01/24/14 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

Hey, y'all.
Scott here.
So you made a little bit of money in this horrid economy, only to find that the Fed is more or less outlawed saving.
So into the treacherous waters of the stock market bubble you go, but how to make a little money without too much risk of losing it all?
Check out wallstreetwindow.com.
Mike Swanson is a successful former hedge fund manager who opens a very real window into his main account, updating his subscribers on the facts of and the reasoning behind all his market moves.
Follow along on paper or with real money and see what happens at wallstreetwindow.com.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
We're live here from three to five on Liberty Express, Monday through Friday, right after the Tom Woods Show, and Sunday mornings at 8.30 Pacific on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA.
This Sunday, I don't know who the guest will be yet.
I guess you'll find out.
Next up today is Gareth Porter, our good friend from interpress service, IPSnews.net, and also he writes for Truthout from time to time.
As I was telling you earlier, he won the Gellhorn Award for his work for Truthout on the night raids and the targeting and the civilian casualties in the Afghan war there back in, I think it was in 2012.
And anyway, so welcome back to the show, Gareth, how are you doing?
I'm fine, thanks very much, Scott, glad to be back.
That was 2012, right?
Well, the award was given in 2012, so it reflected writing basically in 2011.
So there you go.
So here's the thing.
There's this guy, he's active duty, Daniel L. Davis, a colonel in the U.S. Army as I understand it, and also you know this guy because you've written about him and quoted him in your articles before, if I remember correctly.
And so I guess first of all, can you explain to me how it is that the Pentagon would let a colonel write an article about how they're wrong about everything about the horrible, terrible war that they prosecuted?
That's a very interesting question, Scott, and indeed there is, I think...
Not that I'm against it.
No, I mean, it's a very interesting story and it is instructive that this is happening, that it can be done.
I think you have to understand a couple of things about Danny Davis.
He is a man of total integrity, and at the same time, a man who has gone through channels, he has basically hewn strictly to regulations at every stage of his whistleblowing.
And he is indeed a whistleblower, and he is a whistleblower in the sense that he has called attention to misrepresentations and lies by senior officials of the Army, including David Petraeus, of course, in the case of Afghanistan.
And he has done so in a way that makes it clear that he speaks only for himself, but that he's exercising his First Amendment freedom.
He has done this now a couple of times.
First, if I remember correctly, in 2009, in regard to the war in Afghanistan.
Has it been that long?
Okay.
I think so.
I believe I'm right on that.
Yeah, if you say so.
Yeah, I'm not arguing with you.
And then, of course, again, most recently in 2011.
So he has been a thorn in the side, certainly, of the Pentagon and high-level brass in the Army in particular.
But he has done this whistleblowing in a way that they found it, shall we say, not convenient to essentially punish him.
And they could have tried to do that.
I'm sure they have done that in other cases where somebody has done something to piss them off.
But I think Danny did his whistleblowing in such a careful way.
And for one thing, I mean, he got it into the news media.
He was interviewed by the New York Times on a front-page story.
And that led, then, to a number of appearances on network television.
And I think, at that point, it became just too difficult and too costly for the military and the Pentagon to crack down on him and punish him for his dissent, his dissenting views.
And so, you know, I think what he has done here, and this takes nothing away from the reality that Ed Snowden did something that involved breaking the law, because that really was the only way that he could be a whistleblower in the way that he was.
But for what Danny Davis has done in terms of whistleblowing, he has shown that it is possible to do it if you are careful enough and clever enough to do it in a way that the military finds it not convenient to take away your ability to continue to express yourself, that you can, in fact, express dissenting views at a very fundamental level on extremely important policy matters.
And in this case, of course, what Danny was doing was saying that the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is going to be a disaster.
And then after it is shown to be a disaster, he pointed out the ways in which it was a disaster.
Yeah, I mean, and that really is the bottom line here, is that he is a whistleblower.
And so this isn't insubordination.
It's sound advice from somebody who, you know what, damn it, Captain, if I got to go over your head to the people, I guess I'll have to.
But it's it does have that, like you said, pure integrity, just trying to do the right thing here kind of attitude written all over it.
