09/22/14 – Philip Giraldi – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show here at noon to three Eastern Time on the Liberty Radio Network on the weekdays.
On the line, I got Phil Giraldi.
He's a former CIA and DIA officer, and now he is the executive director of the Council for the National Interest, which sponsors this show, as you hear during the commercial breaks.
Also, he writes for the American Conservative Magazine at theamericanconservative.com and for owns.com.
Welcome back to the show, Phil.
How are you doing?
I'm fine, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing good.
Oh, yeah.
I meant to say your latest article at the American Conservative is called Obama's Failed Foreign Policy Change.
We're running it today at antiwar.com in the viewpoint section there.
We're going to talk a bit about that big picture stuff here in a minute.
But first of all, I wanted to ask you about what must be a bunch of crap put out by the government and the major media about a brand new al-Qaeda group, a brand new Zarqawi break off sect, something called the Khorasan, which is sure to cut off all of our heads soon.
What do you say?
Well, I think, you know, these groups definitely exist, but, you know, they kind of exist in the sense that they have a website in which they threaten to do this, that and the other thing.
And then you have dubious intelligence reports coming in from here and there, you know, saying that this is for real this time.
This guy is a former al-Qaeda and he was involved with 9-11 and he's the founder.
And there are all these militants from Western Europe and the United States that are going to be unleashed upon us.
You know, there's a kernel of truth to all this stuff.
But the problem is, you know, you have to decide, is on balance the whole story credible?
Are we really under siege by all these guys with beards who, while they may have ambitions at the same time, don't really have an easy way to get to the United States or even to get to most places?in Western Europe.
So, you know, what is the threat?
I mean, the threat is obviously being engineered by people who have a vested interest in keeping the threat going.
I would suspect a lot of the information about Khorasan, for example, might come from somebody like Rita Katz, who makes a very fine living out of conflating these claims by various terrorist groups and selling them to the Citibank and others.
You know, it's a business, it's a racket.
Yeah.
I mean, they are, as you describe them, basically pirates without a ship.
And we are way safe over here in the new world, to a degree.
On the other hand, it seems like, well, I don't know, Phil, I guess I'm just paranoid by nature.
And it seems to me like these guys probably would want to attack us if they could try to get Americans to escalate the war over there more.
I think that's probably, they think, in their interest to do as they keep trying to bait us into, you know, calling Obama a coward and all this stuff as they do cutting people's heads off.
And I also think that on any given day, the FBI is way too busy in trapping some idiot into saying Osama is my hero or whatever, than they are actually doing any kind of decent job tracking which Americans have gone to Syria to fight and where they are, etc.
We had this one kook from Florida who went to Syria to fight, came back, hung around for a while, went back to Syria and did a suicide attack.
So it's not hard to see how that kook could have just stayed here.
And meanwhile, Homeland Security and all them are sitting around doing anything but actually protecting Americans.
So it doesn't seem like that much of a feat for one of these guys to get on a plane.
And then, you know, one person could do a lot of damage with one rifle in the right circumstances, you know, with the right soft target to hit, you know?
Yeah, no, I agree with all that.
I mean, there's no reason to assume that these guys are incapable of doing anything.
But the problem is, we've created a monster here.
They know that every time they make a comment on the Internet and it gets picked up inevitably by Rita Katz or by an intelligence agency, it's going to scare everybody and we'll spend another $10 billion on doing something we don't have to do.
And sure, if one of these guys actually gets over here, has the means, you've got to connect all these dots.
They have to, first of all, be able to get over here, which ain't an easy thing anymore.
And then they've got to be able to come up with some weapons or they've got to come up with a bomb or they've got to come up with this or they've got to come up with that.
And they have to get into a situation where they get through whatever security is existing and actually get there and ignite it.
And yeah, sure, they can really do some serious damage, kill a lot of people.
But you know, does this threaten the country?
And is this something that we should be on high alert for the rest of our lives about?
And that's what bothers me, because they keep, you know, the intelligence people, it's not so much the intelligence people, it's the political guys.
