02/11/09 – Chris Floyd – The Scott Horton Show

Alright y'all, welcome back to Anti-War Radio, it's Chaos in Austin, live from Chaos Los Angeles Division.
It's a pretty big conglomerate for a little pirate radio station.
Alright, I'm sure you guys know that one of my favorite blogs to read is that of Chris Floyd.
It's called Empire Burlesque, that's also the name of one of his books, Empire Burlesque, High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium.
And this blog, Empire Burlesque, is just absolutely fantastic, it's the best, it goes right on your list of RSS feeds or however you do it there, it's chris-floyd.com.
Welcome back to the show Chris, good to talk to you.
Yeah, good to talk to you, good to be here.
Well first of all, I guess I wanted to say, it's been so long since we've talked, I don't know if we've discussed Barack Obama at all, but I certainly like the way you've been covering his administration so far in your blog.
Let's start with this, it's relevant, people will see the point here in just a moment.
Why don't you tell me a little bit about Binyam Mohamed, who is he and why should anybody care about him, Chris?
Well, obviously nobody cares about him very much.
He's a British resident, he's someone from Ethiopia originally.
He fled persecution in Ethiopia, came to Britain, was given leave to stay while his asylum case worked out.
At some point, he was a Muslim, he went to Pakistan, I believe he went to Pakistan to try to kick a drug habit.
While he was in Pakistan he somehow fell afoul of the Pakistani authorities who somehow turned him over to the Americans.
I don't know all the details about why they turned him over to the Americans, except that he was a Muslim, maybe a driving while Muslim or something, and perhaps because he was British or because...
I really don't know why.
He was turned over.
Perhaps somebody just wanted to sell him to the Americans, because you know, back in those days, I think it was 2002, the Americans were paying top dollar for fresh meat for the whole train there from Bagram to Guantanamo Bay and everything.
Anyway, so he's been in the Gulag, the American Gulag, since 2002.
He was tortured in Bagram, he was renditioned to Morocco, I believe it was, I don't have all the details in front of me, Morocco, where he was tortured, sliced with knives, you know, had his penis sliced with knives, body cut up, but eventually he ended up in the tender confines of Guantanamo Bay, where he's been for several years, and is now on a hunger strike, although I just read today that they may be about to dump him off their hands and send him back to Britain.
But anyway, there's a couple of lawsuits that have been brought on behalf of Binyam Mohamed.
One of them in the United States is a lawsuit against, I think, a company called Jessup, I'm not sure, Jessup International, the company that was involved, a private contractor that was involved in renditioning him to Morocco.
Now hold it right there, Chris, I want to see if I can try to make a connection for the audience.
They might remember, we've in fact, perhaps even during interviews with you, we've joked over the years about the case against Jose Padilla, and how supposedly he was going to enrich uranium by swinging it in a bucket over his head, and that was taken as, from, you know, the way I read it, and the sources, the way they originally reported it, it was basically, this guy's an idiot, and how could he be a threat, apparently, you know, he was an absolute fool.
But now, we understand, now the truth comes out about where that story really came from, that Jose Padilla was going to make, or wanted to make, I don't know if it was supposed to be, you know, an atom bomb, or a hydrogen bomb, or which, by enriching uranium, swinging it over his head.
Yeah, well, Binyam Mohamed was charged with the same thing originally.
It all comes from, as you know, some satirical magazine article that was written a few years ago about, you know, how to make an atom bomb, and it was, you know, completely ludicrous, and I don't know, and finally they got, they finally got, I don't know about Padilla's case, but they got Binyam to admit, to confess that he had read this magazine article at some point, you know.
I mean, as you say, it's completely ludicrous, and it's written in a style, I think it's actually written for the Nation magazine.
Well, I actually saw a thing on TV, I think Keith Olbermann was saying, it started out as a Rolling Stone piece.
Rolling Stone, that's it.
And it started, and apparently it was a parody that went around in the early days of the internet that people thought was funny, and it has, you know, something to do with the nitrous oxide in Whippets, or something like that, you know, a whipped cream.
Oh, yeah, it's one of our first, and as you say, you know, I mean, the...
Yeah, the whole thing was a complete joke, not anything that anyone would take seriously at all, unless you're a torturer for a living.
That's right, well, unless you want to have some kind of, you know, you have to have some hoped-up reason for it.
Anyway, Muhammad, that's right, that's what Muhammad was in prison for, basically.
Well, first he was charged with all these other plots, and they dropped everything else, and in the end they dropped all charges.
He's actually been held for six years now, going on seven years now, for no reason at all.
And as I say, he's about to get out.
