Hey, Al Scott Horton here for wallstreetwindow.com.
Mike Swanson knows his stuff.
He made a killing running his own hedge fund and always gets out of the stock market before the government-generated bubbles pop, which is, by the way, what he's doing right now, selling all his stocks and betting on gold and commodities.
Sign up at wallstreetwindow.com and get real-time updates from Mike on all his market moves.
It's hard to know how to protect your savings and earn a good return in an economy like this.
Mike Swanson can help.
Follow along on paper and see for yourself, wallstreetwindow.com.
All right, y'all, Scott Horton Show.
Check out the archives, 4,000-something interviews at scotthorton.org and at libertarianinstitute.org.
And hey, this one is dedicated to the memory of our friend Will Grigg, who died just the other day.
It's our other good friend, the great Gareth Porter, writing again for truthout.org.
New revelations belie Trump claims on Syria chemical attack, you don't say.
Welcome back to the show, Gareth.
How are you?
I'm fine.
Thanks, Scott.
Glad to be back again.
Very happy to have you on.
Hey, before we start talking about all the facts in your article and stuff, I wanted to point out a thing that I was thinking in my brain.
And it went like this, boy, you better be right to not believe this thing because then later you're going to look like a real jackass if it turns out that Bashar al-Assad and his government really did do this.
And this is how social psychology works.
Look at the profound consensus.
Everybody is so sure, and I know I'm the one out on a limb for not believing, but it's not like that works on me or anything.
I'm just saying my brain does fire those neurons, same as everybody else.
We feel that pressure to go along with the received wisdom.
But I know better.
I know I just need to wait around and Gareth Porter is going to pick this thing apart for me.
So.
Well, you're absolutely right, Scott.
I mean, there's no doubt that that the the consensus in the country, political consensus, media consensus does make a difference.
It weighs on everybody to one one degree or another.
I mean, I have to consider it.
I mean, of course.
Absolutely.
The thought the thought occurs that you better be right, because otherwise, you know, you'll be you'll suffer a tax because of, you know, this is this is going to be if they're going to pounce on it with every ounce of strength.
So it absolutely makes a difference.
And in some sense, it's good because it makes one more cautious about one's analysis and you should be cautious, you you damn well better make sure you're getting it right.
Right.
And, you know, that that's the good that's the good side of it.
The bad side of it is that for most people, it prevents them from even entertaining the thought that it might be different from the consensus.
Right.
Well, you know what?
If there's one thing about the 21st century by now, I think it's just fair that never mind people with alternative political ideologies or anything else.
I think it's just right for every American to feel like we don't have to believe them.
You know what?
A lot of the times the things that they say about why we need to bomb people.
It turns out it's just not true.
Maine, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin, for that matter, that I always skipped in the North Korean attack on the South, which was really the other way around there.
So, you know, the the green light for Saddam to invade Kuwait, the weapons of mass destruction, the fake sarin attack from three and a half years ago, Gareth, the Gaddafi's promise to annihilate every man, woman and child in the eastern half of his country in 2011, the hundred thousand people who'd already been murdered in Kosovo, according to Bill Clinton in 1999.
It turns out that actually, geez, I don't even think I'm done yet, but I'll go ahead and stop.
You know, the fact is, Scott, that every single one of the rationales for the use of force that the United States has given have been to one degree or another simply a lie.
I mean, that's the reality.
And that is why you're absolutely right that it's not just, you know, it's not just a good idea for people to doubt.
It's really incumbent on people to doubt, not to give the benefit of the doubt to the government, but exactly the opposite.
Force them to to to prove their their argument before you accept it.
Right.
All right.
Well, and this is, of course, your specialties.
You take their claims and then you hold them up to the light.
So here we go.
There's a town.
It's in Syria.
A bunch of people died or something.
And other than that, nobody agrees.
The U.S. and I guess its allies say that, well, in the U.S., that's a pretty general term, too.
You can parse that if you want, Gareth.
But the U.S. says the official statement of the government is that Assad did it.
He dropped a bomb on this town.
He gassed these people with sarin and he's guilty.
And that's why we Donald Trump launched this cruise missile strike, et cetera.
