11/13/09 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show

Welcome back to the show, it's Antiwar Radio, Chaos 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas.
I'm happy to welcome Philip Giraldi back to the show.
Of course, he writes for us regularly at Antiwar.com, he's a contributing editor at the American Conservative Magazine, that's amconmag.com, you can read him off and on the blog there as well, and he's a former CIA and DIA officer, stationed in Turkey and other places too.
And again, the column is Smoke and Mirrors, that's at Antiwar.com slash Giraldi.
Welcome back to the show, Phil, how are you doing?
Hi, Scott, I'm fine.
All right, now, if I remember right, it was the August 1st issue of the American Conservative Magazine, back in 2005, that had a deep background, it was the name of your news briefings there in the magazine, still is, and you reported that you had sources inside the government that were telling you that not only was the United States Air Force drawing up plans, I forget if it was the Strategic Air Command specifically or what, not only were they drawing up plans for bombing Iran, but that included even the possible use of nuclear weapons in the bombing of Iran, and now a lot of time has gone by, and thank goodness there has not been any bombing of Iran, or, well, not by the Air Force anyway, since then, Phil, but your recent column, in fact, I guess it was yesterday, new on Antiwar.com, talks about the still very real possibility of a war with Iran, not under Bush and Cheney, but even now under Barack Obama, what do you say?
Well, I just find it peculiar that the United States is not in any good position to be fighting anyone given the state of our economy and the fact that we're bogged down in two ongoing wars, yet if you follow the media with any care at all, it seems to be pretty obvious that there are a lot of forces in the United States, most particularly in Congress and the media, that are pushing for another war, another preemptive war against Iran to effectively disarm Iran.
Well, and, jeez, there's so many different ways we can go with this.
Well, let me start with the most important here.
To your understanding, does this still include the possibility of actually nuking them, Phil?
Well, you know, I never really said that they were going to nuke Iran.
All I said originally back four years ago was that they were preparing contingency plans because the U.S. government had, or the Pentagon had, information indicating that the Iranian, some of their nuclear sites, were quite likely so far underground and shielded with layers and layers of concrete and steel that they couldn't be attacked or couldn't be destroyed using conventional weapons.
So what they were doing was drawing up, essentially, a contingency plan to use tactical nuclear weapons, this is smaller nuclear weapons, to take out some of these sites.
And, you know, lots of people were surprised by that, but they really shouldn't be, because in war situations, obviously the Pentagon is going to look at every possible contingency and every possible scenario that might play out.
So it wasn't like they were saying, yes, we're going to go ahead and nuclear bomb Iran.
But it was just, it was one of the options that they were looking for.
Sure.
Well, as I do so often, I sort of oversimplified and overstated it.
And I'm glad you clarified that.
Although, if I remember right, two years ago, or I guess maybe two and a half or so now, we did an interview where we talked about the possibility that, I think your phrase was, they'd hold their nukes, the U.S. government would hold their nukes in their back pocket as sort of an implicit threat to the Iranians that, you know, we might use conventional weapons to bomb the hell out of you.
But if you dare fight back, for example, try to orchestrate a uprising against the Americans in Iraq, the American soldiers occupying Iraq or something like that, then we'll nuke you.
So you better just sit there and take it while we bomb you conventionally.
Yeah, that again was basically something I was picking up from contact that I have in the intelligence area and also in the Defense Department.
People who were saying, yes, of course.
I mean, obviously, if you're getting in a war fighting situation, all options will be on the table.
And if the Iranians were so bold as to create an impossible situation for our soldiers in Iraq, which they could do probably easily enough, we would always have that implicit threat that if it went too far and if too many of our soldiers were in harm's way, in danger, then the nuclear option might be something that the United States might consider.
Again, that's kind of a sensible conclusion.
If you go to war, terrible things happen.
And suddenly things that you would never consider are on the table and there are things that are being considered.
I think that's the danger of the current situation in the Persian Gulf, in that we have a situation which is not exactly escalating wildly, but nevertheless, there's always a constant edge to it.
And there's always the constant danger that there will be an incident that will escalate.