He's probably about to get out.
Anyway, but the point was, as you're going to bring it back to Obama, there was a lawsuit, and yet now the tortures that Binyon Muhammad has undergone are pretty much in the public record, you know, they're in the public record, we know what he's gone through, we know what he's charged, you know, what he's alleged to have happened to him, we have corroborating evidence from different places, all that's in the public domain.
But the Bush administration has tried to quash the lawsuit, the American lawsuit, by saying that, you know, because some of this information might be, it's not actually, might be sensitive intelligence, then they can't have the trial at all.
They can't have no trial, State Secrets says you can't have this trial at all.
And now, of course, that's a gross abuse of the State Secrets Act, which, you know, is draconian on its face, anyway.
But even, you know, you can say, because, as some people have pointed out, you know, if you have a piece of evidence that is so hot, too much hot intelligence that it can't be said in open court, then you go to the judge, and he can rule with each individual piece of evidence.
But no one has ever used the State Secrets Act until Bush came along to throw out an entire case because something might be sensitive in it.
Well, and in America, as opposed to Great Britain, where you're on the phone from right now, there's no official Secrets Act here.
There is no State Secrets privilege anywhere in the law in this country, it's simply made up by judges.
And in fact, it came from a case where, it turned out in the end, when the information finally came out, they were just lying, they weren't protecting secrets, they were protecting negligence.
Right, absolutely.
Well, it's a State Secret, it's not a State Secrets Act, it's a State Secrets privilege that's been established in law, you know, just like the idea that corporations of people have been established by the courts, it's not a law.
But anyway, the point of fact is that the Bush people were trying to use this draconian interpretation.
So then Obama's elected, and of course, Obama's bringing hope and change and a change of underwear for everybody.
I guess, I don't know what he's bringing, but some kind of change.
But this week, they went back to court and they took the exact same argument of Bush people saying, you know, this case cannot be held.
What the point is, they're trying to quash this evidence of torture coming out.
At the same time they were doing that in America, they've also intervened in a British court because there's a British court case about Binyam Muhammad, he's a British resident.
And these high court judges over here in Britain said they wanted to hear all this evidence, they said there's credible evidence of torture, this should proceed.
But at the last minute, the UK government intervened with their own draconian laws over here to quash the case saying, oh no, it's a national security thing.
And the judges revealed that what the national security problem that the British had was that both the Bush administration and the Obama administration told the British, told the Brits, that if they went through with this case, the United States would cut off all cooperation in terrorism cases.
What they're trying to say was, you know, if we have any intelligence that you're about to be attacked by terrorists, we're not going to share it with you if you go through with this case and reveal this torture that we've been involved in.
And that's not just some pipsqueak nobody country, that's England, our very most special special relationship.
That's our most specialist buddy, special relationship, you know, Anglo-American brotherhood and all this other claptrap.
Yes, of course, that's our greatest ally in the war on terror.
And they were threatening to just cut them off, you know, so, you know, you want somebody to blow you up too bad.
And all of this, all of this done by, you know, it's been done specifically by the Obama administration now, you know, it's just, you know, it would boggle the mind unless you already knew what Obama stood for.
But it's just, it's quite amazing anyway.
It's quite, it's quite revealing, let's say, it's not really surprising, but it's quite revealing.
Well, and you block quote on your blog from, I forget which NGO did a report about what happened to this guy and in the broad details and in some of the detailed details, I guess I should say the broad strokes and some of the details you can tell, you know, we know what happened to this guy.
It's the very worst things in the world seems to me the kinds of things where even if this guy really was a terrorist murder, he's done his time now.
Let him go.
You know, this guy's been through absolute hell and back all to accuse Jose Padilla of make-believe things.
Yes.
It's all tied up to the Padilla case.
You're right.
And of course, Padilla was subjected to horrible tortures and basically, as you know, he had his mind broken because when he finally got to court, he had no mind left.
He was scared of his own defense lawyers.
He couldn't cooperate with him.
He'd all, you know, he'd, he'd been completely turned where he just was totally dependent on the, uh, on his tortures, you know, he was subjected to sensory deprivation and all sorts of torture.
For years without any charges, kept in military brigs, all this sort of stuff, which is, which by the way, the Padilla case, you know, Obama's getting great, uh, getting a lot of snaps for, uh, supposedly beginning the process of one day closing down Guantanamo Bay, the concentration camp down there.
But you know, well, okay, that's fine if they closed down Guantanamo Bay, but these same kind of tortures were being practiced in American prisons where Jose Padilla was being kept and the American prisons in Bagram and Afghanistan and the American prisons in Diego Garcia.