And then there's the other side of the story, the Syrian government and the Russians and their claims.
And then there's a whole lot of gray area and leaks and claims and and counterclaims and debunkings all over the place here.
So this is where I turn it over to you to help us get it all straight.
Well, where to start?
I mean, I think that there are two key points on which the Trump administration, these two unnamed officials who, by the way, I I feel fairly confident that it's Votel and Mattis who are the unnamed senior officials who briefed the media three days ago now.
And the reason is that those are clearly the two officials who have been most deeply involved in talking with the White House about what to do about this, how to handle it and so forth.
They're the ones who've been most immersed in the details.
It would make total sense for those two to be the ones who who briefed the media.
By the way, they both gave an on the record press conference at the Pentagon, not on the on the issue of the what happened in Khan Sheikhoun, but rather on U.S. military policy in the Middle East that same day.
So they are a team.
They work together.
I have no doubt they're the ones who are who are the ones who have perpetrated yet again a fiction on the American people over this over this incident.
And what they what they told the press in their briefing had two major two major points as I as I analyze it.
One was that the Russians came up with this cockamamie idea that that the Syrians were carrying out a strike, were going to carry out a strike and did carry out a strike against a warehouse that they suspected had chemical toxic chemicals in it.
Only after the fact, they tried to make the case that it was only after the fact.
They claimed that some Syrian source unnamed had told Russian media that that, in fact, the Syrian Air Force didn't carry out any strikes that day.
And in that town, we don't know anything more about that.
But but that was and then they then they they claimed that it was it was simply something that the Russians were doing to cover up the reality.
So that was the first point.
Then the other one is that they that they had identified the source of the sarin gas that killed dozens of people, as many as 100, according to the story, 50 to 100 people.
And it was a crater in the road in the middle of the road, which is the subject of a number of videos, which some some of your listeners may have already seen online.
And so so they they said, you know, we know that this is where the the chemicals came from that that killed all these people.
It wasn't from the warehouse that the Russians claimed the Syrian the Syrian said.
So that's the storyline that they peddled to to the media.
And of course, it was lapped up without any serious questioning, without any effort to fact check or anything of the sort.
But what I found in and what I said in my article that was published last night, yesterday evening, is that they they were completely wrong or or presumably wrong, demonstrably wrong in both of these instances.
In the case of the story about the the plan to hit the warehouse, we now know that that the Russians actually informed the U.S. military in Syria 24 hours before the strike took place, that the Syrians were going to carry out such a strike, that it would be targeting the warehouse that they had reason to believe had toxic chemicals in it.
Now, you know, that that is based on a source who is well connected with people in the intelligence community, particularly so with someone who is in the U.S., in U.S. military intelligence in the Middle East and who is familiar with this episode of the of how the Russians use the deconfliction line, which I think people are familiar with.
The deconfliction line was intended to prevent an accident between Russian and American planes in Syria.
They they warn one another when either of them is planning a flight that could potentially, you know, be it be the cause of some sort of an accident.
So now is there a specific counterclaim there that no, they did not call us before they launched this airstrike, because that would be highly unusual if they did not call them over this deconfliction line before launching any airstrike.
Right.
I think that's true.
You know, I'm I'm not sure of that, but I think it's true that the Americans aren't disputing and saying they didn't call.
That's one of the suspicious things they're not disputing.
And of course, if they disputed it, then they would admit the story that it's true that the Russians have have have said that and they're not acknowledging it.
So, of course, they simply ignored the whole point of that story.
They're covering it up, essentially, is what I'm trying to say.
But but so they they did, in fact, try to suggest that there was no evidence of any strike on a warehouse.
You know, they did not make that statement flatly.
But the entire briefing that they gave was an effort to suggest that there was no such strike.
However, this is this is one of the things that boggles my mind about this briefing.
There is a paper that has been circulating in Washington that has as far as I know, I have not seen it.
I've not seen a URL for it, but but I have seen references to this paper.
I've seen the text of it.
And in this paper, it's it's an unattributed.
Well, it's it's it says it has a title, something like, you know, the strike in Hans Sekun of April 4th.
But there's no attribution.
There's no authorship attributed to it.
