a discount on this
orange and the kid said 13-year-old boy
I believe.
He said I'm sorry I can't give
discounts.
I wouldn't even give a discount to
Muhammad himself.
And bin Laden standing with an earshot
said, "What did you just say?" Boom. And
shot the 13-year-old boy right in the
face to death.
That's one of the moderate rebels.
That's the moderate rebels. And And what
were the moderate rebels the whole time?
What? the ones who were quote unquote
modern, the free Syrian army, the guys
with shorter beards who would come and
talk to the Americans who would who
there pictures of them in tents that say
US aid on them and their job was just
receiving the money and the guns and
delivering to the bin Laden just like
with the war in Afghanistan in the 80s
or something.
You know, Bandark can empty his jails
and whatever, but for the most part,
like these guys are volunteers. There's
not an organized state army on the
ground that's like conscripted them and
controls them to that degree. So who's
out there fighting? The guys who are
fighting are the ones who don't mind
dying. The ones who are absolutely the
most committed to this revolution. And
we know who they are. They're bin Laden
and Zawahari and Zarqawi's guys. al
Qaeda in Iraq in Syria going at that
time by the name Jabat al-Nusra which
I'm told roughly translates from
association of assistance or helpers and
that they're al Qaeda in Iraq in Syria
the same guys that were the vanguard of
the Sunni insurgency in Iraq War II are
now the vanguard of the Sunni insurgency
in Syria and while there's just one line
on a map between them we're still on the
side of the Shiites in Iraq but we're on
the side of the Sunni in Syria. Now,
this goes on for 2 years and you have
bin Laden from all over the place,
including Chetchins and Chinese
weaggguers and people from all over
everywhere coming to join the jihad,
just like in Iraq War too, Egyptians and
Libyans and whoever come to join the
And by
um the late spring, early summer of
you now have a split between Baghdaddy,
who's now also come to Syria, sorry,
from your point of view, this way, into
Syria. And now Baghdaddy and Galani, the
leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria
split. And it's a fight over control and
over really over oil wealth and who
controls the their gangster spoils or a
bunch of terrorists but also over
doctrine too. Baghdaddy is more like a
zarqawiite
and Baghdaddy is saying I want my
caliphate now against the advice of Iman
Alawahari who is now the surviving
leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq after bin
Laden was killed in May of 2011.
Zahari is the one who said, "No, we
should fight the far enemy. Don't create
a state now because you won't be able to
hold on to it. Just keep fighting." And
he sent an emissary uh who had been an
original veteran of the Afghan war named
Alsuri to come and negotiate between
Baghdaddy and Galani. Baghdaddy killed
the guy and declared a state in eastern
Syria. Now at this time Assad has to
pull his forces back from the east and
consolidate. All the population centers
other than Raqqa. All the other big
population centers are in the west of
the country. Hama Aleppo and Damascus
and he has to try to protect these
areas. And so he ends up being forced to
leave eastern Syria basically wide open.
So by June of 2013, Baghdaddy splits
from Golani and creates ISIS, the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or Iraq
and the Levant or you know whatever they
called it in in Arabic. The acronym is
pronounced dash d aes
uh e s. Um, and so when we say ISIS,
ISIL, the Islamic State, the Caliphate
or Dash, that's all the same thing.
That's al Qaeda in Iraq, went to Syria,
consolidated eastern Syria. Now, that's
in June of 13. 6 months later, they
hoist the black flag over Falluguja.
And at anti-war.com, we're freaking out.
And I've been saying on my show this
whole time, Western Iraq is wide open.
Patrick Coburn says Western Iraq is wide
open. Red alert, man. This is a problem
here. We're backing these guys. There's
nobody seems to think about the next
stage of this conflict. I remember even
Michael Shyer said on my show, I think
the big problem right now is Boo Haram.
And I'm like, uh, excuse me. We're
backing the bin lanite caliphate in
eastern Syria and Western Iraq is wide
open for the taking. And you can go back
and check my archives from especially
the first half of 2014 where I'm
interviewing even the despicable
Jonathan Lande and all kinds of anyone
that I know who knows anything about the
Bin Laden. I'm interviewing them mostly
so I can browbe them and tell them I on
the ball everybody. This is what
matters, right? This is the most
important crisis that could possibly be
going on. And we know now that Mike
Flynn was the head of the DIA at the
time. And he, we know from Seymour
Hearse, there's an article called
Military to Military in the London
Review of Books about how Mike Flynn was
heroically insubordinate and was giving
secret intelligence to the Germans to
give to Assad to use to kill the Bin
Laden, to kill the CIA's terrorists on
the ground there. And that's what got
him fired from the DIA. And now Mike
Flynn is a a Iran hawk. He hates the
Ayatollah and the Shiites and that whole
thing is a absolutely pro-Israel Zionist
guy 100%. But his point of view was,
well, let's just bomb Thrron. Just cuz I
hate the Shiites doesn't mean I want to
back Osama bin Laden's suicide bomber
head chopper brigades against their
friend in Syria. What the hell is this?
It's crazy. Same thing for Tulsi
Gabbard. By the way, the most
controversial thing about this woman
supposedly her entire career somehow she
was a toad of Assad is what um Bari
Weiss told Joe Rogan and he asked her
what's a toad and she said I don't know
and he said how do you spell it and she
said with a Y and had no idea even to
spell the word that she was trying to
smear Tulsi Gabbard as some kind of
agent of Bashar al-Assad. Tulsi Gabbard,
who at that time was a major, later
promoted to captain in the Army National
Guard, who I believe only left the
National Guard to become director of
National Intelligence. This American
military officer, right? Oh, yeah. I'm
so sure she's such a traitor to this
country. Give me a break. They keep
promoting her. She may even still be in
the National Guard. I'm not sure if that
how that works when you're the DNI. But
Tulsi Gabber never said that Bashar
Assal is a good man. She never said he's
a hero. She never said America should
all lie with him. She never said
anything like that. What she said was
Assad is less worse than his enemies.
America is backing al Qaeda. Now, if you
know anything about Tulsi Gabbert, she
has never been, is not, and has never
been against the war on terrorism. In
fact, when she was running for
president, she put out statements
defining al Qaeda so broadly, she said
hundreds of groups are linked to al
Qaeda in the world and that she's
willing to fight them.
Okay? She is a overtheline to unreason
hawk on killing bin Laden. Okay?
But she and and by the way, why Lex?
Because she fought in Iraq War II. not
fought, but she was in Iraq war in a
medical unit at Balad Air Base north of
Baghdad for like a year. And I've never
heard her talk about this part of it,
but it is clear. There's no question
it's impossible otherwise. She saw our
guys screaming and dying in front of
her, right? Over and over and over
again. Okay, so that's why she has that
gray streak in her hair like Nancy from
Nightmare on Elm Street is because of
that. So now the Democrats are saying,
"Forget what you know about the shirts
and skins, lady. We're on the skin side
We like Al Qaeda now." Now Lex, like
quite frankly, like every other idiot in
Washington DC apparently could not have
told you the difference.
But Tulsi Gabbard could.
Tulsi Gabbard knew who was who and she
knew that Assad's enemies are al Qaeda
in Iraq in Syria and you couldn't have
tortured her into switching sides in
that war, right? It doesn't mean that
she's soft on Iran, but it means that
she wants bin Laden's dead dead and
she's supposed to be siding with them
now. And we're all supposed to be
encouraging them to overthrow this
secular dictator who's is who protects
and backs the Christians, the Shiites,
the Drews, and even and somebody argued
with me the other day in a YouTube
comment somewhere I saw about cuz I had
said the majority of Sunnis backed him
too. I think that that's true and
certainly it was true of the middle
class in Aleppo and it was certainly the
fact that the Syrian Arab army was
always majority Sunni Arab serving that
secular government. Just cuz they were
Sunnis didn't mean that they were bin
Laden. These, you know, crazy techury
salafy whatever ideology and and
especially I call them bin Laden because
it ain't just that they're Salafies cuz
there are innumerable I don't know
hundreds of thousands or millions even
of Salafies and Wahhabis in this world
who are quietists. They don't have
politics. Their politics are your king
is your king cuz God made it that way.
You're not questioning that, are you? I
didn't think so. We used to have that
tradition in the west, the divine right
of kings and that kind of thing. If
you're a good Muslim to a great many
Muslim people, never mind their
leadership, but I mean people out in the
and it it depends on the sect and the
region and everything, but the super
majority of them quite apparently are
quietists. Their job is not to question
the civil authority. Their job is to do
what civil authority says. That's why
they're the civil authority. That's how
most people feel about their governments
anyway, right? For what's the bin
Laden's problem was he was political and
he had these political goals for this
earthly realm where we exist today. And
so he really was um Loretta Napoleon,
the great Italian journalist, compared
him very much to like a Leninist where
he's trying to overthrow this world and
and have things the way that he wants it
to be in a way that even again radical
and fundamentalist Muslims usually don't
believe in and usually in fact the
studies have shown it's rad it's
amateurs who are actually kind of new at
Islam and don't know that much about it
who tend to be the more fanatical and
the more violent. whereas people who
actually know more about it will say uh
actually as you better not do that and
that kind of thing right um and I cite
all the studies in fool's air and I have
the footnotes in fool's eron uh showing
that directly and including some of the
9/11 hijackers including the bulk of the
fighters for the Islamic State caliphate
they're just regular Iraqis who are
conscripted and thing fighting for ISIS
but that didn't make them even
necessarily that political much less
motivated by simply theology to behave
in these ways. You know what I mean?
Uh if just briefly
because you brought Tulsy up, why do you
you think I I had a chance to have
multiple conversations with her. Why do
you think she was smeared so much on
this topic and other topics? Why did she
piss off?
The first thing was this. She absolutely
just knew better and was immovable like
Stonewall Jackson on this issue. you're
not going to be able to convince her
these are moderate rebels. Those lies
don't work here. So now that put her
severely on the outside of the consensus
and with authority, she actually knew
what she was talking about. That was her
problem and that was their problem with
her. They couldn't fix that. And then of
course she even though they loved her,
oh man, they groomed her. People forget
when she first came in, she's pretty,
she's intelligent. She's in the
military. She fought in Iraq or, you
know, is a quoteunquote combat vet
because even though she wasn't pulling
triggers there, she was shelled while at
Camp Balad. So, she's earned her stripes
as an official combat veteran in that
sense. And she's a woman and she's a
Democrat and this is everything that
they wanted. But then she endorsed
Bernie Sanders.
Oh yeah.
And then they went for full jihad and
never forgive her for that. And so that
was her
Hillary Clinton went after her. Is that
what happened? Trying to remember. and
Hillary Clinton tried to smear her with
Russia gate. The pathetic uh diseased
dying windbag Robert Windram from uh NBC
News attempted to smear her as well as
he attempted to smear my colleague and
editor and friend Hunter Durens as part
of the Russia gate hoax. This absolutely
ludicrous reporting. Have you ever heard
of anything that Robert Windram ever
reported in your life? Can you think of
anything where you go, "Oh, Robert
Windram, he's the guy that did this."
No. He will only be known when he dies,
which will be soon, as a disgrace to
humanity and to his profession for his
disgusting and despicable lies against
Tulsi Gabbard, against Jill Stein, and
against Hunter Dorencis. May he burn in
hell. So anyway, and his entire NBC news
organization, too. And that's why they
hated her. It's cuz she told the truth.
Yeah, it's sad. It's sad that people
like that, like we spoke about this with
Ron Paul. Well, this is different
obviously different humans, different
walks of life and so on, but there's
there's like uh there's certain people
that just have this authenticity. Sure.
And agree with them or disagree. There's
like this is like a strong this is a
really interesting person.
And actually for for a long time, Bernie
Sanders was that also. And it's like and
there's something about the system that
wants to destroy those kinds of folks or
at least suffocate the authenticity in
that person.
And to make them conform. I wouldn't I
wouldn't give him as much credit as the
two of them, but but Ron is in a class
by himself. Of course, I I guess you
could say that they're comparable
because I disagree with her and pretty
severely enough on enough things that
but on the other hand, I think Bernie
Sanders is sometimes disingenuous in a
way that I don't find her to be. Um,
without getting too far into that, but
anyway, you're right though that you
know, you can see the people who are
outside the norm usually and are treated
as the outcasts up there. if they're
anywhere near the halls of power up
there, they're the ones usually who are
telling the truth about things and are
getting things right. Okay. So, so now
let's fast forward now. So, so as I
said, in January of 14, they hoist the
black flag over Falluguja.
we at anti-war.com, etc., are freaking
out over this. Oh, and I was going to
say about Mike Flynn. Mike Flynn was the
head of the DIA that put out a report, a
secret report that's now published.
Judicial Watch. got it. And the great
Brad Hoff wrote about it at uh his great
blog uh Leavant report. People can find
it. And what happened was
the DIA put out a report saying our
allies are backing bin Laden terrorists
in Syria. Their goal is to create a
solopist principal principality in
eastern Syria. And there is a real
danger that this could blow back into
western Iraq and al Qaeda in Iraq could
return to their old haunts in Mosul and
Rammani. And he warned that in the
summer of 2012.
Okay. Then they just short of a year
later they consolidate a state in
eastern Syria just as he said, just as I
said. Again, you can check the records.
All my all 6,100 and something of my
interviews are at scottwarton.org if
anyone ever wants to see whether I was
good on this back when I claim I was. Um
and then um
Obama was asked, "Mr. President, what
about the black flag being hoisted over
Falluguja?" And Obama, this is Vanity
Fair magazine, and he tells him,
"Listen, just because the junior varsity
puts on a Kobe Bryant jersey doesn't
make them the Lakers,
right? So this idiot, I'm sorry, excuse
me for a moment, but don't you like to
somehow take the slightest comfort in
the fact that like at least Barack Obama
can read, at least he's like the
slightest bit maybe interested in what
he's doing compared to W. Bush or Trump
who are clearly just winging it. And W.
Bush just forget it. Bill Clinton, of
course, they would say he would know
more about any subject than his
briefers. and they better be on topic
cuz he read six books about it and he's
a horrible child killer. But that's
still true about him that he's a
brilliant guy or at least a brilliant
consumer of data and and in in trying to
form his policies. He wanted to be in
charge and know as much as he could. How
could Barack Obama lex not know who al
Qaeda in Iraq is? How could he think
that ISIS is the junior varsity?
These guys are the vanguard of the Sunni
insurgency that killed 4,000 out of the
4,500 of our guys that died in Iraq war.
These are the Zarqawiites. They're worse
than Bin Laden. They are
Patrick Coburn said they're the Islamist
Camir Rouge, right? Like Pulp Pot and
the Communists, the most insane lunatics
to ever be armed with weapons before,
right? nutcases.
Berserkers.
This is the Junior Varsity, the suicide
bomber brigade, the most dangerous one
that's ever been created in history. And
6 months later, they rolled right into
Mosul. And this is the picture you still
have in your head of that long trying,
that long train of Toyota Helix pickup
trucks rolling into Mosul with their
headlights on and all the jihadis in the
back of the trucks with their rifles.
And just as Patrick Coburn and I had
predicted, the Shiite Iraqi army that
had hardly any interest whatsoever in
ruling Mosul or Toree or Fallujah turned
tail and ran and the Islamic State
caliphate then conquered all of Western
Iraq from 2014. They took um Mosul to
Cree. It took them a little while, but
they took Ramani in 15. And they took
Fallujah right away and they created an
in area land mass the size of Great
Britain with a standing army of at its
highest about 250 to 300,000 men if you
take if you look at their troop strength
in various places during that time. And
then what did Obama do? This is in Oh
man, you know what? We should watch this
clip, dude. Let's pipe this in here.
Speaking of Jonah Goldberg, type in Orin
O R E N Orin Sunnis and it's going to
come right up as your first YouTube
link. It's going to automatically launch
right there. There it is right there.
Sunnis versus Shiites and the lesser of
two evils. And I actually met the guy
who asked the question here came up to
me at a thing and said, "Hey, I'm the
guy that asked the question at that
thing." So kudos to you, buddy. Thank
you. Lex Freeman, let's watch this clip
and trip out.
doesn't stay in there for another couple
more weeks. What What do you think your
country is doing in order to protect
your interest?
Pause one sec. Did I mention now this is
in the middle of June 2014?
Okay. They sacked Mosul and Abu Bakr
Albaghdaddy got up there at the Mosul
Grand Mosque like a cross between Bonito
Mussolini and Osama bin Laden and
declared himself the divinely appointed
califf Ibraim, ruler of the Islamic
State Caliphate.
This is two weeks later. Okay, hit the
How are you working to align with other
partners? All right, keep in mind I
don't speak for the government anymore.
I'm just speaking for me.
Not true. Wait, pause it again. He gave
an interview to the Jerusalem Post where
he said these exact same things while he
was still Netanyahu's ambassador to the
United States. And this is treason. This
man was born in the United States of
America. Okay, go ahead.
And what I'm going to say is is is harsh
and perhaps a little edgy,
but if we have to choose the lesser of
evils here, the lesser evil is the
Sunnis over the Shiit for the reason for
Okay, it's a lesser evil.
It's an evil, believe me, it's terribly
evil. Again, they had just taken out 7
to 800 former Iraqi soldiers and shot
them in a field. But who are they who
are they fighting against? They're
fighting against the against the proxy
with Iran that's complicit in the murder
of 160,000 people in Syria. You can
just, you know, do the math. And again,
one side is armed with suicide bombers
and rockets. The other side has access
to military nuclear capabilities. So
from Israel's perspective,
um, you know, if someone's got to if if
there's got to be an evil that's going
to prevail, you know, let let the the
Sunni evil prevail. And I, again, I'm
speaking entirely for myself.
No, he just said from Israel's
perspective, from the Netanyahu regime's
perspective is exactly what he meant.
And it's fine because we have plenty of
MSAD and military officers echoing those
exact same statements. Even Thomas L.
Friedman says, "We shouldn't defeat the
Islamic State yet. They're taxing the
Shiites." Okay, there's no question of
what he meant there. And by the way, is
he talking about the mythical moderates,
the free Syrian army? No, he's not. How
do we know that? Cuz he did just say
Sunnis. But he also said we just saw
them take 1,700
Iraqi, he says, soldiers, but it was air
force cadets at Camp Spicher and
massacred them in the field. Iraqi
Shiites. That was ISIS that did that
just a week ago. When he's saying this,
he's not talking about the mythical
moderates. He's saying the Sunni evil,
let the Sunni evil prevail. He's talking
about Baghdaddy's bin Laden caliphate.
Because, and what are his two excuses?
That Assad is responsible for every
single death in the war when all he's
doing is defending his state from
foreign invasion by foreign backed
superpower backed bin Laden suicide
bomber. He just said suicide bomber
mercenaries, right? But no, Assad's
responsible for every single one of the
deaths. And then he lies again outright
and says, "And Iran has military nuclear
technology," implying that somehow the
Ayatollah has a bomb and he's going to
give one to Assad or to Hezbala. And so
that's why we need to back al Qaeda in
Syria. Both of which are of course
complete and total hoaxes. And again, he
admitted in the middle of that after
lying and saying he's only speaking for
himself, he accidentally said from
Israel's perspective, he also said the
same thing again in an interview with
the Jerusalem Post either right before
he left or right after he left being the
ambassador said the exact same thing.
And he's clearly reflecting Benjamin
Netanyahu's view here. There's no
question about that. And I have in
enough already I have an entire section
called Israel's role that showed how
they were giving direct aid and comfort
to the bin Laden um uh by way of the
Golan Heights. And there was even at one
point quite famously there was an attack
by local uh Drews on the Golan Heights
kidnapped prisoners of the Israelis
basically um who attacked an Israeli
ambulance that was shipping bin Laden
back to the front because the bin Laden
had been killing Syrian Drews their
brethren and so they attacked this
ambulance and it became kind of a
controversy. It also was controver
controversy when ISIS, not even Nusra or
Jhal Islam or Ral Al Sham or one of
these other groups. Actually, ISIS
accidentally hit Israel with a rocket
and immediately apologized. Mhm.
Very sorry about that. We like you guys.
No offense. Forget that. You can read.
Let's look at this. As long as we're on
this, I'm having so much fun. Type in
foreign affairs
and accepting al Qaeda.
There you go. The enemy of the United
States enemy. And just in case you're
confused, with a nice big picture of
Osama bin Laden and Iman Zawahheri on
the top. And the article is about how
we're supposed to hate the Shiites more
cuz that's what our allies want
regardless of who killed all those
Americans in New York City.
They ran another one. Type it in. The
good and bad of Aar al-S sham.
This is from Brookings. The good and bad
of Syria. Aar al- Sham. Yep. It's by
that uh traitor Michael Duran
and Clint Watts. Who's Clint Watts? He's
the guy, the former FBI agent who was
behind Hamilton 68 that lied and said
that you and all your friends are all
Russian bots and that you ought to be
censored right off of Twitter. That's
who Clint Watts is. He's a damned liar.
And he later admitted to BuzzFeed, "Oh,
I don't really know about that whole bot
thing. He was the guy who did it working
for Bill Crystal. They created the
Alliance for Securing Democracy." And it
was Clint Watts who lied that whole and
there were hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds of stories
claiming that Russian bots were behind
it every time anything good ever
happened on Twitter during that era.
That's who Clint Watts is. And then they
say, "What's Did you click the thing?
Page up just a sec. What's the by line
here? the good and bad of Aar al- Sham.
Oh, they deleted it. In the foreign
affairs version, the subhead is an al
Qaeda linked group worth defending.
Yeah. I mean, it also says the al Qaeda
of yesterday is gone. So, it's changing
the story.
They're good guys now, man. They kill
Shiites for us now.
Yeah, they killed Serbs for us. We
really liked it when they were helping
kick in Serb skulls. Um,
well, just to wrap that up, Obama
launched a war. He waited a couple of
months to try to push out Maliki and
then he launched Iraq War 3 to destroy
the caliphate again. In this time, in
this case, directly on the side of the
Iranians, you had Iranians on the
ground, Kuds force on the ground running
the Iraqi Shiite militias, fighting for
Toree, liberating Toree from the bin
Laden with America flying air cover for
them. At this time, John McCain
complained, "We're flying as Iran's air
force in Iraq, but we're flying as
Iran's air force against the bin Laden
caliphate that McCain had helped build
up to spite Iran for accepting our
Christmas gift of fighting Iraq war for
them." So, it was all John McCain's
fault when he complained that. And then
there's a a guy named Michael Horton, no
relation to me, but who is from the
Jamestown Foundation and a terrorism
expert. He says, "Yeah, John McCain
complains that we're flying as Iran's
air force in Iraq." Well, we're flying
as al-Qaeda's air force in Yemen because
this was at the time that Obama switched
sides in the Yemen war where America was
giving intelligence to the Houthis. Wall
Street Journal January 2012 uh 2015 and
Al Monitor by Barbara Slavven from the
Atlantic Council uh January 2015.
America's passing intelligence. Lloyd
Austin, Obama's, I mean, pardon me,
Biden's later secretary of defense was
the head of Central Command. He's
passing intelligence to the Shiite
Houthies to use to kill al Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula. Our enemies, the ones
who tried to blow up the plane over
Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 with the
underpants bomb. The guys who uh did the
horrific attacks in Nice and in Paris,
France, the Charlie Hebdo and the Eagles
of Death Metal concert. They attacked a
kosher grocery store in uh France and a
uh a Jewish museum in Brussels. This was
the first I think uh ISIS in Syria
attack uh was at a Holocaust uh museum
in in uh Brussels. So that blowback was
coming all all way right away. But
anyway, AQAP in Yemen, they were like
real ass al Qaeda guys and they were
coming for us. They weren't just like,
"Oh, al-Shabaab in Syria, right? These
guys were real enemies. And Obama's
willing to turn right around. And
because the new deputy crown prince of
Saudi Arabia, Muhammad bin Salman,
wanted a promotion. He was the defense
minister. He's the brand new 29 years
old defense minister and deputy crown
prince. He wants to make a political
move. So he launches a war in Yemen
against the new Houthi regime with
Obama's support so that he can use that
as a power play inside the royal family.
This is when he arrests the crown prince
Muhammad bin Naif and um uh Talal and
all of those Saudi billionaires that got
marginalized and arrested in their all
their property stolen at that time in a
big move by MBS to make himself crown
prince and de facto king which he is
right now. And he did that in alliance
with Muhammad bin Zed from UAE. And they
convinced Obama to do it. And it was an
absolutely genocidal war against the
civilian population of Yemen that whole
time. I'd hate to leave that out. I
guess we have to skip Somalia for let me
say about Somalia real quick. It's the
longest war in American history. George
W. Bush sent Jac there in December and
CIA in December of 01 and they never
left. We've been killing people in
Somalia ever since then. And the first
thing that they did was they took the
bad guy warlord from Blackhawk down in
93 and they tried to put his son in
power. They built up his son. you bring
us the scalps of jihadis.
And get this, according to the CIA
talking to the Washington Post, this is
their version, there were three,
not 13, not 30, not 3,000, not three,
nothing, three al Qaeda members,
suspects wanted for questioning by the
FBI for their potential involvement in
the USS Cole attack and the Africa
embassy's attack. That was the excuse
for this intervention. the potential
that there were three bin Laden in
Somalia. So, America started backing the
warlords against them. More people
started and whoever their other enemies
were, right? Whatever they want to do.
The more that they fight, the more they
keep coming back to the CIA and saying,
"Oh man, you wouldn't believe how many
enemies there are out there." And they
make matters worse and worse. And this
is at a time where people mock
libertarians for noticing that without a
government, Somalia was thriving. They
had come from communism. Then they had a
civil war of 50 warlords versus each
other, but everyone was spent and nobody
won. And so they had essentially a
stateless country, but it was more or
less at peace and no one was powerful
enough to gangsterize everybody else.
And so the ports at Kismeo and Mogadishu
were open with no tariffs. And they had
massive trade. And one of the best ways
to measure economic growth at that time
was in the expansion of the cell phone
industry, which was um more extensive in
Somalia at that time than any other
place in Eastern Africa. And this was
under de facto accidental libertarian
capitalist anarchism, right? With no one
in charge. And libertarians noticed
that. And to this day, freaks and cooks
and especially liberal democrats like to
say, "Oh, if you like freedom so much,
why don't you move to Somalia?" Well,
excuse me, but George W. Bush, you know,
freedom himself, has been destroying
Somalia with the power of the most
powerful regime in the history of the
solar system this whole time since then.
So only an American who knows nothing
about America's responsibility for
destroying that society could possibly
be ignorant and idiot enough to blame
libertarianism and freedom and liberty
and capitalism and and free trade among
property owners for what ails Somalia.
USA the regime is what ruins Somalia,
our military, our CIA. And so by 2005,
they formed their own little pseudo
government in response to American
intervention and aggression called the
Islamic Courts Union. W Bush then hired
the Ethiopians to invade to crush them.
their historical Christian enemies
against this Muslim society um and hired
Ethiopia to invade and they did complete
with mass rapes and torture and want and
murder and just absolute war crimes and
that was what led to the rise of
al-Shabaab. Al-Shabaab means the youth
or I've been told more accurately the
boys. And under the Islamic courts
union, it was a group of 13 different
groupings that came together. That's why
it was a union. And but who was in
charge? The elders, the uncles, the
imams, the grandfathers, the old men of
the village were the ones who were in
charge of dispute resolution going on,
right? But now once George Bush had
Ethiopia invade Christmas time 2006,
well, guess who leads the insurgency?
The boys. And that's why we've been
fighting uh al-Shabaab in Somalia since
2006 because George W. Bush invented
them with his horrific satanic demonic
murderous war that he waged there from
2001 through 2006. Then self-licking ice
cream cone. Oh look, we have a terrorist
enemy we have to fight. In 2012, America
kicked them out of Kiso or the the
Kenyans did with American support.
kicked them out of the port city of
Kismea where they had a black market
charcoal operation going financing their
efforts. And when they did that, it was
only then that they turned to the Saudis
and accepted a sack of gold coins to
declare themselves al Qaeda. 2012,
11 years after George Bush came to
Somalia, he succeeded,
he and his successor Obama succeeded in
turning them into bin Laden. Only then
the Americans killed the worst leader of
the bin Laden faction, a guy named God,
they killed him in 2012 or 13. Oh, I
should have mentioned that the guys they
overthrew in Bush's last year in power,
Connisa Rice made a deal with them that
they can actually be the government of
Somalia after all. Never mind our giant
war against your Islamic courts union.
You can be the president, a guy named
Sharief, you can be the president after
all, but it has to be in the form of our
our uh transitional federal government
that we've built for you. So once those
guys, their original enemies that they
waged this whole war to thwart, once
they went ahead and accepted them and
empowered them, al-Shabaab said, "You
guys are traitors and sellouts and kept
fighting." And by the way, um Obama
murdered men, women, and children with
drones. We had our nuclear submarines
firing cruise missiles at thatched huts
full of women and their daughters. Okay,
that's what Barack Obama did. Made that
thing nothing but worse and worse and
worse the whole time he was in there.
When Donald Trump came in, this is
according to James Mattis. He complained
to James Mattis, his secretary of
defense, and said, "I want out of
Somalia. Why are we in Somalia? Where's
Somalia? What do I care about Somalia?
Get me out of there." And Mattis said
two things. one, we're trying to prevent
a Times Square attack type attack.