And, you know, in the Indian Ocean where the British were years ago, the Brits moved out a whole people.
There's a whole population.
They, they dispossessed them because the Americans wanted to have a base down there in the Indian Ocean and it's going on, you know, in Baghdad and all these other places like that.
So yeah, it's great.
If, even if they closed Guantanamo Bay concentration camp, it doesn't, it doesn't stop any of this stuff from going on because it still goes on.
It goes on right there, you know, in a good old homeland.
So, um, but yeah, it all ties back to the Padilla case.
And what we have seen is that the Obama people are following the, uh, the Bush line straight down the line on this.
And all this is to protect, not only protect the people who have tortured, but I think, I think it's to protect the power to torture because as you recall, just last week, Leon Panetta, we were told with some great liberal was going to be in charge of the CIA.
He testified under oath before God and everything to Congress that, oh, he would be sure he would not hesitate to recommend to president Obama that he, that he used harsh interrogation techniques that go beyond the army field manual.
Well, he even said, he even said, I would seek presidential authorization if it was a ticking time, which right there, what is he saying?
It's not up to Congress.
It's not up to the constitution.
It's up to the president to decide whether it's okay to torture somebody or not.
Well, this is absolutely, this is the same, you know, a theoretical position, whatever it is, you know, the same philosophy of governance that we had on the Bush administration.
I mean, there's no, there's no difference.
And in fact, Chris, as you point out on your blog, he even uses the John U Alberto Gonzalez, Dick Cheney formulation, David Addington, Michael Haynes, George Bush formulation that unless you torture someone to death, it ain't really torture.
Well, absolutely.
I mean, this is the whole, I mean, well, there's another court case where they are trying to uphold the John U memos.
I don't know all the details.
I wrote about that recently, but yeah, I mean, this is what the, this is why it's so, I mean, it would be funny if it wasn't so tragic is that people, there's this sort of debate amongst the progressive, you know, side bloggers here.
Well, gosh, what can we do?
Do you think Obama should prosecute, you know, these people or these people or what, you know, they ain't going to prosecute nobody, you know, because they want the same powers.
They're going to do the same powers and, and they still retain most of all these, the same tortures actually still work for Obama now, they're Obama's torturers now.
And I just want to make one more point, I think it's important because we often hear about what the Obama people talk about is this army field manual.
He's going to restrict all interrogation to the army field manual.
Well, someone was pointing out the other day, I think it was on alternate.
I don't have it right in front of me.
The techniques that the army field manual allow are, are themselves torture.
I mean, you know, they, especially if you use them in combination, well, and they altered it, right?
I mean, this was the whole thing with the detainee treatment act of John McCain, which of course still allowed the CIA to torture people, but banned the military from doing anything outside the manual.
Then they went and they updated the manual to allow torture in the military rules.
Well, I know what I find quite amusing and, you know, in a sort of bitter way is you have so many of these progressives now, liberals, whatever you want to call them, you know, Obama supporters who now look to this, the army field manual is some Pentagon manual for harsh interrogation.
And they treat it like it's, you know, Oh, Obama's going to adhere to the manual.
Like it's the constitution or something, like it's some sacred document.
It's like you have all these formerly anti-war progressive types, and now here they are looking to a Pentagon manual for torture as their lodestone, you know, as their guiding star.
It's just, it's, it's quite bizarre.
And but anyway, I mean, you know, as many people say, and I think I probably said beforehand, what were you going to have under Obama presidency was that you were going to have the basic core principles of the Bush administration and, you know, dressed up in better PR garb.
And this is one of the, I think, you know, that many people said this beforehand.
I think I said this once or twice and other people said back during the Bush days is that you think Bush is bad.
What's going to be bad is that someone's going to come along after Bush and they're going to take all these powers and they're not going to be a complete walking putz like Bush.
And they're not going to look like some villain out of a science fiction movie like Cheney, you know, they're not, you know, because these people put people off, you know, they're going to be somebody that's going to be attractive.
They're going to sound good.
They're going to sound liberal and they're going to use these same things and they're going to be much more dangerous because people will go along with them.
And Arthur Silber has made this point many, many times is that what, why, why it is so dangerous when Obama does these things is that, is that there's no one, there's no opposition to it.
Who's, you know, he's already sort of disarmed the so-called left or the so-called progressives or, you know, they say, well, we've got to back Obama.
So who's going to stand up against these things, you know?
Right.
Well, it's the Republicans.
They're the only opposition we got, but they're not going to stand up against torture and war and things like that.
