03/14/16 – Gareth Porter – The Scott Horton Show

You hate government?
One of them libertarian types?
Or maybe you just can't stand the president, gun grabbers, or warmongers.
Me too.
That's why I invented libertystickers.com.
Well, Rick owns it now, and I didn't make up all of them, but still.
If you're driving around and want to tell everyone else how wrong their politics are, there's only one place to go.
Libertystickers.com has got your bumper covered.
Left, right, libertarian, empire, police, state, founders, quote, central banking.
Yes, bumper stickers about central banking.
Lots of them.
And, well, everything that matters.
Libertystickers.com.
Everyone else's stickers suck.
All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
Oh, good.
Eric Margulies is going to be here in the third hour to talk about his North Korea piece, which is great.
For a lot of reasons.
Great because it's a great article, and great because then you don't have to hear me blab for half an hour, so that'll be perfect.
All right, but now we go to our good friend, Gareth Porter.
And he has a brand new piece out, just hit this morning.
Kerry sought missile strikes to force Syria's Assad to step down.
And this is Gareth's review and commentary, as G. Gordon Liddy would put it, on the Obama doctrine.
Jeffrey Goldberg's massive piece on Barack Obama's foreign policy in the Atlantic, which I discussed with Jacob Hornberger on the Liberty.me show last week, if y'all want to check that out.
But anyway, we got Gareth's take, which promises to be awesome.
So welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Gareth?
I'm doing fine.
Thanks, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
I appreciate you joining us.
On Twitter, the guy says, they should just call it the Scott and Gareth show.
And I think probably, you know, it would be like that, except I'd be taking up too much of your time.
You got to have time to write this stuff for me to interview you about.
But anyway, if I'm Mr. White, you're Clark Kent, dude.
You do a great job.
Even though I don't pay you, because I don't have any money.
But whoever does pay you, good for them.
The book is Manufactured Crisis, by the way.
That's a little something I can do.
Manufactured Crisis, the book on Iran's nuclear program.
Everyone else is wrong about everything.
Gareth Porter is the only one who got 100% right on Iran's nuclear program.
Manufactured Crisis, buy it and read it.
OK, now, this article.
Goldberg wrote up a thing.
Now, this article.
Goldberg wrote up a thing.
He had extensive access to Obama and all his people.
We all know in this audience who Jeffrey Goldberg is.
And, you know, he's the Bob Woodward of Barack Obama here, basically.
The insider access journalist.
So what'd you learn, Gareth?
Well, you know, what to me is, it's not the main story that Goldberg tells.
But I think it's an important part of the story, which really deserves much more press coverage than it has gotten.
No major news source, except I think CNN did a squib on it.
But the other news outlets have really remained silent about this story.
And that is how John Kerry, Secretary of State John Kerry, really pushed very, very hard for a number of months.
We don't have the exact time in this story when Kerry began to request that Obama approve cruise missile strikes on Syrian government targets in order to, as he put it, send a message to Assad that he must agree to step down.
And we're talking about in 2013?
No, no, I'm talking about, now I'm talking about 2015, 2016.
Oh, OK.
After, essentially, I mean, it's not clear whether they began.
I suspect the implication is that the request by Kerry for cruise missile strikes began before the Russian intervention.
You know, because clearly he was beginning to, he turned to the subject of Syrian peace negotiations.
Once the agreement with Iran was wrapped up in mid-July, he began to work on the Syrian issue.
And my supposition is that he began the request for missile strikes soon after that, because it was essential from his point of view to maximize the pressure on the Syrian government as soon as he began that effort.
But it's not explicitly stated precisely when the request began.
But Goldberg does say over the past year, which implies that they began before September of 2015.
But clearly, once the Russian intervention began at the end of September last year, then we know that Kerry stepped up the pressure on Obama saying, now we've got to have this.
Otherwise, he told Obama and he told Goldberg, I don't really have any leverage.
Well, I'm supposing that he, you know, Goldberg must have gotten much more from Kerry than he let on about this.
Although he did talk about an interview with him in which he asked him point blank, are you more willing to take action in Syria than Obama is?
And Kerry owned up to that very freely.
Yeah.
All right.
And so then, now you mentioned about the TOW missiles here that led, that helped the so-called Army of Conquest, which was just the two faces of al-Qaeda in Syria, Ra'ar al-Sham and the al-Nusra Front there.