Well, the thing about that is the Times
Square attack was committed by a
Pakistani American named Fisel Shazad
who was living the dream, man. He had an
advanced degree. He had a nice house and
a wife and a kid and a car and was doing
fine. And then he went home to Pakistan
on vacation and he saw the results of
one of Barack Obama's drone strikes that
killed a family there. And he
volunteered to sign up for the Pakistani
Taliban that had never done anything to
us. They had not targeted us at all. It
was the first time that they did. They
recruited him, taught him how to make a
bomb, and then he went to Time Square
and tried to kill a bunch of innocent
people on I think it was a Friday night
or a Thursday night there on a and
luckily his bomb was just a dud and
didn't kill people. So, James Mattis is
causing Times Square attacks. He's not
preventing them. And then secondly,
again, this is Mattis told the Post that
he told Trump, "You have no choice."
And that Trump said, "Okay." And then
not only that, because this was his
policy was, you know, the myth that
America only lost Vietnam because Lyndon
Johnson tied one arm behind the
military's back and wouldn't let the
generals do the job because he's pouring
over the maps all day and and a penny
pinching and micromanaging the war
effort. Well, that's been a big myth. HW
Bush said, "I ain't doing that. General
Scorskoff, you do what you got to do.
I'm not right." Donald Trump said the
same thing. Nobody's ever going to
accuse me of micromanaging the military
and preventing them from accomplishing
their goals. So to that end, from the
moment he took power in 17, he devolved
decision-making authority as low down
the chain of command as he possibly
could, cut out all of Obama's lawyers
and whatever who were in the way and
second-guessing
and um and so he devolved command
responsibility. Oh, and then he also
changed the rules of engagement to make
uh to recategorize these sort of pseudo
war zones like Somalia and Yemen into
full-scale active war zones where now
the rules are less. And essentially he
told James Mattis, you do everything
that you can and want to do within the
law. That's it. You go as far as you
possibly can on everything.
Empowered the military. He empowered the
military greatly, especially when it
came to fighting bin Laden. I don't ever
want to hear somebody say that I didn't
kill enough people in Somalia and that's
why it didn't work. I told James Mattis,
you do whatever you got to do in
Somalia. If they couldn't make it work,
it still ain't my fault. Right? That was
the way that he played it and that was
the way he did the same thing in
Afghanistan. He wanted out of
Afghanistan from the moment he came in.
Instead, he escalated the war for four
years while he was negotiating with the
Taliban. killed another extra couple of
tens or hundreds of thousands of people
even in a massive air and drone war
especially in Nangahar and in Helmond
for you know almost his entire four
years in power um during that.
Can we take that tangent and talk about
his second term how that changed and
first maybe a bathroom break?
Yeah, sure.
All right, we absolutely today must talk
about Israel Palestine and the Iran war.
But before that, can we uh uh wrap up uh
and uh Iraq War II?
Right. So, yeah, we'll get those out of
the way real quick. Just to say about
Somalia, it's been the status quo. I
have no new information for you other
than it's been the sock puppet
government failing to quell the
al-Shabaab based insurgency this whole
time. Bush bombed them, then Obama for
eight each, then Trump for four, then
Biden for four, and now Trump in his
second term now has vastly increased the
strikes. His counterterrorism guy,
Sebastian Gora, who's an idiot and a
hawk and couldn't tell you the
difference between this or that, but he
knows he wants to kill them all. And
he's one of these, you know, Fox News
blow hard, no nothing idiots that Trump
has hired and put in charge over there.
And he's massively escalated the war
against al-Shabaab. But of course that
means blasting men, women, and children
to tiny pieces with high explosives and
that kind of thing. Um, and in fact, at
one point, Trump even sent uh regular
troops there for training and then
pulled them back out again, I believe in
his first term. But this is something
that uh Dave Damp does a really good job
at covering this every day at
anti-war.com. Uh the the ongoing war, it
literally is America's longest war is
against Somalia since December 2001
without stopping. Um, and then on Iraq
War II
again, Obama finally launched it after
using the pressure and the threat of
ISIS to force Maliki out temporarily.
He's still not all the way gone. They
replaced him with a guy named Almati who
was from the Supreme Islamic Council. So
again, take your pick. Dawa or scary.
Um, and then he launched the war in
2014. It was a brutal war. Special
operations forces on the ground mostly
guiding air power to targets. They
absolutely just decimated the cities
that they liberated including Tree,
Mosul, Ramani, Fallujah, especially
Mosul. Um, killed, you know, another
many tens of thousands of people to
destroy the caliphate that they had
built. And when I say Iraq War 3, that
includes eastern Syria as well, because
they ended up going to Raqqa, which was
the capital. We call it eastern Syria.
It's really sort of north central Syria,
but it's relatively east where most of
the rest of the east is empty desert out
Can you actually break down Iraq war 1 2
3 3.5 exactly where you dealing it
So Iraq war one is operation yellow
ribbon desert storm the first Gulf War
1991 January through February 1991. Iraq
war one and a half is from the end of
that all the way through W. Bush.
That's Bill Clinton bombing him on
average every other day for 8 years
Um that's Iraq War 1 and a half. Then W.
Bush comes in and he and the
neoconservatives
lie us into Iraq war. And that's the war
that we fought through 2008/11.
The worst of the fighting was over by
the end of '08. Uh we'd won the the war
for our adversaries by then and then
stayed and finally left by the end of
2011. then were gone for about 2 years.
Although, as I said, CIA was still doing
drone strikes there. So, we really
hadn't stopped bombing Iraq that whole
time. Um, and then they build up the
caliphate and launch Iraq War II in
August of 2014, which ends at the end
essentially of Trump's first year in
power. 2017, maybe into the beginning of
2018, is when they wrap up Iraq War II.
And now is what I would call Iraq war 3
and a half, which is America again
embedded with the Shiite army, hunting
down and killing the last of the bin
Laden Sunni insurgency, which still pops
its head up from time to time here and
there. But of course it puts us our guys
right in range of Shiite militias that
operate sometimes independently and
sometimes under the control although
maybe deniable control of Iran and
groups like Katib al-Hzbala which is
very closely linked to the BA brigade. I
say all, it's just Katib Hezbollah. Um
uh but they're very similar to the BA
brigade. Essentially, um adjuncts of the
official army, Shiite militias, they
call them the PMUs, the popular
mobilization units that once ISIS came
to Western Iraq, the Ayatollah Ali al-
called on all Shiites to rise up and
defend, you know, the new Iraqi Shiaan
from them and all that. So that's where
the PMUs, you know, really came into
existence. And then of course they have
their own incentive structures going on
and are probably pretty close in
relative power to the official Iraqi
army itself at this point and are very
much under I don't know complete control
but are very close to the Iranian goods
force revolutionary guard. Um so um
I think you would say that Iraq war 3
and a half is what continues to this
day. The worry is that it'll turn into
Iraq War 4 and we're going to end up
turning around again and fighting
against the Shiites that we fought Iraq
War II and three for in connection to
what's going on
in alliance with Israel against Iran and
their friends. Right? That's the danger.
That's what if we get to Iraq War 4, it
would be that
we started talking about Iran and then
you went to Somalia because we had to
cover Somalia,
right? And then I guess because we're
both just focused and a little bit
exhausted, forgot to talk about Iran.
So, uh, Scott, one of the amazing things
about you is that you said, "Why don't
we just continue today?" And you came
Let's do this. Let's talk about the war
in Iran.
What's the right way to
punch it in?
We'll punch it in.
Yeah. So, here's the question that you
asked me that I never answered, which
was, well, so what is with Israel's
hyperfocus on Iran then anyway? like
this obsession at this point. So, as we
talked about, it's kind of a distraction
for Rabbine in the first place. And
then, you know, the Lakood took
Rabbine's same demonization of Iran, but
without the compromise with the
Palestinians part, right? And that was
the Netanyahu doctrine. And I always
thought, well, not always, but you know,
was an issue that potentially
it it seemed to make more sense for
Netanyahu to not really seek regime
change in Iran, to hawk it up against
them, you know, at all times, keep
tensions high. But isn't Iran the basis
of trying to rally all the Gulf states
to come and be partners with Israel now
that like come on, we have to have a
united front against the Persians,
especially since Netanyahu's men in
America convinced George W. Bush to go
to Baghdad and put Iran's best friends
in power there. And in fact, we didn't
talk all about the mechanics of the
thing, but we did talk a little bit
about the Yemen war. It was blowback
from Obama's CIA anti-al Qaeda war that
through a few complicated steps as I
outlined in the book led to the rise of
the Houthis coming and taking over the
who are Shiite group from the north of
Yemen coming and taking over the capital
city of SA in 2015. As I said, America
was backing them for a little while
against al-Qaeda before Obama stabbed
them in the back and took Saudi and
al-Qaeda's side against the Houthis. But
this is another example of the increase
supposedly of Iranian power. Although
the Houthis are not nearly as close to
Iran as say for example Hezbala in
southern Lebanon who you could I think
fairly characterize as as Iran's 51st
state right where in the case of the
Houthis in Yemen that's pretty
exaggerated most of the time and they
were under total blockade so all the
propaganda about Iran shipping them all
these weapons was exaggerated but anyway
so the Iranian Shiite crescent has been
empowered by American foreign policy and
by the way until last December we talked
about the caliphate and
war with Iran against the caliphate,
right, Iraq War II to destroy it again.
Um, but then in Syria, that left Assad
far more dependent on Iran than ever
before and more dependent on Hezbala
than ever before. So, you could barely
characterize the dirty war of the Obama
years in Syria as having fully backfired
and not really accomplished anything.
That is up until last November, December
when Al Qaeda broke out of the Idlib
province and sacked Damascus. That was a
major score for the Sunni side against
the Shiites. By the Sunni side, I mean
America and Al Qaeda and Israel and
Turkey and Saudi and friends, right? So,
as I say, it made sense for Netanyahu to
have an enemy in Iran to rally the Sunni
Arab states against. On the other hand,
hey man, we're getting rid of the pal
from the point of view of Loot here.
We're getting rid of the Palestinians at
least of the Gaza Strip. West Bank is
next. We got Hezbala completely
crippled. Their charismatic leader
Nasallah dead. We got Assad overthrown
and replaced with friendly bin Laden in
Syria. Of course, the Shiites still
control Baghdad. There ain't no reverse
in that. But
Israel is essentially,
you know, winning in many ways in the
war over there, at least in the short
term. And so,
just like I was saying about Netanyahu's
speech before the UN, that this is the
new Middle East. Basically, I won. The
Netanyahu doctrine is we get everything
we want and without compromising with
the Palestinians. And then the last
major enemy player on the board is Iran.
And apparently they thought, you know
what, like having an incentive for these
Sunni kings to be friends of ours is one
thing, but actually just going ahead and
getting rid of them and turning Iran
into something like the chaos in Syria
where there's no central state in Iran
anymore at all and it's all just belooki
jihadis blowing up suicide bombs and and
you know Kurdish leftists and whatever
going on, you know, tearing the country
apart is you know like the Odinan plan.
Um, which I guess I'll explain that.
There's a It's really funny, man. If you
read this, it's it's so ridiculous. Uh,
it's ode d y i n o n. O dead yanan.
There you go. Yanan plan. So, what it
is, the Yanan plan is an article
published in February 1982 in the Hebrew
journal Kunim entitled the strategy for
Israel in the 1980s. This article was
penned by Oded Yinan, reputedly a former
adviser of Aran Shaon, a former senior
official with the Israeli Foreign
Mhm. So, here's what the thing says. It
says, "Oh no, the Soviet communists are
sure to finish conquering the entire
world real soon, and poor little Israel
will stand alone against the one world
communist state," which of course is
exactly how it worked out, right? Said
the Soviets were gone by the end of the
decade. They didn't exist at all
anymore. But that's like premise one.
The Soviets are going to conquer
everything and poor little Israel is
going to be all alone. So the only way
we can secure our existence now will be
to smash every Arab state into waring
tribes where the worst armed enemy we
have is a coup shaking a rifle over his
head, right? And and waring tribes by
religious and and um whatever ethnic
sectarian divisions that they can help
to engineer to keep everybody else just
completely divided and weak. There's no
point in being friends with anyone.
let's just be way more powerful than
everyone because that's the darkness of
the world we face now even though the
premise is false that you know still was
the policy. Um along the lines of the
clean break too where it's a peace
through overwhelming strength rather
than friendly and and decent relations
with the neighboring states. So anyway
um like what's going on in Syria now is
like is there even really any such thing
as Syria now? The Turks have a big, you
know, chunk in the north. The Israelis
are already taking a major chunk in the
south, including uh Mount Herman or
Hernon, I always say it wrong, right
outside of Damascus. And um and then you
got Bin Laden. Like what kind of real
state can they make there? It's going to
be, you know, this this guy Golani has
been to CIA finishing school, right? He
clearly is like or he's under control of
the Turks to a degree and has stopped
chopping off heads and doing suicide
attacks and bad public relations like
that. there's still a bunch of bin Laden
cooks. If he's really that tame, his own
men are getting get rid of him soon
enough. Anyway, um so uh so you see like
you know in in far eastern northeastern
Syria you have the Kurds under the
protection sort of kind of the Americans
um but then so are their enemies the
Turks. Uh and then you have
you know the the um Alawites in the far
west of the country who've been you know
massacred in the thousands and you have
Christians who are at least threatened
that you know their their uh civil
status has changed under the new jihadi
regime. There's uh fighting um between
the jihadis and the drews where people
are being lined up and shot and all
this. So in other words like there is no
Syria which is perfectly good with
Israel, right? that like if they could
do the same thing, I guess Jordan and
Egyp Egypt are tame enough, but they if
they could just wreck every state in the
region, I think uh well that would be
according to the Odinan plan and I think
that may have been their plan for Iran.
Now Lex, they tweet out pictures and I
forget I'm sorry which official it was.
If it was the defense minister,
I think it was the defense minister of
Israel. Tweet out a picture of him with
the son of the Sha Resa Palavi or the
grandson of the older Sha Resa Palavi uh
senior there as though like the plan was
we're going to parachute this guy in
when we launch this war. It's going to
be a regime change war. And the
Washington Post had a piece that said
the Israelis sent messages to all the
leading generals and told them, "If you
don't rise up and overthrow the
Ayatollah right now, we're going to kill
your families."
And then they are hitting all these
regime targets, including police
stations and all this kind of stuff,
command and control systems in the
military where the idea apparently was
hoped to get a regime change. They hoped
that it would be enough to weaken the
government and that some force would
come to power, which shows that probably
they're delusional. and listening to
cooks, you know, telling them that
things like parachuting a monarch back
into Persia could possibly work to be a,
you know, full-scale regime change. They
knew, we know that they knew, of course,
that they would need America to finish
the war against the nuclear program,
which they actually didn't, but at least
it would take America to hit Natans and
Fordo, these deeply buried nuclear
centrifuge facilities. So whether they
really hoped that they could get the
United States to go all the way and
follow through with a regime change,
hunt down and kill the Ayatollah. I
mean, there was a news story that Donald
Trump told the Israelis, don't kill the
Ayatollah. Like, we all know where he
is, but don't do it. They claimed that.
I don't know that that's true, but that
was one of the stories that they put out
anyway was that America had made his
explicit choice to preserve the regime.
Although, if you just kill the
Ayatollah, that doesn't necessarily
destroy the government, right? Somebody
killed our president. That doesn't mean
the whole government falls, right? the
Congress is still going to convene and
they're going to whatever have a new
guy, whatever.
Well, didn't Trump explicitly post don't
kill the Ayatollah? I think he said we
know where he is.
Yeah, I think he threatened him, but I
think they also put out a story saying
that he told the Israelis not to kill
him. But I think I think both things are
right there. So, but then the point
being that to get a real regime change
in Tyrron means a real war in Iran. And
air dominance is one thing, but boots on
the ground standing around in Tyrron
telling mullers that they cannot convene
anymore or whatever is a whole different
ballgame, right? And and it's a thing
that for all the talk of war with Iran
over all of these, you know, last two
decades at least, nobody's talked about
we're going to send in some kind of
occupation force or do anything like
that. But so that that's always been a
big part of the argument against the war
is that you start the war, you don't
really have a way to finish it, right?
because in fact as we've already seen
that contrary to Trump's claims they did
not completely obliterate their
centrifuge capacity. Now they seem to
have inflicted some pretty heavy damage
on uh Fordo andor Natans although there
are conflicting reports and some say
that Natans was less damaged uh than
might have been. They did destroy
importantly the conversion facility at
Isvahan. That's where you can take
uranium metal after you refine the ore,
then you convert that to uranium
hexafflloride gas. That's what you spin
in the centrifuge cascades, then you
convert it back into metal. So without
that facility, you either have a bunch
of gas or you have a bunch of metal that
you can't enrich to another state, you
know, to a higher state. So um what do
or if you have a bunch of gas, you can't
convert it back into metal. So without
that facility, they have a setback. But
I don't think all their all their
facilities are destroyed. And they've
already announced that they're not and
that they still reserve the right to
enrich uranium and that they're going to
and that they're not even going to talk
with us anymore until we recognize the
right to enrich uranium. Although they
do, and I'm not saying that this is
true. I don't know that this is true,
but I'm saying it is true that they've
said this, that they are still bound by
the Ayatollah's fatwa of 2003 that bans,
you know, reiterating the previous
Ayatollah's fatwa that bans the pursuit
of weapons of mass destruction. So
they're declaring that they have not
broken out to a nuke are are calling
their bluff, which again it was always
an implied bluff. They never explicitly
said, "Don't you bomb us or we'll make
nukes, but that seemed to be the the
implied threat. They're they're a
threshold state. They have a latent
deterrent." Well, what happens if you
bomb it? Well, now we'll make nukes was
always the implied threat. Well, now
they're saying no. And that could be
that just because America inflicted so
much damage on their thing that they
they it's going to take them a while to
get up and running enough to even make a
credible breakout. I don't know. It
could also be that the Ayatollah has
just said, "No, the principle of our
sovereign right to enrich uranium and
have a nuclear program for peaceful
purposes is the only thing that we're
insisting on. And we really, just like
we always said, don't want nukes anyway.
And um but now that Trump one more
thing, now that Trump has accepted
Netanyahu's definition of any nuclear
program is a nuclear weapons program,
well then if they keep enriching, then
we keep bombing. And Trump has
explicitly threatened that, right? So
we're just on this ladder. They're not
going to give up enrichment. And Trump
is apparently so far never going to back
down on enrichment, which W Bush and
Obama had done. Like, ah, what are you
gonna do? They're never going to give up
enrichment. If we're going to be
reasonable and get a deal, we are going
to have to recognize their right to
enrich, which is actually in the
non-prololiferation treaty there, you
know, which they have signed, which is
America's treaty.
Do you think the world is a more
dangerous place if uh Iran gets a
nuclear weapon?
Yeah. I don't want anybody having nukes.
I hate to see the proliferation. I mean,
in a way, nuclear weapons seem to make
states more responsible a lot of times,
but you can't really count on that,
right? You can say,
"Yeah, they keep the peace." They do
keep the peace. Major powers don't want
to fight with hydrogen bombs. Come on.
It's insane. It's beyond insane. It's
unthinkable. On the other hand, it's a
great bluff until it fails. And if it
fails, then you're talking about
devastation beyond imagination. Is that
surprising to you? So sorry to once
again zoom out on human nature that the
mutual assured destruction has worked
up to this point seemingly effectively.
It's just a blink of an eye. Right. And
the the Soviets got nukes in 46.
Yeah. So
meaning in the full arc of human
history, it's a blink of an eye.
That's right. Yeah. There's no
there's no like real base of statistics
to measure from, right? It's been a few
decades. Think of it like this. If I say
to you, "Look, man, here's how
international security is going to work
for the next 275 years, okay? All the
major powers are going to have hydrogen
bombs and they're all going to hold them
at each other's capital city's heads in
a Mexican standoff permanently
and it's going to be great. And that's
how we're going to go forward for the
next, I don't know, 10 generations."
No, that it couldn't possibly work,
could it? We're all going to die at some
point if that's the setup. And I'm not
advocating for a global state here. I'm
perfectly against that better than
anybody, but I'm just saying there's got
to be a better way than the permanent
Hbomb Mexican standoff. And I'm not
advocating for unilateral disarmament
and surrender, but I am advocating for
multilateral disarmament. And Ronald
Reagan thought we could not Walter
Montdale. Ronald Reagan went to
Reichovic in ' 86 and he was a hair away
from making a deal with Macau Gorbachov.
This is three years before the wall came
down in Berlin. Okay. They didn't know
that the Soviet Union was about to
cease. And hell, Soviet Union didn't
cease to exist again until the end of
They didn't know. Ronald Reagan didn't
know this is the end of the Soviet
Union. He knew it was the end of the
Cold War. Him and Gorbachoff were end in
the Cold War. And Reagan believed at
that point to some degree or another. I
can't speak exactly but they reportedly
believed he was on a mission from God
that he had the like destiny granted to
him mandated to him to abolish nuclear
weapons from the face of the earth and
he was a hair away from making that deal
with Mauy Gorbachov and the tragedy of
it is that the deal fell apart because
of the completely fantastic and
ridiculous promise of the Star Wars
shield program where they were going to
have lasers in space to shoot down all
incoming ICBMs and all this and We're
talking 1986 technology, right? This is
a joke. There's no way in the world
they're going to do that. It would have
cost, you know, however many trillions
we didn't have and never worked anyway.
And Reagan said, well, I promised the
American people that I would build one.
But the whole thing is, man, if we're
getting rid of all the nuclear missiles,
then you don't need one anyway, so it's
okay. And then, by the way, they were
not counting on a magic wish to
implement it either. The plan always was
going to be America and the Soviet Union
would try to get our nuclear stockpiles
down to roughly rough parody with the
other nuclear weapon states. At that
time, France, Britain, Israel, and
China. India and Pakistan didn't have
nukes yet. South Africa only had a few
before they gave them up. And then once
we got down to about two or 30 hundred
each, then we see if we get down to 100
each. Then we see if we get down to 50
each. Then we see if we can get down to
10. Right? So it was not like, oh,
Ronald Reagan turned into Jane Fonda,
the commie hippie sellout trader who
wanted to just give away the store to
the enemy and all of a sudden became,
you know, a naive believer in like
fantasies coming true. It was all like a
hard-headed realism that these machines
are too dangerous to let politicians
hold on to them over the long term. It's
the same conclusion that William Perry
and Henry Kissinger too at the end of
their lives, they formed a group called
Global Zero. George Schultz as well,
Reagan's Secretary of State, formed a
group called Global Zero about saying we
have to got to get rid of these weapons.
And William Perry, he had been Clinton's
Secretary of Defense who had opposed
NATO expansion, almost resigned over it
and should have, but he wrote a book
about my life at the nuclear brink. And
he wrote about like you just don't
understand about these machines. Okay?
Right. Talking about a hydrogen bomb.
Like you just can't imagine what it
would be like to have Dallas wiped off
the face of the earth. that level of
devastation and and what that would mean
for the survivors and the rest and and
having all of our cities wiped off the
face of the earth in an afternoon like
that. Everything our ancestors have
built for 3,000 years destroyed over
nothing could possibly be worth it.
Nothing could be. There's so many
difficult questions here. Do you think
the world is stable and smart enough to
deal with a situation where somebody
drops one nuclear weapon? I don't I
that's the worry, right? And from all
the war games, once the nukes start
going off, they keep going off. We can't
let them nuke us without nuking them
back. We have to do something, sir. And
then it just keeps going and going. The
Americans claimed that the Russians, and
I don't know the truth of this, could be
true, that the Russians have a doctrine
of escalate to deescalate. I think they
denied it, but in other words, they'll
go ahead and drop a nuke first and say,
"See, that's how angry we are. You guys
better back down." And the Americans
immediately ran a war game and publicly
leaked it and said, "If the Russians
ever try to do that escalate to
deescalate stuff, no, we will nuke Barus
and we will say, "Oh no, we're the ones
who are loco. Don't you mess with us. We
are escalating to deescalate. Now you
back down." So you see, then we all die
by 7:30, right? Is there a number, again
a difficult question, is there a number
of warheads that's low enough to where
cuz you said bring it down from 100 to
50 to to 10. I don't know. I did have a
fun conversation one time with Lyall
Goldstein who's this brilliant uh all
kinds of nuclear war planner and and
defense analyst. He used to be at the
Naval War College. And I was saying,
"But come on, Ly. Like, what if we just
got them down to like a few low kiloton
type bombs or whatever." and he's going,
"Yeah, no, we don't want to do that cuz
that makes them really much more
thinkable and usable. What you want to
do is have at least a certain minimum
number of multi- megaton city killer
bombs so that the capital cities remain
in jeopardy because that is the counter
incentive to the politicians going that
far. You need, forget the tactical, you
need the strategic nukes to prevent war,
right? And so all that makes sense if
you're a certain kind of egghehead. But
I'm just saying, man, I don't know. Even
that that the the bombs that they hit
Japan with are nothing compared to the
super, as they called it then, the
hydrogen fusion bombs where you're
talking high kilotons or low megat tons.
I was wondering if you can comment on
some of the interesting interviews that
that are in hotter than the sun, another
one of your books, hotter than the sun,
time to abolish nuclear weapons. It is a
book by Scott Horton that features over
a decade of interviews with a wide array
of experts on this very topic on the
dangers posed by nuclear weapons, the
nuclear arms industrial complex and the
history, politics and future risks
surrounding nuclear proliferation.
Is there any some interesting interviews
you remember like insights?
Yeah. Well, I mean the funny story about
that is a friend of mine just came to me
and goes, "Look what I did." and he
sends me a PDF of transcripts of all
these interviews I've done about nuclear
weapons over 20 years.
I didn't even ask him to do it or
anything. He just came to me. Yeah.
And then so I was like, "Okay, well, I
want to delete a couple of these and I
want to add a couple more." And then we
just kind of ship shaped it. I stopped
writing Provoked for a minute to get
this out in 22. But when you like look
that as a piece of work, the transcripts
because sometimes it's like
you might be so busy
thinking about the current thing and
looking into the future that you forget
to look back at all the conversations
you've had on this particular topic and
to to sort of start to extract some
deeper wisdom from it, you know.
Well, the title of the book I you know I
had already done my first two books are
time to end the war in Afghanistan and
time to end the war on terrorism. So
this one's called time to abolish
nuclear weapons which I think really
puts people off and makes it sound like
oh just uni um unilateral surrender to
the chaoms or whatever kind of thing you
know um but that's not really what the
book is about right the book is
essentially about all aspects of nuclear
weapons America and Russia's nuclear
arsenals past and present North Korea
Israel Iran India and Pakistan and you
know all their different nuclear weapons
programs Hiroshima Nagasaki all the
anti-uclear activists including like the
nuns who break into naval bases and bang
on ICBMs with a hammer and then go to
prison for 10 years. And there's a whole
like very proud tradition of essentially
like socialists uh like the Catholic
workers um who uh the Beran family. You
probably heard of of Father Brian,
Daniel Beran, and uh I forgot his his uh
brother's name. Um and Freda is his
daughter and um Mallister is his wife,
the nun. And and these guys um
they go to prison all the time. Daniel
and Philip, that's right. They're a
peace activist, you know. Um Freda is
their daughter. She's a great one. And
so I have, you know, all that kind of
stuff. Um as I say, Hiroshima Nagasaki,
why North Korea's nuclear weapons
program is all George W. Bush's fault,
which you don't want to get me on that
topic probably. Although I could do it
pretty quick, but we should do Iran
first at least before we forget. I mean
on on Iran and in general. Yeah. What
what are the things in the American
toolkit that should be used to minimize
the chance that states like Iran get a
nuclear weapon in the near future?
Rob prom
send whoever is the secretary of state
of God, Marco Rubio, send somebody over
and just be cool. Yeah, we had look as I
said before um Zabin Brazinski and
Alexander Hey, they wanted to normalize
relations with Iran in 1993. They said
we do business with these people. Dick
Cheney said we do business with these
people. You know, it's just the
attitude. All you have to say is like
this is a USA. We're number one. I ain't
afraid of no Ayatollah.
Like we have all the power. So you're
telling me even though we have all the
power, we hold all the cards, there's
nothing we can do to work it out with
these people. Come on. We still hold a
grudge over because they supported the
groups that did the Beirut attack in
Get out of here. Ronald Reagan was
selling them missiles a year or two
years after that through the Israelis.
So come on. You know, you can't you're
not allowed to. Look, we we helped
Saddam Hussein gas their cities. our our
aircraft carriers shot down one of their
civilian airliners with almost 300
people on board. So should they forgive
us for that and so that we can move
forward? Yes, they should. That was a
stupid thing that some idiots did, but
that was a long time ago and we we have
to live on this planet together. So what
are we going to do? You put those things
behind us and you move on. This is
business, man. And so that's what you
do. You just ignore the Israel lobby and
you just put Trump on a plane to Thrron.
Look here, Ayatollah, I was talking with
my guys and we figured out this is what
we could probably agree on and here are
the issues still outstanding and let's
figure it out. And by the way, this is
how Nixon and Kissinger did Mao. They
went over there and they agreed to be
friends first. Then they worked on all
the stipulations.
And we should say, so the idea here is
basically talk to everyone but trust no
That's right.
And so when we say friends, we mean
basic courtesy and diplomacy. Right.
But don't doesn't mean you trust the
Think about the phrase Ronald Reagan's
phrase trust but verify. Well, what does
that mean?
Don't trust
doesn't mean anything. It means don't
trust. It means be polite and verify.
That's what it means, right? It means
pretend like you're trusting because
that's how you get along in the world.
But what but you verify. You send your
inspectors to make sure. That's all. And
you have an agreement to do so and it's
fine. And so, and quite honestly, like
look, man, the Ayatoll, if he wanted to
secretly try to break out and enrich up
to weapons, great and make a nuclear
weapon, he could have. You know, I'm
sure you've heard this propaganda
numerous places on TV. Um, Marco Rubio
said this numerous times. Uh, Mike Baker
is a regular podcast guest around here
somewhere and was saying this kind of
thing uh a week ago or so that look,
Iran had 60% enriched uranium.
get it
like that's on its way to weapons grade.