So, you know, it's, it's, um, but yeah, I mean, the, the, I wrote this, I think recently was that the Obama administration is going to uphold the core principles of the Bush administration, which is enriching the rich, as we've seen with this bailout, extending the empire, as we see with the, you know, extending the war on terror into Pakistan and enhancing the authoritarian power of a militarized state, which is what they're doing with this, you know, Binyamuhamma case and other things like that.
So, uh, uh, yes, it's, uh, these, we live in interesting times, as they say, we certainly do.
Well, and you know, what happened is, I don't, I don't know if, you know, to what degree there ever really was any, but there's been a complete breakdown in accountability.
Uh, you know, you talk about, uh, you know, how Obama's sworn to not look back at what happened, uh, in the last administration and any, you know, particular war crimes and torture statutes might've been broken and that kind of thing.
And this is something that I learned as a kid.
I think even back in the 1980s was I learned about Richard Nixon, that he had had an illegal secret war in Laos and Cambodia, and that he'd been impeached for paying people hush money who'd participated in a burglary.
And I thought, well, that's kind of strange.
And then I watched, uh, Ronald Reagan get away scot-free with Iran Contra and everybody knew it was illegal.
There was a law that said, no, you can't fund death squads in Nicaragua and El Salvador's right there in the, in the rules.
And they went ahead and did it anyway.
And there's no accountability for that.
Bill Clinton of course, was impeached for lying in a civil deposition, uh, about a civil rights case.
But, uh, he was the guy that burned Waco to the ground who, uh, bombed Iraq, uh, for years and years on average of, uh, once every three days, according to Jeremy Scahill, that's the conservative estimate.
Actually, the New York times says once every other day was the average.
And that was all based on the lies.
And, uh, and it's just the same with all these guys.
Of course, uh, George Bush senior, uh, pretended that he had a satellite photos that said that the Iraqi army was about to barrel into Saudi Arabia, which was a lie.
None of these people are ever impeached for actually torturing and murdering anybody.
You got to get them on some technicality off the clock, you know?
Well, I mean, that's, I mean, that's the way it always is with a really powerful.
And so it's the Al Capone situation, right?
You know, you can't get Capone for murder.
You can't get him for burglary.
You can't get him for extortion.
You can't get him for cheating on his income taxes.
Then you can get him.
You see?
That's how they got in.
That's how they put Al Capone in prison.
Yeah.
But now if you, if you, uh, you know, or Al Capone and evade your income taxes, they make you the head of the treasury, the boss of the IRS.
Well, I'll tell you what, you know, I mean, I mean, seriously, it would be a lot better off if Al Capone was the secretary of the treasury, you know, because at least one thing that Capone did was they, uh, uh, the Capone gang, they, they had, they had a lot of social programs they took care of.
In fact, I was reading the other day, um, uh, you know, where they have these, these date stamps on milk and food now, you know, you use by such and such a time.
It was the Capone people who made the milk companies in Chicago start doing that.
The first people ever did it, you know, cause they get a lot of bad milk and they were getting, you know, their people, their territories, they're saying, you know, Al, we're getting bad milk.
Our feelings.
So he went to the milk companies and said, you know, you've got to put a stamp and tell people when this milk is good and when it's going to go bad.
That's funny.
I thought you were going to say, you know, it might as well be Capone that way.
Just reveal what gangsters they really are.
Because Capone was actually that much more caring than the state could ever be.
Well, I mean, a lot of ways.
Yeah.
I mean, so, I mean, yeah, if you're going to have gangsters, this has happened out there in the open and, you know, um, that's kind of the worst thing, but you know, cause I used to say this all the time, you know, the worst, one of the worst things about it, then of course, you know, what, what, what the government actually does, you know, what Bush has done and what's Obama's doing is bad in itself or what's even somehow harder to take is that we're supposed to believe it's all noble.
It's all good.
It's all lawful.
You know, I just always wanted to say that old thing, you know, don't kiss down my back and tell me it's raining.
Okay.
Just, you know, if you're going to piss on me, just say you're pissing on me.
Okay.
Don't pretend like I'm supposed to like it or it's going to grow flowers or something, you know, that's, that's like the hardest part.
That's one of the things that got me started writing about all these things in the first place.
Uh, politics back in the Bush thing was that no one was sort of making that point.
You know, we were all pretending like it was some sort of, you know, it was all legitimate somehow.
I said, no, this is criminal.
This is evil.
This is criminal.
This is stupid.
Uh, but nobody was saying at the time.
I just wanted to keep saying, you know, look, I know you're pissing down my back and I'm just going to say you're pissing down my back.
You know, I'm not going to let you call it, you know, raindrops from heaven or something.