And and in this paper is clearly a paper that circulated within the intelligence community and in the administration.
In this paper, there is a specific reference to a Syrian airstrike on a warehouse, which is said to be located, as I recall, in eastern Hans Sekun in the eastern suburbs of the city.
So we know that they are aware that there was such a strike.
OK, we know that from that paper.
And yet they chose to try to deny that there was any strike on a warehouse in Hans Sekun.
But that to me is a very telling point.
OK, that's the first point.
Second point is that that their supposed certainty that this crater in the road with a hulk of metal in it is the source of the chemical that supposedly the sarin that killed all these people is is certainly highly questionable because we now know from our friend Ted Postal, who is a brilliant analyst and and just is absolutely unstoppable.
You can throw virtually any problem at him and he'll come up with a way.
This is the rocket scientist from MIT.
He debunked the sarin attack story last time and backed up Seymour Hersh against.
That's right.
That's right.
And he did so because of his his his powerful knowledge of how various rockets and missiles work.
And he's able to analyze these things.
So in this case, he was able to look at this rusted, not I don't say rusted, this this hunk of metal, this remnant of something and say, well, this is not a standard issue missile or rocket that is used by the Syrian Air Force.
In fact, it's an improvised device that that, you know, is not is not something that would be fired from an air from an airplane.
And he was able to show that that that it shows evidence of having an explosive on top of it, meaning that it was it was located in the in the crater or it was it was located someplace on the ground where there was an explosive on top of it, which blew it open or mashed it down is the way he put it.
Didn't blow it open.
It mashed it down and forced the sarin out through the end, like as he put it, like toothpaste from a toothpaste tube.
The presumed sarin.
Right.
Because he's doesn't he say that there's still actually no real reason to think that there was actually any sarin in that tube necessarily, just that somebody set off a bomb in the road.
That's it with a tube.
There are two there there are two levels or three levels here that are involved in this in this issue.
One one is whether this weapon was, in fact, air launched or or ground launched weapon.
And he makes it very clear it was not an air launched weapon would have to be done from the ground.
Two is is, you know, whether that weapon actually fired, you know, whether it was actually used in that in that place.
And three is whether it actually was sarin that came out of if it was used.
And so so these are all three different questions that that he he addresses the first one.
He does not address the other two.
He's not he's not expressing any certainty or any strong view on the other two questions.
And and I have to add that this question of whether it was sarin or not is of particular interest to me because I have been for the last year or or more have been looking at the evidence of whether previous previous so-called sarin attacks were in fact sarin or not.
And I I am reasonably convinced that in either none or in only very few of these cases were they, in fact, sarin attacks.
I believe that they were that the chemicals that were used that have been used in Syria have been weapons that that use smoke that that was converted into phosphine gas by contact with moisture in the air or which weapons were were actually based on emitting phosphine gas.
Now, we know that ISIS has, in fact, come up with some weapons or a weapon which which has which is based on pumping phosphine gas into a into a barrel and then firing it out or emitting it.
So so, you know, my view, based on all the research I've done, I won't get into more detail on it, is that most or all of these so-called sarin attacks have, in fact, been something else.
They they are based on a phosphine gas which mimics the the symptoms and the signs and symptoms of a sarin attack.
But but it's much less lethal.
It only kills.
Generally speaking, it only kills if you have been exposed to the gas in a very confined space, which, of course, was the case with at least 29 of those who died, potentially a majority of those who died in Kansai Kun.
They were 29 members of a single family were killed because they were in a basement which was filled up with this gas or where the gas came in.
So it was much more lethal there.
Hey, I'll sky here for Rye Guys T-shirts.
Rye Guys says W.R.Y.
Guys dot com.
Great, irreverent, thought provoking T-shirts upholding a pro freedom perspective inspired by such classic humorous as Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken and Oscar Wilde.
They invoke the wit and wisdom of the past to satirize modern myths.
These high quality shirts for men and women look good and feel good and they make great gifts.
Use the coupon code Scott for 15 percent off.
Rye Guys T-shirts at Rye Guys dot com.
That's W.R.Y.
Guys dot com.