That would be easier to enrich to
weapons grade.
But this you see there's they don't go
anywhere with it. It's all just a
non-sucker. It doesn't mean anything.
Marco Rubio goes the only countries with
60% enriched uranium 235 are countries
with nuclear weapons. You see how that
doesn't mean anything? You can't make a
nuclear weapon with 60% enriched
uranium. So what was the point of them
making 60% enriched uranium? It was so
they had leverage in the negotiations
that they were in the middle in so they
could negotiate it away. They did the
same thing in the Obama years when they
were working on getting into the JCPOA.
And it was America that broke the deal,
not them. And then it says in the deal
that if America starts breaking the
deal, then Iran can stop abiding by some
of the stipulations in it without
actually leaving the deal. And without
being in violation of the deal, they'
just be stop abiding by some of the
stipulations. Then in December of 2020,
the Israelis killed the uh top nuclear
scientist over there, Fakraada, in a
machine gun ambush thing. And then in
April of 21, they did a sabotage attack
at Natants, which they took credit for.
Okay? And it was in reaction to that was
when the Iranians started enriching up
to 60%. Now, at this point in the story,
Mike Baker goes something something yada
yada yada and can't finish the
statement. What does it mean that they
have 60% uranium? What are they doing
with it? Yes, it's true that if they
turned it back into a gas and enriched
it all the way up to 90%, then they
would have enriched uh you know, weapons
grade uranium. But they're not doing
that. And they weren't doing that. And
so, why try to frame it as a dangerous
threat? The only reason they were
enriching it up is because of course it
is closer to weapons grade. They're
demonstrating that like, "Hey guys, you
keep assassinating our guys and
sabotaging our plants. We keep it it's
it's counterproductive for you, isn't
it? We keep enriching to a higher and
higher degree. If you want us to stop
doing that, you need to engage in
diplomacy instead of murder and
sabotage." That was the message that
they're sending. And then, of course,
they're just going to ship all the
uranium to Russia or to France. probably
I guess the Russians to dilute it down
back into you know to a lower grade to
burn in their civilian reactor and so
there this whole time they have not
broken out to make a nuclear weapon.
Now, the North Koreans did. George Bush,
well, I'll tell you real quick, is this
quick little thing. In 2002, George Bush
put him in the Axis V. Well, first of
all, Bill Clinton had an agreement with
them. It's called the agreed framework
of 1994 that said that if you leave your
heavy water reactor off at Yong Byong
that the Soviets had built for them. You
leave it off, we will build you two
lightwater reactors that cannot produce
weapons grade plutonium as waste and
we'll give you a bunch of fuel, oil, and
a bunch of welfare if you stay in the
NPT. don't uh enrich to
they didn't have an enrichment program
at all. Stay in the MPT, keep the
inspectors in the country, leave your
reactor off, and we'll do these things
for you. Now, America never lived up to
their end of the deal. Nuke Gingrich
wouldn't let Bill Clinton live up to his
end of the deal in the '90s. It was
actually Donald Rumsfeld's company that
got the contract to build the lightwater
reactors and never delivered them. And
then they delivered some of the fuel
oil, but very little of it. But still,
the North Koreans stayed in their side
of the deal until W. Bush came to town
and W. Bush first of all put him in the
axis of evil. And then in the fall of
2002, John Bolton accused them of
admitting supposedly, although not on
camera or on audio anywhere, but
supposedly a guy admitted at a cocktail
party that they had a secret uranium
enrichment program. Well, if they did,
that's not necessarily a violation of
the NPT or their safeguards agreement or
of the agreed framework. Again, a
civilian enrichment program is protected
under the NPT as long as you're not
making weapons out of it in violation of
the deal, right? So, even if they were
doing that, that's a cause to sit back
down at a table. That's not a cause to
break the deal. But what did Bush do?
Him and Bolton, they tore up the agreed
framework, officially announced that
it's dead. Then they added new
sanctions. Then they announced something
called the proliferation security
initiative which was their claim to have
the right to seize any North Korean ship
on the high seas uh in order to prevent
proliferation which is nothing in
international law allowing that but they
just claimed it unilaterally. And then
in December of O2 they put them in the
nuclear posture review on the short list
for a potential nuclear first strike.
And it was only then that Kim Jong-
said, "Fine, screw you guys." And
announced he was going to withdraw from
the treaty, kicked the inspectors out of
the country, and they started making
nuclear weapons. Now, you might ask,
what the hell were they doing? And I
think the answer is they thought they
would have a chance to go to war with
North Korea before they were able to
complete their bombs. Problem is, Iraq
didn't go like Ahmed Chalibi promised it
would go. And so, they were in no
position whatsoever to go to North
Korea. So, they forced them out of the
deal, pushed Bush to nukes. That was the
great the last article that the great
Gordon Prather wrote for us at
anti-war.com was called How Bush Pushed
North Korea to nukes and it tells this
whole story. Rest in peace my friend
Gordon. He was a great one man. How Bush
pushed North Korea to nukes by Gordon
So the Ayatollah said low man hands up
don't shoot. Here's my books. Yes, I'm
enriching uranium and I know you don't
want me to. He bought some material,
some equipment to do it off the black
market, but only because Bill Clinton
denied the Chinese the right to just
sell them a lightwater reactor.
Prevented them from doing so when that
would have been fine. If you just let
the Chinese sell them a lightwater
reactor, they would have never had a
heavy water one, you know. Um well, in
fact, one more thing about North Korea.
Donald Trump proved that that diplomacy
works. He completely broke the ice with
Kim the last time he was the president.
It was John Bolton that sabotaged a
thing. He brought John Bolton with him
to I forgot if it was Vietnam or
Singapore, which meeting it was where
Bolton sabotaged the thing. On the
second meeting, he literally sent Bolton
to outer Mongolia to keep him out of the
way, but it wasn't enough. But if if he
had let Steven began, he was the guy who
said, "Hey, we could take
denuclearization off the table first and
just work on normalization first and
denuclearization later." That was always
obviously the poison pill of the Bush
and Obama people. First, give up all
your nukes, then we'll begin to talk to
you. Yeah, right. And so Steven Began,
who worked for Trump, was saying, "Nah,
we don't have to do it like that. We can
work with them." He gave a speech like
that. But then if you look at the
pictures, Began's in the chair in the
back by the wall and doesn't get to sit
at the table saying nothing or he's down
further on the table, whatever it was,
and didn't get to have his say. Um, and
so it was Bolton helped. It was the same
guy, John Bolton, uh, who Sheldon add
picked to be Donald Trump's national
security adviser, uh, was the one who
ruined that. Um anyway, on Iran, me and
every other don't bomb Iran activist in
America for two decades have been saying
if we attack them, then they're more
likely to break out and make a nuke. So,
I have to stand on that. That yes,
they're now more likely to break out and
make a nuke than they were before
because of the completely foreseeable
fact that we can't pursue a regime
change. We're only incentivizing them to
arm themselves up worse. So now we're
counting on like the cool patient wisdom
of the Ayatollah nominee to not be that
crazy when the whole point supposedly of
this is that he's so crazy that you
can't trust him with any nuclear
technology at all. Right? You can't
trust him with the ability to enrich
uranium up to weapons grade whether he
is or not. But now we got to just rely
on him and hope he doesn't because now
he could. You just dig a deeper hole
under a bigger mountain and try again.
Do you think Trump should travel to
I do. I absolutely think that Donald
Trump could go straight to Tyrron and
then Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang and
come home and be Trump the Great. Said
before, I'll say it again. And even with
the Russia situations we talked about
before, but I don't want to spoil it,
but very difficult to solve. It's
coming up.
That's right. We're punching this in
everybody, but it's very difficult to
solve. Um,
it's funny,
but there's got to be a way. And and
even if that's the hardest one, I think
we could absolutely put away our
problems with Iran and North Korea,
no question, I don't really know exactly
what we have outstanding with China
other than the potential of conflict
over Taiwan. It's they're not really
threatening our allies in Korea, Japan,
or Australia, or anybody else. And I
don't, you know, really worry about
that. Um that's not been their history.
They got their own problems. It's a very
poor country in the West and all that.
So, um, I'm not so worried about the
rise of China as some are, but So, go in
and do diplomacy. Go in and do
diplomacy. And that's Trump's whole
thing. And look, you know, they say only
Nixon can go to China. Well, why is
that? Cuz if a Democrat did it, Nixon
would call him a commie, right? Like, he
can't. It would be Nixon to to stop it.
But if Nixon goes, well, you know, it's
not that he's a commie. Here he's
shaking hands with mouse tongue. Why
would Henry I mean, why Yeah. Hen why
would Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon
of all people shake hands with Mao? They
did because they're smart, right? Not
because they're communists, but because
they were making what they thought was a
wise move to benefit America's national
interests at the expense of the Soviet
Union. And if that means shaking the
bloodiest hand in the history of the
world, then business is business, right?
Same thing is Ronald Reagan can end the
Cold War with Macau Gorbachov. Imagine
if Montdale had won in 84 and it was
Walter Montdale that was trying to
negotiate the end of the Cold War in
front of the Republicans.
You could imagine it going terribly,
right? In a way totally different than
having Reagan and his successor Bush
handling it from the GOP side. And then
same thing here, man. If if Donald Trump
just gets up there and goes as he always
does, right, I'm the tallest, richest,
most handsome, most successful diplomat
in the history of the world, watch me.
And then go out and make that the
standard. Being a good diplomat is the
measure of a man. I say so and then go
out there and act that way. Then it is
what he says it is, right? What the
And do the thing where you meet and then
you pull them in with that handshake.
Yeah. Get that handshake. Yeah. You got
to appreciate the fact that the
Republicans probably still, even though
there's obviously a lot of resentment
and a lot of bad feelings over all these
years, but it comes down to it, a
Republican president really says, "Come
on, everybody. We got to go fight them
radical Islams." He could probably get a
lot of Republicans to go ahead. Oh man,
terrorism is the problem again. Remember
Islam from before were the thing? And
like, yeah, and go along with that. I
think they could. And I think Donald
Trump Donald Trump could simply just run
on I kill Muslims dead and I'm a big
tough right-winger. But he does not. He
runs on I'm the peace president. I'm the
one who's trying to solve all this. I'm
the one who's going to make all this go
away for you. He knows that's what we
want to hear. And I think it's his his
basic bias except of course he has you
know Israel the devil on his shoulder
making him or you know strongly
influencing him to choose the wrong
thing a hell of a lot of the time. But I
think that's his basic instinct is to
want to do that kind of stuff. You know,
I don't think I've heard a politician
talk about peace as much as him. Like
legitimately, I mean, yeah, is grounded
in ego and narcissism and so on that I'm
the best dealmaker in the world, but
Yeah. Let him have it. Yeah. Call it
victory. I don't care. Call it whatever
you want, dude.
What it means to be a man is to go into
the fire and make the best deals in the
That's right.
Yeah. Fuck yeah. That's America. That
should be cuz America has a gigantic
stick and gigantic carrot.
Fucking use it.
Yeah. And especially the carrot thing.
That's my thing with North Korea. It's
like we have everything to give
and nothing to lose. Like even when I
describe the Bill Clinton deal, we give
them some fuel oil and some welfare. You
know what? Like I'm a libertarian. I'm
against all taxation. But all other
things being equal, what's it to you,
Lex? We pay them a little bit of welfare
to keep them from turning their heavy
water reactor back on and harvesting
plutonium out of the sob. Okay, now
they're sitting on a couple of dozen
nukes and it's all America's fault. So,
you know, could have tried harder and
better and not hired John Bolton to
help. You know what I mean? These are
decisions that men made. They could have
gone the other way and they still could.
You know, if you remember when Trump
first came in, he was saying a lot of
really cool stuff about, "Yeah, I'm
going to spl I want to sign a big new
nuke treaty. I want to slash the
military budget. I want to have a new
treaty with Russia and China where we
all slash our military budgets." He
said, "I don't want to pivot from the
Middle East to great power competition.
I want to get along with everybody.
Let's all just get along and make money
for the rest of the century." Like,
yeah, dude. That is, you know, the the
lack of special interests talking,
right? That's what Trump thinks before
everybody gets to get in there and have
their say about, "No, sir, we got to do
this, that, and the other thing." But
why have major power competition at all?
Why have any of this stuff? Maybe we can
just be a world of people owning
property and exchanging it freely to,
you know, uh, greater enhance our
standard of living, you know.
I wonder if you can comment. I forget if
we already did about the treatment of
the Iranian people by the Iranian
Oh, yeah. Uh, yes, you did start to ask
that and I This is where we went to a
good question.
Yeah, that is a good question. But hang
on, let's do Somalia real quick. Yeah.
No, I'm sure it would suck to live in
Tyrron. you know what I mean? Or in
Iran, I don't know. It's I'm I'm sure
it's a police state. It's on the face of
it, it's an extremely flawed republic,
the same as ours, only different in, you
know, in different ways. Um, but I mean,
the very worst things you can say about
them in international diplomacy or
international, you know, action lately
is they keep opening up America's
Christmas gifts, right? They keep
accepting. I mean, if you want to blame
them for sending Chi to lie to Pearl,
you can. But I mean essentially they
stay home and let America do their dirty
work for them. You know, we fought three
wars for them. Two Iraq wars in
Afghanistan. Um and and hell helped
empower their friends in Iran in Yemen
accidentally um you know in in reaction
form, but still. And so um
you know they're not the aggressive
power that they're portrayed to be often
times. You know, even again, look at
this current war where they fired all
these rockets at an empty corner of a
base again in Cutter. They called Donald
Trump beforehand and let him know the
rockets are coming. They've fired
exactly as many rockets as bombs America
dropped, 14. And remember, Trump
tweeted, "Thanks for the heads up that
you're shooting the rockets so we can
shoot them all down." In other words,
even after America hit them with our
biggest conventional bombs, they still
struck back only in a symbolic way and
absolutely signal they did not want to
tangle with the USA at all. This is
after Trump warned them to evacuate
Tyrron, right? Which could have been a
threat of a nuclear strike or at least a
carpet bombing campaign or at least a
very heavy bombing campaign against
government targets, you know, civilian
government and military government
targets in the in the city that, you
know, is a a pretty major threat. And
the Ayatoll still is like, "Come on,
man. I want to fight you." And and
shoots his 14 little measly missiles as
essentially a show only. And so we're
relying on that. This thing could have
escalated, right? This war that Israel
is dragging us into, it could have. What
if they had shot 5,000 missiles at our
bases in the Gulf? We'd be in the middle
of a ugly as hell war right now. They'd
have had to quote unquote had. They'd
have talked themselves into probably
sending in ground troops to complete the
regime change once it gets that bad. So,
that is a risk that they were taking.
Um, and thank goodness that cooler heads
prevail. But it's kind of nuts that
America has to rely on the supposedly
mad mullas to be cool while we're
bombing them, right? In a way where if
they escalate at all, we could escalate
and and the thing could get way out of
control very quickly. Um, with America
attempting to occupy a land three or
four times the size of Iraq with
mountains and four times the population
and the rest.
I was really worried. I think we got
lucky and I was really worried that this
would be another forever war.
It ain't over yet, man. That's the
problem is they just they didn't solve
it. They could have solved it at the
table. They probably still could,
but they have to recognize just go to
Ayatollah and speak with Ayatoll.
But, you know, like I talked with Tita
Parsy and he's a great expert on this
and has been preaching more or less the
dove side of the case here for a very
long time. He told me on the show the
other, he's like, I fully expect them to
break out and make a nuke. Now, hell,
they kicked the inspectors out.
Israel and America just gave them cause
to kick the inspectors out of the
country. They think the inspectors were
were spies, passing intelligence to the
planners for the war. So, they kicked
the inspectors out. So, now we lost
track of every last atom. We had it
where I could sit here and tell you,
man, the IAEA, for all their complaints
about, oh, we found this little thing
and we found that little thing, explain
this, explain that. For all of their
little nitpicking, they always continued
to verify the non-diversion of nuclear
material in Iran to any new any military
or other special purpose. Meaning, they
knew where it all was. They had their
scales. They had their sensors. They had
their seals and their cameras, and they
knew this much uranium is here today.
It's there tomorrow and whatever. They
tracked it all around and they could
verify the non-diversion. That's the
IAEA's job. Now, that chain of evidence
is broken. now like we don't know
exactly what they're enriching. We don't
know how much exactly they've been able
to convert and where they diverted it to
and whatever and what is happening now
essentially undercover darkness. So if
they invite the inspectors back in and
say see our civilian program at that
point they very well could have a secret
parallel weapons program that we don't
know about. Now that has not been the
case this whole time. It very well could
be the case going forward from the
summer of 2025. So from this point on,
you still think carrot
is more effective than stick. So
diplomacy versus threatening and
military action. So here diplomacy is
the only way out. Yeah. Well, and
especially considering like I'm not
saying that's like the magic trick of
all foreign policy or whatever, although
I I'm just a non-interventionist anyway,
but I'm just saying as far as like
solving this problem,
the Ayatollah wasn't making nukes.
There wasn't an emergency that we had to
So yeah, of course diplomacy is the
answer when he's sitting there saying,
"Look, man, I have a civilian program
and that's going to have to be good
enough for you." Of course, violence and
threats are what has made it far more
likely that they're now going to make
nukes because the Israelis say for them
to have nuclear technology at all is
equivalent to them having an advanced
weapons program, which is just really
not true. And again, it's a problem that
we can't solve for them without
committing to a serious war effort that
no war planners have talked about in
this whole time. But again, that's the
unreality of the whole thing. You can't
solve it from the air. So don't start
it. You're going to make matters worse,
but you can't fix it for with a B2. Even
if you kill the Ayatollah and 10 of his
best guys, you still didn't overthrow
the government there. They got 20 more
guys. What are you talking about? they
just make a new guy, the Ayatollah, and
pull the old president out of
retirement, put him up there, you know.
So, if you're insisting on regime
change, it's going to take the third
infantry division. Anybody signing up
for that?
And I the thing I really really deeply
worry about is something you spoke about
which is the god forbid the possibility
of a bin lad knight type character doing
a terrorist attack in the United States
and then the machinery the
military-industrial complex creating
propaganda that says Iran somehow
connecting Iran to it and now we have to
invade Iran. We the American people have
to put feet on the ground and regime
change and and all of a sudden but I
think the American people I mean the the
wars in the Middle East have really
taught the lesson like no depends on how
quick it's forced on them right at this
point. See it took Bush a year and a
half to li with Iraq. Obama just goes
yeah we're going to war in Libya and
every like okay whatever right?
But war with Iran is a is another
delight. I mean,
Trump, too. Trump didn't barely even
lied us into it, right? His own
government was saying, "They're not
making nukes." And he goes, "I don't
care what they say. I want to do it
anyway. Israel says they are." And they
just did they they barely even lied us
into it. They just did anyway. And then
they go, "Well, see that was over. Short
and sweet. Time for peace." And then
call timeout. But again, it's not over
And then we got lucky because Iran did
not respond.
Yeah. Exactly.
By escalating.
And Trump claimed that he completely
obliterated their program and total
victory, which is not true. So where are
we now? We're at the second half. You
know, I mean, I was really worried
because Iran was essentially humiliated.
And when when states like that,
especially regimes like Iran's is
humiliated, they don't usually like
to uh be sort of calm and deescalate,
right? In fact, especially if it's true
that they're so fragile in their power,
right, that this would make them even
more desperate to show how tough they
That's how you create terrorists.
In fact, the headline today is Iran
demands full reparations for the war
before talks. In other words, just
exactly what you said, give us our pride
and then we'll talk to you. Recognize
enrichment and then we'll talk to you.
In other words, we're going nowhere with
talks right now until Donald Trump
climbs way down on the ladder. And by
the way, in diplomacy in general, on a
basic human level,
letting people have their pride, not
humiliating them is essential. You know,
doing things like labeling somebody as
the axis of evil,
you're signaling to your own people
but you're humiliating, you're deeply
disrespecting the other side. Sometimes
you have to like soften the
communication in order to achieve not
trusting anybody, but in order to
achieve ends,
right? And that was their whole point
was to escalate conflict, right? And
also think about the lie you talk about
signaling to the Americans. How's this
for a lie that Saddam Hussein and the
and Osama bin Laden and Kim Jong- are
all in a big alliance against you to
kill you. Right? So Saddam and Ayatollah
both hate each other more than any two
men in the world. The Ayatollah probably
doesn't think too much about Osama, but
Saddam Hussein's clearly terrified of
And none of them had a damn thing to do
with Iran or with pardon me with North
Korea except that North Korea had
shipped some missiles to Iran back in
the day, but they had no tight alliance
at that time. And they're mid-range
missiles. Not that big of a deal anyway.
So, Axis, nothing. But the point was
these are all people we want to pick a
fight with basically.
What do you think? Did we cover Iran?
I think we got it.
I think we got it. Now, I I forgot and I
wanted to thank you for signing uh all
the books that you gave me with Lex for
Peace. I think that's a beautiful way to
sign it and a beautiful goal to live by.
I hope you like it, man. All right,
brother. Uh and uh back to
now yesterday again more.
Now, let's let's go back to Iran and
their nuclear program and the recent war
in a minute, but you want to do Israel
Palestine. Okay. So,
it's a huge long complicated story. I
really highly recommend Daryl Cooper's
podcast, Fear and Loathing in the New
Jerusalem. I know people say a lot of
terrible things about Daryl Cooper, but
none of them are true. I He's my partner
on my podcast, Provoked, our new show.
And the guy is a total sweetheart, man.
He's not a hater of anyone. He's not a
Holocaust denier. What happened was
people misunderstood him when he was on
the Tucker Carlson show that day. In
fact, he was making the opposite point
of what people think. They thought that
he was saying the Holocaust was just
that the Nazis didn't have a good plan
to feed all their prisoners. That's not
what he was saying. What he was saying
was that even if you were a Holocaust
denier, you could not deny the fact that
the Nazis were taking possession of
millions of people that they had no plan
to care for and that yes, in fact, a
great many of them were starved to death
and shot in this thing. and that if you
were the worst, even you would have to
admit that that's what he was saying.
But what happened was a minute ago he
had just said he thought Churchill was
worse than Hitler. And it was kind of
tongue and cheek, but he was saying for
various reasons that Churchill was the
real villain of the war. And there's a
case to be made for the role that
Churchill played in escalating that
whole thing. But that aside, when they
heard him say the thing about the
feeding and the Eastern in Eastern
Europe and the the care for the
prisoners, they misunderstood and they
thought that what he was doing is just
spinning for the Third Reich at this
point or whatever when that was
absolutely not the case whatsoever.
Dude, he's a a really great guy. And if
and in fact, I'd ask anybody listen to
even just the very first section of Fear
and Loathing in the New Jerusalem. He
demands that you put yourself, if you're
going to listen to him, he doesn't just
tell it as objectively as he can. He
demands subjectivity from you and that
you, the listener, put yourself in the
shoes of the people that we're talking
about here. Imagine if this was you. And
the first thing that he describes, it
sounds like a bunch of Israeli settlers
coming to m murder some Palestinians on
the West Bank. But then you realize that
no, he's talking about Russians doing
pograms against Jews in Russia in the
dawn of the Zionist movement in the
early 20th century, late 7 late 18th
century and into the 20th century. And
he's talking about their victimhood and
why they were so motivated to create
this movement and get the hell out of
there. It was the era of nationalism,
but they had no place for their state of
their own. So they wanted to move
somewhere else and do it. Whatever. He
tells it from their point of view as
much as he possibly can. There's just no
hatred or prejudice against Jews in
there at all. And it it bothers me.
Liars don't really bother me. They just
make for a good foil. But it bothers me
that good people would misunderstand and
believe lies and think the worst of the
guy because I think his 25-hour long
podcast, Fear and Loathing in the New
Jerusalem, leads up to the creation of
the state. That's where it ends. It's
the whole backstory to the creation
thing. And it's just brilliant, man. It
is. It's so good. Um, but in any case,
look, the story is there was this
radical Jewish nationalist movement
called Zionism from Eastern Europe where
they wanted to find a homeland. They
thought maybe they'd go to Argentina or
Madagascar and they settled on Palestine
for obvious historical reasons and all
of that kind of thing. And the movement
only had so much uh Jews at the time.
The majority of religious and reformed
Jews in the United States and in Europe.
Um I don't know how many reformed Jews
there were in Europe at that time. In
the United States it was a big movement,
but they mostly were against it. The
consensus was against it for a variety
of reasons. Then of course after the
second world war it really took off and
the argument was made that the Jews of
Europe need somewhere else to go after
the holocaust. And so they that was what
led to
a push by the western powers to
transport many more of them to Palestine
and to help them to create the state
there. Now
obviously there's only so much we can
cover here but to try from from my point
of view I think to try to like narrow in
on like what is crucial to understand
about the thing is that in 1948
they launched what was called the Nakba
by the Palestinians the catastrophe and
this is when they were all cleansed off
of what's now what we call Israel proper
that is less the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip um and East Jerusalem, but they
went as far as West Jerusalem. And
they when they created the state, they
cleansed that territory through terror
and murder and rape and pillage. They
and mostly through terror, they forced
all those people out of their homes. And
when we say 750,000 people, X, we're
talking about the population of greater
Austin, Texas, right? including
Flugerville and Round Rock and maybe
Okay, we're talking about a lot of
people were forced off of their property
and into what then the Gaza Strip in the
West Bank and then refugee camps
elsewhere in Kuwait and in in Lebanon
and Syria and the rest. Um now when they
did that all morality aside just
strictly like um what they say
descriptive not normative right that
like in this sense it worked
in the aftermath
the Zionists had created an 8020 super
duper Jewish majority so they could call
themselves a Jewish democracy and have a
lot of the trappings of democracy and
ingratiate themselves with the west or
try to on that basis
And there's like some of some truth to
it, of course. Um, but you know, and by
the way, let me recommend to you and to
your listeners, but I really hope you
read this. I'll bring you one. I should
have brought you one today. I didn't
think of it. I have a stack them at my
house. Um, it's called Coming to
Palestine by my colleague Sheldon
Richmond. And he is the co-founder with
me of the Libertarian Institute and a
brilliant and longtime libertarian
writer and activist. and he was of
course uh raised Jewish and Zionist in
the United States in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania.
And um this is a collection of essays
that he wrote over probably 30 years or
something. And it's just about how he
learned the truth about all this and how
that's why he ain't a Zionist no more.
Man, what do you mean the Darius
massacre, which is like the Mi massacre,
right? This horror show. I never heard
of that. They told me it was a land
without people. for a people without
land. That kind of sounds screwy,
doesn't it? The Eastern Mediterranean
shore was devoid of life. That's I don't
know. So, that was a lie, right? And in
fact, I mentioned Eric Margles, my
friend, the journalist. His mother was
sort of a Lois Lane character, an
independent journalist of her own who
went tramping around the um trampsons
around the um the region after World War
II interviewing sultans and kings and
potentates and whatever. and she
reported on the horrific conditions of
the poor Palestinian refugees, the
Muslims and Christians who had been
cleansed from their land and forced into
the West Bank. And they threatened to
murder her. And they threatened to
murder my friend, little baby Eric
Margles if she would dare to continue to
tell the truth. At that time, Lex, the
Palestinian people's existence was a
wild conspiracy theory by cooks. Only
cooks believe there's Palestinians. This
was a land without people for a people
without land. What a coincidence. And
what good fortune that they could come
and just make an empty desert bloom at a
cost to nobody and a cost of nobody's
conscience here. And that was of course,
you know, people who really knew a lot
about things would have known better
than that, I guess. But that was
essentially the mythology that the
American people were told by popular
culture and particularly in Hollywood
movies and the way that they did uh the
movie of Exodus and all of those things
in pushing this mythology. Now
the thing about that is oh and I was
going to say about Sheldon's book.
Sheldon points out that the Israeli
scholar made a secret deal with the king
of Jordan that he would take the West
Bank and Israel would not fight him over
it. He they would encourage him and even
to help him to take the West Bank. Why?
To preclude the possibility of the
creation of a Palestinian state on what
was left of Palestine. They wanted it
all at least someday. If they can't have
it all now, they can at least prevent
the Palestinians from making their own
state out of if we got to take it from
the other side the the party on the
other side of the Jordan River later,
that's easier. So they did that
deliberately on purpose to screw the
Palestinians out of their own
independent state from the first place.
Okay. But now here's getting to the meat
of the thing. Go ahead.
Uh if I may just read a little bit more
about the book that it's a collection of
essays written over 30 years that
critically examines the history of the
Israelis dispossession of Palestinians
and challenges the mainstream narrative
often presented in the United States
regarding Israel's founding. Richmond, a
noted libertarian author, argues for
reason, freedom, peace, and toleration
with respect to both Palestinians and
Israelis, turning conventional stories
regarding the region on their head. In
this volume, Richmond meticulously
documents historical events and policies
that led to the displacement of
suffering of Palestinian people,
emphasizing their rights as individual
human beings and the injustices suffered
when they were made refugees,
dispossessed, or killed. This book is
recognized for being forthright and
honest in its depiction of the conflict,
drawing on well doumented data and
offering a perspective that is often
absent from mainstream discourse.
Absolutely right. And Sheldon again,
just like if we were talking about Mir
Shimer and these guys or Dr. Paul, he's
a saint, right? Nobody's got nothing on
Sheldon, man. He is an exceptionally
decent man and there's nothing that
nobody can do about it, right? So what's
his motive here? His motive here is
decency. His motive here is and he tells
the story of his grandfather. They would
always say, "Next year in Jerusalem."