And once you get on that road and kind of accept being on that road, then there are only bad things that can happen.
Wow.
Yeah, you know, that really is the important thing, isn't it?
That that perspective that it is reasonable to consider using nuclear weapons against this helpless, non-nuclear state once you've already accepted the premise of going down this road.
Well, what are you going to do?
Let them kill every American in Iraq.
You got to stop them somehow, if that's what they try to do.
Right.
That's right.
Yeah, sure.
And that's that's the that's the issue.
It becomes it becomes a devil's bargain either way.
You know, you you you create this situation which can only have bad consequences.
And when the bad consequences occur, then you have worse consequences.
Wow.
Yeah, well, so now let's talk about some of this.
Who's on the side of the who is the war party in this case?
Who wants an actual war against Iran?
If I remember right, even during the the height of the tensions in 2007, it was the Joint Chiefs of Staff who told George Bush, no way, man.
And then he didn't do it.
Yeah, well, I think if you kind of look at the record right now and see who is who is making the most the craziest comments about about Iran, you would actually have to look at Congress.
You you have you have a number of congressmen who have been tabling resolutions.
The one that's about to go for a vote would basically cut off all refined petroleum products from Iran, which was would essentially be an I think everybody would agree would be an act of war because it would it would totally destroy the Iranian economy.
Iran is dependent on 40 percent of its energy supplies with petroleum imports.
So, you know, it's it's this kind of stuff.
This is coming out of Congress.
And, of course, AIPAC is the the force behind Congress, the one who does all the position papers and and sort of sets this whole thing up.
And then the mainstream media in general kind of lines up behind all of that.
Well, you know, I think you may have the same problem as me in the sense of being so immersed in actual good journalism all the time.
Maybe you, like me, have a problem in staying plugged in to what Boobus Americana is out there actually believes.
And I was actually shocked, but not surprised.
I did an interview the other day where they were interviewing me about this question.
And and the question was set up that, listen, everywhere in the media, all of right wing radio, all of it and and virtually everything on TV about Iran begins with the premise they're making nuclear bombs.
Everybody knows they're making nuclear bombs.
They're making nuclear bombs.
And that is the premise, the completely outside of anti-war dot com and a few other places, the almost completely unchallenged premise of the entire debate in the society about what to do.
And, of course, hey, if they're about to nuke us in our jammies and the smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud, then maybe we should nuke them first, Phil.
Well, alternatively, they're going to the other line you'll hear constantly is that they're going to they're going to develop this nuclear device, which would probably weigh about a thousand pounds, and they're going to hand it off to some guy in a turban who's going to get on a 747 and come over and detonate it as soon as he lands in New York.
Yeah, that's the other line.
Let's see.
The problem is, you know, you're constructing what they're doing is they're constructing a straw man here.
They're constructing several straw men where they're they're creating a premise and they're assuming that their readers or their listeners will will believe that the premise is correct.
And once you have that premise, then you go off into all kinds of fantasies about what is going to happen or what you have to do and so on and so forth.
And the fact is, of course, that the best intelligence information suggests that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.
And it also suggests that Iran has nothing but kind of problematical relationships with the terrorist groups that are particularly hostile to the United States.
So all these premises are kind of wrong, but but nobody challenges it in the mainstream media.
As you say, antiwar is one of the few sources I would add the American conservative also as as one of the few places you can actually go and get a different perspective.
But of course, we're a very much a minority perspective and people get most of their news from these sources that essentially have an agenda that they're pounding and pounding away at.
Well, and this, of course, cuts straight to the role of the Israel lobby in this.
But a major part of the war party narrative for years now, Phil, has been that Iran, rather than being a ready made ally for the United States, if our real goal is fighting al Qaeda, is the mother of all terrorism in the world.
And so all the terrorist groups in the world are really just one big terror group.
And Iran is at the heart of all of it.
And so now we're at a place where our intelligence agencies are actually backing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, his former terrorist group, Jandala in Pakistan and in Iran.
I don't know if if you have a comment about their possible role in the recent attacks there, but as has been covered by everybody from Andrew Coburn to Seymour Hersh to Brian Ross at ABC News, the United States has indeed been giving these guys money, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's old terrorist group money to stir up trouble inside Iran.