Also, this is the backstory.
So this, it was, do I understand you right?
That you said once they took Idlib, that that was when it seems to you, Kerry really started pushing to go ahead all the way to Damascus now?
Well, you know, I think that there's a larger timeline here that has to be considered as one piece of it.
I don't sort of single out in my story or in my understanding of the timeline of the requests for missile strikes, the Idlib victory.
I didn't mean to say you did, I was just asking.
No, so I want to go back to 2013, as you correctly asked earlier, just a few moments ago.
The role that Kerry played in 2013 is crucial to understanding what happened in regard to the Obama administration's policy in Syria.
And it's now much clearer, I think.
But if you go back to 2013, what is so striking here is that really, almost as soon as he became Secretary of State, one of Kerry's first moves was to try to get Obama to agree to a much more aggressive program of assistance to the armed opposition in Syria, which meant already by that time, early 2013, it really meant that inevitably there was going to be a strengthening of the position of al-Qaeda in Syria, that is al-Nusra Front, because it had already been reported in the news media, and it was clearly the finding of the U.S. intelligence community that al-Qaeda had a strong, really the strongest position within the armed opposition was held by al-Nusra Front.
They did so in collaboration, close collaboration with Arar al-Sham.
The two of them played a dominating role in the armed opposition.
So, you know, the national security team in general, and John Kerry in particular, knew that in pressing for a much more aggressive program of military assistance to the opposition, they were going to be strengthening the position of al-Nusra Front and Arar al-Sham.
No question about it.
So when he did that, that was really the first of a series of moves that were intended by Kerry to set up a situation where he could bring about a negotiated solution to the Syrian problem that would involve, of course, the President Bashar al-Assad stepping down.
That was clearly, from his point of view, an absolute necessity.
So what was going on was that he was building up pressure on the Syrian regime to get Assad to agree to step down as part of this process.
And so the next move then, and of course, this was taking place in early 2013.
It is essential to know that in early 2013, the Assad regime was on the offensive.
They were quite successful in pushing back the armed opposition.
And so what Kerry was doing here was trying to play catch-up ball.
He was trying to increase the pressure on a very urgent basis at that point in early 2013.
And a big part of the story that I tell in my article is that Kerry was the one who was pushing the idea that the Assad regime was carrying out chemical weapons attacks in the spring of 2013.
See, that's what I was just going to ask you, the trial balloons on the sarin.
We'll be right back, everybody, with Greg Gareth Porter right after this.
Hey, all.
Scott here.
The thing is, I need you guys to help me to get these download numbers up.
So do me a favor and sign up for the podcast feeds of this show.
You can choose the whole show or just the interviews at iTunes and Stitcher.
All the buttons you need are at the top of the right margin at scotthorton.org.
The more subscribers I have, the more iTunes and Stitcher will help promote the show to new listeners.
If you're a hardcore fan, brand new or from way back, please leave them customer ratings and reviews too.
Trying to get these wars ended.
Hey, all.
Scott here.
On average, how much do you think these interviews are worth to you?
Of course, I've never charged for my archives in a dozen years of doing this, and I'm not about to start.
But at patreon.com slash Scott Horton Show, you can name your own price to help support and make sure there's still new interviews to give away.
So what do you think?
Two bits?
A buck and a half?
They're usually about 80 interviews per month, I guess.
So take that into account.
You can also cap the amount you'd be willing to spend in case things get out of hand around here.
That's patreon.com slash Scott Horton Show.
And thanks, y'all.
All right, you guys.
Welcome back.
Well, during the break, I tried to queue it up, but I couldn't find it.
But if you guys go to, if you just type in Scott Horton, North Korea, Iran, then it'll come up.
It's the speech I gave in San Angelo, Texas, April 24, 2013.
And at the very end of the speech, in the questions and answers, we're talking about Syria.
And at one point in there, I said, and if you want to know what Israel's position is on this, then all you got to do is look at how they were jumping up and down, screaming, accusing Assad of a chemical weapons attack the other day.
And John Kerry put out a statement that basically said, not yet.
Just wait.
We're going to do that here soon.
And that was the way I paraphrased it anyway, in that speech on April 24, 2013.
And then that's exactly what they did.
I pay tribute to that one, to you on that one, Scott.