And his grandfather would say, "Next
year in Philadelphia." Because he hated
Zionism. And he would say this, I'm
quoting a quote of a quote of a Jewish
guy quoting his Jewish grandfather,
okay? Say the Jews are responsible for
all the problems over there, not the
Palestinians. And Sheldon says that he
always regretted that he never had a
chance to really ask him what he meant
by that and really talk with him about
that he was too young and and didn't
never get around to it, but that his
extremely Jewish grandfather who helped
raise him in Philadelphia had nothing
but contempt for the Zionist project.
And he shows how most religious and
again reformed Jews were against it. So
it's going to, you know, cause Jews to
divide their loyalties. is going to
cause Jews to be falsely accused of
dividing their loyalties. It's going to
cause nothing but endless disruptions in
the Middle East and problems for the
United States of America, which is
actually their country. I mean, think
how insane it is to call American Jews
the Israeli diaspora when they're not
from Israel. Israel was created in 1948.
American Jews came here in the 18th
century. Man, what the hell? And and in
the 20 uh pardon me, the 19th, I meant
to say uh century in the 1800s. And in
the 1900s is when millions of Jews came
to the United States, right? Uh how in
the world are they the diaspora from
Israel that came into existence after
America became their promised land, you
know? Um it's and so this was a big part
of why there was so much resistance
among Jewish communities against the
creation of the Israeli state in the
first place. And Sheldon goes into that
in great depth. It's just fantastic
book. It's a little bitty book. I mean,
everybody get right through it. It's but
it's really worth your time. So, where
I'm going with this is the ' 67 war. And
what happened in 1967 is that Israel
took possession of the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip and all the Palestinians on
it. Now, they cleansed another 250,000
Palestinians. They expanded their border
a little bit in the West Bank and
cleansed about another quarter of a
million uh Palestinians off of their
territory at at that time. That usually
goes unnoted. But the thing is is they
quite literally man they de facto
annexed. I heard a report on my way here
today. I was listening to Dave Damp's
anti-war news and he was saying Israel
is threatening to annex Gaza. Well,
Israel Good and stole Gaza in 1967 and
all the people on it too and the West
Bank too and East Jerusalem, including
East Jerusalem, as well as the Golan
Heights uh that he stole uh that they
stole from the Syrians. Um those poor
Jews and their occupation usually gets
uh much less mentioned, but they were
kidnapped along with the Palestinians as
well. And the thing is about it is that
they wanted that land. They didn't want
the people, but they couldn't just get
rid of them all. They had cleansed their
750,000 to create the Israeli state.
They couldn't push the rest of them the
rest of the way into Jordan. Now they
have I don't know what the number was
exactly then or I forget what it was
then. We're now talking about almost six
million Palestinians on the West Bank,
the Gaza Strip, and including the oneif
of the Palestinians who are citizens of
Israel who don't live under occupation,
but as sort of secondass citizens of
Israel, like under Jim Crow type
situation where they're not allowed to
intermar, they're not allowed to u live
wherever they want around Jewish
communities that don't want them. And
there with only one slight exception,
the tradition has always been that they
can have a political party in the
Knesset, but no group of parties would
form a majority with them. In other
words, any group of Israeli Jewish
parties would rather let the other guys
form a coalition than form a coalition
with the Arabs. And that only changed
one time in our very recent history
here. I believe during Donald Trump's
first term or maybe early Biden when Yar
Laid needed uh to ally temporarily uh
with Arabs um was the one time they've
ever broken that tradition. So anyway,
I'm off on a tangent, but there are, as
I said before, it's 8020. So there's a
oneif of the population of Israel proper
or whatever green line Israel 67 borders
Israel or Palestinian uh Arab Muslims
and Christians. So you combine their
population with the occupied population
of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Now
you're talking about 50/50. Only the
Israeli Jews have all the power and the
Palestinian Muslims and Christians have
none. And in the occupied territories,
they live as utter slaves as though
under communism, under not just martial
law, but foreign government. occupation
military law. In other words, and by the
Israelis, no law at all. We're talking
children brought before military courts
in a foreign language and sentenced to
dungeons without any process. We are
talking about totalitarian slavery like
under the NKVD in the USSR.
They are not free and Israel is not a
democracy when half the people under the
control of their state have no rights at
all. No civil liberties, no civil rights
as far as like participation in
governmental process, no taxation
without representation. They have no
representation whatsoever. Okay? And the
thing is about it is what makes them not
slaves is the Israelis don't want them,
right? They're not forcing them to work
for free. They're certainly depriving
them of all of their rights and
humiliating them every chance they get,
stealing all their water resources,
murdering them, pillaging them, stealing
their territory a little bit at a time,
and working toward a day when they can
finish the job and just take it all. And
what's really messed up, man, is that
they don't even really want the Gaza
Strip that bad. I mean, sure they do,
but what they really want is the West
Bank, as their religious zealots call
it, Judea and Samaria, and that they
have leftover religious edict from 3,000
years ago that says that you can say
whatever you want about the Palestinians
and their natural property rights under
lock in theory and the western
conception of how one comes to own a
thing and they will say nope we have
supernatural property rights that says
that we get to come and kill you and
move into your house and do whatever we
want and recognize no rights to the
Palestinians just like uh justice uh
Teny or Tani saying that the black men
have no rights that a white man is bound
to respect, right, in Dread Scott.
That's the way that they treat the
Palestinians. They call them
grasshoppers, right? Not even mammals.
They're just insects to be eradicated
because the Israelis covet their
property. It's as simple as that. They
want to covet it so they kill so they
can steal and that's it. And then
they'll come up with every lie in the
world to try to justify it all. Now,
David Bengurian, the founding prime
minister of Israel, said, "Give it back.
Give it up. Let them have it. Yeah, we
want the land, but we don't want all
these people. What are we going to do
with them all? How like what's the
endgame here when we're taking
possession of millions of people that we
hate and don't want in our country?" And
so, it's not worth it to do this. That's
Ben Gurian, the founding guy said that.
And they told him, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. We
know what we're doing." And you're
probably familiar with this woman,
Daniela Weiss. You'll see her in various
documentaries and so forth. She's the
insane zealot saying we must uh occupy
and and settle all of Gaza and all of
the West Bank. Um
and uh so she um there's a great new
documentary called The Settlers. I
forget. I never saw part one of it, but
the the sequel, it just came out is
called The Settlers. It's really good
and it's includes um extensive
interviews with her. And there was a a
statement that she made recently in the
last 2 years where or or or a video that
came out that someone some journalist
had revealed this video I guess of her
in the 1970s
explain or maybe it's her in more recent
times just talking about the 1970s. Um
forgive me but people can find this I'm
sure. Um, and what she's saying is from
the moment they took over the West Bank,
she worked with Ariel Chiron to create a
an archipelago of settlements across the
West Bank in a way to preclude the
possibility of a Palestinian state as
fast as they possibly could. That was
absolutely their first object is we've
got to bisect them here and bisect them
there so that they can never have a
state of their own. And that was their
goal this whole time, this radical
seller movement. Now in, you know, we
talked about the '9s, we talked about
the clean break when Netanyahu came in.
The the clean break again is a clean
break from Oslo and um Yetin and Shimone
Perez's attempt to negotiate with the
Arab states and the Palestinians
and um of course Netanyahu. If you're
not familiar with this, we should maybe
play this as long as we're taking our
time here. Lex, let's see if we can find
secret video of Netanyahu.
This is it. This is it. Yeah. So, you
just mute that and and just read the uh
read the caption there. So, let me set
this up. Netanyahu in this in this
video, he is no longer the prime
minister. He's um at a settller's house
in the living room. He tells the boy,
"Turn off the video camera." And the boy
either fails to turn it off or he
deliberately turns it right back on
again. It's a bit unclear, but the video
keeps rolling. And Netanyahu keeps
blabbing. And he's saying, "What you do
is you just beat these Palestinians. You
just hurt them and cripple them and kill
them and weaken them and let them know
that they'll never win and we'll crush
them and blah blah blah blah blah." And
she says, "Ah, geez, Bi, but aren't you
going to drive the world crazy and make
them mad, especially America?" And and
Netanyahu then ridicules us and says,
"Let me tell you something about
America, okay? America is a thing that
is easily moved. 80% of them support us.
It's absurd.
I'm not afraid of Bill Clinton. Let me
tell you what I did to Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton said, "Yada yada, area C."
I said, "No problem, Bill." But then you
know what I did? I made it where Area C
is this huge military area, twothirds of
the West Bank. Haha. sexually assaulted
old Bill right in the face and got away
with murder. And not because his spies
were blackmailing Bill Clinton, tapping
his phone and all of his sex capades.
They use that blackmail to try to get
him to pardon Jonathan Pard. That's
different. They were doing that. But
Netanyahu here is mocking Bill Clinton
and he's mocking the American people for
being essentially a bunch of
grasshoppers that he can do whatever he
wants with us, including lie our fathers
into sending their sons to die in his
wars. If I may just comment, one of the
things that troubles me a lot in these
the geopolitical aspect of this is when
the prime minister of Israel shows so
much disrespect towards the president of
my country. Oh, he never had any respect
at all. Don't let don't let me sound
sympathetic to old Bill Clinton the
child killer here when I say this, but I
can almost sympathize with him when they
say after his first meeting with
Netanyahu in 1996, after half an hour,
he came out and said, "Who the f does
this guy think he is? Oh my god, who's
the superpower and who's the client
state?" Like he was out of breath.
Exasperate, just stunned. Why? Why is he
able to talk like this to the United
States president?
I have no idea. He blackmailed Bill. He
told Bill Clinton, "You better let
Jonathan Pard out cuz I have you on tape
with Monica Lewinsky, pal."
And Bill Clinton was going to do it
except that George Tennant said he would
resign and that many leaders of the CIA
would resign in protest if he did it.
Jonathan Pard was the one of the most
destructive spies in American history.
He was spying for Israel and they were
turning over everything that he stole. I
mean, rooms full to the Soviet Union.
But it's not just Clinton. Like he shows
even just let's just take it to today.
Uh Benjamin Netanyahu seems to show a
lot of continued disrespect towards
Donald Trump.
Like this is the this is the Donald
Trump is the president of the most
powerful country
and the best friend he ever had. Move
the move the embassy to Jerusalem.
Recognized Israel's seizure of the Golan
Heights. wrangled these phony Abraham
Accords, which we're about to describe
here in a minute. Did all of this for
him, has only barely talked him out of
annexation, but said, "We'll get to it
though, buddy. It's cool. Just wait." On
full annexation of the West Bank last
time around. Clearly, it's the agenda
this time. Clearly, Trump's wrapped
around his little finger, and still he
has nothing but contempt. And I wish
that someone would tell Trump, "Listen,
pal, you might as well be a Palestinian
to this guy. He doesn't care about you
at all. He doesn't care about our
country at all. Back to my question
about Mark Dubowitz, my hypothetical
here, which goes for all pro-Israel
factions in the United States. You think
Benjamin Netanyahu cares that 3,000
Americans died on September 11th because
Muhammad Ata was taking revenge for what
Israel had done in Lebanon? No. And you
know how I know that, Lex? He told the
New York Times, they didn't overhear
this and report it. he said to the New
York Times in an interview on September
It's very good. You want to pull that
September 12, 2001, New York Times.
Netanyahu very good.
That's how much respect Benjamin
has for the
enlistment age sons of the United States
of America.
and the dead civilians on those planes
and in those towers.
New York Times. That's it.
A day of terror. The Israelis spilled
blood is seen as bond that draws two
nations closer.
Asked tonight what the attack meant for
the relations between the United States
and Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu, the
former prime minister, replied, "It's
very good." Then he edited himself.
Well, it's not very good, but it will it
will generate immediate sympathy.
He predicted that the attack would quote
strengthen the bond between our two
peoples because we've experienced terror
over so many decades. But the United
States has now experienced a massive
hemorrhaging of terror. Yeah, man. And
listen, on September 11th, Donald Trump
says that there were Muslims in New
Jersey celebrating the attack. There was
somebody in New Jersey celebrating the
attack. They were Israeli MSAD officers
and they were arrested and they told the
arresting officers, "The problem isn't
us. The problem is the Palestinians."
The FBI released the pictures and
they're holding lighters up like they're
the ones burning the tower down and
they're all laughing and celebrating.
Justin Roando called them the
high-fivers. The FBI arrested them and
held them for months. Carl Cameron of
Fox News did a four-part investigative
series quoting FBI agents as saying they
had to have known what was happening.
MSAD was in the United States following
the hijackers around and they only gave
the barest of warnings that August. They
did not tell everything that they knew
about the September 11th attack. And
then it hit and Netanyahu said it's very
good. And then his fifth column lied us
into war with Iraq. And he never got his
pipeline to Hifa, by the way. But he did
make a deal with the Kurds to ship the
the uh oil out of there through Syria to
Israel. So they got their nickel a
barrel discount at the cost of 10
trillion of our wealth and they just and
the ruining of the entire beginning of
the third millennium, pardon me. Um, but
it just did not have to be this way. It
just did not at all.
Is it worthwhile here before we talk
about Gaza to draw a distinction between
the Israeli government and the Israeli
Just like we can draw the distinction
between Hamas and the Palestinian
Yes, absolutely. Although I would say
that by the Israelis argument about
popular sovereignty and popular consent
among the Palestinians for Hamas, they
are far more implicated in the actions
of their government. There's virtually
unanimous political consent for Israel's
government's actions in that country.
Their political spectrum is from Dick
Cheney to Hitler with Dick Cheney being
the leftist progressive. They are a
national socialist regime at war under a
theory of that they are a master race
ruling over the unmention.
It is a barbarian society. And does that
implicate every last Israeli individual
civilian human being? Of course not,
Lex. That you know a bunch of the people
who were killed at that rave, they were
actually there at a peace function.
They were trying to figure out a way to
help the people of the Gaza Strip and
even to someday recognize their
independence and freedom and do
something for them. Those people got
caught up and murdered by Hamas that
day, right? There there are not just
liberals and leftists, but libertarians
and different there are plenty of army
veterans and whatever. you want to go
like the overall percentages,
there is a resounding consensus for this
type of policy in that country
reminiscent of America circa 2002
in a way that we do not have
after October 7th. You're saying
even more so. No, even before that. Even
before that, you know, the the
Palestinians are considered to be the
barbarians. They are the enemy. They are
the goyam. They are the the obstacle to
what the Palestinian what the Israeli
government and and the ideal is for the
country to have. Wouldn't it just be
better if we could get rid of them all?
And that is the consensus and just get
rid of them all one way or the other. Um
and I I think that you know whatever.
I'm not saying as Maline Albbright would
say, "The people of Iraq are all
responsible for Saddam Hussein and I'll
starve them all and grind their bones to
make my bread as long as they won't
overthrow Saddam for me."
Which is the same thing Osama bin Laden
said, which is, "The American people are
responsible for the actions of our
government. After all, you're a
democracy, aren't you? And you pay your
taxes," he said. And so that was why he
said it was okay to kill us. I would
never agree with Maline Albbright or
Osama bin Laden about why it's okay to
kill innocent civilians at all. Um as
diametrically opposed to their
philosophy as I could possibly be. Um
and that goes for absolutely when
Palestinians kill innocent Israeli
civilians. And if people say, "Well,
they're settlers and colonists and all
this too." Fine. If they're not holding
a gun, they're not a combatant, then
they're not holding a gun and they're
not a combatant. That's it. That's, you
know, I don't know what the Geneva
Conventions say. That's what the Horton
Conventions say. I don't care about any
of that, you know. Um, so,
and especially when it's children.
Yeah. And so, even if the population of
the United States, say the population of
broadly, and hell in you could measure
the polls go back. I bet you it's better
than 85% of Texans supported George
Bush's invasion of Iraq. Does that mean
any of them deserve to be killed because
they supported his evil premeditated
plot to kill people? No. That's
politics. That's government. And that's
the individual men who pulled the
decisions. The individual men who told
the lies to convince the hapless to go
along. They're responsible. People who
cheerleled for it. Let's just concede
much less so. Okay? You know, if the
people of America said absolutely not,
well, that would have been better and
ultimately it was up to us if we could
get enough of us to be good on it all at
once. Like we talked about with Syria
and stopping the war in 2013, they just
could not get past the population that
wouldn't budge.
We should say that in such dire
situations, the propaganda machine turns
on in every individual nation.
And so it's actually very difficult to
be a citizen.
Yeah. that can see the the reality of
the world clearly because you're
swimming in information that is
very constrained to a particular kind of
narrative and this is true for every
single nation at war and have you ever
seen the documentary defamation
it's really great it's made by an
Israeli Jew who goes out in search of
anti-semitism and the worst anti-semite
in the whole movie is his grandma on the
West Bank I'm not going to quote her cuz
she's a vicious anti-semite um but the
thing is is he goes traveling all around
the world trying to find anybody who
hates Jews for being Jews. And he has no
such luck. And he goes and he hangs out
with a boxman at the um Anti-Defamation
League. And he goes on a field trip to
Ashwitz with some Israeli kids. But at
the beginning of the documentary, he
shows how the propaganda campaign
against the Israeli people by their
government is essentially like America
2002 forever
with no letup. It's show of this, show
of that always. And they really tell the
people, they really do raise them to
believe that every non-Jew in the world
wakes up in the morning with only one
goal, to kill all the Jews. And that's
all anyone else cares about or thinks
about. And they're all looking for the
first opportunity.
And aren't you glad that Israel's here
to protect you? Otherwise, it would be
another Holocaust immediately tomorrow.
Right? That wasn't the result of the
most insane, fanatical, cranked out
lunatics to ever seize power in a major
industrial nation. No, that's what all
of humanity wants to do to us and would
do at any moment if they could. That's
what they're told all day, every day.
And to a great extent, then believe it.
And so then and it's like an
anti-fragile belief. Daryl Cooper was
talking about this on our show the other
day. Um that the more people say, "My
God, Israel, what they're doing is so
wrong and I disapprove and I don't like
them anymore."
The more they say, "See, right?" He
compared them to the branch of idiians,
right? When when people turn against us,
it's just like we predicted they would.
You see what they're doing? It's just
like before. And so there's no room in
there to say, "Hey, wait a minute. Maybe
we really are going too far here. If all
our friends are telling us that we're
doing the wrong thing, what the hell?"
Nope. You know how the anti-semites are.
That's all they do is that's all they
want to do is and that's all they think
about all day long is how they can harm
us. All of them. And so under that state
of paranoid siege then you shouldn't be
too surprised that people are willing to
then go to the utmost lengths to destroy
their enemies uh you know when they can.
And of course Hamas did a very good job
on October 7th of playing into that
script. But now we're taking our time
here today. So before we get to that,
let's talk about Aeros Ron one more
minute here because I should mention
briefly that this defamation movie looks
excellent.
Oh, it's so good.
Israeli director and a lot of the
Israeli press are praising it. It looks
fascinating. Of course, it's 2009. It'd
be interesting to see how that evolves
with social media and all that kind of
stuff, but it's actually uh it's
fascinating when you confront the
and and how dis how uncomfortable that
there's Mir Shimemer, right?
There's a how uncomfortable people are.
Um when confronted with the fact that
actually nobody hates you at all
and then it's like they feel so
uncomfortable. At one point when they
go, he goes on the field trip to Ashwitz
with these high school kids and they
meet this old man and he's like, "Hi,
who are you?" And they're like, "We're
kids from Israel and we came to see
Ashwitz." He's like, "Oh, that's
interesting. Why are you doing that?"
And they're like, "Well, it's part of
our history and the thing that we're
doing." He's like, "Oh, okay." And then
the next day, oh, and then at one point
they're walking through this beautiful
green field that's like puffy clouds and
blue skies and chirping birds and the
Holocaust is long over now in Poland.
And so they're just it's the a beautiful
scene and they have a MSAD bodyguard
there to protect them from the
anti-semites who are going to jump out
of the woods and holocaust them all if
he wasn't there to protect them. And
then the next day the guy says to him,
"So how was your trip to Poland? How
have you liked it?" And everything. And
the one girl starts explaining, "Yeah,
this old man, he came up to us and
attacked us and called us Jew donkeys
and all these things." And he says, "No,
he didn't. I have it on film. I'll show
it to you right here." He said, "Hi, who
are you and what are you doing here?"
Oh, that's interesting. Why are you
doing that? That's what he said.
But the thing is is they came all this
way after being told that everybody's
trying to murder them. They're in the
land of the Holocaust and there is no
Holocaust going along anywhere. That was
at that time 70 years before. And they
don't need a MSAD bodyguard at all. In
fact, they don't even need Stanley Smith
security there at all. Just their
teacher would be fine. And no one there
is anti-semitic. No one there means them
any harm at all. And these high school
students then have a hard time coping
with that and trying to figure out what
this weird world is that they're living
in where it can't be that they were lied
to. It's got to be that guy must have
said something hateful to us under his
breath. I'm pretty sure he did. Didn't
he say something about how we're donkeys
or something? Right. And they just have
to come up with this in their own mind
to rationalize the danger that they've
been told by people that they trust that
they're in when in fact they're not.
Right. Okay. And when in fact when they
are, it's the direct result of American
wars like scaring a bunch of refugees
into Europe and then killing even more
people and then they commit terrorist
attacks, things like that, which is
again all Israeli foreign policy that's
getting them killed. But now
anti-semitism is good for Israel and
they know it. Benjamin Netanyahu is
cynical as can be about this. If you
remember when uh there was one of these
attacks, I believe at the uh kosher
grocery store in Paris,
Netanyahu came to France and he said,
"That's right, French Jews. You'll never
be French. You're Jews. Come home to
Israel." And they said, "Damn you. Screw
you and get out. We are too French. And
how dare you come here to this country
and tell everybody else that we really
we're your fifth column and not
patriotic members of our civil society,
civic society that we are in fact part
of and have lived here for centuries.
Screw you, dude. But that's good for
him. He likes it when people hate Jews
overseas because it's good for driving
Jews overseas to move to Israel. And
that's what's good for Israel and that's
the only thing he cares about. again,
September 11th. Oh, man. This is great
is the only way that he can see it. What
he always wanted.
And just like the high-fivers. Oh, good.
The Palestinians are the problem. Now we
can get you to do what we want.
Um, can we go to
Oh, yeah. We got to do uh Aeros Chiron
2005 real quick. Aeros Chiron disengages
from the Gaza Strip. Now, why'd he do
that? Well, there's two major reasons.
Okay, the first one is, and you can pull
this up if you want to at
scotthorn.org/fairuse.
It's the guy's name is Arnon Soffer with
two Fs. Arnon Soffer, and then type in
kill and kill. That should bring it up.
There you go. An interview with him from
as I say it here. The year is 2004. It
is a year before Prime Minister Ariel
Chiron quote disengages from Gaza. Two
years before Hamas wins a plurality in
the election George W. Bush forced them
to hold. 3 years before Elliot Abrams
failed coup which led to Hamas kicking
the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza
and seizing so-called control under the
strip of the strip under Israeli
overlordship of course and the
institution of the full-scale siege and
the beginning of the quote mowing the
grass campaigns which began in 2008.
Chiron's adviser, Anon Soffer, explained
to the Jerusalem Post that the problem
is the Palestinian Muslims and
Christians are having too many babies.
The Israelis don't want to let them have
a state, but they do want to kick them
quote out of Israel, at least virtually
or figuratively, by so-called
disengaging with them so as to reduce
the number of Palestinians officially
occupied by Israel by a couple of
million people. Does that make sense? So
this guy is a demographer from Tel Aviv
University. He comes to Ariel Chiron and
says, "Mr. Prime Minister, you got to
look at my mathematics here. We have a
problem. There are too many Palestinians
and they are out reproducing us. We are
approaching a 50/50 split or worse,
where we are going to be a literal
dictionary definition, a parttheid state
of a minority ruling the majority under
this iron fist. And that could be very
untenable for the future of the state
and our support from the rest of the
western states etc.
So to solve this problem what we want to
do is just figuratively
kick the gazins out of Israel even
though Israel stole the Gaza Strip in '
67 and they never did literally
disengage. They just put the thing under
siege. If you listen to pro-Israel uh
you know um propagandists now they'll
say well we gave them a Palestinian
state. We gave them full independence
with the disengagement of 2005 and all
we got in return is rockets. But that's
not true. The is it was the Israelis
that broke the ceasefire originally just
as they always did ever since that time
uh until October the 7th of of 23. Um
they broke the ceasefires every single
time and then it was W. Bush who forced
them to hold the election where Hamas
won again a plurality not a majority in
even any single district anywhere in
Palestine did they win a majority of the
popular uh vote. Um then they formed a
coalition government which W. Bush um
then secretly conspired and it's funny
to read. The article is called the Gaza
Bombshell by David Rose and Vanity Fair.
And in that article, David Wormser
throws Elliot Abrams under the bus for
this and says this was an idiotic scheme
to help Fatah overthrow Hamas in the
Gaza Strip, which led to to Hamas
kicking their ass and pushing them out
instead and Hamas then having uh more
control over the Gaza Strip, which is
what I think the Lood guys probably
wanted. And because so first of all now
again back I'll get right back to that
in a second but softer again
this article is from the Jerusalem Post
where he gives an interview to a lady
named Sarah something and he explains
the whole thing. Now, I found this I
forget where I I got it from, but it was
I found on the Jerusalem Post where it
used to be like the URL is still there,
but and you can see where other people
have linked to it in the past, but now
that URL is dead and that kind of thing,
but if you search the Jerusalem Post
website carefully for her name and his
name, you will find other articles about
it where they refer back to this and
refer back to the most explosive quotes
out of it, etc. So, this is verified and
definitely a real interview even though
I don't believe you can find the whole
thing at the Jerusalem Post anymore, but
that's where it comes from. So, by the
way, and yes, go ahead. You've mentioned
many times scott horton.org/fare
use. So, you're almost like creating an
archive of important documents that if
they were to be erased from the
internet, they're here to be found,
right? as the stuff that's like most
important, especially if I need it and I
need to link to it and I think, you
know, whoever's got it now is going to
be unreliable in the near future. Link
rod is a real thing.
It's a real problem. And and um so yeah,
on on things like this where it's like I
can only find it in a pretty obscure
place, I'll go ahead and reprint it here
so that if that obscure place goes away,
it'll still exist. Cuz man, I mean, I
really am shocked and surprised and
dismayed how many times you'll have
crucial information that there's only
one version of it anywhere online and it
could go away any day. You know what I
mean? Like there's a lot of things like
that. Stresses me out. So I try to do
stuff like this. So now so he he says,
"Listen, this is what we got to do. We
have to disengage from Gaza." So that
like just as a ruse, right? As an
optical illusion, we're going to make it
seem as though we're kicking the
Palestinians of Gaza out of Israeli
control and jurisdiction. That way you
can't say it's an aparttheid state
anymore. Now we're back more to majority
rules over the minority. Of course,
ruthlessly, but still, it's less worse
than having a Jewish minority ruling
over a Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and
Christian majority. that would be less
tenable, right? Was the idea. So he told
Chiron this and said, "You got to do
this and this is why." He explains this
to Sarah, what's her name? At um oh, it
was even called one-on-one. It's the
demography, stupid was the original
title of the thing. And he tells her,
"This is what we got to do." And then we
got we'll have to put them under siege,
of course, and and lock them in this
cage like animals, basically. And she
says, "Well, what do we expect the
Palestinians to do, right? they're going
to freak out and fight. And he goes,
"Yeah, of course they are. But then we
will just have to kill and kill and
kill. We will have to just bomb them and
bomb them and bomb them and bomb them to
just keep them weak and keep them from
being able to resist." That's it. That's
where that comes from. Ariel Chiron's
advisor, our nononser by Ruthie Bloom.
I'm sorry I said her name wrong. I
thought it was Sarah or something. It's
Ruthie Bloom. And and that's what he
explains. We will just have to kill and
kill and kill. Now another important
aerial shone advisor was a guy named
Dove Weissglass
and he explained to Harets that the
whole point of the disengagement from
Gaza is to put the peace process in
formaldahhide
again dividing and conquering the
Palestinians. We leave Hamas, at least
ascendant at that time, in Gaza. Then he
says, "We can say to the American
we have no partner for peace."
And he says, "We have from the Congress
a no one to talk to certificate
that says we have no one to talk to."
And it says we'll have no one to talk to
until Gaza is Norway. See you then. and
Okay, so for Ben Shapiro and his minor
birds and mindless pariting puppets out
there who believe him when he lies that
this was the gifting to the Palestinians
of independence. What it was was it was
a lood scheme to divide and conquer and
destroy the Palestinian people so that
one day the Israelis could take the last
of their property from them. That's what
it was. And then when they put them
under siege, you know what they said,
Lex? They said the people of the Gaza
Strip are hungry but not starving. And I
wonder if that rings a bell in your mind
where you've heard that before.
That's what Walter Duranti wrote in the
New York Times about the holy
in the same article where he said you
have to break a few eggs to make an
They're hungry but not starving,
said Walter Duranti and Ariel Chiron's
men as they inflicted a holore on the
people of the Gaza Strip.
That's again, you know, for the
cognitive dissonance are like, well, why
are we doing this then? Again, it's the
lobby. It's the compromise of the
American political system. But if your
dissonance is telling you it can't be
that bad, your dissonance is wrong. Yes,
it can too. That's exactly how they are.
And because Americans, we we're
westerners. We have a a different
tradition. I mean, we were all even in
government school, they teach us that
every man is born equal. Not in every
way, but in terms of our rights that we
possess to own our own life and control
our own destiny. That's what we believe.