And now, what are these reports that the Al-Qaeda guys had kidnapped or maybe even not Al-Qaeda, but there's this other group very close to Al-Qaeda there, I forgot their name, that supposedly had kidnapped a bunch of villagers from a neighboring area a week before and that maybe they were the victims here in some kind of, you know, like, yeah, I saw maybe the thing was more of a setup than an accident kind of a scenario.
I don't know anything more about it.
I mean, I just I haven't really tried to get into that one, to tell you the truth.
I'm not I'm not in a position to say, no, that's not true.
But I I certainly don't regard it as a necessary, necessary to an explanation, obviously, of this, of what happened.
Well, I can say that, you know, on this show, I guess I could check the date as long as I'm talking about it.
But this is the day of the missile strike, the day of the Tomahawk strike.
Before the Tomahawk strike, I interviewed Philip Giraldi, the former CIA officer who I know that you're very familiar with.
And he told me on this show that he had intelligence and military sources who were basically backing up the Russian narrative here that they hit this warehouse and some gas was in there.
I don't know if it was sarin or not, but that's seems to be what happened.
Well, I mean, there's an additional detail which I have in my article, which which also backs this up, although in a in an incomplete way.
And that is an eyewitness report of a of an attack on a one story building by the Syrian planes or a Syrian plane, or a Syrian plane, I should say, and which created a mushroom cloud, according to the eyewitness, a 14 year old girl who was on her way to studying the Koran, study of the Koran, and then turned around and went back home, which was very, very near there.
So she was up.
She was very close to the building that was hit.
She was within a few hundred yards of the building that was hit a few dozen, a few dozens of yards, I should say, not hundreds, dozens of yards is the way she put it.
And she she saw then in her neighborhood after she went back home and was safely inside.
She saw the people who arrived in the neighborhood to help others succumb to the poison gas to the toxic gas.
So that, in fact, suggests to me that it does seem likely it seems to me most likely that indeed the the poison gas, whatever it was, whether it was sarin, I think was much more likely to be something different.
I think it was a more phosphine, a phosphine gas of some sort, was was the cause that that is the the attack, the bombing of this warehouse with that gas in it was the the cause of the sickness and or the the illness and and deaths that that we saw in Kansai Kun that that seemed to be more likely than not at this point.
Yeah, I mean, that sure makes a lot more sense than the Syrians decided.
Well, I mean, we could get into the whole context of the fact that they've been winning in recent days against al-Nusra and that kind of thing anyway.
And the politics of the the talks that were supposed to start the next day or two days later in Brussels and all this and all the political reasons why Assad had no real reason to do this.
But then we're supposed to believe that when they launched this gas attack, they dropped one gas bomb and they hit in the middle of the road out in this sort of agricultural slash industrial park kind of thing on the outskirts of this town.
And then that the gas from that one bomb then inundated this entire town and killed almost 100 people.
But nobody has any pictures of the big cloud rolling in from, you know, the other neighborhood across the road or anything.
You know what I mean?
The whole thing doesn't make sense at all on the face of it.
There is this one video which is taken at ground level close to a cloud moving along at a fairly rapid pace.
Now, Pierre Spray, my friend Pierre Spray, tells me that, you know, look, you don't you don't know whether that is in fact Khan Sekun or not, even though the voice says this is Khan Sekun.
But but it does it does seem to be the kind of toxic or the kind of thing that looks like the toxic cloud that could have killed people.
And it looks like well, so has Bellingcat tried to place all the landmarks in the picture and say that this is next to the hole in the road or not?
Well, they have they have some sort of an analysis of that.
They did that right off the bat.
But it doesn't what they what they showed, as I recall it, I haven't looked at it for a while now, but as I recall it, it didn't really prove anything.
It certainly it certainly was not an analysis that had any power to to indicate, you know, whether the the gas that killed people actually came from that hole in the road or not.
They didn't even claim that they were doing that.
So I think the answer to the question generally is no.
Well, and did did is it how do you say it?
Postal?
Postal?
Postal.
Yes.
Postal.
Did he mention about whether the bomb should have exploded in the air if it was a gas dispersal bomb rather than explode on impact with the street?
And whether I mean, is that part of his analysis of why?