And that's, I mean, of course, what's really sad is that we have to do all that all over again.
Now here comes Obama and we have to, you know, convince the whole other audience that this is what's happening.
You know, uh, if you, if you, if you enable torture, if you continue torture, if you keep George Bush's defense secretary in office for God's sake, it's Pentagon warlord in office for the God's sake, you know, you're just continuing all this, you know, so, uh, it's not, it's not changed.
It's not wonderful.
It's not new.
It's just the same thing we've seen before in a slightly better package.
Yeah.
I mean, that's really the thing too, is, you know, just like with everything, it's all about the narrative and how to get out the narrative that this guy, Obama's just some Democrat Senator.
So he looks a little bit different and he, you know, practices his speech in front of the mirror more times than some of the other guys or something big deal.
It's not like he was Ron Paul or something who actually, you know, meant to change policy and 500 improved ways.
You know what I mean?
Like for example, they had asked him and he swore that, you know, his first day in office, he would tell the Navy to get away from Iran, to get back from their coast would be the first thing he did.
Now that's change, you know, and everybody said, ah, screw that guy.
You know, he's old.
He's a Texas Republican.
We don't like Texas Republicans give us the, the one word, one syllable slogan, let us swoon for that.
I don't want to, you know, learn about policy here.
Well, yeah, that's true.
Of course, you know the thing, if he'd run as a Democrat, they would have ignored him also too.
You know, they would have marginalized him.
They would have found something, you know, something weird about him, like a signature Mike Gravel and all those guys, you know, who ran grab my gravel was running a lot of similar kind of situation as a Democrat, but he was just sort of laughed off them.
Right.
Yeah.
And Dennis, that's true.
Of course.
I mean, you know, Ron Paul had all those strikes against him because of being Republican.
He wasn't going to get a look in from progressives and stuff.
So some people, I know, um, I just saw a guy that I saw, um, that I saw later was a Ron Paul supporter.
Arlo Guthrie had come out for Ron Paul earlier in the primary and he was here in Oxford recently for a good concert.
So, um, I mean, you know, some people, you know, and you couldn't, couldn't really accuse Arlo Guthrie of being some sort of a right wing conservative.
Now could you?
Uh, no, I know you're right, but I mean, uh, what I was going to say, what you're saying is correct.
Obama is, is, uh, is a, you know, it's just, well, I've written about this before and other people have too.
It's the same thing as Bill Clinton came in in 1992.
Oh, what a breath of fresh air.
Oh, look at this young man.
Oh, he must be such a liberal progressive.
He's oh, he's going to, he's going to do away with the excesses of the Bush years, you know, all this kind of stuff.
And of course he was, you know, the worst kind of, um, corporate, well, whatever you want to call it, you know, corporate lackey sort of thing, just like Obama is, you know, I mean, Obama, Obama was the, uh, the favorite candidate of Wall Street.
He got more money from Wall Street than John McCain did.
He got more money from the defense industry than John McCain did, you know?
So, um, it really is a tale of, uh, salesmanship over substance.
It's just because I didn't mean to leave out Kucinich and Gravel, you know, I'm sorry that I did.
It's just, obviously Ron is my favorite, but both of those guys were absolutely committed to peace and both of them knew all the issues better.
I remember Dennis Kucinich teaching Barack Obama that there's such a thing as the international atomic energy agency and that they have a safeguards agreement with Iran when Obama had no idea about this right there in the debate, live on the stage.
Yeah, well, I know.
I never heard anything about that.
All I know is I'm going to, I'm going to nuke Iran if they, uh, stick a, uh, stick at Israel, you know?
So, uh, yeah, I mean, absolutely.
I mean, you had the, yeah, you had some people who were willing to say that, uh, you know, uh, Ron Paul's anti-empire, uh, stance was, it was like, you know, practically unique.
I haven't seen anything like this in 50 years in American politics, but, uh, it would have been marginalized in any case, I think.
And, uh, I just, I don't know.
I don't know what the, um, yeah, I mean, I agree with you.
The main point is that this whole narrative of Obama is, you know, a change agent and all this kind of stuff is, um, is again, it's, it's, you know, it just makes it even worse, makes the actual policies it does even worse because we're supposed to believe it's some kind of thing.
Something that's different.
It's not really different.
I mean, it makes me more ashamed of, you know, the population too, cause it's the economy stupid.
At least, you know, is multiple words and syllables going on there.
It requires you to, you know, at least think about something for a minute or something, but hope and change just to one syllable, one word slogans that mean absolutely nothing at all.