You know what? Meer Kahane, the rabbi
that was al Qaeda's first target in New
York City in 1990 in the United States,
he gave an interview to Mike Wallace in
the late 1970s where he complains that
American Jews believe in all this Thomas
Jefferson crap. Well, we don't. It's us
versus our enemies. We will destroy
Now that was considered fascism by the
Israeli Supreme Court then. That is the
Lakood party doctrine. Now every Arab,
Palestinian, Muslim and Christian must
be killed andor forcibly removed from
the last of the 22% of measly stinking
what's left of historic Palestine there.
I think what's happening in Gaza
is absolutely horrific. And I think the
US government should not be supporting
that in any way. So how can we end it?
So on October 7th, let's let's rewind
from October 7th.
Why do we do the Abraham Accords under
Trump's first term? We did the Abraham
Accords because Saudi Arabia especially
and the other Sunni Arab kingdoms had
always promised that they would refuse
to officially normalize relations with
Israel until the Palestinians got a
deal, either an independent state of
their own or equal rights and
citizenship in a single state. Now, what
Jared Kushner figured out was, well, we
can just print money, so what's your
And so what he did was he bought F-16s
for Bahrain, F-35s for UAE, debt
forgiveness for Sudan, and they made a
deal with Morocco that they would
recognize Morocco's illegal invasion and
seizure of the northern half of the
nation of Western Sahara.
And then uh that would be essentially
these countries bribes to normalize
relations with Israel. And they were
working on Saudi Arabia. Now, on
September the 22nd, 2023, Benjamin
Netanyahu gave a speech before the UN
General Assembly. You know, like he
likes to do with his visual aids. This
time, he held up a map of the Middle
East, the big red arrow across from
Israel to the Sunni Arab states of the
Gulf. And he said, "This is the new
Middle East." Well, that was an inside
joke. He was mocking Shimone Perez
because Shimone Perez said, "We got to
deal with Arafat and the PLO Fatah and
and deal with a pal pseudo Palestinian
state at least. Then we can make peace
with the Sunni Arab states and have a
new Middle East. So Netanyahu is up
there crowing that under the Netanyahu
doctrine, he got the new Middle East
without giving in to the Palestinians in
any way. Now, of course, he frames it
like, "Oh, the Palestinians have been
holding peace hostage." When what he's
really saying to them is, "Y'all are
screwed now, boy. Ain't nobody coming
for you. I got you. You never get in a
state of your own and independence, and
you're never getting citizenship. You're
going to live in those concentration
camps of yours until you're dead, and
we're done taking them from you. I win,
you lose." That was his speech of
September 22nd, 2003.
Two weeks later, Hamas broke out of
their pen and launched the October 7th
attack. And they did kill probably a
thousand people as the Israelis killed
at least dozens, perhaps more than a
hundred of their own people by invoking
the Hannibal directive. Now, you might
remember the story of um an Israeli
soldier named uh I think it's Eisenkot
who had been captured by Hamas and taken
into the Gaza Strip back years ago. And
the Israelis ended up having to
negotiate like and release a thousand
Palestinian captives, not prisoners,
because the Israelis hold them without
trial, without any process whatsoever.
They just kidnap them and hold them. So,
they're hostages too, these
Palestinians. But they had to release a
thousand Palestinian hostages to get
their one Israeli hostage back. And they
said, "Never again are we going to do
that." So they invented a new doctrine
which says if one of their soldiers or
two of their soldiers is getting
successfully captured by Hamas and taken
back into the strip that they'll kill
their own soldiers as well as the
captives in order to prevent that from
happening. They called that the Hannibal
directive. Well, on October the 7th, and
this is all from, first of all, very
astute American observers like Max
Blumenthal, Abu Al uh sorry, Ali Abu
Neima, and uh Brad Pierce at the Wayward
Rabbler. They all immediately noticed
this. But then it was double extra
triple superverified by the Israeli
press. Harets, wet, the Jerusalem Post.
That's all you need to show that they
introduced what they call, and I think
they probably made this up on the fly,
mass Hannibal, which means not just kill
a soldier,
but even if it's a little old lady who's
been kidnapped and is in the back of a
car on the way, any car on their way
back to to back to the Gaza Strip, they
bomb. They also used a tank to hit uh
and kill a house full of at least nine
civilians in one case in one of the
kibuts. Now, I'm not playing down what
Hamas did there. I am pointing out what
Israel did. And this is a big part of
why they had to embellish what Hamas
did. Because look at these houses are
blown up. What happened here? Hamas only
had grenades. This is much more
destruction than that. All the cars at
the rave that were destroyed, they were
destroyed by helicopter fire, not by
Hamas. How could Hamas have destroyed
all those cars? They did not have the
ability to do that. And now, I'm not
saying who all was in those cars when
they were blasted at the rave and what
all every little thing that happened
there. But it's clear that Israel waged
a bunch of the destruction on their own
people and deliberately so. And there's
video testimony of this girl talking
about there's shooting in a house and
her officers telling her to keep
shooting and all of these things. I
think she's even saying she defied one
of these orders at one point and said
she didn't want to keep doing it because
it didn't seem like it made sense to her
and that kind of thing. And so this is
part of why they embellished what Hamas
did. But of course then they also wanted
to do the the Belgian babies on
bayonets. That's from the first world
war. all the lured stories of the Huns
atrocities against the Belgians and why
we have to go and stop them. And again,
the Saddam Hussein and the Kuwaiti
babies thrown out of their incubators.
These are the kinds of atrocities that
jerk that jerk tears. These are the
kinds of atrocities that get people to
change their mind and support a thing
that they otherwise would not. And when
in fact Hamas did kill unarmed women and
children and particularly I don't know
how many children but uh at least a few
and many many unarmed civilians many
many women and so their their atrocities
were already were already scarlet they
already were absolutely guilty of war
crimes and what they had done that day
and in fact it was so bad that people
think I don't know man I'm not taking a
stance on
But I tend to doubt it, I guess, would
be my stance. Um, and I have simpler
explanations. But there are people who
think that Netanyahu let the attack
happen because he wanted that kind of
horror show to be inflicted on his own
people so that he could get away with
doing what he's doing now. Because why?
Because what Hamas did is what's letting
him get away with what he's doing now.
He gave them this excuse just like Bin
Laden gave George Bush one. Only Israel
ain't going to be wrecked here. this is
not working out for Hamas the way they
hoped. And I think their primary
objective really was to take captives so
they'd have them to trade for their own
captives back for their own hostages to
get back. Um, but they went way too far.
They killed way too many innocent people
and then gave the Israelis the rit. Now,
as far as the attack being successful,
it's worth pointing out. We call it
October 7th because it was over by
supper time. Okay? It wasn't the second
week of October. It wasn't the autumn of
It was one day that these captives were
out were able to break out of their
concentration camp and commit some
atrocities. Right? This is not the
nation next door. Again, Contra Ben
explicit lies that when he says, "Well,
what would we do if Mexico was shooting
rockets across the Rio Grand into
Texas?" Well, Mexico is the name of the
national government in Mexico City and
its armed military force. If they were
firing rockets across the border into
Texas, well, we would have some
negotiation to do, wouldn't we? Okay. or
worse. What we're talking about here is
not Mexico. We're talking about an
Indian reservation. We're talking about
people who were already conquered and
captured in 1967
who've been living under the
totalitarian control of this foreign
occupying army ever since then. We're
talking about the the closer equivalent
would be Nelson Rockefeller sending the
National Guard to put down the riot in
Adica prison. and killing all the guards
along with the prisoners.
This would be imagine maybe in an
earlier time an Indian reservation where
they break out and they commit some
atrocities, scalp some Anglo uh heads
and then what do we do? We go in there
and bomb and kill 100,000 of them
or if again because this is Israeli
territory. Okay, dare. No, de facto.
Absolutely. This is a ghetto. So, how
about if if the Trump government decided
to build a wall around South Chicago and
say, "We can't tolerate the violence of
the blacks of South Chicago anymore.
Everybody knows that's one of the
highest crime rates in the country.
We're just going to bomb them cuz
occasionally they break out of the black
part of town and hurt other people, too.
So, we're going to enclose their ghetto
in giant concrete in razor wire walls,
and then we're going to bomb them all to
death." That's what Israel is doing.
Fish in a barrel, a canned hunt. You
understand? Like a father abusing his
son, a helpless captive,
right? A guard beating an inmate.
Jeffrey Goldberg torturing some poor
Palestinian in his cell.
Not a sovereign nation defending itself
from attack from another sovereign
nation of any kind. And Americans don't
understand this because they're called
Palestinians. And so, aren't they from a
country called Palestine? Everybody's
got a country, right? But no, Israel is
on top of Palestine. So, no, they don't
have a Palestine. They don't have a
country. They don't have a government.
If if Beta, the PA on the West Bank, if
they are trustees in an Israeli open air
prison, then Hamas is just the strongest
gang. They're the Crips of the Bloods or
the Latin Kings or the Aryan Nations
have taken over the prison in the Gaza
They're not the dulyeleed government of
the people of Palestine. When George W.
Bush forced those people to hold that
election in 2005, the majority of the
population of Gaza were children, were
minors, at least under 18. Okay? Could
not vote. The majority of them were
minors. That was in 2005.
The last time they got a chance to vote,
guess what? The majority of them are
minors still to this day.
they have popular sovereignty behind
Hamas and bear collective responsibility
for Hamas's crimes when as we mentioned
a previous era it was Israel that helped
to uh install Hamas in power in the Gaza
Strip in the first place helped their
rise their botched coup of well they did
the disengagement to empower them again
no one to talk to certificate bragging
about it then they did the botched coup
which maybe was deliberately bombed or I
don't know exactly what happened there,
but that ended up with Hamas in charge
of the entire Gaza Strip. And then we
have, as we know, and people can, you
might want to pull this up if you want
to and show them. It's by me and one of
my guys, Connor Freeman is his name, and
the article is called Netanyahu's
support for Hamas backfired.
Yeah, right there. Second one. I'll tell
you a funny story. I did the Pierce
Morgan show the other day. I debated
Wesley Clark on Ukraine again. But while
I was on hold, Pierce Morgan was
whooping the Israeli ambassador. And I'm
not sure if it was the ambassador to
Britain or the ambassador to the United
States, but um he was going after him so
hard. And at one point, it was so funny.
You could see his face twist a little
bit cuz the guy realized what he said
after he said it that like, "Oops, this
undermines the narrative a little bit."
But the ambassador railed to Pierce
Morgan. Nobody elected Hamas. They're
not the legitimate power there. which is
yeah, that's right. He's railing against
Hamas, right? But what's he just did?
What did he just do? He just told the
truth and acquitted the Palestinian
people of responsibility for Hamas. And
then what did Pierce Morgan do?
Heroically told the truth that you know
who did support Hamas?
Benjamin Netanyahu and the Lakood. Oh,
check that out. You know who you get to
kill? Anybody who's near somebody who
years ago supposedly may have voted for
Hamas to win a plurality.
Well, you know who really voted for
Hamas? Benjamin Netanyahu did. So, who
gets the death penalty now?
They're willing to kill 20,000 children
or more so far, burying little babies.
Imagine a little 5-year-old baby buried
alive in rubble and has to starve to
death for 5 days in there. That's what
Benjamin Netanyahu, the actual
owner, controller, creator of Hamas,
boister of Hamas onto the hapless,
helpless Palestinian people.
They supposedly have popular sovereignty
and chose Hamas. Netanyahu chose Hamas
for them. And he said over and over, "We
control the height of the flame. Anyone
who wants to thwart the establishment of
a Palestinian state must support Hamas
in Gaza so that we can keep the
Palestinians divided and so that we can
continue to tell American, again, we're
talking about Netanyahu here, so
American idiots, absurd fools, that we
have no partner for peace
because we keep the terrorists in
charge. charge in Gaza. And you know
what's funny about this? Netanyahu has
been quoted repeatedly saying, "We
control the height of the flame." Three
different people said he said that to a
group of Lakood ministers.
And then he denied it and his friends
denied it and said he never said that
even though we got all his buddies here
bragging about how smart he is for doing
it that way, etc. But anyway, there's a
new documentary called the BB Files.
It's all the footage is Shinbet national
police interrogation videos of Benjamin
Netanyahu and his disgusting wife Sarah
and all of their friends and including
Sheldon add and Miriam Add who gave
Donald Trump $600 million
to do whatever Israel says. And they're
all interrogated in there because Sarah
Netanyahu is a beast who demands that
all of their friends give her jewelry
and champagne and cars and what I don't
know cars, all kinds of fancy things.
And this is illegal in Israel. This is
absolutely against the letter of the
law. They are not allowed to accept
these gifts from wealthy people in this
way. They're totally compromised. He is
a guilty felon. 100% is a probably a
huge part of why he's keeping the war
going as long as he can because they
won't put him in prison as long as he's
keeping the war going. But here's my
point. On video, Shinbet asks Prime
Minister Netanyahu, why do you support
Hamas in Gaza? Why are you leaning on
Qatar to give them billions of dollars?
And Netanyahu says, "This is how we keep
the Palestinians divided, but we control
the height of the flame on video to the
cops." Okay, so that means also that
everyone who said that that quote was a
lie is either a liar or a damned fool.
Okay, I just had to make that point
because that's important that this is
absolutely true. Okay. They say the
Palestinians are responsible for Hamas.
No. Benjamin Netanyahu is responsible
for Hamas.
Benjamin Netanyahu owns the entire
chessboard.
Benjamin Netanyahu is backed by the
unlimited budget and military power of
the global superpower and all of his
myriad civilian and military
intelligence services. Hamas and the
Palestinians are pawns on his board.
That's the fact. And if it's okay to
kill Palestinians because they are
nearby Hamas, then it's okay to kill
Benjamin Netanyahu because he is
literally, not figuratively, their
greatest ally. And in a direct sense,
not like, oh, America is Osama bin
Laden's indispensable ally. I mean,
literally, he sent MSAD to Qatar to
demand that they give more money to
Hamas over and over and over again. and
his own men ratted him out for it. Okay,
that's treason. He's the one who should
hang from the end of a rope, not the
people of the Gaza Strip who have been
killed. Probably a 100,000 of them have
been killed now, including torn to
shreds, including they bomb their tents.
They bury them alive and they quite
herd them in to uh narrow yards
after starving them almost to death and
and bring them in to a narrow area. Then
they open the gate all at once. They
don't bring them in through some kind of
checkpoint.
They make them they just open the gate
and so that the people rush in a mad mob
rush to grab whatever food they can and
then these people are literally
starving. So the spirit of friendship
and cooperation falls aside and now I
will stab you so that I can feed my kid
today, dude. And so people, it's the
Hunger Games out there or worse,
whatever analogy that you have to Soviet
communism is is it's the equivalent.
It's the moral equivalent of Soviet
communism is what it is, Lex. It's the
worst thing in the world. It's the most
barbarian regime in the world. Far worse
than the Chaikcoms. I mean, they have to
lie their ass off to try to pretend that
Beijing treats the Weaguers this way.
Give me a break. The weaguers are kings
compared to what's happening to the
Palestinians right now. And the only
thing that makes Israel the second worst
government in the world is the United
States of America has the power to do
this, to help them do this to the
Palestinians, but also do it to the
Iraqis and the Syrians and the Yemenes
and whoever else Israel says as well.
But this is pure barbarianism.
And I strongly urge, I know that you've
seen it. I strongly urge your audience
to go watch this interview of this man
Anthony Aguilera who is a special forces
guy that's above the Rangers but below
Delta but that's second tier special
operations army special operations
forces the green berets been fighting in
the terror wars all these years fought
in Iraq I don't know how old the guy is
if he fought in Iraq war I he certainly
fought in Iraq war II and in Afghanistan
and and had been deployed 12 times
Tucker said including to the stands in
Central Asia and Vietnam I I don't know
who he's killing in Vietnam. Maybe just
training there. I don't know.
He also did an interview on Breaking
Points with Saga and Crystal.
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that. So,
the story is that they demonized UNRA,
which was the UN relief refugee relief
agency. What refugees? Well, 80% of the
population of the Gaza Strip are
refugees from what we call Israel
proper. Israeli Jews stole that land
from them. That's their land. That's why
they live in Gaza. They're not from
Gaza. 80% of them are not from Gaza or
they are but their parents and
grandparents and great-grandparents were
not. They are refugees there. So, ever
since then, UNRA has been there to
provide humanitarian relief for these
poor people who've been cut off from
their country on the other side of the
razor wire. And so, UNRA was in charge
of distributing the aid. But then they
lied, of course, is ridiculous
propaganda that UNRA had been involved
in the October 7th attack. And there may
have been one guy who had worked for
them before who said something or maybe
even participated to some small degree,
but it's a ridiculous charge against the
entire organization. And as this guy
Aguilera explains, they had I believe I
can't remember the number. Was it did do
you remember if he said they had 40
sites around the country? I believe he
said they had 40 sites around the strip
where they were delivering aid to
people. when they closed that down, the
Israelis replaced it with this new uh
humanitarian relief foundation or global
humanitarian foundation, I think it's
called, GHF, right? Um, and they only
have four stations and three of them are
near the Egyptian border and only one of
them is what they call the in the what
they call the Narazim corridor, I
believe it's pronounced. That's like
halfway through the strip. The people of
the north have nothing. There's no aid
coming into the people of the north at
all. They're starving to death up there.
And and he says there's only these four
places. And then here's what we're
talking about, Lex, when we're talking
about killing the starving people as
they line up for aid. What it is, and
this has been explained in Harets, by
the way, they have senior officials and
army people talking to Harets about
this. This is the most important liberal
daily in Israel. The Israeli New York
Times basically um has firsthand
reporting from enlisted and officers,
perpetrators saying that yes, it's true.
We do this. Okay. Then Aguilera tells
the story the best and has some video
and shows. What it is is this.
They open the the food place early in
the morning for this riot where
everybody's supposed to come and rush
and grab the food. So people come
walking and they force them to walk
through war zones to get to the places
where there's firing going on anyway.
Force them to walk for I don't know how
many miles this is 12 kilometers. So um
10 miles
a hell of a walk man I don't know 8
miles something still incredible long
walk for poor hungry starving people.
They get all the way there and then but
from the IDF's point of view, they're
supposed to go this way and then they're
supposed to go that way. They're
supposed to go over this hill and then
come around this way and then you line
up at the thing. But there's no signs
anywhere and there's no little metal
barricades like a Black Sabbath show or
something for people to follow. So, how
do they direct the Palestinians foot
With machine guns, with artillery, and
tank rounds.
There's an invisible line. You'll know
you cross it when I blow your head off.
And when the mob of Palestinians coming
down for their food, when they can see
that people on the edges of the crowd
are being shot and killed, they know
that, oh, I guess that's where the line
is. That's how they're supposed to know
where the invisible lines are drawn.
Aguilera said, he asked them, "Why you
just put up a sign that says go this
way?" And they go, "Nah, that's too
expensive."
So instead, they shoot at them not just
with fully automatic rifles, but with
artillery and with tank rounds. They
blast him to hell in the name of crowd
And he says that they say, "Oh no, we're
just shooting over their heads and
shooting at their feet and shooting
behind them to direct them." You imagine
directing civilian traffic that way with
machine gun fire. So what happens is
they all die. He says they're coming
down this thing. They're shooting over
the heads of these guys, but behind them
is a is a hillside where people are
coming down there. So then when the f
the sun finishes coming up, there's just
roses just dead bodies everywhere.
And then he says then the Israelis go,
"Oh, Hamas did it. Come on, man." Like,
you know, would be Hamas in Bosnia did
some false flag attacks in 1995. That's
not what's happening here. Okay? These
people are being slaughtered. Starving
people are being brought in and
masquered. As Tucker Carlson rightly
said, men were hanged to death from the
neck for this at Nuremberg,
murdering prisoners.
This is if you seen Schindler's List,
there's a scene in there which I don't
even know if this really happened or
not. Probably did. What the hell? Or if
this is just Spielberg shows one of the
concentration camp guards shooting the
Jews for target practice. That's what
they do. There's numerous reports coming
in in just the last couple of weeks that
there has clearly been well I don't know
clear I shouldn't say numerous. I saw
that there's an is a British doctor
saying this and then there was someone
who said that he confirmed it, although
I wasn't sure how serious he was or not.
I shouldn't take that, but it seemed
like a very credible report in the first
place. And in fact, the British doctor
is at least claiming that he's passing
on reports for other doctors. And what
are they seeing? They're seeing
Palestinian children who all have the
same signature type of wound to the same
body part. One day they're all shot in
the genitals. children. The next day
they're all shot in the elbow. The next
day they're all shot in the knee or in
the heart. And what's happening here is
the Israelis are shooting them for fun
for target practice. Just like the Nazis
in Schindler's List, killing the little
girl in the red coat. That's what
they're doing. They're burying them
alive. They're starving them to death
and then forcing them into mobs and then
machine gunning them. Right? If this was
a movie, you'd say it was too over the
top. It's too fake. It can't be true. If
it was if anybody leaned left and they
heard this about the communists, they'd
say, "No, it's right-wing propaganda."
Like, no, dude. This is how they are.
This is exactly how they are. And it's
exactly how they treat the Palestinians.
They do not recognize their humanity.
They are nwords. They are gooks. They
are goyam grasshoppers.
That means it's okay to kill them.
All of them. The prime minister gave a
speech to the officer corps where he
said the enemy is Amalecch out of a
3,000year-old Bible story where Jehovah
supposedly told the ancient Hebrews to
wipe out a tribe called the Amalecch and
kill every last man, woman, and child
and baby and oxen and wipe them off the
face of the Earth. Now, Lex, nobody
thinks that God whispered to Benjamin
Netanyahu and said the Palestinians or
Amalecch, right? This is just a bunch of
crap. Even if you believe every single
word of the Bible as the literal
inspired word of God from back then,
that ain't got a thing to do with this
now, other than a cynical, lying,
thieving murderer invoking a god who
says it's okay to kill children. that
you must that you are commanded to kill
them all.
And this was his orders to the officer
corps. And then I got to read Liz Wolf
in Reason magazine every morning telling
me that Israel's goal is fighting Hamas.
Benjamin Netanyahu said in May, "We are
destroying all of their homes so they
have nowhere to go back to so that we
can force them all to leave."
And I gotta read Liz Wolf in Reason
telling me that Lood means well and
they're just trying to protect
themselves from armed terrorists
when they are explicitly and
deliberately
slaughtering children, shooting toddlers
in the head, shooting pregnant women in
the stomach,
bombing refugees tents with 2,000 lb
It is a genocide.
They It's not And that doesn't just mean
a giant massacre and it doesn't just
mean ethnic cleansing. They are
attempting to destroy the Palestinian
people as Palestinian people. They have
bombed all of their universities and
schools, all of their government offices
that have any records of land ownership
or family histories. They bombed every
last hospital in this strip. Lex,
remember when we argued about whether or
not they bombed the parking lot that one
time at the start of the war? They
destroyed them all. You want to talk
about babies in incubators? There was a
hospital in the Gaza Strip. This is an
absolute guaranteed verified fact. If
you want to stop and pause and look it
up, we can do that. Otherwise, you know,
your audience can surely find this.
These Palestinian doctors were
threatened and told, "We are going to
absolutely kill every single last one of
you if you don't get out of that
hospital right now." and they refused to
leave and said, "We are protecting a a
NICU full of premature babies in their
incubators and we will not leave them."
And the Israelis said, "You have to
leave or we're going to blow the place
up. But if you do leave, we promise that
we will take possession of these
premature babies and protect them." And
then you know what they did? They left
them in their incubators to die. All of
them. and the media went in there and
found a room full of corpses. So, under
George HW Bush's theory, America has to
launch a war against Israel now and
carpet bomb Tel Aviv because this is
proof of Israel's intent to quote
systematically dismantle Palestine.
That was the excuse for Iraq War I and
it was a lie. This is true. It's true.
And Lex, they like it. They think it's
funny. They don't give a damn. They
don't give a damn to kill a premature
baby. That premature baby was going to
grow up to be a Palestinian one day.
Nits make lice.
Kill them all. That's the doctrine.
Again, harets, there are free fire
zones. If anyone is between here and
here, you just kill them. There's no
sign that says this is a freef fire
zone. If it's an 11-year-old boy walking
with his little sister, you shoot and
kill them both.
kill anything that moves just like
America and Vietnam.
This is like James Madison Fallujah.
Worse, worse. And in fact, as as
Aguilera says, he goes, "Man, I've been
all over the terror wars. I've never
seen anything like this." He told the
BBC, he said, "What's it like?" It's
like Terminator 2. Remember Terminator
2? Where it's after the Hbombs have hit
Los Angeles. That's what it's like,
right? absolute horror show. And man,
it's America's fault. No less than the
Yemeni war was the American Saudi war.
This is the American Israeli
genocide. It's not a war. It's a
slaughter. It is a canned hunt against a
helpless captive
uh you know, prisoner population.
And just like happened on September
11th, just like happened to that couple
that were assassinated outside of the
Israeli embassy, uh just like what
happened with the guy attacked with the
makeshift flamethrower in Boulder,
Colorado, and I can't prove this yet,
but you mark my words and we'll see
whether I'm right, that the guy that
attacked New Orleans on New Year's Day,
drove his truck down Bourbon Street,
killed 12 people, and injured another
few dozen. And then we're very lucky in
the sense that when he finally crashed,
he crashed into a backhoe or a bulldozer
at the end of Bourbon Street. And there
just happened to be a group of six cops,
I think it was, standing right there. So
when he crashed and he got out of his
truck with his gun, they blew him away.
Otherwise, he could have killed many,
many more people. Who was he? He was an
American Army veteran who had converted
to Islam and signed up with the Islamic
State. And what are the chances, Lex,
that on New Year's Eve 2024,
that this man is motivated do to do this
for any other reason than American
support for Israel and the Gaza Strip?
There's a 99% chance that that was what
he was ranting about to his parents in
his video messages that he recorded on
his way from Houston to New Orleans.
Just the same as Omar Matine uh
complaining about Obama killing the
women and children in Syria in the
nightclub massacre of uh I'm sorry what
year? 2000 I'm sorry the the Orlando
night pulse massacre. Um, this is
blowback from American foreign policy.
And again, not for being a good friend
to a good friend, but for being a loyal
ally to a state that doesn't give a damn
about us that celebrates when September
11th happens to us because it means that
we will now be easier to manipulate and
put into the service of carrying out
their foreign policy goals, and spend
our treasure that kill our men that
empower their enemies, requiring us to
do even more to fight for them. against
them back and forth over and over for
decades. And all we get out of it is
confiscated wealth and dead civilians.
And and I'm terrified quite honestly. I
know there are a lot of people who kind
of downplay this. I am legitimately
terrified of bin Laden terrorism. I
ain't afraid of the Shiites. I don't
think the Ayatollah wants to fight us.
And I don't think Hezbala is going to do
nothing to the United States of America
without his say so. And he ain't giving
it. It's the Bin Laden who tried to
knock our towers down in 93 and who did
in 2001, killing thousands of our people
and they're still here. They did San
Bernardino. They uh had a failed attack
on the subway in New York. They had a
failed attack on a marathon in New York
and New Jersey. They had a successful
attack in Boston, at Fort Hood, in
Little Rock, Arkansas, Pensacola,
Florida, and Corpus Christi, Texas.
These are all in our era, post September
11th, terrorist attacks against our
people because of our government serving
Israel's interests, primarily in the
Middle East. So there's a strong case to
be made that what's happening in Gaza is
going to lead to the growth of uh the
increased number of bin Laden in the
and dead American civilians as a result
of that.
So basically it makes United States less
Absolutely.
zooming up on the broader world, it
makes the entire world less safe
including Israel.
That's right. It's the most cynical
thing, man. You know, like there's an
interview, you probably read this
before. A lot of people are familiar
with this. Sabin Brazinski was
interviewed by a French magazine in
1998. No lueller
or some kind of thing. I don't speak
French, man. And they interviewed him
and they said, this is in ' 98 now, so
this is after the Taliban have come to
power. I think it's before the embassy
attack, but it's after Kobar. It's after
the first world trade center bombing and
the the um national guard attack of 90
of 95 in Saudi and the reporter asks
him, "Hey man, so all our support for
the mujadin in Afghanistan in the 80s,
that was your brilliant idea.
It's going to help lead to the rise of
all this terrorism. So what do you think
about that?" He says, "Sar, are you
kidding me? What's a couple of stirred
up Muslims
versus the liberation of Eastern Europe
and the destruction of Soviet communism?
And we know what we're doing. And he
says in that same interview that we were
not necessarily I love the way he says
this. You could apply this exactly to
the Ukraine war. We were not trying to
provoke them into invading Afghanistan,
but we were knowingly increasing the
probability that they would, which is of
course the exact same thing. And so, you
know, that's the attitude. Again,
terrorism is a small price to pay for
being a superpower. If you get to be the
superpower, that's how they look at us.
Some people partying on Bourbon Street
on New Orleans. Like to you, you might
say that is a sacrifice I'm not willing
to pay. Who could be more innocent than
people partying on Bourbon Street? What
could be more American than having fun
with your friends and family on New
Year's Eve? Why should they have to be
crucified for Israel's sins? It makes no
sense at all for the American people to
have to put up with this. But where you
would say no enough intolerable, they
would say, well, who cares? A few
expendable civilian, they might as well
be Afghans, they might as well be
Palestinians, the people of New Orleans.