Well, it's, you know, it's Jason Ditz gets all the credit, you know, news.antiwar.com for every important thing on the planet Earth you need to know, man.
I mean, simple as that.
That kid, he is just on it.
So that was exactly what was happening at that moment.
You're absolutely right.
The Israelis were clearly pushing for a finding by the United States that Assad was using chemical weapons against the opposition.
And Kerry was clearly building a case at that point.
He was in the process already of using that as a key part of a strategy to sort of trap, entrap the Obama administration or Obama himself into a situation of going to war in Syria.
And we know from a very nice piece of reporting in October of 2013 in the New York Times that in June, Kerry went to the White House with a paper that made the argument that, indeed, they knew that Syria had used chemical weapons repeatedly, and that unless Obama did something about this, that Assad would feel empowered to continue to do it even more.
And so this was a key move by Kerry, which clearly was accompanied by an effort to get Obama to agree to this much enhanced program of assistance to the opposition, to the armed opposition.
Now, of course, we know the big story that followed, which was the August 21st sarin attack, the alleged sarin attack that occurred on August 21st, 2013.
And at that point, Kerry was the one who was, of course, pushing the hardest for cruise missile attacks as the response.
And at that moment, originally, of course, the President Obama agreed to do so.
And then he changed his mind.
And we now know that one crucial factor in his thinking at that moment was that the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, came to him personally out of the blue, unexpectedly, and told him that, in fact, the intelligence on the alleged sarin attack by Assad was not a slam dunk, quote, unquote.
Now, when Clapper says it's not a slam dunk against the background of the former CIA director, George Tenet, claiming that it was a slam dunk on Iraq, you know something's up.
Well, of course, Clapper was the head of the National Reconnaissance Office at the time and got Iraq completely wrong and hid behind that.
Oh, well, Saddam must have sent it all to Syria with Putin's help and all that crap back then.
That's who Clapper is.
And so that makes it I mean, I don't know how much Obama understood about that at that moment.
I can't comment on that.
But and by the way, this is in the new.
We haven't known this until this only just came out in the same Goldberg piece here.
Exactly.
Again, this is how important this is.
Clapper went to the president and said, oh, I can't vouch for the intelligence here, boss.
Done.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, we don't know exactly what words he used, but it was enough to shake Obama's confidence in the intelligence and and among other considerations that led him then to back away from from the cruise missile strike that had been that he'd agreed to previously.
And we already knew that because of Phil Giraldi and other former CIA officers, I think maybe Lange had written about there's something that the CIA analysts were going to resign rather than put their names on any kind of intelligence assessment at the time.
And that was why they put out a government assessment, which was a brand new invented thing that they came up with, which means it was written by the White House, not by the CIA.
Right.
And Clapper clearly was playing a political role here in, you know, in giving them some kind of statement that they could use, you know, that that DNI was on board with this.
But but at the same time, he was clearly worried about the fact that that his his reputation was going to be at stake on this.
So anyway, that that was a key a key element in the decision not to go to war.
Right.
And the way he phrased it was, I just got effed over on this.
It was all about poor little John Kerry.
A bunch of people were going to have their lives exploded apart.
And it was going to reflect badly on him for getting too far out ahead of the president.
It's all about his ambition to get a Nobel Peace Prize for for a combination of Iran and Syria.
That was clearly what was on his mind.
Yeah, we've got to start this war so I can get my medal.
Yeah.
The final the final piece of this puzzle, though, is coming back, circling back to the to the TOW missile decision, which was in late 2013.
We don't know exactly the date that it was made, but we know that by late October or November, the Defense Department was officially notifying Congress that they were selling 15,000 TOW anti-tank missiles to Saudi Arabia.
Now, of course, that was a giveaway to anybody who was paying attention, who was not totally asleep, that this was going to be used in Syria because there was no other need for these on the part of the Saudis.
And, of course, they began then to dole them out to their favorite groups in Syria.
And again, clearly, the the Obama administration and John Kerry in particular knew that they were going to be strengthening the Al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham led coalition or command, particularly in Idlib, for a major offensive to push back the Assad regime.
So this was going to be aimed at a game-changing balance of power in Syria militarily.
And this was an extremely risky decision that Obama went along with.
I'm quite convinced.
Again, this is implied in the timeline.
He went along with this because, of course, he was on the defensive politically because he didn't go to war by agreeing to the missile strikes.