Yeah, there's no question about that.
That's going on.
The the United States, Britain and Israel are their intelligence services are all actively involved in stirring up unrest inside Iran with various groups.
And indeed, one of these groups is Jandala, which which five years ago would have been a terrorist group on our prescribed list.
And now suddenly it's a it's an asset for us to be using to create unrest in Iran for for what purpose?
I don't know.
Do they seriously think that they're going to overthrow the government there?
You know, this whole thing is crazy.
Well, and maybe it's not crazy at all.
As we as we've talked about over and over again, and in the sense of 9-11 and all these things with terrorism, the action is in the reaction.
And so you could see why, as we've discussed, I think before on this show, if the moderates in Iran are the enemy because they make it harder to justify regime change, then what better way to marginalize those in Iran who would rather have reproachment with the United States and a cooling off with the United States than blowing things up and letting everybody know that the CIA is behind it?
Why else would you tell Brian Ross in the first place?
Yeah, well, that's that's the point, isn't it?
I mean, the thing is, the more you destabilize or try to destabilize the Iranian government, the stronger you make it, because the the average Iranian will see that he's being attacked by outside forces.
So this is a perfectly normal reaction.
And it does indeed make it look like the people who are reformers are working with the enemy.
So it's you know, it's a it's a nonsensical policy.
And I would have liked to have seen Barack Obama repudiate this kind of nonsense.
But of course, he hasn't.
And that's kind of scary.
Yeah.
You know, my favorite BBC headline of the last few years, Phil, was Ayman al-Zawahiri in a video interview with a Pakistani journalist went on and on denouncing Iran for being behind all the 9-11 conspiracy theories that blame Israel for it.
And they're trying to steal our glory because they don't want you to believe that Sunnis can fight with vengeance against the great Satan.
And we can, too.
And and going on and on and on, blaming the Ayatollah Khamenei for all these goofballs.
Yeah, well, you know, the problem is that there's a lot of confusion out there over how you know that there's a there's kind of a concept in the American media that there's some kind of monolithic Muslim enemy out there.
And of course, that anybody who's looked at the issue of people like Colonel Pat Lang and others understand perfectly well that there are these groups are broken up into subgroups and subgroups of subgroups.
And and they have different agendas and they have different ways of pursuing their objectives.
And, you know, anyone who tries to to see this in unitary terms and wants to see some major evil force behind behind all the terrorism in the world is delusional.
Yeah, well, along those lines, I bet you have some wise things to say about what happened at Fort Hood, Phil.
Well, you know, I must admit, I'm somewhat conflicted about Fort Hood, having having been a soldier myself and been in a kind of a war situation during Vietnam.
And, you know, I really empathize for for the situation that soldiers who are fighting in a war that they they don't support philosophically or politically, what kind of dilemma they find themselves in.
I have to believe, of course, that that that Major Nadal was was unbalanced mentally because no one goes to the extreme that he did to to protest.
There were other ways he could have done it.
He could have refused service.
He could have gone to jail.
But there were there were other ways to deal with the dilemma.
And I have to believe that.
And I do believe there is a there is certainly a Muslim element in in that his very strong religious beliefs drove to a certain extent what he did.
They might have been the dominant factor.
But there this this is still one of those stories where there is so much about what happened and how it happened and what the background of it is that we don't know yet that it probably is a little bit early to be making judgment.
OK, well, I think this is always valuable to attack the left from the left and the right from the right.
And, you know, for people who aren't familiar with you, you're clearly no hippie.
You're a former DIA and CIA guy.
You're a contributing editor at the American Conservative magazine.
And I want you to address, Phil, if you can, the right wing spin, particularly the neoconservative spin that this is Mohammed's fault.
This is why this keeps happening is because of Islam.
And don't you see it really is one big terrorist group with one big evil force behind it?
That terrible enemy religion.
Well, you know, I would point out to them that, you know, they're making their case based on one incident in all these years.
And there have been many other incidents involving shooters all over the United States in various situations, most of the others being Christian.
So, you know, the religious element is there.