It's the guys at the top of Homeland Security or in the White House who are always talking about these threats.
I think the intelligence people have a pretty good perspective on how serious they are or not serious they are.
But the guys who want to politicize this stuff, it's because they want to leave the impression that the government is doing a great job protecting us.
We need another $100 billion and we'll be even safer.
You know, it's this kind of thinking.
And I think we've got to walk away from that thinking.
Sure, people are going to get killed by terrorists in the future in the United States.
There's no question about it.
But you know, we have 35,000 people killed every year by cars.
The question becomes, at what point does it become a government responsibility to spend tons of money on a threat that might be, you know, a tiny fraction of one percent viable?
Right.
Well, see, and that's my specific fear isn't so much like I'm going to be hurt or anyone I care about is going to be hurt or even that Americans in any kind of large numbers are going to be hurt.
You know, I would think the maximum damage in my nightmare scenario would be maybe a couple of dozen people shot before somebody shoots the evil terrorists or whatever.
That's nothing.
Right.
That's not even a pinprick.
But what my fear is, is the reaction that like, all right, that's it.
We're going to do Tehran now or whatever.
Great.
Who knows what madness could come from something like that.
If we can have a full scale Iraq War three breaking out now just because of a couple of beheading videos, then what if somebody really shot up a damn ball game in a real bad way?
You know what I mean?
Like that.
Who knows what kind of crazy thing would happen?
So it's not, you know, my fear isn't to like try to, you know, accentuate the war propaganda that, yeah, we all need to live in fear and go fight.
It's my my fear is that if something happens, we're going to go fight even more, create, you know, as Hosni Mubarak said before the attack on Iraq in 2003, said, if you do this, you're going to create 10,000 bin Laden's were there before there were 200 of these guys.
Really?
He was kind of right.
I mean, at least 10,000 are cowies, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's it.
That's exactly the point.
So, you know, but let's put it let's look at it another way.
No matter what we do, even if we spend this hundred billion dollars, there's still going to be terrorist attacks in the United States.
They're going to happen just because in a country as big as this with with with big, relatively open borders and so on and so forth.
It's just going to happen.
You have to accept it's going to happen.
So should we be spending 100 billion dollars to, you know, to line the pockets of politicians and beltway bandits or or should we just accept that this is the reality of the world that we have created?
But so let's not forget that point.
We have created, as you point out, with Mubarak's comment, this is a world that we've created.
And now all of a sudden we're not too happy with it.
There are a lot of terrorists out there.
Yeah.
Well, and I guess that's that's their spin on it.
If they if you if you put the war party to the wall on this, they'll say, OK, OK, well, so maybe George Bush's war did lead to a lot of this.
But anyway, that's still the past.
And we still have to do something about it.
Now, you know, they're basically they made the nightmare of that war propaganda from back then come true in a sense, again, not that these guys have ready access to the North American continent.
Obviously, it's not so simple, but it's sure.
You know, northwestern Iraq sure was like this 13 years ago.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you know, and, you know, it gets complicated, obviously, that terrorism is for real.
These people are not nice.
But you know, the thing that astonishes me is this constant citation of the threat of the Western jihadis, of the people that have gone to join the fighters.
But I don't know if I'm missing something here.
But if you look at what evidence is produced about these these so-called Western jihadis, I mean, they're not white people.
I mean, they're they're basically Muslims.
They're very identifiable in terms of their their travel patterns.
I'm sure they're being profiled like crazy by by intelligence services and by the police and by border protection and all this kind of thing.
It's not exactly like they're just because they were raised in France or something like that, that they're going to have an easy ride moving around the world.
I mean, it's not going to happen.
We got it.
We got to take this break.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
Just a second.
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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with Phil Giraldi.
He wrote this thing at TheAmericanConservative.com, Obama's failed foreign policy change.
Yeah, not much change to it.
Could be worse, I guess, but then again, it's getting worse right now in a real bad way.
And so I think I got to ask you about this, Phil.
You are the first guy to write, and it was, again, in The American Conservative magazine, would have been December 2011, that Obama had signed a new finding authorizing covert action in Syria and in Iran.