Right, right.
Well, yeah, this really helps enhance the understanding of what they were doing and how how much worse they made it while, you know, in a in a Kerryite effort to make it better by escalating to try to force a solution.
They didn't get all they got was the escalation and not the solution.
Exactly.
They and you know what?
I mean, this reminds me very much of the encounter that John F.
Kennedy had with his national security bureaucracy.
It was, of course, a different cast of characters, but it's the same the same storyline that he was under terrific pressure from key national security officials.
In that case, it was McNamara and George Bundy who were leading the charge, trying to get him to agree in 1961 to put combat troops into South Vietnam.
And he knew it was wrong.
He he did not agree to it.
But then he agreed to let them send several thousand advisors, quote unquote, to South Vietnam.
And it was the beginning of the advisors, meaning Rangers, right?
Well, no, it was actually it was a combination of special forces and, you know, ground troop advisors and more importantly, most importantly, Air Force pilots actually, you know, who were flying combat missions in the guise of being advisors in these two cedar plains.
Yeah.
Hey, did you know?
Oh, check it out.
I mean, we're in the break anyway, but this just came to my mind.
It was former Ambassador Dan Simpson.
Do you know him or know of him?
I know of him.
Yes.
OK, so he writes for the Pittsburgh something or other.
He was really great on the show last week about Afghanistan, and then he started going off extemporaneously about Yemen and all kinds of things.
And I'm not exactly sure his phrase here, whether he knew it or he was.
I think he said he had heard this, not just he was guessing that there were American copilots in the Saudi jets bombing Yemen, not just refueling them, but even, you know, white boys flying in the back seats of those F-15s.
That's interesting.
I mean, he seemed to know something inside about it.
I mean, that he was.
It'd be worth going back to listen to it again, I think, now that I think of it.
But yeah, he had heard it before somewhere.
I should ask Giraldi that.
He probably would have heard that.
Well, that would be a huge story if it's true, obviously.
Yeah, absolutely.
I was even joking in my in my book proposal that I did.
I made the joke that it's even reported that the Americans are holding the Saudi pilots tiny little hands all the way to the targets.
And then apparently like, no, I really had that right.
They're sitting in the back seat, maybe.
All right.
Well, I got to go, man.
I'm sorry.
I'm late.
I got to get Margulies on the line here.
Thanks, Gareth.
You're great, dude.
I appreciate it.
Y'all, that is the heroic Gareth Porter.
What would we do without Gareth Porter?
Am I right?
Seriously.
Kerry sought missile strikes to force Syria's Assad to step down.
Sigh in parentheses there at the end.
MiddleEastEye.net, MiddleEastEye.net.
And the book, of course, is Manufactured Crisis.
Buy it and read it, please.
Hey, Al Scott Horton here for NPV Engineering.
This isn't for all of you, but for high end contractors specializing in industrial construction and end users who own and operate industrial equipment.
NPV offers licensed professional consulting on chemical and mechanical engineering for your projects.
Tanks, pressure vessels, piping, heat exchangers, HVAC equipment, chemical reactors for oil companies or manufacturing facilities, as well as project management support and troubleshooting for those implementing designs.
NPV will get your industrial project up and running.
Head over to NPVEngineering.com.
Hey, Al Scott here.
If you're like me, you need coffee.
Lots of it.
You probably prefer taste good, too.
Well, let me tell you about Darren's Coffee.
Come to Darren'sCoffee.com.
Darren Marion is a natural entrepreneur who decided to leave his corporate job and strike out on his own, making great coffee.
And Darren's Coffee is now delivering right to your door.
Darren gets his beans direct from farmers around the world, all specialty, premium grade with no filler.
Hey, the man just wants everyone to have a chance to taste this great coffee.
Darren'sCoffee.com.
Use promo code Scott and get free shipping.
Darren'sCoffee.com.
Hey, Al Scott Horton here.
It's always safe to say that one should keep at least some of your savings in precious metals as a hedge against inflation.
If this economy ever does heat back up and the banks start expanding credit, rising prices could make metals a very profitable bet.
Since 1977, Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc.has been helping people buy and sell gold, silver, platinum and palladium.
And they do it well.
They're fast, reliable and trusted for more than 35 years.
And they take Bitcoin.
Call Roberts and Roberts at 1-800-874-9760 or stop by rrbi.co.