And just as a religious the religious sentiments of someone who shoots an abortion doctor certainly play a role.
But the point is, you know, it's it's too easy to jump to the wrong conclusion.
Senator Joe Lieberman has been leaping on this and and saying that this is Islamic extremism and it's terrorism.
Well, you know, sure, that's a that's a facile way of analyzing analyzing a complex situation.
And and Lieberman has an agenda.
He's trying to he's trying to marginalize Muslims in general.
He's trying to create a sense that Muslims are a threat to the United States in general.
That's not a view I share.
I, you know, I've known too many Muslims.
I've lived in Muslim countries.
The whole the reality of of of the Muslim religion and how it how it relates to many people who call themselves Muslims is a lot more complicated than Joe Lieberman will ever understand.
Well, good, because that's, you know, pretty much what I think, too.
And I just hate to see and I did somehow I forget maybe some liberal blogger had collected the links for me.
I can't remember having the guts to really go through and surf.
But I did see some of these right wing blogs, you know, in the Michelle Malkin end of the Internet where, aha, see, this proves we were right all along about whatever goofy, terrible thing it is that they're trying to indict a billion people on Earth of being a part of.
And somebody's got to tell them that they're wrong.
And I don't think hippies telling them they're wrong works well.
It's got to be people like you telling them, hey, come on now, there's a difference between this, that and the other thing.
And let's discriminate here and make sure that we say it accurately and understand exactly what it is we're dealing with rather than just going along with a bunch of propaganda to justify more war against Iran, against Somalis, against whoever.
And it creates it creates a fundamental dilemma for for our democracy.
If you pursue this the way Lieberman would pursue it, because, you know, there are six million Muslims in the United States.
The vast majority of those of those Muslims are peaceful, hardworking people.
And there are ten thousand Muslims in the armed forces.
I mean, do you marginalize these people?
Do you do you create a situation where you're saying, no, we don't trust you?
That ain't going to work.
So just in practical terms, I mean, these people are rather than looking for for answers or looking for for something that could be construed as constructive.
They're looking for things that are basically divisive.
All right.
Now, let's talk a little bit about what to do about this.
Your article before last at Antiwar dot com slash Giraldi is called A Manifesto for X Street.
And we've got about nine minutes here.
So what is this, the new anti imperialist league?
Well, actually, it's kind of the the new national interest foreign policy league, I think.
It's not really what I'm proposing is not really dramatically different than some of the stuff that Ron Paul has been coming out with, you know, in terms of return to constitutional norms and and a return to war as being an exceptional state for the United States, not the normal state.
But basically, I was just what I was just arguing was that, look, we have lobbies like AIPAC representing Israel's interests.
We have lobbies like J Street, the newer Israeli lobby, but nevertheless representing Israel's interests.
We have Turkish lobbies.
We have Greek lobbies.
We have Armenian lobbies.
How about finally, since the U.S.
Congress is not doing what it should be doing and representing the U.S. national interest, how about a foreign policy lobby that that pushes for the American national interest and for the interests of the American citizens?
And so I laid out kind of a manifesto about a number of things that a group like that might well have as policies.
Well, and of course, your list of of what ought to be done and what you define as the national interest is a very kind of particular thing.
Obviously, it's a lot like what I would agree with.
But I kind of flinch at the term national interest because ultimately that means, hey, if we feel like killing a bunch of foreigners for whatever we call our national interest and we can, I mean, is is that too general of a term?
Well, it's a you know, it's a kind of actually it's kind of a specific term.
I think that for me, national interest means that essentially your your policy is guided ultimately by those issues which are life and death issues.
If you have a life and death issue, a national interest, you have to do whatever that issue requires.
OK, and that could mean going to war.
But the fact is that we have kind of destroyed the process by fighting a number of wars in which there was no national interest.
And we have basically broken our constitution because our constitution requires that when U.S. soldiers are fighting overseas, there be a declaration of war after a full debate and so on and so forth.
And none of this has taken place.
So basically, you know, when I say national interest, I'm really saying, no, we're setting the bar a lot higher in terms of when we get involved in wars and when we get involved in international interaction.