The general the general point of view of people who work on gas, you know, I should say chemical weapons, is that the effective way to do it is to have an explosion above the ground.
I mean, that's the way you disperse it effectively.
That's the most effective way.
And, you know, his position is clearly that this was exploded on the ground, not not in the air.
So, I mean, it's he's he's suggesting that it it was not I mean, he's he's he's very firm in his conviction that this was not an air launched chemical weapon.
All right.
Now, Garrett, so what about this?
All the story where it was intelligence sources at first came out and said, oh, we think now that the Russians must have known about this chemical attack because they share a base and for whatever other reasons.
And then later, the military and then even the Secretary of State explicitly walked that back when he was in Russia.
But there was a pretty big story about that in the first place.
Yeah, the story that I'm familiar with, Scott, is there was an Associated Press story on the on the 10th, on April 10th, that quotes a an unnamed senior U.S. official saying that the Russians had a drone flying or hovering over over the the city of Khan Sheikhoun, where the so-called hospital was located, where some people were brought for treatment on the day of the of the attack or of the incident, shall we call it the incident, for the moment, at least.
And so so the argument by this senior U.S. official is that the Russians had visual evidence that the the the Syrians were attacking the victims of their own of their own sarin attack, people who were going for treatment.
So so they knew all along that the Syrians had carried out this attack.
Now, of course, that's a tortured argument because it's based on the assumption that there was, in fact, a sarin attack by the Syrians and that that whatever happened at that hospital, the so-called hospital, whether it was real hospital or not, I'm not sure, was was a direct result of the sarin attack that the Syrians had carried out.
So the whole thing was just based on a whole pyramid of assumptions and is really worthless.
That's all I can say about it.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, so I wonder what you think is next, then.
This is a bit far afield from your article.
But so they did this strike.
But then that was it.
But then they said Assad must go.
But then they said not that we're going to do anything about it.
So is it just Barack Trump here?
Same old policy as one year ago?
Or has there been a significant change here?
There's been a significant change.
But, you know, it's it's a change that is shaped by two overriding considerations.
The first one.
And I'm not at this moment going to try to prioritize which one is over is is the primary one in the view of of the Trump White House.
But clearly one of these overriding considerations is domestic politics.
I mean, it's clear that Trump understood that by carrying out this strike and by posturing, you know, a strong anti-Assad posture as well as anti-Russia posture in doing so, he would redeem himself in the eyes of much of if not all of the U.S. news media and disarm his partisan critics.
What, of course, has happened.
So that is clearly one of the things that is behind the posture that has been struck in conjunction with this U.S. airstrike or, you know, not airstrike, but missile strike against the the base in Syria.
But the other one is at least of equivalent importance politically.
And that is the concern that this administration has about North Korea.
I think that the Trump administration is really freaked out about North Korea.
They think that unless they do something in the coming months, it will be impossible to stop North Korea from having a capability to go ahead with a program that will result in being able to hit the United States with a nuclear weapon.
And therefore, they are they're convincing themselves that they have to get the Chinese to step in and essentially sit on the North Koreans.
And the only way to do that, in their view, is to frighten the Chinese by convincing them that that this administration is capable of carrying out a preemptive attack against North Korea unless the Chinese do something.
And that is exactly the posture that the Trump administration has struck in recent days.
In fact, I would say in recent weeks, they've been sort of leading up to this.
So I think that that that really goes a long ways toward explaining the dramatic turnaround in the political posture that they've struck about both Russia and the Assad regime in recent days.
Well, you know, I don't know.
What if the Chinese say, well, no, we're not.
Well, that's the question I mean, which I happen to think is the most likely outcome here.
The Chinese, first of all, they've they've been played before, or at least the Obama administration tried to play them over over Iran.
You know, they, the Obama administration explicitly sent people to Beijing with the message that unless the Chinese can convince the Iranians that they've got to give in on the in the negotiations, they're going to lose.
And if they can convince the Iranians on the nuclear talks, then then the Israelis were afraid the Israelis are going to carry out a wage of war against Iran and then all hell will break loose and we'll all be losers.
So you better get in line and do something about the Iranians.
And I think the Chinese are perfectly capable of seeing through this.