Well, it's hard for them to prosecute it as well.
And also, he's a colonel and not some specialist, which kind of matters, too.
Right.
Well, that's right.
And don't forget that that he he served extremely honorably in Iraq in a situation where he, in fact, was he had to be medevaced to the United States for medical treatment for for a number of months.
So he is somebody who has been repeatedly in combat, in combat situations in Iraq and Afghanistan and in his most recent tour of duty in Afghanistan, he was he had an extraordinary opportunity to travel all over the country to visit the places where the United States had troops.
Now, talk about that.
What what was his job?
Because I was actually just kind of remembering that off the top of my head from a few years back when I was talking about.
He was working for a special project, which was intended to basically create to maximize the effectiveness, if I remember correctly.
If I can, you know, reasonably accurately recall the the description of what he was doing, it was to to to improve the weaponry and other other material and technology available to the troops in Afghanistan.
So so he was evaluating, essentially continuing to evaluate the situation throughout the country for the purpose of recommending ways in which their their their material and technology could be could be improved to the maximum.
And so and this really meant then that he went everywhere in Afghanistan and met with virtually everybody of all different ranks and all different job descriptions.
Correct.
All different job descriptions and all ranks.
That's the most important thing.
He was dealing with the the grunts as well as the officers at different levels.
And he, in fact, I mean, really the greatest value of of what Danny did in his final report, which was a very long, if I remember, you know, seventy five pages roughly.
What he did, which had such value, was that he got the straight dope from guys who had no absolutely no reason to not to tell the truth.
And he learned from them some extremely he got some extremely important insights, including, you know, information about the fact that in one location after another, he found from from the people that he talked to that the Afghan units with which they were working were up uniformly in contact with and and clearly had understandings with the local Taliban units.
And so that really is, I think, the most the single most important insight that that Danny has given us, that that, in fact, throughout the country, there were these understandings of not not just tacit, but in many cases explicit, because he was told that they had intercepted phone contact between the the local Afghan unit that they worked with and the Taliban, the local Taliban in the area.
So, you know, this gives the lie to the the official line that that are our Afghan military allies are constantly improving their ability to to carry out operations against the Taliban and that that we are.
Therefore, this is one of the ways in which the war has been continuing to progress.
Yeah, well, now, did you ever see, by the way, that movie, the Vice documentary, This is what victory looks like.
I believe, let's see now, refresh my memory.
I saw a couple of theirs and I don't remember if that's the one I saw or not.
I hate to say it, but the thing that's most memorable about it is the, I guess, sergeant or, you know, gunnery sergeant or something complaining about how his job is basically protecting the child molesters of the community.
No, I did not see that one.
I did not see that one.
But that, of course, is is a very familiar complaint from U.S. and NATO troops that they that they were indeed in contact with Afghan officers, translators who were, you know, in the that was habitual abuse of young boys in particular.
I mean, you know, there was an occasional female who was who was abused, but in almost every case, it was it was a sexual abuse of young boys.
Well, and as the whole situation is depicted in that movie, it's really sad.
But the point I was going to make actually about it was just about the situation on the ground where I guess it's the Afghan military in the north, in the south where it's and I guess in the east where it's more the posthumous, they call them the Afghan police.
But basically, it's the same thing.
The guys bribed by America to not fight Karzai for now or whatever it is or his allies for now, the bribe to go along.
And basically, as they visit the the various Afghan army and police, they're completely pathetic and powerless.
And there there's no way that they could stand up against the Taliban if they were left on their own.
And so I'm just saying it makes perfect sense what you're saying about.
Well, you know, all these guys, they just cut deals with the Taliban.
Look, just don't kill us.
And then when the Americans leave, you can kill Sen or whatever.
Everybody's just waiting till the Americans believe.
And then we're going to settle this.
Right.
I mean, that's basically I think that's basically right.
But I would add, you know, that that it is it is somewhat more complicated, complex in the sense that there are obviously those locations within a number of provinces where the local, you know, the the people who have sort of tribal sources of power, as well as sort of just power that they were given by being part of the Afghan military at one time or another, or or Mujahideen units at one time or another.