George Bush doesn't care about them. Nor
does Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Donald
Trump for that matter. The next time
there's a terrorist attack, you and I
already know what's going to happen. And
they're going to blame it on
fundamentalist radical Islam which makes
evil people hate good people and want to
kill us. Now we have no choice but to do
with whatever what do you want us to do
next. BB whatever he said is whatever we
have to do next. The next time that we
have to pay the price for what Israel
did the last time. And I'm sick and I am
tired of it. I I think there's a really
big deeper human nature point that
you've spoken to over the last several
hours, which is uh trying to defeat
terror with military force
over the past 30 years. We have learned
the lesson that that only creates more
Yeah. And which they don't mind again
cuz it just gives them more to do. And
because again, the Bin Laden are over
there, not over here. And they like
killing Serbs and Russians and Shiites.
And so that's all cool.
But also with the proliferation of
nuclear weapons.
I'm glad you mentioned that. Guess what?
The le which are the bin Laden of
Pakistan. There's a a journalist named
Steve Call who wrote um Ghost Wars about
Afghanistan and he wrote Director at S
about the Pakistani uh ISI their secret
intelligence service who backed the
Taliban and backed the bin Laden. Well,
uh, the leashar ea was, um, one of their
groups and they seized, according to
Steve Call, they seized control of an
Indian ship for a time before special
operations troops were able to go in
there and kill them all off. Well, that
ship had nuclear weapons on board.
Apparently, the jihadists didn't know
that. They probably would not have been
able to access them or know how to use
them, but still.
Bin Laden jihadists seized control of a
ship that had atomic bombs on it. That
is not nothing, right? It's just like
bin Laden almost toppled one tower over
into the other. Let's start paying
attention now instead of later. Which by
the way, Ramsay bin Alib before he fled,
he wrote letters to all the New York
papers saying he bombed the World Trade
Center as revenge for American support
for Israel and bombing Iraq from bases
in Saudi just as his uncle colleague
Shake Muhammad uh would say years later
after doing September 11th. Um it's
always about Israel, dude. Always was.
Again, even the dual containment was
always about Israel. Zakuir's guy that
said we had to stay in Saudi. So, you
know, I know Dubitz is watching this
right now and saying, "See, see, he's
blaming it all on the Jews." But that's
not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is
that Israel, which calls itself the
Jewish state and happens to be run by
Jewish men, and that's what their thing
is, that they have interests that are
very different from ours, and that their
lobbyists and their, as Justin would
call it, their amen corner in the United
States has their interests at heart, and
those interests are opposite of ours. as
Justin I know would hasten to point out
that the majority of American Jews
opposed Iraq War II. And you might say,
"Well, yeah, but that's cuz they're
liberal Democrats." Okay, fine. Well,
they're not Ariel Chiron's men, are
More American Jews um per capita opposed
Iraq War II than any other ethnic or
religious group as they divided it up in
the polls at that time. Right? So it's
it's clearly not the lie that Mark
Dubowitz would try to put in my mouth in
order to discredit what I'm saying. But
what I am saying is some pretty ugly
true things about the role of the Israel
lobby in the United States. And again,
just as Mir Shimemer says, they have to
work this hard. they have to spend this
much money and they have to go around
calling everybody a Nazi because that's
what it takes to get Israel to keep
doing what Israel wants. Um the US has
different interests that we would pursue
otherwise. And so it takes this
extraordinary effort to bend our empire
to their will and including yes even
supporting the empire itself because as
Irving Crystal and Norman Pod Horitz
probably the two most important
neoconservative leaders of that
generation both said in the 1970s
that this is their words. I'm not saying
this and I'm not saying people took
their advice. I'm saying this is what
these two neocon nuts said was this is
I'm virtually certain this is the
podoritz quote is Jews don't like large
defense budgets but we need to support
them because we have to make sure that
under whatever excuse we keep America
engaged in the world so that it is
available to help Israel. And this is a
big part of why they're China hawks, why
they're Russia hawks, why they're
anything hawks, why they're Venezuela
hawks, because to them the greatest,
this is what Brett Stevens said in the
New York Times, the former editor of the
Jerusalem Post, who's now regular writer
at the New York Times. He he said the
very same thing about keeping America
available to protect Israel. And then he
says in the same article, but it's
totally an anti-semitic canard that
anybody who supports Israel and supports
these wars does so at America's expense
or in any way contrary to America's
interests. But then he's the one who's
saying that's what we have to do is bend
America to Israel's interests. It
couldn't be anything more anti-American
than that. And I would encourage people
to read George Washington's farewell
address. I mean, the guy was a brilliant
genius and and he wrote the thing
himself and it's probably four or 5,000
words on foreign policy where he says
that we should always issue entangling
alliances with any portion of the
foreign world because we'll form
unnatural passionate attachments to the
interests of these other nations and
then that will divide the people here.
It'll lead to all kinds of acrimony and
accusations and eventually you'll have
the partisans of foreign nations in
charge and they will denounce as
unpatriotic
the Americans who don't want to share
their allegiance with another power and
all of these things. You couldn't have a
21st century author write it any more
eloquently or convincingly than George
Washington himself in his farewell.
What a truly great man George Washington
He had his flaws, but yeah. Well, yes.
Yes. Jefferson, too. All of them. Yeah.
But I'm grateful for this country and
these men that founded the country on
these settle principles that
revolutionized human history. Absolutely
And we have to make sure we carry the
flag of those ideas forward. I
absolutely think that and this is why
I'm a libertarian. To me, libertarianism
is real American distilled. To me, the
Declaration of Independence, that is the
North Star. Everybody's born free. And I
don't even have to prove it to you cuz
I'm armed. And I'm telling you, dude,
I'm not giving up. You understand?
That's what it says.
Me, too.
Self-evident to me. Yeah.
I don't have an argument. I'm just
saying. And And that's the American
creed. And And that's what I believe in.
I believe that essentially all of
liberalism and conservatism and
socialism are all deviations from the
true American way, which is liberty and
property and and and the individual's
right to determine their own destiny.
That is what it's all about. And if we
lived that, I mean, imagine being afraid
Germany and Japan are going to rise back
up again. This whole time, we never
needed to do any of this. All we had to
do was be free. We could have done as
Jeen Kurpatre said abandoned the entire
empire been a normal country in a normal
time this whole time stayed out of all
the world's conflicts perfected our
republic to the best of our ability made
political and individual liberty our
highest political goal and shown the
world how it's done. Y'all's bills of
rights ain't good enough not like ours
is. Y'all's independent judiciaries
aren't independent enough not like ours.
Y'all's rule of law is too subject to
the will of men. You need to really
encode this thing and follow it like in
the deal, right? We could have I one
time humiliated Neil Ferguson's wife,
Hersa Ali, if you know her, she's the
atheist ex-Muslim little pet mascot of
the war party there that they trapes
around and have her demonize Muslims and
whatever. and I humiliated her in a
debate in front of a bunch of people at
a Freedom Fest in Las Vegas. And it was
funny because at the end of the debate,
um the uh the host of the debate uh said
to me that, "Wow, you made her case
better than she did and then you
destroyed it." And my case that I was
making was about that there are real
problems in the Muslim world. Like for
example, the worst thing probably is the
female uh genital mutilation, female
circumcision they call it in Eastern
Africa and in Kurdistan is where that
seems to be the the worst uh places
where those traditions are still
continued to this day. And then you have
of course the brutality and the
corruption of the dictatorships of uh
North Africa and of the Gulf. You have
just the absolute widespread accepted
custom of child abuse among the poshunes
of Afghanistan and Pakistan, especially
Afghanistan. I don't know as much about
in Pakistan. Um you have of course the
absolute tyranny over women in almost
all of these countries where they're
made to wear the hijab or the veil or
even a burka uh if whether they want to
or not and these kinds of things.
Whatever. We could go on and on here,
Lex, about the imperfections of these
countries. But guess what? You know
what's the worst thing about Somalia and
Libya, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and
America is the worst thing about all
those countries. The violence that our
country has brought to them. The
absolute destruction, the wholesale
wanting and cruel violence against
populations that never did anything to
us. Not one of these groups had the
slightest thing to do with September
11th, unless you want to say that Omar
should have just slit bin Laden's throat
in 99. I guess I'd agree with you about
that. But you know, the axis of evil,
Iran, Iraq, and Syria, none of them had
anything to do with September 11th.
There wasn't a single Iraqi, Syrian, or
Iranian on those planes or behind any of
that at all. Obviously, the only reason
they put North Korea in the acts of evil
is cuz if they put Syria in, you'd have
went, "Wait a minute. This speech was
written in Tel Aviv. Dude, what does
this have to do with Osama bin Laden who
killed our guys who Bush has already let
get away? Oh, you want to do something?
Let's end with this for this part of our
section before we move on to the Cold
To to show just how much our government
cares about the American people's
interests here, see if you can find
George Bush from March 2002.
And the quote would be, "I'm truly not
concerned about him." Bin Laden.
Uh during White House news conference on
March 13th, 2002, President George W.
Bush stated concerning Osama bin Laden
that he was not truly concerned about
him. That's a quote. This statement
generated controversy, particularly when
Senator John Kerry brought it up during
a presidential debate in 2004, according
Well, and screw John Ky. This ain't no
got nothing to do with sticking up for
him. And you know, in my book, I quote
the entire statement here because I
would I would not want anyone to
mistakenly believe that I quoted any of
this out of context. It's one of those
things we're like, "Nope, let's go ahead
and see everything that he has to say."
And to our benefit, George W. Bush is
only so smart and only so good at
getting away with this. Um he would like
he clearly has had conversations with
his staff about how we're work we have
to change the subject really from Osama
to Saddam and it's a little clumsy and a
little difficult to do but we're going
to have to kind of figure out how to do
that and so this is W. Bush sort of
taking a stab at it, except that he's
just not up to the task, right? So, he
can only be as smooth as he is in trying
to make these statements. And I would uh
I would argue it does not work out too
well for him. But it makes it, I think,
very clear to us just frankly like how
much contempt they have for us. You
know, George W. Bush, it really meant a
lot to people. Lex, when he climbed up
on that fire truck and he said, "I hear
you and we all hear you and the rest of
the world will hear you soon." People
really were like, "Man, we need a leader
and we got one." Can you imagine Bill
Clinton being even pretend macho enough
to act like that? When America needed a
man, there was W. Bush, right? And and
people believed so hard in him after
that. And then he ruthlessly exploited
their goodwill and their faith in him in
order to manipulate them and lie to them
to use their sons to go to a war for his
own reasons that he knew had nothing to
do with protecting us from terrorism. In
fact, again, W. Bush is so bad at this,
he told Katie Kurrick on CBS News,
"One of the hardest parts of my job is
connecting Iraq to the war on terrorism.
because he he right that's all he can do
he sputters oops was I supposed to say
it like that I guess probably not right
that was because what's he saying he
knows it is the most difficult part of
his job is trying to figure out how to
get people to believe that this
aggressive war has anything to do with
defending ourselves from that other
thing that happened that one time you
know when he clearly was just opuscating
Mr. President, in your speeches now, you
rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden.
Why is that?
Wait, pause real quick.
The American people,
forgive me for stipulating this is 6
months after the September 11th attack.
Okay, sorry. Go ahead.
Also, can you tell the American people
you have any more information? If you
know if he is dead or alive,
deep in your heart, don't you truly
believe that until you find out if he is
dead or alive, you won't really
eliminate the threat of Well,
deep in my heart, I know the man's on
the run, if he's alive at all.
And uh I I uh you know, who knows if
he's hiding in some cave or not. Uh we
hadn't heard from him in a long time.
And the idea of focusing on one person
uh is um really indicates to me people
don't understand the scope of the
mission. Uh terror is bigger than one
and uh he he's just he's he's a he's a
person who's now been marginalized.
Um his network is his host government
has been destroyed.
Um he's the ultimate parasite who found
weakness, exploited it and um
um met his match.
uh he is uh you know as I mentioned in
my speeches I do mention the fact that
this is a fellow who is willing to
commit youngsters to their death and he
himself tries to hide if in fact he's
hiding at all. So I I don't know where
he is, nor you know, I just don't spend
that much time on him. Ellie, to be
honest with you, I'm I'm more worried
about making sure that our soldiers are
well supplied, that the strategy is
clear, that the coalition is strong,
that when we find uh enemy bunched up
like we did in Charie Code Mountains,
that the that the military has all the
support is need it needs to go in and do
the job which they did. And uh there
will be other battles in Afghanistan.
There's going to be other uh struggles
like Sherry Code and I'm just as
confident about the outcome of that of
those future battles as uh as I was
about Sherry Code where our soldiers are
performing brilliantly. We're tough.
We're strong. They're well equipped. We
have a good strategy. We are showing the
world we know how to fight a a a
guerilla war with conventional means.
But don't you believe that the threat
that bin Laden imposed won't truly be
eliminated until he is found either dead
or alive?
Well, as I say, we hadn't heard much
from him and uh I wouldn't necessarily
say he's at the center of any command
structure.
And you know, again, I don't know where
he is. I uh I
I repeat what I said. I truly am not
that concerned about him. I know he is
on the run. I was concerned about him
when he had taken over a country.
Yeah. And then uh of course we know and
we've talked about the events that
Yeah. I gotta say again, I guess just to
finish this segment up to reiterate, I
think our highest priority really. And
in fact, as much as I like seeing Tulsi
Gabbard perse persecute the Russia gate
felons who framed President Trump for
treason and deserve to be banished with
their families from North America
forever. Um, I really wish that Tulsi
Gabbard actually only had one priority
in the entire world, which is protecting
us from bin Laden terrorism.
I'm serious about that. These guys are
coming back here. And now, it's true. I
should stipulate again, Israel loves Al
Qaeda and ISIS. As long as they're
killing Shiites, they've got a pretty
good relationship with Al Qaeda in
Syria. Now, last December, Abu Muhammad
Al Jalani, the leader of al-Qaeda in
Iraq and Syria, broke out of his pen and
sacked Damascus with the help of Turkey
and Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu went to
the border, gave a press conference, and
took credit for it himself. Okay, that
and Ben Shapiro got on there and said,
"Yeah, it's al Qaeda taking over, but
that's good because at least they're
pushing the Shiites out. This is somehow
the leader of American conservatism. You
tell me how that worked." But yeah,
Um, right now overall Israel has a very
close relationship with al Qaeda. But
then again, so did Bill Clinton and they
still attacked us, right? Just because
we're supporting them here doesn't mean
they won't attack us there. And we're
still motivating them to come at the
United States. And and especially when
you're talking like lone wolf cooks
where it can be just one jerk with a
rifle can do a hell of a lot of damage
whether anybody on the internet even
recruited him to do it or not. Um, and
especially with real uh ability to
recruit there. And again, just like
always, man, just like with the FBI
enttrapments, there's almost 300, more
than 300 FBI enttrapments on terrorism
charges. Trevor Arensson is the greatest
journalist on that question. He wrote a
book called The Terror Factory about the
FBI. And every time they entrap some
idiot into a bin Laden plot, what do
they tell him? Don't you hate freedom?
No. They tell him, "Isn't it impossible
to tolerate the violence that George
Bush/ Barack Obama slash Donald Trump
slash Joe Biden are bringing to the
people of the Middle East, and don't you
want to do something about it? Here's
$10,000. Say you love Osama into the
microphone, kid." And he goes, "Yeah,
I'm really angry about American foreign
policy. I love Osama. Give me $20,000."
And off to the penitentiary he goes. And
that's how they get him. every time they
cite American foreign policy. Do you
think that there's a six figure salary
paid FBI informant in this country
anywhere that's going to try to recruit
a terrorist by citing freedom?
You know what's really bad about
Americans is they let three or four
million Muslims live here and go to
whatever mosque they want and don't
bother them at all. And it's fine. Oo,
that enrages us. Oh, we hate that
America for all their freedom of
religion where a tiny Muslim minority is
able to practice in peace and security.
That ain't it. That's not how an FBI
informant recruits uh dupe into a plot.
They cite American foreign policy 100%
of the time. So the FBI knows same thing
that I know. Same thing that the FBI
testified to the 9/11 commission. I
think they identify with the Palestinian
issue and I think that's why they're
taking revenge against the United States
of America. And so what do we get from
Israel on all this? Like maybe we need
to invite Duboitz back in here so he can
tell us what is one thing that Israel
has ever done for us. They helped Obama
back al Qaeda in Syria, but that was
Obama helping them back al Qaeda in
They helped Ronald Reagan sell missiles
to the Ayatollah
when he was back in Saddam at the very
same time.
I guess we owe him big for that.
Otherwise, they steal our secrets and
sell them to the Soviets or to the
uh including like the Chinese supersonic
sea skimming missiles. They got those
from American designs. Pilford by the
Israelis. Jeff Stein from Spy Talk when
he's not being an insane Russia gate
lunatic. Poor Jeff. I used to respect
him. But Jeff Stein reported numerous
times that the FBI and CIA do a report.
Actually, they made them stop doing this
report because every year they said that
after Russia and China, Israel is the
worst country that spies on the United
States of America and is the greatest
security threat for the counter
inelligence agents in the United States,
trying to hold them at bay. Russia,
China, and Israel are the countries that
spy on us the most. again, including
Bill Clinton, and they tried to
blackmail him with their information
about Bill Clinton cheating on his wife.
They're just a security threat to the
United States of America.
I'd buy anybody to to make a coherent
argument that's not based on just pure
lies and sophistry. Quick bathroom break
once more and then let's do that cold
war, man. I'm having fun.
So, like we talked about provoked, you
wrote a book on uh cold war 2.0.
How Washington started the new cold war
with Russia and the catastrophe in
Ukraine. So, can you lay out the history
and the mechanism of how this went down?
The book is divided by presidents. Those
are the chapters.
And I go through I start with HW Bush.
We have a few flashbacks to the fall of
the Soviet or or earlier days of the
cold war in the Reagan years, but
basically we start with the end of the
last cold war and the overthrow of the
Soviet Union by the Russian government
led by Boris Yeltson at that time at the
end of 1991. Red flag came down on
Christmas Day 1991. Never forget it. And
people can watch that on YouTube.
There's a great Ted Cppel special about
it. Uh ABC News, really good thing. Um,
and so that was the end of Soviet
communism.
then the question was, well, now what?
And the answer was, America's got to
stay. If America leaves, and by the way,
the Soviets, I think, and Jeffrey Sax
said this the other day on Pierce
Morgan, I think. No, no, no. Yeah, I
think that's right. That the Soviets
actually agreed with that. that as James
Baker put it in his discussions with
Gorbachov, he's like, "Hey, would you
prefer an independent
potentially nuclear armed Germany with
its own foreign policy or wouldn't you
prefer that we stay in Germany?" And the
Soviets said, "Actually, we like you
guys better than the Germans, so yes, we
we would even agree with that." Now, the
purpose of NATO in the first place,
according to his first general
secretary, Lord Isme, the Brit, was to
keep the Soviets out, sorry, the
Americans in, the Germans down, and the
Soviets out. So, you replace the Soviets
with the Russians, right? But then, so
the idea is we're not leaving. Again,
this is the era of the defense plan and
guidance. America will dominate the
planet. You can call it empire. You can
call it dominance. You can call it
preeeminence or um
or primacy.
Uh that's Zubzinski like to call it uh
Crystalin Kagan called it benevolent
global hegemony.
This is the unipolar moment of Charles
Crowutamemer. Um and in fact in his
rejoinder to Jeene Kirkpatrick he said
we should stop at nothing short of
global domination.
And so this was the idea and in the
defense plan and guidance just as in the
famous study by the project for new
American century Bill Crystal and Robert
Kagan's group that was called rebuilding
America's defenses that came out in
1998. And by the way you can find I'm
pretty sure you can find both at scott
horton.org/fairuse /f fair use the
defense plan and guidance for 1994 again
written in 1992 and there are two
different versions of it they made them
rewrite it but it's essentially the same
thing and then the project for new
American centuries rebuilding America's
and these are basic neocon doctrine for
the end of the 20th century
and where they say we have to stay in
the Middle East to contain Saddam
Hussein first and foremost freed
Zachariah said in the '90s Saddam
Hussein is our lynch pit in the Middle
East. If he do, if he did not exist, we
would have to invent him. Get it as an
enemy to have so we have an excuse to
stay. So um
uh we have to expand in the Middle East
and this is the whole story as we've
told so far here. But then also we have
to expand NATO. That's the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization, America's
military alliance with Britain, France,
and the other Western democracies,
including Western Germany, and now
Germany and the rest as we've
incorporated more and more in Eastern
Europe as well. Our military alliance,
we have to expanded into Eastern Europe.
And there's a huge question at the time
about like the obvious thing was
after our great peaceful victory here. I
mean, for people who are too young for
this and don't understand or something
like if you were to ever believe in
magic or God or miracles or something
like that kind of a thing, the Soviet
essentially just fell away in peaceful
revolutions and simple withdrawals in
almost every case. Now, the dictator in
Romania and his wife were put up against
the wall and machine gunned to death.
Civil war broke out in Tajikhstan I
think and there was fighting between
Armenia and Azerbaijan
and it was not perfect but man on the
sliding scale of grading things on a
curve flex it was perfect man it was you
could not have had magic wishes come
true in a way to make the Soviet Union
just dissolve away the way they did that
kind of peaceful victory was the kind of
thing where it was like how best in deep
senses of that term to take advantage of
this. We really have a huge
responsibility for how we act now. And
so one of the things that occurred to
them immediately was as so many of them
put it them being the foreign policy
establishment and including the
administration
uh Bush Senior and Bill Clinton too, we
don't want to move the dividing lines in
Europe further east. We want to erase
them completely. We want a Europe that's
whole and free.
Does that or does that in not include
the Russians? But at first the message
was yes, it does. And George Bush Senior
said, uh, we want to have a single zone
of peace from Vancouver to Vladivastto,
meaning the entire northern hemisphere.
Now, this is why I was such a new world
order cook in the 1990s was because
there were enough threads of things like
this where part one side of the argument
was essentially that yes, we should
bring Russia into NATO too.
Now, what's that? To me, in my mind,
that fit in with G. Edward Griffin's
John Burcher grand design conspiracy
where you take the two enemies, move
them together, and they're going to form
basically like a single white world army
of the north to then lord it against
Islamic South Asia andor China. And but
it would essentially be the single one
world army of the one world government
under the United Nations in this new
alliance between the United States and
Russia. But that was not true at all.
That was not right. And the woollyheaded
one worlders like Strobe Talbot, that's
his own word for himself. Um
that idea that we're going to really
befriend Russia and bring them in from
the cold all the way with us was never
really on the table for discussion. It
was dismissed essentially immediately.
And so like in 1997 when Bill Clinton is
throwing them scraps and giving them the
NATO Russia Council, I'm going, "Oh my
god, look, they're doing it. They're
building the NATO Russia Council." When
in fact, he's giving them the stiff arm
and treating them like crap. But I was a
kid and I didn't have the internet back
then and his different times. Um but so
in fact in a way chapter one and two of
that book are me grappling with what was
really going on at that time when I
thought it was something else back then.
I really thought that they were trying
to build this world federalism with
Russia and then come to find out that
this is Dick Cheny's world not Al Gore
if that's if that's does that make sense
right that like this liberal nambi pami
baby blue UN flag internationalism
that's just cover for the brute force of
American hegemony over the world and of
course you got to get the liberals on
board so you tell them a bunch of nambby
pami stuff to get them on board because
they like that kind of thing that oh
look it's all humanitarianism and we're
passing out food or you know it's world
federalism, it's multilateralism and all
of these like little buzzwords that make
them feel good about what we're really
doing is seeking essentially a pack
Americana over the world. And so
that was what was going on. Now
obviously if instead of erasing dividing
lines we're just moving them further
east what does that mean? It means that
we stop at Russia.
You got to ask yourself, how does that
look from Russia's side? And how it
looks from Russia's side is an
explicitly anti-Russian military
alliance encroaching steadily toward
their borders. And obviously regards
that as a threat. And when I say
obviously, I mean the George HW Bush
administration understood that that
would be a result of NATO expansion. And
that's why they lied and said, "What
we're going to do is we're going to
empower what was then called the CSCE,
the Conference on Security and
Cooperation on in Europe, which is now
called the OSC for Organization.
Um, we're going to empower them and
we're going to have a security
partnership."
And so what's going to happen is NATO is
going to become irrelevant. We're going
to marginalize. NATO is essentially
going to become a political
organization. So even if it expands, it
doesn't really matter because what we're
really talking about is something that's
sort of like the EU plus the United
States, but it's going to be relegated
to a political organization and it's
going to be replaced by the CSCE because
who needs an alliance? There's no enemy
and we want to be partners with you. And
since Russia and all the middle states
in central and eastern Europe and far
eastern Europe, if you want to call it
that, right, the Baltics and Ukraine and
Barus are all members of the CSC already
since the Helsinki Accords of 1975. Well
then cool, presto.
Everybody's neutrality is baked in and
we're all in it together. But they were
lying, man. They never meant to do that.
The plan always was to expand NATO, of
course, to keep it a military alliance
and to keep it the center of American
power in Europe and to use the CCE. And
then later, the Clinton administration's
version of the same scam was called the
Partnership for Peace, where Warren
Christopher knowingly, the Secretary of
State knowingly lied directly to
Gorbachov's face and tried to make him
believe that we're doing the Partnership
for Peace instead of NATO expansion
andor again reiterating that NATO is
just going to be this political thing
and it's not we're not really doing much
with it anyway right now at all. When
they knew that wasn't true, they had
already decided that they were going to
expand NATO for certain. The decision
had been made like in stone by then. And
they were shining them on and trying to
get them to go along with their further
agendas as much as they could get away
with as long as they could get away with
it before breaking the bad news to him
that actually we are expanding NATO
after all. Because man, they knew that
this is going to destroy Yeltson. This
is going to cause such pressure against
him. In fact, when Clinton gave his
speech announcing that he had been lying
and that he really does mean to expand
NATO in 1994,
Yelson freaked out because he misto
misunderstood that Bill Clinton was
saying that we're going to start doing
it next year in 95, which was Clinton
had promised him that they definitely
would not do that. Yelson had to stand
for reelection in 96 and this would
absolutely destroy him and they all knew
it. Lex, what does that mean? That means
that every pro-American moderate
English-speaking liberal in Moscow
would be implicated,
right? That they said we were cool and
we're doing what we promised we wouldn't
while they were telling everybody else,
"Don't worry about the Americans. We can
trust them. It's all good." and this and
that, right? So, they knew this was
going to destroy Yeltson politically.
So, they promised that, "No, Boris, no,
no, no, man. Don't worry. We're not
going to do it until after you're safely
reelected in 96." They absolutely
understood. All of them understood the
depth of of how destructive that would
be to him because of how the entire
consensus inside Russia at that time in
their entire you know political and
foreign policy establishment was
absolutely opposed to NATO expansion and
were of course terrified by it and this
is all before Putin or W Bush ever come
to town. This is just HW Bush and Bill
Clinton years and dealing with um Mikall
Gorbachoff and then Boris Yeltson in all
of this. And I give credit to Joshua
Shiffrenson is the great academic. I
believe he's now at KO. um he was at
Texas A&amp;M University and I'm not sure
where else he has written but he wrote a
bunch of great journal articles that I
learned a hell of a lot from and cite in
my book where he shows explicitly is
it's beyond argument that they knew that
they were lying they were planning one
thing and they were doing something else
and he he's very polite and says that
they were knowingly misleading I think
but I call them damn liars and it's
pretty clear that they were and So
that's a huge part of it just to get us
started off here in the 1990s. What are
we going to do? Oh, and I'm sorry. Yes,
we're going to expand NATO. But first,
it's important to to emphasize that yes,
in fact, they did promise not to. And
people keep trying to debunk this, but
they can't. I have rebunked it and and
they cannot at all challenge the facts
as I marshall in my book. And it's
overkill. This is one of the two
sections where I have probably far more
than I need to demonstrate my case
because I tried to simply on I think I
already said this earlier in our review,
I'm sorry, on the case of the promises
against NATO expansion and on the
subject of the Ukrainian Nazis, I went
for absolute overkill on the citation
and the development of the idea and the
story and the proof and what it all
means because I feel like those are the
two most controversial uh stance es that
I'm taking in the book as being
factually true and I want the skeptical
reader to say, "Oh boy, I didn't really
realize it was like that when they're
done." So to be clear on the NATO
expansion saying that there was clear
indication made official that NATO
promises made by the United States that
NATO will not expand
and not just promises but it was an
agreement that we promise not to expand
the NATO alliance if you'll allow the
reunification of Germany. And that was
what convinced
Gorbachoff to say, "Okay, fine. We'll
agree to withdraw and allow Germany to
reunify under NATO."
And then the deal is, and as I show in
the book, it's not just that James Baker
said this one time on February the 9th,
1990. He said it six times on February
the 9th, 1990. and on many other in fact
on that same day Robert Gates who was
then the deputy secretary of defense uh
pardon me the deputy director of the CIA
told the same thing to the director of
the KGB in a meeting on that same day in
Moscow and then the German foreign
minister Hans Dietri Genture said this
over and over and over again including
in public at public press conferences
right in front of James Baker who only
nodded in a sense and never said
anything against it that we promise not
not to expand NATO, but that includes in
because here's the rub and this is what
makes it a little complicated and maybe
people's eyes glaze over or the word
party tries to say this is all anybody
ever meant by that was Baker said in a
weird way that if you allow Germany to
we won't spread NATO one inch
inside Germany. That's where the phrase
not one inch comes from.
Well, that doesn't make any sense. It's
like the East German government is going
to be the government of the new Germany,
right? Bon is going to move to Berlin
and West Germany is going to be the
regime that rules the new reunited
Germany, right? No question about that.
