08/12/14 – Daniel McAdams – The Scott Horton Show

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I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
And again, sorry to trouble you, but it is fundraising week here at the show.
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Alright, next up on the show is our friend Dan McAdams from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Welcome back.
How are you doing?
Hi Scott.
Great to be back with you.
Very good to have you here.
And so first of all, let's talk about Iraq here a little bit, Dan.
So man, all over the place, it seems like.
Not just Reason Magazine, but all over the place.
People who, not necessarily just libertarians, I haven't been taking the temperature of the whole damn libertarian movement or anything, but I have seen all over the place at least liberals who certainly ought to know better saying, well, geez, you know, got to go save the Yazidis.
And everybody seems agreed that this Iraq War III is just a humanitarian mission, Dan.
And so I wonder, what's your problem?
Yeah, exactly.
It is amazing the same people who were burned in 2002, who, you know, some of them did a mea culpa, but a lot of them didn't.
But here they are back again for more punishment, you know.
And we actually just put up a good article by Pepe Escobar, who's always entertaining, but also very insightful.
And he makes the point that this whole idea about it being a humanitarian gesture was basically an afterthought that the Obama administration tagged on because he knew that he would get a lot of people on board.
But what Pepe points out, and I think it's a pretty good point, is that a lot of this has to do with avoiding another Benghazi.
As you know, in Kurdistan, there is a U.S. consulate, quote unquote, that's home to thousands of CIA agents who are running around doing all sorts of things.
And there was a real danger that this place would be overrun.
And he points out that that has a lot to do with it, as also the idea of a regime change in Baghdad, which we've, we're seeing sort of a slow motion regime change over the past couple of days, where the U.S. once again gets tired of its puppet and wants to put another new one in power.
So unfortunately, people are very gullible, and you wrap it in a humanitarian angle, and nobody stops to think, well, hold on, if bombs created this mess in the first place, how can more bombs solve the mess, you know, afterward?
So it is a very unpleasant situation to watch so many people falling behind, yet more war propaganda.
Yep.
All right, now, so here's the thing about the Islamic State, though, is that when Patrick Coburn compares them to Nazis, their fanaticism to the Nazis, their chauvinism, when he compares their mentality to the Khmer Rouge, that they're, you know, basically just nihilistic butchers, perfectly happy to kill women and children without the slightest thought, just as much as a fighter, and hell-bent on, you know, one way or another, a final solution of the Shiite problem and whatever other problems that they bring on for themselves.
And so what about that?
What about the fact that, you know what, when they called Noriega Hitler, it was a stupid joke, it was ridiculous.
But if you call this guy Baghdadi Hitler, and the people around him a bunch of, you know, fanatics as bad as Nazis, man, you might have a point there.
So isn't the lesson of World War II, we've got to start these wars earlier to prevent the rise of people who are really this bad from coming into power, Dan?
There may be something to that, but you know when the time to stop this war was?
It was to stop it back in the mid-2000s when the U.S. put forth the surge, the Sunni awakening, the Arab awakening, that is what created this group in the first place.
Yes, starting it earlier, which is to have said years ago to Saudi Arabia, stop supporting these lunatics.
You provided them training, you provided them weapons for years because your pet project, getting rid of Assad, and now you've created, as Coburn himself says, a Frankenstein monster.
Stopping it early would have been for the U.S. to tell Turkey, stop leaving your border open for the transshipment of weapons to these lunatics, who now make up more than 80 percent of the resistance against Assad in Syria.
Stopping it earlier would have meant telling the CIA, stop training these people in secret bases in Jordan and Turkey.
The vetting process, as we all know, it's been well-reported, was haphazard at best.
And actually David Stockman has a new article out that's very good.
He says, how was it that these guys became so adept at using very high-tech precision weaponry in very short order, you know, dot, dot, dot.
The answer is they've been trained by the CIA for years.
So I would agree with people who say that.
Stop it before it starts.
Unfortunately, the horses are already out of the barn.
It's already started.
And nobody's looking at the people who caused the problem in the first place and who continue to exacerbate the problem.
Or worse, they say, this is America's responsibility.
You know, we're the ones who put these poor people in this position.
So now we've got to help them even more than if we were just some other third bystander country here.
And even if you accept that argument, which I don't accept it for some, for certain reasons, even if you accept that argument, the question is, is the approach that the U.S. is taking, will that be effective in solving the problem?
Or does the U.S. even give two cents, I was going to say something stronger, about these people?
You know, 500,000 Christians disappeared from Iraq under U.S. occupation.
Nobody said a word.
Christianity has been decimated in Syria.
But because they were seen to be allied with Assad, who protected them, the U.S. didn't say a word.
So the U.S. has lied about its concern for ethnic and religious minorities in the region when convenient.
So why should we believe them now that they even care about these people?
But supposing they did, how do we know that this approach is the right approach?