And to think that you could actually Buffalo such a giant percentage of the population into going for that, to me is, you know, it's like the Kola Wars or something like, can't you see through this or what?
You know?
Well, I know you're absolutely right about that, but of course, you know, you would, I mean, this is where Obama had great luck.
He's coming along with a place where people, you know, people want to, they had a great yearning for change.
You know, they won't change.
I've got to have change.
I won't change.
It's just like, uh, it's almost like when the Bolsheviks came in, uh, you know, into the chaos after revolution, of course they overthrew the real revolution with their slogan, you know, land, peace and bread.
Well, who didn't want, you know, here's the Russians that were, you know, they were devastated.
They didn't know what's going on.
They want land, peace and bread.
You say you're going to give it to them.
That's what you'll go for, you know?
But you're right.
One thing that was really unusual about Obama, I thought, because I'd read, of course, you know, I'm over here in Britain, so I didn't see, I don't see the news over there.
Thank God Almighty, you know, the TV news and, uh, I don't even watch TV news over here, you know, so I didn't see the news.
I didn't see all the clips.
I just kept reading.
You know, Obama's a great orator.
He, you know, I've never seen his oratory, you know, I read all on the blogs, you know, these, uh, these guys, uh, you know, practically cheerful about his great oratory.
I said, well, gosh, maybe it's a good oratory, you know, whether you agreed with him or not.
But a couple of times during the campaign, I got to see him actually give a speech.
Just as you say, all he ever does is a string together, the biggest, you know, a string of cliches and we knew and hope we got to work, we got to take responsibility.
But I mean, they're just a bunch of string, they're just a string of cliches.
I mean, I, I don't, I don't, I don't know where his reputation as a great orator comes from.
You know, maybe it comes from the fact that he can write a book or something, but as far as, as far as the speaking goes, you know, speech making goes, it's just a, it's just the most standard border plate that we've heard for 30 years.
You know, Bush's speech writers came up with some more juicy rhetoric, you know, for him to pass through his mouth.
I didn't know what he was talking about, but it's just quite, it is quite amazing the sort of sales job.
But I think it does tie back to people's, you know, this is unfortunate, this is a sort of a tragedy.
It ties back to people's great yearning for desperate, you know, desperate yearning for, you know, real change.
But of course, all they were going to be allowed to be given was this sort of, you know, fake change agent.
You know, they only give the choice between McCain and Obama, the only choice, you know, your choice is Kennedy and Nixon, your choice is McCain, Obama, you know, your choice is, you know, Mondale or Reagan.
I mean, you know, this is no choice at all.
You don't, you don't get a choice, but because you have this genuine yearning, it's almost like a metal filings go to the magnet, you know, it's like, oh, let's change over there.
That's what we want, you know?
But of course, that's not what we're going to get.
We're going to get this horrible boondoggle of a bailout, you know, just, it's just, again, and it continues, it continues and even exacerbates the Bush policies, you know, what are they going to give now?
$1 million, $2 million, $3 trillion to these bankers, you know, I mean, it's just, it's just amazing.
Well, I guess it's somewhat sort of to our credit that the American people most of the time mean well, they just, they really don't have the ability to do anything about it, do they?
I don't, what the hell am I going to do about it?
And I care as much as anybody.
Well, I know, that's what I mean, people, I mean, the American people mean well as much as anybody else in the world means well, I mean, you know, it's like, but, well, you know, I said, well, we have it.
Well, yes, you're right.
I mean, the point is, we have such a gigantically powerful systems of power, you know, these systems of power, corporate power, state power, military power, all entwined with each other, financial power, all entwined with each other, and they're just, they're just massive.
I mean, it's on a massive inhuman scale that you, that it is very hard for anyone to move or to think, you know, how you can really change it.
And so it is quite a, as I say, you know, it's quite a, it's a dispiriting situation.
Well, you know, one thing that, because actually I'm like you, I never watched him on TV for a long, long time.
I was introduced to the concept of Barack Obama by being told that he was a rock star and that he was just sweeping the nation and whatever back in, you know, I forget, 2005, I guess, early 2005 or something was the first time I ever heard of him.
And of course, that just put me off from even wanting to know a thing about him for as long as possible.
You know, I was no more impressed with all the, you know, rhythmic speech pattern or whatever than, than you were.
But one thing that really showed me his character, you know, really drove it home.
Not that I hadn't already decided, but really drove it home was in the presidential debate right there on the eve of his victory last November.
And I guess it was the end of October when they had this debate and they were talking foreign policy, he and John McCain and Tom Brokaw.
And Somalia was brought up in the context of Black Hawk Down.