So, how is it that only the western half
of the country is in NATO? That doesn't
make sense. So then they had to walk
that back and go, "Okay, well, you know
what we'll do though is yes, obviously
the whole country will be in NATO, but
we promise not to move any substantial
military forces into the then GDR, East
Germany. Uh that was short for German
Democratic Republic, which was commi
enslaved East Germany.
um we promise not to move our forces in
there or nuclear weapons into the
eastern part. So they're still
respecting the promise. They're kind of
revising it cuz they have to cuz the
first in the first sense the promise
doesn't actually make rational sense,
right? You can't really bring you can't
reunite Germany but only leave the first
half inside the military alliance. Okay?
But they said, "Okay, but we're not
going to build new bases and station
forces further east, and we're not going
to put nuclear weapons there." Okay, so
they're still respecting that promise,
and that part ended up in the final
Washington treat final treaty that they
signed. Now, um,
Hans Dietri Genture made the most of
this, but so did the Chancellor Helmet
Cole. And this is the part and Mary
Elise Serat wrote a whole book about
this called Not One Inch. And she has a
whole hell of a lot on this. uh as her
and Shiffronson are probably the two
best on it, although I think he's
probably got the edge, but she shows
Helmet Cole went and met with Gorbachev
and he knew that HW Bush wanted to
reconsider this and thought that Baker
was being too consiliatory, but Helmet
Cole went ahead and stuck with the day
before yesterday's interpretation or was
it just yesterday's interpretation
instead of the new one cuz he knew that
that's what he wanted Gorbachov to hear
that this is how it's going to be. And
it was based on that promise from Helmet
Cole that Gorbachov said, "Okay, fine.
You can do it." And Helmet Cole said,
"Can I quote you on that right now?" And
he goes, "Yeah." And Helmet Cole went
right outside and held a press
conference and said Gorbachov just said
that Germany can reunite. Blam, got it.
Now, was that in a treaty like right
there? It was just a spoken word, but
they moved to reunite right then based
on it. The treaty came later, right? So,
same kind of thing here. They try to
argue that words don't mean things only
when it's a treaty ratified by the
Senate. But that's not true. And
Schifferson especially goes through and
shows some examples and there are plenty
of others. But you have the entire
arrangement around West Berlin, for
example, which your younger viewers may
not know that West Berlin, the western
half of Berlin was a free city wholly
within Kami East Germany was still
occupied by the US as a remnant of the
Second World War. And so it's a very
complicated situation there. But
America's entire arrangement with the
Soviets about how to treat West Berlin,
checkpoint Charlie and all these things
was purely handshake agreements. They
had no treaty at all. And Roosevelt in
fact when he was still alive, uh they
were already working on this and said
that the agreement that we were already
working out over Vienna, Austria should
also apply to Berlin. and he did not
want it on a piece of paper because he
wanted it specifically for a
trustbuilding measure. And if we don't
put it in writing and both sides just
have to live up to it based on what's
the right thing to do in the
circumstance, then that'll help build
our relationship for the better. And
that's really cuz Roosevelt was a
Stalinist commi dictator himself. But
don't get me off on that tangent. But
anyway, uh speaking of one world
communism, um but so there was no formal
arrangement over West Berlin. Then same
thing when Henry Kissinger and Richard
Nixon split ma tongue off from the
Soviet Union in the cold war and made
them really our allies in the war. We
didn't have a war guarantee, but we had
a deep relationship that they crafted at
that time. all handshake deals, nothing
official, no treaties is how they
handled it. When in the Cuban missile
crisis, Kennedy negotiated with Cruchef,
secretly with his brother, the attorney
general, over the heads of and around
the CIA and the State Department and
made a secret deal with Cruchev that if
you get your missiles out of Cuba, we
will remove our mid-range missiles from
Turkey. And they didn't even say this,
but just implicitly also Italy where we
had st uh stationed these same Jupiter
mid-range missiles and and we promised
never to invade Cuba again. That
informal secret deal that wasn't
revealed until the end of the Cold War.
They said at the time, "Yeah, Jack Kenny
just faced him down." No, he made this
secret deal and it held and it has held
this whole time. They kept the missiles.
They've never put missiles back in
Turkey. We do have air dropped and and
uh hydrogen bombs and airplanes
stationed at the Insurlic base there. Um
but we have not stationed missiles in
Turkey ever since or in Italy ever since
then as and lived up to that deal. Nor
have we invaded uh Cuba although they
did try to murder Castro more times
after that but we haven't invaded. So
that was an informal deal. It's not only
a handshake deal. It was a secret and
completely deniable. And yet they abided
by it anyway because sometimes you got
to do that. And that's the way these
things go. When it comes to this, you
have Peter Baker in the New York Times
saying, "Nah, come on. If it's not in a
treaty, then it's not anything at all."
But that's not true. As Ted Snyder said,
this wasn't just a promise. This was an
agreement. We promised not to expand
NATO. Okay? Can we reunite now? Yes, you
can shake on it. That's a deal. And the
Americans lied and broke it. And they
knew they're lying and breaking it. And
when the Russians started complaining to
the Clinton people,
Warren Christopher launched an internal
investigation at the State Department to
find out if it was true or not. And they
decided it was true, but that oh well,
screw them. We're going to go ahead
Can we, if it's okay, fast forward, as
you said, your book is called Provoke
Not Justified. I should say from me,
maybe you can uh speak from your
perspective that the reason the war in
Ukraine in 22 started was because
Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
And then you could backtrack like what
why he did was he escalated the war in
Ukraine by about 100,000%.
Right? But the war had been going on for
a very long time, right? And that's very
important. You know, it's not just the
backstory, but it really is the start of
the war was when John Brennan came to
town on April the 12th and 13th of 2014
and demanded that the acting president
Turovv launched the war and he did on
the 14th.
It was all John Brennan's fault like a
lot of things. A drastic escalation
was committed by Vladimir Putin.
Absolutely right. Yeah.
And there's when we look at
responsibility and we talk about wararm
mongers and we talk about the
military-industrial complex.
That's I think it's really important to
explore from an American perspective.
But when you look at the region
and who started that escalation, you you
have to put the chief responsibility
on Vladimir Putin.
Of course,
the guy's a gangster. That's how he got
a job in the first place. He was part of
the Yeltson family and he had been the
deputy mayor of St. Petersburg where he
worked for a criminal named Saabek who
was part of the Yeltson family and we
say family like the Italian mob in New
York families. Uh that's exactly in the
exact same meaning of that term. That's
what they called it at the time. And
that was where he came from in the first
place. and his first job really was
protecting all Yeltson and his guys and
getting them out of the country with all
their money safely and then you know
taking control of the thing. So, we're
ahead of the story a little bit, but the
guy's an sob. You know, people say, "Oh,
he's a KGB and he's a commie." Well,
he's not a commie. He sided with the
reformers against the coup plotters in
August of 1991 when it counted,
right? And and also, he wasn't a spy. He
was a clerk. like he was, you know, he
was a colonel, but like I've never seen
anything that said he's out slitting
throats and bribing people and
blackmailing people and turning spies.
He was a operations guy back at
headquarters. Um, I know a lady named
Susan Tennyson. You ever heard of her?
She's an American who was doing outreach
to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Spent
her whole lifetime, I think she's still
alive, little old lady, sweet old lady.
Spent her whole lifetime trying to make
friends with Russia. And she talked she
told me the story about meeting Putin
when he was the deputy mayor of of St.
Petersburg and how he wouldn't take a
bribe. He just wanted to get the job
done. Whatever the job was, she needs
some bureaucratic hurdles taken. He
said, "Well, check this box and sign
here and thank you very much." And
didn't want her money, which she thought
was a really big deal at the time that
wow, like this guy has a sense of honor
and duty and doing his job in a way that
nobody else here does. Everybody else
here is a Mexican cop going kicked out.
you know what I mean? Everybody um and
where he wasn't. So now I'm not saying
that makes him a moral guy or whatever,
but I'm saying that makes him very much
like a business's business sort of a
dude who has his priorities like in that
way. He's a head of state and a powerful
state and you have to be in practice a
psychopath to run a country like that.
That goes for Obama and the rest of them
too, man. Uh all of these guys, it's a
psychopathic job to kill people. uh and
especially in the kind of large numbers
especially that the Americans do but and
Putin's been responsible for a bit of
violence of himself uh up until even
this time and I don't think anybody
underestimates I don't you know there's
some people I guess who kind of they're
so anti-American Empire they start
seeing or maybe too sympathetic instead
of just empathetic with the other side
right and sort of maybe rationalize a
bit of the Russian point of view or
whatever in a way that doesn't appeal to
me. I don't I don't think you have to
like honestly I don't see anything.
Well, look, I I have in the book, it's a
Bill Hicks quote. There's options. He's
talking about pro-life people ought to
be blocking cemeteries and preventing
funerals, but he says there's options.
So, I just like little tiny little
Easter eggs like that. Putin could have
done other things like for example he
could have um again like in 2018
demanded only this time really seriously
and loudly and with the world paying
close attention in a way that they
weren't in 18 that I want baby blue
helmet UN peacekeepers from a third
non-interested country to go stand on
the border of the gray zone in the
Dawnbass on what's supposed to be the
ceasefire line in eastern Ukraine. And I
demand it and I'm serious and I'm going
to come up with ways to force y'all to
give into this. In other words, to to
ratchet up the tension, not to start the
war, but to find a creative way to force
the West to implement the Minsk 2 deal
that the West signed along with Ukraine
and Russia in 2015
and that Obama rubber stamped and that
the UN Security Council rubber stamped
and that America and Kiev had always
refused to implement. He also, and maybe
as part of enforcing that, he could have
vowed to obstruct all UN Security
Council business. He's got veto power.
He can vote no on anything and just
grind the UN Security Council to a halt.
That's a hell of a lever of pressure. He
could have also cut off all gas to
Western Europe through the Nordstream.
He had already shut off Nordstream 1. I
forgot exactly the offense that caused
him to do that. It's in the book, but he
had already shut down Nordstream 1. He
could have shut down Nordstream 2 and he
could have shut off all the gas
pipelines running through Ukraine as
well. This is in the winter of 21. We're
talking about in November, December of
21 into January, February 22. It's cold
as hell. Europe is up at Canada type
latitudes, man, where it's cold in the
winter up there. And he could have
played hard ball like that. And as I
complain in the book as well, he also
could have been just not so damn koi
about the thing. and where he kept
denying that he was going to invade and
saying well this is very coercive
diplomacy essentially but like come on
just give in which I think he did offer
treaties and this is we're jumping way
ahead in the story I think Biden could
have negotiated his way out of it if
he'd been trying to I think he was not
trying to so when Biden was president
you were saying that he did not do
right to negotiate in good faith in fact
this is why I thought there wouldn't be
a war it's not because I didn't think
Putin had it in him. I'd been warning
for years. He had been warning for years
and I noticed. He had told an Italian
diplomat in 2014, you know, I could be
in Kiev in 2 weeks. And so this was
always the threat that this could get,
you know, much worse. Um, and but I
thought it wouldn't happen because
William Burns, who is the author of the
net means net memo and was I don't know
if he was ever CIA, but he was stationed
in the embassy over there since the
1990s, had been Bush's ambassador to
Russia and was like, if there's one guy
who can work this out with Sergey
Lavrov, it's William Burns. And I
idiotically
thought, and God, how stupid could I
have been that I thought that of course
William Burn's mandate from Biden will
be see us through this, prevent this war
from happening. And I knew the war was
preventable because the issues on the
table were not just some front, some
excuse. The issues on the table were
deadly serious issues of NATO expansion,
the potential for missile imp placements
in Ukraine, especially after Trump tore
up the non the intermediate nuclear
forces treaty of 1987, which would have
made it legal for America to station uh
nuclear missiles in Europe again and um
and the ongoing war in the Dawnbass. And
if if William Burns had the mandate to
figure this out, dude, then he could
have. And I know that he could have. And
I know that they did not try to do that.
They never negotiated either of those
proposed treaties. One was for the US,
one was for NATO. And they were
reasonable. And Lex, I have in the book,
not just Chas Freeman, the brilliant
genius, you know, career diplomat who
went to China with Nixon and was the
former ambassador to Saudi and all these
things who told me personally that like
absolutely
this is a reasonable treaty to
negotiate. Am I saying we should sign on
the dotted line? Hell no. We don't do
that for anyone. But is this reasonable
to sit at a table and negotiate?
Absolutely. And I show in the book Joe
Biden administration White House
officials, possibly State Department,
but at least high level officials, NSC
and/or state, told the Post and the
Times that we think these are reasonable
treaties and that they should be
negotiated. But then they did not do
that. They refused to negotiate those
treaties. They refused to negotiate NATO
expansion. They refused to negotiate the
imp placement of missiles as a potential
imp placement of missiles in Ukraine and
they refused to implement Minsk do or do
anything to end the civil war and in
fact helped to increase it. According to
the OCE, Kiev was escalating artillery
attacks on the other side of the line uh
into the third week of February of 2022.
And so,
listen, there's a quote in there of
Putin where he says, you know, I think
they're trying to provoke me into
invading. That's not the exact quote.
Forgive me. But he acknowledges that
this could be a trap, but I really don't
know what else to do. And and quite
frankly, I think that's right, Lex. And
I think and my excuse is is I was too
damn busy recording the audio book of
the last war. Enough already in the
Middle East. I'm one of those generals
always behind and so I was outsourcing
too much of my primary reading to my
opinion pieces that I was reading from
smart people and people that I was
interviewing at the time but I wasn't
reading just enough of hate to say it
but just the post the times in the
journal that's who the US government
talks to so you got to read the post the
times in the journal and if you read the
post in the times and the journal very
carefully um and a lot of the rest of
the media too. From the era of
especially December of 21 and into
January and February 22, you'll find a
lot of references to Afghanistan.
Not our recent absolutely humiliating,
disgraceful failure and ultimate
withdrawal after 20 years. Just 3 months
before in the end of the summer of 2021,
just 3 months later, they had the word
Afghanistan in their mouths. We want to
replicate the Afghan war. You know,
Rambo 3, what we did to the Soviet Union
in the 1980s, not our Afghan war, their
Afghan war. But we're going to do it
this time with the Ukrainian Nazi right
as the mujaheden. And we're going to
lure the Russians in, bog them down, and
bleed them to bankruptcy, inflict on
them a strategic defeat. uh Nile
Ferguson who's Wi-Fi humiliated in front
of all those people in Las Vegas at that
time. He wrote an article in Bloomberg
News where he says, "Look, everybody
who's anybody
in Washington and London knows that the
policy is to inflict a strategic defeat
on Russia. We're not trying to dissuade
them from invading." And you could just
see where right after the start of the
war, somebody asked Ned Price, the State
Department spokesman, "Man, what are we
doing to negotiate an end to this
thing?" I mean, you would just think
that the consensus of all 8 billion of
us would be, "You can't have a hot war
on Russia's southern western border.
This could go nuclear. We have to cease
fire immediately. General strike, call
it off. Somebody go to Geneva and figure
this out." That's what everybody thought
was happening. And so the reporters ask
Ned Price, man, what are we doing to do
the thing, to end the thing? And Ned
Price goes, well, you know, there are
larger principles at stake here about
independence and sovereignty and the
right of a nation to direct its gaze in
whichever direction that it wishes to
direct its gaze.
In other words, this is sticking with
what they call the open door policy,
which says that any country that wants
to join NATO can join NATO if we say so.
And no third country
can say otherwise. And no third
country's security interest will be
taken into account. And you see how they
do this in committee. They go, "Well, is
anybody at the table here think that
Russia ought to have veto power over who
we allow into our military alliance?"
And of course, nobody raises their hand
when you put it that way. So then that's
it. We dismiss that forever. Now we have
an open door. Now, of course, there is
no no door. It's just jargon. It's just
meaningless garbage basically thought up
by a bunch of bureaucrats. They could
change it just as easy. But instead,
they say, "Nope."
especially
when the Russians, and this is pointed
out by Steven Walt and by um Samuel
Cherup at Rand pointed out that yeah,
it's hard because once the Russians are
demanding that we do these reasonable
well, now doing them seems unreasonable
cuz we don't want to give in to their
And so, like, no, we and man, this is
the worst Joe Biden. And Joe Biden has
always been the worst since 1973,
but this is him at his absolute most
dim-witted. So he can't really think
hard about any of these things. He
mostly would just speak in historical
analogies about World War II. He's
Churchill facing down Hitler. And so
you're going to talk him out of that?
You're going to tell him that he ought
to be Neville Chamberlain and appease
Hitler at Munich? Of course not. You
know what you got to do to a bully? You
got to punch him in the nose. And I'm
sure you've must have heard this a
hundred times in the leadup to this war.
They'd all say this. All these dorks
would talk about, "Yeah, you know how
you face down a bully, you punch him in
the nose." Well, how would they know?
They never punched a bully in the nose
before, right? They're dorks. And they
now have all this power and think that
they know what they're doing and the
best thing they can do is relive their
third grade trauma. uh getting bullied
by me and my friends on the playground,
you know, and they get to pretend like
what? They're the star of the baseball
team that came and stuck up for the
bullied kid. Nuh-uh. No, they're not.
That's their little fantasy that they're
playing out. And they would say things
like that over and over again. It's it's
Chamberlain at Munich and the bully on
the playground. But nobody can just talk
about what about the ongoing war in the
Dawnbass. Can we get off of your
analogies? I got in an argument again. I
for the third time I debated General
Wesley Clark about Ukraine on the Pierce
Morgan show and again he immediately
retreats to World War II fantasies.
Well, that's like saying that Stalin
should have given in to Hitler and
because he can't talk about the war.
They're lo losing provos right now.
The the war is getting worse and worse
for Ukraine all the time. So he has to
say, "Uh-uh. You know what? The
Ukrainians believe hard and you just
need to believe hard like them." That's
the level of argument that I got out of
General Wesley Clark, the former
fourstar general, Supreme Allied
Commander of NATO forces in Europe who
served Bill Clinton launching the
aggressive war against Kosovo based on
lies in 1999 based on a false claim that
the Serbs had murdered a 100,000 Kosvar
Albanians when that was a lie. And
they're fighting for Bin Laden. a bunch
of heroin dealers and organ smugglers
and bin Laden terrorists in that war of
treason. But anyway, that's General
Wesley Clark for you. But that's
basically all they got. It's a bunch of
believe hard and a bunch of World War II
metaphors and playground metaphors
because they can't talk about the actual
war themselves. To be clear, if I may
comment, you're referring to Americans
or maybe Europeans. Well, in the foreign
policy establishment guts, right? I do
want to say that Ukrainians, people in
Ukraine, and I know many of them are
true heroes and they're fighting for
their country. And whether the
geopolitics of it makes any sense, it
doesn't take away from the human beings.
Yeah, of course.
Defending their land and in absolute
hellish worscape, man. I mean, it's
World War I plus drones, right? muddy
trenches and tank rounds and artillery,
airdrop dumb bombs and drones hunting
you. It's an absolute nightmare out
there, man. Anybody with telegram is
going Jesus Christ looking through the
thing, you know? It's not quite as bad
as Gaza cuz it and look, they're
conscripts. So, it's very unfair, but in
essence, they're wearing green in our
fair game out there fighting on the
field. Most of the civilians have been
able to flee. the civilian deaths are
counted in the single thousands I
believe low thousands uh which is
absolutely horrific for those people but
at least that's like the silver lining
is that it's essentially combatants
fighting but it's still absolute hor
show and you're right that look you know
I can't deny the bravery anybody out
there risking their balls for you know
any of this stuff but the thing is there
are different wars going on right
there's a war between the United States
and Russia going on with a proxy war
hell there's a with America and China
going on with using Ukraine and Russia
as our proxies. Then there's America and
Russia using their proxies in Ukraine.
Then you have Ukraine, you know, Kiev
versus Moscow. But then you also have
Lviv versus Donesk, right? And these
nationalists from out west trying to
force their version of what Ukraine is
supposed to be on the people of the east
who of course are ethnically and
culturally Russian. And I'm not saying
that means everyone who is so wants to
join the Russian Federation, but I'm
just saying there's a severe culture war
going on for dominance in the country.
And u all of these wars are playing out
at the same time. But then so anybody
who says, "Hey, I'm defending my land,
my neighborhood, my community. Give me a
rifle and I'll go do brave things."
Like, hey, that is what it is. Overall,
what's really happened here is the
United States of America has gotten
their weak friend in a fight with their
stronger, tougher neighbor when we had
no ability or intention whatsoever to
bail them out of it. When they said,
"We're going to give you all the weapons
it needs, as much as it takes, as long
as it takes," they knew they were lying.
Even Camala Harris can tell you, "Russia
is a bigger country." By the way, that's
a real quote. I don't know if you know
that, but she sound like she's talking
to a four-year-old.
And and I'm sure she was simply paring
her own advisors from what they told
her. Not even what they told her to say,
but what they told her. Ukraine is a
country in Europe. Russia is a bigger
country in Europe. Russia is next door
to Ukraine. And Russia has invaded
Ukraine. And that's bad and we are
against it. When I heard that, I thought
it was fake or I thought, "Come on, she
was talking to elementary school kids
and you guys are taking out of context."
No, she said that on the Black Guy
Morning Show on the radio in Chicago.
And they looked at her like, "Lady, we
know that Russia and Ukraine are in
Europe. We know that Russia is a bigger
country than all other countries. Tell
us something that we don't know."
and she didn't know anything that they
didn't know. So, she could not tell
them, but she could tell them that
Russia is bigger than Ukraine. She might
have been able to extrapolate that they
have a hell of a lot more available
fighting aged males to complete this war
than Ukraine, and they always will, and
there's nothing anybody can do about it
other than if Joe Biden would be willing
to send the United States army in there
to fight them. Even the Germans and the
French and the British and the Poles
combined couldn't do it without America
to help them do it. It's without America
to run the whole thing for them. Anyway,
if you wanted to really whoop the
Russians and drive them out of the
Donbass and Zabrosia and Gerson and
Crimea, you need to send in the Marines.
You need to send in the Air Force and
the Navy. And we're not going to do
that, Lex. And Joe Biden said
explicitly, we're not doing that. That's
World War II. will give the Ukrainians
everything they need to fight. As you
said, zoom all the way in. Here's some
hero making the ultimate sacrifice. Zoom
all the way out. Here's some damned fool
using these people as cannon fodder on
some fool's errand. They can't possibly
win to to deliver a strategic defeat
against the Russians that they have
completely failed to deliver. If
anything, they delivered a strategic
victory to China by kicking front kick
straight in the chest Russia right out
of Europe and into the arms of the
Chinese when of course Russia is the
eastern frontier of European
civilization.
Um, and we're doing everything we can to
change that. Joe Biden himself said, "No
Russian leader in all history has ever
thrown in as hard with the West as
Vladimir Putin."
It's Joe Biden himself who kicked him
right back out again.
It really seemed
that Donald Trump more than uh any
recent president wanted to make peace.
there's a strong will for peace. Why do
you think he has not been successful?
Yeah. Okay, let me just emphasize here.
We're skipping a lot to the end, and I
know it's late, so it's okay. But there
are a lot of other things beside NATO
expansion, including tearing up the
treaties, installing
anti-bballistic missile systems in
Romania and Poland, but that are fired
from dualuse launchers, the MK-41 or
Mark 41 missile launcher that can also
hold Tomahawk cruise missiles. and while
all the all the while refusing an
inspection regime. There's also of
course overthrowing the government twice
in 10 years in Ukraine, all the other
color-coded revolutions um in Georgia
and in Kyrgyzstan and the rest. And um
of course support for the Maidan
revolution of 14 and the war that broke
out after that. And as I said, I I beat
essentially every topic that I could
think of outstanding between America and
Ukraine that's happened this entire
time. I do not spin for the Russians the
whole time. I accuse them of plenty of
things in there that they actually did.
And I defend the truth from false
accusations rather than defending the
Russians cuz screw them and they don't
need my help. And this book is not for
them. It's for us. Um, but um I I tried
not to leave out anything. I mentioned
sort of it's the epitome, the Montenegro
weird phony coup of 16, but we tried to
overthrow the government of Barus three
times, 01, 05, and 20.
Uh, we've been messing around a lot in
in building up this cold war. That's why
that book is so long is it it is 475
thou 477,000 words and and I don't think
wasted and that does include the
footnotes which by the way Lex when I
took the URLs out and the the the
footnotes are font size nine I believe.
When I took the URLs out that saved me
77 pages.
That's how many articles are are in
there. But if people go to scott
horton.org/provoked/notes
org/provoked/notes.
I have a PDF file there of all the notes
with their links. I only took the links
out at the very last moment. So, there's
a PDF file where you can take anything
in here and I'll have a working link to
it at scottworn.org/provoke/notes
and people can download the whole PDF of
the whole thing and it's 375 pages of
notes in regular font. How would you
recommend one where So I've read parts
of this that jumped around. Yeah.
unless I
my mental health goes to complete shit.
I hope to uh travel back to Ukraine and
to Russia to interview the key figures
there. And you said that I should
definitely read the entirety of the
And look, I think it it's written to be
a page turner all the way through. And I
am outraged. And the book is written
from this point of view and it's
engaging enough. And as I say, it's so
long because there's so many subtopics.
I do not belabor and beat the dead horse
and force you to read a bunch about
things that you're not interested
anymore. We do the litenko chapter, then
it's over. We do the Bellarus chapter,
then we're done and move on to the next
subject as fast as I can take you
through it. It's the same way I wrote
the previous books, too. This is what I
need to tell you before I let you off
the hook and change the channel. Right?
Just like in enough already, I gave you
four pages on Somalia. I know you're not
going to read six. You might not get to
Libya if I try to make you read six on
Somalia. So, I only gave you four. You
know what I mean? I wrote it that way in
the first place. I I think I proved my
point. And I give you um you know the
ability to find the proof for yourself
uh to track these things down further.
If I say these people essentially made
this claim in this piece, you can track
that down and double check and see if
I'm lying or not or see if I understood
right or whatever as you go through
there. People will falsely assume that I
don't have Ukrainian and Russian sources
in there, but I do. But the thing is I
just I don't use cerillic at all because
nobody can read that. So, I use Google
Translate on the titles. So, a lot of
times you don't realize that it's, you
know, unless you look closely, you won't
realize that these are there plenty of
foreign sources that I site in there,
but I just give them their English
headlines um through Google Translate or
whatever, so people know what they're
looking at, but again, I have the links
and even the links to the translated
versions of the stories and all of that.
Um, but I'm not dodging your question
about Trump, by the I do want to talk
about that, but I wanted to make it
clear that I'm not just saying Bill
Clinton expanded NATO in the '90s. W
Bush did too in the 2000s. Obama did too
in the 2010s and Trump did too. Uh
brought Montenegro and northern
Macedonia into NATO. Um the there's the
color-coded revolutions and the missiles
and all of these things. Um and so
it all came to a head essentially in the
Biden years. It could have. Trump I
think could have solved it if they
hadn't have framed him for Russia gate.
By the way, I have 75 pages on Russia
gate in there. It's the most thorough
take down of Russia gate I think you can
find anywhere. Although I don't take
credit, I give credit to the great
Russia gate journalists who absolutely
destroyed those lies. People like Paul
Sperry and Matt Taibbe, Aaron Mate and
uh and Robert Perry for that matter
before he died. Gareth Porter, of
course, and so many others who did such
great work on Russia Gate. It was just
absolute one hair away from just blowing
the guy's head off in Dallas. I don't
know what's the difference. It's
unbelievable to have the CIA and the FBI
come at the president of the United
States this way. becoming a major party
candidate for president this way and
then the president-elect and then the
sitting president of the United States
talking about trying to overthrow him
with the 25th amendment hire a special
counsel to pretend to investigate him
for another two years. These people
should have all of their prop property
confiscated. They and their family
should be exiled from the United States
forever. Everyone involved in that plot.
everyone involved at Perkins Koi,
everybody involved at the Georgia Tech
team, everybody involved in uh you know
Glenn Simpson and his Fusion GPS,
everyone at the FBI and CIA and NSA and
any of the government agencies who went
along with that plot ought to all be
kicked out of the United States forever
and their great grandchildren. As you
write, it was the CIA and FBI as well as
the Clinton campaign and their agents
that did this to Trump. the front runner
from major party candidacy for the US
president, later the Republican nominee,
president-elect, and eventually sitting
chief executive. None of it was true.
And you go on and more of that coming
out all the time about just how not true
it was and just how not true they
already knew it was. And I have so much
in there. And I I beg your audience to
read the Durham report. There are new uh
newly declassified uh appendixes uh to
it that are just being released as we
record this. One came out yesterday. Um
and so we're going to get much much more
about the origins of Russia Gate here.
But Lex the the at the bottom line they
go okay after it all falls away still
Russia hacked the DNC and gave it to
Wikileaks. Nuh-uh. That was a lie. And
it was Crowd Strike that made up that
lie in combination with the Georgia Tech
team and DARPA at the Pentagon. I I have
trouble keeping track of exactly at all.
People should follow Undead Foya on
Substack. He's brilliant anonymous guy,
uh, brilliant analyst to this stuff. Um,
the core allegation there, there's no
proof of that whatsoever. And now we
know for a fact, we only just found this
out. Read Aaron Mate at Real Clear
Investigations. And we know for a fact
now that the FBI and the NSA
gave No, pardon me. The CIA and NSA, is
it FBI and NSA? FBI and NSA gave it only
low to moderate confidence. In other
words, none of this information came
from the National Security Agency.
They're the ones who would really know.
And the CIA and the FBI had both already
debunked this stuff before they started
to pretend to believe it again. And part
of it is because of compartmentalization
inside the agencies. These analysts are
in charge of looking at this. These
analysts are in charge of looking at
that. But Brennan and Comey are in
charge of ignoring all of the disputing
information and cherrypicking out all
the rest to try to make it look true.