If it's not been successful in the past.
Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying, too.
I guess.
And the good news is that Western Iraq is not necessarily, you know, paradise.
I mean, there are a couple of rivers run through it and all that.
But whatever oil resources are there are not that much.
And so these guys might be and I'm sorry, audience, I repeat myself a bit sometimes when I'm really, really right about something.
These guys might be as fanatical as a bunch of Nazis, but they don't have a Germany to rule here.
They've got a, you know, piece of crap desert to rule and they're hemmed in by enemies on all sides.
I don't know, man, Dan, seriously.
Real world stuff.
Never mind, you know, ideology, because you and I could beat the hell out of everybody on ideology.
But real life.
If Ron Paul was a president and you were his national security advisor and Iraq was this was the final falling apart of the Iraqi state and war and men, women and children being killed and all of this madness, seriously, what would you tell him to do?
Well, to accept the fact that Iraq is an artificial nation, probably to accept the fact that that it probably will break up no matter what you do.
The only thing you can do with military forces exacerbate the problem.
You could use leverage.
Of course, you could tell Saudi Arabia to knock it off.
You could tell Turkey to knock it off.
You could tell the CIA to knock it off, although you might get JFK if you do that.
But, you know, you can do there are things that can be done.
Like Ron Paul, he said, well, you know, I'm going to bring my own security to the White House.
I don't trust their Secret Service.
Yeah, exactly.
There are things that can be done.
But you know, this is how propaganda works.
You know, it's as we talked about last time I was on your show, it's not enough to oppose war.
You have to oppose oppose war propaganda.
And the propaganda works by tugging at the heartstrings of people and saying, we've got to do something about these people.
OK, we all agree on that.
Will this help?
Probably not.
But it's in the past.
And, you know, what's interesting, you talk about it's just a piece of junk in the desert.
But interesting that Kurdistan has now captured the oil fields in Kirkuk, which they've been salivating over for years.
And you can bet your bottom dollar there are a lot of the equivalents of Joe Biden's son who over there profiteering on this as well.
Yeah, including on CNN.
I mean, Peter Galbraith, who worked for George Bush over there, you know, he's there's an article of Forbes, the 100 million dollar oil patch, all about Peter Galbraith.
And he's on CNN today saying we got to fight for the Kurds.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Yes, exactly.
You saw the same thing, as you remember well, in Kosovo, where Madeleine Albright and Wesley Clark and others all of a sudden became huge industrial tycoons down there after they liberated Kosovo.
The same thing happened is happening in Ukraine with Biden's son and others.
And in the oil fields of Kurdistan now, now Kurdistan is amazing.
You know, it goes to show how far a lack of shame can get you.
You know, you can do real well in American politics as long as you don't care if everybody knows.
Just what a crooked, corrupt, lying, murdering thief you are.
All right.
Well, hang on a minute.
We'll be right back with Dan McAdams, formerly worked on Capitol Hill.
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Hey, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with Dan McAdams.
He's at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
We're talking about the nightmare of Iraq War III going on there in the Islamic State.
But now to World War III, maybe.
Let's get an update on what's going on lately in Ukraine.
Dan, first of all, I'd like to ask you, I guess, about the state of the fighting and how much progress the Ukrainian military is making against the separatists in the east.
Well, it looks like, you know, certainly the Donetsk region is somewhat encircled by the Ukrainian forces and Lugansk is a little bit.
It has a border with Russia still.
So, you know, things don't look that great for the rebels in the east.
But aside from that, things look much worse for the civilians on the ground who have not been part of the fighting, but who have been, who have taken the brunt of the fighting.
Obviously, from both sides, it's been disruptive.
But you know, there's plenty of evidence that the Kiev forces are simply wantonly shelling apartment buildings and blowing people up as they walk down the streets.
So it's a it's a humanitarian disaster that is, you know, up there with Gaza, really.
But nobody wants to talk about it because these aren't the right kinds of people to be helped.
And that's why you don't see the U.S. media worried about it or the U.S. government.
You know, when they do say something, they say that, well, they're bombing themselves.
You know, this is this is the they did say it about about Gaza as well.
So they're not favored and they're in a terrible situation.
They've not had electricity or water in weeks.
And, you know, they're trying to stream across the border to Russia or anywhere to survive.
And it's a it's a terrible tragedy.
All right now.
So the United Nations is saying and, you know, even I was surprised by this and we've been talking about this, you and me and others on this show have been talking about this for months now about the, you know, ethnic Russians in the east, the civilians fleeing to Russia.
And I guess just because of the Durther reporting or maybe I just haven't been looking closely enough.
I was surprised to find out, Dan, here in the Christian Science Monitor, that the U.N. is saying that almost a million people have fled eastern Ukraine for Russia.
So I guess, you know, they don't have to win a bunch of military victories if they can just scare all the population away.