And sometimes America tries to do good and, and feed the poor people and we get chased out of there.
And I forget if McCain was making the point that we should never, ever leave a place that we occupy or else we look weak to terrorists or exactly what the debate was.
But Tom Brokaw, who's got to know better.
I mean, there's just, I mean, he's Tom Brokaw, come on, he's the number one hairdo on NBC or at least was for so long.
He's plugged in enough.
He's got to know better.
And clearly Barack Obama and John McCain know better.
And I could, you know, using my imagination, I can see the gears turning in Obama's head as he's deciding, okay, we're leaving America's current war in Somalia out of this question.
We're going to talk about Black Hawk Down and we're going to pretend that America has never had a thing to do with Somalia since then.
And they went right along, all three of them.
And yet, well, I don't know, tell me, Chris, has America had anything to do with intervening in Somalia at any time since 1993 or what?
Well, I think we sent some fruit baskets over there now and then and, you know, some baby formula.
Well, no, of course, we've talked about it many times about, you know, the horrific atrocity that America has committed in Somalia over the last two years when they, over two years now, when they got the Ethiopian army, the armies of the Ethiopian dictatorships to invade Somalia where they had their only stable government they'd had in about 15 years at that time, the Islamic Court Union, you know, as you know, the collection of sectarian groups who had brought some stability to the country.
Maybe not the kind of stability you and I would like to live under, but stability for people who've lived, you know, in sheer hell for 15 years after the last American intervention.
But as you know, what's happened since then during that regime change operation where the Ethiopians came in and played the part of America and Iraq with American support, American air power, bombing refugees, American, this is, this was like an escort, this is not some, you know, American death squads moving through Somalia to, you know, take out supposed terrorists and all this sort of thing.
So now what's happened since, what's happened since that time?
What's happened since that time?
Well, I was just reading about this, you know, recently today, 10 to 20,000 people have been killed.
3.2 million people, oh no, 3.6 million people are now living on emergency food aid and they're about to starve.
1.3 million people have been driven out of their homes.
25% of the population is suffering from acute malnutrition.
Now before this happened back in 2006, I just saw this statistic yesterday.
There were 260,000 Somalis living on food aid, you know, because you know, they're always having droughts and stuff that they're living on food aid, you know, emergency food aid, 260,000.
Now after the American intervention, the American-led, American-backed, American-funded intervention, there's, as I just said, there's 3.6 million people dependent on food aid to keep from starving.
There's 10 to 20,000 people dead, the whole country's sort of ruined.
And now what's happened?
But what has happened?
Well, recently, as you might know, you know, there's been, there's been the government that the Ethiopians and the Americans installed, this transitional federal government.
The head of that government has been ousted.
And who they now put in place, who's now been elected by the Somali parliament, is the same man who was the head of the Islamic Court Union when they drove him out.
All this stuff is, you know, they went through all these two years of hell on earth and subjected these people to hell on earth to come all the way back to full circle and put back in power the same man that they drove out two years ago, two or three years ago.
And of course now, in the meantime, in the meantime, of course, what's happened is that because of the, you know, the Ethiopian occupation, you know, America's, with America's help, more and more Somalis have been radicalized and the more extreme element that was in the former Islamic Court Union, you know, they've become more radical.
They've become more virulent.
And now they're, now there's a sort of internal war.
Now they're fighting against their former allies.
And so what we're going to have now in Somalia probably is unless, you know, by some miracle of a new president whose name is Sheikh Sharif, who is a, you know, quasi-moderate, you know, Islamic cleric, I mean, unless he somehow can bring together this, the more extreme Islamic elements that are still fighting, we're going to have a, you know, it's a good old long range, long lasting civil war in Somalia.
So no, there's all this hell on earth, and as you said, this is, you know, and I've mentioned this over and over and over again during the campaign, not one syllable about what's happened in Somalia these last two years, and what was even happening on the ground all during this summer and all during the campaign, not one syllable escaped the lips of any of those presidential candidates, McCain or Barack Obama, who, you know, who is, as we know, of African descent and has family living in Kenya next to Somalia.
And you know, not a single word was said about what's going on in Somalia, not a word.
And as you said, there they were on the podium, on the debate floor, talking about Somalia, not talking about Black Hawk Down, well, because there was a movie made about Black Hawk Down years ago, which, you know, and of course, that movie, as we know, what happened in Black Hawk Down was a bunch of Americans got massacred after, after the Americans had gone in and massacred a whole bunch of Somalis beforehand.
And that's why they were attacked, and that's why a few Americans, that's why Americans were dragged to the streets in Mogadishu and things like that.