And man, what a fraud. I mean we are
talking on the level of the branch
devidians killed themselves on the level
of Saddam Hussein is making nuclear
weapons to murder you with Bashar
al-Assad woke up one morning and decided
to murder the entire population of his
country so it's a good thing that USA
and al Qaeda are here to protect the
poor population of Syria from his uh
wrath and it's on that level of lie it
is unbelievable what they did to him and
you know I have so many problems with
Donald Trump. But man, I hate his
enemies and I would love to see him
ruthlessly, lawlessly persecute these
people. They deserve to suffer for what
they did to him and to this country
putting us through that. Think of how
many women bankrupted their husbands
with therapy bills because they were
that convinced that the Russians had
done a coup d'eta and installed a Nazi
fascist white supremacist to overthrow
us. They heard it on National Public
Radio and they're freaking out, man. I
mean, you could come up if you wanted
to, you could have a conspiracy theory
where it was the drug companies that did
this just to sell more Zoloft to these
people. They drove them up the wall.
Like, see, Lex, the problem is you know
better, dude. But pretend for a minute
that you're one of these idiot women
that listens to Mara Liasin on National
Public Radio and she says the Russians
did a coup and put a manurion candidate
in power. You served Hillary Clinton's
rightful throne and he hates all the
blacks and the trans. he's going to
murder them all and start and he's and
you know attack Canada or whatever. They
were terrified. They were terrified.
It's no less cynical than what W. Bush
did when he said, "Oh yeah, be afraid.
Be very afraid. You won't be safe until
a year and a half from now when I get to
invade Iraq." You know how many people
on the edge of sanity went over? People
did. I know for a fact people did. I
know stories of people who are driven
crazy by that stress of believing that
every Arab they see is a murderer
terrorist trying to kill them. People
believe in that. People think that their
their leaders wouldn't lie to them.
Willie Nelson said they wouldn't lie to
me. Not on my own damn TV. Yeah, they
would too. The ones you love the most.
You're a Republican. It's the
Republicans that are lying to you.
You're a Democrat. You have no idea how
much they despise you. They'll lie right
to your face and they think it's funny
when you believe it. They enjoy your
terror because your your fear and upset
makes it easier for them to do wrong.
That's what it's about. That's what it's
all about. Why' they do this to Trump?
Cuz he said he wanted to get along with
Russia. He wasn't going to give them our
nuclear codes.
He even said, "Lex, I'm doing this
because I talked to Henry Kissinger."
And Henry Kissinger said, "Wow, you're
the tallest, smartest, most handsome,
wealthiest, successful person I've ever
met, and you have a very smart Russia
policy, which is to split Russia away
from China."
Is that cuz they have a blackmail pape
of Donald Trump and his prostitutes? No,
it's what Henry Kissinger, Nelson
Rockefeller's man, wanted.
the grand Republican
grand strategist of American foreign
policy for he only died a few years ago,
right? And he was still writing books. I
mean, they were still turning to him for
advice for decades. This guy since the
1970s, since before I was born, Henry
Kissinger, the most important counselor
to Richard Nixon about what are we going
to do about the Soviet Union and China.
He told Trump, "Yes, Trump, I agree with
you. That's what we should do. We should
do what it takes to befriend Russia so
that we can contain China." Now, I'm not
a China hawk, but whatever, man. That's
the point. And there's another major
point here to mention too, which as I
was saying before in this book, I don't
quote a whole lot of Buchanan and Paul.
I give them the credit that they
deserve, but I make a special point to
constantly quote Kissinger and Brazinski
and their contemporaries
where they admit these are the vanguard
of the NATO expanders. And Brazinski
especially was an anti-Russia hawk. He's
the son of Polish aristocrats and fierce
anti-communist
and um and anti-Russian even still too
after. And they all said, "We have to
come up with a special status for
Ukraine because it's so closely
intertwined with Russia." Dating back
hundreds of years and to even the
foundation of Russian civilization began
in Kiev before traveling moving to the
center of gravity to Moscow later. And
you as Kissinger said, Ukraine's been
part of Russia for 300 years. And this
is not just some deal where we just get
to do what we want. We have to take into
account how deeply complicated this is
and how deeply riven Ukrainian society
is especially on who do we want to run
with. And they said, "So what we have to
do is we have to create a special status
for Ukraine just like we had for Austria
and Finland in the old Cold War where
Austria and Finland were not members of
the Warsaw Pact nor were they members of
NATO and they did not have troops. Well,
they did have Soviet troops still
occupied Austria for a while. They
finally didn't. I don't think they
withdrew until the 50s, but they
eventually did withdraw. But but they
were not members. They were not forced
to be made members of the Warsaw Pact
like all the rest of the Eastern
European states were. They had no choice
but to join with sock puppet comms run
out of the Kremlin and everything. Um
and so but Austria and Finland had this
neutral status in the last cold war and
they said, "Well, that's what we want to
do again. That's what we need to do for
Ukraine. That's again Kissinger and
Brzinski who were not neoconservatives
but were very hawkish on NATO expansion
and on Russia and on and on NATO
expansion being for the purposes of
containing Russia. No fooling about it.
But in this case, man, if we try to take
Ukraine away, the Russians are going to
break it. Cuz in fact, it ain't going
anywhere. It's stuck next to Russia.
This is another thing that Obama
explained to Jeffrey Goldberg that well
Jeffrey Goldberg, Russia's always going
to have escalation dominance in Ukraine
because it's right there and it means a
lot more to them than it does to us.
They are willing to go much further than
we are. And then he says to Goldberg, he
challenges him and he says, this is
after Obama's coup has o push, whatever
transition of power has led to the loss
of Crimea. And he says, Jeffrey
Goldberg, you tell me who in Washington
says that we ought to put American boys
on the ground to secure the independence
of the Donbass from Russia. Can you name
me somebody's ready to do that right
now? No, of course not. So the rest of
Washington pipe down, right? You keep
saying we're not doing enough, but
there's nothing we can do that won't get
NATO into a war with the Russian
Federation.
And as even Robert Kagan, I'm ruining
the end of the book now. Even Robert
Kagan said, you know what? It actually
doesn't matter to the United States who
runs Ukraine.
The northern coast of the Black Sea,
that's so far beyond our jurisdiction.
And this is Kagan's words, not mine,
Lex. He, and I don't agree with him
about this at all, but he says, you
understand his context, what he means
here. He says, "The Soviet Union
dominated Ukraine the whole time after
World War II, and we think of those as
the good old days." Now, I do not I know
people who are enslaved by the
communists in Ukraine in those good old
days. There's nothing good about them at
all. Okay? But what he was saying was
America never had a problem with Russian
dominance in Ukraine. We always called
it the Ukraine and we always pronounced
it Kiev. And what are you talking about
that we're willing to go to the mat for
the dawn bass? No, dude. Makes no sense.
And the mat is Hbombs burning hotter
than the sun. So we cannot fight them.
And certainly not over this. They're
rolling on Berlin. Call me. They're
rolling on London. They're going to nuke
London. Man, I'd hate to see the world
end that way, but maybe we would have to
fight for the Brits. Lex, I'm really
more of a continental defense kind of
guy myself to tell you the truth. But
that's not what we're talking about
here. We're talking about
Czechoslovakia
with now the Czech Republic and
Slovakia. That's Central Europe.
When we or maybe the Czech Republic is
Slovakia, that's Eastern Europe.
Bulgaria, Romania, that's Eastern
Europe. Ukraine is east of Eastern
Europe, right? Brent Skrov said, "We
only wanted to liberate Eastern Europe,
not Ukraine."
Okay, this is too far away. It's not our
concern. And it's not to say that, oh
yeah, no, it's fine for Russia to invade
and kill and dominate this place with
violence because, hey, that's their
sphere of influence. That's not what I'm
saying. I'm saying it was suicidal
madness for them to go along with
America's push for them to join our
military alliance. That's as much
respecting of Russia's sphere of
influence as they needed to do. Was not
mess with that. That's what got them in
trouble. That's what made the Russians
say, "Look, it's either sooner or later.
It might as well be now. The longer we
wait, the more the Americans build up
their forces, and we're going to end up
having to fight them anyway." They were
making them a de facto member of NATO
with what they called interoperability,
normalizing their military forces with
ours as much as possible, making them a
de facto auxiliary of the NATO alliance.
So that if NATO ever fought the Russian
Federation, just like Germany and
Lithuania and Hungary and Poland and the
rest, the Ukrainian army would be one
other auxiliary army fighting under
United American NATO command.
That's what we were doing with them
without the article 5 war guarantee that
we promised to come protect you, but
still normalizing and integrating their
military force with ours is one standard
thing. Constantly training with them,
changing their equipment, changing their
command and control structure,
everything to mirror NATO standards. And
it was a legitimate threat. Putin said
in his speech when he declared war, he
said, "If the if the Americans put
Tomahawk cruise missiles infe
nuclear ballistic missiles that they're
making after they have torn up the
intermediate nuclear forces treaty of
And if they put hypersonics there, they
could hit Moscow in five minutes. He
said, "It's like a knife to the throat."
Now, you don't have to sympathize with
the Russians at all. You could hate him
and want the Chinese to kill them all
for you. I don't know. But you have to
admit that these are serious, and
credible security concerns. This is not
a bunch of bluster and a bunch of
bluffing and a bunch of ideological,
you know, you know, garbage or, you
know, propaganda. And it's and it's not
the nationalist theories of some
romantic swept away by visions of a lost
glorious past that he wants to regain
and all these things. As everyone says,
as I said to Pierce Morgan the day
before yesterday, that's the weapons of
mass destruction of this war is that
Putin woke up and started this war
because of what an aggressor he is. and
that there's no backstory that anybody
needs to know about how America put
Ukraine in the position of getting their
ass whooped by their bigger nextoor
neighbor in this way. That's the lie
under the whole thing. The same way that
Clinton lied us into Kosovo with the
100,000 dead Kosvarss, Bush with his
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,
Obama with his impending genocide in
Benghazi and Libya. Give me a break. All
of these lies. That's the lie of this
one. unprovoked attack. Unprovoked
attack. It's like white separatist Randy
Weaver. You have to say that. You can't
just say Randy Weaver. You can't say
Randy Weaver, survivor of a boy and a
dog and a woman, his wife who were
slaughtered by federal agents. No, you
have to call him white separatist Randy
Weaver. Well, Russia's attack has to be
unprovoked attack. Oh, look at this
shiny coin. Unprovoked attack.
And that works on people. Somehow people
don't just rebel against that and say,
"Wait a minute. Are you calling me
stupid or something?"
Why would you mandate that we call it
that in such a way if you weren't lying
and covering up for the fact that you
provoked it and you know you did, which
is clearly the case. That's why they
called it that. You know, you could call
it an unprovoked attack sometimes. They
called it an unprovoked attack a 100,000
times because the public relations firms
decided that this is the lie and this is
the best way to stick it to the American
It's absurd how easily moved the
Americans are. Just give us some lies.
And by the way,
our Zionist friend would say that I just
blame the Israelis for everything. Well,
the only role that the Israelis play in
my book is Naft Tali Bennett, the guy
who caused the September 11th attack. It
tried to end the war, tried to negotiate
in good faith and do shuttle diplomacy
between Ukraine and Russia and tried to
stop the war right after it started in
the spring of 2022. And that's all I
have to say about the Israelis role in
any of this part other than it was their
pit column, the neoonservatives in
America, who really got our policy off
this way in the first place. and Robert
Kagan's disgusting wife, Victoria
Nuland, who really was the ring leader
behind the overthrow of 2014, which was
even what Carl Gershman, the head of the
NE, called it was the overthrow of the
government there that they did. What uh
can Trump do to help bring peace in
Ukraine? As I mentioned that he
legitimately from every interaction
I've had, from everything I understand,
he legitimately wanted to make very
I think he's totally sincere about it,
But why was he not successful?
And how can he be successful? What are
your thoughts on that?
I don't have an answer to the second
one. I don't know what the hell he's
going to do.
I'll tell you what,
the backstory here is that in September
of 22, the weekend of September 11th, in
fact, of 22, Ukraine had their best few
days. They had a brilliant faint where
they started building up forces in
Kersan and they convinced the Russians
to move forces to Kersan. Then they made
a huge move in Harkke and forced all the
Russians out of back into Luhansk.
And then they also hit them in Kersan
down at the river and kicked them back
across the river and so maintained that
one-third of Kersson on the right bank.
I guess I'd call it the right.
Yeah, they were extremely successful uh
in those offensives at that time.
Probably the most the biggest success
arguably the biggest success of the war.
Absolutely. And it's been all downhill
from there. And the worst thing probably
of all is that Putin said, "Oh yeah,
well I hereby annex Zaprosia and Kursan
too." These are the two provinces
between the Donbass and the Crimea. And
he hadn't claimed them yet. Now this is
the so-called land bridge. Importantly,
the Ukrainians gave him a real motive to
do this because they had cut off the
fresh water. There was a canal from the
Neper River down to Crimea. And to
collectively punish the people of
Crimea, they cut off the water resources
there, which they still had enough for
drinking water, but they did not have
enough for any agriculture or anything
else. And it really hurt them a lot. So
they already had their pretext there to
take that territory so they could reopen
that channel of fresh water to Crimea.
And then he was just angry. His men were
humiliated on the ground there. And he
said, "Oh yeah, well, I hereby annex two
more Oblasts." Then then they passed a
law in the doom man. He signed it,
right? And I guess it's two houses. He
signed a law that said, "We've now
redrawn the Russian border here." Okay.
But now, if you look at how they're
fighting the war, and I'm not a military
expert on this, but I know some. And for
example, Colonel Douglas McGregor and
Lieutenant Colonel Danny Davis. I think
Davis is the one I trust the best.
As far as his point of view on that,
Uh, just to give a shout out to Daniel
L. Davis that you mentioned. Excellent
podcast. Somebody that I've had a bunch
of conversations with uh privately. He's
a sweetheart.
Oh, he's a wonderful man.
First of all, his backstory is a
fascinating one.
But also uh he's extremely knowledgeable
on the very nuanced details of all
aspects of military operations.
Absolutely does. As I mentioned an eon
ago when we began this interview that in
Iraq war I one
it was Colonel McGregor with McMaster
and Davis under him that did the battle
of 73 easting against the Iraqi army and
what the Soviet tanks possesses is where
they both all three come from. McMaster
sold his soul to Satan and McGregor and
Davis have been good guy. Well,
at least since I rack war. Now, I don't
know if you know this about Danny Davis.
I guess you probably do, but your
audience doesn't. That he was the heroic
whistleblower of the Afghan war in 2012.
Do you know that story? Mhm. So, in
2009, there was a former Marine captain
turned State Department employee named
Matthew Hoe, and he warned Obama not to
do the surge. And his boss, the
ambassador, Iikenberry, he had been the
general in charge of the war previously.
And Iikenberry backed up Hoe and said,
"Don't do the surge. That's all Obama
needed to hide behind was Iikenberry and
Ho." And he could have said no. and
instead he gave in and he ordered the
escalation. He had already sent 40,000
troops. Then he announced he's sending
30,000 more for a total of 70,000
additional troops. The giant horrific
failed Afghan surge of 2009 through 12.
And then at the end, Davis was the
whistleblower who broke ranks, testified
before the Senate, and published an
article in the Armed Forces Journal
saying that David Petraeus is a liar and
that America has not achieved what
Petraeus called success cuz he wouldn't
dare call it victory in the war in
Afghanistan. And that here's the real
truth. And here's how Davis knew is he
had a special job, which was arming and
equipping all the guys all around the
country, whatever they needed. his job
was to go and give them whatever
equipment. So that gave him a special
insight into the war because he was
going to all areas of the country and
seeing the guys everywhere that they
were. And he said the same thing that
Matthew Ho said. So these boys are
getting killed for this. And then as as
Ho had put it like how am I supposed to
write a letter home to this guy's wife
and say that he died a good death when I
know it's not true. And same thing with
Davis. Like these guys, you know how
military guys are? They talk about these
are my men. They're mine,
you know, and so what do you do when
they're dying for nothing? And so Davis
said enough of this and came home and
did what he could, told the truth to end
the war. And he's a great American
patriot. And he, you're right, he's a
brilliant genius, too. And he's a
brilliant war analyst on all the wars,
particularly Ukraine right now. That's
his show is Daniel Davis Deep Dive.
Yeah. highly recommend people listen to
DDD uh Daniel Davis Deep Dive. It's on
YouTube. It's on all the podcast
platforms. He served for 21 years in the
army with four combat deployments and
he's got stars and things too, man.
And but the most heroic thing he ever
did was quit and tell the truth. Um
anyway, I trust his analysis of the war
better than anybody else. There's
another uh guy um I really like named
Willie Oam. His name is Matt Williams.
He's an Australian veteran of the war in
Afghanistan. You'd really like him. Um
he's a brilliant war analyst. He looks
at the maps every day and analyzes day
by day by day. Oh, see there's where he
interviewed me.
Um he's a wonderful guy. I'm afraid he's
got cancer right now. But uh he's he's
hanging in there and and he's a he's
just a brilliant analyst of the world.
You'd really like him. and he goes day
by day by day he shows who's taken how
much land. This is why I could only
shake my head at Wesley Clark the other
day that I'm going, "Listen, the
Russians are ascending on the
battlefield, dude. There's no reversing
this. Believe harder. Come on, man." And
and then he acts like, "What are you
talking about, Horton? The Russians
aren't winning." It's like, "Yeah, they
are, dude. They are. Danny Davis and and
Willie Oam, they're not wrong about
that." you know these reports this
depends I guess on who you're reading
and I do see some kind of wishful
thinking from people from time to time
but no lord they are losing provos is
about to fall they move they have
virtually 100% of Luhansk they are
making major gains in donk and they're
making moves in denipro pasque which is
the big I can never say it right but
that's as good as I could ever get of
the pro the oblast between the river and
the dawnbass there and of course there's
sumi and harke in the north and all of
this is still in danger of being taken.
Um oh and I'm sorry cuz I never really
answered your question right about
Trump. Trump's problem is Lex that he
got just elected and inaugurated at the
wrong time for his second term here and
the Russians they annex those
territories but they don't control them.
Daniel Davis, our tangent here. He
explains that the strategy in the war is
to fight a war of attrition, to grind up
Ukrainian forces with artillery and
airdrop bombs and move slowly to
preserve Russian soldiers lives and make
the other guys die more. Now, typically,
and this is in some specialized stuff
out of my purview, but it's like they
say that like it you lose three three
it's three to one uh disadvantage for
the advancing army on a defensive
position or whatever. That doesn't hold
in all cases. And I think I may even
have said that wrong. Somebody tried to
correct me on that recently. Like it's
it's not exactly that way. But the thing
is it's more dangerous obviously to move
on a defensive position than to remain
in one. like all other things being
equal, I guess, but then they just have
way more artillery and way more time and
they can just move very slowly and make
sure that actually the the defenders die
at a much higher rate than they do and
they're not running out of artillery and
they're not running out of men. They've
not even launched a full-scale
mobilization for the war. people know
that they're winning and so they're
volunteering to go and get some and um
and they're they can afford their
economy is not crushed and so they can
afford to pay bonuses and have people
sign up and while meanwhile Ukraine's on
a conscript army that's had at least
tens and some reports say more than
of deserters flee the front lines refuse
to fight there's been at least hundreds
of people have drowned to death in the
Denista River on the border murder with
Malddova trying to escape. Um, people
oppressed gangs riding around in vans
beating people up and kidnapping them
and throwing them in the back of the van
and taking them off to the front to be
killed in a few hours. I It's a horror
show over there, man. And then and I
don't know if Ukraine is going to
survive because see and this is part of
my argument and I said this in my 4-hour
speech right after the war began that
and I was assuming then as a lot of
people did that the Russians were going
to have a lot more success a lot sooner
and that the Ukrainian military would
essentially be smashed and they'd be
fighting an insurgency here which is
what that was plan B. Plan A was to warn
them don't you do it. Plan B was we're
going to back the mujaheden.
In other words, the the Nazis right
sector and ASOV and whatever because the
military will be smashed and Russia will
dominate the entire east of the country
at least was the presumption going in by
the American side. So we're now on like
plan C was actually better than plan B,
right? They skipped a step and wanting
to back an insurgency. The state army
has been able to hold. We're recording
this thing 3 and 1/2 years into the war
and the state army still exists. They've
still been able to pour arms in there
all this time and keep the thing going
for now. But as I predicted in that
speech, I said, you know, this could be
a real pirick victory for the Russians
Russia's government is a government
program and all they do is fail upwards
in their self-licking ice cream going
fashion. That's not a speciality about
Americans. That's a specialtity about
the economics of government monopolies
on security forces, right? And so,
think about the map for a minute. Putin
just went in there and drew a line
around all the pro-Russians.
Not that everyone who's an ethnic
Russian and a Russian speaker in Ukraine
wanted to join the Russian Federation,
but I'm sure you've seen the election
result maps where it goes from dark blue
to dark red and a real kind of grayscale
fade in between there where when you get
all the way in Donesk and Luansk, you
have people who are, you know, have a
lot of inner marriages and mixed
families across the borders and very
much consider themselves to be Russians
even living inside Ukraine. And I read a
study of Ukrainian nationalism that was
about how the only Ukrainian
nationalists are the Nazis out west.
Most Ukrainians really identify with
their city more or their region more
than really considering themselves
overall Ukrainian patriots in that
larger nationalist sense according to
some some pretty in-depth surveys about
all that they had done in the past. And
so, but anyway, I'm not, in other words,
I'm not trying to oversimplify it and
say, "Oh, yeah, everybody in Donetsk was
just begging for Russia to invade or
whatever." Some of them were uh some of
them, of course, were not. But anyway,
by drawing the line where he has now,
he's now taken everyone who could even
be potentially pro-Russia out of Ukraine
permanently.
So it used to be that the people who
leaned more or less people always said
Yanukovich was Putin's puppet or
whatever. It's not actually true.
Separate tangent, but the more or less
Russianleaning guys from the parties in
the east, they would win. That's why
America had to overthrow the government
there twice in 10 years in the Orange
Revolution and the Maidon Revolution.
Well, that's never going to happen
again. All of those people are never
going to vote in a Ukrainian election
again. And who's going to be dominant if
they ever do hold elections? It's
probably going to be somebody to the
right of Zalinski that wins. Remember,
Zalinsky was brought in because he was
Jewish meant he wasn't ethnically
Russian. He wasn't ethnically Ukrainian
or like culturally whatever the
sectarian lead with those. He was kind
of a third choice. And he was from so he
wasn't from all the way in the Donbass,
right? But he's still a Russian speaker
and ran on peace. That was supposed to
be his charm, right? Well, those days
are over. So, who's going to win now? My
biggest fear is it's going to be Andrew
Bletki, who's the leader of the AOV
battalion, which is now known as the
Third Army Corps. It went from the AOV
battalion to the AOV regimen to the
third separate infantry division. Now,
it's the third army corps. And Bleski is
the guy, the famous quote, I'm sure
you've heard about leading the white
race against the semileled intervention.
That's him. And I quote at length that
whole speech, which I found on
archive.org, or you know the the
official ASOB battalion website is down
but you can find the way back machine
version of it. That whole speech is
absolute insane Hitlerian lunacy about
Aryan values and the nation of Ukraine
is a single living organism and every
egg and every sperm belongs to the state
for the greater glory of the Ukrainian
Empire and just
yeah that's Nazism. All right, that's
exactly what that is. Uh there's no
mistaking it for any other thing. And
these are the proud grandsons of the
Galatian SS and you know who Stephen
Bandera and the UPA and and O
before the UPA was UN who had served the
Nazis in the Holocaust in the Second
World War. And these are their proud
grandsons and legacies. And this guy
Bleski is from this is called the
Patriot of Ukraine which is a group out
of that was again descended from these
Nazis. and he's he and his ilk are very
likely to be the leaders of the new
Ukraine. And so how's Russia supposed to
deal with that now? Well, now we got to
go to Odessa. So at least we can take
that great and important port city from
them. And gez, now we can see
Transnistria from here. You know, that
little strip of land that Russia
controls on the Muldoven side of the
river on the Muldoven Ukrainian border.
That's Russian controlled land, a frozen
conflict since the end of the Soviet
Union. Well, man, from Crimea we can see
Odessa, and from Odessa we can see
Transnistria, and we can really punish
those Ukrainians by completely cutting
them off from the Black Sea. And then
still you have a frozen conflict with a
bunch of right-wing radical, severely
anti-Russian,
grudgeholding national socialists. And
so now, what is anybody going to do with
them? You know, that's who the new
Ukrainian government is going to be
dominated by his people who are far to
the right of conservative men and and
then what and then so now put put
yourself in Putin's point of view.
Again, this is a government program gets
worse and worse and worse. Well, the
next option is now that you've created
I'm I'm assuming some things, but still
you created a radical right-wing rump
state of Ukraine that is going to
constantly be a disruption. Well, what
you do is you finish cleansing them into
Poland and Romania. You just kick them
all the way out and reabsorb the entire
place, right? That is the obvious
solution from the Russian point of view.
And that's how they fight their wars.
They just move very slowly with
artillery and wipe out everything in
their path until they own it. That's the
mess that America has gotten Ukraine in.
I don't see how this ends anytime soon
or anytime that really,
you know, again from the Russian point
of view. Let's say they take those four
oblasts. Well, look at all the people in
Denipro Pasque and all the people in
Sumi and Harkefe who are Russian
speakers who of course the Russian
government is going to say need our
protection especially now that they're a
smaller minority in the country than
before when their side will never win an
election again, a national election
again. Well, we're going to have to go
all the way to the river now, right? It
only makes sense, man. It's a government
program. It's a disaster and it's going
to keep getting worse and worse and
I really hope the next leader of Ukraine
is not a right-wing extremist as you're
suggesting.
Yeah, me too.
And uh I think the bigger picture here
is as we've been talking about for many
hours that it's the uh politicians and
the bureaucrats that waged the war and
regular people that pay the price of it.
That's right. As Azie Osborne said,
right? And they leave that all to the
Rest in peace, by the way. Aussie
Osborne. Yeah, man. I think this whole
conversation was a really deep
eloquent case against war
in all parts of the world and especially
to the degree United States is involved
and your whole life's work
has to been this incredible case against
war with anti-war.com
with the libertarian institute with all
the work you've done. And so
in this goal, I'm very much with you
100%. I'm really glad that you're doing
the work you're doing. So thank you for
fighting the good fight.
Thank you very much, Lex. As long as
here, I'll say one more thing, which is
uh if you've ever heard of the great
libertarian Tom Woods from the Mises
Institute and the Libertarian Institute,
he has something called Liberty
Classroom where it's him and his
professor friends telling you the truth
about the things that they were supposed
to teach you in school but didn't. Well,
he built me my own Liberty Classroom.
It's called the Scott Horton Academy of
Foreign Policy and Freedom. And if
anybody got all the way through this
podcast this far, they might be
interested to know. We plan on going
um next month and it's two huge courses
on the Middle East and the Cold War with
Russia by me. And then I also have the
great James Bvard, the most successful
and important libertarian journalist in
world history. Uh current writer for the
New York Post and fellow at the
institute. Uh great author, brilliant
man. is going to be doing a course on
his entire career of investigative
journalism. And then we have Ramsay
Birud is going to do the story of Israel
Palestine, the great Palestinian refugee
and exile, writer of the Palestine
Chronicle and a regular writer with us,
a regular contributor at anti-war.com,
good friend of mine, wonderful man. Then
we also have William Bupert on how uh
he's a army infantry officer and uh
expert on debunking the bankrupt
counterinsurgency doctrine of David
Petraeus and James Mattis. Uh they call
it coin in Afghanistan and Iraq. Uh he
debunks all that and is from the Chasing
Ghosts podcast and he's going to do a
course on how America lost every war
since 1945.
And then the great historian, dangerous
history, CJ Kilmer, is going to be doing
a course on how Woodro Wilson is the
worst person who ever lived because of
course he is the father of Lenin and
Stalin. Uh Lenin and Stalin and Hitler
and World War II and for that matter the
American Empire to contain communism
after it was all over too. And so um
it's going to be a hell of a thing, man.
And we got a bunch of great guys doing
really great work to put this thing
together. So that's at
scotterortonacademy.com
and it will go live September.
I'm really hoping in August. Uh maybe
not. So you can watch first of all this
awesome video by Dan Smottz who's the
most talented video editor in the world.
But then also just enter your email
address. Then you'll be the first to
know when we go live and launch the
Scott Horton Academy.
Scott, thank you brother. Appreciate it.
Thanks for listening to this
conversation with Scott Horton. To
support this podcast, please check out
our sponsors in the description. And
now, let me leave you once again with
the words of Dwight D. Eisenhower spoken
in 1953.
Every gun that is made, every warship
launched, every rocket fired signifies
in the final sense a theft from those
who hunger and are not fed, those who
are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money
alone. It is spending the sweat of its
laborers, the genius of its scientists,
the hopes of its children. The cost of
one modern heavy bomber is this. a
modern brick school in more than 30
cities. It is two electric power plants
each serving a town of 60,000
population. It is two fine fully
equipped hospitals. It is some 50 m of
concrete highway. We pay for a single
fighter plane with a half million
bushels of wheat. We pay for a single
destroyer with new homes that could have
housed more than 8,000 people. This is
not a way of life at all in any true
sense. Under the cloud of threatening
war, it is humanity hanging from a cross
of iron. Thank you for listening and
hope to see you next time.
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