And they gathered a following based on the ability to pay, you know, to to recompense, you know, armed followers that these people have built up networks of violence that are personally, you know, loyal to to these local power holders.
And this is going to continue for years and years into the future.
We are not going to see I think it's it's very likely that we're not going to see anytime in the near future a clean resolution of this war in Afghanistan as the United States continues to withdraw and, you know, NATO troops withdraw, of course.
What we're going to see is a pattern where, you know, Taliban, they continue to hold real, you know, effective power in many districts, in large parts of most districts of certainly the Pashtun South and a few districts or a number of districts, even in the non-Pashtun North and West.
But but at the same time, you will see a number of districts where there are pockets of of power held by these essentially, you know, military potentates and people who have simply gained power by the ability to to have a number of guns under their command.
And I mean, they are corrupt.
They are brutal.
They they have no loyalty but to themselves and they use their power, you know, to amass more power, to to make money.
And this has, of course, been a source of of enormous resentment on the part of much of the Pashtun population, certainly, and the cause for them to rally to the to the Taliban in the past.
But but what but I think we're going to see that that pattern is going to continue for for quite a while.
And, you know, ultimately, you know, I think it's most likely that that the Taliban will certainly consolidate power over the Pashtun South.
But, you know, that there is a there's a theory that has been put forward by a an analyst.
I just just read the last few days suggesting that, you know, that there is a pattern here in which both sides, both the Taliban and these local power holders are profiting from the present situation.
The Taliban take advantage of the fact that there are these horrible, you know, people who who hold power locally with with no more more rationale than simply to maintain their power and to get more and more money and more power they gain from that politically.
But at the same time, these power holders continue to take advantage of the situation in various localities to maintain their power.
So, you know, the point of all this, I think, is that what the United States is going to leave in Afghanistan is an even greater mess than would be the case if the war could be rolled up and finished quickly and the Taliban win, because I think that would be a better situation for far more people in Afghanistan than what we're leaving behind for the next several years.
Was the coin doctrine in the surge just a big hoax?
Well, at one level, certainly it's a big hoax because it's part of a broader set of institutional mechanisms for maintaining the military's budget and and its its political sway in this country.
You know, clearly that that was its primary function, to persuade the American people that everything is OK, just trust us and we have a plan in Afghanistan, when in fact they did not have a plan that had the slightest possibility of success.
You know, if you ask me, you put a gun to my head and ask me, did David Petraeus know that that this was a complete sham and a lie and that it had no chance of success?
It's probably, you know, not so clear cut.
This is back to, you know, the old question that we've gone over time and again on your show.
Are these people simply lying or is it more complicated than that?
And, you know, for Petraeus, I've suggested, I think, in the past that he he convinced himself on the basis of his his so-called triumph in in Iraq.
His hat size grew several several sizes very quickly in the aftermath of that, of being sort of lionized by the media and the political elite.
And I think he did rather begin to believe that he was capable of working magic in Afghanistan as well.
I've read Catch 22.
I know that the generals in charge, they don't do like Colonel Davis and go around and talk to everybody in a real honest way.
Hey, let's step outside and smoke a cigarette.
Have no, no, totally to the contrary.
To the contrary, Scott.
I mean, you know, one of the things that Danny documented is that, well, maybe he didn't put this in his report, but he told me about this, that he recalled briefings, military briefings in which a three star general would would be telling the briefers, you know, the lower ranking officer, intelligence officers, that what they were suggesting, which was questioning, you know, the the success of the strategy in Afghanistan, that he didn't want to hear about it, that they were wrong and he knew better and that he he didn't want to hear such dissenting views in effect.
I mean, that wasn't the exact wording, but that was the effect of of what this this general was telling the the the intelligence briefers.
And so, you know, I mean, they systematically sort of tried to discourage lower ranking officers from telling the truth, essentially, in Afghanistan.
That was part of the deal.
Yeah, well, and, you know, I remember talking with Michael Hastings back in, I guess it would have been 010 when everybody was so excited about the political scandal over McChrystal.
I actually read the whole article and the whole article was about what a joke the surge was.
And of course, how brutal it was if you were on the receiving end of the special forces.