And in Syria, that meant support for the rebels to some degree.
And now, so that was the very end, December, again, 2011.
And there had already been some kind of things going on there for a little while with the Saudis, et cetera, earlier in 2011.
But anyway, I don't know exactly what, when that finding you're referring to was signed now that I think about it.
Story broke in December.
But anyway, so since then, there's been at least a half-hearted attempt by the Americans to support the rebels, maybe only to guarantee a no-win grind rather than a real regime change.
Maybe they gave up on regime change at a certain point, something like that.
But it certainly has seemed to me, for what I know, that when the Saudis, the Qataris, the Turks are doing all what they do to support the al-Nusra Front, the Arar al-Sham, and the Islamic Front, and whatever other groups that they've been supporting all this time, that basically that's just plausible deniability for the Americans having their satellites do it.
But it's really an American policy to support this thing the whole time.
And now that it's blown up in everybody's face that ISIS has taken all this territory and declared a caliphate, when really they're not any different than al-Nusra, who the Americans have been tolerating all along here and hoping to, in effect, support, now Leon Panetta, the Secretary of Defense, Hillary Clinton, and the rest of them are saying, see, we told you we should have supported the moderate rebels more then.
And now because Obama failed to do enough, that's what Panetta, who was, again, Secretary of Defense at the time, told 60 Minutes, and it aired last night, you may have seen, what do you make of that?
Is that really right?
Do you think Obama could have created a moderate army that could have marginalized or even defeated Assad and prevented the rise of al-Nusra and ISIS?
Well, I think Obama has only spoken the truth once, and that's when he said that an army made up of shopkeepers and accountants and people who fix cars were never going to be able to overthrow Assad that was a fiction, or did he call it a fiction or did he say it was a fantasy?
It was a fantasy that we ever thought that there was an opposition that was both western looking and capable of doing this.
So that's the only time he's spoken the truth.
This other stuff is all nonsense.
There was never any real serious capability apart from other major powers intervening in Syria, which kind of happened on the sneak anyway, to overthrow Assad.
So the whole thing is like this horrible story that's been concocted and keeps growing different kind of appendages, you know, oh yeah, well this is this and this is that, but of course it's all bull, and certainly when somebody like Clinton or indeed the president comes out with a lot of self-justifying stuff about what we should have done, you know they're lying.
Right.
Yeah, well, I mean, they sound like a bunch of Keynesian economists really saying, you know, like Paul Krugman saying, see, you just didn't inflate enough.
This is actually their policy.
And so now, well let me ask for a little clarification here, because I didn't go back and reread the article.
But was that the finding in 2011, and a finding is a piece of paper signed by the president ordering the CIA to go ahead and break the law or do whatever they want, right?
And was that what this was saying, work with the Saudis, the Qataris, the Turks in order to finance this so-called revolution here?
No, I think there was still an illusion going on at that time that the Saudis and the Turks and Qataris were somehow on our side and that we all understood what the game was.
But in fact, all of those countries have been playing their own game right from the beginning.
I'm quite astonished that I keep learning more and more about what the Turks were up to because the Turks are acting completely outside their own interests in terms of what they've stirred up in Syria, in terms of the refugee problem they have now, in terms of everything else, in security and everything.
But the Qataris and Saudis, obviously their dedication to Sunni revolution, as it were, is something that should have been more transparent.
Yeah, well, I think when you're talking about what's coming out more and more about the Turks, it's their support for the Al-Nusra Front, sworn as a lottery, just like Herst said in his sermons.
And for ISIS.
There was an article in the Turkish media this weekend about ISIS supporters openly recruiting in Istanbul.
The article, unless it was a fake, was complete with pictures and accounts of who had been suborned by them and so on and so forth.
It's quite an eye-opener.
These are NATO allies.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, so now here's the thing about it.
I mean, I'm willing to, it's my premise even, that these guys are basically a bunch of dimwits and they're so self-interested that they can't possibly have time to be interested in much of the facts or anything.