And in any case, one of the people that the Bush administration had later on backed, you know, one of the warlords they backed against the Islamic Court Union in their regime change operation, is the son of the man who killed the Americans the first time around.
So, you know, right, Adid, Adid, the bad guy.
Yeah, Adid and, yeah, that's right.
You know, I saw an episode of Frontline long ago where they interviewed the father of one of the dead Army Rangers, or I don't know, he might have been a Delta guy, I don't know which.
Anyway, the father said he met Bill Clinton.
And he said, you know, I'm trying to paraphrase best I can.
So I says to Bill Clinton, hey, listen, let me ask you something.
You guys were trying to negotiate with this guy, Adid, and you had had your Secretary of State, I forget who it was at the time, Warren Christopher, whoever, send, you know, one of his munchkins to go and try to work out a deal with this Adid guy.
And Bill Clinton said, yeah, that's right.
And then I said, well, then why did you send my son out to go and kidnap the guy at the same time you're trying to make a negotiation with him?
And then he said, Bill Clinton gave me the most blank look I've ever seen on a man's face.
He just stared at me.
And then he said, well, I don't know, I asked Tony Lake the same question.
And in fact, I one time found that transcript online and was able to get the Google cache.
I don't know if anybody can find it anymore, but it's out there somewhere.
And so, yeah, it is just from one travesty to another.
But yeah, I mean, here's the thing about it.
Even if Obama cared about Somalia, which I don't see any reason to believe that he cares at all about what George Bush and Dick Cheney and the Ethiopian army have done to that place.
But even if he did care, he couldn't mention it without having to teach everyone the entire story because no one in America has ever heard of it.
Absolutely.
I mean, that's a very good point.
I mean, this is this is one of the problems I've had, you know, because, you know, I've been writing about Somalia a lot.
I mean, I'm not an expert, but it means there's a lot of people out there who knows much more about it.
You know, you're unique just because you care and have a voice on the subject.
But one of the problems is that you have to sort of every time I write about it, I feel like I have to say about four paragraphs to explain what I'm writing about, because no one knows it's ever heard of it.
No one knows anything about it.
It's funny you mention that thing about Clinton saying, well, gosh, yeah, I asked Tony Lake how that happened.
It reminded me of something when someone asked Bush later on about why they dissolved the Iraqi army, you know, right after the invasion, which helped instigate the insurgency, you know, and help bring ruin to the Iraqi society.
And Bush said, yeah, I don't know how that happened.
I'm going to ask somebody about that, you know, this is the commander in chief that we're all supposed to follow and stuff like that, you know, but, you know, that guy, Thomas Ricks, who's basically the new trumpet for Odierno and Petraeus and their push to stay forever.
He last night on The Daily Show explained that Petraeus never told George Bush about the program to rename the insurgency that concerned local citizens and put them on the payroll.
That very same insurgency that they had created with the firing of the army, that they didn't tell.
And he said, he asked Petraeus, you didn't tell Bush until later or what?
And Petraeus just said, yeah, that's within my realm of authority to straight up hire the evil doers, the evil terrorists who 4,000 of our guys died fighting for years in a row.
And this is the kind of thing that the president's not even apparently concerned with.
People under him know better than to even bother him with such details.
Well, that's above the president's pay grade, I guess.
But, well, yeah, I mean, yeah, I've been reading about this, about Ricks and Petraeus, I can't even say it without saying Petraeus, Petraeus, of course, Petraeus is obviously angling for the president himself.
And maybe, you know, in 2012, 2016, we'll finally have this perfect, you know, perfect meshing of our military state, you know, when the general finally just takes over or something.
But yeah, it's quite a story.
Yeah.
Well, then I guess the real question is, then after somebody stabs Petraeus in the back, then who's the dictator, you know?
No, that's true.
I mean, yeah.
But...
Et tu, Pelosi?
Yeah.
I don't know.
Boy.
Can you imagine her as the emperor?
Boy.
Yeah.
I mean, we were just sort of, we're really blessed with a great generation of leaders all the way around.
I mean, we're really, we live in a golden age, you know.
Well, I'll tell you what.
I certainly am glad that you keep writing.
It's great to see somebody whose eyes are so clear and is also so talented with the prose can keep me entertained as I read this horrible stuff.
And I want to thank you very much for your time again on the show, Chris.
Well, thank you.
Thanks a lot.
All right, everybody.
That's Chris Floyd.
The book and the blog are called Empire Burlesque, High Crimes and Low Comedy in the American Imperium.
That's at chris-floyd.com.
That's it for Antiwar Radio.
See y'all tomorrow, 11 to 1, Los Angeles time.