But then how the rest of the army, a hundred thousand of them, their job was then what to stand around and be traffic cops and trick the Afghans into loving them for being such great traffic cops all day or whatever.
And meanwhile, they're just getting shot at and the whole thing is crazy.
And the morale was at the lowest point and that was at the at the height of the damn thing.
And the average was saying this is ridiculous.
Absolutely right.
That by 2000, by the time that Petraeus took over, you know, there was sufficient evidence to be able to say that this is a failed experiment.
But of course, that was, you know, you were talking about mid 2010, July 2010.
And remember that Obama had decreed that there should be a beginning of withdrawal and turnover of responsibility to the Afghan government troops by mid 2011.
So unfortunately, you know, they they were empowered in a sense to have another year essentially.
And so Petraeus comes in there with another year ahead of him to play games.
And that's exactly what he did.
I mean, you know, he he was clearly he did within his that that first year, he definitely was scamming.
And you I'm sure you remember the story that I did about his claims within the first two or three months, first couple of months that he was in Afghanistan, claiming that they had captured a thousand three hundred, if I remember correctly, you know, Taliban and that that was, you know, a huge success.
And this showed that they were on the right track.
Well, of course, that was a complete lie.
And he knew it perfectly well, because the records showed that that these people were released within, you know, the vast majority were released within a matter of weeks because they had no evidence whatsoever that they were not civilians.
I mean, they were civilians.
It was like a quota for the NYPD.
Let's go out there and round up some black guys.
Right.
Exactly.
It was it was a scam.
And so what I said about Petraeus at the beginning of of his of his going to Afghanistan, when he might have felt that, well, I could do this, I think very quickly he he began to realize that this was much, much more intractable.
And he he was forced to engage in a bunch of scams.
I think that that's the bottom line.
Well, you know, I guess Gates, did you learn anything from Gates's memoir so far, the media about it yet, about, you know, as far as the argument about getting into the search?
Well, no, I haven't I haven't seen the book, but, you know, I'm quite sure that there's nothing more than what was reported.
You know, in the news media about what Gates was saying, he didn't want to get into any of those details.
Obviously, this was not this was not in his interest to to go beyond, you know, just a few little dabs here and there to make the impression that he he was seeking.
And, of course, the impression he was seeking to make was that that he was the man who cared about the troops that he was sending off to war, whereas he he did not get the feeling that the president really cared about the, you know, about the cause, as he put it.
And, you know, in fact, as I we've we've talked about in the show, you know, what was really going on was that that Petraeus was trying to with the support of of Robert M.
Gates, was trying to force the hand of the president to give up his plan for beginning withdrawal in mid 2011 and to turn over responsibility.
And to a great extent, I think that they were successful, not completely, but they minimized the withdrawal.
It was much less than what the White House and Joe Biden wanted to do.
And I think, you know, it's just another chapter in the spinelessness of of the White House in the face of military of the political power of the military in the Pentagon.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, basically, they're all just a bunch of Lyndon Johnson's.
It's not going to end on my watch.
I'm not going to be the one where the.
Well, I think they're worse than Lyndon Johnson.
And, you know, my argument is that Lyndon Johnson did, in fact, hold out much longer than people understand, realize for.
Well, but I just mean, well, he's on tape saying he knows that he can't win, but he ain't going to be the first president to lose a war.
Let Dick Nixon take the rap for this damn thing.
Well, yeah, he said that.
I mean, he didn't say he didn't say he knows he's going to lose the war, I don't think, in that particular tape, but.
Well, you know, he was he was he was basically saying we want the the Vietnamese to step up and, you know, do their part and kill a lot of Vietcong.
And also he didn't want it to be part of his legacy that he was the first president to lose.
There's no doubt he didn't want to be the loser.
And he was trying to find a way to avoid that.
But, you know, in the end, it's absolutely true that that the Bundy brothers had agreed in early 2005 that Lyndon Johnson was ready in 2005 and 65, 65, 65.
I always do it.
Thank you, Scott.
I always do that.
You have to catch me.
Hey, I do it all the time.