On the other hand, come on, everybody knows that Al-Nusra and then Nusra and ISIS have been the leaders of this rebellion.
The suicide bomber, prisoner beheader kind of kooks.
And they have just kept doing this and doing this.
So, I mean, is that not unperceived?
Didn't they know?
I mean, I know that they don't read every single thing that Patrick Coburn writes the way I do or whatever, but they must have had some idea that they're taking a real risk here in supporting these groups.
Yeah, I agree with you.
Again, this whole Syria thing has been a mystery to me right from the beginning because it never made any sense.
If there were any, you know, let's not put lipstick on the pig about Assad.
He's a tyrant and a murderer, but, you know, he's not unique.
And certainly if we were seriously interested in avoiding a civil war that has killed, what, now 200,000 Syrians, we would not have gotten into this game.
And instead, all we've done is enabled that, enabled that killing to happen.
And you get a guy like Obama who pretends to have a conscience, this blood is on his hands, you know?
And I'd like to see some accountability someday in the U.S. government, but I probably will never see that.
And, you know, but it's just that we've become a creature of our own kind of fiction that we've drawn up about how we're a force.
Hillary Clinton, in her review of Henry Kissinger's book, you know, it was a replay of the Madeleine Albright stuff about how we are the country that sees far.
We have to exert our leadership for liberal principles and democracy and freedom for all.
I mean, this is bullshit.
Yeah, it's crazy that they continue to try to push it, too, in the face of all of this.
But did you see the piece at the National Interest where they did the poll where more Americans than ever say that the U.S. government should be doing less around the world?
And then they also say that, yes, any pretext will do for any war anywhere on the planet at any time.
So right ahead.
Yes, that's exactly what, indeed, what's going on now in Syria is an indication that that clearly is the way the government sees itself.
I mean, there were a few people spoke out against Obama taking unilateral action, as it were, but not very many.
And the votes in both houses of Congress were pretty heavily in favor of doing this kind of thing.
And these people are just delusional.
Yeah.
Well, OK, so wait a minute now, because you're absolutely right about that.
I mean, it is absolutely just crazy to sit and watch a Senate hearing where John McCain is telling the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, well, what if Assad attacks the FSA?
Are you going to defend them from him then?
And he's just trying to ignore the possibility that that could even happen.
Know our policy is we're going to turn the FSA into a 100 percent anti-ISIS organization And Assad, why, he's just going to play freeze tag for a minute and just sit there and do nothing for a while and everything's just going to be.
So in other words, what do you expect to happen here, Phil, when they actually implement the policy based on their, you know, ridiculous kind of narrative that they've set up about backing these moderates against all comers?
Well, it cannot it cannot turn out well.
I mean, there's just no way that there is any dynamic here that can be exploited or twisted to turn out well.
And another thing I noticed last week, I'm sure you saw the article, but Dempsey said at one point that if we're going to bomb Syria, right, we're going to do it without Syria's permission.
This is an act of war.
We're attacking Syria, basically.
And it was Dempsey or one of his people in the Pentagon said, essentially, he said, look, and if Syria tries to defend itself, we will retaliate.
And you know, we're attacking another country which we're not at war with.
It would seem to me that the right of that country to defend itself is inherent.
And we're saying we're going to retaliate against somebody defending themselves against us.
I mean, my God, the fact that we can even twist our tongues around these kinds of formulations is scary.
I mean, it's just it's like we've totally lost our minds in the last 15 years or so.
Yeah.
I think you live too close to Washington, D.C., the way you say we all the time.
But then again, now, you know, the American people again, just go along.
Seventy something percent say go ahead and bomb.
Just don't send Johnny this time.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
Well, anyway, we're over time.
I'll let you go, Phil.
But thanks very much for doing the show again.
I appreciate it.
OK, Scott.
No problem.
Hopefully it'll be a better world the next time we talk.
I'm sure it will.
All right.
That's Phil Giraldi.
He's at the Council for the National Interest.
That's the America lobby in Washington, D.C. and also he writes for the American Conservative Magazine and owns dot com.
You and the owns dot com.
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