It's yeah, it's a way of I mean, I wrote about it a few weeks ago.
It's a way of ethnic cleansing the whole area and opening up to what have you opening up to fracking so that Biden's son can make a fortune.
Who knows?
But it is an absolute disaster.
No one's talking about it.
As a matter of fact, I forget it was a few weeks ago that one of the State Department spokespersons I don't remember if it's Saki or the other one when asked about it, implied that these were just people going to visit their grandmothers in Russia, you know, which is which is so callous and disgusting, but so typical of how these people are framing this issue.
As far as American intervention, can you tell us about the extent of actual, you know, intelligence and or special forces type activity there by the United States or our allies in helping the Ukrainian military?
Well, we know because they've announced it, that they've sent in an unnamed number of it, but of it, but court advisors, including people from special forces, as is always the case with advisers to help them figure out how to win in eastern Ukraine.
You know, this is this is the escalation on the part of the West all the same time that yells at Russia not to escalate when we don't even see any any evidence of Russia escalating.
You know, the irony of the past week is as the U.S. was bombing Iraq for humanitarian reasons, it told Russia not to send in any medicine or food because humanitarian needs should not be addressed by those who caused the problem in the first place.
Yeah.
So the the the irony there is is awfully thick.
But the latest thing really is this one hundred and two hundred and eighty seven trucks from Russia with aid, with food and medicine and things to support the civilian population in eastern Ukraine under the auspices of the Red Cross.
And with the agreement of the initial agreement of the Ukrainian government, when I went to bed last night, they were leaving Moscow and everything seemed to be fine.
I woke up this morning and Ukraine said, no, they can't come in there.
They're transporting S-300 rockets, you know, and into Ukraine, which, of course, we would know if that were the case.
And then the latest we've seen is that apparently they will let them in.
But who knows what kinds of hoops they'll be forced to jump through, you know.
But there's two hundred and some white trucks that are full of humanitarian supplies.
And you know, if they are weapons, it would be the probably the stupidest thing the Russians ever did, because if they wanted to sneak them over, there certainly are better ways than putting them in these big white trucks.
Right.
So the Americans are publicly warning the Russians, you better not intervene like this.
And then so the Red Cross intervenes, brokers the deal.
Yeah.
It says, no, don't if you if even if you deliver food, we're going to consider it an invasion is what the U.S. said, which is which is pretty bad.
Well, and of course, when they run out of talking points to say for a little while, they just go right back to, oh, the Russians are about to invade.
They're about to invade, which they've been saying for six months straight.
Yeah.
Amassing troops on the border.
And you know, the Western press or stenographer is not only for Washington, but Kiev as well.
So every crazy thing that comes out of the mouth of these leaders who went from the streets of Maidan into parliament where they're still fighting each other.
You know, if you've looked at any video from the Ukrainian parliament, you see you see endless fights going on in parliament where they have the same street fighting mentality.
They're saying the same crazy things.
But the U.S. media, with very few exceptions, repeats it word for word.
Yeah.
Seems like they'd push back a little bit after six months of this about to intervene, about to intervene.
Do you have a Facebook post to show me or anything up there?
You know, come on.
That's this this great AP reporter who Matt Lee, who keeps antagonizing these young State Department gals.
You know, if you at least have some social media, you can show us as proof.
Yes.
Something.
Well, and what they don't say is that this is their own soil.
And can you imagine if there was this kind of thing happening on the Mexican border with the threat of spilling over into the U.S.?
You tell me that we wouldn't have any military.
Look at this.
Look at this town, this town in what is it, Missouri, last night where there was a little bit of rioting over an African-American kid being killed by the cops.
It looks like it's been invaded, invaded by the U.S. military.
Yeah.
Well, that's our next interview with Will Grigg coming up in just a second.
Exactly.
That's exactly it.
So you're telling me if this were happening on the border with Mexico, the U.S. wouldn't move some troops down there.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, you know, and I'm sorry because we're just about out of time here, Dan, but I wanted to point out here this piece in The Hill about from the 1st of August about sending in more trainers and contractors and all that and just the way they frame it.
Speaking of stenography, that and it's just such double think right in the first sense, the Pentagon said it plans to send troops to train Ukrainian forces next year as the country faces continued aggression from pro-Russian separatists.
So they're not even claiming that yet.
They're trying to invade and conquer Kiev here or anything.
They're separatists and attacking them is defense from their aggression.
All in one sentence.
Yeah.
There you go.
Oh, and there's the damn music.
I wasted the end of your interview there.
Sorry, Dan.
Soon we will do this again.
Thank you very much.
Come back on the show.
Thanks, Todd.
All right.
So that's Dan McAdams.
He's at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
It's Ron Paul Institute dot org.
And we'll be right back.
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Maybe we should consider advertising on the show.
See if we can make a little bit of money.
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