Yeah, they they believed and they said in their memoir and Bill Bundy said this in his memoirs that Lyndon Johnson wanted to lose or was ready to lose the war.
He refused to start the bombing.
And that's what they concluded.
All right.
Anyway, so what about this?
Robert Gates did admit, which was obvious at the time we talked about the time is the most clumsy failed coup in the world.
Right.
When the putsch of 09, where they tried to rig the election, but Karzai outrigged them and survived their botched attempt to put Abdullah Abdullah in there.
Remember, the New York Times ran a report smearing Hamid Karzai's brother as a CIA agent, drug dealer.
Are you there?
All right, well, the light's still green, but I don't hear Gareth, do you?
All right, well.
Gareth Porter, everybody, the great Gareth Porter, the world's greatest reporter.
Well, anyway, he's really good.
All right, so I'm Scott Horton.
This has been my show.
Thanks very much for listening for the Sunday show on KPFK.
But anyway, thanks very much for listening, everybody.
I'll see you back here Monday, three o'clock Eastern on Liberty Express.
Hey, I'll Scott Horton here for the Future of Freedom, the monthly journal of the Future Freedom Foundation at FFF dot org slash subscribe.
Since 1989, FFF has been pushing an uncompromising moral and economic case for peace, individual liberty and free markets.
Sign up now for the Future Freedom, featuring founder and president Jacob Hornberger, as well as Sheldon Richman, James Bovard, Anthony Gregory, Wendy McIlroy and many more.
It's just twenty five dollars a year for the print edition, 15 per year to read it online.
That's FFF dot org slash subscribe and tell them Scott sent you.
Don't worry about things you can't control.
Isn't that what they always say?
But it's about impossible to avoid worrying about what's going on these days.
The government has used the war on guns, the war on drugs and the war on terrorism to tear our Bill of Rights to shreds.
But you can fight back.
The Tenth Amendment Center has proven it, racking up major victories.
For example, when the U.S. government claimed authority in the NDA to have the military kidnap and detain Americans without trial, the nullifiers got a law passed in California declaring the state's refusal to ever participate in any such thing.
Their latest project is off now dot org nullifying the National Security Agency.
They've already gotten model legislation introduced in California, Arizona, Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas meant to limit the power of the NSA to spy on Americans in those states.
We'd be fools to wait around for the U.S. Congress or courts to roll back Big Brother.
Our best chance is nullification and interposition on the state level.
Go to off now dot org, print out that model legislation and get to work nullifying the NSA.
The hero Edward Snowden has risked everything to give us this chance.
Let's take it off now dot org.
Hey, I'll Scott Horton here for cash into coins dot com.
So you want to buy some bitcoins?
Cash into coins dot com makes it easy and 100 percent anonymous.
Just deposit the money into their account at any Bank of America, Wells Fargo or credit union with shared branching and then just email them a picture of the receipt with your bitcoin address and you get your bitcoins.
A simple, clean, anonymous way to get bitcoins in a tough, competitive new market.
Cash into coins dot com has the advantage.
A great system and great customer service to keep you coming back.
That's cash into coins dot com.
What was the only interest group in D.C. pushing war with Syria last summer?
AIPAC in the Israel lobby.
What's the only interest group in D.C. pushing to sabotage the nuclear deal with Iran right now?
AIPAC in the Israel lobby.
Why doesn't the president force an end to the occupation of Palestine, a leading cause of terrorist attacks against the United States?
AIPAC in the Israel lobby.
The Council for the National Interest is pushing back, putting America first and educating the people about what's really at stake in the Middle East.
Help support their important work at Council for the National Interest dot org.
Man, you need some new stickers for the back of your truck.
Scott Horton here for Liberty Stickers dot com.
Aren't you sick and tired of everyone else being wrong about everything all the time?
Well, now you can tell them all what's right with some stickers from Liberty Stickers dot com.
At Liberty Stickers dot com, they're against everything.
So, you know they're good on your issue, too.
Whether it's the wars, police, state gun laws, the left and right of the president, Liberty Stickers dot com has hundreds of choices so you can find just the right words to express your opposition and contempt for those who would violate your rights.
That's Liberty Stickers dot com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.
Liberty Stickers dot com.