And they know that the Trump administration is well aware that to to wage war against North Korea would be a total disaster.
So I don't think it's going to work.
But I think that's, that's what they hope will be the effect.
Yeah.
But then so as far as Syria goes, what all effect does this have on that?
I mean, if they want to get away with this bluff against North Korea, don't they need to be getting along with the Russians to not just the Chinese?
Well, logically, of course, they need to get along with the Russians.
The problem that I always need to get along with the Russians, no matter what the question is, of course, but yeah, yeah, but but I think the real problem, the real threat here in the posture that we're talking about, of saying that if there's a another chemical strike, then we will, we'll have to react again.
That, of course, is a an invitation to the jihadist to pull another false flag attack.
And and so I'm very much afraid that that will be the effect of it.
And so then we're all in the soup.
All right, well, but I mean, okay, so it comes down to it.
Trump goes crazy.
He starts listening to the Likud Nixon.
He says, fine, let's carpet bomb Damascus and get Assad out of there.
Will Russia go to war to prevent that from happening?
Of course they will.
Yeah, I mean, there's no they'll have no choice.
I don't I don't think they'll have any choice.
If the United States is going to use force to try to end the regime, that would be an intolerable affront to any major power, especially one that is led by somebody like Putin.
So yeah, I mean, my guess would be to call the bluff means we all die anyway.
All of us including him.
There are a few steps in between, you know, a war between the US and Syria, US and Russia and Syria and nuclear war.
I'm not saying that it's not a highly dangerous situation because it is but you know, I don't think we can have a limited war with Russia over Syria and then just leave it at that.
I think once you start killing Russians in the air over anywhere or on the ground at their anti aircraft sites or whatever it is, you're on a slippery slope.
Now, do you ever read Andrew Coburn's book about Rumsfeld?
And in the in the 1990s, they would do the practice exercises for the continuity of government and when the shadow government takes over if DC gets nuked and whatever this kind of thing, and Donald Rumsfeld would play the president, and he would end up leading the entire world to total thermonuclear devastation every single time.
Whenever there was a opportunity to say, Okay, okay, okay, enough, enough, enough.
No, they'd still just keep going.
Revenge.
You can't nuke our Denver, we're going to take out your St. Petersburg and back and forth.
And that's it.
And it just keeps going till we're all dead.
And it's basically designed that way.
The University of Chicago eggheads, they made it so that it's so intolerably intolerable.
To have a nuclear war that we won't have one at set that what happens if the bluff is called?
Yeah, right.
I mean, you know, this is the illogical logic of the nuclear of the nuclear age, but I'm not sure.
I'm not sure how that gives the United States assurance against not having a counter blow in Syria from the Russians.
I don't think that's the case.
I mean, I think that would be ridiculous.
Well, I mean, for me, it's a big reason not to try to test them and pick the fight.
But then I also think, you know, I understand that Mr. Putin has got to be Mr. Macho up there.
It's because he's the Donald Trump of Russia and everything, you know, with his tough guy attitude and all that.
But then again, at what cost safe face?
What if America really does?
What if Donald Trump really does decide on regime change in Damascus?
We never shooting war over that.
I mean, ultimately, does Syria matter that much to Russia?
I know they have their naval base there and I know they don't want another jihadist stand based out of Damascus.
Syria doesn't matter that much to the Trump administration.
I mean, let's face it.
They don't give a rat's ass about Syria.
Well, that'd be fine with me.
You know, I mean, they don't.
And that's why I really don't think that that is in the cards.
I mean, they're not talking about regime change there.
You know, they're talking about, yeah, we we want the world to take responsibility for the policy that they're talking about is the same one as the Obama administration.
OK, there's no difference.
Well, but then again, I mean, you know, remember in 1998, Bill Clinton signed the regime change act against Saddam that said, yeah, one day we'll get rid of him.
And then, yeah, one day came.
It's official policy.
In fact, that's what the Bush he said all during early 2002 and three.
They said, hey, Bill Clinton is the one who signed the regime change act.
All we're doing is just building on this bipartisan consensus.
It was building on it.
That's right.
But but now what I'm saying is that they have having used military force that their regime change policy, quote unquote, goes back to what the Obama administration was saying.