We're not making it lower.
We're just saying that it really has to be a vital concern of the United States before we commit soldiers and before we get involved with situations with foreigners.
Yeah.
Well, you know, if you think about it, the actual program, the way it works in the sense of APAC or the AARP or the NRA or whatever, basically the way it works is we'll donate to your campaign as long as you vote how we like.
And if you don't, we'll donate to the guy who's running against you.
And and I guess in the sense of J Street, I've heard it said that or written, I guess I've read it written before, that if a congressperson wants to cross APAC and say, no, I don't want to put a blockade on Iran, then they need somewhere else to go and they need to know that J Street will still have their back if they want to take a peace type position.
That's basically what we would what the X Street lobby would have to do, which I'll say we I want to join.
All right.
Well, you know, we can have people sending contributions to to your postbox there.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Put make me the treasurer.
That's a great idea.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But, you know, I mean, the whole point is that there are so many things that the United States is doing now that just are not justified in terms of, you know, making the United States a stronger and a better place and helping the American citizens to have better and more productive lives.
It's just not happening.
And I'm focused by focusing on foreign policy.
What what my intention would be is to get us out of these things that are things we can get out of things like fixing the health care system and other things like that are a lot more complicated and they have a lot of domestic issues.
They get tied up in them and so on and so forth.
But foreign policy issues are foreign policy.
They're they're they're away from us.
I mean, and there are these are issues that can be fixed.
We can say, look, no more wars in Afghanistan, no more wars in Iraq, no more war against Iran.
We can say we're not going to get involved where foreign lobbyists can can basically bribe our congressmen and manipulate our Congress to do various things.
These are things we can walk away from.
And so I think that maybe the focus on foreign policy is not a bad thing.
Yeah, absolutely.
Because there is a lot of common ground on the left and the right with the moderate libertarian center that just want peace and want our troops home from Korea and Japan and the rest of it.
Let's just call this off.
Hey, it's a trillion dollars a year.
If you can't get through to a conservative with a number like that, I don't know what I mean.
Come on.
We can agree.
And and I absolutely agree with that.
Gay marriage and socialized health care and all these other things from from whichever point of view you take on them, whether right wing or left wing view on any of those issues.
Let's just hold off on the culture war for a while until we can get our modern anti-imperialist lead together with the best of the left and the right to just, as you say, just leave it.
We don't need all this.
We can just leave it.
And we won't even notice except for how much richer we are and how how many fewer enemies we have.
That's exactly the way I look at it.
And as you correctly point out, this is not a right wing or left wing issue.
This is this is a national issue.
This is something every American should should understand and should be able to support if it's presented right.
And I think the problem is that, you know, what was somebody said once said that when you go to war, the first victim of the war is is truth.
And I think that's the problem.
We are we've been in kind of a war economy and a war political situation for eight years now.
And nobody really from following the mainstream media really knows what's going on anymore.
And I think this is it's time to step back from that and say, look, we don't need this.
We're not we're not gaining anything by being in Afghanistan.
We're not gaining anything by being in Iraq.
And we're not gaining anything by foreign lobbyists being able to to do what they do.
So let's let's kind of walk away from this and take a breather.
Hey, would it be OK if we add to your X Street manifesto the repeal of the National Security Act of 1947?
Phil?
Oh, absolutely.
I think that I think it's time to to throttle back on the intelligence agencies.
The other thing I would I would abide by.
There's your headline for all you journalists, all you aspiring journalists in the audience.
CIA man, former CIA man, repeal the National Security Act of 1947.
You know, I would I would definitely do it.
And then I would follow it up by by eliminating the National Endowment for Democracy.
We'll stop all the democracy promotion and nation building.
Awesome.
All right, everybody.
That's Phil Giraldi.
He is a former CIA guy.
He writes Smoke and Mirrors for us at Antiwar dot com.
You can also find him at Amcon Mag dot com.
That's the American Conservative magazine.
I forgot to mention before, but I'm glad you kind of reminded me in the interview there, Phil, that everyone can also find what you write at the Campaign for Liberty.
Thank you.
Thank you, Scott.
Thanks very much, Phil.