09/02/10 – Patrick Cockburn, Michael Hastings and Andy Worthington – The Scott Horton Show

by | Sep 2, 2010 | Interviews

These interviews are excerpted from the KPFK broadcast of September 2nd. The entire show can be heard here.

Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, discusses the embarrassing performance of what was supposed to be an impressive display of U.S. military power in Iraq, the bitter sectarian divide remaining from Iraq’s civil war of 2006-07 and why Kurdish autonomy my be preferable to true independence in the short term.

Michael Hastings (audio begins at 19:30), author of the article ‘The Runaway General‘ in Rolling Stone magazine, where he is now a contributing editor, discusses why the AfPak War — unfortunately — lives up to its name, the large increase in drone strikes during Obama’s presidency, the elusive ‘inflection point’ at which combat casualties permanently decline and why the ‘surge’ in Iraq can’t be duplicated in Afghanistan.

Andy Worthington (audio begins at 35:45), author of The Guantanamo Files, discusses the proceedings at Guantanamo that are grinding to a halt, why ‘material support for terrorism’ charges have no relation to war crimes and should be tried in federal courts, the political realities that make Guantanamo’s timely closure highly unlikely and the 58 Yemeni prisoners still in custody despite being cleared for release.

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