That is that, you know, we need to have an agreement with the Russians to, you know, to have a settlement which will somehow dispose of the problem of Assad.
That's very different from saying we're going to bring about regime change militarily.
I can't see that that's where they're headed at all.
They're they're they're not they're explicitly not saying that is what I'm trying to get across.
Yeah.
Well, so anyway, time being, at least in the Obama years, Assad must go meant no, we're not going to carpet bomb Damascus.
But yes, we're going to spend a billion dollars a year sending jihadist mercenaries to suicide bomb you.
So that's still pretty bad.
It's still pretty bad.
Yeah, it's still pretty bad.
And I guess.
I mean, the confidence is high that that could actually never lead to regime change that can just prolong the stalemate.
Is that it?
Well, I mean, the let's face it.
I mean, they're they're supporting the opposition has been a farce.
And, you know, you know, I know you're well aware that I have that I thought that there was really that that that policy was finished under the Trump administration.
Indeed, you know, the the fact that CENTCOM on the very day, as I recall, that the that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that chemical incident took place in Khan Sheikhun.
CENTCOM spokesman when asked about the the chemical attack said, well, that's not our department.
We have no responsibility for the relationship between the opposition and the regime, which to me, was another signal that the United States was out of the business of supporting the opposition in Syria.
But all that has changed now, I guess.
You know, you know, that that appears to be the case.
I don't know exactly what it means, but well, we can never underestimate the fact that the CIA is its own empire, and they do what they want anyway.
Right.
Well, they they have done what they want in the past.
I agree.
But what you know, at least Obama seemed to give up even trying to tell him what to do or not do anymore.
You know, I think what that means is that he he didn't have the backbone to stand up to them.
He didn't he wasn't willing to say no.
And the point is that if the president says no, then, you know, he can make it difficult to impossible for the CIA to continue.
Right.
A policy that that he opposes, but he's willing to try that hard.
You've got to have some backbone.
That's something you've got to have.
Right.
Well, or a little bit of background knowledge.
Right.
So here we got Trump has got some backbone, but he doesn't even know where Syria is.
Well, I'm not even sure I would go along with the idea that he has backbone with regard to the military.
He hasn't shown.
No, that's true.
I mean, only on a personal level if somebody offends him.
Right.
So he decided he didn't like Mike Flynn anymore, even though Flynn wore medals, you know, exact.
But but the institutions themselves know they're the only interest group that he represents at this point.
So exactly.
Exactly.
All right.
Well, listen, I've kept you too long, but thank you so much for giving me some of your time again, Gareth.
You do great work as always.
Always a pleasure, Scott.
Thank you.
All right, you guys.
That is the great Gareth Porter.
He wrote the book on Iran's nuclear program.
It's called Manufactured Crisis, the truth behind the Iran nuclear scare.
And he wrote 10 million great articles in the past for IPS News, for truth out or for Middle East Eye.
And we republish virtually all of it at antiwar dot com as well.
The great Gareth Porter.
And check out all of his interviews going back 10 years now in the archives at Scott Horton dot org slash interviews as well.
Hundreds and hundreds, literally 300, maybe more now.
With the great Gareth Porter, I'm Scott Horton.
Check out the full archives at Scott Horton dot org slash interviews and at Libertarian Institute dot org slash Scott Horton Show.
And follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton Show.
Oh, and the Q&A show.
If you guys like the Q&A show, you can subscribe to that at Scott Horton dot org slash show.
And you can send me your questions on Twitter.
Just use hashtag S.H.S.Q.A.
Right.
Scott Horton Show.
Questions.
Answers.
Hashtag S.H.S.Q.A.
Or just email me Scott at Scott Horton dot org.
And I'll try to get to all y'all's foreign policy questions, too.
And those I also post all those on the blog at Libertarian Institute dot org slash blog as well.
All right.
That's enough.
Thank you guys very much.
Bye.
Hey, I'll Scott Horton here.
It's always safe to say the one should keep at least some of your savings and precious metals as a hedge against inflation.
And 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 thirty five years.
And they take Bitcoin.
Call Roberts and Roberts at 1-800-874-9760 or stop by RRBI.co.
